TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: Your Time On Facebook rolls out, revealing how much time you waste in the social network’s mobile apps. “It is a little while — over three months, in fact — since Facebook said that it was planning to launch a tool that would give users some insight into the amount of time they spent using the social network. This tool is now rolling out.”

Yikes! TechCrunch:
Tumblr booted from App Store due to child porn . “Tumblr’s app was booted out of the iOS App Store a few days ago due to an issue with child pornography getting its way past the app’s filtering technology, according to a report from CNET, which Tumblr then confirmed.”

I am shocked at how quickly Microsoft updates have turned into a tire fire. From Ars Technica: Now it’s Office’s turn to have a load of patches pulled. “On November’s Patch Tuesday two weeks ago, Microsoft released a bunch of updates for Office to update its Japanese calendars. In December 2017, Emperor Akihito announced that he would abdicate and that his son Naruhito would take his role as emperor. Each emperor has a corresponding era name, and calendars must be updated to reflect that new name. The Office patches offer updates to handle this event. Two of these updates, KB2863821 and KB4461522, both for Office 2010, are apparently very broken, causing application crashes.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Completely Wipe a Hard Drive. “There is data on your hard drive that you want to get rid of. Perhaps the computer is about to be sold or donated to charity; maybe you just want to ensure the data on the drive is totally erased before you use it yourself. Whatever the case, you can delete the drive in Windows using native or third-party tools.” DBAN is great if you can’t use the sledgehammer method.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: Facebook Is Testing Auto-Responses For Live Video And Some Of The Suggestions Are Offending People. “Facebook appears to be testing a new tool that prompts users to comment on live video streams — including those involving sensitive situations like shootings and sexual assault — using suggested text and emojis.”

The Next Web, included here for sheer weirdness: Student discovers copycat stalker imitating her Instagram account . “A Scottish college student apparently discovered a classmate had been imitating her pictures on Instagram, to an eerie degree. According to a now-deleted Facebook post, a woman named Chloe Cowan and her sister spotted the copycat, allegedly a fellow student named Honey Basra. The latter would apparently recreate Cowan’s photos, down to the clothes she was wearing and the caption.” This may be a hoax.

Bloomberg: Alphabet Chairman Struggles With Google CEO’s China Strategy. “Alphabet Inc. Chairman John Hennessy is unsure about a banner strategy of the company’s most-important executive. Hennessy said he’s not confident Google will be better off bringing a censored search engine to China — a key goal of Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Russian hacking tool gets extra stealthy to target US, European computers. “Russian hackers have a new tool up their sleeve to gain access to sensitive computers without getting caught, cybersecurity experts say. And they’re using it to target US and European government entities, as well as a former territory of the Soviet Union.”

Haartez: Israeli Archivists Fume Over Wikimedia Israel’s Reposting of Historical Photos Trove. “The Association of Israeli Archivists has roundly condemned Wikimedia Israel, the local affiliate of the U.S. foundation that runs Wikipedia, for copying into its photo archive 28,000 photographs taken in pre-state Israel. In a statement Tuesday, the archivists accused Wikimedia Israel of being ‘thieves in the night’ and said the move may violate intellectual property rights and general ethical norms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Axios: Exclusive poll: America sours on social media giants. “Silicon Valley has a big and growing problem: Americans have rising concerns with its most popular products and a growing majority wants big social media companies regulated, according to new poll conducted by Survey Monkey for ‘Axios on HBO.'” Good afternoon, Internet…

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