Opera's browser is now available with chess baked in
blogs.opera.com
blogs.opera.com
It sounds like they struck a deal with chess.com to put a bookmark that opens a regular web page. It's no more "baked in" than accessing the same website via Chrome or Safari.
By the way, check out lichess.org. Free, open source, no ads, interesting architecture, servers that don't crash, feature parity with chess.com.
I've seen it with a few popular content creators getting their own "custom version" of Opera where it has an on-brand theme and links to their content directly baked into the browser download. Presumably there is some kind of customisation pass that thinly wraps the regular installation process.
I don't personally get the appeal but maybe big brands are more likely to feature the browser if it's customised (eg. live streaming a big chess.com game where the "official" tournament client is the Chess.com Opera Browser).
Well yeah, it says that right in the first sentence ("exciting new partnership..."). It'd be unlawful if they didn't prominently disclose that this is a paid endorsement.
There's a diversity of both paid and free chess servers, and the paid ones don't hold any particular advantage today. This kind of ad (it *is* an ad) takes predatory advantage of people unaware of the internet chess landscape, to funnel them into handing over their wallet when it's completely unwarranted. (See e.g., lichess.org [0]).
And all this Opera stuff is baffling to me. Why would anyone choose to put advertisements in their browser, in any form? Ads don't inform you–as this example shows, they mislead and prey on you. The conventional defense of ads is they fill in information gaps: they tell you about services you want but didn't know were available, like an interesting restaurant on a nearby side street you've never visited. But it's so much more often the opposite: this ad convinces people to pay for a service they don't want and don't need. It takes advantage of information asymmetry, of the consumer's lack of familiarity with the product domain: it doesn't flatten that asymmetry, but exploits it.
It takes authentic humans, like me right here, to tell you "internet chess is free and you probably don't want to pay for it like all the ads tell you to". No commercial agent will do that.
Sponsoring players and influencers certainly helps cementing their brand.
That contradicts what I have been hearing. And it makes total sense. Unlike on lichess, the incentives are wrong for chess.com to remove whale cheaters.
Special guest - Vladimir Kramnik, who has being researching cheating in chess with stats, quite intersting / disturbing
I'm surprised it's still alive, but I guess the advertising business model and these marketing deals are lucrative enough to keep it running.
Their bandwidth saving proxy was quite good when I needed to use it on shitty 3G back in the day.
I am not saying this to throw shade, it might legitimately be a good idea. Of course, attack surface, spyware, blah blah, but users don't care about that, sadly. Someone might install it just because it's le funny browser.
I'm expecting Opera's logo to change to doge any day now.
China requires all companies to hand them data whenever they want. In the West, there is at least a semblance of proper reason required for the law enforcement to demand your data.
I don't think that US government maintains a database of all the data of all the users of all US companies. But, for China, I would say, that is a non-zero amount of possibility.
Beyond usage data, there is telemetry in PC, and much more tracking is possible in android apps.
I had tracked Opera, Chrome, Brave, DDG, Bromite, and FF through both Tracker Control [0] and DDG's tracking monitoring in beta. Opera fairs much worse, and many shoddy, dark companies come up.
I am not a security specialist, but my advice would be to stay as far away from Chinese products as possible- in this case- Opera.
[0]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.f...
> In 2016, Opera was acquired by an investment group led by a Chinese consortium.
The new Opera likes to promote their Norwegian roots everywhere, but it is very much a Chinese business with an overseas office.
The laws themselves exist to a certain extent, but the government places itself above the law in ways that aren't acceptable inside the EU and the other states who implemented the GDPR.
This is because Europe is not part of the USA, which means the protections against tyrannical government interference don't apply; those protections only apply to Americans.
(You expected detail, to further argue/troll with?)
PS: I'm EU citizen and, according to the Schrems II verdict, US laws are absolutely inadequate when speaking about personal data and privacy.
In any comparison of this sort, an often forgotten fact is that the US and EEA/EU countries are long-time allies, having a long tradition of mutual help and cooperation. Whereas China is led by genocidal, totalitarian, communist rulers.
Look, as an EU citizen, I was disappointed by Snowden's revelations, too. But there is no equivalence.
It says that US intelligence agency can access data of any EU citizen without any authorization or control from the citizens or any EU authority.
More or less the same thing that Cina can do, the difference is that they have far fewer data.
> Look, as an EU citizen, I was disappointed by Snowden's revelations, too. But there is no equivalence.
Snowden was only the tip of the iceberg, what's happening nowadays with cloud/SaaS it's far more big and complex, and can only get worse.
And for example the CCP has begun retaliating against foreigners and companies for speaking against China's interests. They also look more and more likely to aid Russia in their European aggression, possibly because they are looking to start an invasion on their own in Taiwan. This means that their espionage efforts in Europe and elsewhere are increasing, and the outcome of CCP's espionage, much like Russia's espionage, may have a direct effect on our well-being. At least until the Russian invasion isn't settled and until they don't back off from Taiwan.
China was also caught repeatedly for having engaged in industrial espionage at an unforseen scale. And no matter what other countries or companies did in the past, it's always best to focus on present dangers. Europe cannot afford to lose all its trade secrets to China, given the danger to its industries (e.g., auto). Organizations should think hard about allowing access to sensitive data from devices that also have TikTok installed.
People have a skewed perception of how WW2 happened. Its historical start date is almost arbitrary, because in truth WW2 started with isolated conflicts that only grew in intensity over time, slowly.
In times like these, it's best to stick with our allies. Also, countries like Germany should do well to diversify their imports, because otherwise the EU will suffer just like we suffered from the hiked energy prices. And then maybe the US won't be available to help like they did with LNG exports.
Again, there is no equivalence between US and China for Europeans. One is a working democracy under the rule of law and a long-time partner, the other is not.
PS: just to be clear, I'm mentioning countries, but I have nothing against their citizens. My country once was a totalitarian hell hole too, and I know fully well that in totalitarianism the state stops representing the "will of the people".
It really does underscore one of big problems for China, no one trusts them. The CCP is an actual hindrance for Chinese companies as its involvement prevent them for growing trust in their products and brands. I suppose that's why Opera still uses a lot of mentions of Oslo and Norway on their website. It's better for the brand if people think it's Norwegian.
/s
The modern reincarnation isn't called Opera, it's Vivaldi. I didn't use it because it was too slow (implementing the old Opera features on Chrome must have been difficult).