May 4 Tech news roundup: Arc Browser released for Windows, Netflix discontinues Basic plan, OneDrive gets an offline mode

A new desktop browser is available for Windows 11. Netflix is discontinuing its cheapest ad-free plan. Let’s find out what else happened in this week’s tech news roundup.

Netflix asks Basic users to move to other plans

Netflix has begun prompting users who are subscribed to its Basic plan to switch to another plan. The price of the Netflix Basic plan was increased in October 2023 to $9.99. The streaming company is discontinuing its cheapest ad-free plan, so users will need to pick one of the other 3 plans that it offers. It allows you to download content on up to 2 devices, and stream videos in Full HD.

The most affordable one is Netflix Standard with ads, which as the name suggests includes advertisements, and costs $5.99 per month. The Netflix Standard plan, which costs $16.49 a month, is now the cheapest plan to watch without ads. In addition to downloading media on 2 devices, you can choose to add 1 extra member to your subscription.

Netflix Premium is the most expensive plan from the company, it costs $22.99 per month. Subscribers can stream videos in Ultra HD resolution, and supports spatial audio. You can download media on up to 4 devices, and the Premium plan also gives you an option to add 2 extra members.

Arc Browser is now available for Windows

Arc Browser for Windows has been released. The stylish browser, which debuted on macOS, is based on Google’s Chromium project. So you can install extensions from the Chrome web store. It comes with the popular uBlock Origin ad blocker extension pre-installed. Arc Browser has a vertical tab bar, which supports tab groups that are essentially folders. The browser has a minimalistic user interface with few buttons. Arc Browser has some cool features such as a built-in note-taking app, whiteboard, mini player for playing audio/video in a pop-up window. You can use the Boosts feature to customize the themes for websites. Arc also supports a preview feature that lets you glimpse the content from services like Gmail, Outlook and GitHub.

There are some caveats, the first one is that Arc Browser requires you to sign up for an account with the company before you can use the application. Next, you will need to import your data from another browser. Oddly, there are no options to skip either of these steps. Arc Browser supports Windows 11, but is not compatible with Windows 10 or older versions of the operating system.

Microsoft OneDrive on the web now has an offline mode

Microsoft OneDrive users can rejoice, the cloud storage service is getting a cool feature, the ability to access files offline. The feature uses the local storage on your computer to store some cache to open files faster. Users will require the OneDrive Sync app, which will automatically run a one-time set-up of offline mode.

This will allow you to browse the “My Files” view to organize your files, and the “Home,” “My files,” “Shared,” “Favorites,” “People,” and, “Meeting” views. The Files On-Demand feature can be used to choose which files and folders should be saved locally on your PC. All changes that are made while you are offline will be synced back to the cloud when you connect to the internet.

However, the new offline mode is exclusive to premium customers, i.e. Microsoft 365 subscribers who have a work or school account. So consumer accounts, aka free users, will not be able to use the offline mode on the web.

Microsoft says it will not fix the Windows 10 KB5034441 0x80070643 error

Four months ago, Microsoft released the first Security Updates of the year for Windows 10 and 11. But, the update introduced a new bug, the KB5034441 0x80070643 error. The update would fail to install because the WinRE partition, which is the Windows Recovery Environment, on a PC is not large enough. The update requires the WinRE to have at least 250 MB of free storage. IT patches a security vulnerability that could allow attackers to bypass BitLocker encryption using WinRE.

Now, after months of waiting for a fix, Microsoft has confirmed that it cannot fix the KB5034441 0x80070643 error via a Windows Update. However, users have two workarounds to resolve the issue. You will need to use Disk Management to manually increase the size of the WinRE, or use a PowerShell script provided by Microsoft to update the size of the recovery environment. This will allow the update to be installed.

Windows 11 will not display a watermark if your PC doesn’t meet requirements

Recently, some rumors surfaced claiming that Windows 11 will soon start displaying a new watermark. This was said to be related to the new AI Explorer, which is powered by Copilot. Users were worried that the operating system would place a watermark in their file manager, similar to the one it displays on the desktop on unactivated copies of Windows, if their PC did not meet the system requirements for the artificial intelligence features.

However, these rumors were shot down by Albacore. The well-known Microsoft leaker, clarified that the watermarks would be displayed only within AI Explorer’s interface itself, and not in other areas of Windows 11.

Security experts claim that installing third-party apps via Apple Safari can result in privacy issues

Thanks to some antitrust rules imposed by the European Union, Apple was forced to make some changes to its ecosystem to allow the installation of third party app marketplaces on iOS. This included an option to download app marketplaces from websites. But, some security experts say that Apple’s system of installing marketplace apps from Safari has some privacy issues. Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk investigated the mechanisms to discover how the process works, and found a flaw that could allow malicious marketplaces to track users across the web.

The issue is related to a URI scheme, which can be used to determine how a specific network request is handled. A website that hosts the marketplace could trigger a marketplace-kit request. Unfortunately, any website can this, and the iPhone would send a unique user identifier to the site. This would identify the user’s visit to the particular website. Shockingly, this also happens in Safari’s private browsing mode. The researchers say that Apple needs to address the privacy-risk by checking the origin of websites, validate the JSON web tokens (JWT) that they pass, and use certificate pinning. In its current state, the loophole poses a risk of cross-site tracking, injection attacks, and an-in-the-middle attacks, that could compromise the security of the user and their device.