The big news was that there are bugs in modern computer processors - dubbed Meltdown & Spectre - that allow programs to steal passwords and other sensitive data. Almost every computer produced in the past 20 years is affected. Chip manufacturers, OS makers, Cloud computing sellers and web browser developers - Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, ARM, Mozilla, RedHat and others - have released security patches, or at least discussed how their hardware, software or services might be affected. This issue is still developing, and I’m sure there will be more updates in the coming weeks.
There were some smaller updates as well:
- Google My Business Listings can add video.
- All existing paid YouTube channels and videos have been made private. Individual purchased videos will be available through January 1, 2023.
- Google+ has started two free learning series: #CommunityExperts for Community Moderators and #CreateConnections for improving your posted content.
And if you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check out my 2017 year in review.
Image: The Winter’s Festival by Willard Metcalf (1913), Public Domain
Upcoming:
- 8 January: Google+ Community Experts: Azlin Bloor on How to sustain long term success in your Google+ Community
- 9 January: Google Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout
- 12 January: Google Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout
YouTube and Video Creation
- Meet the YouTube Contributors (LightCode Gaming)
- How To Deal with the "Have Win Apple iPhone X Get it From :- t.co/****" SCAM (The Lady from UNCLE)
- YouTube Algorithm Questions Explained by YouTube Employees (Creator Insider)
- Apple joins Google, Facebook and others in group pushing for efficient mobile video (Engadget)
- Logan Paul, and the toxic prank culture that created him, explained (Vox)
- Logan Paul’s Video Is a Cautonary Tale for Platforms That Hope AI Will Save Them from Offensive Content (Technology Review)
Go Live
- Streamlabs OBS — Livestreaming Reinvented (Streamlabs)
- Millions shared New Year’s Eve moments with friends and family on Facebook Live (Facebook Media blog)
Google+
- Google+ #CreateConnections: Monika Fuchs on creating better travel Collections
- Google+ Moderators: Learn from #CommunityExperts (Rachel Bakker)
- Google+ in perspective: 2017 updates (Leanne Osborne)
Other social media
Google Photos and Mobile Photography
- Flickr: Your Best Shot Group Closing soon (Flickr Blog)
Google for businesses
- Videos finally come to Google My Business listings (Colan Nielsen)
- Google Makes 14 Changes to the Review Guidelines (Joy Hawkins)
- How to optimize your Google My Business listing (Sherry Bonelli @ Moz)
- Google is considering selling off Zagat (The Verge)
- Google Maps reviews of forest Logan Paul visited are filled with insensitive suicide jokes (Daily Dot)
Bloggers and Webmasters
- "Fix" Insecure Website warnings caused by Nuffnang ads on your Blogger blog (Irsah InDesigns)
AdSense and advertising
- Why ad earnings are lower for most publishers in January (ezoic)
Hangouts and Messaging
- Google is investigating Pixel 2 XL voice messaging bug affecting WhatsApp, Allo, and Telegram (Android Police)
Made by Google, Android, Project Fi
- Google Home and Assistant now work with more than 1500 smart home devices from 200+ brands (Android Police)
- Meet Project Fi: A phone plan from Google (YouTube Playlist)
Productivity
- New Google Calendar web UI to begin automatically upgrading users on January 8th, 2018 (G Suite Updates)
- Chrome for Android Update: Chrome 63 (Chrome Releases)
- Stable Channel Update for Chrome OS: Chrome 63 (Chrome Releases)
- Geocoding and Routing improvements added to Bing Maps (Bing Blog)
Privacy and Security
- Further protecting users from deceptive or confusing inline installation on Chrome (Chromium Blog)
- "Meltdown" and "Spectre" processor vulnerabilities affect 20 years worth of devices
- Meltdown and Spectre: Here’s what Intel, Apple, Microsoft, others are doing about it (Ars Technica)
- Official site from the researchers who discovered the vulnerabilities
- Relatively non-technical explanation of Meltdown (pwn all the things)
- Detailed technical background from Google's Project Zero
- Chrome: Protect Yourself from the Spectre Vulnerability in Chrome (Mashable)
- Internet Explorer & Edge: Mitigating speculative execution side-channel attacks in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer
- Firefox: Mozilla Security Blog: Mitigations landing for new class of timing attack in Firefox
- Intel responds to security research findings
- AMD: An update on AMD Processor Security
- ARM: Vulnerability of Speculative Processors to Cache Timing Side-Channel Mechanism
- Google: mitigation status for Google products
- Google Cloud: What Google Cloud, G Suite and Chrome customers need to know about the industry-wide CPU vulnerability
- Google Cloud: Answering your questions about “Meltdown” and “Spectre”
- Amazon Web Services: Processor Speculative Execution Research Disclosure
- Apple: About speculative execution vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs (Apple)
- Microsoft: Windows 10 update which is not compatible with all anti-virus software
- Microsoft Azure: Securing Azure customers from CPU vulnerability
- RedHat Linux: Kernel Side-Channel Attacks
- VMWare security advisory: VMware ESXi, Workstation and Fusion updates address side-channel analysis due to speculative execution
More around the web
- Artwork Personalization at Netflix (Netflix Tech Blog)
- Meet “raw” water—ludicrously priced unfiltered water with random bacteria (Ars Technica)
- The leading lobbying group for Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech giants is joining the legal battle to restore net neutrality (ReCode)
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Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy