Yael Grauer says, “If you’ve been relying on password meters to determine how strong your passwords are, we’ve got some bad news. Their strength measurements are highly inconsistent and may even be leading you astray, according to a new study from researchers at Concordia University: In our large-scale empirical analysis, it is evident that the commonly-used meters are highly inconsistent, fail to provide coherent feedback, and sometimes provide strength measurements that are blatantly misleading. Researchers Xavier de Carné de Carnavalet and Mohammad Mannan evaluated the password... [...]

David Nield says, “Since it launched to the public at the end of 2005 (the very first video is still online), YouTube has come to dominate online video in a way that few businesses manage to dominate anything on the Web. Today, it boasts more than a billion users, who are uploading more than 300 hours of video every minute and generating billions of views every single day. So far, so rosy—but YouTube isn’t exactly the home run that these figures might suggest it is, and it’s facing increasing pressure from all sides. Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that YouTube was... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “WhatsApp doesn’t want to be a platform. Co-founder Brian Acton, on a panel Wednesday at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, made that very clear. Unlike its sibling service Messenger, which has started courting outside developers and businesses, all that matters to WhatsApp is that the service remain stable, simple and unfettered for its worldwide audience of 100 million monthly active users. That matters to parent company Facebook too, but likely for different reasons. WhatsApp—which sold to the social network last year for $19 billion dollars—offers an interesting... [...]

Signe Brewster says, “If you are interested in sharing a video across the Web, you probably start by uploading it to YouTube or Vimeo. Facebook wants in on that action, and as of today allows videos uploaded to the site to be embedded elsewhere. During an F8 keynote address Wednesday, product marketing manager Deborah Liu announced anyone can now grab the embed code from their Facebook videos. “This dramatically increases the potential reach of your content,” she said. But not anyone’s ability to make money from video. Upload a clip to YouTube and you can get paid based on... [...]

Matt Asay says, “Cloud computing now totals nearly $20 billion, but not everyone shares equally in those cumulus riches. According to a new Synergy Research report, Amazon Web Services dominates the cloud with 28% of the overall market, with Microsoft Azure making gains but still commanding just 10% of the market. And while that AWS lead isn’t as hefty as it once was, the cloud market clearly seems to be settling into the Haves, mainly comprised of AWS and Microsoft, and the Have Nots, which includes everyone else. A Big Market Getting Bigger For years we had to guess at how big the cloud... [...]

Lauren Orsini says, “Amazon has launched a visually dominant storefront for showcasing exclusive products. Called Amazon Exclusives, this Pinterest-like image grid allows users to browse through products from paddleboards to patterned Mary Janes that are only for sale on Amazon. “Amazon Exclusives is comprised of sellers that have chosen to sell their products only on the Amazon Marketplace and through their own websites and physical stores,” the company wrote, and other than that, the products have little in common. The grid display appears to have been chosen order to encourage browsing... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “Looked at one way, Google is an online advertising company with a lot of peripheral—and mostly not-very-profitable—side businesses in mobile devices and Internet service. Looked at another, it’s an ambitious-bordering-on-crackpot technological innovator that just happens to make its money from ads. Google, of course, prefers the latter characterization. So it wasn’t any big surprise when Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of product, took the stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday to offer some insight into Google’s mindset and clues... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “A landmark vote Thursday morning by the Federal Communications Commission ruled in favor of upholding net neutrality. In other words, Internet providers will not be permitted to slow, block or prioritize online traffic in exchange for fees. And they are not too happy about this. “The action that we take today is an irrefutable reflection of the principle that no one, whether government or corporate, should control free and open access to the internet,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said regarding the decision, which will, for the first time, apply net neutrality protections... [...]

Lauren Orsini says, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol, known colloquially as HTTP, has been the foundation of the Web’s data communication since 1999, but its age is beginning to show. Now the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has just announced the completion of HTTP2, set to be the first major update to the protocol in 16 years. Mark Nottingham, chair of the IETF HTTP Working Group, announced the news Tuesday. Once HTTP2 goes through an editing process at the IETF, it will be approved and published as a Web-wide standard protocol. Here’s what this means for users”. Everything You... [...]

Lauren Orsini says, “Pinterest has lowered the hammer on affiliate links—a way for social-media users to make a small commission in return for recommending a product. Ostensibly, the move helps keep the site tidy. But unsurprisingly, money is also involved. According to an email many pinners received Thursday, Pinterest is removing all affiliate links on “pins,” the Pinterest term for a image-centric post. The pins themselves will remain live, but Pinterest is officially encouraging users to find other means of making money on the visually oriented social network. Pinterest has... [...]