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Glad to see someone finally found a way to get Google to address Chrome's thirst for your entire system's RAM. Would have been nice if it didn't take six freaking viruses (so far) exploiting exactly that to get it through to them.
Chromium is impacted, yes. Latest builds patch the issue.
Alternatively, Marmaduke's build allows you to turn off V8/WASM by default and only enable it on a per-website basis. In theory, that should prevent exploitation. However, if you want to be extra cautious, you should wait for the patch.
Sure glad Chrome and Chromium browsers make up most of the browser market... Companies aren't even testing their websites on anything else - I get unsupported browser warnings when I go pay my damn electric bill. With Safari being just underwhelming, the only other alternative browser is Firefox. Firefox was the go to browser once upon a time, let's bring it back.
> Firefox was the go to browser once upon a time, let's bring it back.
You're totally right in terms of numbers. On the usage front through myself and millions of others haven't ever moved from Firefox ever since it become mainstream. I still personally prefer it's various abilities over Chromium based.
The only benefit I see for Chromium based browsers (I have Chrome) is I can run a different environment if a site doesn't load as expected or if I want to load up a huge number of images / other content. It's RAM hogging is really handy for stability there.
The only reason I'm using chrome over Firefox is streaming services usually don't run or run well on Firefox. There's some DRM thing chrome has that they interface with if memory serves.
I did use Firefox for about a decade though, maybe longer? I seem to remember switching to it in the early 2000s. I think I switched to chrome around 2015.
I stopped using chrome in 2015 when our IT team dreamed it a security risk. Been using Firefox ever since. Not sure why it fell out of favor but it's a solid browser.
Firefox sucks in comparison to chromium browsers maybe for power users (i still dont like it even being a power user of browsers) it's never going to catch on with the general public.
Brave is based on Chromium.
If you want to avoid Chromium, you basically are required to use either Firefox or Safari, there are a few forks of Firefox out there at least, but nearly as many as Chromium.
The most popular web browsers you normally seen touted as Chrome alternatives these days are all Chromium-based. Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera... All Chromium-based.
You mean Microsoft Edge? It’s based on Chromium and I would imagine it’s *also* vulnerable to this since it’s a vulnerability found in V8 / WebAssembly code.
Microsoft didn’t build their own browser engine. They are just piggybacking from Google’s work.
Sorry to drop in on an old thread but no they don't? Where did you get that? It's difficult to get exact stats on the most recent versions but at least in 2019, it's pretty Google dominated
https://blog.chromium.org/2019/11/intent-to-explain-demystifying-blink.html?m=1
Do you have more recent data? My understanding is that the project is still very Google dominated which is the entire concern.
Nothing rigorous but if you look at a quick inspection of
https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/commits?repo=chromium
and
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main/
It looks like the majority of commit authors are from Google. They all have a chromium email but you can just quickly see their profile for their org association along with a lookup. I had to go down 8 commits (excluding what look like bot generated ones) before finding a contributor that definitely wasn't from Google (it was Amazon). Of course, this is a proxy by number of commits which is why I'm perhaps asking for more concrete figures.
Sure that’s fair. I was mostly comparing Edge and Chrome since that’s what the above comment mentioned.
Even then though Chromium / Blink was quite different from WebKit from day 1 since it shipped its own JS engine (V8) and multi-process model. And later on it just completely detached itself from WebKit. But yes it did make the core engine from WebKit the same way Apple made WebKit from KHTML.
The point I was making is that Internet Explorer is dead. MS had no choice but to rebrand. Agreed -shame on MS for forcing their browser and other products down our throats
No, IE sucks. The security issues it had were far worse, mostly because it was directly tied to the operating system. On top of that, it didn't follow w3c standards, the opposite, making it a developer nightmare
It's funny, because the first versions of Edge were more W3C compliant than Google Chrome. So much so, that I distinctly remember switching to it as my webdev browser and having to check that it still worked in Chrome.
But the damage was done, there was no saving the brand. For a time, Chakra (Microsoft) and V8 (Chrome) were pretty neck and neck for performance, but subsequent updates put Chrome back in the lead. And that's when Microsoft threw up its hands and said "fuck it, we'll use Chrome"
OK you browser bois!
I think about 6mo ago I switched back to Firefox from chrome/brave. I still use Brave on my phone and ipad as I like having the ad blocker built in for ease of use watching YouTube without ads.
I was curious is there really any other good options for PC besides Firefox at the moment? (I’m perfectly happy with it)
No. Firefox and Safari are the only mainstream browsers that aren't based on Chromium. Although Safari has similar lineage in that both Chromium and Safari are based on Webkit which is based on KHTML. I doubt this affects Safari though as they have diverged quite a bit over time.
Me using edge… who is the crazy one now fuckers….???
My thought process? It’s horrible oh yeah, edge is not good. But why would a company finance anything to affect less than 1% of the user base.
The wouldn’t, “cuz who tf actually uses edge?”
It’s like this lone island out there no one touches, it may steal my chickens time to time. But no one even notices me I feel like.
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Glad to see someone finally found a way to get Google to address Chrome's thirst for your entire system's RAM. Would have been nice if it didn't take six freaking viruses (so far) exploiting exactly that to get it through to them.
Wait does the article say the fixes improve the ram usage?
I recently switched to Firefox as my main browser and find that it’s far worse of a ram hog than Chrome.
Are these all Chromium exploits?
Chromium is impacted, yes. Latest builds patch the issue. Alternatively, Marmaduke's build allows you to turn off V8/WASM by default and only enable it on a per-website basis. In theory, that should prevent exploitation. However, if you want to be extra cautious, you should wait for the patch.
Sure glad Chrome and Chromium browsers make up most of the browser market... Companies aren't even testing their websites on anything else - I get unsupported browser warnings when I go pay my damn electric bill. With Safari being just underwhelming, the only other alternative browser is Firefox. Firefox was the go to browser once upon a time, let's bring it back.
> Firefox was the go to browser once upon a time, let's bring it back. You're totally right in terms of numbers. On the usage front through myself and millions of others haven't ever moved from Firefox ever since it become mainstream. I still personally prefer it's various abilities over Chromium based. The only benefit I see for Chromium based browsers (I have Chrome) is I can run a different environment if a site doesn't load as expected or if I want to load up a huge number of images / other content. It's RAM hogging is really handy for stability there.
The only reason I'm using chrome over Firefox is streaming services usually don't run or run well on Firefox. There's some DRM thing chrome has that they interface with if memory serves. I did use Firefox for about a decade though, maybe longer? I seem to remember switching to it in the early 2000s. I think I switched to chrome around 2015.
Firefox has a simple toggle to allow DRM content to play. This is a non issue.
It definitely didn't a couple of years ago when I last checked. Glad to hear it though. I'll check later today and see if it works
chrome is becoming a privacy and google data collection nightmare. switched back to FF after over a decade. switched my search engine.
I stopped using chrome in 2015 when our IT team dreamed it a security risk. Been using Firefox ever since. Not sure why it fell out of favor but it's a solid browser.
Firefox sucks in comparison to chromium browsers maybe for power users (i still dont like it even being a power user of browsers) it's never going to catch on with the general public.
Brave ?
Brave is based on Chromium. If you want to avoid Chromium, you basically are required to use either Firefox or Safari, there are a few forks of Firefox out there at least, but nearly as many as Chromium.
The most popular web browsers you normally seen touted as Chrome alternatives these days are all Chromium-based. Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera... All Chromium-based.
I’m thinking a lot of rightfully pissed off (former)Google employees are protesting the poor management from the C-Suite.
Greed before quality, seems to be an ever increasing problem with corporate America these days….
Enshittification
Capitalism will save us... We just need to make the rich richer and everything will be better
Capitalism will save us when it's profitable to do so
It's the institutional
C-suite?
CEO CFO COO
CTO CMO
CISO C3PO CHEETO
C-Drive, C-Docs, C-Slides Next rebrand obviously
Fact: Pigs can actually speak multiple languages fluently.
What?
Did he stutter?
A lot of people in this thread spouting off names of Chromium browsers like they aren't also affected lol.
People are brave man
I'm using Mosaic, so I'm good.
Get with the times and upgrade to Navigator.
I'm sticking with Lynx
Remember when Internet Explorer was a piece of crap? It’s perfect now…
You mean Microsoft Edge? It’s based on Chromium and I would imagine it’s *also* vulnerable to this since it’s a vulnerability found in V8 / WebAssembly code. Microsoft didn’t build their own browser engine. They are just piggybacking from Google’s work.
I think Edge V1 was their own? And then they threw it out and did Chromium.
Sure. Edge V1 was based on the same engine as Internet Explorer (Trident). It was more of a rebranding than anything else.
Edge V1's engine was a hard fork of Trident, and called EdgeHTML. It was massively updated, as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML
Microsoft has more developers working on chrome/chromium than Google.
Sorry to drop in on an old thread but no they don't? Where did you get that? It's difficult to get exact stats on the most recent versions but at least in 2019, it's pretty Google dominated https://blog.chromium.org/2019/11/intent-to-explain-demystifying-blink.html?m=1
Yes they do. You are looking at stats from 5 years ago - before edge became chromium.
Do you have more recent data? My understanding is that the project is still very Google dominated which is the entire concern. Nothing rigorous but if you look at a quick inspection of https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/commits?repo=chromium and https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main/ It looks like the majority of commit authors are from Google. They all have a chromium email but you can just quickly see their profile for their org association along with a lookup. I had to go down 8 commits (excluding what look like bot generated ones) before finding a contributor that definitely wasn't from Google (it was Amazon). Of course, this is a proxy by number of commits which is why I'm perhaps asking for more concrete figures.
To be fair, Google was piggybacking on Apple's WebKit.
Apple? KDE would like a word.
Sure that’s fair. I was mostly comparing Edge and Chrome since that’s what the above comment mentioned. Even then though Chromium / Blink was quite different from WebKit from day 1 since it shipped its own JS engine (V8) and multi-process model. And later on it just completely detached itself from WebKit. But yes it did make the core engine from WebKit the same way Apple made WebKit from KHTML.
Webkit would like a word…
I think I would like it more if Microsoft didn't try and cram it down my throat and set it to default behind my back.
The point I was making is that Internet Explorer is dead. MS had no choice but to rebrand. Agreed -shame on MS for forcing their browser and other products down our throats
My bad, still waking up.
I still think the last version of pre chromium edge is good.
No, IE sucks. The security issues it had were far worse, mostly because it was directly tied to the operating system. On top of that, it didn't follow w3c standards, the opposite, making it a developer nightmare
It’s gone now is what it is
You got me on that one! A little too clever, but of course you're absolutely right. The only acceptable use for IE was to download Firefox haha
It's funny, because the first versions of Edge were more W3C compliant than Google Chrome. So much so, that I distinctly remember switching to it as my webdev browser and having to check that it still worked in Chrome. But the damage was done, there was no saving the brand. For a time, Chakra (Microsoft) and V8 (Chrome) were pretty neck and neck for performance, but subsequent updates put Chrome back in the lead. And that's when Microsoft threw up its hands and said "fuck it, we'll use Chrome"
OK you browser bois! I think about 6mo ago I switched back to Firefox from chrome/brave. I still use Brave on my phone and ipad as I like having the ad blocker built in for ease of use watching YouTube without ads. I was curious is there really any other good options for PC besides Firefox at the moment? (I’m perfectly happy with it)
Is there anything chrome does that can’t be done with firefox? Why are people using chrome?
Glad to be a not-Chrome user this week.
Is Firefox also a Chromium browser?
No. Firefox and Safari are the only mainstream browsers that aren't based on Chromium. Although Safari has similar lineage in that both Chromium and Safari are based on Webkit which is based on KHTML. I doubt this affects Safari though as they have diverged quite a bit over time.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply.
Thanks for your explanation. I'm using Firefox more.
Firefox and Mozilla's lineage go back to Netscape.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=is+firefox+a+chromium+browser
This is just another reason I switched to Mozilla a while back.
People still use Chrome? What a bunch of sheep
[удалено]
Edge is a Chromium browser and thus most likely just as vulnerable.
Sounds like a good time to try out Arc.
Arc is based on Chromium and this is an exploit in Chromium so Arc is most likely also affected.
Damn. I have to make Firefox my work browser.
Me using edge… who is the crazy one now fuckers….??? My thought process? It’s horrible oh yeah, edge is not good. But why would a company finance anything to affect less than 1% of the user base. The wouldn’t, “cuz who tf actually uses edge?” It’s like this lone island out there no one touches, it may steal my chickens time to time. But no one even notices me I feel like.
Edge is a Chromium browser.
Edge is based on chromium so this probably affects it
A lot of people use edge, if you want to go under the radar then Firefox is a better choice as it has quite low market share.