Why Google Is Removing JPEG-XL Support From Chrome

Following yesterday’s article about Google Chrome preparing to deprecate the JPEG-XL image format, a Google engineer has now provided their reasons for dropping this next-generation image format. Phoronix reports: As noted yesterday, a patch is pending for the Google Chrome/Chromium browser to deprecate the still-experimental (behind a feature flag) JPEG-XL image format support from their web browser. The patch marks Chrome 110 and later as deprecating JPEG-XL image support. No reasoning was provided for this deprecation, which is odd considering JPEG-XL is still very young in its lifecycle and has been receiving growing industry interest and support.

Now this evening is a comment from a Google engineer on the Chromium JPEG-XL issue tracker with their expressed reasons: “Thank you everyone for your comments and feedback regarding JPEG XL. We will be removing the JPEG XL code and flag from Chromium for the following reasons:

– Experimental flags and code should not remain indefinitely
– There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG XL
– The new image format does not bring sufficient incremental benefits over existing formats to warrant enabling it by default
– By removing the flag and the code in M110, it reduces the maintenance burden and allows us to focus on improving existing formats in Chrome”

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Chromebooks With Mobile Data To Act As Wi-Fi Hotspots

In an upcoming update, Chromebooks equipped with mobile data will be able to serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for other devices, just like Android and iOS devices can today. 9to5Google reports: The work-in-progress feature has made its first appearance in ChromeOS code in the form of a new flag coming to chrome://flags. The details are quite slim at the moment, with little more than the flag description available today. That said, it’s easy to imagine how a mobile hotspot would work on ChromeOS, based on how the same feature works on Android phones today.

Presumably, you would be able to choose the name and password for your Chromebook’s hotspot through the Settings app in ChromeOS, where you can also toggle the hotspot on and off. If it truly follows the example of Android, there would also be an easy way to turn on your hotspot through a Quick Settings toggle.

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Chrome’s Latest Update: 30 Security Fixes and Bug Details Kept ‘Restricted’

Hot Hardware warns that on Tuesday, the Stable Channel for Chrome’s desktop edition “had an update on April 26, 2022. That update includes 30 security fixes, some of them so bad that Google is urging all users to update immediately.”

The release notes for Google’s Chrome v101.0.4951.41 for Windows, Mac, and Linux has a long list of bug fixes; you can view it here. However, there’s also a key statement in that page.
“Note: Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed….”

Effectively the the non-developer translation of the quote above is that something so significant was found, the details are being kept hidden.

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