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Google has brought ChromeOS M137 to the stable channel, and it includes a few focused updates for users and IT admins. A key change is a new policy for managing big groups of Chromebooks. The face control accessibility tool, which Google also updated back in ChromeOS M135, now gets a vital control for managers. A new policy called FaceGazeEnabled lets them switch the feature on or off across a whole school or company. The update also brings a new audio feature called crosstalk cancellation. It aims to create a better sound experience using just the Chromebook's built-in speakers. The software processes audio to make it seem like it is surrounding your head, not just coming from two small points. This tries to copy the feel of a surround sound system or good headphones. Any audio gets a boost, but you will notice it most when watching movies or playing games with directional sound. More accessibility tools have arrived, too. ChromeVox now has a direct keyboard shortcut, Search + O + C, that displays spoken text as braille captions on a connected display. For the poor souls in IT, troubleshooting got a little less painful as well. A new event-based log collection system, when enabled by an admin, will automatically upload relevant logs when something specific fails, like an OS crash or a botched update. Instead of digging through mountains of data, administrators get targeted reports sent straight to them. Here's how to enable it: Turn on the Device system log upload setting. Turn on OS update status reporting—For the Report device OS information setting, select OS update status. Turn on device telemetry reporting on crash information—For the Report device telemetry setting, select Crash information. Google also keeps things sane by limiting these targeted uploads to just twice a day per device. As usual, the update is rolling out slowly. If you do not see ChromeOS M137 for your machine yet, just be patient. This phased release lets Google find and address any issues before the update gets to everyone. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of May): 2,377 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Editing a transcript in Clipchamp will soon automatically trim your video to match. Microsoft's video editor Clipchamp is about to get a powerful feature for trimming videos. Soon, the app will support trimming a video by editing a transcript. Clipchamp is the built-in video editor on Windows 11. There are also versions of Clipchamp available on the web and for iOS. At this time, you cannot use Clipchamp on Android devices. Microsoft purchased Clipchamp in 2021 and has steadily expanded the feature set of the app. It's designed to be a basic video editor, not a competitor to Adobe Premiere Pro or more powerful tools. The work version of Clipchamp comes with select Microsoft 365 business and education licenses. It supports branded video templates, has a range of AI features, and can record your screen and webcam for creating presentations. Clipchamp already supports generating AI transcripts for dialogue within videos. But a new feature set to ship this month will allow you to edit the text within the transcript and then have the corresponding portion of the video removed. The capability makes it possible to trim segments of a video without having to deal with the timeline, lowering the learning curve for video editing and streamlining the process of creating videos centered around dialogue. Microsoft's Anastasia Passaris announced the feature in a Tech Community post and outlined how to use the feature: Open a new or existing video project in Clipchamp that contains spoken dialogue. Select the Transcript tab from the panel on the right-hand side of the editor. Select Generate transcript to start the transcription process. Highlight any text in the transcript that you’d like to remove, then select Delete. This will remove that portion of the video from the timeline. The Captions tab is being replaced by the Transcript tab in Clipchamp. Caption-related features are still in the app but they now live in a different section. AI-generated transcripts include timestamps to make it easy to jump to different parts of a video. With the new feature, you can delete off-topic dialogue and have your video trimmed accordingly. Transcript-based editing will roll out in June 2025 to Clipchamp for work users. Quick and easy video editing Clipchamp is an easy-to-use video editor with a growing list of capabilities. It's especially useful for making presentations and content centered around dialogue. (Image credit: Future) Transcripts and captions are important because they make content more accessible. They also can help with retention since people can listen to a presenter speak while also reading the same information. In the days of social media, it's also useful to have captions because people can watch your content while it's muted. I used to work in television and often repurposed content for the web. Transcribing videos used to take ages. As important as it was, transcribing by hand took a considerable amount of time. Clipchamp's AI-generated transcriptions save quite a bit of time and the ability to trim videos using those transcriptions is a natural extension of the feature. I've reviewed and re-reviewed Clipchamp since it was purchased by Microsoft. It's a solid video editor that has a lot of capabilities centered around productivity. If your business or organization already has a license that includes Clipchamp for work, I'd suggest giving the app a try for content such as walkthroughs, onboarding videos, and presentations. Clipchamp also has a version for personal use, which I use to create highlight reels for my American football team. That version has a slightly different feature set but it's also easy to use. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of May): 2,377 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Internet providers are increasingly tasked in the role of anti-piracy enforcers and instructed to block pirate websites and services. In Europe, court-ordered blockades are now commonplace, but ISPs are cautious when it comes to further expansion. In a recent submission to the EU Commission, EuroISPA, which represents over 3,300 ISPs, complains about "disproportionate" blocking measures, as recently seen in Italy, Spain and elsewhere. Earlier this month, dozens of rightsholders and copyright groups urged the European Commission to pave the way for more robust measures to tackle live-streaming piracy. Two main themes in many of these submissions were broad pirate site blocking powers and effective Know-Your-Business-Customer (KYBC) requirements for online service providers. Ideally, this would enable rightsholders to swiftly block pirate sites while allowing them to track down the identities of those responsible. According to the MPA, IFPI, beIN, Eurocinema, FEVIP, Premier League and others, blocking and/or KYBC are essential to combat piracy. ISPs are Deeply Concerned These calls for broader enforcement are neither new nor unexpected. At the same time, they are not without opposition either. Among the many rightsholder requests, EuroISPA, the world’s largest association of Internet Service Providers, urges caution. “We are deeply concerned by the approach taken by some European rightsholders and certain Member States, who have implemented disproportionate network blocking measures,” the association writes. EuroISPA represents over 3,300 ISPs, including several of the largest European providers. The group is particularly concerned about regimes where over-blocking and collateral damage have damaged many innocent parties. Despite previous overblocking incidents, the rollout of increasingly broader blocking regimes continues. Where the initial orders were targeted at local ISPs, more recent blocking requests have included DNS resolvers, which operate globally. This introduces fallout well beyond EU borders. “Despite numerous over-blocking incidents, certain Member States continue to escalate their efforts and have therefore taken increasingly aggressive measures to expand blocking orders beyond local ISPs,” EuroISPA writes. Problematic Blocking Efforts The ISP association lists several concrete examples of collateral damage caused by overblocking. This includes an intervention in Italy, where a Cloudflare IP-address was blocked, rendering tens of thousands of websites inaccessible for Italian users. Italy’s blocking regime, known as “Piracy Shield“, also added the drive.usercontent.google.com domain, which made Google Drive unavailable in the country for more than half a day. This error was the result of reports from “trusted flaggers”, EuroISPA notes. Case study: Italy In Spain, there were similar overblocking issues related to third party service providers, including Cloudflare. One blocking order targeting CDN infrastructure, requested by the football league LaLiga, was approved in court while the owners of the servers were not informed, leading to collateral damage. This led to many outages for legitimate websites without any advance warning for those affected, EuroISPA says. “LaLiga secured the blocking order without notifying cloud providers, while knowingly concealing from the court the predictable harm to the general public. This blunt approach not only demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet works, it also violates the principle of net neutrality.” The ISPs worry that ‘expeditious’ blocking requirements, including an often mentioned 30-minute timeframe to take action, will lead to more errors. There are concerns that smaller service providers are simply not equipped to properly analyze the accuracy of blocking requests in such a short timeframe. When done properly, EuroISPA believes that blocking remains an option. In this light, EuroISPA mentions an order in Belgium under the Copyright Directive framework, that offered “clear guidance” and “legal certainty” for ISPs, enabling them to take prompt and appropriate action. Guidelines and Cooperation EuroISPA isn’t ruling out all blocking efforts, it’s concerned that the current blocking push is disproportionate and a threat to the open Internet. Instead, of expanding the European Digital Services Act, which has yet to be implemented in many member states, the EU should foster cooperation. “EuroISPA believes that collaborative approaches between rightsholders and intermediaries are more effective than relying on court orders and invites rightsholders to engage directly with ISPs rather than pursue legal action against them. “The ultimate goal should be to bring together stakeholders – despite their potentially conflicting business interests – to collaborate on finding practical and sustainable solutions to piracy online.” The call for voluntary cooperation is not new and, in some countries, this is a reality today. However, this also requires both sides to reach common ground, which can be easier said than done. KYBC, DNS and VPN Expansions While EuroISPA opens the door to future agreements, it’s also clear that the European Commission should not burden internet service providers with further anti-piracy obligations. The association notes that expanding the current KYBC provision will introduce extra risks for the ISPs, which could potentially undermine the Internet as a whole. The same is true for the suggested addition of DNS and VPN providers as site blocking partners. While EuroISPA doesn’t rule that out, it notes that the legal and technical aspects of these measures should be carefully analyzed before any action is taken. All in all, the ISPs urge the European Commission to tread with caution and keep the interests of all stakeholders in mind when deciding what steps to take next. — A copy of EuroISPA’s submission in response to the European Commission’s assessment of the May 2023 Commission Recommendation to combating online piracy of sports and other live events is available here (pdf). Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of May): 2,377 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend