Chromebook Instant Tethering Now Works On More Android Devices

One of the advantages of having a Chromebook device is the fact that you can utilize Instant Tethering — a Chrome OS feature that allows you to share an Android phone’s cellular connection with a Chromebook.

Acer Announces New Chromebase Models (Reminder: That’s a Chrome OS All-in-One)

It’s been quite a while since we heard anything about a “Chromebase,” the informal term for an all-in-one desktop computer based on ChromeOS (as opposed to a Chromebook). Acer announced two new designs based on Intel 8th-gen processors.

The Chromebase 2412 and its more button-down “Chromebase for Meetings 24Vs” variant hide all of their computer guts behind a 24-inch, 1080p touchscreen. Said guts include a maximum Core i7-8550U processor (a screamer for ChromeOS), 4-8GB of RAM, and 32-128GB of storage. The computers come with a USB-C port, plus four USB 3.1 ports, HDMI-out, an SD card slot, and an Ethernet port. Both machines have a standard VESA mount—a nice touch, and one that’s not always included for all-in-one designs.

Mozilla Finally Blocks Auto-Playing Audio In Firefox 66

irefox users will finally get rid of annoying auto-playing audio with the introduction of a new feature designed to block audible multimedia content from auto-playing.

The browser will “only allow a site to play audio or video aloud via the HTMLMediaElement API once a web page has had user interaction to initiate the audio, such as the user clicking on a ‘play’ button,” writes Mozilla’s software engineer Chris Pearce.

Putting Users and Publishers at the Center of the Online Value Exchange

Publishers are getting a raw deal in the current online advertising ecosystem. The technology they depend on to display advertisements also ensures they lose the ability to control who gets their users’ data and who gets to monetize that data. With third-party cookies, users can be tracked from high-value publishers to sites they have never chosen to trust, where they are targeted based on their behavior from those publisher sites. This strips value from publishers and fuels rampant ad fraud.

In August, Mozilla announced a new anti-tracking strategy intended to get to the root of this problem. That strategy includes new restrictions on third-party cookies that will make it harder to track users across websites and that we plan to turn on by default for all users in a future release of Firefox. Our motive for this is simple: online tracking is unacceptable for our users and puts their privacy at risk. We know that a large portion of desktop users have installed ad blockers, showing that people are demanding more online control. But our approach also offers an opportunity to rebalance the ecosystem in a way that is in the long-term interest of publishers.

There needs to be a profitable revenue ecosystem on the web in order to create, foster and support innovation. Our third-party cookie restrictions will allow loading of advertising and other types of content (such as videos and sponsored articles), but will prevent the cookie-based tracking that users cannot meaningfully control. This strikes a better balance for publishers than ad blocking – user data is protected and publishers are still able to monetize page visits through advertisements and other content.

Mozilla Thunderbird 60.5 is Now Available to Download

How to use the Daily Build of Mozilla Thunderbird

Firefox Nightly: These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 52

New in Firefox DevTools 65

We just released Firefox 65 with a number of new developer features that make it even easier for you to create, inspect and debug the web.

Chrome 72 for Mac, Windows, Linux rolling out w/ revamped Google settings, kills Chromecast setup

Chrome 72 removes the ability to setup Chromecast dongles using the Mac, Windows, or Linux browser. Users could previously setup Wi-Fi, device naming, and more by heading to chrome://cast. That URL would walk users through finding a streaming device on your network. Now, that page just shows users what special officers are available to them.

Google is directing users to the Google Home app for Android and iOS. It’s important to note that this change only applies to the setup process and not any Casting functionality. Users can still send tabs, video, or audio from Chrome for Mac, Windows, and Linux to a Chromecast or other Chromecast-enabled device, like Google Home, once everything is setup.

Reps OKRs – First half of the year 2019

Firefox 65: WebP support, Flexbox Inspector, new tooling & platform updates

Well now, there’s no better way to usher out the first month of the year than with a great new Firefox release. It’s winter for many of us, but that means more at-home time to install Firefox version 65, and check out some of the great new browser and web platform features we’ve included within. Unless you’d rather be donning your heavy coat and heading outside to grit the driveway, that is (or going to the beach, in the case of some of our Australian chums).

Mozilla Introduces Firefox 65 for Improved Privacy Controls, New Version Automatically Blocks Slow-Loading Website Trackers

Mozilla has been working on updating its browser to give more control to its users. As a result of it, Mozilla Firefox 65 has been officially launched today for Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android platform. The new release of the browser will help with content blocking controls, WebP image support, AV1 support on Windows, and other bug fixes and improvement.

Mozilla Firefox 65 is now available for download on Firefox.com for desktop users. People who are already using the Mozilla browser will be able to upgrade to the new version automatically. Firefox 65 rollout for Android users has started slowly and users will be able to download the app or update it once the complete rollout process takes place.

Chrome 72 Has Some Wayland Improvements, Eyes Deprecating FTP

In addition to Mozilla releasing Firefox 65, the release calendars also aligned today with Google introducing the Chrome 72 web browser. 

Chrome 72 is a notable update in that it deprecates TLS 1.0/1.1 while eyeing FTP deprecation in the future, offers up some Wayland improvements, crash reports support within Chrome's Reporting API, user activation API additions, and other changes.

Google Releases Chrome 72 for Linux, Windows, and Mac, Download Now

After announcing the release of Chrome 72 for Android, Google promoted today the Chrome 72 web browser to the stable channel for Linux, Windows, and Mac computers too.

Google is introducing the Chrome 72 web browser for desktop platforms, including Linux, Mac, and Windows, a release that promises to add yet another layer of stability and security improvements in an attempt to offer you a better and more secure browsing experience whenever you're using Google Chrome.

Open-source tool scans for hackable robots on the net [Ed: How to make FOSS sound dangerous and malicious rather than the back doors it helps uncover]

The tool dubbed aztarna (“footprint” in Basque language) allows security researchers to audit robots connected to the web, locating and identifying robots and their components, not only in the open internet, but also upon industrial environments where robots operate.

World's favourite open-source PDF interpreter needs patching (again)

Google Project Zero bug-hunter Tavis Ormandy took a "random look at the new release" of Ghostscript, and found a partly addressed vulnerability present in all versions up to 9.26.

Google's Proposed Changes to Chrome Could Weaken Ad Blockers

THE WEB CAN be an annoying and creepy place. Big animated ads try to distract you from what you’re reading, while ads for products you’ve already bought stalk you. That’s led many people to install ad blockers or other tools to inhibit websites from tracking them. According to a survey by identity management company Janrain, 71 percent of respondents use ad blockers or some other tool to control their online experience. Google, which makes the bulk of its money from advertising, has even gone so far as to block ads on its Chrome browser on a small number of sites with particularly aggressive ads.

What is Chromium?

Google has undertaken many projects over the years, building upon the success of its search engine which has held total dominance of the market share since most people can remember. The Chrome browser, in particular, is up there with some of its most well-known and widely used platforms and, just like the search engine, Google's browser has achieved considerable market dominance, despite being unfashionably late to the party.

Google planning changes to Chrome that could break ad blockers

 

The problem for ad blockers comes with an API called webRequest. With the current webRequest API, the browser asks the extension to examine each network request that the extension is interested in. The extension can then modify the request before it's sent (for example, canceling requests to some domains, adding or removing cookies, or removing certain HTTP headers from the request). This provides an effective tool for ad blockers; they can examine each request that is made and choose to cancel those that are deemed to be for ads.