Today is Social Media Day. Are U celebrating?
Month: June 2012
Instagram down due to severe electrical storms
Instagram tweets that it is down due to severe electrical storms, which had hit Northern Virginia yesterday. Instagram’s cloud servers are based in Northern Virginia via Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.
It’s the same service that’s used by Netflix and Pinterest reports Business Insider.
Facebook, Twitter effecting the way we socialize
According to this very interesting news, published in the Global Post, social networking platforms Facebook and Twitter are making teenage girls come across as more aggressive. Language employed by the users (consumers) of social media is becoming shorter, sharper and more “to the point,” Marie Clair, from Britain’s Plain English Campaign says. As a result, the many teenage users have less time to deliberate carefully over their words, and can come across as curt, straightforward and even aggressive when speaking to one another and adults. The change is more noticeable in girls than boys because they communicate more frequently, Clair has said.
Social media have effected the way we socialize and communicate. Not too much, but yes, much has been written about how social media is effecting our language and social skills, our behavior and interactions with others.
English actor and film director Ralph Fiennes has also said that social media like Twitter is eroding our modern language and diluting it “so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.”
A teen in socialtimes writes – “it irritating that many teens cannot go for longer than ten minutes without checking their Facebook pages before having withdrawal symptoms, but it is even more frustrating when they can’t even go half as long as this without mentioning the site”.
As per another Guardian report in March this year, reported a research finding that – People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly. This research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships. The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site’s public walls and changed their profile pictures more often.
In a recent survey in India it was found there is a considerable increase in young people using social media platforms like twitter and facebook. Twitter pushes individual to discover new words and acronyms of their own, to fit in 140 characters, which requires mental maths to decode the message and hence a new language which is point to point. Carol Craig, a social scientist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, said young people in Britain were becoming increasingly narcissistic and Facebook provided a platform for the disorder.
A number of other studies have also linked narcissism with Facebook use, but this is some of the first evidence of a direct relationship between Facebook friends and the most “toxic” elements of narcissistic personality disorder.
In its research site Microsoft writes, “a large portion of language found in user-generated content is in the Informal English domain — a blend of abbreviations, slang and context specific terms; lacking in sufficient context and regularities and delivered with an indifferent approach to grammar and spelling”. (In context of organizing a workshop)
Twitter drops partnership with LinkedIn
Since 2009, Twitter and LinkedIn has worked together on allowing users of the professional social network to publish tweets to their LinkedIn profiles. This two and a half year partnership is being dropped by Twitter says a LinkedIn Blog Post.
Twitter consumer product chief Michael Sippey wrote in a post on Twitter’s developer blog that the changes were part of a move to deliver a “core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools.”
Twitter has been gradually moving to push out partners who display tweets on their websites, but those efforts have been primarily focused on mobile clients, where Twitter’s been emphasizing its own offerings.
Users will still be able to post updates on LinkedIn and broadcast those updates to Twitter, but content-sharing won’t go the other way. To do this – Compose your update, check the box with the Twitter icon, and click “Share.” This will automatically push your update to both your LinkedIn connections and your Twitter followers just as you’ve been able to do previously.
What’s bizarre, though, is that Twitter just upgraded its own Facebook app, which crossposts tweets to users’ Facebook profiles—exactly what LinkedIn has been doing, with Twitter’s blessing, since 2009.
Meebo to shut down on July 11
That’s the News. Meebo full set to shut down on July 11.
Meebo is a consumer internet company reaching approximately half of the US Internet population. Meebo Bar is its flagship product, which provides publishers a way to connect their websites with social network sites like facebook. It also helps users build their own web experiences around the things that interest them the most.
Meebo’s product will be folded into Google’s current offerings to improve chat and integrate with the Google+ social platform.
Meebo was founded in 2005, and is headquartered in California. On 4 June 2012, Meebo in its blog disclosed that Google Inc. will be buying the company.
A Car for the Blind
Named as the Da Vinci of Humanoid Robots, Dr. Dennis Hong is busy designing a car for the blind. (name given by Washington Post)
Motivated by the long-term goal of providing blind people the opportunity to perform a variety of everyday activities independently and safely, Hong decided to start by designing a car for the blind.
In a Ted talk on 4 March 2011 Dr. Hong shared the design behind the car. It would use robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools. It’s not a “self-driving” car, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed, proximity and route – and drive independently.
A range of equipment and tools will enable a blind driver to determine his or her environment, surrounding objects (both moving and stationary) and speed. Some of these include a pair of gloves that sends messages to a driver and various video cameras that produce specific sounds based on what is captured on film.
While Dennis Hong’s innovative technology does not make it legal for the blind to drive on the roads, it represents a tremendous breakthrough in the quality of life for those who are visually impaired.
Dennis Hong is Associate Professor at Virginia Tech, is the founder of ROMELA (Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory) at the University. He is the first person of Korean descent to speak at the world renowned TED conference. It was Star Wars which planted a sci-fi seed in him as a child, which eventually led to a full grown reality.
Wimbledon, London 2012 Olympics on Facebook – Courtesy BBC
The BBC has begun streaming live sporting events on Facebook, the biggest tie-up to date between the social-networking site and an international broadcaster.
The application launched on Thursday, with live coverage from the Wimbledon tennis championships.
During the Olympic Games, the BBC will run 24 simultaneous streams in addition to the main BBC channels.
Users outside the UK will not be able to access the feeds. The service used the same “geo-IP blocking solution” to limit access as other offerings, such as the iPlayer, the BBC said. It added that users must have a TV licence to legally watch the material.
Other international broadcasters, such as NBC, have set up alternative streaming services – the US broadcaster has teamed up with YouTube to provide live coverage on NBCOlympics.com.
Users are able to share information about what they are viewing with their friends, as well as discuss the action with other fans via a live-chat feature. Information about what other Facebook friends have been watching appears alongside the video feed
The app, which is in beta test mode, is currently providing up to six simultaneous streams of Wimbledon tennis matches.
Targeted advertising, not controlled by the BBC, will appear to the right of the app in line with the Facebook-wide layout. The BBC does not make money from the arrangement.
However, during the Olympics these adverts will be removed due to restrictions put in place by the International Olympic Committee.
More details about the service have been explained in a blog post.
‘Favourite moments’
Facebook said the BBC’s coverage would be added to its London 2012 portal which it announced earlier this month.
“We are really pleased that the BBC has chosen to bring its legendary sports coverage to Facebook,” a spokesman said.
“Watching major events such as Wimbledon and the Olympic Games is a naturally social activity.
“Now viewers within the UK have the ability to share their favourite moments with friends and to discuss the action live as it unfolds.”
Phil Fearnley, general manager for BBC News & Knowledge, said the app would create a “distinctive live-streaming experience” for viewers.
“We hope to use it to test the benefits of social viewing, as part of our ambition to deliver more innovative and transformative experiences to sports fans,” he said.
The BBC said there were no plans as yet to bring other live events, such as news, to the social network.
(source: BBC)
Smile factor in Google Nexus 7
Time for Nexus 7, the second in the Nexus series and the 1st Tablet in the series. So its smile factor is the purpose it is best at – gaming, watching video, reading e-books.
Nexus 7 has been built by ASUS, and is powered with a NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 quad-core processor with gaming in the mind. Pages load fast; game is smooth, responsive; running multiple apps is cool. 1 GB Ram and 12‐core GPU delivers rich and immersive graphics while patented 4-PLUS-1(tm) CPU design gives you processing power when you need it, and battery saving efficiency when you don’t. – Smile.
It runs of the latest Android Operating system – Android 4.1, Jelly Bean. Android is already the leader in smartphone operating systems. Smile now.
The tablet enjoys a 7 inch wide screen with stunning clarity on 1280 x 800 high-resolution display protected by scratch resistant Corning® glass. With Corning glass display, also called flexible displays, the advantage is that you can avoid glass breakages, and it is also lighter in weight. It is scratch resistant and gives a sharper text with over one million pixels. HD movies are more vivid and gameplay is smooth and dynamic. – Smile again.
It has in offer 4 million books for you. It also has an option to switch to day or nighttime modes. You could directly hit movies and TV shows instantly available on Nexus 7 in full HD – no waiting for downloads and syncing, or worrying about storage space. It comes with 8 or 16 GB memory options. Use a Micro USB if you need more memory. Over 600,000 apps for Google Play are also accessible. – Smile more.
Price $199. This surely would make you smile.
Smile, smile and smile – Google Nexus
Everybody is writing about Google Nexus 7 tablet. Let me write about the first in the series – Google Nexus mobile phone first. Expect a review of Google Nexus 7 late in the evening today.
When Baden-Powell said “A smile is a secret key that opens many hearts.”, he forgot that Google would follow it word by word. With the Google Nexus, Google now says “A smile is a secret key that opens your mobile phone.”
Work pressure, daily life tension, stress, anger. Be sure your Google Nexus will make you smile always, whaever the situation be. At least you have to smile whenever you need to unlock your phone. It boasts a “Face Unlock” feature which makes you smile to unlock the phone and also because you now don’t need to remember passwords.
With a 1.2 GHZ dual core processor (only few in competition) Nexus was already faster. It is 4G ready so, In India you will find it useful for a longer time. Another reason to smile.
“Galaxy Nexus is the world’s first phone with a 4.65″ high-definition sAMOLED display making text, videos & games look crisp, vibrant and rich. ” says Google. And yes, it is. the first Super AMOLED screen on a phone. With an edge-to-edge 720p screen high-definition, videos look amazing as in the Pic. Another reason to smile.
For those who share contacts, websites, apps, maps, directions and YouTube videos to other people close by, Nexux gives another reason to smile- simply hold two NFC enabled Android phones close to each other and touch to beam and share. (very little competition)
Tired of typing alphabet by alphabet. Touch the microphone on the keyboard and use your voice to instantly type your emails, SMS, or anywhere you want to enter text. Don’t you think this is another reason to smile.
Nexus gives you a high-end camera with zero shutter-lag, automatic focus, top notch low-light performance and a simple, intuitive way to take panoramic pictures. No stitching needed – Aha. Videos at 1080p which can be edited and shared right from your phone. Smile again.
Price – $199 (at today’s exchange rate of 57 it would cost around Rs.11,500) – So you finally agree that – it is the biggest reason to smile.
FCC to think again on mobile phone radiation
For those who believe that mobile phone radiation do not pose a threat to human health, it is time to think again. Well, Federal Communications Commission is doing so.
For years the FCC neglected to update its scientific statements on cell phone radiation. It is now going to launch a review of its safety standards related to mobile phone radiation. The rules now in force for cell phone radiation were developed in 1996, based on research from the 1980’s. New research has rendered those studies obsolete.
“This review is long overdue. It is impossible to imagine how the FCC will be able to retain its current standards, which allow 20 times more radiation to reach the head than the body as a whole, do not account for risks to children’s developing brains and smaller bodies and consider only short-term cell phone use, not frequent calling patterns over decades.” said Renee Sharp, director of Environmental Working Group’s California office and senior scientist, who have been demanding safer norms.
In May last year, the Interphone Study Report on mobile phone use and brain cancer risk was published. The study conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and World Health Organization suggested “There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma, and much less so meningioma, in the highest decile of cumulative call time, in subjects who reported usual phone use on the same side of the head as their tumour and, for glioma, for tumours in the temporal lobe.”(Press Release No 200, 17 May 2011)
Following this in June th same year in its Fact Sheet No 193, June 2011, World Health Organization recently said that the electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones as possibly carcinogenic to humans, though it denies increased cancer risk due to long-term exposure to animals.
(More news on radiation: all about mobile phone radiation)
Monsoon time – Akash again in the sky
Its monsoon time in India and Akash- the much awaited, much talked about and enough criticized low cost tablet again appeared in Akash.
The 1st $35 version of course got washed away without reaching anybody with its share of twists and turns. The next version Aakash 2, is set to launch in August for a price of $39 now. (Rs. 2,263).
This tablet will run on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system and and will have a 2GB flash storage, a 256 MB RAM and a 800Mhz processor. It has a 7-inch capacitive multi-touchscreen, supports Wi-Fi and GPRS a micro SD card slot and a USB port, but doesn’t have a 3G compatibility.
The original Aakash tablet was bashed by the users for having poor responsiveness and bad quality overall.
Akash I was being manufactured Datawind along with IIT Rajasthan. First news reports showed that it has been decided that Akash would be given to school kids for trial. The price tag would have been around Rs. 1100 for the kids and around Rs. 3000 in the market. Few months later there was a decision that these will be given to university students, at around Rs. 2,200. Something went wrong and Akash went into oblivion. We also heard of a rift between these two, because IIT Rajasthan wanted the tablet to be water-proof and loaded with military-style specifications, which Datawind didn’t approve of.
In the Budget 2012-13, about Rs 765 crore was allocated for the second phase of the project expected to begin this April.
The project went to IIT-Bombay. The HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal is now confident about the release of Aakash 2. Hope this time it reaches the market successfully.
Anybody to buy a village- eBay has one in offer
Pratariccia is one of hundreds of abandoned or semi-abandoned hilltop villages in stunning locations in Italy is up for sale at €2.5m to potential international buyers – thanks to eBay.
Proving that property deals in Tuscany are not just the preserve of rock stars and aristocrats, an entire Tuscan village has gone up for sale.
According to reports in Guardian today, this small village nestled among oaks at 850 metres altitude is blessed with stunning views over the Casentino valley. The medieval village of Pratariccia has stood empty for 50 years, ever since its population of farmers and shepherds abandoned their stone cottages for factory jobs during Italy’s economic boom.
Now the owners of the remote village – reportedly a religious order – are seeking to cash in with an online sale.
“They tried and failed to sell the village through agencies for years but have got a lot of attention by putting Pratariccia on eBay and should get a result,” said Luca Santini, mayor of nearby Stia, who walked in the woods around the village as a child picking mushrooms.
Pratariccia is being eyed by developers as potential hotels – where guests get their own cottage – or health spas, or boltholes for Italian émigrés to return to for retirement, like San Basile in Calabria, which has been selling empty cottages cheaply.
Barclays-Libor-emails-investigation: Its pay time
Reuters today published the matter of barclays, regarding investigations into whether banks manipulated the London Interbank Lending Rate, know as Libor, in which Barclays has agreed to pay $453 million in fines to UK and US regulators to settle its part. Communication which happened over email, helped as evidence against Barclays. I hope this makes for an interesting reading.
“We’re clean, but we’re dirty clean, rather than clean-clean.” “No-one’s clean-clean.”
“Done … for you big boy,” read a message sent by a Barclays (BARC.L) banker to one of the lender’s traders, who had asked him to fix a key lending rate artificially low.
“Dude, I owe you big time! Come over one day after work and I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger,” a trader from another firm emailed a banker at Barclays, showing his thanks for the rate set artificially low.
UK-based Barclays has agreed to pay $453 million in fines to UK and U.S. regulators to settle its part of an investigation into whether banks manipulated the London Interbank Lending Rate, know as Libor.
Investigators were helped by extensive emails and other messages about Libor, a set of benchmarks designed to indicate the rate at which banks estimate they are able to lend to each other. Libor is used to set corporate and personal borrowing rates worldwide.
Communications released by authorities on Wednesday showed Barclays traders calling each other “superstar” and with little concern for covering their tracks as they urged colleagues responsible for submitting Barclays’ Libor rates to try and influence final prices.
Requests came in such as: “We need a really low 3m fix, it could potentially cost a fortune. Would really appreciate any help.”
And: “Your annoying colleague again … Would love to get a high one month. Also if poss a low three month … if poss … thanks.”
Traders made their requests in person, via email and through electronic “chats” over an instant messaging system.
On a few occasions, some traders even made entries in electronic calendars to remind themselves what requests to make of Barclays’ Libor submitters the next day.
One trader would shout across the desk to make sure other traders had no conflicting preference to ask the Libor submitters.
“The traders were barking orders like they were at a fast food drive-through and the submitters were so accommodating that they might as well have said, ‘do you want fries with that’,” said Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which led the settlement agreement.
DON’T TELL ANYBODY
Some 257 requests were made to rate submitters from at least 14 Barclays derivatives traders over four years. Traders at other banks also tried to influence Barclays’ rate, while Barclays’ traders put pressure on the rates offered by others.
Most of the world’s biggest banks are under investigation as regulators from Europe, North America and Japan attempt to prove banks rigged rates. Barclays is the first to settle.
“This is the way you pull off deals like this chicken, don’t talk about it too much, 2 months of preparation… the trick is you do not do this alone … this is between you and me but really don’t tell ANYBODY,” a Barclays trader told a trader at another bank.
Investigators said Barclays derivatives traders got the bank to submit inaccurate rates between 2005 and 2008 so they could profit. The bank also submitted artificially low rates from September 2007 to May 2009 to ease fears it faced funding problems during the financial crisis.
Judging by the messages, Barclays was not alone in having an interest in lowering their submitted rates during the crisis to avoid signalling to markets their distress.
On one occasion, a manager said if Barclays submitted its correct rate, “It’s going to cause a shit storm,” and the bank submitted a lower rate.
“NO-ONE’S CLEAN-CLEAN”
But the bank’s treasury staff were beginning to become uneasy. In late 2007, Barclays told the UK Financial Services Authority and the British Bankers’ Association, the trade body under whose auspices Libor is set, of its concerns that rivals were setting rates too low.
Months later, a senior Barclays treasury manager called the BBA and warned them that rates were not accurate, but that Barclays was not the worst offender.
“We’re clean, but we’re dirty clean, rather than clean-clean,” he said.
“No-one’s clean-clean,” the BBA representative responded.
Hackers are young, or, Crackers are Young?
- In Russia, police detained a hacker who created a system of networked computers and stole more than 150 million rubles ($4.47 million) from people’s bank accounts. The network infected around 6 million computers with a Trojan virus helping access to user’s bank accounts. The hacker is 22-year-old men.
- This week, FBI made 24 arrests of hackers after a sting operation spanning four continents that targeted online financial fraud of stolen credit card and bank information. All of these hackers were men between the age 18 to 25 years.
- The Bulgarian police in Feb this ear arrested an alleged member of the loosely associated Anonymous hacktivist group, for website of Prophon, a Bulgarian music licensing company. He was against paying for music and movies. It was a 20-year-old boy
- In March this year, hacker who was the first person to “jailbreak” an iPhone was booked and charged with felony marijuana possession by the police in Sierra Blanca, Texas. He jailbroke the iPhone by physically taking it apart. The hacker was a 22 year old boy has worked with Google and, up until recently, as a software engineer at Facebook.
- The LuckyCat virus which attacked Indian computers for about 10 months was devised by a former graduate student (male again) at the Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. He is working at Chinese portal Tencent and was recruiting students for his school’s computer security and defense research.
- Computer expert of Sunny Bank, Kingswood, used a router to tap into BT phone boxes and made hours of calls to expensive numbers, worth £10,000 of premium-line bills. He is a the 27-year-old.
- 2 British members of Lulz Security hacking collective pleaded guilty to computer crimes today. They are Male, 20 years and 19 years. They did DDoS attacks against several targets, including CIA, Arizona State Police, PBS, Sony, Nintendo, 20th Century Fox, News International and the U.K.’s Serious Organized Crime Agency and National Health Service.
- In March this year the 5 members arrested (suspects), belonging to the Anonymous group of hacktivists, 23, 29, 25, 19 and 27. They are all men.
- A 30 year old Linux administrator from Galveston, Texas was arrested by FBI and charged with unauthorized access to a protected computer and posting vulgar pics of his girlfriend.
- February this year, Interpol arrested 25 suspected members of the the Anonymous hacker group across Europe and South America. All were aged between 17 and 40 including 17 year old.
- Federal Judge in Boston, sentenced a man, Ryan Harris, 28 to three years in prison to step up a crackdown nationwide on computer fraud.
Teenage hackers have always been in abundance mentions cyberwarzone.
But, why are the young turning to hacking?
Part answer is the 22 year old Slavas case. A Russian, an accomplished athlete at teenage, fanatic lover of high-risk sports like snowboarding, skiing has taken to hacking. A snowboarding accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. Salva says ”For me, hacking is mostly sport. But if someone offered me big money to hack someone else’s system, I’d give it serious consideration.” For young people in Russia, a country where Internet use is growing rapidly but where there is still a frustrating lack of jobs, hacking has become a subculture with a strong allure.
Frustrations of not being able to do something, being able to harass someone, to earn more, to avail benefits for free, wanting to make a point through demonstrating power/control, might be some of the reasons. Also governments taking a strong step by decided hackers as a threat to computer security also adds to the bucket of reasons. I suspect that most members of Anonymous group are young techies, advocating information should be free. Hacking as such has also increased as a tool of state sponsored espionage, so number of hackers has also increased. The Young are a part of it as indicated in the case of LuckyCat operation.
Last …. young geeks were always dominating the Tech world…. (a blanket statement :))
Is it that young are turning to hacking or the difference between hackers and crackers is diminishing.
Well, the question remains to be analysed- why are the young turning to hacking or cracking?
Sources:
(1) http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/russian-botnet-hacker-arrested-for.html
(2) https://techkhabaren.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/24-hackers-arrested-by-fbi-all-betwen-18-to-25-years/
(3) http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/20-year-old-anonymous-hacker-arrested.html
(4) http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/hacker-made-calls-worth-10000-from.html
(5) http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/tale-of-lulzsec-two-admits-targeting.html
(9) http://cyberwarzone.com/cyberwarfare/teenage-hackers-could-be-our-last-best-hope
Mac o/s isn’t susceptible to viruses- statement removed from Apple website
Apple has quietly removed a statement from its website (http://www.apple.com/why-mac/better-os/) that the Mac operating system isn’t susceptible to viruses. Apple released a patch to a Java vulnerability that lead to the infection of roughly 600,000 Macs with Flashback Trojan, there were claims weeks later from security researchers that hundreds of thousands of Macs were still infected.
The specific language about the operating system, “It doesn’t get PC viruses” was replaced with “It’s built to be safe.” But now, Apple may be taking security threats more seriously. It also says “Innocent-looking files downloaded over the Internet may contain dangerous malware in disguise.”
Apple’s Macintosh systems were generally considered safer in terms of virus attacks. Experts believe, since Mac OS is used by less than 5% in the world, it makes little sense for the virus writers to target these. There have been however, instances of Viruses and malwares affecting Mac systems.
However, in September 2011 Intego, security company detected a Trojan horse, which they named Flashback, masquerading as an Adobe Flash Player installation. Once downloaded the malware would disable some of the features the user had previously installed on their computer. The infection then attempted to inject code into applications launched by the user, to connect to the host server and send back unique information that could identify the user.
In April 2012 another security firm Dr. Web reported a variant of the Flashback which infected 600,000 Macs around the world. This version exploited vulnerability in the Java programming language and meant users could be infected simply by visiting a compromised website. In this particular case, Apple’s aloofness was even called legendary. Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab, calls “Apple a decade behind Microsoft in terms of security”.
Apple is introducing a new app security measure called Gatekeeper in the upcoming release of Mountain Lion, the latest version of Mac OS X.
Tech Khabaren 