About
If you've got a story, picture, or link that's beyond belief, send it to tipline@haveigotoneforyou.com with your name and where you heard about it and we'll add it!
Accounts
Click here to check if anything new just came in.
March 30 2012
The Craziest Would-Be Data Center/Fake Island Nation Adventure Story You’ll Ever Read
The Principality of Sealand and data haven?
Seven miles off the English coast and just 24 feet above the roiling waves of the North Sea is the Principality of Sealand. The nation’s total area amounts to just 120 x 50 feet, but its occupier and “ruler” since 1966, Major Paddy Royal Bates, has had outsized dreams for his former military platform out in the sea. Once, it was the home of HavenCo, that company that billed itself as a “data haven,” the Switzerland of data centers.
HavenCo was supposedly to be the home of businesses who didn’t want governments minding their business: porn, anonymous currencies, governments in exile. When Fox News reported that WikiLeaks was moving its servers to Sealand, it certainly seemed fitting but, alas, turned out to be just speculation. That led us to Ars Technica, where law professor James Grimmelmann has written what is probably the definitive history of Sealand and HavenCo, and it is a thrilling read. A few snippets from nation’s short history include a pirate radio broadcaster hurling Molotov cocktails, press wars over “marooned children,” and coup led by a former diamond dealer (possibly staged).
Grimmelmann has found a colorful cast of ...
August 19 2011
No More ‘Jersey Shore’: New TV Tells Advertisers, Retailers, and Everybody Else What You’re Watching
Best friends!!
Modern life is about maximizing information overload. So while you watch your favorite shows on the boob-tube, chances are you’re also surfing the Interwebs, looking for that actor’s screen credits, buying the season on DVD, checking other people’s real-time reactions. Ah, but what if your TV pulled up all that stuff for you, and helpfully displayed it on your computing device of choice, a la Google Ads in your email? Wouldn’t that be…something?
Before the end of the year, just such a TV will be released by a start-up called Flingo—a TV that, should you opt in to the service, will note what you’re watching and customize what your computer shows you. Technology Review got details from some officers of the company:
“Any mobile app or Web page being used in front of your TV can ask our servers what is on right now,” says David Harrison, cofounder and CTO of Flingo. “For example, you could go to Google or IMDB and the page would already know what’s on the screen. Retailers like Amazon or Walmart might want to show you things to buy related to a show, like DVDs, or ...
February 01 2011
Facebook Addicts, Rejoice: Airplanes Offer Free Access in February
For all those penny-pinching, world-traveling Facebook-users out there, you’re in luck: you’ll be able to check Facebook during your flight and not pay a dime if you fly during the short, sweet month of February.
Of course this means we all need to prepare ourselves for the inane status updates. Like: “I can see my house from here!” And: “Clouds… wow.”
Participating airlines–including American Airlines, Delta, United Airlines, AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, Virgin America, and U.S. Airways–are partnering with Gogo Inflight Internet and Ford to provide airline passengers with free Facebook access. As Mashable reports:
It’ll work like this: Once the travelers are allowed to turn on tablets, phones, laptops and other personal electronic devices, they will be able to access the Gogo Wi-Fi network, and then click on the Ford/Facebook banner to access Facebook.
Of course, the ulterior motive is that you won’t want to stop just at Facebook, in which case you’ll be charged for internet access, starting at around $5. And in March, the Facebook free ride will be over, too.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Map of Facebook Friend Connections Lights Up the World
January 21 2011
Newsflash for Chatroulette Flashers: Your Days Are Numbered
Online flashers could soon be out of a hobby, thanks to a team of software engineers from the University of Colorado. The team is developing a system called SafeVchat, which is meant to detect and filter out obscene images, foiling even the fastest of flashers.
The team tested their algorithms at Chatroulette, the infamous online video-chat service that lets you communicate with randomly-selected strangers, and the results looked good.
As you can probably guess, the problem with seeing video images of random strangers is that some of these people are all-too-eager to show off their flesh. Despite the age restrictions on some video-chat sites and the noble-yet-feeble first attempts at creating filtering software, flashers still peddle their wares with ease and have seemed as unstoppable as a bad rash.
But not for long. Enter the engineers.
With SafeVchat, Xingu Ying and his research team have created algorithms that monitor the harbingers of flashing, and wipe away the video output whenever it detects too much flesh. As New Scientist reports:
First, they detect facial features – eyes, nose and mouth – in the video because many “misbehaving users” hide their ...
December 14 2010
Map of Facebook Friend Connections Lights Up the World
What do 10 million Facebook friendships look like? It pretty much looks like the world at night from space. Facebook intern Paul Butler made the map and was surprised by how elegantly it lit up the world. Facebook has truly gone global. From his Facebook post about the map:
I was interested in seeing how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends. I wanted a visualization that would show which cities had a lot of friendships between them.
To make the map Paul looked up 10 million friendship pairs, and listed the friends by current city, then tabulated the number of friendships between cities. He then mapped this connection strength to the latitude and longitude of the city.
The data rendering was a little bit more complicated, as Paul explains in the post:
I defined weights for each pair of cities as a function of the Euclidean distance between them and the number of friends between them. Then I plotted lines between the pairs by weight, so that pairs of cities with the most friendships between them were drawn on top of the others. I used a color ramp from black to blue to white, with each line’s color depending on its weight.
Many of the areas with few connections are regions with small populations (hello, Sahara and Amazon!) or low internet penetration. And the lack of connections to China would be because the government blocks Facebook access, though there is an almost identical site called Ren Ren Wang.
The dark vastness of Russia is explained by the fact that Facebook is only the seventh most popular social networking site in the country, with only two percent of Russia’s online audience using it. But it still beats MySpace, so that’s really all that matters.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Desperate For Facebook Friends? Buy Some!
Discoblog: Worst Science Article of The Week: Facebook Causes Syphilis
Discoblog: Teen Sues Mom for Hacking His Facebook Account
80beats: Facebook Unveils Its Messaging System—Just Don’t Call It Email
80beats: The Facebook Movie Comes Out Today. Is It Fact or Fiction?
80beats: Facebook CEO: People Don’t Really Want Privacy Nowadays, Anyway
DISCOVER: Map A World Full of Spam
DISCOVER: Map What Does the Internet Look Like?
Image: Facebook Engineering Page
December 07 2010
Canadian Internet Users: Link to This Post at Your Own Risk
A lawsuit by Vancouver businessman Wayne Crooke might just break Canada’s Internet.
Crooke is suing the publisher of a site called p2pnet for a post about free speech in Canada, written in response to a libel lawsuit brought by Crooke. In the post, publisher Jon Newton linked to the allegedly libelous articles. Crooke asked him to remove the links, but Newton refused, so Crooke accused him of defamation.
If Newton loses in court, anyone who shares a libelous (whether they know it or not) link over the Internet would be guilty of libel themselves, a ruling that would essentially shut down the Internet, Newton explained to Ars Technica:
“If I lose there won’t BE an Internet in Canada,” Jon Newton wrote me this morning as he prepared to step aboard a Vancouver Island seaplane. “Just a shadow.”
The case has been dragging on for years, since the blog post went up in 2006. After Crooke lost in British Columbia court and in his provincial appeal, he successfully appealed his case to the Supreme Court of Canada, a trial that is starting today in Ottawa and is being streamed live.
The case could impact not only bloggers, who use hyperlinks in their text (see what I did there?), but also anyone who shares links over social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr; via forums and link sharing services like Reddit, Digg, and Del.icio.us; or even search giants like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.
Crooke argues that the inclusion of a hyperlink means that the author is essentially “republishing” the original libelous article, no matter how the link in included in the text. The Montreal Gazette quotes his written arguments:
“The creation of a hyperlink is a considered and active choice,” said [Crooke's] written arguments. “It is part of what the primary article has chosen to communicate. It is more than a mere reference, it is an inclusion.”
Newton and his defense team, including the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, compare hyperlinks to footnotes, source references, or–in this example quoted by Ars Technica–a finger pointing at something:
“If two friends are walking past a sign with defamatory statements on it, and one friend, points it out the other, the law should not make the friend who points to the sign liable as a publisher of defamatory statements on that sign. This is all the more so with hyperlinks.”
But even Newton’s advocates note that there may be exceptions. Ars Technica explains CIPPIC’s idea that a person may be at fault for linking to libelous material if he has “knowingly endorsed and adopted the defamatory statements,” and also notes an example from the appellate judge:
As one of the appellate judges in the case noted, saying something like “the truth about Crookes can be found here” and linking “here” might be a very different thing from a mere bibliographic link.
Related Content:
Discoblog: How Slow is South Africa’s Internet? A Pigeon Is Faster (Literally)
Discoblog: Ontario Parents Try to Protect School Kids From Dangerous WiFi Rays
Discoblog: Is Googling Bad For the Environment?
80beats: “Do Not Track?” FTC Proposes an Opt-Out for Internet Users
Bad Astronomy: SPEECH Act now a law: big win for libel reform!
Bad Astronomy: BREAKING: BCA drops libel case against Simon Singh!
Image: flickr / Jurvetson
November 30 2010
Guilt-Free Procrastination: This Online Game Could Cure Genetic Diseases
Have a brain for puzzles? What about ones that help advance science?
A new online game called Phylo is harnessing the power of idle brains on the Internet–asking any and all to help align genomic sequences. Human brain power is used instead of computer power because, as the researchers explain in the press release, humans are still better at some things than computers are:
“There are some calculations that the human brain does more efficiently than any computer can, such as recognizing a face,” explained lead researcher Dr. Jérôme Waldispuhl of the School of Computer Science. “Recognizing and sorting the patterns in the human genetic code falls in that category. Our new online game enables players to have fun while contributing to genetic research–players can even choose which genetic disease they want to help decode.”
When game players find the best arrangements of colorful little boxes, they’re really making the best matches they can between the genome sequences of different animals–like a human and a monkey, or a dog and a bat. The researchers, from the structural biology group at McGill University, loaded the sequences of genes related to diseases like breast cancer into the program, adding in the genetic data for many different species. You can then slide the colored boxes (stand-ins for the nucleotides in DNA) around to minimize the number of mismatches and gaps and maximize the number of matched nucleotides. The matches show which parts of the genes have been preserved across different species and are therefore important, according to the Phylo about page:
These similarities may be consequences of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. From such an alignment, biologists may infer shared evolutionary origins, identify functionally important sites, and illustrate mutation events. More importantly, biologists can trace the source of certain genetic diseases.
What I noticed in playing the game is that the scoring doesn’t seem to fit the game’s objective–the highest points are sometimes awarded for just squishing all the code together, not necessarily for making the most nucleotide matches. I also think the penalty for opening a gap (a stand-in for a genetic mutation) is too weighty. But all in all it’s quite addictive, until you get stuck on a sequence–you can’t move on to the next level until you equal the computer’s score, which, at least in my experience, can be tricky at times, and you can run out of time if you get stuck. Play the tutorial for more information and detailed directions.
In the end, you compare the gene sequences for up to eight different species, trying to make the best matches and beat the computer. Everyone’s alignments are analyzed by the game, and will contribute to the global database as an “optimization” of the computer’s sequence alignments. The creators even plan to create a Facebook application to play the game (which they optimistically say could rival Farmville in popularity), but right now it’s hosted at the group’s website. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.
Related Content:
Discoblog: The Computer Game That Could Cure HIV
Discoblog: Impact: Earth! Lets You Smash Your Home Planet to Bits
80beats: Crowdsourced Science: 5 Ways You Can Help the Hive-Mind
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Foldit – tapping the wisdom of computer gamers to solve tough scientific puzzles
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Tetris could prevent post-traumatic stress disorder flashbacks (but quiz games make them worse)
DISCOVER: This is Your Brain on Video Games
Image: Phylo
October 29 2010
Everest Gets 3G Coverage; Avalanche of Tweets & Status Updates to Follow
Ncell, a subsidiary of the Swedish telecom company TeliaSonera, has installed a 3G data network in a Nepalese town that should reach the summit of Mount Everest. This high up, high-tech improvement will allow summit-ers to communicate with friends, family, and organizers from the top of the world.
A phone base station was set up near the town of Gorakshep at 17,000 feet above sea level, and the signal should reach to the peak about 12,000 feet above that, telecom officials said–but it hasn’t been tested yet. The service should be fast enough to allow adventurers to make video calls and surf the Internet from their phones.
Lars Nyberg, CEO of TeliaSonera, told the Associated Foreign Press how excited they were to take the mountain into the wireless internet age:
“This is a great milestone for mobile communications as the 3G high speed internet will bring faster, more affordable telecommunication services from the world’s tallest mountain,” said Lars Nyberg.
The service is definitely an upgrade from the voice-only network set up in 2007 by China Mobile on the Chinese side of the mountain, and the erratic coverage of satellite phones. Who wouldn’t want to update their Facebook status to “chilling at the summit of Mount Everest” or “check-in” there? Now we can all wait with bated breath to see who gets the first Mayorship.
An Irish mountain climber named Gavin Bate was aiming to send the first tweet from the summit in 2009, but because of the weather conditions couldn’t reach the summit. Perhaps as people start to use the data network Everest will get better reviews on Google Maps; right now it’s at 2.5 stars.
But apparently the mountain committee had other ideas of how to use the connection–at least that’s what Ang Tshering Sherpa told the Associated Foreign Press:
“The erratic and expensive satellite connection that many times does not work for days will be replaced with this service, making it possible for all climbers to keep in touch with their organisers and family,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, a member of the International Mountain Protection Commission. “This will also be helpful, possibly, when there is an accident or an expedition mishap,” he added.
Related content:
Discoblog: Would You Give Up Sex for Internet Access?
80beats: EXTREME SCIENCE: Doctors Drop Their Pants on Everest for a Blood Oxygen Test
80beats: Why Climbers Die on Everest: It’s Not the Avalanches (or the Yeti)
80beats: “Interplanetary Internet” Will Soon Bring Twitter to the ISS
DISCOVER: How Much Does The Internet Weigh?
Reality Base: “PopeTube” Launches, Brings New Holiness to Internet
Image: Flickr/stevehicks
October 21 2010
Want to Watch a Mars Rover Being Built? There’s a Webcam for That
Want to see your tax dollars at work? There’s a more exciting way to do it than watching a road crew pour asphalt for the latest highway expansion. Now you can watch the next Mars rover being built in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, thanks to a well-positioned webcam.
Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is a hulking beast compared to its smaller cousins, Spirit and Opportunity. The six-wheeled Curiosity is about the size of a car and weighs 2,000 pounds. The rover is scheduled to blast off toward Mars in the winter of 2011, and to reach the planet in August 2012. Its mission: to probe rocks, take pictures, and generally cruise around looking for signs of life, past or present.
The “Curiosity Cam” went live today. It will typically show technicians working from 8 in the morning until 11 at night, Monday through Friday, but the bunny suit-clad engineers sometimes disappear from the shot when their work draws them to other parts of the building. (During their lunch break today one commenter groused that it was boring to stare at an empty room.) Right now the technicians are working on the rover’s instruments, tomorrow they’re scheduled to put the suspension system and wheels on. Be sure to tune in!
Related Content:
80beats: It’s Alive! NASA Test-Drives Its New Hulking Mars Rover, Curiosity
80beats: James Cameron to Design a 3D Camera for Next-Gen Mars Rover
80beats: Spirit Doesn’t Return NASA’s Calls; Rover Might Be Gone for Good
80beats: Mars Rover Sets Endurance Record: Photos From Opportunity’s 6 Years On-Planet
Image: NASA / JPL
October 19 2010
Ontario Parents Try to Protect School Kids From Dangerous WiFi Rays
A small town in Ontario has come down with a bad case of technophobia. The majority (88 percent) of an Ontario school’s parent group (which has 210 members) voted that they want the wireless Internet at their children’s school shut off, the group said in a press release:
“After learning the whole story about how risky WiFi is, parents voted to protect their children’s health and plug the computers back in with hardwires,” said Andrew Couper, a member of the elected School Council…. “This is something every school council across Canada should be questioning.”
After the wireless was installed, the parents of Meaford, Ontario say their children began complaining about symptoms ranging from headaches to nausea, which the children said struck while they were at school. In my day we called this illness “school-sucks-itis”. Well played, kids.
While the parent’s informal poll has made the news, the real decision lies with the Bluewater District school board. Couper said that the school trustee told him the decision process could take years, but the parents can present their views at the school board meeting next month. The board spokesperson didn’t express any opinion about the parent’s vote.
The Medford, Ontario school is only the latest in a string of schools who have considered banning wireless internet, said CBC News:
Health Canada issued an advisory in August, when the issue initially surfaced, stating that wireless internet is not harmful to anyone’s health. “Health Canada continues to reassure Canadians that the radiofrequency energy emitted from Wi-Fi equipment is extremely low and is not associated with any health problems,” the statement said. “Based on scientific evidence, Health Canada has determined that exposure to low-level radiofrequency energy, such as that from Wi-Fi equipment, is not dangerous to the public.”
If only Ferris Bueller’s school had WiFi, it could have saved him a lot of the trouble he went through (clammy hands, etc.) in order to ditch.
Related content:
Discoblog: Worst Science Article of the Week: Use a Cell Phone, Damage Your Baby
Discoblog: Pregnant Women Need Fear No Cell Phone Radiation: Belly Armor Is Here!
Discoblog: Death by Wifi? Wireless Medication Implant Could Get Hacked
80beats: Super Wi-Fi: Coming Soon to Airwaves Near You
80beats: Cancer Doctor Issues a Warning About Cell Phones, and Causes Panic
Image: Flickr/whiteafrican
September 03 2010
Ad Depicts Google CEO as the Ice Cream Man From Your Nightmares
Annoyed by Google’s revised stance on “net neutrality“? Pissed off by the company’s power to collect personal data in applications like Buzz (which can show others who you Gmail the most) and Street View (which shows the locations of cars and faceless people)? Worried about the news that a Street View project gone awry mistakenly collected information from the Wi-Fi networks that Google’s mapping vehicles cruised past? The activist group Consumer Watchdog feels your pain. And to spread the anti-Google message further, the group is running the video ad below on a 540 square foot video billboard in Times Square.
The cartoon shows Google CEO Eric Schmidt giving children free ice cream, body-scanning them, and divulging their parents’ secrets. Consumer Watchdog hopes the video will inspire viewers to pressure Congress to make a ‘Do Not Track Me’ list, similar to the existing ‘Do Not Call List.’
As Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog says in a press release:
“We’re satirizing Schmidt in the most highly-trafficked public square in the nation to make the public aware of how out of touch Schmidt and Google are when it comes to our privacy rights…. America needs a ‘Do Not Track Me’ list and Google is Exhibit A in the case for it.”
Questioning Google’s views on privacy, the group cites a statement from Schmidt where he said that children hoping to avoid their internet past might change their names, and an earlier Schmidt interview, where he said:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
For an interesting look on privacy and the internet, check our DISCOVER’s special 30th anniversary issue this October, in which MIT internet and society expert Sherry Turkle questions where we are headed in the next 30 years.
Related content:
Discoblog: Beware! Prolonged Internet Use May Cause Psychotic Episodes
Discoblog: And the Survey Says: Google Is Not Making You Stupid8
0beats: Opinions: What Google and Verizon’s Plan for Net Neutrality Means
80beats: China Bans Electroshock Therapy For “Internet Addiction”
80beats: Have You Consumed Your 34-Gigabytes of Information Today
August 11 2010
Prosecutor to 4Chan Founder: Please Explain the Meaning of “Rickroll”
When a Tennessee man hacked Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and wrote of his exploits on the forum 4chan, federal investigators asked the site’s founder Christopher “Moot” Poole for server logs. Court testimony from April and published yesterday shows that federal prosecutors had other pressing questions for Poole: for example, the meaning of “peeps” and “rickroll.”
Assistant to the U.S. Attorney Mark Krotoski questions Poole:
Q. Certain terms, have a meaning unique to 4chan?
A. Yes.Q. Like “OP,” what is “OP”?
A. OP means original poster.Q. Are you familiar these terms, having been the founder and administrator of the 4chan site?
A. Yes.Q. What would “lurker” mean?
A. Somebody who browses but does not post, does not contribute.Q. What do the words “caps” mean?
A. Screenshots.Q. And is there any significance to “new fags”?
A. That is the term used to describe new users to the site.Q. What about “b tard”?
A. It’s a term that users of the /b/- Random board use for themselves.Q. What about “troll”?
A. Troublemaker.Q. “404″?
A. 404 is the status code for not found. It means essentially gone or not found.Q. Not found on where, the 4chan site?
A. 404 is the http status code for not found, a page not found by the Web server.Q. In what about “peeps”?
A. People.Q. “Rickroll”?
A. Rickroll is a mean [sic] or Internet kind of trend that started on 4chan where users — it basically a bait and switch. Users link you to a video of Rick Astley performing Never Gonna Give You Up.
Bonus humor points for the fact that the court reporter had apparently never heard the word “meme” before. The story went viral yesterday; we found it on Gawker’s Valleywag and the complete testimony on The Smoking Gun. Apologies to those hoping to find a reference to LOLcats: relevancy?
Check out DISCOVER on Facebook.
Related content:
Bad Astronomy: Sucked into a black LOL
Discoblog: Your Plants Have More Twitter Followers Than You—Literally
Discoblog: ZOMG! Get These iPhone Apps Right Meow!
Discoblog: Should the Internet Win the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize?
Image: flickr /Andrew Dupont
July 22 2010
Online Shoppers Can Play Dress-Up With a Robotic Torso
Add one more job to the list–along with vacuuming floors and assisting in surgeries, now robots can try on clothes for you. The company Fits.me is developing a robotic torso for online shoppers that can morph to match shoppers’ body dimensions, creating virtual fitting rooms on clothing websites.
Men can try a demo version of the product on the company’s site. After entering measurements such as neck and waste size, and selecting from three torso types, the site displays what you might look like in a particular shirt. The torso doesn’t morph in real time; instead, the site pulls from a database of pictures–2,000 body size combinations, the company reports, systematically showing users if pinstripes in small, medium, or large will make them look fat. Shirt sellers Hawes and Curtis is already testing a version of the system on their site.
As reported by the BBC, the company next hopes to develop a version of the torso for women. Maarja Kruusma a professor of biorobotics at the University of Tallinn who helped the company develop the system, told the BBC that it’s a difficult task. Women’s clothing comes in more intricate styles, and their torsos are more complicated to model, she says:
“You can’t just take a male mannequin and put breasts on it. That doesn’t work.”
Related content:
Discoblog: How to Make High Fashion From Bacterial Slime
Discoblog: Fashion Grows an Eco-Conscience: Waterless Dye Debuts at Fashion Week
Discoblog: For Guilt-Free Fur, Wear a Coat Made From an Invasive Water Rat
Discoblog: Robot Model Struts the Catwalk in Japan
Discoblog: Swine Flu Fashion? Japan Introduces Swine Flu-Proof Suit
June 23 2010
Eugenics Today: Do Ugly People Deserve Beautiful Children?
Think picking a date on looks alone is a little shallow? How about picking your kids? The owners of the dating site BeautifulPeople.com have no qualms on the subject–they’ve launched a “virtual sperm and egg bank” where users can select beautiful people’s beautiful genetics by signing up for their beautiful gametes.
Though the company won’t perform egg extractions or accept sperm donations, they will serve as matchmakers and then forward the interested parties to the proper clinics. The company says its exclusive dating site–you can only join if other members judge you attractive enough–is a magnificent resource for those looking to breed up.
As reported by ABC News, the site has decided to generously offer its services even to the beauty-challenged.
“Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone–including ugly people–would like to bring good looking children in to the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool,” company founder Robert Hintze said in a statement.
Everyone from bioethicists to the professionals who run clinics are concerned about site visitors skipping over the proper medical and psychological screenings. There is also concern about the participants’ expectations–and perhaps basic understanding of genetics. Just because biological mummy and daddy have good looks, it doesn’t necessarily mean their offspring will. If BeautifulPeople.com doesn’t make that clear, things could get very ugly.
Related content:
Discoblog: Dating a Dud? Blame It on Biology
Discoblog: Worst Science Article of the Week? Women are getting “hotter”
Disoblog: In Japan, Your Blood Type Could Get You Hired…Or Fired
80beats: No Gattaca Here: Genetic Anti-Discrimination Law Goes Into Effect
Image: flickr / alainelorza
June 17 2010
Silliest Statistic of the Week: One-Third of the Internet Is Porn
It’s Optenet’s business to find porn and, apparently, they’re pretty good at it. In a recent press release, the company that offers family-friendly filters for your computer claims that one-third of internet is porn.
Ana Luisa Rotta, director of child protection projects at Optenet, says in the release:
“When you consider that more than one third of the Internet’s content is pornographic, combined with the overwhelming increase in young people now curiously visiting Websites with such ease of access, it is becoming increasingly imperative that adults take responsibility for the management of home PC security.”
“Home PC security”? Was that a subtle reference to Homeland Security? We don’t know, but according to Optenet we’re all in danger. Their study, which looked at “a database of hundreds of millions of URLs,” churned out these stats:
-Pornography makes up 37% of the total content on the Internet
-Websites related to online role-playing games (RPGs) have grown by 212%
-Websites that contain violence have increased by 10.8%
-Websites that contain terrorism content have increased by 8.5%
-Websites that contain illegal drugs purchase have increased by 6.8%
An excellent point made on the blog Geeks Are Sexy, which broke the story: if these numbers only reflect the total number of sites in each category, then an increase doesn’t really mean much of anything. If the whole internet is getting bigger, then of course the number of each type of page on the internet is also increasing.
One wonders if that huge database also showed an increase in more wholesome websites–for example, corporate pages for porn filtering businesses.
Related content:
Discoblog: To China’s Internet Filter, Garfield is Pornography, Porn is Not
Discoblog: Got Child Porn Stored in Your Xbox? New Forensic Tool Will Find It
Discoblog: Bad News for Cyberporn: Internet Sex Linked to Depression, Anxiety
Image: flickr / gcfairch
May 05 2010
Video: Google Chrome Is Faster Than a Speeding Potato
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
