December 2017

We all know that Google likes to tinker with the layout and design of the company's Chrome browser. While the company won't touch the actual interface much, it started to introduce material design changes to the browser some time ago.

The last release version of Google Chrome changed the bookmarks interface for instance to material design.

If you open the Clear Browsing Data dialog on Chrome right now, you will notice that it was changed as well recently by the company.

KB4057291 is a new update for Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system that addresses display issues on systems with AMD legacy cards.

The patch is specifically for PCs with AMD legacy cards that got a driver update through Windows Update that brought the version of the driver to 22.19.128.0.

Mozilla plans to make Firefox 60 the next ESR (Extended Support Release) version of the Firefox web browser, and not Firefox 59.

New major Firefox versions are released every six to eight weeks. Mozilla introduced a fixed six week rapid release cycle back in 2011, but switched to a flexible 6-8 week release cycle in 2016.

Microsoft runs a beta right now on Outlook.com that users may participate in to gain access to upcoming features early.

The company runs betas regularly on Outlook.com to test new features; usually, all of the features that are part of the beta will also be in the updated version once it launches.

Anti-Paywall is a new browser extension for Firefox and Chrome designed to bypass website paywalls automatically when pages of supported sites are visited.

Paywall systems are designed to keep anyone but subscribers from accessing certain content on the Internet. Especially newspaper sites use the feature to limit access to content, and to entice visitors to subscribe so that they may access content during the subscription period.

Microsoft Garage released Outings a new travel discovery application for Google Android and Apple iOS devices recently.

Outings: Discover Beautiful Places serves two main purposes: first, as a travel discovery app to explore destinations, and second, as a companion app when you are traveling to get suggestions on what to do or visit at a specific location you are visiting.

You can use the application as a guest, or sign in with a Facebook or Google account to save stories and places. It is interesting that Outings does not support Microsoft Accounts at this time.

SiteDelta Watch and SiteDelta Highlight are two WebExtensions for Firefox and Chrome that add website monitoring functionality to the browser.

Both check a site for changes and notify you about them, and the core difference between the two is that Watch does so automatically and Highlight only on connect.

HP released updates for Synaptics touchpad drivers recently for HP notebooks that removes a disabled keylogger from the driver.

Again, HP? A security researcher disclosed on GitHub that he discovered a keylogger in the keyboard driver of HP notebooks. While deactivated by default, anyone with elevated access to the machine could enable the logging of keyboard input by setting Registry values.

The Opera browser is the only major web browser that comes with a built-in VPN service / browser proxy that users may activate to improve the privacy while they are using the browser.

I have a friend who is about as skilled with computers as I am with nano-technological engineering. That’s a thing, right? Anyway, every month or two, he asks me to ‘fix his computer’ which usually means cleaning junk, malware, and uninstalling anything he shouldn’t have installed. Often, I do this from my computer at home, sometimes from within my GNU/Linux partition.