Techmeme: Explainer: How Google's New SSL / HTTPS Ranking Factor Works (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

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August 16, 2014, 12:00 PM

Top News

Heise:

GCHQ's “HACIENDA” program completed full port scans targeting 27 countries — NSA/GCHQ: The HACIENDA Program for Internet Colonization — Translations of this article are available in German, French, Italian and Spanish. — Since the early days of TCP …

More: IETF Datatracker, tum.de, Gigaom, PC World and The Register

Tweets: @fredericjacobs, @kashhill, @ioerror, @ashk4n and @cyberwar

Rémi Rousseau / Medium:

Surgeon uses synchronized GoPros to record surgery, Oculus Rift to play it back for students — Virtual surgery gets real — What the Oculus Rift could mean for the future of medecine — Technological innovation takes time : virtual reality has been a thing in the medical field …

More: SlashGear, Mashable and Road to Virtual Reality

Barton Gellman / Washington Post:

Spyware tools allow buyers to slip malicious code into YouTube videos, Microsoft pages — CloudShield Technologies, a California defense contractor, dispatched a senior engineer to Munich in the early fall of 2009. His instructions were unusually opaque. — As he boarded the flight …

More: The Citizen Lab, The Intercept, Digital Trends, The Verge, The Register and Gizmodo

Tweets: @csoghoian, @anonyops, @thomas_drake1, @youranonnews, @ciphersuite, @dangillmor, @evacide, @dangoodin001, @kaepora, @ashk4n and @csoghoian

Mike Williams / BBC:

UK Premier League warns about posting goal videos, says it's developing tech to find violators — Premier League warns about posting goal videos online — The Premier League has told Newsbeat they're going to clamp down on fans posting unofficial videos of goals online.

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:

Explainer: How Google's New SSL / HTTPS Ranking Factor Works — Last Thursday, Google launched a new ranking signal to give HTTPS sites a ranking boost, a small ranking boost, to encourage webmasters to migrate their sites from HTTP to HTTPS. — In our story from Thursday …

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

Germany recorded John Kerry, Hillary Clinton phone calls ‘by accident’ — Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor, Hilary Clinton, were both caught up in German spy efforts, says a new report. According to German weekly Der Spiegel, the country's foreign intelligence agency …

More: Associated Press, Reuters, Europe, Guardian and RT

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

BBM for Windows Phone comes out of beta — BlackBerry today released BBM for Windows Phone, finally removing the beta tag. You can download the app now directly from the Windows Phone Store. — The company explains that the version 1.01 release fixes a number of bugs and makes performance improvements …

More: Inside BlackBerry, Softpedia News, PhoneDog.com, TruTower, Windows Phone Central, MobileSyrup.com, WinBeta and WMPoweruser

Josh Ong / The Next Web:

Google buys city guides app Jetpac, support to end on September 15 — Google has acquired the team behind Jetpac, an iPhone app for crowdsourcing city guides from public Instagram photos. — The app will be pulled from the App Store in coming days, and support for the service will be discontinued on September 15.

More: Jetpac, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Engadget, VentureBeat, Tnooz, 9to5Google and Reuters

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Kevin Rose Steps Into Part-Time Role At Google Ventures To Build A New Startup Called North — Serial entrepreneur, investor, and overall Internet good guy Kevin Rose is stepping down from his role of general partner at Google Ventures. The Digg and Revision3 founder will be moving into a part …

More: Re/code, Valleywag, VentureBeat, bizjournals, Business Insider and The Next Web

Tweets: @kevinrose, @kevinrose, @evelynrusli, @dondodge, @qthrul, @summertomato, @kevinrose, @alexalbrecht, @davemcclure and @pinboard

Thanks:@kylebrussell

Richard Harper / Inside Microsoft Research:

Microsoft says WindUp, their Snapchat-like app, is for noncommercial, research purposes only — WindUp: Researching Patterns of Content Creation and Exchange — Given erroneous press reports about our research, as the lead for a Microsoft Research project called WindUp, I want to clarify our project's objectives.

More: Tech Times, Forbes, TruTower, Engadget, Neowin, TechnoBuffalo, SlashGear, MobileSyrup.com, WMPoweruser, Digital Trends, CIO.com, ITProPortal, Pocketnow, Gizmodo and Neowin

Tweets: @msftnews and @tomwarren

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple adds key Vice Presidents, more diversity to executive leadership page — Apple today has expanded its Executive Leadership Team to include notable Apple Vice Presidents. The team shown on Apple's official PR Bios website now includes Vice President of Special Projects Paul Deneve …

More: Fortune, ReadWrite, Mercury News, Daring Fireball, Business Insider, iDownloadBlog.com, Cult of Mac, MacRumors, App Advice, iMore, MacDailyNews, MacNN and iLounge. Tweets: @markgurman. Thanks:@allegrotechie

Josh Lowensohn / The Verge:

Latest audit on two Chinese Apple suppliers finds labor, health violations — Apple says it's made “meaningful improvements” since the 2013 inspections. — A new report from the Fair Labor Association (FLA) on two facilities run by of one of Apple's manufacturing partners has found numerous violations …

More: Fair Labor Association, TechCrunch, MacRumors, TechnoBuffalo, Reuters, MacDailyNews, iLounge, AppleInsider, iMore, 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog and Electronista

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