6 ms·

Hah, that's a funny thread. I've heard that Google is using Chromebooks for engineers with production access. Makes a lot of sense sense since Chrome OS is muc

by eeZi 9y ago

Hah, that's a funny thread. I've heard that Google is using Chromebooks for engineers with production access. Makes a lot of sense sense since Chrome OS is much easier to secure than a normal Linux distribution.

candiodari 9y ago
That sounds insane. Do you have any proof ? Google also has goobuntu, which I'm being is what's provided to engineers.
- puzzle 9y ago
  Niels Provos himself is a Chromebook user (not sure if he needs to access production these days...) and he talks about locking down privileged access to Chromebooks with security keys: https://mikecborg.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/securing-clouds/ https://mikecborg.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/securing-clouds/ (search for all occurrences of 'chromebook') https://youtu.be/O-JXFQezWOc?t=35m0s https://youtu.be/O-JXFQezWOc?t=35m0s
- dgacmu 9y ago
  You can choose what kind of laptop you want. ChromeOS is one of the options, and security (+ trivial exchange-ability) is one of the selling points for using a Chromebook. I tried it for a while, but I'm too used to the Mac to have made the switch more easily, so I moved back. But I know quite a few folks who use and love them. Opinions, as I'm sure you can guess, vary widely. It was surprisingly not-bad, even for a diehard mac user, and that was on a model from two years ago.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    I wonder about that. Can you use a mac laptop to write software for the Google infrastructure ? That seems unlikely, if only for the security implications (would apply to any laptop of course, nothing to do with macos or chromeos)
    - dgacmu 9y ago
      Yes. Remember, there's not really "the Google infrastructure" as some separate component. With a few exceptions, it's all One Big Repository (https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stores-billions-of-lines-of-code-in-a-single-repository/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stor... ). Google is a very large engineering organization, and (my opinion here, but one shared by others) recognizes that there's a lot of diversity in what engineers like for their workflow. There's obviously a set of standards for what you can choose from as far as laptops (since the company is buying them), but it's pretty broad. Here's a Quora answer that goes into more detail: https://www.quora.com/What-computer-or-laptop-do-software-engineers-or-programmers-at-Microsoft-Google-Facebook-Amazon-and-or-other-big-tech-companies-use https://www.quora.com/What-computer-or-laptop-do-software-en... You can read more about Google's security model in a USENIX ;login article from last year: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/44860.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... (source: The above cited sources, plus I'm part-time at Google.)

by eeZi 9y ago

candiodari 9y ago

That sounds insane. Do you have any proof ? Google also has goobuntu, which I'm being is what's provided to engineers.

puzzle 9y ago
Niels Provos himself is a Chromebook user (not sure if he needs to access production these days...) and he talks about locking down privileged access to Chromebooks with security keys: https://mikecborg.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/securing-clouds/ https://mikecborg.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/securing-clouds/ (search for all occurrences of 'chromebook') https://youtu.be/O-JXFQezWOc?t=35m0s https://youtu.be/O-JXFQezWOc?t=35m0s
dgacmu 9y ago
You can choose what kind of laptop you want. ChromeOS is one of the options, and security (+ trivial exchange-ability) is one of the selling points for using a Chromebook. I tried it for a while, but I'm too used to the Mac to have made the switch more easily, so I moved back. But I know quite a few folks who use and love them. Opinions, as I'm sure you can guess, vary widely. It was surprisingly not-bad, even for a diehard mac user, and that was on a model from two years ago.
- candiodari 9y ago
  I wonder about that. Can you use a mac laptop to write software for the Google infrastructure ? That seems unlikely, if only for the security implications (would apply to any laptop of course, nothing to do with macos or chromeos)
  - dgacmu 9y ago
    Yes. Remember, there's not really "the Google infrastructure" as some separate component. With a few exceptions, it's all One Big Repository (https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stores-billions-of-lines-of-code-in-a-single-repository/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stor... ). Google is a very large engineering organization, and (my opinion here, but one shared by others) recognizes that there's a lot of diversity in what engineers like for their workflow. There's obviously a set of standards for what you can choose from as far as laptops (since the company is buying them), but it's pretty broad. Here's a Quora answer that goes into more detail: https://www.quora.com/What-computer-or-laptop-do-software-engineers-or-programmers-at-Microsoft-Google-Facebook-Amazon-and-or-other-big-tech-companies-use https://www.quora.com/What-computer-or-laptop-do-software-en... You can read more about Google's security model in a USENIX ;login article from last year: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/44860.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... (source: The above cited sources, plus I'm part-time at Google.)