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Finding the dog pictures you want on Flickr just got easier
Flickr is finally catching up to the likes of Google Photos and Google Search. Now when you check out Yahoo's photo sharing site you can find all manner of visually similar pictures just by clicking the "..." button on an image. From there, you should find relevant and, as the name suggests, similar photos to what you had in mind. Yahoo explains that this uses computer vision to achieve its results. There's a lot in that post to digest, but the key takeaway is that with time, it'll get better at delivering the bloodhound photos you're craving. And if you want to try using Yahoo's Locally Optimized Product Quantization for your own sorting techniques, it's open source. Get crackin'!
Yahoo hackers accessed 32 million accounts with forged cookies
In a regulatory filing, Yahoo revealed some additional details about data breaches that have affected over a billion accounts. Among that information is the news that hackers who obtained Yahoo's code and were able to create their own cookies were able to access 32 million accounts through 2015 and 2016. Additionally, the 10-K statement provided to the SEC says that Yahoo notified 26 individuals and consulted with law enforcement after it became aware that state-sponsored hackers had exploited its account management tool for access.
Verizon will pay $350 million less for Yahoo
Despite two massive security breaches, which affected over a billion user accounts, Verizon still wants to make Yahoo its own. Early reports suggested that the carrier has been seeking to reduce its $4.83 billion offer by $250 million, but the two parties announced today that they have agreed on the slightly higher figure of $350 million.
Verizon reportedly reduces its Yahoo offer by $250 million
Verizon's $4.83 billion Yahoo acquisition could end up costing closer to $4.6 billion, Bloomberg reports. The discount comes after two high-profile Yahoo hacks came to light last year, which affected more than a billion user accounts. Earlier reports suggested Verizon could be seeking $1 billion off the acquisition price, and that was before Yahoo revealed its second (and even larger) data breach in December.
Yahoo can scan your emails to tell you who's calling
Yahoo has added two new features to its Mail app, helping users both easily identify phone numbers linked to email contacts and instantly sync photos from their camera roll to their desktop mailbox. The first new addition to Mail -- imaginatively named Caller ID -- recognizes familiar numbers, matching them to their corresponding email contact information. Conveniently, enabling the feature also updates previously dialed numbers in your call history, even adding in the contact info as you dial a recognized number.
SEC probes Yahoo's response to billion-user hack
The SEC has this thing about companies keeping secrets, especially if those secrets could hurt investors. Yahoo, meanwhile, suffered two significant hacks in recent years, but dragged its feet in telling everyone about them. So it should be no surprise that regulators are now apparently investigating the moribund company to determine any wrongdoing.
Marissa Mayer to resign from Yahoo's board of directors
Marissa Mayer has been virtually synonymous with Yahoo ever since she took the helm, but things are about to get a bit muddier now that the Verizon's acquisition is near closing. Yahoo has announced that Mayer, co-founder David Filo and four other people are resigning from the company's board of directors once Verizon officially takes control. According to the SEC filing, it's "not due to any disagreement" with how the business is run -- it's just that Yahoo will technically be considered an investment company once the buyout wraps up, and doesn't believe it needs more than five people on its board after that.
The year of Yahoo's undoing
It's not often that we're able to quantify the crappiness of a particular year, but Yahoo's 2016 was so tragic that it ended with a hefty, widely publicized price tag: $1 billion. That's the size of the discount that Verizon requested on its purchase of Yahoo, just three months after the $4.83 billion acquisition went public. That deal (and the discount) is still in the works, and it's expected to close early next year, but Verizon clearly feels it has the upper hand in negotiations. And, after Yahoo's year of hacking disclosures, government spying and security issues, it's easy to see why.
The Engadget Podcast Ep 20: I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
It's the last episode of the year and host Terrence O'Brien is closing things out with managing editor Dana Wollman and reviews editor Cherlynn Low. After looking at the biggest winners of 2016 last week, the crew is taking on the biggest losers. That means exploding phones, shady medical startups and trolls galore. Plus the standings for Flame Wars are finalized ahead of CES, so get ready 'cause things might get real weird next week.
The biggest losers of 2016
Last week we broke down the biggest winners of 2016. This week, we're taking a look at the biggest losers. Yahoo has clearly had one of the worst years in history for a company. And, unless something changes soon, this whole mess with the NSA and 1.5 billion hacked accounts could become the problem of Engadget's parent company Verizon. So, there's that. Of course there was Samsung's parade of exploding gadgets and Twitter... well, Twitter just couldn't seem to get its act together. It's now known as the platform of choice for trolls and white supremacists as much as it is for forcing you to distill complex thoughts into 140-character fragments. Of course, between the explosion of fake news and the continued hostility towards the science of climate change, the biggest loser of 2016, might just be the American public. Check out all of Engadget's year-in-review coverage right here.
The Engadget Podcast Ep 18: We Both Go Down Together
Managing Editor Dana Wollman and Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar join host Terrence O'Brien to talk about the biggest tech stories of the week. First Dana and Devindra debate the value of Amazon's delivery drones and Google's... I mean Alphabet's new self-driving car company, Waymo. Plus they discuss the privacy freakout surrounding Evernote. Then all three will dig into the never ending security failures of Yahoo. Now that the company has admitted that over 1.5 billion user accounts were compromised -- and didn't say a word about it for over 2 years -- will Verizon still go through with its planned buy out? The panel certainly hopes not.
Yahoo confirms new security breach affecting over one billion accounts
Yahoo just revealed that in August 2013, someone stole data linked to more than one billion accounts. Back in September, the company announced a 2014 security breach affecting some 500 million users, however, it believes these two incidents are "likely distinct." Additionally, the company says that it believes the same hackers from the 2014 breach dug into its code and figured out how to forge cookies to target specific accounts. It has invalidated the forged cookies and notified holders of the accounts they were used to access in 2015 or 2016.
Nearly half of Flickr's photo uploads come from smartphones
It's no secret that Flickr is popular with phone-toting photographers, but it's now reaching a tipping point. The Yahoo-owned image service has posted its year in review, and it notes that 48 percent of photo uploads now come from smartphones. That's a big jump over the 39 percent from 2015 -- it's now clear that you're in the minority if you uploaded shots from a dedicated camera. The numbers for conventional cams aren't exactly pretty.
Yahoo Answers Now is a standalone app for iOS
Yahoo Answers has been the butt of many jokes for a long time now. But if you enjoy browsing through all the amusing questions people submit and tend to reply to some yourself, you'll love the latest update out of the company's HQ: Yahoo Answers now has a standalone iOS app. According to TechCrunch, it was previously known as Yahoo Hive, which has been lying low on the App Store since the summer. Its launch is likely an attempt to challenge newer, shinier Answer rivals like Quora. It's also the latest in the list of mobile apps Yahoo released this year.
Yahoo admits some staff knew of 2014 hack
As Yahoo attempts to piece together how a hacker accessed 500 million user accounts back in 2014, the company has now admitted that some employees knew of a security breach when it happened. In a filing with the SEC, Yahoo said that while it only disclosed news of the attack in August, a "state-sponsored actor" had accessed its network two years ago but it didn't quite know the extent of the damage at the time.
Yahoo brings all its bots together in one app
Yahoo has quietly introduced a new app called Yahoo Bots, as recently spotted by VentureBeat. The application, available for iOS and Android, acts as a hub to connect you with all of the company's virtual assistants. You'll find bots that provide information from Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance, and more could be added in the future. Meanwhile, Blitz helps Fantasy Football players research their team and manage it, as well as get real-time stats, player news and personalized roster recommendations. If you want to check it out, Yahoo Bots is a free download from the App Store or Google Play.
Search for classic GIFs in the Internet Archive's new collection
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Internet Archive has created a special treat for its visitors: an utterly enormous number of GIFs culled from the original social network, GeoCities. Fittingly, the new collection is dubbed the Geocities Animated Gif Search Engine or GifCities for short. It features a whopping 4,500,000 animated GIFs from the classic internet era of the mid '90s. Even though Yahoo shut down the service in 2009, each of these GIFs links back to its originating page via the Wayback Machine -- just as with the National Archive's collection.
Yahoo's latest transparency report reads like tonedeaf fluff
Following all the trouble it has had lately, Yahoo has released its annual transparency report. Globally, the firm had 20,511 data requests, with almost half of them coming from the United States government (9,408). This doesn't tell the entire story, though. The company also issued a "users first" outline that reads like little more than PR fluff. "Our users place their trust in us, and we take seriously their privacy and our role in promoting freedom of expression," the report reads. "Our commitment to and concern for your privacy, security and freedom of expression are demonstrated in our users first approach to government activities." Sure, Yahoo.
Artificial intelligence won't save the internet from porn
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." -- United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart In 1964, the Supreme Court overturned an obscenity conviction against Nico Jacobellis, a Cleveland theater manager accused of distributing obscene material. The film in question was Louis Malle's "The Lovers," starring Jeanne Moreau as a French housewife who, bored with her media-mogul husband and her polo-playing sidepiece, packs up and leaves after a hot night with a younger man. And by "hot," I mean a lot of artful blocking, heavy breathing and one fleeting nipple -- basically, nothing you can't see on cable TV.
Lawmakers demand answers from White House over Yahoo emails
Four dozen members of the US House of Representatives, acting as a bipartisan bloc, have requested that the Obama Administration brief them on allegations that Yahoo improperly scanned user emails at the behest of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
