UKC

Why when I go onto YouTube (and other places) does it say "Please update your browser, Your browser is no longer supported. Update it to get the best YouTube experience and our latest features" etc, etc...

The particular video in question (linked from a UKC thread) was ok on June 19th although I have been on sites where this type of message comes up before.

I'm on Windows 10, using Edge and when I go into settings it happily tells me that I'm on "Version 126.0.2592.113 (Official build) (64-bit)" and that it's up to date.

I'm on an 8 year old laptop and my suspicion is that with all the updates that Microsoft force on you, they gradually introduce stuff that makes your hardware obsolete when performance wise it's just fine.

Ranty bit over - does anyone know how to fix this?

GNU/Linux?

YouTube is owned by Google so they obviously want you to use Chrome....

Don't know how to fix it, but my suspicion would lie more with Google/YouTube than Microsoft for this.

My guess would be one of: 

• A fault with YouTube's compatibility detection code. Nothing you could do about this other than wait for them to fix it. 
• A conflict with an extension you've got installed. Most likely an ad-blocker or a privacy extension. Either an accidental incompatibility or Google deliberately making life with those tools harder because they're against Google's interest.

Of the big tech companies with their own operating systems, I think Microsoft have the least to gain from any kind of planned obsolescence. Yes, they make money on sales of new PCs, but a huge part of their business model is built on the ubiquity of Windows which is helped by it just carrying on working.

Or more simply, an alternative browser. Chrome would be the obvious candidate, but is very much playing into Google's hands. Firefox would be the real alternative.

Though Edge basically is re-skinned Chrome anyway.

Serious question - how can Edge be reskinned Chrome when one is MS and the other Google?

Not saying you are wrong, just intrigued!

Edge uses the Chromium engine that underpins Chrome.  It has a lot of its own “features” tacked on as well, such as an Internet Explorer compatibility mode.

Explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

My Chrome browser, which I've just updated has a different problem - or maybe it's connected

Whatever address I put in, I either get

"Your connection is not private" (net::ERR_CERT_WEAK_SIGNATURE_ALGORITHM) - e.g. trying www.bbc.co.uk/news

or a

"This site can't be reached" screen (ERR_SSL_KEY_USAGE_INCOMPATIBLE) - e.g. trying www.ukclimbing.com

Edge is based on chromium which is open sourced. If you are after some bedtime reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

That's super odd. What kind of network are you connected to?

Home wifi - Vodafone fibre

Chrome's been pumping out those errors for some time, months, maybe a year, semi-ignored by using Edge but here's the weird one - I can't watch a movie on Amazon prime on Edge - out of date browser etc, but if I cut and paste the relevant address into Chrome I can watch it on there.

Do other devices work fine on that network? I'm concerned you might have some kind of malware installed on your laptop and doing a clumsy job of intercepting traffic.

Yep, wife's (more recent) Laptop, phones ok

Maybe do some googling on one of those about current best options for malware scanning, just in case.

I would be very suspicious of that PC if I were you.

https://xkcd.com/2083/

One constant in the tech universe: There’s always a relevant XKCD. 

Do you have a screenshot? I would guess you are seeing some dodgy ads vs anything from MS.

If Edge has an update it will appear as part of the browser window with something along the lines of "restart to apply update" vs part of the page being displayed.

If you are so badly out of date edge cant be updated then I would expect the OS to be throwing warnings.

Firefox has started going off the rails recently. I'd keep looking. 

I checked the version number he reported. It does seem to be up to date.

How so? That's worrying, because I've been intending to switch to it myself.

Get "brave' browser. This does not track you and you can enjoy YouTube without any adverts

https://cybernews.com/privacy/firefox-data-collection-feature-sparks-backla...

I may be missing something but that sounds quite a lot like Apple’s SkAd attribution system, which is generally considered to be an absolute PITA for advertisers as it indeed does preserve privacy. What are the specific concerns they have? Someone in the article mentioned that “it could be deanonymised using other identifiers” but have they actually tried that? Unless Mozilla has seriously screwed up it should not be possible to deanonymise the aggregate data, it certainly isn’t in SkAd, so much that Meta and the like constantly try and find new tracking methods to work around it and play a constant cat and mouse game with Apple. Most recently they were found to be using file accessed date fingerprinting to identify users, so that API is now banned for use in apps outside very specific scenarios.

It's more that it leaves the door open for bad things to happen when cash gets tight. Mozilla always seems to be looking to monetize stuff so the uncertainty over where they'll go next is the issue.

But it's not just that. There have been a few controversies. I struggle to remember them all but this was another: https://www.slashgear.com/firefox-suggest-puts-contextual-ads-in-the-search...

It's also a famous resource hog. CPU usage any time it's open is just daft on my machine so it had to go. Well, waterfox is what I was using, but same same. 

Bit of a shame, because it leaves chrome in a one horse race underneath every browser. 

Do a google searc of the message you get, verbatim, within inverted commas. That'll give you a clue of where it's coming from.

What happens when you visit this link? https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers

They are a company with very large engineering expenditure that needs to stay afloat, it’s hardly surprising that they would want to monetise their product, I don’t personally feel it is reasonable to assume that offering a tracking-free attribution service on an Internet completely covered with actual tracking services will result in them joining that side of things. What would their selling point to advertisers even be if they did so?

I find both Firefox and all Chromium browsers quite bad at that. I use Firefox because Chromium is quite a lot worse with memory usage as well as CPU, and my machine is hardly ever CPU-limited. Logging into my PC to find it having swapped the world out because a few tabs (usually Google services in fact) have allocated several GB each was an extremely common occurrence with Chrome, even with 32GB. Until 2019 or so, my home PC hadn’t even allocated a swap file with 32GB of RAM, things have got totally horrific lately.

Agreed.

Ooh progress - it comes up with "Please update your browser"

But when I visit the link InPrivate it says "Your browser is up to date" - and I can play You Tube videos from there.

So there must be something I've done in settings or extensions that needs sorting.

I googled how to open it in safe mode to suggest you do so to see if it's an extension messing up, but it looks like you've done it already (InPrivate thingy. Not an edge user myself).

See if your extensions have any updates pending, and if not, either disable them one by one see if you find the culprit, or the nuclear option is a fresh install of the browser.

Thanks all.

Removed the two extensions (no idea where they came from), bingo - all seems ok with Edge now.