Group items tagged

Game of Thrones, the fantasy series that came out of a series of novels written by George R. R. Martin and adapted by HBO has just recently aired its third season with a bunch of people watching it during its premiere. The bad news is that the amount of people pirating the show is more then half the amount of people who actually watched it on HBO. With the premiere having around 6.7 million viewers and the amount of pirate viewers at 4.4 million. These stats are quite impressive but HBO can expect a lot more views when it counts on-demand, DVR, online streams with a gross audience of 11.6 million viewers when counting non-live viewers. On the other hand, TorrentFreak claims that GoT has been the most-pirated show over the past year and that the pirated audience is growing even faster. A few hours after the first torrent of the show was uploaded, it had around 110,303 leechers and 52,786 seeders, a total of 163,088 people. This number actually broke the previous record with 144,663 peers for another show called "Heroes".

It's no secret that the countries such as North Korea (obviously), China, and Iran have filtered the internet via censorship to within a couple of breathes of its life. But now there is a new country passing censorship policies: Russia. According to the New York Times, the Russian government has

This article is about the new Google Glass and how you now may be able to take a picture just by winking. The code for this function was dug up by Redditor Fodawim who found some variables with variations on the name EYE_GESTURE_WINK. The wink function can be turned off but if if is not than the user can take a picture just by winking. Google Glass already has a sensor on the inside but can possibly be used to watch your eye. The only other problem is that the sensor will be able to tell the difference from a blink and a wink. This new function on Google Glass will violate a lot of peoples privacy since the user can take a picture of anyone at anytime without that person even knowing.  I think that  this possible function on Google Glass is very creative.

This article is about an artist who has been using remaining DNA samples, software, and a 3-D printer to create faces off genetic material. I thought this article was interesting until I found out that the faces created aren't an exact replica of the people the DNA was received from. The faces are just formed with the possibility of having the same facial features, gender, ethnicity, and so on.  And although the results are not accurate, our technology may advance enough that someday we'll regret leaving hair, skin, or saliva in public. Who knows? One day we might possibly be cloned!

According to the article, Facebook is presenting an app that can track the location of its users. This new feature can introduce ads around the area of the user, which can be very convenient. This can then increase businesses revenues around the world. On the user's side of the story, this deals with the their personal information, which he or she may not intentionally want to share. Facebook, however, may have found a loophole in their data-user policy, which already indicates their permission to access your location. This can lead one to doubt the safety of the internet and how companies can find ways around the law to increase their income.

        It is being reported that the newest Xbox console will have online DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). DRM is technology that puts restrictions on media such as software, games, music, etc. that limits how the buyer is able to use and share the media that he or she bought. This means that the Xbox will always need to have an active internet connection to be able to use the games that you buy, even if the game itself does not require internet connection. The point of this is to prevent to prevent the resale of used games. However, this will mean that people can not share games with eachother, play if the internet goes out or they they do not have the internet at all. This will increase the sale of new games giving the companies more profits. However, this may backfire on Microsoft, as many gamers may not purchase the new console as a form of boycott, reducing Microsoft's profit until the DRM is removed. 

This is a very great report, keep up the great work Spider Man

Uncle Ben would be proud

Photoshop is a software that is used by  It is used by  millions of graphic artists, print designers, visual communicators, and regular people like you. It's likely that nearly every picture you've seen ,such as posters, book covers, magazine pictures, and brochures has either been created or edited by Photoshop. they use Photoshop, because of imperfections in your face to make it more cleaner and your body to make you more skinnier or editing your picture to make illusion. But in this report a Greek police did a photoshop to hide an evidence to brutality. this Greek police will soon be in under investigation for attempting to airbrush out evidence of police abuse in the mugshots for four young men.  These men were arrested for an attempted for armed robbery, but the photos that were taken in the scene clearly shows that they were bleeding and bruised and several days after these mug shots however, shows that their in a better shape. The police defense, he did not admit that he changed the photo. This police has been accused treating immigrants and other prisoners like an animal. 

 This article is about impersonating people online. Outside of the internet people can be arrested and fined for pretending to be a police officer, soldier, and even a normal person. This law still does not apply to life on the internet. This politician in Arizona is trying to make this a law. Doing this could stop people from scamming others online (ex. pretending to have cancer or someone else to get one) but could also stop popular parody accounts used for entertainment(ex. popular twitter accounts such as Fill Werell). Overall this law could probably bring more good than bad helping people protect their identity.

Google is facing a privacy policy problem in Europe. Just last year Google was on 60 separate occasions about privacy notices. This brought the attention from the European privacy regulators. They told Google to give users "more control over their data." The European authorities found that Google had ignored their recommendations and requests. The European Commission stated that in order to strengthen national data, the authorities wanted to be able to give companies a fine up o 1 million euros, or  2% of their annual turnover.  Right now Google Now which is a mobile product in Android 4.1 which can access data on the phone through data points and it allows the phones physical location to be known. Google is having complete access to everyone's personal data which can be extremely unsafe

Facebook heads have launched a new 'search engine' for those using Facebook. Entitled 'Graph Search', this engine allows users to type in specific tags to find users that fall under a specific group. The tags include things such as age, location, relationship status, and other similar traits. The Facebook developers should have seen this as an issue from the very start of the project. Many executives and onlookers anticipated that this engine will cause issues, especially with youth. The main concern being privacy. Facebook claims that only users who opt into this feature will show up on the results, but for mindless teenagers who click accept on anything simply out of haste, this could cause an issue. Although there has been no recorded cases yet, this engine opens the door for sexual predators on Facebook, allowing them to easily search for 'Women under 18 in my area' and similar search options. CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself claimed that they are heightening privacy settings for this engine, but there are still concerns to be had. This new feature is obviously a ploy to send more information to advertising companies and other Facebook partners. Facebook is renown for sending information and demographics of it's users to paying companies, but with Graph Search, anyone can do it themselves, including said companies. Facebook is finding new ways to sell out their user base, while still looking like the 'good guy'. Although it has it's benefits for the honest users that want to use it for social purposes, Graph Search is a very bad decision. If it wasn't apparent to you before, now is the time to get off Facebook.

Basically it's about search engines and how they have a long memory and how we don't think before we post. Our immoral and illegal act online, such as the negative tweets towards Obama. Basically saying that whatever you post is hard to take back even if it was something you once did years ago. (Which you probably even know) "The past is hard to escape" I agree. No matter what bad things you do, if you put something out there, someone will remember for long periods. Just like remembering those embarrassing moments in elementary. Although it's a good thing to make it hard to escape. Most youths and victims will eventually find it a huge mistake/regret.

This article i found is very interesting. It explains to us how people will begin to see many jobs being taken by machines and robots. An example of this given in the article is that Google is making self driven cars which may seem good but many jobs need people driving the cars themselves, like truck drivers and taxis. If vehicles could drive themselves many if not all of the people that drive vehicles will be out of work. Another example is the car insurance companies will charge more for vehicles that are driven manually which will make other companies either have this new technology on there cars or risk going out of business. The article also states that Moore's Law is now going faster and we can see these changes happening sooner. This new change will be great for many computer programmers or similar jobs but other people will have trouble finding a jobs

This article talks chiefly about Google Glass, a new type of device that Google aims at putting out on the consumer market by the end of this year. First, it discusses how even though our technology satisfies all our wants and needs, we are often severely distracted by it. We are looking at everything through a screen that we hold in a way that acts as a barrier between us and the world. What Google is trying to do with Glass is make doing simple things like using GPS and replying to texts a lot more easier. With Glass, you don't have to walk around looking down on your phone oblivious to all that goes around you to find your way to the place you need to get to. Some problems with Glass are that it needs data through Wi-Fi on its own and that if it has no connection it's functionality is greatly limited. Since Glass can record video and it's almost unnoticeable, there is a privacy concern because many people may get filmed on video without them knowing. Also, because most of the interaction is through voice commands, it may become hectic to use the device if it does not understand you when you speak. Right now Google Glass may seem like a gimmick but the longer people are exposed to it the more they will understand its value and potential uses. Basically the question is not if people will use Google Glass, but when.

The main idea of this article is that a great amount of social networking websites can view everything on your account, deleted or not. This is a major breach of privacy because when a user hits 'Delete' they expect it to erase it entirely. This is not entirely true. This also applies to private chat conversations. As a major breach of privacy, this information is easily available no matter how hard you tried to get rid of it. This is an important article because it applies to everyone, including employees. This means that your employer can view any unsavory pictures or posts that you have posted. But is this a bad thing? This technology can be used to catch any criminal activity. Does this mean you should stop using private conversations? No, this means that if you are dealing with anything of a sensitive nature, use a phone.

Good Luck

The article is an excerpt from "Instant: The Story of Polaroid" by Christopher Bonanos. The Polaroid is described as 'that thing that happened before Instagram happened' in the comment proceeding the excerpt. The excerpt tells the tale of how the first Polaroid camera was revealed to the public in 1947 at a scientific meeting of the Optical Society of America by Edwin Land. It is a story of innovation and breakthrough. Previously, cameras would produce negatives on film which would be sent to labs, or developed in home-made darkrooms. This process was difficult, time consuming, and could potentially fail. The Polaroid would change all that. Land took a picture of himself and set a 50 second timer for it to develop. He described how a thick chemical reagent was being reacted with the negative, the same stuff that normally went down a darkroom drain. This was one of Land's biggest breakthroughs. With the 50 seconds up, he peeled back the print, revealing a sepia (or as we described it: a browned-up-a-notch) portrait of himself. This was monumental. A process which normally took a week was done in under a minute. The story of the instant camera raced across America, landing Land in the New York Times and Life magazine. This article relates to the present, where cameras are generally smaller and predominantly digital. As a class, we recently watched a video on micro-technology. Over the years, scientists and engineers have been on the constant struggle to make things smaller, faster, and more efficient. The camera is no exception. Today's cameras contain microchips and processors of their own, in a compact space. Recent Polaroids can print in colour. In a world driven by invention and innovation, many new things may be introduced in our life time. Perhaps one will be as impactful as the Polaroid camera.

This article tells us about how riding a bike in the city will soon be easier than ever courtesy of two wheels and AT&T's wireless network for many big cities across the US. The bicycles will have built-in GPS using AT&T's wireless network to make the basic part of public bicycle renting possible-making sure they don't get stolen or abandoned in some unknown place. Also, smartphone users will be able to use an app to locate Social Bicycle racks nearby, as well as reserve bikes and unlock them from racks. Riders will then be capable to bike around the city and return the Social Bicycle at any rack located in the city. You can also rent a bicycle by using the smartphone app to reserve one. The app will automatically send your personalized pin to the rack, which will unlock the bicycle, checking out the bicycle in your name. It also has a cool feature where you can use the app to track stats like calories burned, emissions reduced, and dollars saved. There isn't any information yet on how much the bike rentals will cost. Social Bicycles will hit more cities at the beginning of 2013.

On the internet, it,s our responsibility to keep our personal lives private. This article is about how 3 celebrities got hacked, and how we can learn from it. The celebrities include Paris Hilton, who's phone got hacked and her personal information was posted. Scarlett Johansson had nude pictures of her, and lastly, Brett Favre who also had nude pictures of himself. We need to be aware of the fact that our personal information may be falling into the wrong hands. Celebrities have different lives than us, particularly those who have paparazzi who follow them around all day which means the information a celebrity chooses to keep on a digital device is in jeopardy. Imagine if someone was constantly trying to hack into your e-mail or social accounts to post embarrassing things about you? This is why we have to be careful about what we post online.

In the movie Iron Man 3, Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., loses his entire life to a man named Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley.  Iron Man loses all his suits and his entire private life and starts hunting for who was responsible for doing all this to him.  When he goes on this quest he needs everything at his disposal to help him and keep him from losing his cool.  This movie is going to continue where the Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 2 Movies left off.  Mandarin is a classic Iron Man enemy so to have him in Iron Man 3 is just mind blowing.  Iron Man 3 comes out May 3, 2013.