Category: News

Google Chrome 126

Google Chrome 126 fixes 21 security issues

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google released a new stable version of its Chrome web browser for all supported platforms. Chrome 126 is a security update first and foremost, but it makes non-security changes to the browser as well.

The security update is available already. Google rolls out these updates over the course of days and weeks. Most Chrome installations are updated automatically, thanks to the built-in updating system.

Desktop users may install the update quicker by opening Menu > Help > About Google Chrome. Chrome displays the installed version on the page that opens and runs a check for updates. The browser will download any new version it finds.

Chrome 126: the security fixes

Google mentions that it has fixed 21 unique security issues in Chrome 126. It lists only externally reported issues on the page. All of these are rated high or lower, and there does not seem to be a(nother) 0-day issue that is affecting the browser at this time.

The security issues rated high type confusion, use after free, heap buffer overflow, and inappropriate implementation issues.

The non-security changes of Chrome 126

Here is an overview of important non-security changes in the new Chrome release:

  • OCR-AI Reader for inaccessible PDF documents that creates a “built-in PDF screen reader”.
  • Beginning to switch to an out-of-process iframe architecture for the PDF viewer. This makes it simpler to add new features to it according to Google.
  • Reactive prefetch on desktop. The feature speeds up navigations and the loading of pages by using a Google-owned service to predict resources that should be prefetched.
  • Tab Group support on iPad.
  • Starting in Chrome 126, Chrome starts to directly support accessibility client software that uses Microsoft Windows’s UI Automation accessibility framework.
  • Search any text or image using Google Lens.

Developers may want to check out the Chrome Status website for development related changes.

Have you tried Google Chrome recently?

DuckDuckGo AI Chat

DuckDuckGo AI Chat: promises anonymous access to AI models

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

DuckDuckGo has launched AI Chat officially. The feature promises anonymous interactions with several AIs, including GPT 3.5 , Claude 3, or Llama 3.

DuckDuckGo claims that access is free and that all chats are private. The company says that it is anonymizing interactions with the AI models. Furthermore, interactions are not used “for any AI model training”.

Users may communicate with all AIs free of charge. Interactions are, however, limited at this point. DuckDuckGo considers introducing paid plans in the future that increase limits and may give paying customers access to advanced models.

Using DuckDuckGo AI Chat is simple. Visit the startpage of the service and pick one of the available chat models to communicate with. Accept the privacy policy and terms of use on the next page.

The essential points are these:

  • DuckDuckGo is not saving or storing user prompts or outputs.
  • The company says it has agreements with model providers “to further protect” user privacy.

DuckDuckGo says that chats are anonymous and cannot be traced back to individuals. It achieves this by acting as a proxy. The AI communicates with DuckDuckGo, and thus also a DuckDuckGo IP address, and not the user directly.

Using DuckDuckGo AI Chat

AI Chat works as expected. You type and send the typed text to the AI. It will respond to it and DuckDuckGo shows the output from the AI in the interface.

Options to start the chat over and switch to another of the supported AI models are provided on the chat page.

The current limit is not highlighted on the AI Chat page. This means that you never know when you reach such a limit. You could switch to another AI model then to continue your interaction.

Closing Words

DuckDuckGo AI Chat gives you access to four different AI models at the time. If you trust the company’s claims, you get to interact with all of them anonymously. It is an interesting option to test the different AIs.

What about you? Do you use AI models already? If so, which is your favorite and why?

Firefox

Firefox is getting Tab Previews soon

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla has launched support for Tab Previews in Firefox Nightly officially. Firefox displays a thumbnail image of the open webpage on hover once the feature is enabled.

Current versions of Firefox display just the title of the website on hover. Firefox shows just the first few characters of a title on the tab itself by default.

While the title is sufficient for some users, others may prefer to see a preview of the actual web content. This may help identify the right webpage and thus tab when switching tabs in Firefox.

Once enabled, Firefox shows a preview of the webpage on hover.

Firefox users who run the Nightly version may enable Tab Previews in the following way:

  1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
  2. Click on Accept the Risk and Continue.
  3. Search for browser.tabs.cardPreview
  4. Double-click on browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to set the value to True, , if it is not true already.
  5. Double-click on browser.tabs.cardPreview.showThumbnails to set the value to True, if it is not true already.
  6. Restart Firefox.

You should get previews now when you hover over a loaded tab in the browser.

Disable tab previews: if you do not like tab previews, you can disable them by setting browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to False.

A third preference determines how fast or slow previews are shown. This is browser.tabs.cardPreview.delayMs, which you may also change on about:config. The value is in milliseconds. Reduce the number and previews are shown quicker, or increase it, to get more hover time before tab previews are shown.

Bonus tip: set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to True to show up to 20 thumbnail images of open webpages in Firefox when hovering over the Firefox icon on the taskbar of the operating system. You can change that number by modifying browser.taskbar.previews.max on about:config.

Closing Words

Mozilla will enable Tab Previews in Firefox by default in the future. Good news is that users can disable the feature, if they have no use for it. Will take months before the feature lands in Firefox Stable.

Will you keep tab previews enabled or are you using them already in another browser?

Chrome

Chrome warning “These extensions may soon no longer be supported”

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google is working on shutting down the old ruleset for Chrome browser extensions in favor of a new ruleset. The switch from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 brings along with it a huge problem: extensions that are not updated will cease to work.

While no one has counted the extensions that rely on Manifest V2 in the Chrome Web Store, the count is likely in the thousands. Not all of the are actively maintained.

In addition, some extensions cannot be upgraded without loss of functionality. This is especially the case for content blockers.

Google, an advertising company first and foremost, does have a vetted interest in limiting content blockers. While there is no evidence that the company has made the decision to limit content blockers deliberately, it is clear that content blockers suffer under Manifest V3.

Chrome These extensions may soon no longer be supported

Soon, Chrome is warning users who have extensions installed that rely on Manifest V2. The browser lists extensions that won’t be supported by Chrome in the near future on the extensions page.

Google suggests to either remove the extensions entirely or to replace them with extensions from the Chrome Web Store that support Manifest V3.

Popular extensions such as uBlock Origin and even some of Google’s own are listed there as incompatible.

While there is a chance that some of these extensions will be updated to support Manifest V3, users of Chrome should not get their hopes up that this is the case for all extensions currently incompatible.

If you use Chrome, you can enable the deprecation warning right now in Chrome Canary.

  1. Load chrome://flags/#extension-manifest-v2-deprecation-warning in the Chrome address bar.
  2. Change the state to Enabled.
  3. Restart Google Chrome.
  4. Load chrome://extensions to see the list of unsupported extensions.

Google has revealed the following information about the deprecation of Manifest V2:

  • June 2024 — Manifest V2 extensions will be disabled in pre-stable versions of Chrome starting in Chrome 127. Manifest V2 extensions cannot be installed in Chrome anymore. Google will roll out the change gradually.
  • July 2024 or later — After monitoring the deprecation for at least a month, Google will roll out the deprecation to stable versions of Google Chrome.
  • June 2025 — Manifest V2 extensions cannot be installed anymore on Enterprise devices running Chrome.

The change will impact most Chromium-based browsers as well.

What about your extensions? Are some of them only available as Manifest V2 extensions?

Microsoft Copilot Bot on Telegram

You can now chat with Microsoft Copilot on Telegram

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft has identified another service that its AI Copilot has not been available on. Today, Microsoft launched Copilot officially for the messaging service Telegram.

Word of warning: while you do not need a Microsoft account to communicate with the AI, it is necessary to part with your mobile phone number for verification purposes.

Here is how it works:

  1. Open the Telegram app and search for Microsoft Copilot, or, open the official Microsoft Copilot Telegram page here.
  2. Select I Accept when asked to do so to continue.
  3. Provide Copilot with the device’s phone number for verification.

Once that is out of the way, you may interact with Copilot using text messages or by selecting one of the displayed ideas.

Note: Copilot limits interactions to 30 per day. This is not much and there is no option currently to increase the limit.

The bot accepts a few commands:

  1. /restart to end the current chat and start over.
  2. /ideas to display examples.
  3. /share to get invites for friends.

The most important command is restart, as it erases the previous chat so that you can start a new one.

Interactions work as you expect them to work. Type a message and submit it to get an answer.

As is the case with all Copilot interactions, messages are send to Microsoft servers. They are processed there and then returned to Telegram.

The process was quick during tests. It is unclear whether that is going to change as the bot’s popularity may increase on the platform.

All in all, you do get the same experience that you get on other platforms that Copilot is available on. The experience is limited, because of the 30 chat turns limit and the inability to generate images at this point.

Verdict

Considering that you can interact with Copilot on other platforms as well, without handing over your phone number, most of you will probably shy away from the Telegram bot experience.

Have you interacted with Copilot or another AI before? Did you like it or find it useful?

Gmail

Gmail: low priority emails pushed to Updates inbox category

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google is rolling out an update for Gmail on Android and iOS that is moving what it considers low priority emails to the update inbox category.

Google’s email service Gmail classifies emails into different inbox categories automatically by default. This is done to display fewer emails to the user by default to avoid email overload according to Google.

Here is the current classification:

  • Primary—Emails from people you know and messages that don’t appear in other tabs.
  • Social—Messages from social networks and media-sharing sites.
  • Promotions—Deals, offers, and other promotional emails.
  • Updates—Notifications, confirmations, receipts, bills, and statements.
  • Forums—Messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.
  • Reservations—Flight confirmations, hotel bookings, and restaurant reservations.
  • Purchases— Order, shipping, and delivery emails.

Soon, Gmail will move emails that its algorithm classified as low priority to the Updates inbox. In other words, some emails that you would expect in the Primary inbox may not be there anymore.

Good to know: this change applies only if you have not disabled the inbox category system. This can be done in Settings > Email Address > Inbox Categories.

There you find options to disable all but the primary inbox. When you do that, all emails are shown in a single inbox in the Gmail application.

The change is rolled out only in Gmail for Android and iOS. The web-based version of Gmail won’t move low priority emails to the Updates group for now.

Google shows a banner in the Gmail app when it is activating the change. It says:

Now, Gmail puts messages that may not need your immediate attention in Updates. You can change this any time in settings.

Google told 9to5Google that it has been testing this change and that it has received positive feedback from testers about it.

Closing Words

Automatic classification of emails is always problematic and Google may make incorrect classifications at times on Gmail. You can disable the functionality entirely to restore a single inbox in Gmail apps and Gmail for the web though.

Do you use Gmail at all or do you use another email service?

AI is changing the World Wide Web: 4 predictions

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft, Google, and other search engine companies have started to add AI to the search results. Google is rolling out AI Overviews to search. This feature displays AI generated content at the top of the results.

This change has severe implications for the World Wide Web. In this article, I’m making four predictions about the future of the WWW.

Not all sites and services will be around in 5 years

AI generated results will keep a portion of searchers on the search engine’s website. The answer may suffice for a good percentage of user searches.

This impacts sites that rely on traffic from search engines. Google says that sites listed by its AI Overviews feature have received more clicks, but it is too early to tell whether only a tiny percentage of sites really benefits from it. In any event, sites on the second or third party of results will likely get less traffic.

The same may be true for certain services. Search engines like Google added more and more tools and features. You can check the weather, convert currency, get translations, do calculations or directions right from Google.

In any event, the drive towards showing more information directly on search results pages will push lots of sites out of business.

Good news is that this may level the search playing field. Companies like OpenAI may create their own search engines, which threatens the dominance of Google.

AI favors large sites and data sources

Generative AI relies on data created by humans. Without that data, it would not be able to produce any results.

For search engines, large data sources are of greater interest than smaller ones. Giving the AI access to the entirety of Wikipedia or Reddit is better than having to parse millions of smaller sites for the information.

Larger sites benefit from this, as they may sell their data to AI companies. Smaller websites do not have the means to broker deals with these companies, which means that they won’t get any compensation for their data. While they may opt-out, this also means that they won’t receive any links when the AI includes them as a source.

Ultimately, small sites are at the receiving end again when it comes to this, while large sites have a new revenue source at their disposal.

Trust will play a major role

Can AI results be trusted? AIs may hallucinate, which means that they make things up. There is also the question about the actuality of data. Since AIs rely on human generated content, they may return content that is out of date or also incorrect.

Say, you search for instructions on making a change to your Windows system. AI may return instructions that work on older versions of Windows. While you may adjust the query, there is a chance that out of date content is returned.

Trust will also play a major role in the survival of websites. Trusted sites will continue to do well, as many searchers will favor them over AI generated content. Sites that have a loyal followship may also survive.

Personality and authenticity remains important

Bland sites that just rehash news stories will have it difficult in the future. They do not really provide much value, but the business model worked, especially for established sites that can rank for pretty much any topic they write about.

Information returned by AI has no personality. It is just a robot returning information. Your favorite reviewer of video games, movies, software applications, or cars, on the other hand, may have more to offer than just the information.

This personality and authenticity of writers, podcasters, or video creators drives users towards services and sites, and may make them follow certain sites or services.

These will continue to do well, as AI cannot compete with that or mimic it satisfyingly.

Now You: what is your take on AI integrations in search, or entirely AI-powered search engines?

Mozilla is adding better profile management to Firefox

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla is working on improving the profile management capabilities of its Firefox web browser. While Firefox has supported profiles for a long time, managing and switching between profiles has not been exactly user friendly.

Currently, Firefox users have two main options to manage profiles. The first is accessible by loading about:profiles in the Firefox address bar.

This opens a page that lists all available profiles, contains options to create a new profile, launch a profile in a new browser instance, or switch the default profile of Firefox.

You may alternatively start Firefox with the parameter -p or -profilemanager to launch the profile manager on startup.

Profiles: profiles are entirely separate in Firefox. This means that no personal data is shared between them. This includes bookmarks, passwords, installed extensions, preferences, and customziations.

The new Firefox profile manager

The new profile manager that Mozilla is working on integrates into the Firefox main menu. A click on the menu icon displays the name of the default profile near the top.

A click on the icon displays all available profiles and management options. The menu lists the following options currently:

  • Rename the current profile.
  • Delete the current profile.
  • Launch one of the other profiles.
  • Create a new Firefox profile.
  • Manage all Firefox profiles.

The new profile manager is a work in progress. Mozilla plans to launch it in 2024 and some of it is available in Firefox Nightly already.

For that, it is necessary to do the following:

  1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
  2. Proceed if you see a warning screen.
  3. Search for browser.profiles.enabled.
  4. Toggle the value of the preference to true with a click on the button on its right.
  5. Restart the Firefox web browser.

Closing Words

Better profile management is a welcome addition to Firefox. Long-time users of Firefox know about profiles, but this has not been highlighted to new users in a long time. Most Firefox users are probably unaware of the browser’s profile support.

Adding support to the main menu could change that for the better. You can keep taps on the development on Bugzilla.

What about you? Do you work with different user profiles?

bounce

Mozilla is testing Bounce Tracking Protection in Firefox

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser could soon block sites and services from bounce tracking Firefox users to improve privacy.

Bounce tracking is a widely used form of tracking that redirects requests. This form of tracking happens in the background, which means that users are usually not aware of it.

Here is an example. A click on Link A should lead to Destination B. With bounce tracking, Bounce C is added, so that the request goes through Bounce C before it reaches the destination.

  • Without: Link A > Destination B
  • With: Link A > Bounce C > Destination B

There can be multiple bounces. With a bounce server involved in the loading process, users can be identified by the operators of the bounce server.

The W3C Community Group Draft report defines Bounce Tracking in the following way:

Bounce tracking refers to the use of redirects in a top-level context (including HTTP 3xx statuses, meta elements with http-equiv=refresh attributes, and script-directed navigation that doesn’t wait for user input) along with link decoration to join user identities between sites.

Bounce Tracking Protection in Firefox

Mozilla is testing the new privacy feature in Firefox Nightly currently. It runs in dry-run mode currently, which means that it is not blocking, but only reporting.

The data that is collected during the dry run helps Mozilla test and optimize the feature.

It will be enabled fully in Firefox Nightly before it lands in Firefox Stable eventually.

Not the first browser to implement the privacy feature

Mozilla is not the first web browser developer that is adding bounce tracking protection to a browser.

Brave Software introduced the feature back in October 2021 in Brave Nightly. It is now available in Brave Stable and was improved in 2022 with a feature that Brave Software called Unlinkable Bouncing.

This feature reduces the effectiveness of bounce tracking further through the use of temporary DOM storage.

Google’s Chrome browser supports bounce tracking mitigations as well, but only if third-party cookies are blocked in the browser according to this webpage.

Closing Words

Mozilla may be a little bit late to the party, but this is still a welcome privacy addition to Firefox. There is no ETA yet for the integration in Firefox Stable. Provided that tests are successful, it is likely that the feature lands in Firefox later this year.

With the new interim CEO in charge, Mozilla has launched several user-friendly features in Firefox or is working on integrating them.

Have you tried Firefox recently?

Edge PWA Search Suggestions

Microsoft testing Search Suggestions in Edge’s titlebar

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft is testing a new search suggestions feature in Microsoft Edge Canary currently. These are shown in Progressive Web Apps (PWA) windows based on activity.

Sites and services like YouTube, Google Maps, the Financial Times, or Alibaba are available as PWAs. The main idea is to give websites a few features of dedicated apps.

This includes pinning them to the taskbar or start menu, or launching them in a window without browser UI.

How to install PWAs in Edge

Installing a PWA in Edge is simple. The browser displays an icon in the address bar when a PWA is available.

Just click on the icon to display the install prompt. Edge explains the advantages of using the site as a PWA.

Activate install to add it to the system. Here you get options to pin it to various places and auto-start it on device login.

PWA Search Suggestions

Edge PWA Search Suggestions

Microsoft added a new feature to PWAs in Edge. The feature, which is available in the Canary version only, displays search suggestions in the title.

The screenshot of the YouTube PWA visualizes this. A search for Nintendo and the opening of some videos resulted in Edge suggesting to search for Nintendo Switch.

Another video resulted in IndieWorld being suggested by Edge. A click on the suggestion displays Bing search results in the sidebar in Edge.

Edge Search Suggestions results

The suggestions appear to be based on the content that you are viewing in the PWA. The usefulness seems limited, even though you cannot run searches directly from the PWA’s window.

There is a chance that the search suggestions feature won’t make it into Edge Stable.

How to disable Edge PWA Search Suggestions

Microsoft added an option to disable these search suggestions. Not everyone may find them useful. Here is how you disable the feature:

  1. Launch the PWA.
  2. Open the three dots menu at the top (next to the window controls) and select App settings.
  3. Toggle Search Suggestions so that its value is Off.

Microsoft describes the feature in the following way:

Search suggestions. Get suggestions from content that may interest you. Seamlessly search for relevant keywords in the side panel without interrupting your viewing.

Note: you need to repeat the steps for each installed PWA.

Closing Words

First revealed by Leopeva on Twitter, search suggestions in PWA windows seem to better integrate Bing Search functionality into these windows. Functionality is limited, but it may be something that some PWA users might want.

If you do not, and the chance is high, you can disable the feature and stop worrying about it altogether.

What about you? Do you use PWAs on your devices? What is your take on the search suggestions feature?