Russia has approved a “Google Tax” for app stores. “Russia’s Federation Council has approved a law requiring foreign companies to pay value added tax (VAT) of 18 percent on online content, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday. The Finance Ministry predicts that the new law will bring in no less than ten billion rubles ($156 […]
Facebook, which earlier this year balked at restoring a user’s Facebook account even after he provided his real passport, has now let a hacker take over another user’s account using a fake passport. And not only that, most of the passport information was 100% wrong. “Facebook’s automated response informed the hacker that if he couldn’t […]
Facebook is tweaking its news feed. Again. “Facebook announced on Wednesday it’s changing its News Feed to prioritize friends and family over news organizations, a shift that will cause referral traffic to publishers to decrease. The change was announced in a blog post addressed to Facebook users Wednesday that said users are ‘worried about missing […]
Google+ is five years old, and TechCrunch brings a bit of the snark. “The number of those who still love the service fell quickly after those heady days of the summer of 2011. Google did so many things right; the design was great (and used what were, at the time, really advanced web technologies) and […]
Twitter has suddenly realized that small businesses exist, and in response has launched Twitter Dashboard. “Similar to Twitter Engage, the idea with Dashboard is effectively to serve as a more personalized, custom destination and app for a specific group of Twitter users — this time, small to medium-sized businesses. While larger corporations will likely continue […]
A new Web site aims to catalog all the voice commands you can use with Google Now. “Kitze, whose website is now No. 1 on Product Hunt, says he got annoyed whenever he saw posts that offered a ‘complete list of Google Now commands.’ That’s when he decided to take matters into his own hands […]
What happens on the Web in one minute? New stats are available. “According to the latest “Data Never Sleeps” report from Domo, published this week, in a single web minute, 159,380 pieces of content are viewed on Buzzfeed, Google translates 69.5 million words and Apple’s Siri handles 99,206 requests. Data levels are rising because of […]
Meanwhile, Google’s research in image recognition is getting better and better. “This week is the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Las Vegas, and Google researchers have several accomplishments to present. They’ve taught computer vision systems to detect the most important person in a scene, pick out and track individual body parts and describe […]
Things I admit I don’t think about much: HowSocial Media Has Changed the Landscape for Editorial Cartooning. “I stood frozen in front of my computer, watching my Twitter feed roll like a slot machine reel. My editorial cartoon criticizing then-presidential candidate Ted Cruz for his decision to have his 7-year-old daughter read from the script […]
Pinterest continues its pivot towards commerce with visual search. “On Tuesday, the San Francisco startup previewed a deep-learning-assisted visual search feature that it hopes will encourage even more shopping. With it, you will eventually be able to snap photos of objects around you—a cool-looking T-shirt worn by someone who breezes past you, for instance—or even […]
The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) has released its digital archive for 1913-1923. “Included in this multi-media archive … are match reports, photographs, film footage and administrative records from the revolutionary decade of 1913-1923. The archive also contains an online museum with bespoke videos showcasing key artefacts from the period.”
Google has launched a new “My Activity” page. “Google has had tools to view your account history for a while, but this new page called My Activity is one of the most comprehensive timelines we’ve seen yet. Here, you can see which sites you visit, what devices you used, which apps you’ve used, and which […]
Evernote is changing its pricing plans. “Beginning today, the prices for our Plus and Premium tiers will change for new subscriptions, and access from Evernote Basic accounts will be limited to two devices. Current subscribers and Basic users who are using more than two devices will have some time to adjust before the changes take […]
A Google researcher has ripped multiple strips off Symantec for the insecurity of its products. “Researcher Tavis Ormandy has spotted numerous vulnerabilities in 25 Norton and Symantec products that are “as bad as it gets,” he says. ‘Just emailing a file to a victim or sending them a link to an exploit is enough to […]
A new strain of ransomware wants to stop you doing unsafe things on the Internet. “A new ransomware (eduware?) called EduCrypt was discovered by AVG security researcher Jakub Kroustek that tries to teach its victims a lesson about ransomware. Like other encrypting malware, EduCrypt will encrypt a victim’s files, but instead of demanding a ransom, […]