On the list of places you’re likely to see people exercising, social media is perhaps second only to the gym. Tricia Burke, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at Texas State University, wanted to know why that is — and what scrolling past all of those workout selfies and half marathon medals is doing to your psyche. Burke, along with Stephen Rains from the University of Arizona, surveyed 230 people who were active on social media about their thoughts on their own health, fitness and weight; how often workout posts appeared in their timelines; the people posting…
Author: Loknath Das
It’s silly o’clock on a Sunday morning and I’m still in bed when I hear my phone ping with a WhatsApp notification. I take a look and groan. A colleague is asking if I know how we teach subtraction according to our mental calculations policy. This is a regular occurrence – even at the weekend. Social media and messaging apps are a blessing and a curse for teachers. While it has broadened our horizons and inspired new ideas (thank you, Pinterest), it has also increased the intrusion of work into our personal lives. We are always contactable, and in many different ways.…
A software company that previously advertised a free trial to National Rifle Association members told ThinkProgress it has asked the NRA to remove the offer from its website. Teresa Zimmerman, director of marketing for Personify Corp, Wild Apricot’s parent organization, said late Friday that she has asked the NRA to remove Wild Apricot from the gun lobby’s website. “We have contacted the NRA directly and asked them to remove our logo and the affiliated text, as they were actually using that without permission from us,” she said. “We never had a formal partnership with them.” Zimmerman explained that one of…
German carmaker BMW will recall and install a software update on nearly 12,000 diesel cars worldwide, the company announced on Friday. BMW “noticed during internal testing that correctly programmed software was wrongly used in a few models,” the Munich-based company said in a statement, adding that it had “immediately informed the relevant authorities … [and] therefore plans to recall 11,700 vehicles worldwide.” Read more: Germany’s love affair with the car The company had reportedly discovered that it had wrongly installed the emissions software built for the X5 and X6 SUV models into the 5-series and 7-series. As a result, the affected cars had…
App developers should take a long, hard look at how they use Facebook’s Account Kit for identifying users – after a flaw in the system, and Tinder’s use of the toolkit, left shag-seekers open to account hijacking. When a horny netizen logs into their Tinder profile using their phone number as a username, the hookup app relies on the Facebook-built AccountKit.com to check the person is legit owner of that account. Facebook’s system texts a confirmation code to the punter, they receive it on their phone, and type the code into Account Kit’s website. Account Kit verifies the code is correct, and…
A prominent white nationalist is suing Twitter for banning his accounts at a time when social networks are trying to crack down on hateful and abusive content without appearing to censor unpopular opinions. Jared Taylor filed the lawsuit Tuesday in state court in San Francisco, marking the latest legal challenge filed by right-wing groups and figures banned from social media sites. Taylor is the founder of the Virginia-based New Century Foundation, an IRS-classified charity that operates the American Renaissance online magazine. The magazine touts a philosophy that it’s “entirely normal” for whites to want to be a majority race. Twitter…
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram might not be destroying the minds of The Youth™ as much as we thought, according to a recent review published in Educational Psychology. In some cases, social media could even be helping them do better at school. German researchers analyzed 59 published and unpublished studies that examined the relationship between academic performance and the use of social media. The studies collectively involved almost 30,000 high school and undergraduate students in 19 counties from 2009 to 2016. Of the 59 experiments, 30 were conducted in the U.S. They found a very small correlation between social media use and poorer grades,…
Google’s voice-activated assistant is branching out to Nest’s deluxe security camera in an expansion that may amplify the privacy concerns surrounding Internet-connected microphones. The virtual assistant is being offered to owners of the Nest Cam IQ in a free update rolling out Wednesday. The move comes just two weeks after Nest moved back under Google’s direct control after spending nearly 2 1/2 years as a separate company owned by the same parent, Alphabet. The $300 (roughly Rs. 19,500) Nest Cam will give Google another potentially valuable earhole in its battle with Amazon and Apple to build digital command centres in people’s home. That ambition has already…
It is universally accepted that miniatures are expensive. It is just as universally accepted that potatoes are cheap. How cheap? They literally sell them by the pound. So one sprouting game designer mashed the two together. The result is called Kartoffelkrieg, or Potato War in the German. First announced as a goof on Imgur just 18 days ago, it’s already got a publisher lined up and a Kickstarter scheduled for March 7. To play, you’ll take your potato and draw from a bag of bits. Inside are all the parts needed to make a proper mechanized potato including armored plates, laser weapons and grasping arms that both slice…
N Chandrasekaran completes a year as Tata Sons’ Chairman and keeps to his promise of stabilising the conglomerate by simplifying the structure. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Vallabh Bhanshali, Chairman of Enam Securities shared his views on the same. Bhanshali said that would rate Chandra’s performance as 9 on 10 this year, as Tata Group Chairman. He further said that Chandra provides an exemplary depiction of an uncluttered mind. I see Chandra as a software man with niche in finance, he added. He also mentioned that subject to external limitations, Chandra has shown blistering speed. Talking about business, he said…