Your Facebook Pokes Are Stored For Two Days, Then Their Encryption Keys Are Deleted  —  Facebook Poke messages self-destruct after a few seconds. but is Facebook saving these potentially embarrassing photos and videos?  No. It's deleting them.  Pokes are encrypted, and Facebook deletes …

The New York Times Paywall Is Working Better Than Anyone Had Guessed  —  The New York Times instituted a paywall on its website last year, a controversial move that has yielded great results.  —  Ever since the New York Times rolled out its so-called paywall in March 2011, a perennial dispute has waged.

Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption  —  Amazon, the great disintermediator that put a spanner — in fact, a set of 25 spanners in a handy case, yours for just $9.99 — in the businesses of many a retailer, is going to face exactly the same fate if it doesn't start to address its weaknesses soon, particularly in the area of publishing.

Exclusive: Hacker nabs 3m Verizon customer records  —  Summary: UPDATED: A hacker has acquired more than 3 million Verizon customer records — but leaks only 10 percent of them, after the phone and broadband giant fails to fix a security flaw.  Updated at 8:00 p.m. ET: Verizon spokesperson …

Google Chrome 25 will disable silent extension installation, kill all such extensions retroactively  —  Google on Friday announced that it is changing its stance for silently installing extensions in its browser.  As of Chrome 25, external extension deployment options on Windows will be disabled …

Google finds its design voice on iOS  —  From the beginning, Google's design sensibilities on the web and Android have been unique.  Whether you were a fan of the spare, utilitarian feel of products like Search or not, you knew when you were looking at something built by Google.

United States and Russia establish joint action plan to combat piracy  —  The United States and Russia have established an agreement to work together to fight intellectual property violations.  As specified in the Intellectual Rights Protection Action Plan, Russia has agreed to shut down infringing websites …

Flickr offers three months of free Pro access to new and existing users  —  Flickr, the popular photo-sharing service owned by Yahoo, has given an early Christmas present to all users, offering three months of its Pro service for free.  Pro accounts generally cost $24.95 per year and offer …

Mozilla backpedals on Firefox 64-bit for Windows, will keep nightly builds coming after all  —  Last month, Mozilla Engineering Manager Benjamin Smedberg quietly announced that the 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows would never see the light of day.  After what he referred to as …

Instagram Reversal Doesn't Appease Everyone  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service.  But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying through on plans to leave.