Apple Mail and Hidden Tracking Images

John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: In my piece yesterday about email tracking images (“spy pixels” or “spy trackers”), I complained about the fact that Apple — a company that rightfully prides itself for its numerous features protecting user privacy — offers no built-in defenses for email tracking. A slew of readers wrote to argue that Apple Mail does offer such a…

Developer Claims Chrome Uses 10x More RAM Than Safari

MacRumors writes:
Under normal and lightweight web browsing, Google Chrome uses 10x more RAM than Safari on macOS Big Sur, according to a test conducted by Flotato creator Morten Just (via iMore). In a blog post, Morten Just outlines that he put both browsers to the test in two scenarios on the latest version of macOS. The first test was conducted on…

Google Chrome Sync Feature Can Be Abused For C&C and Data Exfiltration

Threat actors have discovered they can abuse the Google Chrome sync feature to send commands to infected browsers and steal data from infected systems, bypassing traditional firewalls and other network defenses. From a report: For non-Chrome users, Chrome sync is a feature of the Chrome web browser that stores copies of a user’s Chrome bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and browser and…

Firefox 85 Isolated Supercookies, But Dropped Progressive Web App Support

Tech blogger Paul Thurrott writes:
Firefox 85 now protects users against supercookies, which Mozilla says is “a type of tracker that can stay hidden in your browser and track you online, even after you clear cookies. By isolating supercookies, Firefox prevents them from tracking your web browsing from one site to the next.” It also includes small improvements to bookmarks and password…

Adobe Flash Is Officially Dead After 25 Years With Content Blocked Starting Today

When a user attempts to load a Flash game or content in a browser such as Chrome, the content now fails to load and instead displays a small banner that leads to the Flash end-of-life page on Adobe’s website. While this day has long been coming, with many browsers disabling Flash by default years ago, it is officially the end of…

Wasmer 1.0 Can Run WebAssembly ‘Universal Binaries’ on Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, and iOS

The WebAssembly portable binary format will now have wider support from Wasmer, the server-side runtime which “allows universal binaries compiled from C++, Rust, Go, Python, and other languages to run on different operating systems and in web browsers without modification,” reports InfoWorld: Wasmer can run lightweight containers based on WebAssembly on a variety of platforms — Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, iOS…

Flash Is About To Die, But Classic Flash Games Will Live On

Fast Company’s technology editor harrymcc writes:
After years of growing technical irrelevance and security concerns, the Flash browser plug-in will reach the end of the road on January 12 when Adobe blocks its ability to display content. The web will survive just fine. But there’s a huge library of old Flash games — some of them quirky, interesting, and worth preserving. Over…

It’s Game Over For FarmVille, as Flash Also Buys the Farm

The last day of the year was also the last day for FarmVille, one of the original addictive Facebook games. From a report: FarmVille, which allowed players to cultivate colorful cartoonish farms by tending crops and caring for livestock, had 30 million daily players at its peak. But game developer Zynga announced in September it would shut down the game on…

Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla Ban Kazakhstan’s MitM HTTPS Certificate

Browser makers Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, have banned a root certificate that was being used by the Kazakhstan government to intercept and decrypt HTTPS traffic for residents in the country’s capital, the city of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana). From a report: The certificate had been in use since December 6, 2020, when Kazakh officials forced local internet service providers to block…

Evolving Coursera’s Brand Identity

Today, we’re excited to share Coursera’s new brand identity, a reflection of our commitment to make transformative learning accessible, inclusive, and impactful for all. As we continue to serve our global community of learners, partners, and customers, our new identity expresses the power and potential of every learner—and every learning opportunity—on Coursera.   Learning has the […]
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