afternoonbuzz

Installers, Google Drive, XP, More: Friday Afternoon Buzz, May 2, 2014

I have needed this in the past! Lifehacker shares a useful trick for downloading the full installers for Firefox and Chrome, instead of the web-based installers you get by default. If you have to do tech support and installs somewhere the broadband is marginal, web installers are so frustrating! Someone needs to aggregate full-installer links.

Yahoo is abandoning Do Not Track. “As of today, web browser Do Not Track settings will no longer be enabled on Yahoo. As the first major tech company to implement Do Not Track, we’ve been at the heart of conversations surrounding how to develop the most user-friendly standard. However, we have yet to see a single standard emerge that is effective, easy to use and has been adopted by the broader tech industry.”

From the always-awesome Amit Agarwal, how to Set an Auto-Expiry Date for Shared Files and Folders in Google Drive.

Interesting! Using Instagram to clean up abandoned bikes in New York.

Microsoft has released a patch for the Internet Explorer security vulnerability, and despite XP having passed its end-of-life date has also patched that operating system. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I think that making end-of-life dates firm will mean they’re taken more seriously. On the other hand, XP is still on a very significant number of desktops, and that can’t be ignored.

Facebook has added four new APIs to help unearth hot content. “The APIs — Trending, Topic Insights, Topic Feed, Hashtag Counter — will allow media companies working with Facebook development partners to better discover public content and display it on air or online.”

Tech companies are increasingly letting users know about government data requests. “Fueling the shift is the industry’s eagerness to distance itself from the government after last year,s disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance of online services. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google all are updating their policies to expand routine notification of users about government data seizures, unless specifically gagged by a judge or other legal authority, officials at all four companies said. Yahoo announced similar changes in July.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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