My Science School

Facebook is taking steps to make Instagram, the photo- and video-sharing app with more than 1 billion users, safer for teens. They include automatically defaulting teen users under 16 into private accounts, making it harder for suspicious adult accounts to find them, limiting the options advertisers have to reach younger viewers with ads, and using AI to detect users' ages. "We think private accounts are the right choice for young people, but we recognize some young creators might want to have public accounts to build a following," Instagram said in a blog post. "We want to strike the right balance of giving young people all the things they love about Instagram while also keeping them safe." However, critics say that even though Instagram appears to be addressing online predation, underage users, and advertising standards for teens, they also must be mindful of other issues including cyberbullying, self-harm and exposure to misinformation and adult content.

Giving users options has been frowned upon for years. The logic was simple enough: Most people won't change their default settings anyway, so the onus is on the product to get things right automatically. More algorithms, fewer settings. Less friction! Now, people are being given more choices and more tools with which to decide their experience.

Facebook acknowledged it's still trying to figure out the right way to verify people's age — because there's not much to stop new ones from just, you know, lying — and often, by the time someone reports a rule break, it's already too late. The only option for the platforms is to be more proactive and more careful. Doing that with young users is an obvious choice, because the stakes are so high and the relative business hit fairly low, but it'll be equally important and much harder to make the same decisions for the broader user base.

But whether it was Twitter serving the "Are you sure you want to share this article you haven't read?" pop-up or some of these privacy-focused tools that let people choose who can reach or read them, the focus has clearly shifted away from building the One Perfect System to letting users build it for themselves. At the scale at which these companies operate, that's the only way it's ever going to work.

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Got a pile of Lego bricks lying around at home and have no idea what to build? Brickit uses an AI powered camera to rapidly scan the bricks and suggest things you can make. Spread out your Lego bricks, and let the app scan them. Seconds later, the app delivers options you can construct, without worrying about what to look for from the large number of bricks. Choose the project you want to build and follow the step-by-step building process on the app. The app doesn't just mark the bricks you need for a particular project but also tells you where they are in the pile of Lego pieces! You can share your project with other users on the app. Brickit is available for iOS for now, and will be available for Android soon.

For many of us however, Lego is a big box containing a jumble of random bricks, each belonging to structures that were dismantled long ago. With the instruction manuals long gone, building more than a simple house feels like a daunting prospect. But what if you could scan all of the random pieces and be told exactly what you could make with them? This was the dream for the team behind Brickit, a new app that is inspiring kids and adults alike to build new creations from their old Lego. The process is very straightforward: simply lay out your bricks, point your camera at the unruly heap, and let Brickit do all the work for you. It will scan each individual piece, identify it, and then figure out which of Lego’s many sets you can build from what you have on hand. It will even tell you which bricks are missing.

As well as identifying the various bits in the pile, it will also provide you with illustrations of them in a similar vein to the official Lego instruction manuals. If you’re unsure of where to find these pieces in the undoubtedly huge pile, fear not because the app will then highlight each one in the original photo. As a result, building the proposed sets – assuming you have the correct bricks – becomes a relatively quick and easy task. Though, if you don’t have the right pieces to make any of the sets, you can attempt them anyway, substituting missing pieces for others that you have in your arsenal. This stage might require a bit of thinking outside the box but, as Lego’s original tagline goes: “Just Imagine…”

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Zero-click attacks, as the name suggests, are hacks that do not require any action from the target user in other words, these are attacks that can be executed without the victim carrying out any voluntary action There has been a lot of talk about zero-click attacks recently as a spyware found to be at the heart of a recent hack that targeted thousands of people operated in this manner.

Traditionally, hackers lay out a trap for the potential victim in the form of something like a phishing attack. Here, the victim is tricked into downloading an attachment or clicking on a link that is embedded with malware and initiates the Track

While these attacks require some form of action from the one being attacked - that eventually compromises the system, what makes zero-click attacks more dangerous is the fact that they bypass all these

Zero-day vulnerabilities

This means that zero-click attacks are any cyber attacks that exploit a flaw in the device and work their way into the system. Instead of exploiting human error, these identify potential zero-day vulnerabilities in the Operating System (OS)-flaws that haven't been identified, and hence are yet to be patched. Any device, be it iOS or Android. Windows or macOS, Can therefore fall prey to such an attack.

The recent attack that made news employed a powerful spyware called Pegasus. Once this spyware entered any device, it was able to install a module that enabled it to track call logs, read mails, messages, browsing history, calendars, and even track location data, before sending it to the attacker. Apart from these abilities, the spyware could also hide intelligently and self-destruct if necessary.

Hard to detect and trace

The fact that these zero-click attacks are currently both hard to detect and near impossible to trace poses serious difficulties as to how we surmount them. The only thing that we can do at the moment is to have the software and apps updated on our devices at all times, and also use only the official marketplaces to install any software.

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Turn your pictures into stories with Speaking Photo, an app that lets you add sound to any photo. It allows you to tell a story along with the image before you share it on Facebook, YouTube or via email. The storyboard feature gives users a chance to select multiple photo/audio pairs and customize their play order, creating a larger movie to share. Available for iOS and Android.

With SpeakPic, the voice of the translator will be really fun for you and friends.
Have you thought about making your friend sing his/her team's anthem? Or maybe an unexpected declaration of love. With SpeakPic, anything is possible.

You can change the voice with different effects to make the end result even funnier.
There are dozens of voices to choose from, in multiple languages.

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Lovers of the selfie rejoice! GoCam is a new app that uses touchless technology to let snap selfies. Developed by Swedish tech start-up Crunchfish, the iOS app lets users trigger photos or videos from a distance of up to 10 feet with simple gestures to control your smartphone camera. They can be edited with the included high quality filters and editing tools, and shared on social networks. So no more rushing into your best pose, take your time and trigger the shot when ready!

This unique app has been appropriately named GoCam for iOS devices.  By using gestures to control your camera, the app provides an amazing camera for taking selfies and groupies without touching your phone screen. Now the user doesn't need to rush into her favourite pose or hold it for long time intervals just to get that perfect click. With GoCam, you just have to set your phone and click a photograph whenever you are ready with the app intelligent detect your gesture and click the photo.

The company boosts that GoCam is the very first touchless camera application in the market with video recording, which allows the user to record videos touchless. The app lets the user capture spontaneous moments and then make the photos personal with filters and editing tools before sharing it with friends and family.

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Log into Facebook. On the homepage click on the small lock icon on the upper right side. It will drop a settings menu. Click on 'See More Settings'. This will take you to a new page of settings. On the left sidebar, click on 'Blocking' to reach the 'Manage Blocking' page. Look for 'Block app invites' to block requests from a friend. To block requests from all friends for the given app, look for 'Block apps'. For either of the options, start searching for a friend or an app in the respective boxes. Once you find them, click to add to the blocked list. That's it. No more annoying game invitations.

Facebook has a page dedicated to letting you manage how apps interact with your account. It shows all of the apps you've used Facebook to log into, so it's worth reviewing while you're managing blocking on your account.

Head to Settings > Apps and Websites on Facebook to access this. You'll see three boxes under Preferences, which we'll discuss in a moment.

Also on the Apps and Websites page, you'll see a second box titled Game and App Notifications. Click Edit, then Turn Off to hide all notifications from games and apps.

If you don't care about any content from these apps or don't want to block them individually using the above controls, this is a handy way to stop all notifications in one sweep. It doesn't affect the games themselves, so you can continue to play them.

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Mickey is the unit of measurement for the speed and movement direction of a computer mouse. One mickey is approximately 1/200th of an inch. The speed can be measured in "pixels per mickey", the ratio between how many pixels the cursor moves on the screen and how many centimetres you move the mouse on the mouse pad. The directional movement is called the horizontal mickey count and the vertical mickey count.

Clock speed is measured by how many ticks per second the clock makes. The unit of measurement called a hertz (Hz), which is technically one cycle per second, is used to measure clock speed. In the case of computer clock speed, one hertz equals one tick per second. The clock speed of computers is usually measured in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz). One megahertz equals one million ticks per second, and one gigahertz equals one billion ticks per second.

You can use clock speed as a rough measurement of how fast a computer is. A 2.0GHz computer will run faster than a 1.4GHz computer with the same processor and the same amount of memory. However, you cannot use clock speed to compare computers with different types of processors or computers with different amounts of memory.

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Spyware is a type of malware that is designed to steal your data. Once a spyware is activated, it monitors your activity and tracks your login, password and other data you input. It begins stealing your personal information and relays it to advertisers or third party users. On a more serious level, it can steal your credit card and bank account details, costing you your hardearned money. The best way to protect yourself from spyware is to install an antivirus software and be mindful of what you click and install on your system.

For mobile phones, it's best to download apps from Google Play for Android phones and the App Store for iOS mobiles. "Rooting" an Android handset or "jailbreaking" an iPhone should also be avoided if you're concerned about spyware. In an enterprise environment, it’s wise to make this a policy. Using mobile device management (MDM) software that limits the download to approved apps only is also a good option.

In addition, although it's unlikely that someone is going to physically access your phone to install spyware on it, always create a lock code for your phone that only you know. This is a requirement in many corporate environments.

Even if you're careful about the links you click, the attachments you open, and the files you download, you still may be targeted by drive-by infections. Since drive-by attacks often depend on browser vulnerabilities to infect their victims, the risk of drive-by infections can be reduced by keeping your browser version up to date.

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Coined in 2003 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper, and John Langford, CAPTCHA is short for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". It is a type of challenge-response test used by most websites to distinguish between a human user and a robot as a security measure to keep spam away. CAPTCHA can be just letters, pictures, numbers or a combination of two or more of these.

This CAPTCHA type relies on a human’s ability to generalize and recognize novel patterns based on variable past experience. In contrast, bots can often only follow set patterns or input randomized characters. This limitation makes it unlikely that bots will correctly guess the right combination.

Since CAPTCHA was introduced, bots that use machine learning have been developed. These bots are better able to identify traditional CAPTCHAs with algorithms trained in pattern recognition. Due to this development, newer CAPTCHA methods are based on more complex tests. For example, reCAPTCHA requires clicking in a specific area and waiting until a timer runs out.

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A portmanteau of "malicious" and "software", malware is any software written with the intention of causing harm to a user such as stealing data, damaging devices, and spying, among others. Trojans, spyware and ransomware are all different kinds of malware. Usually, malware is created by hackers looking to make quick money by stealing data or blocking users access to their data Malware can make its way to users' computers in the form of an email link, social media or any executable file. To safeguard oneself against malware, one must install an antivirus software that can detect malware and protect one's data.

Malware authors use a variety of physical and virtual means to spread malware that infects devices and networks. For example, malicious programs can be delivered to a system with a USB drive or can spread over the internet through drive-by downloads, which automatically download malicious programs to systems without the user's approval or knowledge. Phishing attacks are another common type of malware delivery where emails disguised as legitimate messages contain malicious links or attachments that can deliver the malware executable file to unsuspecting users.

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Have you ever created a picture collage for your friends or family member’s birthday? If yes, you know how it works - you take different photos of the person including some amusing ones from their childhood or with different sets of people-and paste them on a single piece of paper. The result is astounding– you have managed to capture the memorable moments of a person’s life on a sheet of paper.

Did you know that filmmakers to use this technique to tell long stories over a short span of time? Enter the world of montages, one of the most crucial tools of a film maker.

What is a montage?

Like a picture collage, a montage is a series of moving or still images that are edited together to create a scene. It is an artistic technique used in filmmaking to communicate a large amount of information in just a few seconds. It is done using various techniques such as juxtaposition of shots, quick cuts and voice overs.

The word “montage” has been derived from the French language. It is a term used to describe the connection of individual pieces into a cohesive whole.

Montages can create some of the most memorable scenes in a film. Here are some reasons why and how montages are used:

Time lapse

Unlike a book, films don’t have the luxury of time. They need to tell stories quick. This means condensing the plot, back stories of characters and character development into just a couple of hours. So how do filmmakers manage to do all that in such a short span of time? Well, the speed up time, literally!

Remember the opening sequence of Pixar’s heart-wrenching film “Up”? The entire love story – from their first meeting to their marriage and old-age – of the two main characters is brilliantly summed up in the sequence. Sequences created this can condense weeks, months, or even years into less than a minute on screen.

Training montage

Often the transformation of a character can be the most important part of a film. Sports films use something called ‘training montages’ to show a character preparing for a major event in the story. Sylvester Stallone‘s training montages from the “Rocky” films are classic examples. Scenes of Rocky exercising and climbing a flight of stairs capture his long stretches of training in just few seconds. You can find similar training montages in films such as “Chak De” and “Dangal”.

Combining multiple storylines

Montage can be used to drive home the central theme or plot point of the film through just one scene. It is done by combining different scenes of featuring multiple events or places into one using musical score or a narrative voice-over in the background. This increases the intensity of the film and also builds up pace. Shots are arranged next to each other.

For example, the famous scene in “The Godfather”, which shows the shots of assassinations of different mafia leaders with the baptism of Michael Corleone’s nephew. It conveys that Michael is the new don. If the scenes were separate, it would not have been this impactful.

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Why do you need a project report?

A project report is a road-map and an assessment document. It compiles information on the nature of the project (what are we supposed to do), the purpose of the project, the materials and inputs that need to be collected, how many will take part, who will do what (someone had to make those paper bags), number of days needed, and what should be the outcome of the project. It also includes the assessment and feedback given.

Did it achieve its objectives? What went wrong? How could what went wrong have been prevented? If it is a success, what made that possible?

Not one way, but many

There is no single correct way to write a report. You can use a standard format and fill it in with the information sought. You can make one, highlighting your own purpose and outcomes. Whichever method you choose, keep this in mind: no one has the patience to read long paragraphs of prose about a project. A project report is meant to give information about an activity with crisp remarks in the end. Keep it simple and to the point. See that the right information is put across clearly and effectively.

Here’s how to go about it

To write a good project report, you just need follow these basic principles:

Write to the reader

This is true of anything you write, even if the reader is you, as in diary writing. Your project report generally goes to the professor, company boss or to government officials, who will be the readers. This means your writing should be clear, concise and highly readable. Ask yourself are they familiar with the concept you have chosen?

Explain the concept briefly. Do you use terminology that is unfamiliar to your reader? If that is the case, include footnotes or make a list of unfamiliar terms and their meanings to be placed in the front pages. You can also try to use simple vocabulary, unless the technical term you choose is absolutely essential. If you are using abbreviations, include their expansion at least once.

Structure tour report

All reports need to have a form or structure. So organize the information into different segments so that your reader can identify relevant sections and quickly refer back to them later on. Also, begin with an abstract or the background. This points to the project’s purpose and a summary of the document’s contents.

Provide data

A good project report should have data backing it up, whether it is defending the team’s performance or breaking down a successful project.

Use charts, spreadsheets and statistics to add credibility to your suggestions and claims. If you say “The beach will be clean if a machine is employed to sweep it twice a day,” then check: do you have proof? Present the data in the form of graphs, photographs and tables.

Separate facts from opinion

Be absolutely sure about the difference between a fact and an opinion. Opinions should occupy minimum space under the heading of “Remarks.” You can make general suggestions, but remove any sentence that carries phrases like, “I think”, “I feel”, “In my opinion/view”, “If I were to do it”, etc.

Add personal views and preferences only when they are unavoidable. When you add them, identify them as: “This is my personal view.” It is a good idea to put these thoughts in a separate section.

Presentation

Type out the report neatly, add data/pictures, proofread thoroughly, make copies and submit it in a folder. Get all the participants of the project to sign it.

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Compact discs are amazing. Once you have listened to one, no other recorded sound will ever better it. Ordinary record discs can get scratched or dirty. Tapes in cassettes can stretch and break. But the sound in a compact disc is sealed in for life. The ‘playing surface’ is never touched and recording remains crystal clear for year after year.

At the heart of the system is a computer. The computer is specially programmed to reproduce sound more accurately than any other home player. The disc is computerized too. The recording on it is made using computer codes – known as digital recording. Inside the compact-disc player, a laser beam reads these codes and feeds them to the computer. The computer turns the codes back into sound – pure, clean sound without a single crackle or hiss.

There is no needle or magnetic head to cause damage. There are very few moving parts too. So your recorded disc will sound as good when you play it fo the thousandth time as it did when you first put it into the player and switched on.

 

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Tap the search bar in Telegram and enter # followed by a keyword to find messages that use that particular hashtag across all your chats. Narrow down search results by username and date range. Also, when you use a hashtag before any word in a message, that word becomes clickable, allowing you to see all the messages relating to that topic.

Like other messaging apps, Telegram's chat list is dynamically sorted by the date of last update, and they limit users to just 5 pinned chats.

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This is fine if you're just chatting with friends and family on Telegram. But if you're one of the many power users and professionals using Telegram for business, communities, and productivity, the 5 pinned chats limit isn't enough.

The chat list gets messy really quickly. We need more organization and sorting for our chats.

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With Telefuel, you can create Workspace and Chat Folders to keep your Telegram organized and in place - and then you can pin unlimited chats into each Workspace and Chat Folder. No arbitrary limits.

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Telegram's chat list is great for normal users, but power users need more. We felt the pain, and built Telefuel to help.

 

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NFT stands for Non-fungible token. It is fuelled by blockchain technology, meaning it is a unit of digital data. What makes NFTS different from bitcoins is that they are non-fungible. An NFT is unique and cannot be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin could be traded for another bitcoin but you get the same thing - 10 bitcoins = 10 bitcoins or something worth 10 bitcoins. However, if you trade an NFT, you get something that is completely different - an NFT art piece = whatever rate is paid for it

NFTS can represent digital files such as audio, video, drawings/artwork, a piece of writing, items in a video game and any other forms of creative work. It can be used to commodify digital creations and fetch money for digital creators.

The first NFTs were based on the Ethereum open-source blockchain and appeared around 2015. More recently, NFTs have become hugely popular with collectors and speculators having spent over 200 million dollars on NFT-based artwork in February - March 2021. This, compared to 250 million dollars throughout 2020

How does it work?

Since NFTS are digital data, artists who wish to sell their works as NFTS need to register with an NFT marketplace and then mint digital tokens by uploading and validating their information on a blockchain. This can cost an artist anywhere between 40 and 200 dollars. After this, the artist can list his or her work for auction on an NFT marketplace, similar to Amazon or Ebay.

How is it different?

NFT artworks have been creating a lot of buzz recently, with many shelling out millions to buy pieces. This new trend has given hope to artists who have been uploading their works on sites such as Facebook and Instagram for free to gain exposure and visibility.

However, a piece of digital art can be uploaded or circulated by anyone on the Internet. So what is the benefit for a collector buying an NFT? While the artworks can be reproduced or circulated by anyone, NFT gives the buyer the ownership rights to the original artwork. Like physical art the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, but the person who has bought the NFT owns the original artwork.

In the limelight

NFT art has suddenly started to trend all over the world after a collector group purchased a digital artwork by artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple for a record-breaking price of 69 million dollars at an auction by Christie's on March 11, 2021.

The piece that fetched the price is titled "Everydays: The First 5000 Days". It is a collage of Winkelmann's sketches that he posted daily and traces the evolution of digital shapes and sceneries through till the beginning of this year.

Winkelmann's work fetched the third highest price ever by any currently living artist, after Jeff Koons and David Hockney

Al artwork

Remember the humanoid Sophia, developed by Hanson Robotics? She has created artworks in collaboration with 31-year-old Italian digital artist Andrea Bonaceto. Sophia's work, titled "Sophia Instantiation" is a 12-second MP4 file showing the evolution of Bonaceto's portrait into Sophia's digital painting. The MP4 file is accompanied by a physical artwork painted by Sophia on a printout of her self-portrait. Her work, which went for auction late last month, sold for nearly 700,000 dollars.

Beyond art

If you thought only NFT art was fetching money, you are mistaken. On Monday, March 22, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, sold his first-ever tweet on the platform as an NFT for 2.9 million dollars! The tweet, which reads, "just setting up my twttr", was posted by Dorsey on March 21, 2006.

 

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