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Google Pushes New Chrome Release, Pays $14k Bounty
Trailrunner7 writes "Google has released version 8.0.552.237 of its Chrome browser, which includes fixes for 16 security vulnerabilities. The company also paid out more than $14,000 in bug bounties for the flaws fixed in this release, including the first maximum reward of $3133.7. The new version of Google Chrome has fixes for 13 high-priority bugs, but the most serious vulnerability the company repaired in the browser is a critical flaw resulting from a stale pointer in the speech handling component of Chrome. That flaw, along with four others, was discovered by researcher Sergey Glazunov, who earned a total of more than $7,000 in rewards for the bugs he reported to Google."
Is that updates take place silently and promptly without any user intervention even on systems with UAC activated (a copy is installed to %appdata%). Why can't other applications just keep themselves up to date automatically in that way? It's obviously not technologically impossible, we've seen it happen. Even Windows Update is vaguely alright in this respect once you disable the restart-nagging. Debian systems do fine after a simple 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y' in the root crontab although the GUI will occasionally pester you.
Firefox has to be the worst offender in this respect, both in terms of actual software upgrades that block the UI and then add-ons that also block the main UI and then spawn a silly splash to inform you of the amazing upgrade rfom 2.1.6 to 2.1.6(b). Unless it requires a change in the terms of the license or more permissions (Android does this nicely), I don't care and I definitely don't need to be interrupted to see it.
Another free tip for the Mozilla team -- when I open an application is not the time to install any updates. In fact, that is the only time you can be nearly guaranteed that I want to use the application right this second. Schedule updates for when I close the app because it's pretty damn likely I don't need to use it for a few minutes.
Apple could learn the same thing about their infernal updates too, plus an extra special place in hell for pimping their other software at the same time. I still get calls from my parents "Do I need Safari?", hmm, no just upgrade iTunes when it asks you to. "What about quicktime?". Gah.