On: No, it wasn’t a virus; it was Chrome that stopped ...

[dreamcompiler]

It wasn't Chrome either. It was Keystone, a separate program that updates Chrome and other Google programs. Most users have never heard of Keystone (and Google likes it that way), but Keystone is running on your computer if you've ever used Chrome or Earth or another Google program. A bug in Keystone caused this problem. Keystone is very hard to kill and if you succeed in killing it it has a nasty tendency to come back.

Keystone is malware written by Google and it needs to die.

[egypturnash → dreamcompiler]

Keystone should be killed in favor of the App Store, along with all the other single-corporation licensing/downloading/updating apps.

I am sure Apple will be perfectly fine with putting a competing browser on their store, especially one whose entire corporate model is founded on tracking users to better serve them ads. I foresee absolutely no conflicts coming from either side of this relationship.

[monocasa → dreamcompiler]

To be fair, updater software for security conscious apps have good reasons to be hard to kill. Even outside of an attack scenario, you want to give as much chance as possible for your apps to still update even if you shipped a crashing bug or something.

[dreamcompiler → monocasa]

Unkillable software also has a very high bar for quality. That means among other things that it needs to be a good citizen on my computer and have pristine quality control. Keystone is neither and never has been. With great power comes great responsibility, and Google blew it.

[dmix → dreamcompiler]

Plus it's one thing to be difficult for malware to kill and another for it to be impossible to disable for privacy or maintenance reasons.

It's a tradeoff that favours Google and imposed by the unilaterally.

I could think of a few ways this could be addressed without forcing it. Such as detection from the browser app when it's not available.

[monocasa → dreamcompiler]

I mean, I'm going to judge them when I stop writing bugs. Until then, a zealous updater seems preferable to leaving browsers around with CVEs, even with this massive fuck up on their plate.

[dreamcompiler → monocasa]

And yet Firefox found a way to solve that problem without creating malware in the process.

[monocasa → dreamcompiler]

Firefox's updater breaks significantly more than Google's.

[manicdee → monocasa]

It might break more often but it doesn’t break my stuff like Google does.

[dralley → monocasa]

How often does it break your computer?

[monocasa → dralley]

I'm saying that for a lot of people, hard breaking their computer might be the better option compared to stop updating CVEs and stealing everything the person owns.