Chrome 63 Offers Even More Protection From Malicious Sites, Using Even More Memory (arstechnica.com) 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: To further increase its enterprise appeal, Chrome 63 -- which hit the browser's stable release channel yesterday -- includes a couple of new security enhancements aimed particularly at the corporate market. The first of these is site isolation, an even stricter version of the multiple process model that Chrome has used since its introduction. Chrome uses multiple processes for several security and stability reasons. On the stability front, the model means that even if a single tab crashes, other tabs (and the browser itself) are unaffected. On the security front, the use of multiple processes makes it much harder for malicious code from one site to steal secrets (such as passwords typed into forms) of another. [...]
Naturally, this greater use of multiple processes incurs a price; with this option enabled, Chrome's already high memory usage can go up by another 15 to 20 percent. As such, it's not enabled by default; instead, it's intended for use by enterprise users that are particularly concerned about organizational security. The other new capability is the ability for administrators to block extensions depending on the features those extensions need to use. For example, an admin can block any extension that tries to use file system access, that reads or writes the clipboard, or that accesses the webcam or microphone. Additionally, Google has started to deploy TLS 1.3, the latest version of Transport Layer Security, the protocol that enables secure communication between a browser and a Web server. In Chrome 63, this is only enabled between Chrome and Gmail; in 2018, it'll be turned on more widely.
Naturally, this greater use of multiple processes incurs a price; with this option enabled, Chrome's already high memory usage can go up by another 15 to 20 percent. As such, it's not enabled by default; instead, it's intended for use by enterprise users that are particularly concerned about organizational security. The other new capability is the ability for administrators to block extensions depending on the features those extensions need to use. For example, an admin can block any extension that tries to use file system access, that reads or writes the clipboard, or that accesses the webcam or microphone. Additionally, Google has started to deploy TLS 1.3, the latest version of Transport Layer Security, the protocol that enables secure communication between a browser and a Web server. In Chrome 63, this is only enabled between Chrome and Gmail; in 2018, it'll be turned on more widely.
Re:Dunno, more memory? (Score:5, Insightful)
64 bit only gives you 2x 32 bit
Incorrect. I'll take your nerd badge now. Security will see you out and we will mail your things to you next week. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Re: Dunno, more memory? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Dunno, more memory? (Score:2)
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Re: Dunno, more memory? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't know that C and C++ give you complete control over data sizes and allow you to use the hardware optimally
No, they don't. Just look at DataDraw to see what hoops you have to jump through to get over the limitations of C/C++ overspecification that prohibits major memory optimizations. C can't see the forest for the trees, hence major opportunities are hidden from it and only available either through tedious hand-holding or through building tools above that see further. The mention of C++ I will treat with silent contempt.
Re: Dunno, more memory? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I jumped to chrome when it was released because it was much faster at the time. At the time it meant giving up a lot of things that I used all the time like adblocking and a lot of site compatibility.
Then there was firefox's memory leaks.
Stuff worked with firefox not so much with chrome.
Today there's not nearly as much of a difference in speed but there's not really much reason for me to switch back either I don't like what firefox has become but I still miss a few of the addons.
Chrome 63's memory usage is lower than Firefox 57 (Score:1, Interesting)
I've been using Chrome 63 and I've found its memory usage to be much lower than Firefox 57's.
I find that Chrome 63 performs a lot better than Firefox 57 does, too. This is strange, because Firefox 57 is supposed to be faster, from what I've been hearing, but I really didn't notice any difference.
What I did notice is that Firefox 57 broke nearly all of my extensions! Some of them I can't even replace, because the authors have given up and aren't bothering to port them to Firefox 57, or worse, they can't even
SO? (Score:1)
Who cares about Chrome? It's spyware and shouldn't be used.
Memory (Score:3, Insightful)
Memory is there to be used. I'm not talking about bloat or inefficiency either. Why not take advantage of system resources?
Re: (Score:1)
Why bother even wasting power on your unused memory then? Might as well unplug it and sell it for a few bucks. If it uses those extra unused gigs to display pages faster then who cares? People brag about how much ram they own then bitch when something actually uses it.
Re: (Score:2)
It's there to be used, but not wasted. Just because my PC has 64 gigs of RAM, doesn't mean Chrome can use all 64 gigs. In fact, I want Chrome to behave itself - to use as much memory as it needs, but no more. And to be well behaved enough in i
Re:Memory (Score:4, Insightful)
This appears to be the greatest motivational slogan for most of the modern software developers.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Memory is not there to "be used" it is there to speed up the system. Using memory inefficiently defeats that purpose. That's not to say security isn't a valid purpose, it most certainly is. Just be careful with the blanket statements.
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The cost of memory efficiency during development at this time beats the cost of memory itself by far at this time point.
An average software developer charges what at least 30$ an hour ? An how much time does it take to improve efficiency in large complex programs ? 1 working day at least ?
For those 300$ I can have 16 GB of DDR4 RAM delivered tomorrow. Sorry, I want to care, but I just can't.
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People run browsers on laptops, some with soldered-in memory.
My laptop doesn't have soldered-in memory, but only has 8GB; it was a pretty high-spec Dell XPS 13 when I bought it. I don't have swap enabled, since when I got the machine it only had a 128gb SSD, and while I've upgraded that since then I've not bothered to make a swap partition.
I would really prefer my web browser behave itself and not chew up three-quarters of that unless it is absolutely necessary; I'm running Opera at the moment and it seems
Re: (Score:2)
I use Chrome on a Chromebook with 4GB RAM , and at the same time a 32 GB Dell XPS 15 too. Never ran into a memory issue.
Whatever, not enabled, but what about new freezes? (Score:2)
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forked from FireFox 4, at 1/10th the size of Mozilla's current crap, and supports everything Quantum does
Seems unlikely. I just installed Firefox 4. None of the benchmarks on Browser Bench [browserbench.org] worked and the page itself didn't render correctly. I went to YouTube and got a message saying "Oops, your web browser is no longer supported.” I ignored the message and tried to play some videos anyhow but nothing worked (maybe it would work if I installed Flash, but YouTube works in the latest Firefox without Flash). I tried Vimeo and none of the videos worked there either.
And it's actually faster.
Didn't seem to be. Page load and render seem
Re: (Score:2)
As in, they put their own code into it.
Cool, where can I download it? It is hosted on GitHub?
Ahh, web browsers... (Score:5, Insightful)
The web browser: the glorified terminal emulator of the 21st century. Where every kilobyte of input takes a megabyte of RAM. Or fifty. How can it be considered remotely plausible that maintaining the state of 15 tabs (mostly text, some images, no video) requires 5 GB? Surely it must be one of the great mysteries of modern computing.
Should one trust nonfree SW w/ said access? (Score:4, Insightful)
In this description one is clearly supposed to trust a nonfree program (Google Chrome) to vet other software's access to the file system, clipboard, webcam, and microphone. But one has no good reason to call Chrome trustworthy. Users have no idea what the Chrome code is doing when it runs because that program is nonfree software. No matter how capable the user is, no matter how willing they are to research and fix problems, Chrome users are not allowed to help themselves by reading the complete Chrome source code, modifying said source code, or help others in the community by distributing Chrome code (whether modified or not). The only users allowed to do these things are the people one ought not trust because they're the proprietor. As a side issue that proprietor happens to be a spy organization. So one should wonder if administrators can block Google Chrome's access to these things too or perhaps that is best addressed by not running Google Chrome in the first place.
Chrome better watch out. (Score:1)