If you want to share Disney+, you need to pay for extra member slots now

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Disney announced the rollout of extra member slots option in many regions today. The company follows Netflix’s example, which cracked down on password sharing and introduced extra member slots some time ago.

Good to know: Extra member slots allow subscribers to gift a membership to a non-household viewer.

The details:

  • Subscribers may add one extra member slot to their account.
  • This costs $6.99 (Standard) or $9.99 (Premium) per month in the US.
  • Price varies from region to region.

Disney is also starting to crack down on password sharing. Like Netflix, Disney is starting to block access to its service, if it notices access from a different location.

Viewers may see “This TV doesn’t seem to be part of the Household for this account”. Subscribers do have the option to select “I’m away from home” or “Update household”.

The first option may be used while away from home for a limited period, the second if a subscriber moved permanently to a new location.

Either option requires a one-time passcode that is sent to the email address associated with the account holder.

Also of interest: How to cope with a changing streaming landscape that is pushing ads and higher prices.

It is interesting to note that an extra slot for Disney+ Premium is more expensive than an extra slot for Netflix Premium. Netflix charges $7.99 in the US for that, Disney $9.99 per month.

It is interesting to note that an extra Basic member costs $6.99 in the US, which is just $1 less than the plan itself.

The core difference between Basic and Premium is that Basic comes with ads and lack of Dolby Atmos audio support. Downloads are also not permitted.

Extra members have other limitations:

  • One stream only at a time.
  • One profile only.
  • Access to the same features and content as the account holder.

Closing Words

Sharing Disney+ passwords will come to an end largely in the coming weeks and months. Just like Netflix, Disney is pushing extra viewers off the service. Apart from stopping to watch Disney+, there are only two feasible (legal) options left:

  • Buy an extra member slot, which nearly costs as much as a regular subscription.
  • Subscribe to Disney+ directly.

It remains to be seen if Disney will see a drop and then an increase in subscribers after its password crackdown hammers down on subscribers in full force.

Are you subscribed to any streaming service? If so, to which and why? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Cookies

Google services dominated web tracking last year

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

When it comes to user tracking on the Internet, Google continues to have a firm hold on the top positions. Kaspersky released its annual web tracking report for the past year.

The data comes from a Do Not Track plugin that Kaspersky uses in its software products. It is designed to prevent different forms of tracking, but is disabled by default.

The key findings:

  • Google dominates tracking on the Internet.
  • Other companies that track users are Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo.

Note: The data comes from products from a single company. It may not reflect the monitoring landscape as accurately as possible because of that.

Google’s dominance becomes clear when you look at regional tracking. Here in Europe, Google Display & Video 360, and Google Analytics are the dominating trackers with an exposure of 17.27% and 11.93%. Third-placed Amazon sits at 9.13% and fourth placed Criteo at 6.80.

Then it is Google again with YouTube Analytics (5.65%), Microsoft with Bing (5.33%) and Google again with Adsense (5.23%).

In North America, it is again Google Display & Video 360 (16.84%) that dominates. Amazon is second this time (9.08%), but then it is Google again with Analytics (8.42%). Google is also placed fifth and sixth in North America.

The situation is similar in other regions. In Latin America, Google holds the first three spots and the fifth. In the Middle East, Google holds the first four spots. In Africa, it is the top three and the sixth.

It is interesting to note that some Google services lost eyes on users compared to the year before in many regions. Growth was limited to East Asia and Commonwealth of independent states. Google’s monitoring declined in all other regions, but it still dominates by a large margin.

Google Adsense and YouTube Analytics are the two exceptions. They managed to increase significantly in nearly every region.

You can check out the entire report on the Secure List website.

How do you protect yourself from tracking? Do you run content blockers? Other options? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Arc Browser maker considering subscription-based features

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Arc Browser is a relatively recent web browser that is based on Chromium. About a year ago, the CEO of the Browser Company, Josh Miller, answered a question in a video that has been on the mind of many: how will the company make money with Arc Browser.

Part of the answer included revenue opportunities that the company would not pursue. This included selling user data. Among the listed possibilities that Arc was pursuing was specific Enterprise editions and also a feature called Boosts.

Boosts are small modifications to certain features on websites. There are boosts to increase the interface of AI chat clients, to blur information in chats, or to localize game times on sports websites.

This may remind veteran Internet users of userScripts, which use a combination of JavaScript and CSS for changing functionality on websites.

Some Arc features may require a subscription

New information about future monetization came to light in an interview with Josh Miller at The Verge.

Here are the main takeaways:

  • Current functionality will remain free. Nothing is going to be taken away to justify paying for the product.
  • Subscriptions are one option, but nothing has been decided on yet.
  • Other options are “usage-based” or “some sort of token system” according to Miller.

The idea seems to be to introduce new features that are either exclusive to paying users or less limited than a free version.

Closing Words

I tried Arc Browser several times. While I like some features, It is clearly lacking features in other departments that I want in a browser. I do dislike the forced account registration on start.

It seems at least that the company won’t remove features from the browser to put them behind a subscription or other form of payment.

It remains to be seen what the future will hold for Arc. It will get interesting if the monetization plans to not lead to the required results from investors.

Have you tried Arc Browser? Feel free to write a comment down below.

Tab Group in Firefox

Firefox is getting Tab Groups – and you may try the feature already

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Tab Groups is a useful browser feature that allows you to group open websites together for better management. Most Chromium-based browsers support Tab Groups, as Google implemented them in Chromium and Chrome.

That’s one of the advantages of using an established browser source that is developed constantly. Don’t get me wrong, there are also disadvantages, like the death of Manifest V2 extensions support, which Google put into Chromium.

It is interesting to note that Mozilla introduced Tab Groups into Firefox at a time when Chrome and Chromium-based browsers did not really support it. Called Panorama, Mozilla launched it in 2010 as a way for users to group tabs.

While the implementation was not as elegant as what Google introduced in Chromium and Chrome, it was nevertheless a useful feature to some. Firefox extensions like TabGroups Manager would improve accessibility and usability. Mozilla decided to kill tab groups in Firefox eventually.

A few months ago, Mozilla announced that it would listen to feature requests from the community. Next to vertical tabs, Firefox would also get support for tab groups.

Tab Groups in Firefox Nightly

Firefox Tab Groups Enable

First bits of code have now landed in Firefox Nightly.

Note: Tab Groups in Firefox is not feature-complete at this point. There is no point in criticism Mozilla at this point, as development is still ongoing.

With that said, Firefox users who want to follow the development may enable Tab Groups in Firefox in the following way:

  • Make sure that Firefox Nightly is up to date (check Menu > Help > About Firefox Nightly).
  • Load about:config in the browser’s address bar.
  • Search for browser.tabs.groups.enabled.
  • Click on the toggle icon to set the value to true.
  • Restart Firefox.

Right-click on a tab and select “Add tab to new group” to create a new tab group in Firefox. You can drag & drop tabs between groups already. Some features, such as the ability to collapse and expand groups, are not implemented yet.

What is your take on tab groups in Firefox? Do you plan to use the feature once it lands? Feel free to write a comment down below.

Invidious blocked

You can’t use Invidious anymore to watch YouTube videos

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

All publicly hosted Invidious instances are blocked from playing YouTube videos. When you try the third-party solution right now, you receive error messages with no option to bypass it.

Note: this may impact other YouTube frontends as well.

Good to know: Invidious is an open source solution to play YouTube videos on publicly or self-hosted servers. All videos played come without ads or tracking, which is the main reason for users to use the service.

A message on the official repository of the service confirms that Google has shut down the latest workaround that it still had to play YouTube videos on Invidious instances.

Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.

Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore.

The development team is not giving up, but admits that it might take months before another workaround is found.

Users may be able to use self-hosted instances to bypass the block according to the announcement, but there is no guarantee that this is going to work in all cases.

Invididious users who want to give it a try can check out instructions here. Note that this requires a fairly good understanding of the used technologies.

This is not the first time that YouTube managed to break Invidious. The main issue now is that the makers have no workaround anymore to bypass YouTube’s blockage.

While there is a chance that they find another workaround, it looks as if Google has won the cat and mouse game for now.

Have you used Invidious in the past? If so, what do you plan to do now? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Edge Extensions performance issue

Microsoft Edge: performance-dragging extension warnings in the works

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Browser extensions can be very useful. From the ultra-useful content blocker to extensions designed for specific tasks. They can make your life on the Internet easier or better.

While most extensions may not impact performance noticeable, some may. That is a problem, as it may not always be obvious which one is to blame. Some userrs may even blame the browser, which is not something that browser makers want.

Microsoft is working on integrating warnings in Edge to warn users about extensions that impact the browsing performance.

The details:

  • The feature is available in Edge 130 and newer only.
  • It needs to be enabled.
  • Edge monitors the performance of extensions when enabled.

Note that the feature monitors performance only.

Tip: Microsoft is testing several new features. There is Super Drag & Drop or a RAM limiter that you may try.

How to enable the feature

Starting with Edge 130, some users of the browser will have the new performance detector enabled by default. Most users won’t, but there is an option to turn it on.

Here is how you enable it in Edge

  1. Load edge://flags/#edge-performance-extension-detection in the browser’s address bar.
  2. Change the value of Extension performance detector to Enabled.
  3. Restart Microsoft Edge.

The feature runs in the background from that moment on.

How the extension performance detector works in Edge

Microsoft describes the feature in the following way:

Enables detection and optional disabling of user-added extensions if they impact page load time. Alerts will appear in browser essentials.

This is not too helpful, but Microsoft published a blog post as well that provides additional details.

There, Microsoft says that Edge will alert the user if it notices persistent extension slowdowns that impact the browsing experience.

A click on the browser essentials icon in Edge displays information about extensions that Edge found to slow down browsing consistently.

Each extension is listed with the percentage of slowdown and an option to disable it. Disabling is optional, and you may also select to get a reminder at a later time.

Most users who use extensions will not see the alerts according to Microsoft.

Closing Words

Whether the performance monitor for extensions is useful or not depends on the individual user. It may help users who install lots of extensions in the browser and users who noticed slowdowns after installing extensions.

The alerts may help identify performance issues, which is useful. Still, some extensions may be too valuable even though they may impact the browsing performance or experience.

Do you run extensions in your browser that you would not disable under any circumstances? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Defender Teaser

ConfigureDefender: open source tool to manage Microsoft Defender settings

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft Defender is the default security solutions on all modern versions of Windows. Users have to become active to replace it with another security solution. It is probably a safe bet that Defender is the tool on most Windows 10 and 11 systems.

It is different from tools like SuperMSConfig, which provide broader tweaking options.

The operating system offers several options to configure Microsoft Defender. The most common for home users is to use Windows Security. It divides settings on multiple pages and subpages, and may leave out some settings depending on certain factors.

ConfigureDefender is a long-standing open source tool to improve this. Just launch the small app after you have downloaded it from its GitHub repository to get started.

The app displays all settings on a single page.

You have two main options now:

  • Change individual settings directly.
  • Use a preset to change the status of multiple settings at once.

Presets offer a quick way to change settings, but it is rather difficult to understand what each setting does. Max, for example, looks like it would set everything to the highest values, but you still do not know what that actually means.

ConfigureDefender supports four presets: default, high, interactive and max. Default is handy, as it resets all settings to their default values.

A click on the info-button opens a readme with the information. There you find information about each preset. It will take some time to go through the listing though.

The second option gives you full control over the settings. Some users may have difficulties understanding what some of the settings do. While experienced users may understand that PUA Protection refers to “potentially unwanted applications”, inexperienced users may not.

It may be necessary to search for specific terms on the Internet to find out what they do.

The program supports a large number of settings. These are divided into basic, admin and exploit guard settings. Each preference is modified through a simple menu. Click on the menu and ConfigureDefender displays the available options. Pick one and hit the refresh button. The program reminds you that a restart of the Windows PC is required to apply the change.

Closing Words

ConfigureDefender speeds up the configuration of Microsoft Defender on non-managed systems. It is easy to use, especially for users who know what each of the settings do. New users may need to spend time in the beginning researching some of the preferences to understand what they do.

All in all, it is a useful helper app for Windows users.

Which security solution(s) do you use? Is Microsoft Defender one of them? Feel free to write a comment about this.

PlayStation 30th anniversary

Sony is launching the PlayStation 30th Anniversary Collection

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The first PlayStation launched on December 3, 1994. To celebrate that launch, Sony announced the PlayStation 30th Anniversary Collection today. It features two limited consoles and three peripherals, including a limited PlayStation 5 Pro console (without disc drive).

It will be “highly limited” according to Sony, more about that further down below.

Here is what Sony plans to release:

  • PlayStation 5 Pro Console – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition BundIe
  • PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Bundle

Both consoles feature the classic gray color scheme of the original PlayStation. They come with a vertical stand, which is sold separately, if you buy regular versions of the PlayStation.

Both versions have no disc drive, but include a matching cover for a disc drive. Both consoles come with a limited PlayStation 5 controller, four PlayStation Shapes cable ties, a PlayStation sticker, one of 30 limited edition PlayStation posters, and a PlayStation paperclip.

So, no PS5 Pro or PS5 with disc drive. Sony says that there will be 12,300 PlayStation 5 Pro console units in the limited design. Each console has its limited number etched onto the unit. The number represents December 3, the day and month of the launch of the first PS console.

No word on the limits of the other items, including the new PS5 Slim edition.

The following hardware is also sold separately:

  • PlayStation Portal Remote Player – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition (standalone)
  • DualSense Edge Wireless Controller – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition (standalone)
  • DualSense Wireless Controller – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition (standalone)

Preorders begin on September 26 in regions where PlayStation Direct is available. In regions where Playstation Direct is not available, preorders may also begin on September 26, but only for some items.

Sony plans to release the anniversary collection on November 21, 2024. It has not revealed the price for any of the listed items.

You can read the full announcement here.

It seems likely that the limited edition will sell out quickly. 12,300 units across all regions means that there is a tiny number that is sold in each region. While some users may be interested in the non-Pro 30th anniversary edition as well, it is probably a good idea to try your luck directly on September 26th, if you want to grab one of the consoles.

Scrapers are probably licking their fingers already to resell the limited editions on sites like eBay for a small fortune.

Chrome for Android may move and delete Tabs automatically

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google released Chrome 129 today for Android and desktop systems. The update fixes a few security issues and introduces new features and changes as well.

One change in particular affects users of Chrome on Android: the automatic handling of inactive tabs.

Once updated to Chrome 129 on Android, the browser will move inactive tabs to a new group automatically. There, the tabs remain for a period of 60 days before they are deleted automatically according to Google.

Tip: Switching from Chrome to Firefox is easier than ever before. If you worry about disabled or crippled extensions, Firefox is your best bet to avoid this.

Note: Whether the deleting is enabled by default is unclear. Google says that the tabs will get deleted automatically, but it was disabled in Chrome 129 Beta.

When is a tab considered inactive? Google moves tabs to the Inactive Tabs group after 14 days of inactivity. Inactivity means that the tab was not activated in that time in Chrome.

Chrome for Android's new Inactive menu.

Good news is that you may change the functionality in the settings. Here is how that is done:

  1. Open Google Chrome on the Android device.
  2. Select Menu > Settings to open the preference.
  3. Activate Tabs there to display tab-related settings.
  4. Tap on Inactive to customize the functionality.
  5. Set the period to 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, or never. The default is 14 days.
  6. Toggle “Close after 60 days” to enable or disable the auto-delete feature.

Google says that the feature is designed to reduce Chrome’s memory usage and to improve the accessibility of tabs in the browser.

Deleted tabs remain accessible through the browsing history, but only if it has not been deleted.

Chrome users who do not want inactive tabs to be moved to the new group should set the functionality to Never. This ensures that Chrome won’t move inactive tabs out of sight or delete them after the inactivity period.

How do you handle tabs in your browser? Keep everything open? Use bookmarks? Start afresh on every start? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Outlook Error Startup MSLS70.dll

Microsoft conveniently suggests to use the new Outlook if you encounter the msls70.dll error in classic Outlook

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft confirmed a new issue that is affected classic Outlook and also Word and other Office applications.

When you start an affected app, you may receive the error message “The required file msls70.dll cannot be found in your path. Install Microsoft Outlook again”.

A click on the OK button, the only available button, hides the error message only. Any attempt to launch Outlook on the system is met with the same error message.

Did you know? The new Outlook may transfer third-party logins when using the sync feature.

Microsoft says that it is working on a solution for the issue. In the meantime, it recommends accessing the emails using the new Outlook or the web-based version of Outlook.

Maybe it is just my cynical-self speaking, but the timing seems awfully convenient. When Microsoft launched the new Outlook client, it made it clear that this app would become the only client of Outlook one day.

It put an end to Mail and Calendar in Windows, but also announced that the classic version of Outlook would go away one day. While that day is years away, it is something that Outlook users need to be aware of.

The error message suggests that Outlook cannot find a DLL that it needs to run. Microsoft’s support page offers no explanation for the issue. Did an update cause the error? If not, what caused it and why is the DLL missing?

A thread on Reddit suggests that you could fix the issue temporarily by using online repair.

Here are the required steps (you need an active Internet connection):

  1. Open the Start menu.
  2. Select Settings.
  3. Go to Apps > Installed Apps in the Settings window.
  4. Locate Microsoft 365 in the list.
  5. Select the three-dots menu.
  6. Activate the Modify option.
  7. Confirm the UAC prompt that appears.
  8. Switch to “Online Repair” and select the repair button.
  9. Confirm the action by selecting the repair button on the next screen as well.
  10. Wait for the process to complete.

This should fix the startup issue temporarily. Try starting Outlook on the affected device. It should work now.

The process is highlighted in a video on YouTube as well.

There you have it. Use online repair to fix the issue or wait for Microsoft to fix it. No ETA given though at this point.

Do you use Outlook? Or do you prefer a different email client on desktop PCs? Feel free to leave a comment down below!