The United Nations is not having an especially good week. Aside from watching U.S. Congressional Republicans vote down U.S. ratification of an international treaty meant to protect the rights of those with …

Facebook Shares Data On Family Interactions

In time for the winter holidays and family gatherings, Facebook on Thursday released a collection of data trends it has amassed about how self-identified family members use the world’s largest social network to communicate.

The trends were released in a post on Facebook’s Data Science page, which in early November released data trends about Facebook usage during the 2012 U.S. election.

Fugitive John McAfee Arrested, Blogs From Jail

Updated 3:30 p.m. ET, Thursday, December 6

Retired antivirus software pioneer turned international fugitive and murder suspect John McAfee was arrested in Guatemala City on Wednesday evening and is currently being detained by authorities there for illegally entering the country, according to Reuters and McAfee himself, who has apparently managed to finagle a computer from a charitable guard to resume his blogging about his strange, recent life as an exile.

McAfee, 67, has since November 11 been sought by authorities in Belize for questioning in the murder of Gregory Faull, a man described as McAfee’s neighbor in the country.

What Instagram’s Twitter Block Means

The popular photo-sharing app Instagram on Wednesday confirmed it pulled support for a sharing feature on another social network, Twitter, resulting in Instagram photos appearing cropped or improperly displayed when posted to Twitter.

Soon, those photos will disappear entirely from Twitter and be replaced with links, as the company confirmed, though users will still be able to post links to Instagram photos to Twitter.

The move drew condemnation from tech circles, as the two social networks used to work harmoniously with each other.

Arctic Suffered Record Ice Losses In 2012, NOAA Report Card Finds

The Arctic had a record year in 2012 — and not in a good way.

The region, located above the Arctic Circle, or 66 degrees north latitude, suffered record low snow cover and sea ice, while at the same time seeing warmer-than-average sea temperatures, increased green space and vegetation growing seasons, and a boom in Sun-driven plankton production, according to an annual report card from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released online Wednesday.

“The Arctic is changing in both predictable and unpredictable ways, so we must expect surprises,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator, in a statement at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. “The Arctic is an extremely sensitive part of the world and with the warming scientists have observed, we see the results with less snow and sea ice, greater ice sheet melt and changing vegetation.”

MapBox Sells Custom Satellite Imagery From NASA, NAIP

If you want to see the world, MapBox has you covered — for a price. The Washington, D.C.-based company that allows users and other businesses to design and publish their own digital maps, on Tuesday announced the launch of MapBox Satellite, a beautiful, easily customizable, new satellite imagery layer that spans the globe, which can now also be used in its customers’ maps.

The imagery is currently available only through MapBox’s paid service plans, though, which start at $5 per month and include other features such as cloud storage and multiple thousands of map loads, or the ability have many users visit the map.

Still, MapBox anticipates major uptake of its new MapBox Satellite imagery, as CEO Eric Gundersen told TPM via email.

Offline Android Maps Just Start Of Skobbler’s Ambitious Roadmap

German digital mapping company Skobbler in late November made what seemed, by its own admission, a nonsensical move: It released a paid maps app, ForeverMap 2, specifically for Android devices.

Sure, Skobbler offers something many other maps don’t — fully downloadable, or cached, map data, for offline use. But that will set users back a few pennies, starting at $0.99 to get a selected city, all the way up to $9.99 for the full world map (state, country and continent levels are priced accordingly in between).

“There are very good arguments against it being sensible to act the way we did,” said Skobbler co-founder Marcus Thielking, in a phone interview with TPM.

NASA Voyager 1 Hits New Region At Solar System’s End

We knew this day would come: NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, today still traveling away from Earth at a rate of 35,700 miles-per-hour, has entered into a new region of space at the end of the solar system, NASA announced on Monday.

“We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space,” said Voyager’s longstanding project scientist, Ed Stone, who has been in charge of the mission of the spacecraft and its identical twin Voyager 2 since their launches, in a statement published Monday by NASA. “Our best guess is it’s likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn’t what we expected, but we’ve come to expect the unexpected from Voyager.”

Facebook Gives Users One Week To Vote On Abolishing Future Voting

Facebook on Monday invited users to vote on proposed changes to its terms of use and data usage policies, for what the website hopes will be the last time ever.

That’s because among the proposed changes to what Facebook refers to as its “governing documents,” which include its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (terms of service) and its Data Use Policy, is one that would do away with such future voting opportunities on website-wide changes.

Facebook gave users one week to vote on the changes here beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern on Monday. Voting ends at 3 p.m. Monday, December 10, 2012.

The Daily Fails Like Many Expected It Would

What can be learned from the demise of The Daily? News Corporation announced on Monday that the iPad publication will shut its digital doors on Dec. 15, less than two years after Rupert Murdoch hailed it as a “model for how stories are told and consumed in this digital age.”