Jason Koebler from Motherboard argues "we should replace Facebook with personal websites." An anonymous reader shares the report: As a freshman in high school, in the year of our lord 2002, I made a website called "Jason's Site." While a website named after myself and devoted to updates about my own life was unspeakably vain for the time, it was also quite forward looking: The site has a news feed, an "about me" page, and an email mailing list for people to receive updates. I intended for it to be funded by reader donations. It had a section for Flash videos and photos, a guestbook, and a "friends" page that was literally a list of my friends. It had an ill-advised but nonetheless prescient "hot or not" section that featured photos of my friends and acquaintances and predated both Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's original idea for the social network, called "FaceMash." I updated the site regularly and obsessively for about three months, and then never returned to it. The site was embarrassing then and is embarrassing now, but abandoning it was a terrible mistake. Facebook gets a lot of credit for "disrupting" social media and for turning MySpace into a worthless piece of garbage, but millions upon millions of teenagers and young adults were already sharing every aspect of their lives on other social networks, and on their own websites. Facebook had the good fortune of being new, slightly different, and exclusive. It was even luckier to come to power shortly before the rise of the smartphone. I guess what I'm saying is that Facebook isn't really all that much better or more convenient than having your own website, or sending emails or chats. But for some reason, Facebook (and Instagram) are where we post now. Facebook has of course become something much larger than a single website, and has, despite its flaws, "helped connect the world" for better or worse. But Facebook tapped into a trend that was already happening -- it didn't invent the idea of letting people put stuff about their lives online, it just monetized it better.

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Judge issues unexpected ruling, saying all prisoners in Lula's situation should be freed while appeals are under way.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Work four days a week, but get paid for five? It sounds too good to be true, but companies around the world that have cut their work week have found that it leads to higher productivity, more motivated staff and less burnout. "It is much healthier and we do a better job if we're not working crazy hours," said Jan Schulz-Hofen, founder of Berlin-based project management software company Planio, who introduced a four-day week to the company's 10-member staff earlier this year. In New Zealand, trust company Perpetual Guardian reported a fall in stress and a jump in staff engagement after it tested a 32-hour week earlier this year. Even in Japan, the government is encouraging companies to allow Monday mornings off, although other schemes in the workaholic country to persuade employees to take it easy have had little effect. Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC) is pushing for the whole country to move to a four-day week by the end of the century, a drive supported by the opposition Labour party. The TUC argues that a shorter week is a way for workers to share in the wealth generated by new technologies like machine learning and robotics, just as they won the right to the weekend off during the industrial revolution.

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The State Department says it had informed the US Congress of plans to sell a Patriot missile package to Turkey.

Washington responds to a 'wide range of malign activity' including interference in the 2016 presidential vote.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma fired a shot at the United States in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. An anonymous reader shares a report: Ma was asked by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin about the U.S. economy in relation to China, since President-elect Donald Trump has been talking about imposing new tariffs on Chinese imports. Ma says blaming China for any economic issues in the U.S. is misguided. If America is looking to blame anyone, Ma said, it should blame itself. "It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said. "It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way." He said the U.S. has wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home. To be sure, Ma is not the only critic of the costly U.S. policies of waging war against terrorism and other enemies outside the homeland. Still, Ma said this was the reason America's economic growth had weakened, not China's supposed theft of jobs. In fact, Ma called outsourcing a "wonderful" and "perfect" strategy. "The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization," Ma said. "The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they've made tens of millions -- the profits they've made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together. ... But where did the money go?"

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Uncle Davey's remedy for all your end-of-year Facebook woes. New rule requires Facebook to peer with the open web so people who are not on Facebook can communicate with people who are. All or nothing is the real problem. Lots of precedent. AT&T had a monopoly over phones for a long time. If you wanted to make phone calls you had to use one of their devices. That rule changed and the rest is history. The technology is easy. There are plenty of people at Facebook who want to do it.

The new Office for Environmental Protection will have similar enforcement powers to EU regulators.

US Central bank raises the benchmark interest rate for a fourth time this year and lowers projections for future hikes.

Tens of thousands of sensitive EU documents hacked allegedly by China's People's Liberation Army, firm says.

Russia's Putin warns new missiles could be built after Trump declares he is pulling out of a nuclear weapons treaty.

Mohammed al-Jadaan says the kingdom wants to be 'disciplined, efficient and pro-growth' after budget announcement.

Country's most popular blogger is among many who may face deportation from Poland after failing to receive asylum.

Earlier this week, a former Microsoft Edge intern alleged that Google deliberately introduced bogus changes to YouTube to break the functionality of the video portal when users on Edge and other browsers tried to access the website. Google today denied the allegation. From a report: Google disputes Bakita's claims, and says the YouTube blank div was merely a bug that was fixed after it was reported. "YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when theyâ(TM)re discovered," says a YouTube spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies, the Web Platform Tests project, the open-source Chromium project and more to improve browser interoperability." In a statement, Microsoft said, "Google has been a helpful partner and we look forward to the journey as we work on the future of Microsoft Edge."

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Microsoft has been looking for ways to simplify the way users log into Office and find their documents via its Office.com portal. On December 19, the company is taking another step in this area by introducing something it's calling simply the Office app for Windows 10. ZDNet: This new Office app is the successor to the existing "My Office" app that's already available to Windows users. Starting today, Windows Insider testers in the Fast ring can download this new app to test it and it will roll out to all Windows 10 users "soon," officials said. My Office allows users to find and install all their Office 356 subscription-related components from a single place. It allows users to view and edit their recent documents, find tips, see their subscription benefits and more. The coming free Office for Windows 10 app can be used in conjunction with any Office variant -- Office 365 Commercial, Office 365 Consumer, a perpetual version of Office (like Office 2016 and 2019) or the web-based Office Online.

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