Firefox ESR, the Extended Support Release, and all development channels received updates as well on the release day. Firefox ESR 91.6, Firefox Beta and Dev 98, and Firefox Nightly 98 have all been updated.

Executive Summary

• Firefox 97.0 and Firefox 91.6 ESR are security updates.
• Firefox supports Windows 11 style scrollbars.
• Mozilla expires current colorway themes, adds new ones.

Firefox 97.0 download and update

Firefox 97.0 can be downloaded from the official Mozilla website. Users may also update using the built-in automatic updating functionality.

Select Menu > Help > About Firefox to display the version that is installed currently and run a check for updates..

Please note that the browser may not be available yet if you are reading this on February 8, 2022. It will become available later on that day.

Here are the links to the official download repositories.

• Firefox Stable download
• Firefox Beta download
• Nightly download
• Firefox ESR download
• Firefox for Android on Google Play

Firefox 97.0 new features and improvements

Colorway themes are changing

Mozilla introduced support for colorway themes in Firefox 94. The browser displayed a "pick your palette" overlay on the first start of the browser, allowing users to select a seasonal color palette for the browser if they wanted to.

The themes that were introduced in Firefox 94 are set to expire automatically when Firefox 97 is installed on a device. An active colorway theme remains the active theme in Firefox for as long as the theme is not changed.

Firefox 97.0 introduces a new set of colorway themes for users to activate. These are found in the Themes section of the about:addons as usually.

Other changes

• Firefox supports the new scrollbar style on Windows 11 devices.
• System font loading has been improved on Mac OS devices; this should improve the opening and switching to new tabs faster "in certain situations" according to Mozilla.
• Linux users can no longer generate PostScript for printing in Linux. The option to use PostScript printers remains available.

Developer Changes

• cookieStoreId improvements for extension developers, including the ability to register container-specific content scripts.
• Improved WebDriver:NewSession and WebDriver:NewWindow stability.
• Marionette:Quit accepts the new parameter safeMode to restart Firefox in Safe Mode.
• Several SVGPathSeg APIs have been disabled by default and will be removed in future versions.
• SVG d attribute can now be used as a property in CSS.
• CSS property color-adjust was renamed to print-color-adjust.

Enterprise changes

Bug Fixes

• PDFjs that is used in Firefox ESR has been updated to the latest version.
• When Firefox ESR updates fail, a link to the Firefox ESR download is now provided.
• Firefox prioritizes authentication headers from most secure to least secure now (not backported to Firefox ESR).
• Fixed access to about pages that were blocked via policies.
• Firefox a JSON policy issue on Windows machines that prevented them from being of the type REG_SZ.
• TLS override UI was removed from certificate error pages.
• DisabledCiphers policy has been updated with additional ciphers.

Known Issues

None listed.

Security updates / fixes

Security updates are revealed after the official release of the web browser. You find the information published here after release.

Outlook

Firefox 98.0 and Firefox ESR 91.7 will be released on March 8, 2022. The developer editions Firefox Beta 99, Firefox Developer 99, and Firefox Nightly 100 will also be released at the same time.

Additional information / sources

• Firefox 97 release notes
• Firefox 97 for Developers
• Firefox for Enterprise 97 - release notes
• Firefox Security Advisories
• Firefox Release Schedule

Mozilla Firefox 97.0: here is what is new

Frontpaged: Mozilla Firefox Browser 97.0

Why is Reddit Enhancement Suite in maintenance mode

The developers of the open source extension have made an announcement at the add-on's subreddit, where they say that several members of the core developer team are busy or have moved on to other projects. The add-on, abbreviated as RES, has been around for a decade, and is available on all major add-on repositories including Firefox AMO, the Chrome Webstore, Opera Addons, and the Microsoft Store. Despite its popularity, the project did not receive much in terms of donations, which can be somewhat demotivating for a team that is working on the development of the plugin. Currently there are just 2 developers working on RES.

It's always sad to see good software die, but it is not dead yet, RES will be in life support mode for the foreseeable future. This means the extension will not add support for changes made to the website, or to support the redesign. The good news is that the add-on's developers have said they may provide patches to fix bugs, or release new options if the source code has been merged with pull requests from other users. Essentially, it depends on the developer community, with limited support from the core developers.

Since it is an open source project, there is also the possibility of other developers forking the add-on and taking it from there. If you read the comments from the Reddit Enhancement Suite developers, they blame the platform for being closed source and not developer-friendly. The push towards the new Reddit is also a cause for concern.

New Reddit - The redesign nobody asked for

Reddit is one of my favorite sites, a friend introduced me to it when I sought some information about a decade ago. I found myself visiting it frequently to learn more things, stay up-to-date on tech and gaming news, and providing help when I could.

A few years ago, when I logged on to Reddit, something didn't look right. Enter the new Reddit design. It is a hideous monstrosity with wasted space either side of the screen, has links to promote other discussions right in the middle of the current thread, and even the subreddit sidebar is sort of in the middle of the screen. I could go on and on about how bad the design is. The interface is like Facebook's news feed, utter garbage, making navigation and searching for stuff, a real pain.

I was perplexed by the design, and immediately looked for a way to fix it, which wasn't hard to find. Other users who were annoyed by the design changes recommended using https://old.reddit.com/ in place of https://www.reddit.com/. Some users pointed out a setting that users can enable from their profile, to make old Reddit the default design. Whew, that was a relief.

It was around during that time, I came across some comments on a gaming sub, where a user had created a table, and recommended an add-on called Reddit Enhancement Suite, to sort the table. That was incredibly useful, but the plugin did more.

Some subreddits disable various elements like the upvote and downvote buttons, the subscriber count, and in rare cases, even the search bar is hidden by the admins/mods. I don't understand the logic behind such decisions. Reddit Enhancement Suite allowed me to disable a subreddit's custom design, giving me the original one, which has always been perfectly usable. This is, in my opinion, the extension's best feature.

To this day, I have not seen a website with a design that's worse than new Reddit, though the new Twitter comes a close second for me, but that's easily fixable with the GoodTwitter2 script.

I'm not sure I would continue using Reddit if they ditch the old design completely. The only alternatives would be to use third party clients that provide a different experience, similar to the old design.

Redreader, Infinity for Reddit, and Slide are great open-source Reddit client apps that you can use on your Android phone. Apollo (needs an IAP to create posts) and Slide are the only iOS apps that I have found to be of the same quality as their Android counterparts. Windows 10/11 users may want to look ReddPlanet, but according to some recent comments from the developer, the PC app is no longer being updated. On the bright side, ReddPlanet for iOS was released recently, and a version for Android is currently in closed beta.

The bigger problem is Reddit itself, when the admins decide to pull the plug on the old site and go, thou shalt suffer our new design and its atrocities, where then will we turn to?

Development of the Reddit Enhancement Suite extension is on maintenance mode

Edge Bar is an experimental feature at this point that is rolled out gradually to users of the browser. You can check Menu > More Tools to see if Edge Bar is listed as one of the options.

First launch displays a short reminder next to the bar with a link to a support page. The bar itself displays information that is very similar to Widgets of Windows 11 or the News & Interests feed of Windows 10, as all three are powered by the same source: MSN.

The bar features a Bing search option at the top, displays weather information and local headlines. The content is powered by MSN and Microsoft, and users may change what is displayed with a click on the "pen-icon" in the footer; this opens the edit area of the MSN website.

There you can change the language, enable or disable modules such as Sports, Traffic or Weather, and tell Microsoft about your interests to personalize the news feed.

The default interface displays several items in a small bar on the left side. From top to bottom, these are Home, Bing Search, Outlook, LinkedIn, Add Item, User Profile, Rewards, Settings, and Pin.

Most options are self-explanatory. The plus-icon opens a basic form that accepts a web address and a name. You may use it to add any website to Edge Bar permanently. A click on the icon displays the website in the interface. Note that it depends on the site whether it is displayed correctly in the small window that Edge Bar provides.

Basic navigation options are displayed at the bottom if a website is displayed. You may go back and forward, reload a page, go back to Home, or open the current page in the Edge browser. An option to load another URL directly is also provided.

Selecting Pin attaches the entire window to the left side of the screen. The window is set to be always on top by default, but you may activate the autohide button to see just a small vertical bar at the right side whenever the window is not used actively.

Closing words

Edge Bar is like a small browser window that you may attach to the side of the screen. It resembles the sidebar of the Vivaldi web browser, but is unattached from the browser window.

Edge Bar is configured to launch with the computer by default; this needs to be disabled in the Edge settings, edge://settings/edgeBar, while all personalization options are configured on the MSN website and not in Edge.

Microsoft continues to push its MSN news feed and Bing Search to users. Widgets and News & Interests are already available on Windows 10 and 11, and the default tab of the Edge browser displays the information as well already. Edge Bar's main attraction is the ability to display custom URLs. Many users do so already by displaying two browser windows side by side though.

The interface lacks customization options. You can't change the search engine or remove it, and you can't remove the default icons either in the interface.

Microsoft Edge: Edge Bar feature first look

The full changelog for the Nvidia GeForce 511.72 Hotfix driver is given below alongside the bug tracking IDs:

• G-SYNC cannot be re-enabled on G-SYNC Compatible displays after manually disabling from the NVIDIA Control Panel [3523157]

• Call of Duty Vanguard random corruption [3519774]

• Assassin's Creed Valhalla may fail to launch correctly [3525655]

In case you're facing one or more of these issues, it is recommended that you download the driver from the link provided below. The Nvidia GeForce 511.72 Hotfix driver is available for Windows 11 and Windows 10 64-bit versions and is the same for desktops and notebooks.

Download 511.72 Hotfix driver: Windows 10/11 x64

If you are wondering why the release notes for the driver is rather small, that's because this is a hotfix release which means all the game optimizations, among other stuff, are carried over into this release from the previous Game Ready driver version 511.65. The 511.65 driver brought support for RTX 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti laptop GPUs and game optimizations too. Find all the details here.

Source: Nvidia

Nvidia quietly outs 511.72 Hotfix driver to fix G-SYNC fail, CoD: Vanguard bug, and more

The first update of the year will debut as Windows 11 version 22H2, and it's essentially based on the existing version of Windows 11. However, it'll be delivered as a full feature update rather than an enablement package. It's not going to be a massive release, but Microsoft has already confirmed that the update will pack a bunch of quality improvements.

For example, you can expect a new feature that will allow you to pin more apps or activities in the recommendations section of the Start Menu.

There's a possibility that some of the new features will be released using 'Windows Feature Experience Packs,' which is a new way to update and improve the OS without major feature updates.

Task Manager

As we mentioned, one of the significant changes in Sun Valley 2 would be the introduction of a new Task Manager.

As part of the major update, Task Manager will be getting a new design based on Fluent UI and WinUI. Still, it will retain the existing information screens, such as Processes, Performance, Startup apps, Users, Details, and services.

Unlike the existing Task Manager, the redesigned app will use a new sidebar or hamburger menu to display processes and performance options. This would make the Task Manager easily accessible on touchscreen devices.

Additionally, Task Manager's top bar now displays the brand and name of the device, its model (if available), a picture of the device, and CPU or RAM being used.

Natural Narrator Voices

Microsoft is introducing more natural voices for the Narrator. This will allow users to enjoy scenarios like browsing the web, reading, and authoring mail, and more.

Microsoft says the new narrator voices use modern, on-device text to speech and, once downloaded, are supported without an internet connection. 

New flyout design

Microsoft is updating the flyout design for the hardware indicators, and media controls that appear on the Lock screen when playing music in a supported app are also getting a new look.

As you can see in the above screenshot, it matches the design shown for the media controls across the operating system and Microsoft's vision for WinUI. Interestingly, the media controls will use a dark theme to complement the rest of the Lock Screen visual style.

Microsoft also noted that updated media controls reflect the Windows 11 design principles, and more flyouts will be updated in future preview releases.

New snapping experience

Microsoft has updated the experience of resizing app windows in snap layouts by overlaying the relevant app icon on top of the acrylic background. Snap some windows using the snap assist, resize the snapped window layout using the buffer and watch the other snapped windows go out-of-focus overlaid with their app icon.

How to try these changes today

If you're interested, you can download and install the preview update today as these changes are currently available  Windows Insider Dev channel

If you're a member of the Windows Insider Program, head to the Windows Update page, click on the Windows Insider program settings, and select Dev Channel to install the update.

What's new in Windows 11 Sun Valley 2 Update, arriving this year

Microsoft addressed a problem with Windows 11 which caused slowed down SSD drives. They released an update to fix this issue, but there are still some who believe it’s responsible for their slow performance today. This time around, the culprit was reported as being behind increasingly slower writing speeds on certain types or brands NVMe solid-state disks (SSD). Bugs like these aren’t immediately obvious and require extensive testing before they become public knowledge.

Fortunately, it looks like this problem may finally get fixed with the release of the February update. Microsoft has been hard at work trying to find a fix for this issue, and it looks like they may have finally found one. A recent post on the Microsoft Community forums suggests that the February update will include a fix for Windows 11’s SSD bug.

This update is said to be optional but it’s important for your computer. If you don’t notice any issues with KB5008353, then install the necessary updates on Feb 8th within Windows 10 Settings menu and through “Windows Update.” You’ll automatically download what Microsoft considers an essential package so keep those PCs connected! We also expect a small quasi-feature release this month which includes improvements of Taskbar as well as prerelease features from Android apps running inside windows 11.

Windows 11’s SSD Bug: Fixed This February?

Chrome is changing its logo for the first time in eight years

Changelog

You can download and install the Telegram Desktop on your Windows 10 PC from the below link, or you can head over to Microsoft Store and search for the app.

Telegram Desktop gets updated with the new features

When a Chrome user opens a site on the Internet that requests a permission, e.g., a maps service requesting the location permission, Chrome displays a large prompt in the top left corner. The prompt remains visible on the page until the user interacts with it, reloads the page or navigates away. The permission prompt has block and allow buttons, and an option to close it.

Google engineers looked at telemetry data recently to better understand how users interacted with these prompts. According to that data, permission prompts are either ignored or dismissed by an average of 85% of users. An additional 9% of users selects the block option to prevent the site from displaying prompts in the future; this leaves less than 7% of all users who select allow as the action.

The prompts stand out and insist that users make a decision, as they remain visible if the user chooses to ignore the prompt completely. The urgency of the prompt and the low number of users that interact positively with the prompts gave Google a reason to look for an alternative.

Starting in Chrome 98, Google users will see an animated chip UI in the browser's address bar when a site requests a permission. It displays an icon and the name of the permission that the site requests, and users may click on it to display the full prompt that allows them to allow access to the function that is requested or block it.

The request chip that Chrome displays will collapse to a blocked icon automatically after a short time to indicate that the permission is temporarily blocked. Chrome displays a blocked icon for several seconds before displaying just the site's lock icon again.

There are exceptions to the default behavior (there are always exceptions, are not there?):

• Chrome displays the full prompt for permissions that it deems "essential" and considers to be "generally not spammy". The permissions are camera, microphone, and camera paired with microphone.
• Chrome displays the full prompt if the permission was triggered "through a user gesture when interacting with the site itself".

Enable the feature now

Google rolls out the new functionality to all Chrome users over time. Chrome users who want to enable it right away can do so by enabling the following flags:

• chrome://flags/#permission-chip
• chrome://flags/#permission-chip-gesture
• chrome://flags/#permission-chip-request-type

A restart is required before the changes are visible in the browser.

Closing Words

The change improves the user experience in Chrome, as permission prompts are no longer displayed on the screen until the user interacts with them. Some sites may see permission interaction stats going down. Google announced that it may enable a more aggressive auto-blocking behavior in the Chrome browser in the future.

Google is making permission prompts in Chrome less annoying

he story of Brendan Eich is in many ways the story of the evolution of the internet and the technologies we use to access it. It is also a story of battles won, lost and soon to play out.

Eich is best known as the creator of programming language JavaScript, which he developed over a sleepless period of ten days in 1995. At the time, he was working for Netscape, whose web browser dominated the market before Internet Explorer spoiled the party.

Recognizing that Netscape had lost its way, Eich spun out another project he had been working on, leading to the formation of the Mozilla Foundation. The organization went on to pioneer the concept of browser extensions with Firefox, which quickly became a household name, before it was crushed under the weight of Google Chrome.

Since departing Mozilla, Eich has focused his attention on a new company called Brave Software, which he believes will help usher in the next landmark period in the history of the internet.

Founded in 2015, Brave is the maker of a privacy-centric web browser by the same name, which blocks both ads and tracking cookies. It is also the proving ground for a novel opt-in advertising model, whereby users are paid for their attention.

With these building blocks, Eich is aiming to bring to fruition an internet characterized not by monopoly and unfettered surveillance, but rather decentralization, disintermediation and individual privacy.

JavaScript is born

Today, JavaScript is deployed across practically all websites, as part of a famous trifecta that also includes HTML and CSS. It allows web developers to code in all the rich features and dynamic content users interact with on the web, and can also be deployed server-side and for various other purposes.

Given its ubiquity and the extent of its influence over the web, it’s easy to forget JavaScript is the creation of a single person, who put it together in under a fortnight. “The web was evolving almost in a biological fashion [in the 1990s],” Eich told TechRadar Pro. “My big contribution to the process was JavaScript.”

When Eich joined Netscape in 1995, he says there was a “feeling of doom” hanging over the company, because Microsoft was breathing down its neck. The infamous Microsoft strategy was to “embrace, extend and extinguish”; it would embrace a new type of software, extend it with proprietary facilities that only functioned inside Windows, and harness these new capabilities to extinguish the competition.

The previous year, Netscape had spurned a low-ball acquisition offer from Microsoft, so the company knew it was next in line for the typical treatment. The plan to shield itself relied heavily on the integration of Java into the browser and the opportunities made possible by JavaScript, which was designed as a dynamic companion language that non-expert developers could use to add interactivity to their websites.

Netscape Navigator 2.0, released in 1995. (Image credit: Wikipedia)

“We knew Microsoft was coming after us and we wanted to get Netscape Navigator 2.0 out the door, with Java as the big programming language and JavaScript as the sidekick that let the average scripter glue things together,” Eich explained.

To some extent, the endeavor was a success. Microsoft, which had previously stated its intentions to make VBScript the go-to language for building web applications, was ultimately forced to build support for JavaScript into Internet Explorer. This meant the company did not have control over the favorite scripting language of the web.

Until 1996, Eich was the sole developer working full-time on the JavaScript engine, which was plagued by technical debt (in other words, messy code) that resulted from the speed with which it was first composed. It was also apparent that a specification needed to be created, to guarantee web pages would function as intended across the multiple browsers that now supported JavaScript.

After rewriting the core, Eich helped build out a vendor-neutral specification in collaboration with Microsoft and other players, which was then left under the stewardship of a standards body called Ecma International.

History shows that Netscape was ultimately unsuccessful in fending off the advances of Microsoft, which eventually captured 95% of the browser market with Internet Explorer. Bill Gates had not only made his browser free, but also packaged it with Windows machines, which left Netscape no room to maneuver.

“A bunch of us started to see the writing was on the wall,” said Eich. “The feeling that we were doomed had been fulfilled, and the question became: what next?”

Under Bill Gates, Microsoft went in pursuit of Netscape with Internet Explorer.

 (Image credit: Shutterstock / Paolo Bona)

Mozilla breaks free

Knowing itself beaten, Netscape decided to open source its browser code. Eich says the idea was to create a community like the one that surrounded Linux, which would engender new browser innovation.

The company tasked Eich and a group of other developers with setting in motion the project, which came to be called Mozilla. The team worked “inside a fishbowl” at Netscape, at a remove from the rest of the company, Eich explained.

In the coming years, however, the relationship between the Mozilla team and Netscape executives soured. The two groups traded blows over product design, release timelines, the toxic working culture and other topics. 

“It was a difficult time,” said Eich. “I stopped using my Netscape email as much as I could and used an ISP email instead. I acted as if I were completely outside the firewall.”

“I also set up a proxy for the developers we were trying to bring in, who didn’t have the advantage of being employees. Meanwhile, Netscape kept regressing to the mean when it came to the strength of its programmers.”

After a series of layoffs in 2003, Eich and the Mozilla team broke out of their fishbowl to form a standalone non-profit called the Mozilla Foundation, which was tasked with carrying the project forward.

Meanwhile, wounded by the famous antitrust ruling over the bundling of Windows and Internet Explorer, Microsoft had grown lazy with its web browser. The strength of the company’s grip on the market meant it no longer had reason to innovate, creating a window of opportunity for a plucky newcomer.

Despite the politicking inside Netscape, the Mozilla team had managed to build a browser capable of rising to this challenge. The first ever to support extensibility, Firefox (as it came to be known after a series of name changes) rose quickly to prominence and reignited competition in the browser space, says Eich.

Firefox was the first ever web browser to support extensibility, paving the way for Google Chrome and other modern browsers.

(Image credit: Shutterstock / tanuha2001)

Mozilla reaped the rewards of its tenacity in the years that followed, attracting many millions of users to Firefox and netting a lucrative deal that saw Google become the browser’s default search engine. Ultimately, though, this level of momentum proved unsustainable and Mozilla was caught out by developments elsewhere in the technology world.

The rise of the smartphone in the late aughts transformed the way people engaged with the internet, and Mozilla failed to spot the danger. While the iPhone shipped with Safari pre-installed and Android devices came with Chrome, Firefox was left out in the cold. Once again, Eich found himself on the wrong end of the platform effect.

Locked out of the mobile market and unable to compete with Google’s marketing spend, Mozilla could do little to stop the numbers tumbling. Once responsible for roughly 30% of web activity, Firefox now holds just a 4% market share, the latest figures suggest.

Although there were efforts to limit the damage with Firefox OS and other projects, Mozilla never managed to regain a proper foothold and has now pivoted towards other products, including a new VPN.

Eich eventually left the organization under a cloud of controversy in 2015. After less than two weeks as CEO, it emerged he had made a donation in support of a ban on same-sex marriage, and the backlash was fierce. We were told an NDA signed between Eich and Mozilla precluded discussions of this chapter of his life.

Brave new world

While no rational person would dispute the importance of Eich’s contribution to the web, it is also true that he has been on the losing side of both so-called browser wars; first at Netscape, then at Mozilla.

This is a pattern he is hoping to break with Brave, which is pitched as the antidote to the threats posed by Google and its stranglehold on the browser and search markets.

Brave’s browser blocks all advertising by default and has a no-tolerance policy towards third-party cookies, which track users across the web to help inform highly-targeted advertising efforts.

Although there are now plenty of browsers that block invasive tracking techniques, Brave stands apart for its ambitions to rewire the economics that underpin the digital advertising industry.

“The plan was that Brave would be faster, easier on the battery and more private,” said Eich. “And with the help of blockchain technology, we also wanted to replumb the economic engine [of the web].”

The company’s unusual model is built around its Basic Attention Token (BAT), which was launched in 2017 via an initial coin offering (ICO). When an advertiser signs up for a campaign, Brave uses 70% of the fee to purchase BAT from the open market, and these tokens are then distributed to users who have opted-in to the ads program.

The Brave Software logo. (Image credit: Brave)

Once in the user’s possession, BAT tokens can either be donated to favorite content creators, used for microtransactions with Brave partners, or flipped into regular currency via an exchange.

Which specific ads are served to which specific users is determined by browsing data that is stored on-device and run through a machine learning (ML) model. Apparently, this approach actually yields markedly higher clickthrough rates than the 2% industry average.

Unlike the Google system, which is based on tracking users indiscriminately across the web, the Brave model is opt-in only, compensates the user for their participation and does not involve the transport of browsing data to the cloud.

The signs suggest this strategy is paying off for Brave, which has benefited from increasing awareness of the importance of privacy among consumers. The latest figures show the browser now attracts 50 million monthly users, which is double the figure from a year ago, and quadruple the year before that.

While these numbers are modest in the context of the total volume of web users, Eich predicts that enthusiasm for the service among developers, crypto fans and privacy evangelists is bound to spill over.

“There are privacy nihilists out there that we’ll never convince, but people have generally become more conscious about their privacy as a result of security breaches and events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” he said.

“But to breach the chasm to mass market, reaching people who are aware of these kinds of problems matters, because they convert their friends and family, and this creates rolling thunder.”

Brave's browser on mobile. (Image credit: Brave)

Empire building

Over the last couple of years, Brave has quietly set about expanding its empire with new privacy-centric products. Orbiting its browser, there is now a Brave VPN, firewall, encrypted video conferencing service, crypto wallet, news aggregator and search engine.

Asked which areas Brave will look to expand into next, Eich declined to provide any concrete information, but did concede the company is “looking at the larger space”. We wouldn’t be surprised to see an encrypted email service from Brave in the near future, for example.

All of these technologies will be foundational to Web 3.0, a new generation of the internet defined by decentralization, disintermediation and greater user privacy. Among those attempting to bring Web 3.0 into being, many believe blockchain and cryptocurrency will play a fundamental role in the transition.

Naturally, Brave has attracted a large number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, whose ambitions with regards to economic freedom align closely with the company’s attempts to create a more equitable and private web. 

The long-term success of the project, however, will be determined by how effectively Brave is able to sell itself to a wider and less technical audience. It has a lot of ground to make up before it can hope to challenge the dominance of Google and other incumbents.

However, as Eich’s story demonstrates, the internet is littered with the corpses of fallen giants. The cry for greater privacy on the web is growing louder and louder, and Brave has put itself in a position to ride the zeitgeist.

Source

Hear me out: browser tabs in music player apps

Windows Terminal is an essential utility if you are prefer command-line interfaces (CLI) and we already know that Microsoft is looking to make it the default CLI experience in Windows 11 soon. If you're an ardent user of the interface, you'll be happy to know that the company has released version 1.13 of Windows Terminal Preview.

Windows Terminal Preview 1.13 includes a revamped settings interface that has been updated to align with the design language of Windows 11, thanks to WinUI 2.6. There is also a new profile setting that enables you to automatically launch a profile as an admin. If you're operating in an unelevated window, launching this profile will open a new window. However, if you're already in an elevated window, launching the admin profile will open it in the same window. There are new "elevate" arguments to cater to this configuration for some Windows Terminal commands too.

Interestingly, Microsoft has also introduced a new text rendering engine. The company has noted that the performance benefits aren't noticeable in most use-cases but in some edge cases, such as those where you're displaying lots of colors, there will be significant performance boosts. In these cases, the updated rendering engine will draw and display your text at your panel's refresh rate. That said, Microsoft has cautioned that since this a preview build and a work in progress, it is slightly unstable at this point and does not have all the features of the existing engine. For now, it can be enabled via settings, but Microsoft will keep improving it over time until it is ready to replace the current text rendering engine. The company also noted that:

We admit this feature began with a kerfuffle we caused in the summer of 2021. When confronted with being told our rendering pipeline had terrible performance, we turned inward. We relied on our existing experiences and we leaned heavily on our partner teams’ work to conclude the DirectWrite general purpose renderer was the best fit for our product. We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes. Thank you for sticking with us. We strive to make this an experience we can all learn from to not only improve ourselves, but to improve our product and delight you all.

Apart from this, there are lots of minor changes here and there such as an customizable bell sound, new actions, support for snap layouts in Windows 11, and lots of other big fixes. You can check out all the details here.

Windows Terminal Preview 1.13 can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store or its GitHub repository. It will initially be flighted in preview builds of Windows for testing purposes before it becomes generally available. It is also important to note that the minimum supported version of Windows 10 required to install Windows Terminal 1.13 and above has been changed from build 18362 (version 19H1) to build 19041 (version 20H1).

Windows Terminal Preview 1.13 is now live with a new text rendering engine

While Windows 11 Dev Channel Insiders were probably disappointed with this earlier announcement from Microsoft, there's some good news though for those flighting the Beta Channel builds. The company announced that the newly redesigned Windows Media Player is arriving on the Beta Channel.

Here's what the new Windows Media looks like:

The new Media Player was released to Dev Channel Insiders last year in November and it's good to see the app finally arriving on the Beta Channel. Microsoft probably feels most of the issues it had in the Dev Channel phase have been ironed out. For example, some of these issues were related to playing content stored in network locations, and a few others like editing metadata or UI components not respecting app theme preferences.

The new Media Player is meant to replace Groove Music, as the latter never really took off quite as well the classic Media Player did. You can read about its features in this original Dev Channel release post since it does not look like any more new features were added, as the company's announcement only says:

We have released the new Media Player for Windows 11 to Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel.

In case you are wondering how you can get the new Media Player on a non-Insider Windows 11 build, here's a guide for that.

The all-new Media Player for Windows 11 finally arrives on the Beta Channel

• Enhance your security on the web. This is a browsing mode in Microsoft Edge where browser security takes priority, giving users an extra layer of protection when browsing the web. Administrators can apply group policies to end-user desktops (Windows, macOS, and Linux) to help protect against in-the-wild exploits (also referred to 0-days).

The following group policies support this browsing mode:

• EnhanceSecurityMode

• EnhanceSecurityModeBypassListDomains
• EnhanceSecurityModeEnforceListDomains

• Personalize multi-profile experiences with profile preferences for sites. Users can personalize their multi-profile experience with the ability to create a customized list of sites for automatic profile switching in Microsoft Edge.
• Deprecate WebRTC's Plan B SDP semantics. This change deprecates a legacy Session Description Protocol (SDP) dialect called Plan B. This SDP format is being replaced by the Unified Plan, which is a spec-compliant and cross-browser compatible SDP format. For more information, see the Chrome Platform Status entry PSA: Plan B should throw in M96 Beta and Stable, and PSA: Plan B throwing in Stable and Extended Deprecation Trial End Date. Requesting a Trial for RTCPeerConnection Plan B SDP Semantics allows sites to continue to use the deprecated API until version 101.
• Overlay scrollbars added to Microsoft Edge. We've updated our scrollbars with an overlay-based design. Users can turn this feature on in edge://flags.

Alongside feature updates, Edge 98.0.1108.43 also brings some important security updates that are listed below:

CVE-2022-23261: Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Tampering Vulnerability

CVE-2022-23262: Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

CVE-2022-23263: Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

There are also lots of new policy updates too which you can read about in the release notes.

Source

The games gaining official support in this release are Dying Light 2 Stay Human from Techland, which comes out February 4, as well as the western release of Lost Ark, the Amazon Games-published 2.5D fantasy MMO, which drops on February 11.

Unfortunately, AMD did not go into detail on what sort of improvements these games are receiving with the driver, but it is a recommended install for anyone with a graphics card from the red team jumping in.

A single fixed issue is present in this driver related to the RX 6700 XT when playing Fortnite:

• On some AMD Graphics Products such as Radeon® RX 6700 XT Graphics, some users may observe flashing colored lights around their character when playing Fortnite™ using DirectX® 12.

The current known issues are these:

• While playing Cyberpunk 2077™ on some AMD Graphics Products such as Radeon® RX 570 Graphics, some users may observe an issue where indoor areas appear darker than expected.
• Stuttering or lower than expected FPS values may be experienced by some users while playing God of War on some AMD Graphics Products such as Radeon® RX 6900 XT Graphics.
• Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen to occur when enabled on some games and system configurations. Any users who may be experiencing issues with Enhanced Sync enabled should disable it as a temporary workaround.
• Radeon performance metrics and logging features may intermittently report extremely high and incorrect memory clock values.

The newly released Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.1 driver is available for download via standalone links on the release notes page here. The Radeon Settings app on Windows can also be used to upgrade to this driver, with the download available in its Optional section.

AMD 22.2.1 driver has support for Dying Light 2, Lost Ark, and Vulkan 1.3

Apart from the annual feature updates, Microsoft plans to roll out new and experimental features to Windows 11, according to a blog post from the company. One particular sentence stands out, reported Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet:

"We will deliver updates to features and experiences in builds from the Dev and Beta Channels by releasing Feature, Web, and Online Service Experience Packs on top of these builds too."

Microsoft has regularly hinted that Windows 11 users would likely get other OS updates in addition to this feature update. However, it refrained from offering any specific details. It did, however, indicate that new features could arrive, either as full OS updates (feature releases) or Cumulative Updates (servicing releases).

It appears Microsoft will adopt three additional channels to deliver new features to Windows 11. They are as mentioned below:

Feature Experience Packs: This medium delivers new feature improvements to customers, but it is in addition to major Windows feature updates.

Online Service Experience Packs: According to Microsoft, “The difference between Windows Feature Experience Pack and Online Service Experience Packs is that the former can deliver broad improvements across multiple areas of Windows, whereas the Online Service Experience Packs are focused on delivering improvements for a specific experience such as the new Your Microsoft account settings page.”

Web Experience Packs: These should be available through the Microsoft Store. The Windows Feature Experience Pack and Online Service Experience Pack will be available through Windows Update. There's no clear indication about the contents, but it is likely that such packs could update or maintain web apps such as PWA, UWP, Android, etc.

In addition, Microsoft stated in its blog post that the Insider channels will remain the same as Dev, Beta, and Release Preview Channels with the Dev channel slated to become more of a means to test features that may never make it to general release builds.

Windows 11 to get Feature, Web, and Online Service Experience Packs

Microsoft to test new experimental Windows 11 features

Here's the full announcement:

For humor, the firm has also set a Batman pushing an empty swing GIF to show that it is disappointed in failing to deliver a Dev channel build this week.

Unlike a few of the times previously, Microsoft hasn't informed of any bug that it ran into while testing and hence we don't really know what might have happened unless the company shares more details about it.

However, there's some good news too. As the announcement says, the Redmond giant is planning on getting back to the business of flighting Insiders builds next week.

Microsoft confirms no Windows 11 Dev build this week as it "didn't meet" the "quality bar"

The future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge (Microsoft Blog)

Mozilla published a detailed technical explanation of the incident on the company's Mozilla Hacks website on February 2, 2022.

The organization received reports about Firefox hanging during connection attempts on January 13, 2022. At the time, it saw that crash reports were spiking but did not have much information about what was causing the issue.

Mozilla engineers discovered that a network request was causing the hangs for Firefox users. Engineers looked at recent changes or updates, but did not find any that could cause the issue that users experienced.

Mozilla suspected that the issue could have been caused by a recent "invisible" configuration change by one of the cloud providers that it uses for load balancing. The organization uses the infrastructure of several providers for services such as crash reporting, telemetry, updating or certificate management.

Settings were not changed in inspection, but engineers noticed that the Telemetry service was serving HTTP/3 connections, which it had not done before. HTTP/3 was disabled by Mozilla and users could finally use Firefox again to connect to services. The HTTP/3 setting at the cloud provider was configured with the automatic value.

Mozilla investigated the issue in more detail after the most pressing issue had been taken care of.  All HTTP/3 connections go through the networking stack Necko, but Rust components use a library called viaduct to call Necko.

Necko checks if a header is present and if it is not, will add it. HTTP/3 relies on the header to determine the request size. Necko checks are case-sensitive. It now happened that the requests that passed through viaduct were put into lower-case automatically by the library; this meant that any request through viaduct that added a content-length header passed Necko but ran into troubles with the HTTP/3 code.

The only Rust component that uses the network stack and adds a content-length header is the Telemetry component of the Firefox web browser. Mozilla notes that this was the reason why disabling Telemetry in Firefox resolved the issue on the user side. Disabling HTTP/3 did also resolve it.

The issue would cause an infinite loop, which blocked all further network communication because "all network requests go through one socket thread" according to Mozilla.

Mozilla states that it has learned several lessons from the issue. It is investigating all load balancers and reviewing their configurations so that future issues like that can be avoided. The deployment of HTTP/3 at Google, which was the cloud provider in question, was unannounced. Lastly, Mozilla plans to run more system tests in the future with "different HTTP versions".

Closing Words

Mozilla reacted quickly to the emergency situation and has resolved it. It may have damaged the reputation, and some users may have switched to a different browser in the process. Mozilla should ask itself whether it is a good idea to rely on cloud infrastructure that is operated by its biggest rival in the browser space. Some Firefox users may also suggest that the organization looks at the browser's handling of requests to make sure that unnecessary ones, e.g. the reporting of Telemetry or crash reporting, will never block connections the user attempts to make in the future.

Mozilla explains the January 2022 Firefox outage that blocked connections

• #15910 - Shortcut keys retain taken after disabled for Shortcut Guide, Mouse highlighter, Mouse pointer crosshair. This was a bug we had for a while but with the increased mouse utilities using the shared code path, it was just noticed.
• #15450 - Fixing a bug where settings wasn't properly saving. This bug was introduced with 0.53 installer update and now is fixed with 0.55.1.
• #15487 - After install, PT won't automatically start as admin unless dont-elevate arg is used. This bug was introduced with 0.53 installer update and now is fixed with 0.55.1.
• #15869 - Removed a dead code path and unused DLL
• #15885 - Mouse pointer crosshairs crashing race condition bug.
• #15348, #15488 - Small UX fixes for helping wayfind.

As such, there are no changes, you can view the ull set of changes in our v0.55.0 post here.

PowerToys is Microsoft's open-source project that offers a collection of nifty tools that people can use to customize the Windows 10 or 11 UI and experience to their liking. As we know, depending upon feedback and general stability, some of the utilities also make their way to the OS eventually. A prominent example of this is Snap Layouts and Span Groups in Windows 11 which borrow heavily from the FanzyZones tool in PowerToys.

If you are using PowerToys in Windows 11, you can grab it in the Microsoft Store. For others in Windows 10, you can open the app and click on "Check for updates" under the updates section on the General tab. Those who would like to try PowerToys for the first time can grab the version 0.55.1 installer from the app's GitHub page.

Microsoft releases PowerToys 0.55.1 to patch issues with Settings not saving and more

With the January 2022 updates, Microsoft introduced numerous bugs breaking LT2P VPN connections, causing domain controller reboots, and preventing Hyper-V from working.

Microsoft later released out-of-band updates to fix these issues, whose fixes were also rolled into the optional preview updates.

However, these optional updates seem to have fixed more than the reported bugs, as they are also resolving significant performance issues caused by the January updates.

Recent Windows updates caused performance hits

After installing the January 2022 KB5009543 update, Windows 10 users began to notice that Windows suffered from severe performance issues.

These performance issues included slow boots and slow response times when opening the Start Menu, launching apps, playing games, and performing pretty much all of the basic functions of the operating system. In general, Windows felt "laggy" after installing the updates.

"Prior to the update, it took maybe 2 minutes for my laptop to boot to the home screen. It now takes close to a half hour. I'm frustrated to the point where I'm now planning to disable updates and uninstall this update," a user named Ninja_Bobcat posted on Reddit.

"This update has ruined my laptop in games, namely warzone and apex. Goes to 0 fps and huge stutters everywhere," another person posted.

"My computer is incredibly slow after KB5009543 security update and KB5008876 windows update. It takes about 3 minutes for my computer to boot and maybe 2-3 minutes to open a tab on chrome. Absolutely killed my computer," said a third Windows 10 user.

BleepingComputer replicated these performance issues after installing the January 2022 KB5009543 update on multiple laptops.

The good news is that BleepingComputer found that installing the optional KB5009596 preview update released late last month fixed these newly introduced performance issues.

However, as these updates are optional, many users will not know to install them. Thus, their performance issues will continue until the mandatory February 2022 Patch Tuesday updates are installed, which will include these fixes.

Windows users can install the optional updates by going into Settings, clicking on Windows Update, and manually performing a 'Check for Updates.'

As this is an optional update, you will need to install the KB5009596 by clicking on the 'Download and install' link.

Windows 11 issues were fixed as well

Not to be outdone by Windows 10, Windows 11 has also been dealing with performance issues within File Explorer.

Users found that it was slow to switch between folders, browse folders, or select files when using File Explorer.

However, the optional Windows 11 KB5008353 cumulative update preview has resolved these issues, with users reporting that File Explorer is back to normal.

"I honestly lost hope because this issue has been there since I upgraded to Win11, other users were claiming it was solved but it wasn't the case for everyone. However, this update seems to have fixed this issue for good amongst others of course," a Windows 11 user posted on Reddit.

BleepingComputer has not been able to replicate the performance issues on Windows 11 to test the fix.

BleepingComputer has also reached out to Microsoft with further questions about what has been fixed but has not received a reply as of yet.

Windows 10 optional updates fix performance problems introduced last month

Out of all of the Raspberry Pi computers, the Raspberry Pi 1, Pi 2, and Zero support 32-bit operating systems while the Zero 2, Pi 3, and Pi 4 are all capable of running 64-bit operating systems. While it is simpler for the RPF to offer just one 32-bit image, it noticed that some closed-source software was only made for arm64 hardware (those listed as 64-bit earlier). It also said arm64 hardware should run better with a 64-bit OS.

Commenting on the limitations of RAM under 32-bit operating systems, the RPF said:

“A more theoretical concern is that 32-bit pointers only allow you to address 4GB of memory. On Raspberry Pi 4, we use the ARM Large Physical Address Extension (LPAE) to access up to 8GB of memory, subject to the constraint that any process is limited to accessing 3GB (we reserve the top 1GB of the virtual address space for the kernel). Very few processes require more memory than this: happily Chromium, which is probably the most memory-intensive application in Raspberry Pi OS, spawns a process per tab. But some use cases will benefit from being able to allocate the entire memory of an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 from a single process.”

One issue that users of Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit may run into is that the 64-bit version of Chromium, which is installed by default, doesn’t include the WidevineCDM library so it’s not possible to watch DRM-encrypted content on sites like Netflix. To watch this content you need to install the 32-bit version of Chromium using the following command sudo apt install chromium-browser:armhf libwidevinecdm0 if you want to return to the 64-bit version use this command sudo apt install chromium-browser:arm64 libwidevinecdm0 .

If you’re ready to grab Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit, just head over to the Raspberry Pi downloads page.

Raspberry Pi OS is now available as a 64-bit download

LibreOffice 7.3 is already available for download on the official project website. The office program is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS systems. Existing users may select Help > Check for Updates to download and install the new version. Selecting Help > About LibreOffice displays the current version.

A strong development focus of LibreOffice 7.3 was to strengthen interoperability with Microsoft Office. The new release features improvements in three areas:

• Support for new features such as the tracking of changes in tables and other elements.
• Performance improvements when opening certain Office files in LibreOffice.
• Import and export filter improvements.

The full changelog provides a detailed overview of the changes in the release. Here is a short overview of important changes in LibreOffice 7.3:

• Support for managing changes for tracked deletions and insertions of tables and table rows, as well as basic table changing tracking support improvements, e.g., tracking the insertion of empty table rows.
• Tracked text moving: moved text is shown in green color and double-strikethrough or underlines to improve the reviewing process.
• Other change tracking improvements, including tracking paragraph style changes.
• Improved PDF export performance for complex documents.
• Improved the loading of large RTL documents.
• Improved rendering speed of certain complex documents.
• CSV import and export improvements, including support for new field seperators.
• Bash-like auto-complete implemented for Calc autoinput.
• Improved the loading of certain XLSM files.
• Improved the insertion of large charts.
• Added PowerPoint compatible screen sizes to Slide > Slide Properties > Slide > Paper Format.
• Support for the generation of one-dimensional barcodes.
• Unified borderline widths.
• Improved Doc and Docx file format list/numbering import, other importing improvements.
• Improved Excel and PowerPoint imports.
• Improved the display of spelling and grammar issues on high-resolution screens.

Closing Words

LibreOffice is improved with every release. Development was focused on improving compatibility with Microsoft Office, and this has been achieved in several meaningful ways in the new version of the Office suite.

Now You: which Office program, if any, do you use?

Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/02/libreoffice-7-3-improves-microsoft-office-interoperability/

I have made some slight modification to adapt it so it can be tested on LeetCode OJ. It passed all 6/6 test cases with a runtime of 1 ms. Pretty impressive for a prime minister, huh?

// Original author: Hsien Loong Lee (http://bit.ly/1zfIGMc)
// Slight modification by @1337c0d3r to adapt to run on LeetCode OJ.
// https://leetcode.com/problems/sudoku-solver/
int InBlock[81], InRow[81], InCol[81];

const int BLANK = 0;
const int ONES = 0x3fe; 	// Binary 1111111110

int Entry[81];	// Records entries 1-9 in the grid, as the corresponding bit set to 1
int Block[9], Row[9], Col[9];	// Each int is a 9-bit array

int SeqPtr = 0;
int Sequence[81];



void SwapSeqEntries(int S1, int S2)
{
     int temp = Sequence[S2];
     Sequence[S2] = Sequence[S1];
     Sequence[S1] = temp;
}


void InitEntry(int i, int j, int val)
{
	 int Square = 9 * i + j;
	 int valbit = 1 << val;
     int SeqPtr2;

     // add suitable checks for data consistency
     
	 Entry[Square] = valbit;
	 Block[InBlock[Square]] &= ~valbit;
	 Col[InCol[Square]] &= ~valbit; // Simpler Col[j] &= ~valbit;
	 Row[InRow[Square]] &= ~valbit; // Simpler Row(i) &= ~valbit;

     SeqPtr2 = SeqPtr;
     while (SeqPtr2 < 81 && Sequence[SeqPtr2] != Square)
           SeqPtr2++ ;

     SwapSeqEntries(SeqPtr, SeqPtr2);
     SeqPtr++;
}


void PrintArray(char **board)
{
     int i, j, valbit, val, Square;
     char ch;
     
     Square = 0;

     for (i = 0; i < 9; i++) {
         for (j = 0; j < 9; j++) {
             valbit = Entry[Square++];
             if (valbit == 0) ch = '-';
             else {
                 for (val = 1; val <= 9; val++) 
                     if (valbit == (1 << val)) {
                        ch = '0' + val;
                        break;
                     }
             }    
             board(i)[j] = ch;
         }
     }
}


int NextSeq(int S)
{
    int S2, Square, Possibles, BitCount;
    int T, MinBitCount = 100;

    for (T = S; T < 81; T++) {
        Square = Sequence[T];
        Possibles = Block[InBlock[Square]] & Row[InRow[Square]] & Col[InCol[Square]];
        BitCount = 0;
        while (Possibles) {
           Possibles &= ~(Possibles & -Possibles);
           BitCount++;
        }

        if (BitCount < MinBitCount) {
           MinBitCount = BitCount;
           S2 = T;
        }
    }

    return S2;
}


void Place(int S, char** board)
{
    if (S >= 81) {
        PrintArray(board);
        return;
    }

    int S2 = NextSeq(S);
    SwapSeqEntries(S, S2);

    int Square = Sequence(s);

    int 	BlockIndex = InBlock[Square],
			RowIndex = InRow[Square],
			ColIndex = InCol[Square];

    int 	Possibles = Block[BlockIndex] & Row[RowIndex] & Col[ColIndex];
    while (Possibles) {
          int valbit = Possibles & (-Possibles); // Lowest 1 bit in Possibles
          Possibles &= ~valbit;
          Entry[Square] = valbit;
          Block[BlockIndex] &= ~valbit;
          Row[RowIndex] &= ~valbit;
          Col[ColIndex] &= ~valbit;
				
          Place(S + 1, board);

          Entry[Square] = BLANK; // Could be moved out of the loop
          Block[BlockIndex] |= valbit;
          Row[RowIndex] |= valbit;
          Col[ColIndex] |= valbit;
	}

    SwapSeqEntries(S, S2);
}

void solveSudoku(char **board, int m, int n) {
    SeqPtr = 0;
    int i, j, Square;

	for (i = 0; i < 9; i++)
		for (j = 0; j < 9; j++) {
			Square = 9 * i + j;
			InRow[Square] = i;
			InCol[Square] = j;
			InBlock[Square] = (i / 3) * 3 + ( j / 3);
		}


	for (Square = 0; Square < 81; Square++) {
        Sequence[Square] = Square;
		Entry[Square] = BLANK;
    }
    
	for (i = 0; i < 9; i++) 
		Block(i) = Row(i) = Col(i) = ONES;
    
    for (int i = 0; i < 9; ++i)
       for (int j = 0; j < 9; ++j) {
           if ('.' != board(i)[j])
                InitEntry(i, j, board(i)[j] - '0');
       }
       
    Place(SeqPtr, board);
}

Source