TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Marketing Land: Bing rolls out ‘Sportscaster’ Messenger bot for March Madness. “Just in time for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, Bing has launched a ‘Sportscaster’ Messenger bot to help fans stay updated on their favorite teams, players and game schedules.”

Hongkiat: New Chrome 57 Reduces Power Consumption for Background Tabs . “With the release of Chrome 57, Google’s own web browser has gotten a slew of new features such as support for CSS Grid Layout and the addition of the new ‘Media Session API’. However, perhaps the most useful addition that comes with Chrome 57 has to be its power management system.”

CNET: Google vows to change ad policy after boycotts in UK. “Google is rethinking some of its advertising policies after coming under fire in the UK. Some advertising customers in the UK have pulled ads from Google-owned YouTube after some of them reportedly appeared alongside inappropriate and extremist content. The list of clients includes the British government and big brands in the UK, such as the Guardian newspaper.”

Reuters: French ad group Havas says only UK unit pulling adverts from Google . “French advertising group Havas said on Friday that it would not pull advertising from Alphabet Inc’s Google platforms on a global basis, after its British business suspended activity with the U.S. company over concerns about its YouTube website.” Only the UK unit is pulling ads.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads. “I’ve sat back and witnessed the development of Windows 10 and appreciated the speed of new feature releases, but it seems there’s a price to pay for this new ‘Windows as a service’ world. Microsoft has gradually been infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads. The first emerged on the lock screen as ‘tips,’ and then there was the bundling of Candy Crush with the OS, and now Microsoft has started blasting notifications into the task bar and File Explorer.”

Gizmodo: YouTube’s Restricted Mode Is Hiding Some LGBT Content. “Anyone who’s ever visited YouTube and ventured into the comments knows that the site struggles with how to deal with offensive content, and now it seems one of its content filtering features might have gone a bit too far. Over the past few days, several LGBT vloggers have accused YouTube of hiding their material through the ‘Restricted Mode’ feature.” Other channels, including gamers and an ASMR channel, are also reporting that they’re being filtered on restrictive mode.

From Financial Times – and I was able to read it without registration: Vietnam targets multinationals in social media censorship drive. “Vietnam is pressing high-profile multinationals to stop advertising on YouTube, Facebook and other sites in an aggressive effort to force digital media companies to censor political content. Businesses including Ford, Unilever and Yamaha Motor have been caught up in the crackdown by Hanoi’s communist rulers on internet postings by foreign-based dissidents and other critics.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Krebs on Security: Google Points to Another POS Vendor Breach. “For the second time in the past nine months, Google has inadvertently but nonetheless correctly helped to identify the source of a large credit card breach — by assigning a ‘This site may be hacked’ warning beneath the search results for the Web site of a victimized merchant.”

This popped up in my Google Alerts, and I don’t think I’ve never seen this before. From the United States Ninth Circuit Court: Watch recording for case: David Elliott v. Google Inc., No. 15-15809. It’s about half an hour and the video is on YouTube as well as embedded on the page. The “United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit” YouTube Channel has what looks like hundreds of videos.

New York Times: Social Media Attack That Set Off a Seizure Leads to an Arrest. “When the journalist Kurt Eichenwald opened an animated image sent to him on Twitter last December, the message ‘You deserve a seizure for your posts’ appeared in capital letters along with a blinding strobe light. Mr. Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, has said he immediately suffered a seizure. On Friday, the F.B.I. said it had arrested and charged a man for sending the electronic file, though the agency did not immediately release the suspect’s name or specify the criminal charges.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: ​Google works to make JPEG graphics smaller but not sucky. “Google thinks it’s found a better way to compress JPEG. In research published Thursday, it details technology called Guetzli that cuts JPEG file sizes by 35 percent in its testing. The idea isn’t to replace JPEG, but tweak its settings to minimize the likelihood we’ll notice problems when files are squeezed.”

The New York Times: How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It. “One secret to longevity as a pundit is to issue predictions that can’t be easily checked. So here’s one for the time capsule: Two hundred years from now, give or take, the robot-people of Earth will look back on the early years of the 21st century as the beginning of a remarkable renaissance in art and culture.” Good morning, Internet…

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