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Re:Yeah, duh. by exomondo · 2019-03-05 13:30 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft's Chromium-Based Edge Browser Looks Just Like Chrome (neowin.net)

They'll probably end up contributing back to the chromium project once they've got the hang of it too.

It's already happening.. You're right, they need a standards-compliant browser because they don't own the platform anymore and it's pretty clear they don't want to, Microsoft want their software and services to run everywhere which means compatibility with web standards is critical. There's no point building your own standards-compliant HTML engine when you can just use and contribute to a collaborative one that way you know the software and services you build for your browser will run on others too.

Re:Can it be disabled? and WTF?? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-02-07 22:42 · Score: 1 · on Google Chrome 73 To Officially Support Multimedia Keys on Your Keyboard (zdnet.com)

I have the same concern, particularly with regards my MS Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard: I use the Mute key all the time for exactly what it does natively on Windows 7 (and did on XP too): mutes all audio on the system. If this functionality is implemented in the browser, what exactly happens? Does it mute the tab (something Chrome 71 already made a mess of)? Does it mute audio in the entire browser? And if it does either of those, is there a way to disable it (say, through chrome://flags)? Because if not, that's a huge problem and major oversight.

As I wrote the above paragraph, I noticed that a reply came in elsewhere indicating that apparently the only keys it'll look at are play/pause/seek and track-oriented keys. What if people are already using those with their media player of choice? Furthermore, the document is marked Editor's Draft as of 2019/02/09, a.k.a. working draft, a.k.a. subject-to-change-at-any-moment. And even if it wasn't, we all know this is exactly how it begins: today it supports only those functions, but 6 months from now it's extended to support Mute and Volume Up/Down, which will provoke someone to consider adding Home, Favourites, Mute, Calculator, etc. via something similar -- all keys that have historically (we're talking 15+ years, folks) been dedicated to the UX aspect of the OS only, UNLESS you specifically went out of your way to configure them on a per-program basis and within that program (ex: Winamp), with some exceptions (read: Internet Explorer actually does use some of these keys itself when running) -- then it'll get extended to Logitech G15 LCD so the browser can print stupid crap on the LCD, followed by RGB LED tweaking, then some kind of fan RPM mod, blah blah blah. This is what's called creeping featurism and it is not a new phenomenon, but its prevalence has greatly amplified in the past 10 or so years.

I have no problem with the browser implementing, say, the appropriate API functions so that an extension/add-on could be used to set said keys up in the browser to perform media-related tasks (not a bad idea really, sort of akin to what the Streamdeck does alongside OBS Studio) -- the user has to install the Chrome extension by choice, thus the concern is alleviated for everyone as a default (read: majority) and bugs/quirks only affect those who effectively opted in through use of an extension.

In all seriousness, the past few major Chrome releases -- 70, 71, and 72 -- all brought with them more UX-related problems than improvements, IMO. For example, in 72 for whatever reason they decided to get rid of the incredibly useful details at chrome://net-internals/#proxy that would tell you what the active/effective settings were -- extremely useful for knowing if your PAC file was loaded or not, if a proxy was in use at all (and if so, if it was SOCKS or DIRECT or what), etc.. And just today I found they removed the chrome://net-internals/#events viewer entirely and replaced it with a dump-crap-to-a-file model that requires you to install Python and a completely separate external utility to decode it. What was wrong with doing this natively? Why not offer both?

I say all of this as a person who is an extremely strong advocate of KISS principle. I just don't see why removing useful information and capabilities of this sort is considered positive progress. Likewise, I don't see how adding media keys support to a browser is progress either. I think it creates more problems and annoyances than it solves. Obligatory Jurassic Park reference.

Re:Que my mom wondering why the internets broke by sjames · 2019-02-05 07:27 · Score: 1 · on Google Tests 'Never-Slow Mode' for Speedier Browsing (zdnet.com)

Perhaps you should read the link provided in the summary.

Everything I said is based on things the actual owner of the feature said.

Re:Gamers? by Tyger-ZA · 2018-11-07 17:15 · Score: 1 · on AMD Reveals Zen 2 Processor Architecture in Bid To Stay Ahead of Intel (venturebeat.com)

Maybe you just don't know what you are doing, and a competent person could run the same "big data sets you generate" on a decade old single machine.

Maybe you just don't know what he is doing, and in your ignorance you can't believe that *anyone* would need so much power for work, because *you* have never needed so much power for anything.

For example, here's an alternative workload that would benefit from having lots of resources: Compiling Chromium requires at least 8GB of RAM. More than 16GB is highly recommended.

Re:Does that mean I can get chromefree android pho by squiggleslash · 2018-10-16 08:57 · Score: 1 · on Google To Charge Smartphone Makers For Google Play in Europe (reuters.com)

Well, that's the rub isn't it, because "pure Android" can mean "Exactly what Google would give you" (more probably) or "AOSP" (fairly unlikely.) The Mail app is part of AOSP. Google's "Android" however isn't pure AOSP, or even pure AOSP + the Google suite, it's often confused with the latter, but it's been drifting away from AOSP for many years now.

Here's email, as you can see it's in there right up to AOSP 9.1 as of the current state of the universe.

I believe most phone makers include it. Sounds like Nokia doesn't, possibly because it's advertising the "Pure Android" horseshit.

Re:Just What We Need... by theweatherelectric · 2018-10-02 01:09 · Score: 1 · on VideoLAN Announces Dav1d, a New Libre and Open Source AV1 Decoder (jbkempf.com)

You can view the source for libaom, which is the reference encoder and decoder. And FFmpeg 4.0 (which incorporates libaom) has been released.

supported models by fibonacci8 · 2018-09-18 14:04 · Score: 2 · on Chrome OS Revamp Delivers a New Look and Linux App Support (engadget.com)

Chromebooks using Intel’s BayTrail do not include VT-x. Yes, normally this CPU includes VMX, but the variant in Chromebooks does not. Thus, unfortunately, they'll never be supported.

Currently running GalliumOS on a Gnawty BayTrail. It does include VT-x. I can enable and use the features in virtualbox. I'm curious who wrote that bit of the page listing currently supported chromebook models.

Re:2019: the year of the linux desktop by SurenEnfiajyan · 2018-09-02 03:23 · Score: 1 · on Is Chrome OS Threatening Windows? (arstechnica.com)

Maybe Chrome OS but not Linux. Chrome OS (also Android) kernel is really irrelevant, especially considering Google's plans of ditching it in favor of Fuchsia / Zircon.

Another good reason to ditch it by SurenEnfiajyan · 2018-08-31 19:28 · Score: 0 · on Linus Torvalds No Longer Knows the Whole Linux Kernel and That's OK (eweek.com)

Sadly, this probably means more shit spaghetti code than ever before. Another good reason for Google to ditch this in favor of Fuchsia / Zircon.

Re:Expensive paperweight. by viperidaenz · 2018-08-28 16:28 · Score: 2 · on Original Chromebook Pixel Reaches End of Life (droid-life.com)

Many flavours of Linux run on it.
Here's the latest Ubuntu https://www.servethehome.com/g...

Not only is the bootloader unlockable, it's also opensource.
You're not restricted in any way with what you can do with the hardware. You just won't get any more automatic Chrome OS updates.
coreboot source: https://chromium.googlesource....
uboot source: https://chromium.googlesource....

Name another laptop manufacturer with entirely open source boot code.

Re:Expensive paperweight. by viperidaenz · 2018-08-28 16:28 · Score: 2 · on Original Chromebook Pixel Reaches End of Life (droid-life.com)

Many flavours of Linux run on it.
Here's the latest Ubuntu https://www.servethehome.com/g...

Not only is the bootloader unlockable, it's also opensource.
You're not restricted in any way with what you can do with the hardware. You just won't get any more automatic Chrome OS updates.
coreboot source: https://chromium.googlesource....
uboot source: https://chromium.googlesource....

Name another laptop manufacturer with entirely open source boot code.

Re: A tiny fraction of the consumer market? by Gavagai80 · 2018-08-24 17:13 · Score: 4, Informative · on Linux Turns 27 (omgubuntu.co.uk)

Presumably jd was referencing Google's experimental Fuscia OS, which may or may not ever actually replace Android (but they hope it does). Fuscia has a non-Linux (but still open source) kernel called Zircon: https://fuchsia.googlesource.c...

Real facts: Written in C, Former BeOS developers. by kallisti5 · 2018-07-20 00:51 · Score: 1 · on Project 'Fuchsia': Google is Quietly Working on a Successor To Android (bloomberg.com)

It's written in C: https://fuchsia.googlesource.c... Google hired a bunch of former BeOS developers to work on it. (It's something new though, not related to BeOS)

Re:Silly by Anonymous Coward · 2018-06-26 11:53 · Score: 0 · on Firefox 61 Arrives With Better Search, Tab Warming, and Accessibility Tools Inspector (venturebeat.com)

lol. Vivaldi is based on chromium, which has Opera (Chinese) and Yandex (Russian) devs contributions in the code. In fact, if you look at the AUTHORS file in master https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/AUTHORS your likely to spy lots of Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic and other non-Norwegian sounding names listed as well. It even lists a Mozilla corp addy.

Re:So....F U Proxies and Internal CAs. by tepples · 2018-05-01 03:24 · Score: 2 · on Starting Today, Google Chrome Will Show Warnings for Non-Logged SSL Certificates (bleepingcomputer.com)

If they did care about the end user's security, they wouldn't make stupid changes like not trusting end-user / admin installed CA certs by default.

Chrome opts in through its network security config file, and Firefox has its own TLS engine. So this affects mostly native apps that use Android's TLS engine.

Since when does removing / forbidding the user's input on trust somehow boost their security?!?!?

Malware has in the past added certificates as a means of intercepting apps' traffic. So have governments.

Re:Linux on the desktop by SurenEnfiajyan · 2018-03-18 01:49 · Score: 1 · on Vim Beats Emacs in 'Linux Journal' Reader Survey (linuxjournal.com)

Linux won in the mobile space. Linux runs on over 2 Billion monthly active devices.

Just because the the Linux kernel is used in Android doesn't mean that it's the Linux kernel's merit. It's like to say that 2 Billion cars using a particular engine means that the engine is successful while the original car, the engine is taken from, is lousy. Android is very much different from GNU/Linux, the Linux kernel is buried so deep that most of the developers don't know about it, and it can be replaced with something like this.

Code check: How does this work? by twdorris · 2018-02-26 23:45 · Score: 1 · on Chrome OS Could Be Getting Containers for Running Linux VMs (zdnet.com)

I know nothing about ChromeOS code. So clearly I shouldn't be surprised that I'm struggling to make since of this commit. But the size of this change seems small enough that I might expect to at least be able to make the two ends meet (the part storing and managing the new policy key and the part that reads that key and acts upon it).

https://chromium-review.google...

But I can't. All I see are things related to storing and managing the key. I don't understand how this newly created "thing" has any effect on the operation of the OS. Where is that policy checked? I assume there's some application layer outside of this structure that's acting upon the value of this new key, yes? Where could one find that?

Re:I love the way Google pretend to be... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-02-16 18:41 · Score: 0 · on Google Exposes How Malicious Sites Can Exploit Microsoft Edge (zdnet.com)

In the past, chrome actually used setuid to construct a secure chroot sandbox environment. However, today setuid no longer used, as they are always developing more modern sandboxing techniques with the state of the art.

Also, to your comment, if you think checking for root privileges is as simple as checking what user a process is running as, you are sorely mistaken at the complexity involved under the hood, Forgetting for a second the fact that programs like chrome actually consist of tens of processes each running with different privilege levels, processes can gain elevated privileges without actually having a uid or effective-uid of root. For example, capabilities, open file descriptors or other handles passed in. It's very difficult to display setcap capabilities granted to a given process.

Re:I love the way Google pretend to be... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-02-16 18:41 · Score: 0 · on Google Exposes How Malicious Sites Can Exploit Microsoft Edge (zdnet.com)

In the past, chrome actually used setuid to construct a secure chroot sandbox environment. However, today setuid no longer used, as they are always developing more modern sandboxing techniques with the state of the art.

Also, to your comment, if you think checking for root privileges is as simple as checking what user a process is running as, you are sorely mistaken at the complexity involved under the hood, Forgetting for a second the fact that programs like chrome actually consist of tens of processes each running with different privilege levels, processes can gain elevated privileges without actually having a uid or effective-uid of root. For example, capabilities, open file descriptors or other handles passed in. It's very difficult to display setcap capabilities granted to a given process.

Re:Why Chrome and not Chromium? by short · 2017-11-13 09:31 · Score: 1 · on Firefox 57 Brings Better Sandboxing on Linux (bleepingcomputer.com)

That blob has been fixed both upstream and in Fedora chromium since 2016-09-07: enable_hotwording=false

Re:Linux is communism by SurenEnfiajyan · 2017-11-13 03:16 · Score: 0 · on Linux 4.14 Has Been Released (kernelnewbies.org)

Don't worry, Google already started.

Re:Blame Chrome for Windows defects .. by drinkypoo · 2017-10-22 03:36 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Chastises Google Over Chrome Security (pcmag.com)

Chrome wouldn't need sandboxing if the underlying Operating System did its job. That is isolate one processes memory from the other. Something the WinTEL platform seem unable to do despite numerous iterations of the x86 processor.

Except you still have all the same kinds of flaws in other operating systems, too, which is why Chrome is also sandboxed on other platforms, e.g. Linux. It's not just Windows. The techniques vary, but no mainstream OS is designed for security first. That would impinge upon performance. Microsoft literally decided to go the other direction in NT4, specifically in the name of graphics performance.

Re:Open BSD Linux ... WTF by swillden · 2017-10-17 02:37 · Score: 1 · on Every Patch For 'KRACK' Wi-Fi Vulnerability Available Right Now (zdnet.com)