Chrome 70 Arrives With Option To Disable Linked Sign-Ins, PWAs On Windows, and AV1 Decoder (venturebeat.com) 53
Krystalo quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 70 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The release includes an option to disable linking Google site and Chrome sign-ins, Progressive Web Apps on Windows, the ability for users to restrict extensions' access to a custom list of sites, an AV1 decoder, and plenty more. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome.
An anonymous Slashdot reader adds: "The most anticipated addition to today's release is a new Chrome setting panel option that allows users to control how the browser behaves when they log into a Google account," reports ZDNet. "Google added this new setting after the company was accused last month of secretly logging users into their Chrome browser accounts whenever they logged into a Google website." Chrome 70 also comes with support for the AV1 video format, TLS 1.3 final, per-site Chrome extension permissions, TouchID and fingerprint sensor authentication, the Shape Detection API (gives Chrome the ability to detect and identify faces, barcodes, and text inside images or webcam feeds), and, last but not least, 23 security fixes.
Surprising (Score:1)
That they would roll back an invasive feature. Color me dubious.
Brought to you by (Score:2, Insightful)
I’ll pass.
(Facebook is “Privacy Rapists 2.0”)
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All the way, even apologise afterwards, so they can set you up again, to rape you again and of course apologise again and on and on it goes. Want to stop the abuse, stop being Google's bitch, you have no choice but to walk away.
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Google and Facebook need to be broken up. So does Apple.
Sorry Microsoft, you no longer qualify as a monopoly.
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Revenue per device (Score:3)
Smart phones? Last I heard Android outsells iPhones by 10-1, worldwide.
Last I checked (Q1 2018 [androidcentral.com]), the mean revenue per user for paid apps and in-app purchases was so much larger on Apple's App Store than on Google Play Store that it outweighed Android's larger user base: "$5.08 was generated per device with the App Store during Q1 compared to only $0.47 with the Play Store."
You have alternatives in every market they are in.
With the exception of the market for tools to develop smart phone applications. If you develop such an application on any computer other than a Mac, it will be Android exclusive, and Android users tend to be
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I didn't mean to imply that Apple ought to be broken up over this. I was claiming only that Android's larger user base tells an incomplete story.
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I beg to differ. Microsoft is still very much a monopoly. There is no way they'd be able to get away with the bullshit they're pulling WRT Windows 10 if they weren't a monopoly.
The only place they are noticeably losing on is anything internet infrastructure related. And that's cause they never really gained much of a foothold to begin with.
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So which browser do you use?
Firefox (Score:2)
So which browser do you use?
I feel disappointed by some of the systematic fact distortions I see on K. Rupert Murdoch's noise outlets. I wish I could fire Fox. Fortunately, Mozilla is working on both the browser side [mozilla.org] and the facts side [mozilla.org] of that equation.
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So, I post something google doesn't like (Score:2, Troll)
Doesn't matter. Soon as I heard they were disabling gmail and goffice (whatever it's called, never used it) when you said something they didn't like on their "platform" I switched to duckduckgo, thunderbird (thank you google for giving me IMAP/POP3 support), and LibreOffice. The only google services I use now are mail (via Thu
Old, bad ideas... (Score:1)
Had to look up exactly what PWAs are, and after reading a bit about them, this on feature alone means that I'll be uninstalling chrome or disabling updates.
"Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web applications that load like regular web pages or websites but can offer the user functionality such as working offline, push notifications, and device hardware access traditionally available only to native applications."
We're just now finally getting rid of flash and all the security vulnerabilities it brought with it
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But...
They don't. Not really. They are just the functions already available to Javascript etc. anyway.
The "new" thing is offline caching, which is under browser control anyway. So you can load a web app when you're offline, like Google Docs already does.
It's a new name for the same-old, from what I see. The examples are all just... web-apps. Sure, they may be WebAssembly, or use workers, pick up a local-cached NoSQL data from an online source, but there's nothing new about them.
It's still subject to th
People who don't trust any script in the browser (Score:2)
There's nothing new here, or any more dangerous than... well... even a five-year-old browser had.
Even a fifteen-year-old browser is too much for some, as scripts loaded from a third party can exfiltrate the viewer's interests to that third party. (Q4 2003 is around the time when Mozilla Application Suite and Safari adopted Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest, the X in AJAX.) The sentiment I sometimes see here and on SoylentNews is "I don't trust any script in the browser. Web documents ought to be static on the client, with interactivity limited to navigation, form submission, and CSS checkbox selectors. Applic
Youtube (Score:1)
Well Youtube is broken (Score:1)
I think Google is trying to kill adblockers. You know, ones that actually BLOCK ADS. Like Google's.
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That's because the MAFIAA whacked all their competitors. Remember MegaVideo? They got an offer they couldn't refuse.
Vimeo, Dailymotion, Pornhub, and indie web (Score:2)
I know Vidme ran out of money, and Vimeo is kind of picky about what videos they accept from accounts that don't pay $240 per year for Pro. But last I checked, Dailymotion and the SFW section of Pornhub still existed, as did just putting .webm files on your website using the <video> element.
Ya but... (Score:2)
Google is evil (Score:2)
I finally switched from Firefox to Chrome. (Score:1)
I think I am switching back.
Waterfox (Score:4, Informative)
Try Waterfox [waterfoxproject.org] and you won't regret it. Its a clean Firefox, also for Android.
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Have they done that on all platforms? Will the Windows version require you to hold Alt+F4 to exit? Is this just to make it harder to accidentally quit and lose your session when you mean to hit Cmd-W to close a tab/window, or is there something more sinister behind it?
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Apparently they did this before (over half a decade ago) and flip-flopped on it:
https://productforums.google.c... [google.com]
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/... [lifehacker.com.au]
Restrict extensions? (Score:3)
the ability for users to restrict extensions' access to a custom list of sites
To me that is the most interesting thing in there. Abusive extensions are an understated problem IMHO, more so than HTTP/HTTPS. It's a step in the right direction at least, although the biggest problem remains since extensions might 'need' wide permissions and nothing exists to stop them from abusing that.
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Spying Add-ons (Score:1)