Slashdot Mirror
Chromecast Update Bringing Grief For Many Users
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, many Chromecast users were automatically "upgraded" to build 32904. Among the issues seen with this update are placing some users on the 'beta' release track, issues with popular apps such as Plex, HBO GO, (more embarassingly) YouTube, and others. Google so far has been slow to respond or even acknowledge the issues brought by customers, save for the beta release mishap. If you're a Chromecast user, what's been your experience?
I work for a pretty large video streaming company out of Hollywood. Our chromecast implementation for our streaming player has been doing crazy stupid shit for the last two weeks. Maybe this is why. Knew I read slashdot for some reason.
Looks like Chromecast has gone the way of Google Chrome: Arbitrary and random A/B testing that you're never notified of, and no way to opt out of.
This seriously pisses me the fuck off with Chome. The browser works great on like 20 machines, and then fucks up on one. You think it is the machine's fault, until you dig and dig and dig into vague forum posts on Google's boards. Then it turns out to be a hidden A/B test, where you have to go into the hidden Chrome settings to force enable/disable some very specific feature to get out of the that one and only that one particular test.
This is EXACTLY what happened to my primary development machine. Chrome had a hidden A/B test for ASync DNS requests. This feature is bugged to shit and back during the test. It would lock the entire browser session (all tabs) for 30-60 seconds at a time while making only certain DNS requests.
Another example is with the internal cache system. There was a bug for a while which would also lock up Chrome for 30-60 seconds at a time just waiting to see if a URL resource is locally cached. There was no fix for this that I could find. My resolution was eventually to have the installers handy for both Release and Beta Chrome laying around. Sometimes Release was the broken build, sometimes Beta was the broken build. So when shit got fucked up, I'd just toggle between the builds.
Amen. I really need a solid alternative to Chrome, that's all.
I keep using all the various browsers and despite its warts I keep coming back to Firefox as my primary browser. Chrome keeps "fixing" stuff that didn't need fixing and breaking it in the process. Safari has some behaviors I find annoying and (surprisingly) I run into a fair number of website that break on it. Plus Apple never seems to do Windows software very well and you can't get it on Linux. And IE isn't available on anything other than Windows even if I wanted to use it (I don't) so it's a non-starter.
Firefox isn't perfect by any means but it is cross platform, generally stable, generally predictable, and fits my particular work style. Basically it pisses me off the least of the major browser options. It's been my daily driver (so to speak) for quite a few years now. If something better came along I'd drop it without a second thought but none of the alternatives really seem to be meaningfully better.