Facebook May Soon Know If You're Lying; Researchers Develop Social Media Lie Detector

Researchers at a U.K. university are developing a lie detector that will be able to tell if information posted on social media is true or false. (Photo : Reuters)

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will soon be able to accurately determine if users are spreading false information.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield are developing a lie detector system for social media that can determine if a post or comment is true, the BBC reported. The lie detector will also be able to tell if the online account was set up for the sole purpose of spreading rumors.

Share This Story

The project was inspired from the way social media was used during the London riots in 2011.
"There was a suggestion after the 2011 riots that social networks should have been shut down, to prevent rioters using them to organize," lead researcher Kalina Bontcheva told the BBC.

Read More

Joyent offers Canonical-customized Ubuntu as a cloud service

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service

Joyent wants to bring Linux into its fold of advanced computing cloud services, and has started offering an enterprise-supported version of the Canonical Ubuntu distribution that has been modified to take advantage of Joyent’s infrastructure.
“The two companies actually complement each other, from an engineering perspective,” said Bryan Cantrill, Joyent senior vice president of engineering, speaking of Joyent and Canonical, which manages the Ubuntu distribution.
Joyent already offers stock editions of Ubuntu, as well as another Linux distribution, CentOS. Joyent support for these images, however, is limited. The new version of Ubuntu, however, will be fully supported by Canonical.
“If you have an Ubuntu related issue on the Joyent cloud, you can be assured that someone will support those images,” Cantrill said.
The idea behind the specially crafted distribution is to allow Joyent users to take advantage of the many tools and software programs available for Linux, as well as for Ubuntu users to fully utilize the Joyent infrastructure.
To date, Joyent has primarily offered an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) through its own SmartOS

Read More

HTC smartwatches and music-based wearables to arrive at MWC 2014

HTC, after being rumoured to make the Nexus 10 device, is once again being rumoured to be working on wearable devices tipped to be introduced in the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2014 event in Barcelona, which starts from 24 February.
Bloomberg reports the Taiwanese smartphone-maker is getting ready to showcase three of its wearable devices at MWC 2014, of which two will be smartwatches and one will be a wristband focusing on playing music tracks.
Of the two rumoured HTC smartwatches, one is said to be a prototype based on the existing Qualcomm Toq smartwatch. The device is expected to come with Qualcomm's Mirasol display technology and Bluetooth connectivity, while the other one will be featuring Google Now voice command service and an AMOLED screen. The smartwatches are said to get released by Christmas this year.

Read More

How WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum went from food stamps to a US$19B deal with Facebook

AFP, Getty Images/BloombergFor WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, 38, the windfall of Facebook buying his company stands in stark contrast to his years as a teenager, when his family relied on food stamps after emigrating from Ukraine.

The US$19 billion deal to sell WhatsApp Inc. to Facebook Inc. started at Yahoo! Inc. more than five years ago, when Jan Koum became disillusioned at the way Internet companies were fixated on advertising.

5 things you need to know about WhatsApp

1. User numbers: For WhatsApp’s 450 million users, Mark Zuckerberg is paying about US$21 per eyeball for each user of the instant messaging platform he’s acquiring for US$19-billion.
2. It’s cheaper than texting: It’s free for the first year and 99 cents annually thereafter. WhatsApp is almost always cheaper than texting, especially internationally and for sending photos and videos

Read More

Microsoft Announces New Xbox One Media Remote

Microsoft is releasing a new Media Remote for its Xbox One video game console this March.The new remote will let you “control video playback for Blu-ray movies and streaming video on Xbox One.”Microsoft also notes that there are “dedicated Back and OneGuide buttons” the latter of which “provides one-touch, quick access to your favorite TV shows and movies through the Xbox program guide.”

In a very real sense, the remote is a tangible replacement for the bundled Kinect voice and motion sensor. People who aren’t comfortable navigating with a gamepad or via voice commands have an even more traditional tool at their disposal now.
Does this suggest that the Kinect should have perhaps not been bundled with the Xbox One? That a remote would be sufficient?

Read More

Google project could mean super-fast Internet for Atlanta

 

The Google Fiber project is a sought-after revolutionary Internet infrastructure that cities across the country are clamoring for. It appears Atlanta could be in the running for the next super-fast city of choice.
What would Fiber bring? Speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. That is up to 100X what most users experience with even the best home broadband speeds, Google says.

Read More

T-Mobile fires back at BlackBerry CEO John Chen

T-Mobile announced that starting Friday, BlackBerry customers from any carrier who trade in their old phone will get a $200 credit toward a new device from any brand, including BlackBerry. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

U.S. wireless carrier T-mobile shot back at BlackBerry CEO John Chen for a blog post that accused it of running an "anti-BlackBerry campaign" after it offered iPhone upgrades to BlackBerry customers.
Chen wrote on Tuesday that he was "outraged" by the "clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing promotion" by the fourth largest wireless carrier in the U.S.

Read More