Hong Kong, Chrome: 2 Updates and Pentimenti
1) Two weeks ago I shared a photo, via Beijing Cream, of contrasting front-page treatment in the South China Morning Post (which is not run by the Chinese government) and the China Daily (which is) on the 16th anniversary of Hong Kong's transfer to control by the People's Republic of China. The two papers revealed their different editorial approaches -- one featuring celebrations of the anniversary, the other showing protests -- but it turns out that they were reporting on different rallies, not the same one. Apologies for misunderstanding on my part.
2) Last week I noted that the switch from version 27 of Google's Chrome browser, to release 28, had zeroed out Gmail's offline function on my computers, leaving me with absolutely no messages in the inbox rather than too many. For me this was a "reproducible" problem, related to the Chrome 27/28 difference. When I was using 28, Gmail Offline didn't work; if I "de-upgraded," back to 27, it worked again. Then if I re-installed version 28, the problem reappeared.
I heard from the Gmail tech team, which suspected that the root of the problem was a corrupted local storage file. On their advice I did the mail-system counterpart of a cold reboot. I force-purged all cached mail messages from my systems; deleted all extant Chrome versions; did a new install of Chrome 28; and in other ways cleared the decks. Then I re-synched Gmail Offline for my accounts -- and now it works, even with Chrome 28.
The Google team says: See, it was a problem with your cached files! I say, Yeah, but it was a problem that appeared only when I installed Chrome 28. We're both right, and in any case I am glad to have it solved. For safety's sake, if you use Gmail Offline, and are upgrading to Chrome 28, you can go through the purge-and-restore steps described here.
These updates offered For The Record.
More From The Atlantic
