Judy’s Tech News Digest

YouTube + Google+ = Trouble for Google

In an exceedingly unpopular move, Google is requiring YouTube commenters to sign in with their Google+ account in order to comment on a video.

Officially, this is Google’s attempt to try to control the oftentimes ‘not nice’ or irrelevant comments left anonymously by some pretty nasty people.  The idea is that if you have a Google+ account, your identity is known and there is no more anonymous comments.   Making people identify themselves will not dissuade many of them from posting nasty comments.  Never mind the fact that you can set up a Google+ account with a fake identity.

Many YouTube users see this as a further attack on their privacy and a not-so-veiled attempt to get more people to create Google+ accounts.

Even one of YouTube’s co-founders, Jawed Karim, expressed his unhappiness in a post on his YouTube account — “why the [expletive] do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?”

A petition asking Google to rescind the Google+ account requirement has already garnered nearly 145,000 signatures so far.

Snapchat Doesn’t Snap Up Billion Dollar Offers

First, there was Facebook’s $3 billion offer that Snapchat turned now.  Now, Google is rumored to have offered a whopping $4 billion to buy Snapchat.   Snapchat said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ again.

Snapchat, founded by a group of Stanford undergrads, has been around for about two years.  Available on both Android and iOS devices, it is a mobile photo and video sharing service.  Users can take photos and record videos, annotate them with text and drawings and send these ‘snaps’ to a controlled list of recipients.  What sets Snapchat apart from other photo and video sharing services is that the user decides how long, from one to ten seconds, recipients can view their Snaps.   After the time has expired, the Snap is hidden from the recipient’s device and deleted from the Snapchat server.  Snapchat now offers ‘Snapchat Stories.’  These snaps will disappear 24 hours after it’s first posted.  In any case, no worries about a prospective college or employer seeing some pictures or videos you’d rather they not see.

While Snapchat has seen its user base grow significantly over the last two years, how does a company with no revenue turn down billions of dollars?  Mind boggling.

404 is ‘Top Word’ of 2013

In its 14th annual global survey of the English language, the Global Language Monitor announced that ‘404’ is the Top Word, ‘Toxic Politics’ the Top Phrase and Pope Francis the Top Name of 2013.

The top ten words for 2013 are:
1. 404
2. fail
3. hashtag
4. @pontifex
5. The Optic
6. surveillance
7. drones
8. deficit
9. sequestration
10. emancipate

404 is the near-universal numeric code for failure, typically a ‘page not found’, on the Internet. ‘404 fail’ is used to identify the complete failure of an effort or project. Kind of sad that 404 and fail are the top words for the year. Last year wasn’t much better with apocalypse being the top word of the year.

 Smartphone Games Addiction Leads to Trouble Downstairs?

Taiwanese doctors have warned that men who are glued to their smartphones all hours are at risk of suffering erectile dysfunction. According to a report on WantChinaTimes, increasing numbers of men in their 20s are visiting urologists with ailments more commonly suffered during middle to old age.

The report details the woes of one particular young couple who consulted Dr. Wang of Kaohsiung Medical Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital complaining of a problem under the sheets. Dr. Wang told the paper that the man is in good heath and his addiction to smartphone games is the main cause of his erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Wang’s prescription: turn off the phone and quit smoking. The result: the man’s condition has reportedly improved greatly – what could be described as a happy ending.

Microsoft Updates its Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit

Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) is a utility designed to help IT Professionals and users prevent attackers from successfully exploiting software vulnerabilities.

EMET enables users to manage security mitigation technologies such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Mandatory Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Structured Exception Handler Overwrite Protection (SEHOP), Export Address Table Access Filtering (EAF), Anti-ROP, and SSL/TLS Certificate Trust Pinning, to help protect computer systems from new or undiscovered threats.

EMET 4.1 release includes new functionality and updates, such as:

• Updated default protection profiles, Certificate Trust rules, and Group Policy Object configuration.
• Shared remote desktop environments are now supported on Windows servers where EMET is installed.
• Improved Windows Event logging mechanism allows for more accurate reporting in multi-user scenarios.
• Several application-compatibility enhancements and mitigation false positive reporting.