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

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

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

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:

Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot — GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.

Will Reed:

The best sales leaders aren't job hunting. Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach. — Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.

Zoho:

Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan — Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Sources:

Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Great Chat:

The launch industrial complex

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Big Technology Podcast:

Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Training Data:

Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI

Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.

Subscribe to Training Data.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:00 PM ET, August 16, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.