A year and a half later, Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service has formally launched in the U.S. for Android, iOS, Chrome OS, macOS and Windows. Engadget reports: The core Luna+ service with over 100 games will normally cost $10 per month, with the kid-friendly Family Channel and Ubisoft+ Channels available for a respective $6 and $18 per month. Amazon hopes to reel in newcomers by dropping the monthly fees of Luna+ and the Family channel to $6 and $3 for anyone who signs up during March. Existing users just have to maintain their subscriptions to lock in that pricing.

The official debut comes alongside some new channels. A Prime Gaming channel, as the name implies, gives Amazon Prime members a free, rotating mix of games. The March selection will include titles like Devil May Cry 5 and Flashback. Pay $5 per month for the Retro Channel and you'll get Capcom and SNK classics like Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting and Metal Slug 3, while a similar outlay for the Jackbox Games Channel provides access to all eight Jackbox Party Pack titles. Luna's latest update also makes it simpler to stream gameplay from a Fire TV device, Mac or Windows PC on Twitch.

In a Google support forum post, Chrome's Support Manager Craig announced that mobile Chrome 100 will do away with the browser's data-saving feature -- the release is due to make its way to the stable channel on March 29, 2022. From a report: The mode will also stop working on previous versions of the browser from that day. Besides several improvements to Chrome over the years to reduce data usage and improve page load times, Google has also seen mobile data costs decrease in many countries. Thus, it believes the data saving mode is no longer relevant in today's world.

HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus are expected to be among the first companies to release gaming Chromebooks. From a report: A code change in the Chromium Gerrit suggests the vendors are working on Chrome OS devices that will support Steam. In January 2020, Google said it would bring Steam to Chromebooks, and the plan may be starting to take shape. 9to5Google spotted a code change on Saturday showing a list of what appears to be Chromebook models that will support Steam:

Acer Chromebook 514 (CB514-1H)
Acer Chromebook 515
Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (CP713-3W)
Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 (CX5500)
Asus Chromebook CX9 (CX9400)
HP Pro c640 G2 Chromebook
Unknown Chromebook from Lenovo.

Industry analysts and former Mozilla employees are concerned about Firefox's future, reports Ars Technica, warning that the ultimate fate of Firefox "has larger implications for the web as a whole." Since its release in 2008, [Google's] Chrome has become synonymous with the web: it's used by around 65 percent of everyone online and has a huge influence on how people experience the Internet. When Google launched its AMP publishing standard, websites jumped to implement it. Similar plans to replace third-party cookies in Chrome — a move that will impact millions of marketers and publishers — are shaped in Google's image.

"Chrome has won the desktop browser war," says one former Firefox staff member, who worked on browser development at Mozilla but does not want to be named, as they still work in the industry. Their hopes for a Firefox revival are not high. "It's not super reasonable for Firefox to expect to win back even any browser share at this point." Another former Mozilla employee, who also asked not to be named for fear of career repercussions, says: "They're just going to have to accept the reality that Firefox is not going to come back from the ashes...."

Mozilla's financial declarations from 2020 said that despite the layoffs it is in a healthy place, and it expects its financial results for 2021 to show revenue growth. However, Mozilla and Firefox acknowledge that for its long-term future it needs to diversify the ways it makes money. These efforts have ramped up since 2019. The company owns read-it-later service Pocket, which includes a paid premium subscription service. It has also launched two similar VPN-style products that people can subscribe to. And the company is pushing more into advertising as well, placing ads on new tabs that are opened in the Firefox browser.... Selena Deckelmann, senior vice president of Firefox, says Firefox is likely to continue looking for ways to keep personalizing people's online browsing. "I'm not sure that what's going to come out of that is going to be what people traditionally expect from a browser, but the intention will always be to put people first," she says. Just this week, Firefox announced a partnership with Disney — linked to a new Pixar film — that involves changing the color of the browser and ads to win subscriptions to Disney+. The deal speaks both to Firefox's personalization push and the strange roads its search for revenue streams can lead down.

Deckelmann adds that Firefox doesn't need to be as big as Chrome or Apple's Safari, the second largest browser, to succeed. "All we really want is to be a viable choice," Deckelmann says. "Because we think that this makes a better Internet for everybody to have these different options."
Interesting stats from the article:

• "Mozilla's own statistics show a drop of around 30 million monthly active users from the start of 2019 to the start of 2022."

• Mozilla's figures now also show around 215 million Firefox Desktop clients active in the past 28 days — a number which has stayed stable.

• Yet In 2008, a full 20% of the 1.5 billion people online were using Firefox to surf the web — including more than half the web surfers in Indonesia, Macedonia, and Slovenia.

• "Across all devices, the browser has slid to less than 4 percent of the market," writes Ars Technica. "On mobile it's a measly half a percent..."

• Next year, Firefox's "lucrative search deal with Google — responsible for the vast majority of its revenue" — is set to expire.

Linux programmers fixed bugs faster than anyone — in an average of just 25 days (improving from 32 days in 2019 to just 15 in 2021). That's the conclusion of Google's "Project Zero" security research team, which studied the speed of bug-fixing from January 2019 to December 2021.

ZDNet reports that Linux's competition "didn't do nearly as well." For instance, Apple, 69 days; Google, 44 days; and Mozilla, 46 days. Coming in at the bottom was Microsoft, 83 days, and Oracle, albeit with only a handful of security problems, with 109 days.

By Project Zero's count, others, which included primarily open-source organizations and companies such as Apache, Canonical, Github, and Kubernetes, came in with a respectable 44 days.

Generally, everyone's getting faster at fixing security bugs. In 2021, vendors took an average of 52 days to fix reported security vulnerabilities. Only three years ago the average was 80 days. In particular, the Project Zero crew noted that Microsoft, Apple, and Linux all significantly reduced their time to fix over the last two years.

As for mobile operating systems, Apple iOS with an average of 70 days is a nose better than Android with its 72 days. On the other hand, iOS had far more bugs, 72, than Android with its 10 problems.

Browsers problems are also being fixed at a faster pace. Chrome fixed its 40 problems with an average of just under 30 days. Mozilla Firefox, with a mere 8 security holes, patched them in an average of 37.8 days. Webkit, Apple's web browser engine, which is primarily used by Safari, has a much poorer track record. Webkit's programmers take an average of over 72 days to fix bugs.

Microsoft last month received a US patent covering modifications to a data-encoding technique called rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that support data compression schemes used by leading technology companies and open source projects. The Register reports: The creator of ANS, Jaroslaw Duda, assistant professor at Institute of Computer Science at Jagiellonian University in Poland, has been trying for years to keep ANS patent-free and available for public use. Back in 2018, Duda's lobbying helped convince Google to abandon its ANS-related patent claim in the US and Europe. And he raised the alarm last year when he learned Microsoft had applied for an rANS (range asymmetric number system) patent.

Now that Microsoft's patent application has been granted, he fears the utility of ANS will be diminished, as software developers try to steer clear of a potential infringement claim. "I don't know what to do with it -- [Microsoft's patent] looks like just the description of the standard algorithm," he told The Register in an email. The algorithm is used in JPEG XL and CRAM, as well as open source projects run by Facebook (Meta), Nvidia, and others. "This rANS variant is [for example] used in JPEG XL, which is practically finished (frozen bitstream) and [is] gaining support," Duda told The Register last year. "It provides ~3x better compression than JPEG at similar computational cost, compatibility with JPEG, progressive decoding, missing features like HDR, alpha, lossless, animations. "There is a large team, mostly from Google, behind it. After nearly 30 years, it should finally replace the 1992 JPEG for photos and images, starting with Chrome, Android."

As both the Chrome and Firefox browsers approach their 100th versions, what should be a reason for the developers to celebrate could turn into a bit of a mess. From a report: It turns out that much like the Y2K bug, the triple-digit release numbers coded in the browsers' User-Agents (UAs) could cause issues with a small number of sites, Bleeping Computer reported. Mozilla launched an experiment last year to see if version number 100 would affect sites, and it just released a blogpost with the results. It did affect a small number of sites (some very big ones, though) that couldn't parse a user-agent string containing a three-digit number. Notable ones still affected included HBO Go, Bethesda and Yahoo, according to a tracking site. The bugs include "browser not supported" messages, site rendering issues, parsing failures, 403 errors and so on.

Google has announced a new version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex, which is designed to run on old PCs and Macs. The Verge reports: The operating system can be installed "within minutes," according to Google's blog post. Google told me that Chrome OS Flex will look and feel identical to Chrome OS on a Chromebook -- it's built from the same code base and follows the same "release cadence." It did caveat that some features may be dependent on the hardware of the PC you're using. In fact, it said this for every specific feature I asked about, including always-on Google Assistant and Android phone syncing. So, if you're going to try this, keep an eye out.

If you want to try out Chrome OS Flex yourself, you can learn more on the Chrome Enterprise website. Note that the OS is still in early access mode, so you may encounter bugs -- you can boot it directly from a USB drive if you'd rather poke around before installing it on your machine.

Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with a bundle of new standards referred to as the "Privacy Sandbox" just overcame a key regulatory hurdle. From a report: The UK's competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has formally accepted Google's commitments about how it'll develop the new standards so they don't harm competition or unfairly benefit the search giant's own advertising business, the regulator announced today. Google's plans are still in flux, and it's not yet clear exactly what technologies Privacy Sandbox will use to replace third-party cookies. Just last month, Google abandoned one planned approach, FLoC, in favor of a new system called Topics API. Today's approval is for Google's approach, rather than any one specific technology. The regulator notes that in the next phase it will "supervise Google to ensure the Privacy Sandbox is developed in a way that benefits consumers."

Google Chrome is rolling out Journeys, a feature that lets you revisit your old browsing sessions based on the subject matter you were searching for. From a report: If you type a word in the address bar that's related to some convoluted rabbit hole you've been down in the past, you'll see a "Resume your research" option that links you to the related sites you've visited before. So far, it sounds like it could be a much more viable solution than digging through your search history for that one site you kind of remember visiting three weeks ago. If you were knee-deep in research about axolotls, you should see all the related pages you accessed in Journeys whenever you type in the creature's name at a later date. The Journeys page will prominently display the sites you've spent more time on and will also provide suggestions based on what you've searched for.

In a tech world still hindered by component shortages, choices have to be made. And in the world of laptops, it seems that choice is Windows-based devices over those running Chrome OS. From a report: IDC on Monday released early data from its latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. It pointed to a sharp 63.6 percent decline in Chromebook shipments, which the IDC defines as "shipments to distribution channels or end users, in Q4 2021 (4.8 million shipments) compared to Q4 2020 with (13.1 million shipments)." In addition to market saturation, supply issues also hurt Chromebook shipments, as the industry still struggles with a deficit of PC components, from CPUs to integrated circuits for Wi-Fi modules and power management. "Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritize Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale," Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a statement accompanying Monday's announcement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: The next class of Chrome OS devices may be targeted at the gaming market -- more than one Chromebook is set to release with a full RGB keyboard. Similar to how Chrome OS offers support for Linux apps and Android apps, there's been a long-running effort -- codenamed Borealis -- to get Steam and various Linux-compatible PC games running in a virtual machine on your Chromebook. While there's yet to be any formal announcement of Steam games for Chromebooks, work has steadily continued since the project was first discovered.

Whether through Steam games or game streaming services, it seems Google's gaming ambitions for Chrome OS may be coming to fruition in the near future. According to changes to Chrome OS code in the last few weeks, Google has begun working to support Chromebooks with full color RGB keyboards -- you can't have a product for gamers without RGB, right? Right? -- starting with a new feature flag. From what we can find, each keyboard key can be individually customized to your liking to vary the intensity of the red, green, and blue lighting to create different colors and adjust the keyboard's overall backlight brightness. For now, this is only possible through an internal command for Chrome OS developers to use in testing. In time, one would assume there would be a tool within Chrome OS to let gamers change the colors of their keyboards.

At first glance, one could argue that this is just about supporting the many USB and Bluetooth connected keyboards you can buy with RGB lighting built in. However, with a bit more digging, we've found that rather than being a generic feature, Chrome OS's RGB support is being prepared for a select few unreleased devices. So who is going to be making the first gaming Chromebooks? For the time being, there appear to be at least three hardware codenames associated with RGB keyboards. The first two are Vell and Taniks, both of which are based on Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake laptop processors. [...] A third hardware codename attached to RGB keyboards for Chrome OS is Ripple. However, rather than being the name of a particular Chromebook, it seems that Ripple is the internal name of a detachable keyboard, like that of the Pixel Slate.

How popular is Linux? The Windows Central site admits Linux is starting to tempt them. "It made such an imprint on Windows Central that not all of us even bother much with Windows anymore."

"Heck, Germany (part of it, to be specific) is taking another stab at ditching Windows for Linux..."

But what are the odds really that Linux overtakes Windows' market share? "That is the tantalizing question at the kernelled core of the great Linux debate, and it's the one we reached out to analysts to hear their thoughts on...." Every year is a special year for Linux in some way, shape, or form, but in terms of eating Windows' lunch, that's probably not in the cards for a long time, if ever.

Forrester Senior Analyst Andrew Hewitt gave figures to further bolster the argument that Linux is a long ways off from toppling Windows. "Overall, just 1% of employees report usage of Linux on their primary laptop used for work," he said. "That's compared to 60% that still use Windows, and small numbers that use Chrome OS and macOS on a global basis. It is very unlikely that Linux will overtake Windows as the main operating system."

With that said, Hewitt did foresee diversification and growth when it came to Linux, Chrome OS, and macOS, but nothing to a degree that would signal Windows is at risk of losing its dominant market share.

"We commonly see Linux used in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments," he stated, mentioning that he'd expect growth there since "VDI has grown 2% year over year according to our 'State Of VDI, 2021' report."
Gartner VP Analyst Steve Kleynhans also tells the site that the biggest challenge to Windows "on anything that looks like a PC is probably Chrome OS... Could Linux continue to grow? Yes. But it's not likely to grow as a direct competitor replacing Windows."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: With its $68.7 billion acquisition of mammoth embattled video game publisher Activision Blizzard, Microsoft will be taking on a lot. It will be absorbing a company criticized by its employees for its workplace culture, one that is embroiled in lawsuits alleging gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment. Microsoft will also be taking on game development studios that have inched closer to unionization over the past several months. But it will also be adding an element that newly minted CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer sees as core to Microsoft's strategy for consumer acquisition: a slew of video games and long-abandoned franchises.

The games created by Activision Blizzard's developers provide the centerpiece of Microsoft's strategic thinking around the acquisition. The titles are some of the most popular in the world. And those Activision Blizzard properties extend well beyond Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush. In discussing some of the intellectual properties owned by Activision Blizzard, Spencer's excitement may have mirrored the enthusiasm of a "StarCraft" player noticing the long-dormant franchise's logo in Microsoft's acquisition announcement. "I was looking at the IP list, I mean, let's go!" Spencer said. " 'King's Quest,' 'Guitar Hero,' I should know this but I think they got 'HeXen.' " "HeXen," indeed an Activision Blizzard property, is a cult hit first-person game about using magic spells.

Microsoft's pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard also means owning the rights to many creations from gaming's past, including Crash Bandicoot, the original Sony PlayStation mascot. There's also the influential and popular Tony Hawk skateboard series and beloved characters like Spyro the Dragon. Toys for Bob, one of the studios working under the Activision Blizzard banner, successfully launched games like "Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time," but was later folded into supporting Call of Duty games. Spencer said the Xbox team will talk with developers about working on a variety of franchises from the Activision Blizzard vaults. "We're hoping that we'll be able to work with them when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love from my childhood, and that the teams really want to get," Spencer said. "I'm looking forward to these conversations. I really think it's about adding resources and increasing capability." Spencer said he's concerned about tech companies unfamiliar with the gaming industry barging in to the space, as opposed to the current, experienced competition against Nintendo and Sony. "They have a long history in video games," he said. "Nintendo's not going to do anything that damages gaming in the long run because that's the business they're in. Sony is the same and I trust them. [...] Valve's the same way. When we look at the other big tech competitors for Microsoft: Google has search and Chrome, Amazon has shopping, Facebook has social, all these large-scale consumer businesses. [...] The discussion we've had internally, where those things are important to those other tech companies for how many consumers they reach, gaming can be that for us."

He added: "I think we do have a unique point of view, which is not about how everything has to run on a single device or platform. That's been the real turning point for us looking at gaming as a consumer opportunity that could have similar impact on Microsoft that some of those other scale consumer businesses do for other big tech competitors. And it's been great to see the support we've had from the company and the board."

Google is tweaking the Nearby Share feature to allow users to share files to their own devices. The new feature called 'Self Share' is now under development. Dinsan Francis writes via Chrome Story: Google recently launched a new feature called Nearby Share. Similar to Apple's AirDrop, Nearby Share allows users to send files to devices nearby. Building on this feature, Google is adding 'Self Share', a new addition to Nearby Share. Self Share helps you send files between your own devices using the Nearby Share method. [...] When this new feature is ready, you will see the "Send to Your Devices" option in the Nearby Share menu.

Google says that its Chrome browser will soon block internet websites from querying and interacting with devices and servers located inside local private networks, citing security reasons and past abuse from malware operations. From a report: The change will take place through the implementation of a new W3C specification called Private Network Access (PNA) that will be rolled out in the first half of the year. The new PNA specification adds a mechanism inside the Chrome browser through which internet sites can ask systems inside local networks for permission before establishing a connection. If local devices, such as servers or routers fail to respond, internet websites will be blocked from connecting.

A Scandinavian hotel chain that fell victim to a ransomware attack last month said it took a novel approach to recover from the incident by switching all affected systems to Chrome OS. The Record reports: Nordic Choice Hotels, which operates 200 hotels across Northern Europe, fell victim to a ransomware attack on December 2, when hackers encrypted some of its internal systems using the Conti ransomware strain. The attack prevented staff from accessing guest reservation data and from issuing key cards to newly arriving guests, as one of the hotel's guests told The Record in an interview last month. But in a press release today, Nordic Choice said that instead of contacting the hackers and negotiating a ransom for the decryption key that would have unlocked the infected devices, the hotel chose to migrate its entire PC fleet from Windows to Chrome OS.

"[I]n less than 24 hours, the first hotel was operating in the Chrome OS ecosystem from Google. And in the following two days, 2000 computers were converted all over the company consisting of 212 hotels in five different countries," the hotel chain explained. Kari Anna Fiskvik, VP Technology at Nordic Choice Hotels, said the hotel had already run a pilot program to test the tool before the attack as a way to save money by reusing old computers with a less-demanding OS. "So when we suddenly had to deal with the cyberattack, the decision to go all in and fasttrack the project was made in seconds," Fiskvik said. Nordic Choice said it plans to migrate another 2,000 computers to Chrome OS, on top of the 2,000 it migrated during the attack. The hotel chain said they expect to save $6.7 million by converting old computers to Chrome OS instead of buying new hardware.

NBC News writes: VPNs, or virtual private networks, continue to be used by millions of people as a way of masking their internet activity by encrypting their location and web traffic. But on the modern internet, most people can safely ditch them, thanks to the widespread use of encryption that has made public internet connections far less of a security threat, cybersecurity experts say. "Most commercial VPNs are snake oil from a security standpoint," said Nicholas Weaver, a cybersecurity lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. "They don't improve your security at all...."

Most browsers have quietly implemented an added layer of security in recent years that automatically encrypts internet traffic at most sites with a technology called HTTPS. Indicated by a tiny padlock by the URL, the presence of HTTPS means that worrisome scenario, in which a scammer or a hacker squats on a public Wi-Fi connection in order to watch people's internet habits, isn't feasible. It's not clear that the threat of a hacker at your coffee shop was ever that real to begin with, but it is certainly not a major danger now, Weaver said. "Remember, someone attacking you at the coffee shop needs to be basically at the coffee shop," he said. "I don't know of them ever being used outside of pranks. And those are all irrelevant now with most sites using HTTPS," he said in a text message.

There are still valid uses for VPNs. They're an invaluable tool for getting around certain types of censorship, though other options also exist, such as the Tor Browser, a free web browser that automatically reroutes users' traffic and is widely praised by cybersecurity experts. VPNs are also vital for businesses that need their employees to log in remotely to their internal network. And they're a popular and effective way to watch television shows and movies that are restricted to particular countries on streaming services. But like with antivirus software, the paid VPN industry is a booming global market despite its core mission no longer being necessary for many people.

Most VPNs market their products as a security tool. A Consumer Reports investigation published earlier this month found that 12 of the 16 biggest VPNs make hyperbolic claims or mislead customers about their security benefits. And many can make things worse, either by selling customers' browsing history to data brokers, or by having poor cybersecurity.
The article credits the Electronic Frontier Foundation for popularizing encryption through browser extensions and web site certificates starting in 2010. "In 2015, Google started prioritizing websites that enabled HTTPS in its search results. More and more websites started offering HTTPS connections, and now practically all sites that Google links to do so.

"Since late 2020, major browsers such as Brave, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge all built HTTPS into their programs, making Electronic Frontier Foundation's browser extension no longer necessary for most people."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg Law: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai must face questioning in a California federal court lawsuit over privacy concerns surrounding Google's "incognito" web browsing mode. Lawyers for the consumers who sued want to ask Pichai about user misconceptions of their privacy online while using Google's Chrome browser. Pichai is subject to up to two hours of testimony under an order issued Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2020, alleges that Google tracks users even when they're browsing in incognito mode. Google disputes the claims, arguing that its privacy disclosures make clear that the private browsing mode doesn't make user activities "invisible" online. In an earlier order, Judge Lucy Koh also allowed consumers to question Google's chief marketing officer, Lorraine Twohill, about incognito's branding as private. Google has tried to toss the claims from consumers, but so far Koh has let them proceed. The company also argued against questioning Pichai, saying lower-level employees responsible for Chrome and the incognito mode are better suited to answering inquiries about private browsing.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has a tendency to show up, innovate, and then abandon its products/services rather quickly. There's an entire site, Killed by Google, that's dedicated to documenting all of Google's dead projects. Even Stadia, Google's once-promising cloud gaming service, could be heading to the graveyard, after years of failing to measure up to Microsoft's xCloud and Nvidia's GeForce Now. But software is one thing. Hardware is another, and Google has let its premiere Chromebook, the Pixelbook, rot without a hardware refresh since 2019's Pixelbook Go.

Not counting the original Cr-48 reference design Chromebook, Google has released a total of four Chrome OS-powered laptops. There was the original 2013 Chromebook Pixel and 2015 Pixel 2 (not to be confused with the phones that are named Pixel). Then the 2-in-1 Pixelbook in 2017, and in 2019, the Pixelbook Go. The pattern for a refresh seemed to be every two years. This year's Pixel 6 event came and went with no word of a new Pixelbook. And according to a recent comment made at Qualcomm's conference by Chrys Tsolaki, Google's retail partner manager for Chromebooks, there won't be a Pixelbook in 2022, either.