Why we are Addicted to Facebook ? – Interesting Survey Results

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December 14, 2015

Admit it, you’ve thought about walking away from Facebook at one time or another. Perhaps you’ve gone so far as to shut down your account, swearing never to return, only to meekly log back in a week later. Researchers from Cornell University have found four key reasons why people make the pledge not to log in to Facebook but ultimately could not resist the allure of Facebook’s social network. So why we are addicted to Facebook ?

What are some of the factors that prevent users from logging off of Facebook permanently? A newly published paper from Cornell Information Science researchers explores that question and points to four themes that significantly influence the likelihood of a return to Facebook. Written by Information Science and Communication Researcher Eric Baumer, along with Ph.D. student Shion Guha, Emily Quan, MPS ’15, and professors David Mimno and Geri Gay, “How Social Media Non-use Influences the Likelihood of Reversion: Perceived Addiction, Boundary Negotiation, Subjective Mood, and Social Connection” was published Dec. 3 in Social Media + Society.

If you have thought about leaving Facebook, you’re not alone. Popular media and academic researchers alike have recently become interested in people who don’t use technology. This includes people who intentionally avoid social media like Facebook, as well as those who simply don’t have access. In many cases, though, there’s not a clear split between users and nonusers. People who leave social media and then return, what Baumer and colleagues term “social media reversion,” provide the opportunity to understand better what’s at stake when people use – or don’t use – sites like Facebook.

Survey Report – Why we are Addicted to Facebook ?

Using survey data provided by 99daysoffreedom.com – an online campaign that encouraged participants to log off Facebook for 99 days – the Cornell researchers honed in on those who made the pledge but ultimately couldn’t resist the allure of Facebook’s social network. The group’s research found four main factors that led to reversion:

Perceived addiction – Those who feel that Facebook is addictive or habitual were more likely to return, according to the group’s research. One participant described this habitual aspect by saying, “In the first 10 days, whenever I opened up an internet browser, my fingers would automatically go to ‘f.'”
Privacy and surveillance – Users who felt their Facebook activity was being monitored were less likely to revert, while those who use Facebook largely to manage how other people think of them are more likely to log back in.
Subjective mood – In a good mood? You’re less likely to renege on your pledge to stay off Facebook.
Other social media – The group found that Facebook users were less likely to log back in if they had other social media outlets – like Twitter, for instance. Those who reflected on the appropriate role for technology in their social lives were more likely to revert. In many of these cases, people returned to Facebook but altered their use, for example, uninstalling the app from their phones, reducing their number of friends or limiting the amount of time spent on the platform.

The team’s findings were drawn from more than 5,000 surveys issued to participants by Just, the Dutch creative agency that founded the 99 Days of Freedom project. These surveys were sent to project participants on days 33, 66 and 99 and were intended to gauge each user’s mood throughout the Facebook detox. A sampling of this data was then shared – with permission from Just and the survey respondents – with the Cornell research team.

“These results show just how difficult daily decisions about social media use can be,” says Baumer. “In addition to concerns over personal addiction, people are reluctant about corporations collecting, analyzing and potentially monetizing their personal information. However, Facebook also serves numerous important social functions, in some cases providing the only means for certain groups to keep in touch. These results highlight the complexities involved in people’s ongoing decisions about how to use, or not use, social media.”

Do you agree with above survey reports and also why are you addicted to Facebook ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

MIT Researchers Developed Untraceable SMS Text Messaging System that’s Even More Secure than Tor

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Sabarinath

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December 12, 2015

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a new untraceable SMS text messaging system, that is even more secure than the Tor anonymity network. MIT researchers claims that using this untraceable SMS system users can create truly anonymous communications.

A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who developed this untraceable SMS text messaging system says — “it provides a strong mathematical guarantee of user anonymity, while, according to experimental results, permitting the exchange of text messages once a minute or so.”

Also Read : Now Facebook Will Notify If Your Account Is Being Hacked By An Attacker Working On Behalf Of A Nation-State

The researchers have named this untraceable SMS system “Vuvuzela”, which is a reference to the noise-making devices used by fans at football matches around the world. The idea behind the system is that, like a stadium full of vuvuzelas, it creates a lot of spurious “noise” that makes it difficult to pinpoint the sound being made by any individual vuvuzela.

How Untraceable SMS System Works

In its basic structure, the system sends messages through three different servers that are each designed to unwrap three different levels of encryption. While this obviously makes it harder for someone to intercept a message and to see its sender and recipient, CSAIL says that an adversary who compromises the integrity of the first server can still “know that two users whose messages reached the first server within some window of time have been talking.”

Also Read : What Are Phishing Scams And 10 Tips To Avoid Them

And this is where they so-called vuvuzela techniques help. When the first server receives a message, it will simultaneously send out a series of “dummy” messages to other locations with encrypted destinations. Once the second server receives the actual message, it also sends out its own dummy messages at the same time it passes on the message to the third server. The idea here is that even if a person has compromised part of the process, they will still find it impossible to discern who is sending and receiving messages.

“So statistically, it’s almost impossible for the adversary to determine even whether any of the messages arriving within the same time window ended up at the same destination,” — CSAIL explains. “Those statistical guarantees hold even if two of the three servers are infiltrated. As long as one of them remains uncompromised, the system works.”

Also Read : This New Computer Chip Can Self Destruct In 5 Seconds

So what do you think about this new advanced SMS privacy proofing method. We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Watch How Chrome Dominates Over Internet Explorer and Other Browsers in Last Seven Years

By

Sabarinath

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December 11, 2015

Lets start a story, once their was a king named Internet Explorer, who ruled the mighty kingdom, internet. When he start to rule, everybody though he was unbeatable but IE never saw a backdoor invasion of another foreign king, Google Chrome to his land. Gradually with Chrome’s new mode of approach and developmental activities, Chrome dominates majority of kingdom. But IE still fighting to get back his position and everybody knows where it will end.

Also Read : Meet Codie – Rolling Robot Toy That Teaches Kids Progamming Concepts

Internet Explorer was was once the king of browsers, controlling more than 50 percent of the market for many years. But release of firefox in 2012 changed that, but even its prominence didn’t last particularly long.

But when Google Chrome was released in September of 2008, it started to dominates over Internet Explorer and Firefox faster than anyone expected.Now, seven years on from its release, Chrome is used by more than 43 percent of Web users across desktop and mobile, according to Statcounter.

Here is a video created by Youtuber Viktor Bohush, beautifully illustrates the domination of Chrome as it slowly took over the market over the space of the last seven years.

Also Read : Top 10 Cloud Programming Languages

It’s incredibly zen with that soundtrack, and shows some interesting points — such as when Internet Explorer fought back briefly in 2013 and grew its share — as well as how Chrome accelerated over the years. Google Chrome has come a long way since its humble beginnings, and has even pushed Mozilla into crisis as it attempts to stave off stagnation.

Chrome Dominates Over IE and Firefox

Also Read : Microsoft Tool Where You Can Upload Image and Calculate Its Emotions

Which browser are you using and Why you think Chrome is better than any other browser available today? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Meet Codie – Rolling Robot Toy That Teaches Kids Progamming Concepts

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Avinash A

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December 11, 2015

There are many ways one can learn programming concepts, like from books, from ebooks, from interactive online tutorials, from videos etc. But you ever think to learn programming concepts from a robot. So now its time to change the mode of learning to future generation. Meet Codie – a rolling and programmable robot which is controlled via a mobile application for iOS or Android.

Codie was developed by Codie Labs, which was founded in February 2013 by serial entrepreneur András Holló and a friend he met in university, Ádám Lipécz with an idea of giving a simple introduction to programming concepts to children ages 6 through 15 through an easy-to-use app interface involving colorful drag-and-drop blocks that represent various actions you can take with the robot.

Also Read : Power Paper – A Paper to Store Electricity Coming Soon

The robot itself has a wooden exterior, two treads that allow to easily traverse flat surfaces (and some less-than-flat ones), and custom internals that include proximity sensors, a microphone and line readers that can “see” any graphical markings on the ground. An LED light on the top of the robot can also be customized to display different colors, using the mobile application.

Also Read : Google Says its Quantum Computer is More Than 100 Million Times Faster Than a Conventional PC

Coide, as the robot is called, gets around pretty quickly. He’s as fast as a little race car, and can be controlled either through the programs a child writes in the app or through a manual interface that includes an on-screen joystick that you can use to direct his movements.

What Codie Do?

To write a program, kids drag blocks onto the app’s screen to dictate actions like “move,” “turn,” “decide,” “wait,” “sound,” and more. The blocks are connected with arrows, and, when tapped, kids can also customize the actions themselves in more detail to do things like adjust the speed, distance, color, brightness and much more.

codie robot app — Image Credits : TechCrunch

Also Read : Meet World’s First Android Smartphone With Massive 10000 mAh Battery

In addition, the programming language teaches larger coding concepts like “if, then, else…” decisions, or looping, for example.When you have completed a program, you can give it a name and save it for future use.

Holló tells us Codie Labs raised funding for the project from an institutional investor in Hungary and an individual angel, totaling $250,000 USD. The startup also ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo this spring which reached $96,000 and allowed them to sell over 500 robots via pre-orders.

He says that most of those robots will be shipping by Christmas this year, or early 2016. The robots themselves are $199 euros (or roughly $216 USD.)

https://youtu.be/Jj5GKCavdeM

Also Read : New Study Claims Merely Visiting Piracy Sites can Place a User’s Computer at Risk

So what do you think about this programming buddy Codie. Does it will a proper coding tutor for kids? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

[Infographic] New Study Claims Merely Visiting Piracy Sites can Place a User’s Computer at Risk

By

Sabarinath

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December 11, 2015

Did you ever think how piracy sites are monetizing their websites and how much they are earning in a year. Shockingly now it proven that piracy sites are making about $70 million a year by spreading dangerous malware all over the internet through pirated files like stolen movies and television shows, cracked softwares and applications etc. And interesting fact is that merely visiting piracy sites can place a user’s computer at risk

According to a new study report, called ‘Digital Bait‘ commissioned by the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) and conducted by cyber security firm RiskIQ says that after examining a sample of 800 piracy sites dedicated to distributing stolen movies and television shows, the found that one out of every three content theft sites contained malware. The study also found that consumers are 28 times more likely to get malware from a content theft site than on similarly visited mainstream websites or licensed content providers.

Also Read : What Are Phishing Scams And 10 Tips To Avoid Them

How Malware is Delivered from Piracy Sites

According to the study, about 45 percent of malware payloads found on the sample piracy sites are make its way on to a user’s device through a ‘drive-by-download‘, which means malware downloaded invisibly in the background and didn’t require user to confirm the downloads. That means merely visiting piracy sites can place a users’ computer at risk because users didn’t need to need to download media or click on any popup advertisements to become a victim. The remaining 55 percent of the malware lured users with fake prompts for requests such as Flash downloads and anti-virus updates and interestingly many of these prompts look virtually identical to prompts from the actual legitimate providers of such services.

“It’s clear that the criminals who exploit stolen content have diversified to make more money by baiting consumers to view videos and songs and then stealing their IDs and financial information,” — Executive Director of DCA Tom Galvin said in a statement.

Also Read : What Is DDoS Attacks And How Does It Works ?

Types of Malware Infected from Piracy Sites

Over half of all malware detected was classified as
Trojans by RiskIQ’s malware analysis tools. ‘Trojan’ is the general term for any malware that secretly installs itself to open unauthorized access to a computer.

Malicious adware and toolbar software were
the next most prevalent types. The definition of
Adware can range from benign to annoying to malicious. Adware detected by the anti-virus tools in this study was weighted toward the malicious end of the spectrum.

And lastly they also found ‘Other’ minor categories and instances where an exploit kit was detected but the malware type was not determined.

Once the malware is in place, criminals are able to steal bank and credit card information, find and share private information, lock a computer and demand a ransom or even take control of the computer to commit acts of fraud while framing the owner of the computer. According to RiskIQ, each month 12 million U. S users were being exposed to malware attacks from specific piracy sites they visited in the Sample Content Theft Group, based on Alexa traffic data and RiskIQ’s measure of malware incident rates.

Content theft, or piracy as it’s commonly known, poses a serious and under appreciated threat to Internet users by exposing them to harmful malware that can lead to identity theft, financial loss, and computers being taken over by hackers. So be careful while surf online.

Also Read : What Is SQL Injection Attack And How Does It Works ?

Check out two infographic provided as study report in brief :

Also Read : The Anatomy Of A Data Breach

If you want to know more, you can read the study on DCA’s website.

So now onwards simply avoid malicious piracy sites and protect yourself. Don,t be a victim because one of the most interesting claims in the study is that content theft sites are 28x more likely to contain malware than a legitimate site.

Also Read : What Is XSS Attacks And How Does It Works ?

So what do you think about the study report. Does it be helpful for you to stay safe while browsing the web ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Meet World’s First Android Smartphone With Massive 10000 mAh Battery

By

Avinash A

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December 10, 2015

Android Smartphone With Massive 10000 mAh Battery

Nowadays its not big a deal to find a Android smartphone with a battery of upto atleast 3000 mAh, which provide all all-day battery life. Now its time to forget them, here comes a new Android smartphone with massive 10000 mAh battery. Yes you heard it right, 10000 mAh , looks like it will deliver all-week battery life. Neowin posted some exclusive images, a Chinese smartphone maker, is set to announce this new smartphone called Oukitel K10000.

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While majority of the smartphone users carry a power bank with them in case the smartphone battery drains out due to heavy use, Oukitel has created a handset which alone features almost thrice the battery of Samsung Galaxy Note 4. The highlight of the Oukitel K10000 is its 10000mAh battery capacity, which is strides ahead from the current flagship high-end smartphones including Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Active, and also the battery-centric Gionee Marathon M5 smartphone, which comes with 6000mAh battery capacity. The battery life of the handset has not been mentioned as yet.

Specifications of 10000 mAh Battery Beast

Also Read : Kyocera Launches a New Soap Proof, Washable Phone

Neowin posted some exclusive images of this new coming massive 10000 mAh battery powered beast. According to Neowin Oukitel K10000 have a metal top, side and bottom build with dual speakers and USB connectivity at the bottom. Neowin also claims to have confirmed specifications from the company, and says the Oukitel K10000 will run Android 5.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box, and feature a 5.5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) resolution display. It is said to be powered by a quad-core MediaTek MT6735 SoC clubbed with 2GB RAM. The LTE-enabled smartphone comes with 16GB inbuilt storage, houses 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front facing camera onboard. The company is yet to launch the handset and reveal the full list of specifications in public.

For now, some of the smartphone with a large battery capacity are the Celkon Millennia Q5K Power and Gionee’s Marathon M3 smartphone with 5000mAh battery, Lava Iris Fuel 20 with 4400mAh battery, Karbonn Alfa A120 with 3000mAh battery. Among the flagship models from popular smartphone makers, Samsung is leading the way with its Galaxy S6 Active, which is backed by a 3500mAh battery.

So what you think about this new 10000 mAh battery powered beast ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Also Read : Microsoft Tool Where You Can Upload Image and Calculate Its Emotions

Google Says its Quantum Computer is More Than 100 Million Times Faster Than a Conventional PC

By

Sabarinath

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December 9, 2015

During initial tests of Google and NASA’s quantum computing system, it was found that the system was unable to outperform regular computers. But now Google has announced that its quantum computer, D-Wave 2X has outperformed a traditional desktop by 108 times and making it one hundred million times faster than a conventional PC.

“What a D-Wave does in a second would take a conventional computer 10,000 years to do,” — said Hartmut Nevan, director of engineering at Google, during a news conference to announce the results.

Google says that their quantum computer, D-Wave 2X “raced” a conventional single-processor computer in a number of tasks, and outperformed it in every case. It has posted the results in a research paper, which is yet to be peer reviewed.

Also Read : Hackers Using Fake LinkedIn Profiles to Steal your Information

What is a Quantum Computer ?

Quantum computer is a computer which makes use of the quantum states of subatomic particles to store information. Quantum computer is different from digital electronic computers based on transistors. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1), quantum computation uses quantum bits (qubits), which can be in superpositions of states. The superposition of these qubits enable machines to make great numbers of computations to simultaneously, making a quantum computer highly desirable for certain types of processes.

Also Read : Kyocera Launches a New Soap Proof, Washable Phone

In two tests, the Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab today announced that it has found the D-Wave machine to be considerably faster than simulated annealing — a simulation of quantum computation on a classical computer chip. Google Google director of engineering Hartmut Neven went over the results of the tests in a blog post yesterday :

We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 108 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core. We also compared the quantum hardware to another algorithm called Quantum Monte Carlo. This is a method designed to emulate the behavior of quantum systems, but it runs on conventional processors. While the scaling with size between these two methods is comparable, they are again separated by a large factor sometimes as high as 108.

The results are not a cut and dry victory for the machine, however. The D-Wave machine was specifically engineered to solve the problems faced by both computers, giving it a distinct advantage. And Google is also working on other forms of quantum hardware, including some that isn’t limited to the optimisation problems the annealer is set to solve.

Also Read : Power Paper – A Paper to Store Electricity Coming Soon

Kyocera Launches a New Soap Proof, Washable Phone

By

Avinash A

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December 6, 2015

What all things you can imagine of washing in your day to day life?? May be utensils, clothes, vehicles and even the exterior of some of the electronic gadgets like television refrigerator etc. But have you ever imagined of washing your cell phone using soap and water? Yes you heard it right — Kyocera one of Japan’s multinational electronics producing company have introduced a new soap proof washable phone – DIGNO Rafre.

The Rafre is designed to be used in all type of environments without any fear of getting dirty as you can wash it by just using soap and water. You may just object by saying that water proof phones are no new inventions in the market. But there is a small change, other water proof phones are not designed to withstand the friction and disturbances caused during scrubbing and washing but the new washable phone DIGNO Rafre gets as edge in this case.

The Rafre is said to have a touch panel that works even when you use your wet hand on the screen or even when the whole screen is wet. Rafre is also resistive to scratches that may come when you scrub while washing. The Rafre also has bone conducting technology that provides audio without speakers.

Specifications of New Washable Phone

The Kyocera Digno Rafre comes with 2 GB of RAM. The phone packs 16 GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128 GB via a microSD card. As far as the cameras are concerned, the Kyocera DIGNO Rafre packs a 13-megapixel primary camera on the rear.

The Kyocera DIGNO Rafre runs Android 5.1 and is powered by a 3000 mAh non removable battery. It measures 71.00 x 141.00 x 10.10 (height x width x thickness) and weighs 155.00 grams. The Kyocera DIGNO Rafre is a single SIM (GSM) smartphone that accepts a regular SIM. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G. Sensors on the phone include Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, and Gyroscope. This product is expected to hit the market by next week.

This phone is apt for children and germaphobes who usually drop their phone in their meals while taking pictures. One more advantage Kyocera claims is that it would help people to take bath tub selfies and the phone even comes with duck shaped floating stand.

More importantly, the innovation would provide an easy solution for removing the germs collected on the surface of phones which has been the concern for many germaphobes. Recent studies have found that handsets gather germs, including Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus mycoides, from hands, bathrooms and public transport. One study in particular found that particularly dirty phones can be covered with ten times more bacteria than a public toilet seat, including faecal matter.

While waterproof phones have been around for years, but creating soap-resistant washable phones has proved more difficult. But finally the human race have achieved another milestone.