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The Linux Foundation, alongside Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Opera, have announced today the formation of the new Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers. As the name suggests, this group has been formed for the support of open-source Chromium browsers so that they can continue to receive the necessary resources, be it financially, or in some other form. The initiative has been undertaken by the Linux Foundation in partnership with Google, and Microsoft, Meta, and Opera, have since joined it. In its press release, the Linux Foundation has explained what this consortium is about. It writes: In its blog post on the Chromium website, Google has explained why the Linux Foundation has been chosen to manage this as well as its thoughts about the whole thing as it cites millions of dollars in cost just for maintenance: Microsoft has also added its own thoughts and it mainly involves its aim to improve Edge while continuing its contributions to Chromium: Opera has also chimed in: Meta, so far, has not released a press release or a statement. What this means is that Chromium browsers are likely going to pick up even more steam, and this may not bode too well for Gecko engine based-Firefox, which is struggling hard against the Chromium juggernaut and especially Google with just ~6% desktop market share. 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+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

If the AI bot is going to stick around, you may as well get the most out of it. It's hard to escape ChatGPT right now, with the conversational artificial intelligence bot taking on everything from web search to essay writing. More than 100 million people have tried out ChatGPT since it launched. Whether you're using ChatGPT for free or paying for ChatGPT Plus ($20 a month), the impressiveness of its text-generating capabilities aren't really matched by its interface, which sticks largely to the basics. That's where third-party browser extensions come in: They can help you get easier access to ChatGPT from other websites, add missing features such as a chat exporter, and suggest better prompts for getting better answers out of the AI bot. These extensions are all compatible with the latest versions of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, except where stated. Merlin Merlin sits in your browser and puts ChatGPT right at your fingertips, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice: Whether you need to compose a reply to a social media post or summarize a long block of text, Merlin can help you out. The Ctrl+M (Windows) or Cmd+M (macOS) keyboard shortcut is how Merlin is activated once you've selected a block of text. You then need to tell Merlin what you want it to get ChatGPT to do: summarize, reply, write, or whatever it is. For example, you can highlight all the text in an email and get Merlin/ChatGPT to compose a response. Having the chatbot right inside your browser makes it really convenient to use, though you are limited to 31 requests per day. ChatGPT for Google You don't have to wait for Google's own version of ChatGPT to arrive, because ChatGPT for Google shows results from the chatbot alongside the standard results from Google whenever you run a search. Clearly this is going to work better for some queries than others: ChatGPT can't tell you the latest sports scores, but it can explain what DNA is. Make sure that you're currently signed into your ChatGPT account in your browser to get the responses to load. The ChatGPT box is neatly integrated alongside the standard Google search results, and you can launch a separate ChatGPT conversation right from it. You can also have the add-on run manually rather than automatically, if you don't want it on every search. Get ChatGPT right next to your Google results with ChatGPT for Google. Google via David Nield Enhanced ChatGPT Enhanced ChatGPT does exactly what its name suggests: It adds some handy new features to the basic ChatGPT interface, including an option to export your chats in Markdown format and a selection of tools to help you with your prompts. Some of those prompt tools include triggers for finding images on the web, getting travel advice, generating translations, and programming in JavaScript. They'll pop up immediately once you've installed the extension. Look for the new Export Chat option down in the lower left corner when you've set up the add-on. You don't get anything in the way of export options, but it can be helpful to have a copy of your chats to refer to. WritingMate If you're planning to do any writing using ChatGPT on the web, from emails to social media posts, then WritingMate can help. You can launch it via a Ctrl+M (Windows) or Cmd+M (macOS) keyboard shortcut, or use the floating icon that appears on the right of the browser window. You're able to use ChatGPT in any way you like, right in the webpages you're looking at, and there are some helpful prompts included with the extension too. ChatGPT responses can be swiftly tweaked and refined as well. If you need more than 10 messages per day or longer messages, you can sign up for a $15-per-month premium account. The access you get to the tool for free should tell you whether or not you're going to find it useful. WebChatGPT There's no doubt that ChatGPT is an incredible bit of technology, but it also has its limitations: It doesn't have access to the most up-to-date information, and can't search the web as such. WebChatGPT (for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox) fixes that, dropping in traditional web search results alongside AI responses in the ChatGPT interface. It also tries to integrate both types of responses to give you something coherent and useful. This approach works better for some queries than others: Try prompts such as "Who is the President?" and "give me the latest Wired headlines" to see the difference that the extension makes to ChatGPT. Use WebChatGPT to bring the latest web search results into ChatGPT. ChatGPT via David Nield Promptheus For some of us, it's much easier to talk than to type, and Promptheus enables you to talk to ChatGPT just as you would with a real person. It may give you a whole new perspective on interacting with AI. You use Promptheus from inside the ChatGPT interface, and you simply press and hold the space bar when you're ready to talk. There are a few extension settings you can play around with too, such as the option to send prompts automatically once you stop talking. As an added bonus, the extension also gives you easy access to ChatGPT from any webpage—just click on the add-on icon in your browser toolbar to start interacting with the AI bot. ChatGPT Export and Share One of the most important features that ChatGPT is missing is the ability to get content out of the ChatGPT interface into other places—you're pretty much limited to the good old copy-paste method. ChatGPT Export and Share (which works in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox) is here to solve the problem. It takes a little bit more time in terms of setting it up in your browser, but full instructions are provided, and the end results are worth it. Once the extension is installed, you'll see new export buttons down below the prompt box. You can save your chats as images and PDFs, and there's also the option to create shareable links to them. Make ChatGPT Work for You With These Browser Extensions (May require free registration to view)

If your browser is prompting you to restart now may be a good time to do so. Microsoft and Google have released an urgent fix for a browser vulnerability in their Chromium-based browsers which can be exploited simply by visiting a web page or clicking a link. According to the BSI: Several vulnerabilities in Google Chrome and Microsoft Chrome-based Edge have been disclosed. An attacker can exploit this with unknown effects. To exploit it, it is sufficient to call up a maliciously designed website or to click a link to such a page. The vulnerabilities have been judged as Risk level 4, meaning they are high impact and easy to exploit. Microsoft has updated their Edge browser to version 92.0.902.78 and list 6 vulnerabilities fixed by the update: CVE-2021-30604,CVE-2021-30603, CVE-2021-30602,CVE-2021-30601, CVE-2021-30599, CVE-2021-30598 Unfortunately, more details regarding the exploits are not available yet. The Chrome browser is affected by the same issues – simply restarting your browser should be sufficient to install the updates. via Winfuture. Microsoft and Google release urgent browser security update for Risk Level 4 Drive-by exploit

If you run Google Chrome or another Chromium-based web browser, then websites may push anything they want to the operating system's clipboard without user permission or any user action. Computer users may use the clipboard of the system for temporary storage: a password for entering it on a website, a file for moving it to another location on the system, or a bit of text found on a site for pasting in a Word document or a search engine. Sites should never have access to the content of the clipboard, at least not without user permission. Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers have no such restriction currently. The makers of the Brave web browser considered adding the user gesture requirement in 2021, but this has not been implemented in the browser. The two other major browsers that do are not based on Chromium, Firefox and Safari, protect the clipboards of their users. Visit the Webplatform News website to test your browser. All it takes is to visit the site and check the content of the clipboard afterwards. If you get the following message in your clipboard, the browser is vulnerable to unauthorized clipboard manipulation: Hello, this message is in your clipboard because you visited the website Web Platform News in a browser that allows websites to write to the clipboard without the user’s permission. Sorry for the inconvenience. For more information about this issue, see https://github.com/w3c/clipboard-apis/issues/182. All Chromium-based browsers that are up to date are affected by this. Firefox and Safari do require a user gesture before websites may copy content to the device's clipboard. User gesture in this context means that the user is selecting content on the site and using Ctrl-C or other means to copy it to the clipboard. A bug report on the Chromium website highlights that the restriction to require a user gesture before reading or writing to the clipboard has been removed. The reason given: it breaks NTP doodle sharing. Adding user gesture requirement for readText and writeText APIs breaks NTP doodle sharing. We are relaxing this check for now, but we should fix this for sites to not rely on these APIs to be called without a user gesture. See NewTabPageDoodleShareDialogFocusTest.All test for more details. NTP refers to the New Tab Page of the browser, doodles are Google Doodles, variations of the Google logo that highlight events or people. On this GitHub page, the assumption is made that the user gesture requirement could break remote clipboard synchronization in browsers. Now You: is your browser vulnerable? Websites may write to the clipboard in Chrome without user permission

Most web browsers ship with a bunch of different search engines that you may switch to, if you are not a fan of the default option. In addition to changing the provider, you may delete the default search engines from the list. But it appears that Chromium based browsers no longer allow you to do it. This change does not affect the option to set your default engine, you just won't be able to the preloaded providers. That's not necessarily a bad thing per se. Chromium-based browsers will not allow you to delete the default search engines A reddit user reported that Microsoft Edge has removed the ability to remove default search engines from the settings. While it is true, another user pointed out that it is not a change in Edge, but in all Chromium-based browsers. Some users says that this only affects the Windows version of the browsers, and that the Linux variants have the option. According to a commit on the open-source project's page, the proposal to remove the delete button was made in October 2021. The developers felt that deleting the search engines was too easy, and that it was a bad thing because it would not be easy for users to add them back, as it is not possible to set the search provider for suggestions, new tag page and other specialized URLs. Following a small discussion which concluded that deleting a search provider could cause more problems than it would break, the change was approved a day later when Chromium 97 was released. Chrome 97 was released about ten days ago, and it became the first Chromium-based browser that removed the delete button from the Manage Search Engines page. Microsoft, Opera and Brave have followed suit in removing said option from their respective browsers. As of now, only Vivaldi, which is still based on Chromium 96, has the option to delete the default search engines. When the browser gets updated to the code based on Chromium 97, it will likely not allow users to remove the search providers. Firefox and Waterfox do not prevent users from deleting the built-in search options either. Chromium-based browsers will continue to allow the user to edit the keywords but not the URLs. You can still add custom search providers if you want to, and this allows you to edit the search parameters. I think this change may not affect most users. It is a precautionary measure that could end up protecting the user in the event a malware tries to delete the default search engine, or hijack it. That said, if a malicious extension, toolbar or website, manages to use the add search engine option to inject a harmful search provider in the browser, and set it as the default provider, it wouldn't be stopped, would it? That is likely a very rare scenario, one that can easily be prevented by using an ad-blocker like uBlock Origin, avoiding illegal websites, and good old common sense of not clicking links randomly. I will admit that I find it surprising that the removal of a simple feature in Chromium's source code impacts every browser that uses it as the base, do they have a choice? This does give Google an advantage over the competition. This got me wondering about what could happen when Google decides to kill support for v2 add-ons, and forces extensions to use Manifest V3. Will it impact other browsers in the same way? I mean, if there is no webRequest API that can be used, what could they possibly do except to rely on their own built-in ad-blockers? Browsers based on Chromium will no longer allow users to delete default search engines from the settings