Author: Martin Brinkmann

When I was young, I studied German, History and English at Essen University in Germany. I worked in computer support for several years at the time to help other computer users when they ran into issues. Writing started out as a passion project, as I wanted to help more users and not just the ones that I handled in support. This lead to the founding of Ghacks Technology News in 2005. First, as a side-project, but shortly thereafter as a full-time project as the site's popularity exploded. I sold Ghacks to Softonic some years ago, but stayed on as Editor. You can still read my articles on the site. I do publish on Betanews as well. In recent years, I started to write and publish technology books, including my latest book "Windows 11 From Beginner to Advanced", which is available on Amazon. I'm also a freelance writer for the German publisher Gamestar. Chipp.in is my newest project. I want to use it to talk about my book projects, sell my books directly, and write about technology, as this is what interests me.

Brave 1.64 browser update brings more AI and blocks VPN services from installing by default

Posted on March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Brave Software released a new stable version of the company’s Brave browser today. Brave 1.64 continues the AI push in the browser, but it also privacy improvements as well as new features.

Existing installations of the browser should receive it automatically via the integrated updating functionality. Desktop users may speed up the installation of the new version by loading brave://settings/help in the address bar. An alternative to that is to click on Menu > Help > About Brave.

Brave displays the current version when the page opens. It runs a check for updates and will download and install new updates automatically at this point. Note that it is necessary to restart Brave once to complete the installation.

One big change of Brave 1.64 deserves special mention. Brave notes in the changelog that it is no longer installing VPN services automatically. This is only done when users purchase a VPN subscription or enable it.

Tip: check out six Brave features that you may like.

Brave 1.64

Like Google and Microsoft, Brave Software is also integrating AI into its browser. Called Leo, it is different from Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini. A core difference is that Leo gives you access to different large language models. Not all of them are free, but the core service is.

Brave 1.64 introduces a Leo AI Tools right-click context menu entry. Right-click on any text element on the webpage and you may select a diverse range of AI tools. The two main options are to ask the AI to provide context and for help with your creative efforts.

For instance, you could select a few paragraphs of text and ask Leo to summarize or explain it. When you are writing, you could ask Leo to rewrite the entire text, improve it, or change its tone or length.

How well this works depends on the text itself but also on other variables, including the large language model. Selecting the last sentence and asking Brave Leo to extend it resulted in the following three paragraphs of text:

The effectiveness of this method relies heavily on two main factors: the text being analyzed and the specific large language model being utilized. The text itself plays a crucial role, as the more nuanced and well-crafted it is, the better the language model can understand and generate appropriate responses. This, in turn, improves the overall outcome of the process.

However, the text is not the only determinant of success. The large language model chosen for the task also significantly influences the results. Different models have varying strengths and weaknesses, making some more suitable than others for specific tasks. For instance, a language model trained on scientific literature may not perform as well when dealing with colloquial language.

In conclusion, the combination of a well-structured text and a carefully selected language model is essential for achieving optimal results. By focusing on these two aspects, users can expect a more accurate and contextually appropriate response from the language model.

Other changes

The full changelog is long and you may want to check it out on Brave’s website to go through all the changes. Here is a quick overview of changes that are noteworthy:

There is a new “Bring all tabs to this window” option in the right-click tab context menu. It moves all tabs of other windows into the active one.
There is a new “show scrollbar” option when vertical tabs are enabled. This adds the option to use it for scrolling.
Chromium’s storage partitioning is now compatible with Brave’s ephemeral storage implementation.
Implemented stream isolation for third-party subresources in Private Windows with Tor to bring it up to par with Tor Browser’s implementation.

Now You: anything that you find interesting? Anything that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Inplace Upgrade Helper: Windows tool to switch between Windows editions

Posted on March 20, 2024March 20, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Inplace Upgrade Helper is an open source tool designed to help Windows users move between different Windows 10 and 11 editions.

The Windows edition, e.g., Home or Pro, determines whether certain features are available or not. A common example is that Home editions lack access to the Group Policy Editor.

Windows includes options to switch editions. In best case, all you need to do is open Settings > System > Activation, click on the “change” button next to Change product key, and type or paste the new key.

This process works well when you upgrade from a less expensive version. Upgrades from Home to Pro should work this way. You may still run into issues sometimes. While this happens often when you downgrade Windows to another edition, e.g., from Pro to Home, it is not uncommon that you run into issues when you try to upgrade the edition.

Inplace Upgrade Helper

Inplace Upgrade Helper supports all major versions of Windows and many special editions. Besides Home and Pro, it also supports Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise, Windows 11 SE CloudEdition, or Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021.

The open source tool includes four different methods to change editions in Windows 10 and 11. These are:

Using slmgr.
Running an in-place upgrade using setup.exe.
Running an in-place upgrade of any edition of Windows. This method blocks any “firmware-embedded keys” of the current edition.
Running a forced in-place upgrade to keep all apps and settings.

While that may sound complicated, it is not really. All you need to do download Windows installation media and extract it on the local system. You may use WinRAR for that or most file archivers.

Download the latest version of the Inplace Upgrade Helper tool and place it in the same directory as setup.exe.

Right-click on Inplace_Upgrade_Helper.bat and select “run as administrator” to start it.

From there it is just a matter of selecting the desired edition, e.g., 2 for Pro, and then the upgrade method, e.g., f for forcing the upgrade or k for trying to install the update using slmgr.

As always, it is recommended to create a backup of the system drive before you make any changes to the operating system.

Note that the tool does not activate Windows. It merely switches the edition.

Closing words

Trying Windows’ built-in option to change the key and edition is the best option if you upgrade from Home to Pro. The open source tool may be useful if you run into issues when you try to switch editions.

Now You: which edition of Windows do you run, if any? (via Deskmodder)

Microsoft continues to add Copilot to anything that moves: File Explorer next

Posted on March 19, 2024March 19, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Barely a week goes by with Microsoft making yet another announcement about Copilot AI or launching a new development build of Windows 11 with Copilot added to something. This time, Microsoft added Copilot functionality to the default file manager of Windows, File Explorer.

This particular implementation does not add Copilot directly to File Explorer though. Microsoft added right-click context menu options to File Explorer that interact with the AI when selected.

Right-click on a file in File Explorer or on the desktop, and you find the new Copilot > Send to Copilot option there. This works similarly to Copilot’s integrated file upload feature. In other words, it allows you to ask Copilot questions about the uploaded file.

For example, if it is an Excel document, you could ask Copilot to look up and return data. Word or PDF documents can be summarized. Speaking of summaries, the second context menu options asks the AI to summarize the selected document.

Weakness in tests

This did not work too well in tests some weeks ago. I asked Copilot to return data from an Excel spreadsheet. While it did return some data, it was not complete. Even when reminded that it missed data that matched the query, Copilot would not return the full set of expected data.

I concluded that this feature could become something useful in the future, but only if Microsoft and OpenAI get it right. And with right I mean that the AI’s output needs to be reliable all the time. Even without hallucinations, which refers to incorrect data being returned that is not found in the source, it the AI ignores some of the data.

For now, it is always necessary to verify the output of any AI on the market to make sure its output does not contain errors.

Microsoft has a few months of development time left before it releases the long-hailed first AI-focused version of Windows. It will be interesting to see if that version will be more reliable than the current versions available for testing.

Now You: have you tried Copilot or another AI?

Google is shutting down Keen, a platform you may have never heard of

Posted on March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

It is not uncommon for Google or Microsoft to shut down services or programs. In fact, there are entire websites dedicated to services and products that these companies shut down.

Google’s latest target is Keen. Keen was developed as a competitor to the incredibly popular Pinterest. As you may know, you can join Pinterest to create collections of “things” that you like. From classic game consoles over your favorite recipes to furniture and holiday destinations.

These collections may be explored by others. Add social features to the mix, and you got a highly addictive foundation.

Keen was not Google’s first rodeo. Remember Google Plus? It was another failed attempt by Google to establish a strong social service foothold.

Keen promised to do things just a tad different when compared to Pinterest. The service allowed users to “curate, collaborate & expand everything” that they were into.

The service was available on the web and on Google Play. Registered users could create so-called “Keens” and add links, text, images, or web searches to them.

Keen allowed users to collaborate and Google added machine learning to the mix to power recommendations.

Keen launched with some fanfare in 2020. While it did get an initial push, as anything that Google does to a degree, it seemed to underperform. The platform got fewer and fewer updates, and nothing really happened to it since December 2021.

Keen shutdown

When you open the Keen website today, you get a popup that informs you that it is shutting down on March 24, 2024.

Both the Keen website and Keen application won’t be accessible anymore after that date. Google says in the farewell message that Keen “was always intended as an experiment”. Keen users may use a data export tool to export their date before March 24, 2024.

All data, including posts, uploads, like, follows, and comments, will no longer be available after March 24, 2024.

Closing Words

Keen is the latest product in a long list of products that Google killed over the years. While there were lots of duds among them, some are missed by some users even today. This includes Google Reader, Google Specialized Search, or Picasa.

Now You: do you use any social media sites?

Mozilla reassures users that it won’t kill Manifest V2 support in Firefox

Posted on March 17, 2024March 17, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla confirmed this week that its Firefox web browser will continue to support the extensions Manifest V2 next to the new version Manifest V3.

Google announced several years ago that it would move Chrome’s extensions manifest to a new version. The manifest defines the capabilities of browser extensions. Google’s initial draft drew the ire from users, privacy advocates, and developers alike. The company’s engineers made several adjustments to Manifest V3, which addressed some criticism but not all of it.

It now plans to end support for Manifest V2 extensions later this year in Chrome. Most Chromium-based browsers will share the fate. In fact, the only option to avoid this is to spend engineering time on reintroducing support for Manifest V2 in the browser engine after removal by Google.

Mozilla is in a better position this time. The organization’s Firefox browser uses its own browser engine, which gives it more control over its set of features. While Mozilla has been pushing Firefox towards improved Chromium compatibility in the past, it has made decisions in the past against this if it thought that it would be in the best interest of the organization.

In the case of Manifest V2 and Manifest V3, Mozilla published a statement about the future of Manifest V2 shortly after Google’s announcement regarding the change. Summed it, it confirmed that Mozilla would not follow Google’s implementation to the letter. Firefox would continue to support Manifest V2, and thus all extensions that relied on it, next to Manifest V3.

In other words, Firefox users would get the best of both worlds. Future compatibility with Manifest V3 extensions and also backwards compatibility to make sure that extensions continued to work.

Not all extensions can be ported to Manifest V3. Some may be ported, but with an impact to the functionality. Especially content blockers and other security tools are on the receiving end in this regard.

Mozilla reiterates its stance

With Google’s deadline to end Manifest V2 support in Chrome coming closer and closer, Mozilla published an update on its stance regarding the change. Mozilla confirmed that it has not changed its strategy at all.

While Firefox is supporting Manifest V3 extensions to a degree already, it will continue to support Manifest V2 extensions as well. Firefox continues to “support MV2 extensions for the foreseeable future” according to Mozilla.

Mozilla keeps a back door open, but you cannot really blame the organization for doing so. The organization promises that it will inform developers and users at least 12 months before making a a change in this regard, if it decides to re-revaluate the decision.

Closing Words

Firefox continues to support Manifest V2 extensions for the foreseeable future at the very least. It is too early to say if the decision will have an impact on the browser’s usage numbers. Once Google launches the change in Chrome, users with Manifest V2 extensions installed will notice that they cannot use these anymore.

These have several options, one of them is migrating to a browser that continues to support them. It will be especially interesting to see how content blockers behave after the changes land.

Now You: What is your take on the Manifest V3 push by Google?

Microsoft Office 2024 and Office LTSC 2024 announced

Posted on March 16, 2024March 16, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft announced Microsoft Office 2024 for consumers and Office LTSC 2024 for organizations this week. These will be the latest perpetual Office releases. In other words: customers buy these versions once without any recurring costs.

While that sounds like a good deal, perpetual Office versions are supported for only five years by Microsoft. While they may be used after support ends, it comes with risks as security issues are not fixed anymore by Microsoft.

Another factor plays a role. Whereas Microsoft 365 Office apps get constant feature updates, this is not the case for Office 2024 and any other perpetual version of Office. There is no technical reason for this limitation. Microsoft does so to cut costs and push its subscription-based business.

What we know about Office 2024

Microsoft does not reveal much about Microsoft Office 2024 or Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 at this point.

The consumer version will be sold for the same price as Office 2021, the last perpetual version of Office that Microsoft released.

The main edition of Office, Office Home & Student 2024, will therefore retail for $149.99. Microsoft Office Home & Business 2024 will retail for $249.99.

Microsoft 365 Personal is available for $69.99 per year. The business editions of Microsoft 365 start at $6 per month and user, but the cheapest version does not include desktop versions of Office programs. The Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan is available for $12.50 per month and user.

Here is the price overview:

	Office 2024 Home & Student	Office 2024 Home & Business	Microsoft 365 Home	Microsoft 365 Business

1-month	$149.99	$249.99	$69.99	$12.50
1-year	$149.99	$249.99	$69.99	$150
5-years	$149.99	$249.99	$349.95	$750

If you just look at the price, it is cheaper to buy a perpetual version of Office.

The main downside to buying one is that it won’t get any new features after release. Some features are also Microsoft 365 exclusive, especially for business users as Microsoft notes:

While Office LTSC 2024 offers many significant improvements over the previous Office LTSC release, as an on-premises product it will not offer the cloud-based capabilities of Microsoft 365 Apps, like real-time collaboration; AI-driven automation in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; or cloud-backed security and compliance capabilities that give added confidence in a hybrid world

Microsoft plans to increase the price of Office LTSC editions by 10% according to the announcement. Furthermore, Microsoft Publisher will not be included anymore in the bundle, as it is being retired.

Closing Words

It is good that Microsoft is giving customers the choice between the subscription-based Microsoft 365 and the perpetual version Office 2024. It is not as good that Microsoft is limiting functionality and blocking any new features from landing in Office 2024 editions after release.

Price-wise, perpetual licenses are still cheaper, if you compare the retail prices. Discounts may change this one way or the other.

There is also LibreOffice, which is free and works well in many cases, but not in all.

Now You: do you use Office?

Google turns Safe Browsing real-time checks on in Chrome

Posted on March 15, 2024March 15, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Announced last year, Google has now enabled real-time Safe Browsing checks in its Chrome web browser.

Safe Browsing is a security component of the Google Chrome web browser. Its main purpose is to warn users about malicious websites or downloads. This includes protections against known phishing websites and malware.

Google Chrome used a local list of known malicious sites by default previously. This list was updated every 30 to 60 minutes by the browser. This meant that there was a short period in which new known threats were not blocked by the browser.

Google calculated that “average malicious” sites exist for less than 10 minutes. In other words, a good portion of malicious sites do not exist anymore when Chrome updates the local Safe Browsing list.

Chrome users could switch the security setting to enhanced to get real-time checks. This new real-time checking of threats is now available in all Safe Browsing modes.

Safe Browsing changes

Google Chrome uses a Safe Browsing list on Google servers now to check any site that is getting opened against it. This improves the protection of users. Google estimates that this should improve the blocking of phishing attempts by 25%.

The change is rolling out to Chrome desktop users already. Android will also get the change “later this month” according to Google.

The option to enable Enhanced Protection is still available. This includes real-time checks as well, but also use of “AI to block attacks, provides deep file scans and offers extra protection from malicious Chrome extensions”.

What about privacy?

Google says that the new real-time nature of Safe Browsing checks is privacy-preserving.

Here is what happens in Chrome when a site is visited (according to Google):

The cache is checked to see if the site is known to be safe already.
If it is not in the cache, Chrome needs to check it against the remote Safe Browsing list.
Chrome starts by obfuscating the URL locally into 32-byte full hashes.
The hash is then truncated into 4-byte long chunks.
These are encrypted by Google Chrome and transferred to a “privacy server”.
The privacy server removes “potential user identifiers” before forwarding the encrypted hash chunks to the Safe Browsing server.
There the data is decrypted and checked against the database.
If a match is found, Chrome shows a warning to the user.

Google entered into a partnership with Fastly to “operate an Oblivious HTTP privacy server” that sits between the Chrome web browser and Safe Browsing.

The main idea behind Oblivious HTTP is to block the receiving server from linking requests to specific clients. Google published a blog post on the Chrome Security blog that offers additional information on the implementation in Chrome and server infrastructure.

Closing Words

Real-time checks should improve protection for users without impacting their privacy. Other browsers who also use Safe Browsing may not be affected by the change if they download Safe Browsing lists instead of using real-time checks.

Those who use Chrome but do not want these real-time checks can turn off Safe Browsing

WingetUI 3.0 Stable is now available

Posted on March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

A new version of WingetUI, a universal UI for package managers, is now available. WingetUI 3.0 features a fully redesigned interface that the developers promise is more responsive and visually pleasing.

Packages should load faster under in the new version, and the application’s package importing and exporting functionality has also been improved.

You can check out my review of WingetUI to find out more about the software. Only this much: the app gives you access to several popular package managers, including winget, but also others such as Chocolatey. You may use these to install new programs on Windows machines, upgrade installed programs, and also uninstall applications.

These operations work in batch mode or for individual apps.

Note: the application will be renamed to UnigetUI in the future. This is done to reflect that it supports multiple package managers and not just winget.

WingetUI 3.0

The latest version of the open source tool requires .NET 8. Missing components will get installed on Windows machines during installation.

The new interface looks different when compared to the old. The main access points were moved from the top to the sidebar. There you find the options to discover packages, view installed packages and package bundles, check software updates, and more.

Some sections displays filters when opened. When you launch discovery, which you use to find new apps, you get a list of filters to customize the output. These allow you to change the search mode and filter by package manager.

It still takes just a couple of clicks to install one or multiple applications. The assortment of optional actions does not appear to have changed and is still displayed at the top. You may use them to install apps as an administrator or skip integrity checks. These may still look confusing to new users, as only a few have text labels. You may hover over them to get a tooltip though.

One of the best features of winget, and thus also WingetUI, is the ability to upgrade all supported applications at once. WingetUI checks for updates on launch and displays all of them in the update section.

Closing Words

The new version of WingetUI worked well during tests. It had a slight display problem on a laptop that used the recommended 200% scaling. If you check the screenshot, you will notice that the sidebar’s scrollbar overlaps it slightly.

Other than that, it worked well during tests. You may still use winget for all the operations, but this requires running commands from Terminal. Also, you do not get extra access to other package managers and tools.

In closing, WingetUI 3.0 improves the application further without taking anything away from it. You can download the latest version from the project’s GitHub repository.

Mozilla adds new languages to Firefox Translations

Posted on March 13, 2024March 13, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser supports native language translations since Firefox 118 in desktop and Android versions of the browser. This feature, called Firefox Translations, supports additional languages now.

One of the main distinguishing factors between Mozilla’s implementation of a translate feature in Firefox and that in other browsers is that Firefox’s runs locally.

Translations happen on the local device. All that is required for that is the downloading of a language pack for each language. Google, Microsoft, and other browser makers use cloud-based translation services. The consequence here is that information is submitted to company servers. Google and Microsoft know about the text that gets translated. Not a problem for some, but if you value privacy, you may prefer Mozilla’s implementation.

Firefox Translations improvements

Firefox Stable supported a good dozen languages up until now. These were Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Portuguese.

The Estonian language is added to the list of fully supported languages.

Mozilla added support for additional languages, but these are limited to being translated. In other words, Firefox cannot translate other languages into these languages yet.

The additional languages are Finish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Turkish and Ukrainian.

Support for these new languages is added remotely to Firefox, an update of the browser is not required. You should see the languages listed already on about:preferences#general under Translations.

Support for additional languages in development

Mozilla is working on adding support for additional languages to Firefox. Users who run development versions of Firefox gain access to additional languages or capabilities.

The focus is on European languages, with Persian (Farsi) being the exception.

Dev users get full access to Czech and Persian (Farsi). Additionally, support for translating Catalan, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) are also available. Lastly, support for translating languages into Hungarian, Russian, and Ukrainian is also available.

Closing Words

Firefox’s translation feature supports many European languages already. Several are still missing, including Danish, Swedish, and Croatian among others.

Support for non-European languages is lacking severely at this stage. These still require the use of other translation services at the time of writing and the foreseeable future.

Now You: which translation service do you use? (via Sören Hentzschel)

Speedometer 3.0: new browser benchmark released

Posted on March 12, 2024March 12, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Speedometer 3.0 is the latest version of the browser benchmark developed in a joint effort by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

Browser benchmarks were a craze for many years on the Internet, but popularity has gone down significantly in the last years.

When Google launched Chrome, it hammered home the fact that the browser was offering better performance with browser benchmarks. It was true at the time and brilliant marketing.

Mozilla, Microsoft, and other browser makers scrambled, but they had huge troubles closing the gap to Chrome.

Today, browser benchmarks are niche again. Developers and organizations may use them, but they play little role for regular Internet users. One reason for that is that browser makers have stopped using them for marketing for the most part. And the reason for that is that the gap is not as large anymore as it was 15 years ago.

Speedometer 3.0

Speedometer 3.0 is a browser benchmark by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Visit the benchmark’s website in any browser and hit the “start test” button to run it.

The benchmark runs automatically from that point on. It make take a minute or two to complete the test and a score is displayed in the end. This score depends largely on the performance of the device and the browser that you use.

Speedometer 3.0 replaces the second version of the benchmark. Apple and Google collaborated in 2018 to release it to the public.

The new iteration improves “how Speedometer captures and calculates scores” and it comes with “an even wider variety of workloads”. In essence, the developers of Speedometer have updated the workloads used to test the performance of the browser to take into account changes in the last six years on the Internet.

This means that a different set of frameworks is used in the tests. New browser and JavaScript APIs are tested, and more complex computations are run as well.

You may check out Google’s post on its Chromium blog for the company’s take on the changes. Microsoft published its take on the benchmark update here.

Closing Words

Most web browsers share a common core. This is true for all Chromium-based browsers. Performance, therefore, is nearly identical when it comes to the likes of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, or Opera. Mozilla with its Firefox web browser and Apple with its Safari browser use different engines, and results may differ more on the same machine because of that.

Unlike computer benchmarks, which may show tweaking potential, browser benchmarks come with little optimization potential. Apart from installing the latest drivers on the machine, there is little one can do to improve the performance of a browser to get better scores in benchmarks.

With that said, it is still interesting to see how your browser or system performs.

Now You: do you use benchmarks?