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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Google made a change in Chrome 57 that removes options from the browser to manage plugins such as Google Widevine, Adobe Flash, or the Chrome PDF Viewer.
If you load chrome://plugins in Chrome 56 or earlier, a list of installed plugins is displayed to you. The list includes information about each plugin, including a name and description, location on the local system, version, and options to disable it or set it to "always run".
You can use it to disable plugins that you don't require. While you can do the same for some plugins, Flash and PDF Viewer, using Chrome's Settings, the same is not possible for the DRM plugin Widevine, and any other plugin Google may add to Chrome in the future.
Starting with Chrome 57, that option is no longer available. This means essentially that Chrome users won't be able to disable -- some -- plugins anymore, or even list the plugins that are installed in the web browser.
Please note that this affects Google Chrome and Chromium.
Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/29/google-removes-plugin-controls-from-chrome/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:47PM
Isn't there a thing called Chromium?
Oh, shit! Why does it even exist?!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday January 31 2017, @03:18PM
The fact they also restricted configuration options in Chromium means that they are really intending to curtail something, or forcefully enable something else.
I wonder if perhaps they are now emboldened with the recent administration changes? Business friendly initiatives allow for much maneuvering.
Considering the new mandate that for every regulation added, one must be removed -- to keep things consumer friendly in order to stop technology that has outpaced the ability to regulate it, we may be entering a new golden age of what the IT industry chooses to do now that they have all the Big Data and little reason to worry about new restrictions in how they use it.
By the time something is declared off-limits, much may already have been done that is considered privacy violating. Or whatever the problem is. Business friendly is called that because it isn't primarily consumer friendly.
But I am a nay sayer. Anyone that adopts one of these ecosystems, or several of them, are sure to be pleased at the conveniences they are provided in exchange for the release from complicated freedoms of choice, right?
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:35PM
So then, Don't Be Evil, unless you can do so quickly enough that it is too late for anyone to do anything about it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Unixnut on Tuesday January 31 2017, @05:11PM
so.. like high frequency trading? :-P
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @09:01PM
Well, as fast as high speed trading, but closer to a high speed fucking.
Imagine a dry, gritty jackhammer approaching your rectum...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by WillR on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:09PM
2004: Don't Be Evil.
2010: Evil is subjective and hard to define.
2013: We make military robots now.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:36PM
I guess that is more like the ascension of Alphabet.
Google made the promise; we can argue if they broke or bent it.
Alphabet did not make that same promise, and their subsidiares not already held to such things are not beholden to such restrictions.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 31 2017, @06:20PM
I wonder if perhaps they are now emboldened with the recent administration changes? Business friendly initiatives allow for much maneuvering.
I'm as freaked out as the next bleeding-heart liberal, but, REALLY?
(Score: 2) by WillR on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:05PM
(Your distro may patch them in, like Gentoo does if you set certain non-default USE flags, but then it should be on them to maintain a patch to bring about:plugins back)