January 2016

Netflix is without doubt a very popular service that allows you to watch TV shows and movies by streaming them to devices you are using.

The service is a lot cheaper than cable in most countries it is offered in, and since it is digital, enables you to pick what you want to watch.

The quality of the Netflix stream depends on several factors that include the bandwidth available on the customer's end, the player technology used to play back the video streams, and the web browser.

BlackBelt Privacy is a free program for Windows that installs the anonymity focused applications Tor, WASTE and VOIP on the device you run the installer on.

While you can install all three clients manually on a Windows PC, the main advantage of using BlackBelt Privacy is simplicity provided that you want to use at least one, better two or three, of the services it installs on the computer.

Private Browsing is a relatively new feature of most modern web browsers that serves two main purposes: using a separate browsing session while using the browser, and deleting local information when the separate session is terminated by the user.

Basically, it is an attempt to delete information about a browsing session so that users with access to the system don't know what a user did while using private browsing mode and to prevent the information of that session to be included with regular browsing data (e.g. suggestions when users type in the address bar).

KeePass 2.31 is a new update to the popular password manager for Windows that introduces a whole new set of features and improvements to the program.

The new version of the application is available for download on the official website. The password manager may remind you on start that a new version is available (if check for updates is selected in options), and you may use the Help > Check for updates option to find out about it manually, but it does not support an option to update it automatically.

Mozilla plans to remote WebRT (WebRuntime) from Firefox for the desktop and for Android. The feature, which most Firefox probably never heard of or came in contact with, is the latest in a series that is getting removed from the web browser.

WebRT was implemented in 2012 in Firefox for the desktop and found its way into the Android version of Firefox in 2013.

So where do users come into contact with WebRT in Firefox, and what it is being good for?

Mozilla's Wiki describes WebRT in the following way:

Google back in mid-2015 announced the start of Project Eraser, an initiative to make the Google Chrome browser less complex by removing obsolete or rarely used features.

The project has not been reported wildly on in the news which is somewhat surprising. The company began inspection of code and features in Chrome 43 to find opportunities to remove code from Chrome to keep it simple and maintainable.

Windows users who run Windows 7 or Windows 8 on their devices have for the most part probably run into offers to upgrade to Windows 10 by now.

There are several solutions to prevent the upgrade from happening, but it seems difficult to block it permanently.

The effort required may increase when the updates of the January 2016 Patch Day are released, as Microsoft announced previously that it would make the upgrade to Windows 10 an important update in Windows Update.

Microsoft has a track record of being extremely tight lipped when it comes to the decisions it is making. The company expanded this even further with the release of Windows 10 by releasing cumulative updates left and right that don't reveal anything about what is actually being updated.

Google software engineer Steve Kobes announced yesterday that the company is about to enable smooth scrolling in Google Chrome on Windows and Linux.

This resolves one of the longest standing feature requests for the Chrome web browser dating back to September 3, 2008.

Failed - Virus Detected is an error message that you may receive when you download files in the Google Chrome web browser.

Chrome displays the download progress of files in a status bar at the bottom of the browser window. It highlights the transfer speed and also status information about the download itself.

Completed downloads can be run with a double-click from there for instance. The Failed - Virus Detected notification prevents that from happening.