2019 Archive
March
Google DanceGoogle has undergone a core update that kicked off a kerfuffle about naming updates. Tongue firmly in cheek I prefer to still refer to them using the old-fashioned Google Dance. Brett Tabke has been naming them after his Pubcon series where many in the industry follow suit. Florida 2 doesn't feel right, though. Danny, now a Googler, piped in on the matter and that's what SEL is rightly going with, the very uninspired March 2019 Core Update. You can dance if you want to.
Accessibility WoesBroken Accessibility is Widespread. "An overwhelming majority of home pages had images without alternative text." As you know, search engines pay attention to whether or not you utilize this very important aspect of webmastering. We must strive to do better.
Vulnerability DisclosureA developer panicked when a French security researcher going by "Elliot Alderson" or @fs0c131y disclosed security vulnerabilities to an Android app maker who unfortunately mischaracterized the ordeal as a hacking failure. Now he's ensnared in a fiasco with several others piping in alongside news reports. Katie Moussouris cited his problems as rookie mistakes.
I-Search
I'm thinking of reviving the old I-Search Digest list as SEO for Developers newsletter. The last time I tried reviving I-Search, after several nice posts from the community, I was doing all the writing. Unfortunately, that changed the nature of what the original was. I don't think it matters if I'm doing all the writing this time.
Pi DayTeam at Google Japan led by Emma Haraku Iwao calculated Pi to more digits than ever before. They made a video for 3:15 minutes long with her describing everything.
Google V8V8 7.3, which contains asynchronous stack traces, lands in node.
Cult of the Dead Cow rears up in politics@ashleyfeinberg: crazy that beto is satoshi nakamoto
Actually he was in Cult of the Dead Cow.
A dozen Google tracking cookies are implemented on gov.uk, a fact which calls into question compliance with GDPR privacy laws. Research showed 82% of EU government sites use cookie tracking.
"There was a Google update today"You can say this every day without being wrong 😉 Barry covers the drama curating choice myth busting quotes from Google employees.
View, Remove XML Sitemaps in GSC@pedrodias: I guess this is public now, so... You can now remove XML sitemaps from the new SC interface. Also there's a link to open the XML directly.
The curl utility turns 21 today. Curl is 160,000 lines of code, documented with 36,900 man pages.
Facebook Plaintext PasswordsFacebook employees built applications that logged unencrypted password data for Facebook users and stored it in plain text on internal company servers. Between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users may have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. Facebook is trying to determine how many passwords were exposed and for how long, but the inquiry has uncovered archives with plain text user passwords dating back to 2012.
Karen Spärck JonesLearn about Karen Spärck Jones in anticipation of a new article for Search Engine Land.
AMP & Mobile Code TestGoogle Search Console's exposed AMP and mobile friendly test forms now come with an input textarea for code.
Karen Spärck JonesProfessor Karen Spärck Jones, originator of search engine algorithms.
April
Avoid Using Browser Password Managers
I wish I could recommend saving passwords using a browser password manager. Selectively, it's probably still okay, knowing enough to be cautious that your passwords can be found out pretty easily if you're ever a target.
A security researcher demonstrated a proof of concept exposing Chrome's SQLite store on Windows. He had success with Firefox as well.
There's a possibility it's not as simple with Safari on MacOS or Linux. We may find that Safari falls just as easily, though, and I definitely like recommending Apple's keychain for MacOS/iOS users.
Security
MSRC
Microsoft partners with HackerOne, says its bug bounty program awarded $2M+ in 2018, now pays bounties faster, and has increased max rewards from $15K to $50K.
Google
Nieman Lab
Survey: fewer than 50% of US adults expect Google to collect data on users' activities on its platforms or apps, track personal browsing for ad targeting, more.
Links Google Doesn't Show Don't Count
Google reinforces the widely known fact that if Google doesn't show you links then they don't count."In general, if our systems don't even show them there, then they're pretty irrelevant overall." There is further detail John gets into answering a question on Reddit.
Microsoft Chromium Dev Build
Microsoft is shipping its Chromium-based Canary Edge browser for users, and for the first time a developer's version alongside, through what they're calling Channels. MacOS versions are not currently available, though the developer blog mentions that they are forthcoming. Channels promises daily downloads available for Canary and weekly downloads for developers.
Google Issue Affected Indexing
A Technical issue affected indexing for at least a handful of sites where webmasters and some SEOs began asking questions on Twitter. Google has since said they resolved much of the problem, though some issues remain. They will be continuing to fix it, having started work last weekend, and will supply more information in the forthcoming days to wrap up the problem.
Security
Katie Fustich / Built In Colorado
Cybersecurity startup deepwatch raises $23M Series A to fuel expansion and R&D, says it's grown to 130 employees and over 100 customers.
Security
South China Morning Post
Profile of Tencent's Keen Lab which exposed a number of flaws in Tesla Autopilot over the years, most recently by using stickers on lane markings.
Security
ZDNet
Dropbox pays out $319,300 in bug bounties for a HackerOne event in Singapore that focused on the file sharing service and its subsidiary HelloSign.
Security
SiliconaNGLE
Bitglass, which allows organizations to extend their security policies beyond their own data centers, raises $70M Series D led by Quadrille Capital.
Programming
VentureBeat
Microsoft makes developer and “canary” builds of its Chromium-based Edge browser available today for Windows 10 64-bit, says builds for macOS “coming soon”.
Privacy
ZDNet
EU starts investigation into Microsoft products used across EU institutions, after a Dutch probe found some products' hidden telemetry violated GDPR.
Privacy
The Verge
EU publishes seven guidelines for developing ethical AI applications including being accountable, sustainable, explainable, privacy-respecting, and unbiased.
Security
Android Police
14 HTC apps that were on the Google Play Store have been unpublished in the last three months, including HTC Mail and HTC Calendar.
Twitter
TechCrunch
Twitter lowers the number of accounts a user can follow per day from 1,000 to 400 to cut down on spam and bot activity.
Facebook
Facebook
As it preps for India's elections, Facebook says it removes ~1M accounts/day using AI, will open centers on election integrity in Singapore and Dublin this week.
Security
The Next Web
Bitcoin wallet Electrum hit by DoS attack with the attackers apparently directing users to download “backdoored” versions of Electrum to steal their bitcoin.
Facebook agrees to update its T&Cs in EU and clarify its use of user data to develop profiles and target advertising.
Facebook
Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic
Instagram class accounts are used by incoming freshmen to make friends and find roommates, similarly to how teens once used Facebook
Facebook
James Vincent / The Verge
Facebook is using AI to map population density around the world and is releasing new maps covering the majority of Africa.
Security
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters
Yahoo reaches a revised settlement with US and Israeli victims of its 2013 to 2016 data breach, paying out $117.5M in total to as many as 194M people.
Google
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat
G Suite now lets Dropbox users work with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides directly inside the file sharing service, following a similar Box integration.
Google
Ron Miller / TechCrunch
Google Cloud Run brings serverless and containers together.
Google
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat
Google Cloud partners with seven open-source projects, including Elastic, Redis Labs, and MongoDB, to offer fully managed services on GCP in the coming months.
Facebook
Alex Hern / The Guardian
Facebook says it will use AI to stop notifying users to reach out to deceased friends, rolls out a “tribute” section dedicated to posts made posthumously.
Security
Eduard Kovacs / SecurityWeek
Verizon is pushing updates to patch critical flaws in millions of residential routers, after the vulnerabilities were reported in mid-December.
Google
BuzzFeed News
Sources: Larry Page and Sergey Brin have yet to make an appearance at Google's weekly “TGIF” town halls in 2019, their longest absence since at least 1999.
Google
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat
Google debuts Cloud Run for open and portable serverless computing, letting devs run stateless HTTP-driven containers in fully managed serverless environments.
Privcay
Karl Bode / The Verge
White House promises to veto the Save the Internet Act, a bill to restore net neutrality and undo the FCC's 2017 repeal decision, justifying it with fuzzy math.
Google
K.G Orphanides / WIRED UK
Investigation finds games approved for kids on the Play Store with shooting and gore; Google removed 16 games after press inquiry.
YouTube
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg
YouTube says it will begin developing choose-your-own-adventure-style shows under a new unit, following the success of Netflix's “Bandersnatch” and others.
Google
Jeff Fieldhack / Counterpoint Research
51% of consumers who bought the Google Pixel 3 in Q4 2018 were previously Samsung smartphone owners, while only 18% previously owned an iPhone.
Facebook
Rob Price / Business Insider
Pirates are using Facebook's Watch Party group video-streaming feature to host movie marathons and TV watch parties, sometimes for thousands of viewers.
Programming
Nick Heath / TechRepublic
Stack Overflow's annual survey, taken by 90K+ developers this year, finds Python to be the fastest-growing major programming language, with Rust the most-loved.
Google
Tom Krazit / GeekWire
Interview with Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian on open source, AWS, working with the military, expanding Google Cloud's sales teams, and more.
Security
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica
FireEye uncovers second critical infrastructure site affected with dangerous Triton malware, which is linked to a Russian government-backed research institute.
Security
Andy Greenberg / Wired
Kaspersky researcher identifies sophisticated new spyware, dubbed TajMahal, that went undetected for five years and is from an as-yet unknown source.
Google
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch
Google announces AI Platform, an end-to-end service for building, testing, and deploying models aimed at developers and data scientists, currently in beta.
Google
Tom Krazit / GeekWire
Google announces G Suite updates: Assistant can now integrate with calendars, live captions in Hangouts Meet, and improved support for Office files.
Google
Shannon Liao / The Verge
Google says any Android device running 7.0 or later can now be used as a security key for two-factor authentication.
Google
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch
Google announces improved security tools for G Suite, including better phishing and malware detection and a new sandbox, in beta for enterprise users.
Google
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat
Google debuts Document Understanding AI in beta, a serverless platform that automatically classifies, extracts, and structures data from documents.
Google
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch
Google launches a set of plugins for IntelliJ, Visual Studio Code, and environments that aim to make building cloud-native apps easier.
Security
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat
RedSeal, which develops cyber risk modeling software for hybrid clouds, raises an estimated $60M+ from Symphony Technology Group.
Facebook
Wired
Facebook rolls out multiple changes to combat the spread of disinformation: demoting untrustworthy sources in News Feed, changes to how Groups work, and more.
Facebook
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge
Facebook debuts new blocking features and verified badges in Messenger and says Groups repeatedly sharing misinformation will reach fewer people in News Feed
YouTube
Todd Spangler / Variety
YouTube TV is raising its price to $50 per month for all customers, a 25% to 43% increase depending on their existing package.
Facebook
Nicole Lee / Engadget
Facebook again pushes back its Clear History tool, first announced at F8 2018 with a launch set for “spring 2019”, to fall of 2019.
Security
Candid Wueest / Symantec
Review of 1,500 hotels across 54 countries: ~67% of hotel websites inadvertently leak guests' booking info to third-party sites like ad and analytics services.
Google
Tony Romm / Washington Post
During a hearing, Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz continue to say big tech companies are stifling conservative speech even as experts say no evidence exists.
Google
Abner Li / 9to5Google
Google launches Currents in beta as its enterprise replacement for Google+, the second time an app has been named Google Currents.
Security
Brian Fung / Washington Post
US security concerns over Huawei highlight the lack of US-made alternatives for 5G network equipment, as Swedish, Finnish, and Chinese firms dominate the market.
Google
Tom Krazit / GeekWire
Google says Cloud SQL will support Microsoft's SQL Server later this year and that it is launching a managed service of Microsoft's Active Directory in alpha.
Privacy
Emily Chang / New York Times
The digital world is not designed to keep women safe, evidenced by the endless harassment and abuse, and any new regulation needs to keep this in mind — The digital world is not designed to keep women safe. New regulations should be. — Ms. Chang, an anchor at Bloomberg TV, is the author of “Brotopia.”
Security
Sarah Jeong / New York Times
Companies are adjusting premiums and policies for life, car, and home insurance based on new forms of surveillance enabled by tech to collect and analyze data — Some technologies are better left in the laboratory. — Ms. Jeong is a member of the editorial board.
APT (Advanced Persisten Threat)
Russian anti-virus and security software maker Kaspersky conducts frequent research that sometimes has identified state sponsored malware. One of their security researchers, Alexey Shulmin, discovered and dubbed a newly found malware TajMahal. That's not because any code signature points to a specific group of hackers. In fact, the malware has been hidden over the past 5 years on target systems, reportedly in Asia. It's conceivable that Asian nation is India but Kaspersky declined to disclose it one way or another and the TajMahal name is said to refer to a file used by the framework.
Over the day today I wrote up a quick feed scraper and parse tool that selects stories from a feed (more feeds will get mixed in relatively soon) for publishing here. This accomplishes a few things, not the least of which is I get to kick back and let content fill my website with stories that match the algorithm I wrote for it. This work is in anticipation of writing something newsy for sorting when politics heats up in 2020.
StackOverflow Programming Language Popularity
As reported by TechRepublic 90,000 developers across the globe completed the annual StackOverflow survey about which programming languages they use, relative enjoyment of those languages, and compensation. The 5-minute video summarizes the results.
Programming
CNN
MIT grad student Dr. Katie Bouman helped develop the imaging algorithm for the Event Horizon Telescope that captured the first picture of a black hole.
Programming
Gretchen McCulloch / Wired
A brief look at why most programming languages are based on English and why on a technical level it doesn't have to be that way.
Security
Carl O'Donnell / Reuters
US cybersecurity company Cofense, formerly PhishMe, says Russia-linked Pamplona Capital seeks to sell its stake in the firm by July as part of CFIUS agreement.
Security
Lily Hay Newman / Wired
Google engineer outlines the Android security team's efforts to curtail the Chamois botnet malware, which infected 20M+ devices at its peak in March 2018.
Security
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet
Security researchers disclose Dragonblood, a group of vulnerabilities impacting WiFi Alliance's recently launched WPA3 WiFi security and authentication standard.
Security
CNN
Sources: Bezos to meet with federal prosecutors, signaling an escalation of the inquiry into whether Saudi Arabia gained private information from his phone.
Security
Joseph Cox / Motherboard
DOJ charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for allegedly assisting Chelsea Manning in an attempt to crack a DOD password.
Security
Ron Miller / TechCrunch
Armis, which helps companies protect IoT devices on their networks, raises $65M Series C led by Sequoia Capital, bringing its total raised to $112M.
Twitter
John Herrman / New York Times
Millions are using deletion services like TweetDelete, raising the question: why doesn't Twitter easily let users mass-delete tweets?.
Programming
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch
Rasa, which is building an open source platform to design and manage AI chat bots, raises $13M Series A led by Accel.
Google
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch
Google's VP of Diversity Danielle Brown says she has left after joining in 2017 and will become chief people officer at payroll and benefits startup Gusto.
YouTube
Bloomberg
Sources: YouTube has introduced two new internal metrics in the past two years: total time spent on site and the murkier “quality watch time”
Google
Jordan Novet / CNBC
Uber's S-1 reveals that Uber paid Google ~$58M to use Google Maps from 2016-2018 and that Uber uses Google's public cloud in addition to AWS
Security
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch
DHS warns about a bug in VPN apps from Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Pulse Secure, and F5 Networks, which can give attackers remote access to enterprise networks — Several enterprise virtual private networking apps are vulnerable to a security bug that can allow an attacker to remotely break …
Security
NPR
Current and former US officials and business execs describe hacking and IP theft by China and why they stayed silent because of the profits to be made in trade — Technology theft and other unfair business practices originating from China are costing the American economy more than $57 billion a year …
Security
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch
Hackers claim they stole ~4K unique personnel records from sites related to the FBI National Academy Association, claim to have data from 1K+ more hacked sites — A hacker group has breached several FBI-affiliated websites and uploaded their contents to the web, including dozens of files containing …
Security
Andrea Peterson / Ars Technica
SS7, a mobile protocol that can be hacked to track users or intercept calls, remains flawed after decades due to the FCC's reliance on telecom industry advice — The regulatory back door big telecom uses to weaken security regulation. … The outages hit in the summer of 1991.
Programming
Sam Dean / Los Angeles Times
Workers in the $43B video game industry are increasingly discussing unionizing, as many grapple with “crunch” as a routine hazard of their jobs — At an industry conference for video game developers in late March, the thousands of lanyarded attendees could try new games …
Twitter
Kara Swisher / Recode
Interview with Nancy Pelosi on online privacy, net neutrality, breaking up big tech companies, and policing hate speech on social media platforms — “He's just being a freak.” — Enough people use Twitter to get their information that politicians have to be there, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says.
Facebook
Jessica Guynn / USA Today
Facebook nominates PayPal exec Peggy Alford to its board, the first African-American woman, and won't nominate Reed Hastings and Erskine Bowles for re-election — SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has nominated prominent technology executive Peggy Alford for election to its board.
Facebook
Rob Price / Business Insider
Facebook accidentally shipped tens of thousands of Oculus Touch controllers with messages like “Hi iFixit! We See You!” or “The Masons Were Here” printed inside — Facebook accidentally shipped “tens of thousands” of virtual reality (VR) controllers with bizarre hidden messages …
Privacy
Joseph Cox / Motherboard
UK court sentences Thomas White, who ran Silk Road 2 as Dread Pirate Roberts 2 and became a privacy activist after his arrest in 2014, to 5+ years in prison — For years, the arrest and case has been kept under-wraps. Friday, a court sentenced Thomas White to 5 years and 4 months for his role …
Security
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet
Gmail launches support for two new IETF-approved security standards, MTA-STS and TLS Reporting, in beta, to help thwart STMP man-in-the-middle attacks — Google rolled out MTA-STS and TLS Reporting support for Gmail servers today, April 10, 2019. — Google announced today that Gmail …
Security
TechCrunch
Naspers-owned payments company PayU acquires Wibmo, which offers payment processing and security services and operates mostly in India, for $70M — PayU, the Naspers-owned payments company that competes with the likes of PayPal but focuses mainly on emerging markets, has made an acquisition to expand its business in India.
Security
Jon Porter / The Verge
Researcher finds Facebook is testing bringing Messenger back into its main app, possibly as a first step toward integrating all of its messaging services — Facebook might be putting Messenger back into its main social media app. The feature is currently in testing and was spotted …
Facebook
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News
Facebook's transparency tool, which shows users the advertisers that used a contact list with their information, is a nightmare for a normal person to interpret — On Facebook under Settings, there's a page in the Ads section where you can view your Ad Preferences.
Google
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries / New York Times
A detailed look at how police forces use “geofence” warrants and Google's Sensorvault location history database to find witnesses and suspects near crime scenes — The tech giant records people's locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes …
Security
Brian J. Barth / The Walrus
Interview with RIM cofounder Jim Balsillie about his advocacy against the rise of surveillance capitalism in Canada and the Sidewalk Toronto smart city project — The entrepreneur who made billions putting BlackBerrys into pockets is now sounding the alarm about Big Tech's creep toward surveillance capitalism
Security
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica
An Illinois bill for banning IoT devices from collecting audio without owners' consent was substantially defanged after lobbying by the Internet Association — Lobbyists: Bill would punish even if failure to disclose was “accidental.” — On April 10, the Illinois State Senate passed the …
Facebook
Olivia Carville / Bloomberg
Facebook suffers third major outage in 2019, with all of its services down for ~2 hours on Sunday, after 24 hour outage in March, and a smaller crash in January — - Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger down for hours — Frustrated users took to Twitter to vent from across the world
Security
Ian Youngs / BBC
Intelligence agency GCHQ has cracked secret codes hidden by the man behind cult comedy character Frank Sidebottom. Chris Sievey drew cryptic symbols in artwork around the borders of some of Frank's fan newsletters, football programmes and record and tape sleeves.
Facebook
Dami Lee / The Verge
Facebook rolls out dark mode for Messenger globally, after previously hiding it behind an Easter egg that required users to send a moon emoji to get the feature — It's official now — Facebook Messenger's dark mode is rolling out to globally today, as announced on Facebook's product blog.
Google
Parmy Olson / Wall Street Journal
Sources: Google is quietly disbanding a UK panel to review use of AI in health care after panel members chafed at lack of info, authority, and independence — Panel members in U.K. chafed at lack of information access, authority and independence from Google
Security
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet
Since mid-February, hacker Gnosticplayers has posted 932M+ user records from 44 companies, including 500px and UnderArmor, on dark web marketplace Dream Market — Hacker Gnosticplayers has stolen over 932 million user records from 44 companies. — A hacker who spoke with ZDNet in February …
YouTube
Chris Welch / The Verge
YouTube showed a link and description of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as part of its fact checking, underneath live streams of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire — A fire has broken out at the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral today, and as you'd expect, many news networks are offering live coverage of the breaking situation.
Security
Janko Roettgers / Variety
Starz apologizes for “inadvertently” issuing DMCA takedown notices for tweets to stories merely reporting about TV show leak, says it suffered a security breach — Facing a backlash over overzealous copyright enforcement, Starz issued an apology for inadvertently taking down tweets to articles about TV show piracy Monday.
Twitter
Karissa Bell / Mashable
Despite publicly pausing verification, Twitter has verified 10,000+ accounts in recent months but withheld the privilege from anyone without backchannel access — Jack Dorsey's mother and father, the '80s band Whitesnake, a “war room” associated with Donald Trump's reelection campaign …
Twitter
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News
Source: Twitter left up tweets threatening Rep. Ilhan Omar's life, which would typically be removed once reported, so law enforcement could investigate them — Twitter left up tweets threatening Rep. Ilhan Omar's life over the weekend so law enforcement could investigate them, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Google
Sameer Samat / Android Developers Blog
Google outlines new Android developer relations policies, says it will take more time to review apps by developers that don't yet have a track record — Thank you for all the feedback about updates we've been making to Android APIs and Play policies. We've heard your requests for improvement as well as some frustration.
Facebook
Wired
Interviews with 65 current and former employees on the meltdown inside Facebook over the last 15 months as the Cambridge Analytica scandal unfolded — Scandals. Backstabbing. Resignations. Record profits. Time Bombs. In early 2018, Mark Zuckerberg set out to fix Facebook.
Facebook
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch
Facebook will discontinue P2P payments in Messenger in the UK and France on June 15; the service will remain active in the US — Facebook is pulling away from its ambitions to provide peer-to-peer money transfers via Messenger in Europe. Today, the company announced that it would be discontinuing …
Google
Megha Mandavia / The Economic Times
Sources: Indian government has asked Apple and Google to take down TikTok from their app stores, following a Madras High Court order to ban the app — MeitY's order will stop further downloads, but people who already the app will be able to still use it. — BENGALURU: Google and Apple …
Programming
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch
Leapwork, which develops a process automation platform that can be used by non-technical staff, raises $10M Series A led by DN Capital and e.ventures — Most work involving computers is highly repetitive, which is why companies regularly have developers write code to automate repetitive tasks.
Google
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet
Mozilla executives reflect on how Google web products would often break in Firefox but not Chrome and on other issues perceived as anti-competitive tactics — Former and current Mozilla engineers are reaching their boiling points. — A former high-ranking Mozilla executive has accused Google …
Programming
Kate Clark / TechCrunch
Zoom raises its IPO list price to $33-$35 ahead of Thursday debut and says it will sell $100M in Class A shares to Salesforce Ventures at IPO price — Zoom, the developer of video conferencing software, plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ZM” at between $33 and $35 apiece, per an updated S-1 filing.
Facebook
NBC News
About 4,000 pages of leaked Facebook documents from 2011-2015 shed light on its approach to sharing and selling data, giving more access to friendly companies — Facebook's leaders seriously discussed selling access to user data — and privacy was an afterthought.
Google
Chris Otts / WDRB
Louisville, KY mayor says Google Fiber will pay the city $3.84M to repair damage to city streets after the company abandoned the Louisville market — LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) - As Google Fiber prepares to pull the plug on Louisville customers tonight, the tech company has agreed …
Twitter
Twitter
Twitter to test option to hide a tweet's replies in June, suspends 3x more abusive accounts reported within 24 hours than last year, relies less on user reports — We want people to feel safe on Twitter. Last year, we shared that building a Twitter free of abuse, spam and other things …
Google
Reuters
Google has removed the popular video app TikTok from its Play Store in India to comply with a state court's directive — NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Google has blocked access to the hugely popular video app TikTok in India to comply with a state court's directive to prohibit its downloads …
Security
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat
HP unveils new commercial laptops and workstations launching in May and June that will include its new AI-based malware protection software called HP Sure Sense — HP hopes to bring much-needed security to laptops and workstations with its HP Sure Sense technology, which uses artificial intelligence …
Google
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google
Google Pay adds Gmail importing for automatically adding movie tickets, loyalty cards, coupons, airline boarding passes, and more from your inbox — Back in February, it was spotted that Google was testing out a new feature for Google Pay which would import data from Gmail automatically.
Google
Dieter Bohn / The Verge
Google announces support for Signed Exchanges in Chrome, which will show the original, correct URL for a page in the address bar for AMP pages.
