
We are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases - kinlan
https://blog.chromium.org/2020/03/upcoming-chrome-releases.html
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dickeytk
Without knowing much about the team I really doubt this has much to do with
remote work. It seems like a smart move to take pressure off team deliverables
in general right now for a host of reasons.

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LanceH
Local schools are leaning heavily on chromebooks. They have checked them out
to students without computers. Adding an os update to this would contribute to
the chaos.

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enneff
OS updates on ChromeOS are seamless and mostly go unnoticed by the user, FWIW.

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tedunangst
Except when they move the launch bar from here to there or hide scrollbars or
make any of a million other changes that cause your screen to no longer
resemble the screenshot you're trying to learn from.

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LanceH
I updated a couple weeks ago and every tab was discarded when I tabbed away,
reloaded when I tabbed back. It's better now. I can only imagine the problems
that would cause for a school with a couple hundred of these checked out.

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retpirato
install session buddy from the chrome web store. it saves your tabs
automatically, & even restores sessions containing a mix of tabs & web "apps"
accordingly.

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rovr138
The only reason this is needed is because something was messed up with the
core functionality. Same thing could happen with an API.

The focus on stability for now makes sense with a lot of people going remote.

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airstrike
2020: the year that did not exist

~~~
Aaronstotle
I joked with my friend a few weeks ago that B.C. would stand for before
Corona/Covid. Unfortunately, it looks like it's not as much of a joke and the
impacts of it are only starting to become clear, I hope we can learn from it
so if there's another pandemic we can react much faster.

~~~
ksec
That is a good joke :) I will steal that.

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jontro
Google Play Store app publishing is delayed as well. Currently the message
says:

"Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are currently experiencing
longer than usual review times. Please expect review times of 7 days or
longer."

~~~
JCharante
I wonder how this will impact educational apps that are trying to get last
minute features for use in environments with a teacher. I know drops is trying
to roll out an update at the moment.

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rvz
2020 has been cancelled. A false start to the new decade.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Guess the "decades run from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9" people won that argument.

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nixpulvis
2010?

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_nalply
> Guess the "decades run from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9" people won that argument.

Like: the twenties run from 2021 to 2030, not from 2020 to 2029.

Because the year after 1 BC is 1 AD. There is no year zero. This is one of the
weird things of our calendar. More about that see Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero).

So, the first millennium is from 1 to 1000, the second from 1001 to 2000 and
the third from 2001 to 3000. And the twenties being the third decade start
with the year 2021, and so on.

The comment is just snarky, because people have a mess with dates. Usually
people start counting with one, even if mathematically starting with zero
would make more sense. But hey, they make an exception for millennia,
centuries and decades. They start with zero. Bravo!

In a sense this is funny. People don't usually start counting with zero. Of
all things they do this for decades, however for once this is not ...
applicable? useful? right?

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EdwardDiego
Not snarky at all - an attempt at an humorous aside. I thought about trying to
tie it to Lua / Erlang / Julia coders vs. C / .NET / Java etc., but thought
that a bit of a stretch. :)

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afrcnc
More on this: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pauses-chrome-and-
chrom...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pauses-chrome-and-chrome-os-
releases-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/)

Apparently they released some blog posts yesterday but changed their mind

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yingw787
I hope that Google and other companies will encourage remote teams and
divisions after this event. Having the ability for some teams to primarily
work from home might provide some hermetic guarantee of continued development
and liveness during a time of crisis.

~~~
enitihas
I don't think this is similar to normal remote work though. Schools are
closed, so people can't work on home in isolation. On top of that people must
be anxious. When people are worried about lots of other stuff their output may
not be the same.

Even basecamp, which is highly remote, postponed their email service launch.

~~~
gingerlime
> Even basecamp, which is highly remote, postponed their email service launch.

I’m sure the added stress didn’t help, but I would imagine it’s more related
to marketing. Do you really want to launch a new product at this time of
uncertainty?

~~~
enitihas
Considering that it was an email service, focused on making async
communication better, one would think right now might be a pretty good time
when a large number of people are working from home.

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dickeytk
strategically perhaps, but the optics on that are so awful. I'd argue it's the
wrong thing to do if you thought you'd be more profitable in a crisis.

~~~
enitihas
It's not about being profitable. They could even maybe launch it below cost
and that might help people even if it costs them. The parent talked about
marketing. And people using something and benefitting from it, and then
recommending to others is probably one of the best forms of it.

The optics are bad if you try to profit unreasonably. Launching something to
help people become more productive, and making reasonable money out of it
doesn't have bad optics.

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czechdeveloper
I wonder, if people just stopped working or moved on some covid related
project?

~~~
nkozyra
I'm sure that's part of it but going remote also introduces a ton a workflow
impediments as the team adjusts.

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rcfw
There are a lot of obstacles for temps/contractors to gain remote access at
google. I'd imagine a lot of testing is done by people who aren't FTEs.

disclaimer: I am a Googler, but know nothing about how the Chrome team
operates

~~~
zeveb
> There are a lot of obstacles for temps/contractors to gain remote access at
> google.

I thought that Google were all-in on BeyondCorp, which doesn't require a
secure perimetre. Did they not actually convert everything, or is it still in
progress?

(edit: removed a non-constructive suggestion)

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eitally
BeyondCorp gives you basic access to unprotected things on the network
(intranet, google apps, etc), but not to secure systems, source code, etc.

~~~
exikyut
Out of curiosity, how does that work? VPN? Remote desktop? Both?

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notokay
Finally, good news.

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throwGuardian
Remote work now is likely lower in productivity than normal-times WFH. If a
software company cannot adjust to remote delivery, albeit at lower than normal
productivity, the rest of the economy has no hope.

I don't understand Google's decision here - I wish they simply predicted a
longer than normal release cadence, versus none at all

~~~
londons_explore
Perhaps because some testing needs to be done on physical devices in a real
lab?

"Please test this build of Chrome on these 1000 various models of android
phones" sounds kinda hard to automate.

Even if you had automated it, you'd probably still need someone in the office
to poke hardware that locked up, etc.

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Symbiote
I don't know what Google use, but a friend worked on a system some years ago
that used a robotic "finger" to press on a phone touchscreen, for testing.
This was for a mobile phone company (pre-Android/iPhone) to check their OS
worked.

I wouldn't be surprised if even the best of those systems requires some human
supervision.

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Fiveplus
Are there any known security loopholes in the issues pipeline that are yet to
be addressed?

I'm interested in knowing if halting updates for a browser mean much to real
world users?

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bla3
It sounds like they're still pushing security updates.

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kinlan
Yep. We will still be pushing critical updates.

