We work on the Internet and are constantly consuming information. There's a lot of it out there. We'd forget it if we didn't write it down someplace…
Visual Lizard's blog covers everything from web standards to the muppets, from php to comic books to music, just about anything we find interesting
In March, many Android users were shocked to discover that Facebook had been collecting a record of their call and SMS history, as revealed by the company’s data download tool. Now, internal emails released by the UK Parliament show how the decision was made internally. According to the emails, developers knew the data was sensitive, but they still pushed to collect it as a way of expanding Facebook’s reach.
The focus is on bug fixes and security, so none of them introduce major new features.
With Chrome 71, Chrome will filter experiences on websites that fall under Google’s definition of abusive. These include web experiences that aren’t just limited to ads, such as auto-redirects that happen without any action from a user or trick-to-click experiences like a warning notification that actually leads to an ad or another website’s landing page. Sites that are reported to have abusive experiences will be given a 30-day grace period to clean up their behavior before every ad on the site is blocked.
Windows Central is reporting that Microsoft is developing a new Chromium browser for Windows 10 under the codename "Anaheim", and that it will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. Their sources "wish to remain anonymous".
A Google spokesperson this afternoon issued an official statement confirming Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet will be made available for regular users. Hangouts "classic" is reported to be shutting down “eventually.” The company is “fully committed to supporting classic Hangouts users” until a ‘succesful’ migration to the new services.
Abraham Riesman scored an interview with Olivia Jaimes, a mysterious cartoonist who’s resurrected the venerable strip “Nancy” for the 21st century.
Today Google is launching Flutter 1.0, the first stable release of its open source, cross-platform UI toolkit and SDK. Flutter lets developers share a single code base across Android and iOS apps, with a focus on speed and maintaining a native feel. The announcement was made today at Google's Flutter Live conference in London - a show dedicated entirely to the launch of Google's new developer track.
Internet providers will not be required to forward notifications that include any of the prohibited content. Any notices that include settlement offers, requests for payments or links to requests for payment fall outside the boundaries of legal notices and do not need to be forwarded as ISPs will not face any penalties for failing to forward such notices.
Google introduces reCAPTCHA v3, their newest API to helps you detect abusive traffic on your website without user interaction. Instead of showing a CAPTCHA challenge, reCAPTCHA v3 returns a score so you can choose the most appropriate action for your website.
IBM and Red Hat executives announced Monday that IBM is acquiring the open source software and cloud services company in a $34 billion cash deal.
When was a word first used in print? You may be surprised! Enter a date below to see the words first recorded on that year.
Safari Tech Preview 68 supports Dark Mode, and Safari 12.1 might support it in a few months too. The prefers-color-scheme query supports three values: dark, light, and no-preference.
The trackers send periodic "silent notifications" to the apps you've installed, and if the apps are still installed, they ping the trackers' servers. If they don't hear back from you, they assume you've uninstalled the apps.
Starting from tomorrow, a random selection of US Firefox users will be offered a subscription to ProtonVPN. VPNs provide protection and privacy from network eavesdroppers and have become particularly popular by users of public Wi-Fi hotspots in cafes, airports, hotels, and so on.
By YouTube channel UX Live.
A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions.
Web browsers are due for a breakthrough. We’ve been waiting for one, since the introduction of Chrome. So, what’s next? What can make web surfing more fun and efficient? Julius Gehrig and Julius Sohn, creators of a Refresh browser concept, have come up with some ideas.
Several years ago media sites began firing writers en-masse to hire video people instead, because Facebook and other social media companies told them that this was the future. "Pivoting to video," some called it. But what Facebook actually delivered was "fraudulent" analytics. Advertisers slowly figured out the videos weren't being watched. Facebook lied about it for a while. Then it apparently admitted it. Then the media sites started firing the video people too.
"Think about the fact that there are people who would rather you wear techbro horse blinkers than build workspaces with quiet, private spaces for you to get your work done." - Chris Hartjes
The case arises due to a right-to-be-forgotten complaint (a complainant wants search results referencing news articles they say are outdated, inaccurate, and disclose sensitive information removed from the Google search index), but the court is not being asked whether the current law includes a right-to-be-forgotten. Instead, the very application of Canadian privacy law to Google search is at stake.
Photoshop for iPad won’t arrive until some time in 2019, but when it does launch it will differ drastically from Adobe’s current lineup of Photoshop-related iOS apps. Rather than focusing on an individual subset of desktop features, like Adobe’s existing Photoshop Fix, Express, and Mix do, the aim with this forthcoming app is to provide the full desktop Photoshop experience on an iPad.
"You can listen to the MP3s you may have at home, but also to the cloud, to podcasts, to streaming radio stations, [and] to a playlist you perhaps have built," Alexandre Saboundjian, the CEO of Radionomy, was quoted as saying. "People want one single experience. I think Winamp is the perfect player to bring that to everybody. And we want people to have it on every device."
"People can check whether they were affected by visiting our Help Center. In the coming days, we’ll send customized messages to the 30 million people affected to explain what information the attackers might have accessed, as well as steps they can take to help protect themselves, including from suspicious emails, text messages, or calls."
It's titled "Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair," co-authored with Sasha Haco, Malcolm J. Perry, and Andrew Strominger, about the black hole information paradox.
"Everyone can enjoy the fact that ARMv8.3 makes JavaScript faster. Comp sci nerds can further enjoy the fact that we now have CPUs being optimized for a specific weird programming language and not the other way around."
Sans Forgetica works by a learning principle called desirable difficulty, which is where an obstruction is added to the learning process in order to promote deeper cognitive processing which results in better memory retention.