I only watch YouTube on my main PC and laptop. Neither of which are 4K and I don’t own a 4K TV. However, many people like to watch YouTube in 4K (especially on their mobile devices) and have been doing so for free. That is likely changing… You might soon need YouTube Premium for more than ditching ads, background playback and trying new features. As MacRumors notes, users on Reddit and Twitter have noticed that YouTube is asking some viewers to upgrade to Premium to watch videos in 4K resolution. It’s not clear which countries, devices or videos are affected, but this won’t be thrilling if you…
Manifest V3
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Today is Sunday, October 2nd: time for the weekly roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly tech news of the week! This week’s picks are centered around user privacy. The Good Some browsers (looking at you Chrome) are going out of their way NOT to help protect their user’s privacy. It is a refreshing change to hear Brave, a privacy based browser built off of Chromium will automatically block cookie consent banners/pop-ups in future releases. One of the unfortunate side effects of the EU’s GDPR is those annoying ‘this site uses cookies, please accept them (so our advertisers…
The Brave Browser, a privacy focused browser based off of the Chromium Browser will start blocking those pesky Cookie Consent Banners in an upcoming future release. Those annoying pop-up banners (and yes our sites have them too) are an unfortunate but required side effect of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations. Not only are these banners annoying but they could be invading your privacy too. In some cases, however, these banners can serve as trackers themselves, as they engage in a privacy-breaching data exchange before the user even has a chance to opt out. Brave will now proactively detect…
Google Inc. 157,46 +0,58 +0,37% Google has pushed back their plans to disabling Manifest V2 based add-ons at least five-months. Previously Google planed to disable Manifest V2 based add-ons in January 2023. I am guessing some add-on developers (especially the Ad Blocking ones) are having trouble getting their add-ons to work user would prefer based on the new Manifest V3 guidelines. An update from the Chrome team says that they will proceed in careful, experimental steps, ensuring a smooth end-user experience during the phase-out of Manifest V2 in June 2023. During that time, Google will support extension developers with guidance…
In January 2023 Google Chrome is going to block extensions still using the old Manifest V2 rules. An extension manifest outlines the permissions and abilities a developer includes in an extension for Chrome browser. From Google’s perspective, Manifest V3 comes to enhance user privacy and security by: Limiting extension access to user network requests. Forcing authors to include all functionality within the extension, ending the practice of hosting code remotely. Moving network request modifications from the extensions to the browser. Replacing background pages with dedicated service workers to improve browser performance. The unintended consequences of the new manifest is most of…