Nielson Media has finally answered one of the pressing mysteries of the age: Why we defriend people on Facebook. Surprisingly, the top reason isn’t overusing played-out memes. The most likely answer: because someone offended us. That data comes courtesy of a study of 1,865 adult users of social media, conducted from March 31st to April 14th. It found that as in real life, behaviors like having creepy friends, insisting on saying terrible things, or simply being a depressing downer play a huge role in choosing with whom we socialize.

By a wide margin, the top reason for removing someone as a friend, cited by 55% of respondents, was “offensive comments”. What, precisely, is meant by “offensive” is unexplained; “political comments” (14%) are considered a distinct reason apart from generally offensive comments. This suggests that the offenses referred to are more personal in nature, unsurprising to anyone fortunate enough to witness a very embarrassing argument conducted for all to see on a Facebook user’s wall.

Not knowing someone well was the second most common reason for de-friending someone, cited by 41% of respondents, and “trying to sell me something” came in at a very close third place, with 39%. Other reasons include “depressing comments” (23%), “lack of interaction” (20%) Breakups and divorce (11%). “Update profile too often” and “they added too many people” are tied with 6% of respondents citing them, a lesson to anyone who thinks that the rest of us are as enthralled by constant declarations of true love, or their children’s latest potty training update as they are.

In addition to de-friending habits, the study also shows that men and women use social media in subtly different ways. Both men and women primarily use such services to keep in touch with family, reconnect with old friends and find new ones. However, men showed a higher likelihood of using social media for professional networking and dating, with a corresponding tendency to approve friend requests if the requesting user is attractive. Women on the other hand had a higher tendency to cite creative expression and positive reinforcement as primary reasons for using social media. Interestingly, the data suggests much higher commonalities among women. The top reasons for approving friend requests or for removing someone as a friend were cited more by women than by men.

The only thing missing from Nielsen Media’s research is a comprehensive examination of people who decide they’ve had enough of Facebook and ostentatiously announce that fact via an angry post to their Facebook wall that contains phrases like “LOL I hate Fakebook!” and “I’m getting back to real life!”. This is most likely due to the fact that such people have also been defriended in real life.

The report can be read in full on the official site.

Hackers in China have recently gotten attention for reportedly attempting to steal industrial technology secrets and hacking US satellites, and now a Wall Street Journal report claims Chinese citizens were discovered hacking US Chamber of Commerce in May of 2010. The first breech is believed to have occurred in November of 2009 or even earlier, giving the hackers at least six months of administrator-level access to the Chamber’s network. It isn’t know (or wasn’t revealed) exactly how much information was stolen; the Chamber says that fewer than 50 of its members were compromised, but they also said the hackers stole at least six weeks of emails from four individuals who worked on Asia policy.

As to how the hackers got in, it sounds like a “spear phishing” attack was to blame, with targeted users clicked on fraudulent links or email attachments. The FBI found out about this breach and alerted the Chamber, which then hired outside investigators to determine the extent of the data theft. The Chamber has since overhauled its network security and prevents its employees from taking mobile devices into countries with a high infiltration risk (like China) — but there’s still some strange and suspicious behavior, like a printer spontaneously printing pages of Chinese characters. At this point, the Chamber feels the best thing it can do is find breeches quickly, because it believes it’s “nearly impossible” to keep hackers out entirely.

Texas Instruments (TI) is facing a patent infringement suit from Cradle IP, which claims that the company is violating three of its patents with its TMS320-series digital signal processors as well as its ARM-based AM389x Sitara and OMAP3 and 4 processors.

The patents in question are #6,647,450 (Multiprocessor computer systems with command FIFO buffer at each target device), #6,708,259 (Programmable wake up of memory transfer controllers in a memory transfer engine) and #6,874,049 (Semaphores with interrupt mechanism).

All three patents were held until November 9, 2011 by Cradle Technologies, which was spun off Cirrus Logic in 1998. Cradle IP is a subsidiary of Cradle Technologies that was apparently created to monetize Cradle Technology’s patents. Cradle Technologies describes itself as a “leader in network video surveillance systems”.

According to the suit, Cradle continued to develop multi-core hardware designs after it was separated from Cirrus Logic and even released chips, including the CT3600 multi-core DSP in 2005 and was earlier to market than TI and Freescale. The company also stated that it has tried to contact TI about the alleged patent violations as early as November 2008, but has been supposedly ignored.

As usual, the document asks for a court trial to confirm the infringement, as well as “compensatory damages, past and future, amounting to no less than reasonable royalties, prejudgment interest, and/or any other available damages based on any form of recoverable economic injury sustained by Cradle as a result of TI’s infringement including enhanced damages for TI’s wilful infringement of the Patents-in-Suit.”

SOURCE via Morris James

Connected Intelligence, a unit of market research firm NPD, found that the willingness of consumers to be paying for wireless data plans to connect their tablets is declining (not that there has been ever enthusiasm for expensive data plans). According to the firm, only 5 percent of tablet users paid for a data plan last spring and it is around 4 percent right now. It is quite apparent that most tablet users feel that Wi-Fi availability is good enough as 65 percent of tablet owners use Wi-Fi (up from 60 percent earlier this year). Interestingly, about 5 percent of tablet owners said they do not connect the devices to the Internet at all.

“There are multiple reasons for greater Wi-Fi reliance,” said Eddie Hold, vice president, Connected Intelligence, in a prepared statement. “Concern over the high cost of cellular data plans is certainly an issue, but more consumers are finding that Wi-Fi is available in the majority of locations where they use their tablets, providing them ‘good enough’ connectivity. In addition, the vast majority of tablet users already own a smartphone, which fulfills the ‘must have’ connectivity need.”

SOURCE via Connected-Intelligence

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has issued a weird warning: if you have to irrigate your sinuses with water for some medical reason, don’t use tap water. The reason: your brains may get eaten by the Naegleria fowleri.

That’s the scientific name of the brain-eating amoeba, the gross thing in the picture above. It’s like the brain slug in Futurama, except this one kills you instead of controlling your brain.

It’s also what happened to two people in that state. They were infected and died after irrigating their sinuses with tap water.

So what’s this nae… nal… er… Naegleria fowleri? Well the Naegleria fowleri is a micro-organism that lives in ponds, lakes, hot springs or anywhere where there is warm fresh water. It also lives in soil and un-chlorinated swimming pools. When you drink it, there’s no danger. But when you put it up your nose using a device like a neti pot, you are playing with death.

And so how can a person get infected? If you get it through the nose, the brain-eating will attack your nervous system until you are dead. The chances of surviving its attack are slim: 98 percent of attacks end in the morgue.

When you’re infected, the symptoms start one to 14 days after the infection. Your taste and smell will be altered, you will have headaches, fever and nausea. Your neck will go rigid and you will start vomiting. You may also experience confusion and hallucinations, as well as seizures. Death occurs one to two weeks after exposure.

Well the good news is you can actually avoid Naegleria fowleri. More correctly, you can prevent this. Just boil the water first and kill the bastard little bug. In fact, try not to put anything up your nose and ears that hasn’t been sterilized first. It’s a common point of entry not only for this bloody thing, but also to viruses and bacteria.

SOURCE via Yahoo! News

App stores hold thousands upon thousands of applications, so it’s not surprising that it’s sometimes hard to find what you want, or even discover new applications in the sea of software. A new app store is aiming to make app discovery much easier, though. The only difference is that this is a real brick-and-mortar app store.

Openspace is a new start up that wants to make the whole app shopping experience an easier and less confusing activity. Speaking in an interview to AllThingsD, founder Robert Reich said his company aims to fill a gap that Apple and the major carriers leave open and cure customers’ “app-rehension.”

“If your iPhone has a problem, you take it to Apple. If your Android tablet has a problem, you take it to Verizon, AT&T or Best Buy,” said Reich. “But if you have a question about which camera app would be great for taking pictures this weekend on the slopes, where can you turn?”

The first store is located in Boulder, Colorado, and is open six days a week. The staff are called ‘App Gurus’ and are there to help you will all of your app-related questions. The only trouble is that according to AllThingsD, Openspace isn’t sure how it’s going to make money from the store. Down the line, it hopes to partner with developers to take a percentage of revenue from applications promoted in the store, but it’s not clear how the store is going to remain profitable until then.

If you don’t live in Boulder (or don’t feel like venturing to the store) but still want Openspace’s app recommendations, you can visit the company’s website instead.

SOURCE via All Things D

Distracted driving has long been pointed to as one of the major causes for America’s high traffic fatality rates; more than 3,000 traffic deaths in 2010 are attributed to the problem. Citing these stats, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended a nationwide ban on cell phone usage and texting while driving. Due to lax enforcement of existing statues and a high fatality rate, the state of Missouri was singled out in the recommendation.

In making the case for such sweeping regulations, the NTSB’s Robert Sumwalt compared distracted driving to alcohol impairment.  “This is becoming the new DUI. It’s becoming epidemic”. That’s something of an exaggeration – in 2009, the total number of alcohol related traffic fatalities was 10,839. But 3,000 people is still far more than should be dying for something as meaningless as checking on a Words With Friends game. The recommendation of a total ban is non-binding, and laws governing cell phone use vary considerably from state to state. While 30 states ban cell phone use by inexperienced drivers and another 35 ban texting, only 10 have laws strict enough to meet today’s recommendation.

If the states heed this advice, the ban would apply to everything except for emergency calls, and would apply equally to hands-free phone accessories as well as to standard phone-in-hand use. Built-in cell phone systems like a bluetooth car stereo installation would not be affected. The full recommendation is available on the official NTSB site.

SOURCE via CNN

Did you know that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has already produced 100 petabytes of data that needed to be sent out to labs across the world for analysis? Pushing that amount of information across the Internet is a gargantuan task, which is why Caltech teamed up with the Universities of Victoria, Michigan and Florida (International) amongst others to try and break the internet speed record. Using commercially available gear (including Dell servers with SSDs), it was able to push 98Gbps and pull 88Gbps down a single 100Gbps fibre-optic connection between the Washington State convention center in Seattle and the University of Victoria computing center in British Columbia. Head on past the break for a video that shows you how it was done.

Read more…

HP has gone through some big changes in the past year, and it turns out it’s also been considering a rather drastic change to its identity — one that may or may not yet be adopted. That’s been revealed by the team at Moving Brands, who began working with HP on a complete redesign of the company’s brand in 2008, and have now shown off what they’ve come up in an exhaustive case study on their website. At the heart of it is a new logo, which traces its history to HP’s original 1941 design, but takes on a decidedly more modern appearance; gone are the familiar circle and rounded corners, and in are some sharp lines and hard edges. According to Moving Brands, the goal was to make the brand “digitally native, context-aware and ever evolving,” with the lines in the logo itself echoing the same 13 degree angle of the original while also “recalling the forward slash used in programming.” Just what would this new HP look like? You can get a pretty good idea of that at the source link below — we’ve also included a small taste after the break, including two of Moving Brands’ videos. Read more…

Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, has been forced to go to bat for Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson after the television host jokingly suggested striking public sector workers should be shot in front of their own families. Yep. That sounds like Clarkson to us.

According to the UK’s Guardian and Telegraph dailies, members of the UK Parliament then began calling for the government-owned BBC to oust Jezza, with Labor Party member Jim Sheridan asking whether or not Clarkson was a luxury the BBC couldn’t afford. Around 32,000 people sent complaints to the network about the host’s disparaging remarks, but Thompson countered, suggesting that Clarkson is one of the UK’s chief cultural exports at the moment.

The BBC executive also said far more people would be upset to see the gregarious host disappear from Top Gear than had complained about his flippant remarks.

This is just the latest episode in a long line of Clarkson’s skirmishes with various nationalities, religions and organizations, but it doesn’t look like the British personality is going anywhere any time soon.

SOURCE via The Guardian