They only wanted to show their disapproval. Friends eager to counterbalance all those Facebook “Likes” rushed to “Download the official DISLIKE button now” as received in a message. But, sadly, no dislike button was in store. Instead, installing the application provided users with several surveys and left their profiles vulnerable to spammer control. If there was ever a time to unleash their Dislike, this was it.
Yet, as Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos told the BBC–mentioning a similar ploy that offered Facebookers the chance to see an anaconda vomiting up a hippo–such “survey scam” applications are nothing new:
“Anyone can write a Facebook app–these scams are constantly springing up.”
Perhaps Facebook should take note: Users were willing to sacrifice their security for the mere power to express negative feedback. Or, at least, the mere power to express negative feedback without typing.
Perhaps a compromise is in order? Unfortunately, a new Meh button application seems to need some tweaking. As in the Atlantic Wire:
Turns out, every time you click the “meh” button it registers your vote—allowing an individual user to “meh” something 10,000 times or more. That’s a lot of indifference.
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If your car could talk, it might tell you to stop texting. At least that’s what one research team hopes: after paying young drivers to perform texting-like games while driving a simulator, they found that visual warnings from an in-car “coach” helped keep drivers’ eyes on the road.
For high-risk drivers, the warning system “more than doubled their time until a virtual crash,” a University of Washington press release says. That might not sound entirely reassuring. But the researchers say a similar system installed on a real car might help risky drivers avoid a crash altogether.
A team led by Linda Ng Boyle, an industrial and systems engineer at the University of Washington, first had a group of 53 drivers, ages 18 to 21, attempt to drive a simulator while simultaneously playing a matching game. As an incentive to take the game seriously, they paid drivers according to the correct number of matches they made. The riskiest drivers took their eyes off the road for between two and a half to three seconds, compared to moderate and low-risk drivers who would glance off the road for less than two seconds during their longest glances.
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Tired of the faceless urbanites crowding their Google Street Views, computer scientists aimed to remove the pedestrians entirely. The images above show they succeeded, mostly.
The software was developed by Arturo Flores of the University of California, San Diego; earlier this summer he unveiled (pdf) the proof-of-concept. It’s built off of a previous algorithm developed in 2005 that can pick out pedestrians in urban settings. The new program removes the identified pedestrian and covers the gap using pixels from slightly ahead and slightly behind what appears to be someone walking down the street. But it only works in cities (where tall buildings give a relatively flat backdrop), can create a human smear when the photographed person walked at the same speed as the Google camera, and, one could imagine, has trouble in huge crowds–where neighboring pixel-swapping might result in blurry Frankenhumans.
But otherwise, it leaves a non-distracting, relatively “ghost free” image, a university press release says, that will further protect pedestrian privacy. When it almost succeeds, it gives users a good laugh: a post-apocalyptic cityscape including disembodied feet, ownerless dogs, and floating umbrellas.
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Images: Arturo Flores
Biwu English kokafo wapisi? That’s “Will English kick the bucket?” in a new language called ROILA (Robot Interaction Language). Perhaps it’s an apt question of my mother tongue. Under development by a group of researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, ROILA is a language made specifically for human-robot communication.
The language hopes to make up for speech-recognition software’s shortcomings by modifying human language to be more comprehensible for machines. Using an algorithm, it takes parts of natural and artificial languages and combines them to make sure that no two words sound too similar.
But a quick look at its grammar shows that ROILA goes a step further: when it comes to sentences, ROILA has cut out all the patap (English: the crazy). Irregular verbs? No. Most gendered words? No. Most punctuation? No. From the grammar website:
Every sentence will conclude with a full stop: “.” Question marks can be used in sentences where a question is asked. We do not support commas, apostrophes and quotation marks.
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Expletives and MIDI music rose from office cubicles this past Friday: Pac-Man had returned.
On May 21, Google replaced its usual blue, yellow, red, and green title with what the company calls a “doodle.” But unlike previous replacements, which have celebrated everything from Pi day to Norman Rockwell’s birthday, for Pac-Man’s special day (the 30th Anniversary of the game’s Japan release) Google pulled out the big guns, er, ghost-eaters.
This time, the doodle was an animated and playable version of the 1980s Namco video game, complete with our pie-shaped hero and his multicolored ghost foes: Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), and Clyde (orange).
But some kill-joys complain that Friday’s Pac-Man play hindered productivity, and set out to determine just how much money had been frittered away as employees avoided their work.
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If you feel like Christmas keeps creeping earlier every year, consider the companies who are trying to get their products ready for the holiday season. Yesterday, May 19, many companies showed off their wares at the Holiday Gift Guide Show in Times Square.
There are plenty of new gizmos to buy when the calendar turn to December, don’t worry. But we wanted to bring you a few of the delightfully odd or unexpected entries now. Why wait? Some are old, some are new, some are resurrected, and one is, well, blue.
Thanks to the Forever White headset by Beaming White, my dream has finally come true: I can listen to the White Stripes while I whiten my teeth, all without whitening strips. Just put the hydrogen peroxide gel on your teeth, then strap on the headset and subject the gel to blue LED. All the while you can be pumping music through the headset.
Upgrading to a newer, sleeker computer is always fun, but it can leave some clutter around in the form of old hardware. If you can’t recycle the old junky parts, perhaps you’ll consider refashioning them into brand new shoes, sneakers, or even underwear–thus putting the chic in circuit boards. Here are some ideas on what you can do with old electronics parts.
Exhibit A:
Artist Steven Rodrig shows how to re-use circuit boards to create fancy heels that are guaranteed to put the skip back in your step. These decidedly uncomfortable-looking shoes will be a welcome addition to the closet of a woman who already owns uncomfortable stilettos. If she must teeter in pain, let her do it in style–circuit board style.
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Finally, a way to combine our love of taxidermy with our love of technology.
From Kottke.org:
Fearing that the natural world is being replaced by technology, the artist [Kasey McMahon] installed a working computer inside of an idle beaver. First, she crafted a computer from the motherboard up, tested it, then hollowed out a stuffed beaver and molded the two together using spandex spray, resin, and fiberglass. After three months of work, the result was Compubeaver…
Yes, it’s an actual working computer inside a stuffed beaver. And you too can build one in 29 easy steps!
Also, don’t miss Compubeaver’s sidekick, Text-O-Possum, which comes equipped with a laser in it’s back leg that projects an image of a keyboard. So it doesn’t actually text, you say? Well that doesn’t matter, since carrying this thing around will ensure that no one wants to talk to you.
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These days, some of us would rather experience the world through an augmented reality (AR)—one that is portable and hands-free, with devices that can enhance our perception of the world by changing the way we consume computer-generated information.
If you watch football, you’ve likely seen AR technology used to draw an onscreen yellow line indicating a first down. And if you’ve been reading our Science Not Fiction blog, then you probably already know we humans are obsessed with the idea of becoming superhumans, stretching our imagination as far as we can.
But most of what we see on TV has been inspired by what is really happening in labs around the world. The latest buzz is coming out of Germany, where researchers claim they’ve created glasses that can not only display data in front of your eyes, but also respond to questions presented by your eye movements.
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