TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: Russia completes successful test of national internet alternative. “Russia has announced the successful test of its national internet alternative – Runet. According to Tass, the exercises were held on December 23 and aimed to ensure the stability of the network.”

BetaNews: Windows 7 users will still get updates to Microsoft Security Essentials when the OS is out of support. “It’s now mere weeks until Windows 7 is no longer supported by Microsoft. When January 14, 2020 rolls around, the end date for support will have been reached, and Microsoft is keen for people to upgrade to Windows 10 to avoid having insecure computers that don’t receive updates. But not all security updates are being dropped. Having previously said that Microsoft Security Essentials would no longer receive updates when Windows 7 support ends, the company has indicated that updates will in fact continue to be released.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Use Instagram’s New Layouts Mode. “A brand-new Instagram update has finally added a much-requested feature to the app: Users can upload a collage of multiple photos in a single Instagram story and use a new ‘Layout’ mode to create more engaging story posts.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ThePrint: In 2020, Google will have to wrangle the beast it created with Youtube. “As 2020 begins, the largest online video service is being dragged deeper into political fights over privacy, copyright and content moderation. In response, YouTube is trying to preserve the sanctity of its status as an online platform with little liability for what happens on its site. Instead, that burden is increasingly falling on the shoulders of regulators, video creators and other partners.”

Fashionista: Is It Even Possible To Be A Sustainable Influencer?. “A small yet growing contingent of sustainable fashion influencers are questioning if ‘merching’ runs counter to their social and environmental ethos. Some, like [Ellie] Hughes, are shunning brands for their own closets or thrift-store finds. Others, like writer-stylist Aja Barber (@ajabarber), derive their revenue primarily through membership-based platforms like Patreon, where fans can donate to access exclusive content. One influencer, Hannah Neumann (formerly @lifestylejustice), even quit Instagram to establish a fair-trade factory in the Philippines. More may be wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of touting clothing or shoes people don’t necessarily need, even if they don’t talk about it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: A Twitter app bug was used to match 17 million phone numbers to user accounts. “A security researcher said he has matched 17 million phone numbers to Twitter user accounts by exploiting a flaw in Twitter’s Android app. Ibrahim Balic found that it was possible to upload entire lists of generated phone numbers through Twitter’s contacts upload feature. ‘If you upload your phone number, it fetches user data in return,’ he told TechCrunch.”

Billboard: Labels & Publishers Win $1 Billion Piracy Lawsuit Against Cox Communications. “Cox Communications was found liable for the piracy infringement of more than 10,000 musical works by a U.S. District Court jury in Virgina on Thursday (Dec. 19), awarding $1 billion statutory damages to plaintiffs Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: AI achieved a score of 185 on the English written exam of the National Center Test For University Admissions in 2019. “The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT, CEO: Jun Sawada) took the English written exam of the 2019 National Center Test for University Admissions and achieved high marks of 185 points (64.1 T-score).”

Technology Networks: Celebrating One Million Records: An Open-access Database for Clinical Geneticists . “ClinVar has announced the submission of the one-millionth record to its open-access database. The millionth submission was published on Friday, December 20, 2019, a milestone achievement for providing open access to human variant data with asserted consequences to the clinical genetics and research communities.”

Wired: ‘Boomerspeak’ Is Now Available for Your Parodying Pleasure . “In 2019, young people learned how to talk like boomers. It showed up in tweets (‘why do boomers all have such a strange relationship with capitalization and punctuation’), on Reddit (‘On my first ever Facebook post to a friend’s wall, I signed my name like some kind of boomer’), and people who type ‘ok boomer’ as “O.K., Boomer.” There’s a Facebook group where people pretend to be boomers, which consists of typing things like ‘say hi to Joe and the kids for me,,, love! You.’ ” Good afternoon, Internet…

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