Why won't Java 8 update 31 x64 work with Chrome 42.0.2288.6 dev x64 on OS X 10.9.5?

I've updated to Java 8 update 31 x64 on my OS X Mavericks (10.9.5) and now it will no longer work in my Chrome version 42.0.2288.6 dev. Why is this? It worked prior to updating.

I've tried the Java verification page and Chrome then claims that Java is not installed.

Java works in Firefox FWIW.

Solution 1:

Google has disabled NPAPI by default in this version forcing all plugins to use PPAPI.

Supposedly it can be re-enabled by going to chrome://flags#enable-npapi and enabling it, however I'm not having any luck with this...

See response to "Missing NPAPI plugins" from [email protected]: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=453263#c4

As far as I can tell Java/Oracle do not have a PPAPI version of their plugin.

Update: April 17, 2015

Looks like they got the enable npapi flag working, under chrome://flags#enable-npapi

However this bypass will be removed in september.

Update: September 2015

Which means it's now gone.