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Google’s Trans-Pacific Telecommunication System

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world telecommunication system

Google inaugurates its first telecommunication system traversing the Pacific.

Google inaugurated the underwater cable system with a length of almost 5,600 miles that will connect the west of the US with Japan.

The system is called FASTER and contains optimized fibers that can deliver a bandwidth of 60 terabits per second.

The global infrastructure for internet and communication services includes a few hundred submarine telecommunications cables.

The FASTER Telecommunication System

The name of the project was given by the team of engineers working on the project. One of them explained that at the beginning of the project, everyone hurried to get things done and to keep up with the tight schedule, so they repeatedly told one another to do it faster, everything needed to be done faster – and thus, the word became an emblem for the project.

The telecommunication system was an initiative of a consortium composed of Google, China Mobile International, Global Transit, KDDI, China Telecom Global, and Singtel.

The construction started in 2014, and it was managed by NEC Corporation. The total investment is estimated to value almost $300 million.

FASTER includes a 6-fiber-pair cable and transmission technologies that rely on 100 Gb/s x 100 wavelengths of optical cables.

The engineer responsible for NEC’s submarine network division said that the cable would bring benefits to the entire Asia-Pacific region. It seems that the construction involved many technical challenges.

The cable originating point is in Oregon and has two landing spots in Japan. On the American side, the FASTER system is connected with Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Through Japan, the cable is linked to other Asian locations.

The cable will be ready for service during the summer of 2016.

Facebook’s MAREA Project

Earlier this year, Microsoft and Facebook announced their intention to build an underwater cable across the Atlantic. The project will be named MAREA, and it will connect Virginia Beach with Bilbao in Spain. It will ensure an improved data connectivity for Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

MAREA will have an open design that will allow future upgrades to better and more reliable technologies. The system will reduce the costs for customers and will guarantee a better quality of their services.

The bandwidth offered by the optical fiber technology will bring benefits to streamers and gamers all around the world.

In 2015, there were almost 300 underwater cables built around the world. Apart from the Trans-Pacific cable, there are six other systems categorized by their region: Trans-Atlantic, Intra-Asia, Intra-Europe, Asia-Europe-Africa, Asia-Australia, and Australia-USA.

Image Source: Wikipedia

Spam King Sent to Jail

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Facebook spam

The Spam King was convicted for a 2008 Facebook scam.

Sanford Wallace, also known as the Spam King, received 30 months sentence email fraud and court contempt.

Aside from the spending time in prison, Wallace has to pay $310,628.55 as retribution. However, the maximum penalty was 16 years in jail and a fine of $1 billion, which makes the court decision to be fairly generous.

Wallace was accused of having sent 27 million spam messages by using fake Facebook accounts. The messages were a part of a PPC scam and were sent between 2008 and 2009. The contempt of court refers to a prior order not to access Facebook, after a CAN-SPAM act.

In court, Wallace pleaded guilty.

The Spam King

Sanford Wallace has a vast experience in spam, as in the ’80s he started to send junk faxes. He only stopped because the activity was outlawed in 1991.

The Spam King was also taken to court by AOL and Compuserve, as both companies had been targeted by his pellet official emails. Before Facebook, he hit MySpace and sent there another full string of spam emails.

In 1995, his company became the most successful seller of email marketing and also a source of unsolicited email. The company used false returned addresses, multihoming and relaying to ensure its advertising activity. As the business failed to become legit, Wallace had to go back to faxes.

Wallace retired in 1998 from online activity and took various jobs as DJ. However, he still connected to the internet world and in 2004 he was accused of infecting computers with spyware. He received similar convictions in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

The Facebook Scam

Between 2008 and 2009, Wallace owned more than 1,500 fake internet domain names and obtained access to 500,000 Facebook accounts.

In three months, the Spam King managed to send 27 million unsolicited ads that requested users to log into a website with their Facebook username and password. He collected the information and redirected users to a second online site which paid Wallace for the traffic he produced.

Wallace will have to undergo mental health treatment, and he will stay five years on probation after he will have ended his jail sentence.

The decision is supposed to discourage further spam activity in the US. A recent report from Symantec shows that the spam emails, phishing, and email-based malware are on a descending trend.

Image Source: YouTube

Facebook Accused of Ousting Conservative Media from Trending Topics

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'Facebook site'

Facebook has addressed an ongoing controversy of a so-called right-wing bias it has promoted in its Trending Topics feature. According to a former employee, the company’s staffers deliberately omitted conservative news outlets from the feature.

In response to the claims, the social media giant said that there is indeed a human factor that moderates the topics. But moderators are there to decide which story is more important and to ensure that hoax stories are left out.

The controversy

The controversy started last week when critics said that the company has actively encouraged its moderators to filter out versions of trending stories from right-wing media. Moreover, Facebook employees reportedly promoted stories from progressive media venues such as the like Black Lives Matter.

Facebook has argued ever since that its algorithms were not altered in any way. But today it explained how exactly the Trending Topics sections works. The company also said that stories appear on the list regardless of the “ideological spectrum” if they are deemed popular and most important.

Facebook declined the allegations that it may favor a specific ideological or political viewpoint. It also said that it didn’t suppress specific political perspectives in any way. But the centerpiece of its statement is the part with how its algorithms work.

Behind the Scenes

The site uses an algorithm to comb the site for the most popular stories. The AI-based feature picks these topics and sends a report to the site’s team of moderators. Stories make it on that list if they collect a lot of comments and reposts.

The algorithm also looks on an impressive list of news outlets for breaking stories. The move is designed to list the most relevant breaking stories in the Trending Topics Bar even before Facebook users learn about them and start talking.

The topics and stories selected by the algorithm are forwarded to the site’s Trending team. The humans there check the stories to make sure that they are news material, rather than random people’s thoughts on a particular topic. Plus, the team makes sure that a particular story is reported by several news sites.

Additionally, team members decide how important a story really is and what topic it belongs to. From here, a second algorithm takes charge. This algorithm personalizes the Trending Topics feed for each user, depending on their interests. For this purpose, the computer looks for information about how important the news is for that person, where that person lives, and whether the user had read similar topics before.

Image Source: Flickr

GIFs are Now Available on Tinder

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"Tinder app how to screen"

Tinder has a number of new features including GIF sharing and direct photo upload.

There are numerous ways in which people prefer to communicate. Words have been replaced with emoticons, emoji, memes and GIFs. And since dating apps are meant to bring people together, they must provide all the means of communications required by the users. This may be the reason for which GIFs are now available on Tinder.

Emoticons, Emoji, Memes and Gifs Are Taking Over Our Language

Linguists try their best to evolve a language, to study the way in which it is headed, but also the background of the words we use in our day to day communications. But there will come a time, and it seems it will be sooner, rather than later when linguists will have to study the morphology and syntax of emoticons, emoji, memes and GIFs (maybe they will finally settle the pronunciation argument between “gif” and “jif”).

GIFs are Now Available on Tinder

Finally, Tinder has answered the prayers of users worldwide and they have added the possibility of including GIFs in their posts or comments. All the person using Tinder has to do is click on the button SHARE GIF that Tinder has made available on its platform.

This was possible thanks to a collaboration between the famous dating app and GIPHY, the largest meme repository on the internet. Tinder users will also be able to check out the trending GIFs.

No More Additional Facebook Log In

Until now, Tinder users were forced to first upload a picture on Facebook, and then share it on Tinder in the hopes of finding true love at only a swipe away. But this is no longer the case since Tinder has added an “Add Photos” feature to its application.

It seems that this feature was demanded by a lot of users. The reason may be that some individuals prefer to share photos on Tinder that they wouldn’t normally post on Facebook, where there might be a boss or a relative in the “Friends” list.

The added feature helps the users keep their dating profile separated from their Facebook one, but it also helps the company take a step forward.

You Can Now Insert a Heart Shape into the Conversations

Another new feature made available by the dating app is a heart emoji that can be inserted into the conversations. The heart emoji is similar to the “Thumbs Up” one on Facebook, the one that marks the fact that someone likes the conversation.

Image source: www.wikimedia.org

Belgium sues Facebook Over Privacy

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Belgium sues Facebook

 

Belgium sues Facebook over privacy. Yes, it has come to that and it seems that the situation is pretty serious for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its peers.  What happened ?

It seems that the moment that Facebook announced their new privacy policy that was launched at the end of January, this year, Belgium’s Commission for the Protection of Privacy took a stand and asked for some clarifications. As Facebook refused to do so, because they have their headquarters in Europe and thus it falls under the under the jurisdiction of Irish laws.

So the Belgians have issued a report stating that Facebook is absolutely disregarding European and Belgian legislation. As a consequence, Facebook representatives replied that they need not account to any Belgian authority, so long story short, they were sued. Willem Debeuckelaere, chair of the Belgian commission was very crossed about the situation and declared that the fact the Facebook refuses to acknowledge their authority and accept any of their recommendations cannot be tolerated in any way.

Conclusively, there was a subpoena  issued for Facebook US, Belgium and Ireland.

One of the main reasons for Belgians’ dissatisfaction was the fact the “Like” button was also present as a Facebook extension on many other sites, that records the activity of users, as well as many other aspects regarding security and the collection of data that the users introduced. The express concern included other data that are inherently deduced from people’s activity on various sites, even that of those which are not Facebook users. The people are not actually aware of this and they were not prompted to give their direct consent, and that is illegal in Belgium.

Facebook defended itself claiming that Facebook does not use information in the suggested way, neither does it have any malicious intent regarding all this data management. One reason why Facebook has headquarters in Ireland is that the taxes are lower and also its regulations are much more permissive and protect their business throughout the European Union.  The future of this legal case in unsure at the moment, but  the entire world is categorically waiting to see what the outcome will be.

 

Image source: Telegraph.co.uk

MarK Zuckerberg Unveils Rules He Follow For Hiring New Employees

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Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg unveils the things he looks for when hiring a new employee.

In a recent Mobile World Congress, the founder of Facebook discussed the main secret ingredients of a good employee. He informs that he merely ask himself a single question while interviewing a person.

“Whether I would be able to work for that person or not?”

He believes that it is the best thing that tells you if a person deserves that designation or not.

Moreover, he reveals the name of current employees who successfully passed the test: Sheryl Sandberg (Chief Operating Officer)

A woman from the audience inquires what he feels like working with Sandberg.  Zuckerberg stated he regarded her as an adviser and a person who can easily creates a “healthy environment”

Furthermore, 30 years old millionaire admits that the development of Facebook is entirely dependent upon the workers. However, the key thing is to keep small number of employees.

It seems like Facebook is completely following the idea of small team. Currently, the firm has only 55,000 employees. The figures are comparatively smaller as compared to the workers of other companies.

Presently, Facebook has more than one billion users all around the globe. In comparison, the Silicon-Valley firm has less than 10,000 people

Facebook Launches”Place Tip”: A Location Based Recommendation Feature

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Facebook Place Tips

On Thursday, Facebook rolled out a new feature known as Place Tips. The feature is specially designed to offer location based recommendation to the users. The tool will display posts and photos of users’ friends who visited the same place.

For instance, if a user is visiting a certain place then Facebook will show feeds from friends who have already visited that place. It will provide complete information to the users about any particular place or restaurant.

The social networking site has also given a disable option for the convenience of users.  It will allow users to hide their location from their friends

The new feature will be visible on the top of the home page of iOS users with a name “Place Tips”.  As soon as users tap on Place Tips, it will begin to show cards of millions of locations.

However, users have to give Facebook access to their location in order to get benefits from Place Tips. The new tool will make use of cellular networks, Facebook Bluetooth settings, GPS and Wi-Fi  to find the exact location of the user.

Currently, the company is testing the feature in few major cities of New York.  Hence, visitors of Central Park, Times Square and Brooklyn Bridge would be able to view notifications.

The move will leave a great impact on the cell phone users of Facebook. Analysts believe that the new tool can generate a large amount of revenue for the company. It will attract numerous firms from the advertisement industry.

Pew Research Says: Facebook and Twitter Reduce Stress in Women

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women who use social media

A study of Pew Research Center’s Internet Project demonstrates that women who are addicted to “social media” are relatively less stressed.

Researchers carried out a telephonic survey to determine the impact of mobile phones, internet and social media on stress level of people. They asked 2,013 different people about their level of stress in daily lives. Afterwards, they created a stress scale known as Perceived Stress Scale.

Surprisingly, the report reveals that women who use technology are more relaxed. Survey revealed that women who send 25 emails, two digital pictures tend to be less stressful than the ones who do not use technology. Although, these women learn more about more distressing news about their friends and families but still they are less stressed.

The outcome of the study will surely leave a negative impact on all the previous studies associated with side effects of technologies. Earlier, all the researches related to Internet talked about the disadvantages of technology.  Even a report also showed that Facebook and Twitter can lead to self destructive behavior.

Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science and technology research at Pew informs that emotions such as jealously, sadness and being left out appeared untrue

This is the first time when a study showed the positive aspects of Internet.

Facebook Rolls Out the Trial Version of “Facebook at Work”

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Facebook at Work

Finally, Facebook rolled out the trial version of “Facebook at Work”. The new application will draw a fine line between the work place a home of the user.

Today, Facebook launched the app and site of “Facebook at Work”. The social networking media released the site for both Android and iOS users. Unfortunately, the company has not said anything regarding the desktop release of the new application.

Facebook at work site is quite similar to the current facebook.  However, the differences are in the policies of advertisement and third party developers. As per the new strategies, the company would not sale the data of the new app to third parties or to other adverting agencies.

The main goal of the new social networking site is to increase the productivity of employees through communication. It will provide a platform to workers to share their ideas with other employees.  The users would not be interested in the useless videos and posts of old friends.

Facebook started working on Facebook at work in 2013. Initially, the social networking service tried the new version in its London office.  It seems like the site showed good results in its trial. Hence, the company launched the new site for a wide range of people. Currently, Facebook has released the new app for particular offices. The firm has not announced the public resale date of the site.

A few other tech companies such as Microsoft and Google have already launched special versions for offices. Nevertheless, this is the first time when Facebook designed something related to work.

Facebook Seems Ambitious For Videos: Acquires a Video Compression Startup

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Facebook aquires QuickFire Networks

It seems like Facebook is trying really hard to generate more revenue with its video feature.  Today, the social networking media get hold of QuickFire Networks which is a video processing and transcodeing company.

Initially, a group of engineers of QuickFire Network will work together with Facebook. Afterwards, the firm will shutdown rest of its businesses to fulfill the conditions of agreements.

The San Diego based company will help facebook to reduce video file sizes and upload times. Additionally, it will also utilize proprietary technology to support HD videos on Facebook.   After that the videos would not consume a large amount of users’ bandwidth.  These things will definitely play a vital role in the enhancement of facebook’s video feature

Surprisingly, the news of acquisition surfaced just the next day of Facebook’s video data report. On Thursday, Facebook reported that the social networking site has seen an incredible growth in video. Every day, 1 billion daily users watch more than one video on Facebook. As per the states, the proportion of video posts on the social networking site increased up to 75 percent all around the globe.  The highest increase in video viewers is observed in the United States with a ratio of 94 percent.

It appears like that the recent report worked as a catalyst for the ambitions of the company. Facebook is now actually taking big step to mount up the strength of the infrastructure.

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