Internet & Websites News - Page 17

Twitter has rolled out a new way to have conversations via its testing app Twttr. This new format seems to take inspiration from Reddit.

The news has come from Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher who prides herself on finding out new features that are coming to a range of different apps. Wong has managed to find conversation trees that were being tested in Twitter's beta testing app on the main website.

From the video, we can see that Twitter is testing nesting replies in each conversation and that users can select each Tweet to enlarge and hone in on it. This change Twitter is about to implement is set to roll out sometime in 2020, and will certainly give the platform a nice fresh feel. The layout is somewhat similar to that of Reddit's, but Twitter's seems much more sleek and straightforward. What do you think about the design change?

Twitter is planning a great big ol' purge of their platform, as the company is planning on removing a bunch of inactive accounts.

Twitter will be removing accounts that haven't signed into the platform for the last six months. Warnings are already being issued out to accounts that are inactive, but don't stress yet as Twitter has said that the big ol' purge won't happen overnight. It will instead roll out over time, starting on December 11th. According to a Twitter spokesperson, the deleting of inactive accounts will happen over "many months".

This deleting spree is Twitter's effort of cleaning out useless information from their platform and giving users who are active "more accurate, credible information". While this all sounds good, Twitter is aware that this will pose some problems for account holders who have passed away. Loved ones who like to go through old Tweets of deceased friends or family will not be able to do so if the account falls under the "inactive" category and is deleted.

In a very surprising move, the Internet Society (ISOC) has announced it has sold the rights to the .org registry to Ethos Capital, for an unknown amount of money. The deal for the .org domain will be complete in Q1 2020, a few months from now.

There are over 10 million websites using the .org suffix, something that has become synonymous with non-profit organizations. The changes to this with ISOC selling it was an instant WTF moment around the world, with no warning signs or rumors before it happened -- it just happened. The Public Interest Registry (PIR) confirmed it will drop the non-profit status from the .org domain (something it has had since 2003).

It gets worse -- with ICANN (they oversee ALL of the domains on the internet, including the .org domains) have agreed to remove price caps for .org domain names. Until now, these were cheap and very important for non-profit organizations -- from non-profit, to lots-of-profit in 2020 and beyond, it seems.

The internet has been abuzz recently with a swath of videos showing celebrities saying things ranging from funny to downright odd or alarming. This is the world of deepfakes, and MIT thought it proper to represent the power of the new deepfake video capabilities by making one of their own.

As you can see above, that is a small clip from the https://moondisaster.org project which is designed to simulate an alternate reality where the Apollo 11 astronauts did not land on the moon, but instead were stricken by tragedy and the ultimate result of the entire cred perishing on earth's largest satellite.

The video clip, while brief, is created by the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. While it may be cool to see how computer technology can be used for lifelike recreations or even film production, it can be disturbing to think that world events by trusted individuals, reporters, or world leaders could be potentially skewed by those wishing to cause disorder or chaos.

Amazon has decided to expand its music sector by releasing the free service on to more devices. Amazon Music is now on Android, iOS, and Fire TV.

Originally the free music streaming service was just available on Alexa devices, but now that has changed for users in the US, UK, and Germany. At the moment, the service limits free users with listening to playlists and stations that are from specific artists, genres, and songs.

The whole idea of the limitation is to give users a tease of what the service has to offer, and then hopefully either annoy the user into purchasing the whole service, or convince the user to upgrade their Prime package in some fashion. If you are in need of a music streaming service, you can check out Amazon Prime here.

A new social media platform has just launched called WT:Social and its premise to combat Facebook on the front of showing new content first instead of sponsored.

The new platform comes from Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales who has promised that any user signing up to the platform won't have their user data sold. WT:Social also won't be running advertisements or have algorithms like Facebook's, which prioritize content that is sponsored or receiving a lot of engagement. WT:Social will instead show users on the platform whatever content is newest.

According to Wale's Twitter account, the new platform has already gained 160,000 members, and "isn't slowing down yet". Wales also commented on how WT:Social will be different from other big platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, he said "I've come to the conclusion that the biggest problem driving low-quality media is that it has been purely advertising-supported, and that the social networks which provide so much distribution are also purely advertising supported."

Iran is currently under protest as thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the fuel price jump.

Iranian people have taken to the streets to express their concern over the fuel price jump that saw the prices of fuel rise over 50%. In response to the wide-spread disapproval of the fuel price hike, the Iranian government has decided to switch off internet access in the country in an effort to block communication between protesters. The blocking of the internet also makes it extremely hard for journalists to share news regarding the size of the protests.

At the moment, there are only small pockets of internet connection available, and people within these pockets are managing to get the word out about the recent events occurring at ground zero. While that might sound like there is still internet available, it cannot be stressed enough how rare the connection is. The Iranian government hasn't officially acknowledged that it has shut off internet access.

Twitch has released a new introduction application for new streamers and ones that have just started - introducing Twitch Studio, a streamer's best-friend.

Twitch Studio is currently available for download and takes new streamers through an extremely easy to follow introduction process into streaming. It begins with a guided setup where the app detects microphones, webcams, monitor and streaming resolution, streaming display, templates, and bit rates.

The app also gives users the ability to customize their streaming template while also integrating alerts, programmable keys, activity feeds, and chats. It should be noted that the app is only available to download if your operating system is Windows 7 or above. Here is a link to the Twitch website for further information.

Everyday efforts are being made towards the creation of 'quantum internet,' and now a new network protocol has been developed that bring us even closer to its fruition.

UAB researchers have managed to face one of the many problems that are present when designing a quantum internet connection - optimizing automated information treatment protocols to work with quantum data sets. The researchers have created an optimal procedure that has the ability to be able to identify quantum data sets. This is done through a quantum network protocol that can identify common underlying probability distributions and organize them into recognizable patterns.

An example of a classical computer doing this is a simple street microphone test that has multiple sounds occurring at the same time. The computer recognizes patterns and can differentiate the sounds of a conversation, traffic, and cars. What the researchers at UAB were able to do is compare the performance of classic computers and their protocols, versus quantum protocols. The findings were that quantum protocols clearly outperform classical protocols; this was mainly present in large data sets.

AT&T has been caught out slowing down internet speeds, and have agreed to pay $60 million in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In a prepared statement by Andrew Smith, the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection its detailed that AT&T misled internet customers by charging them for "unlimited" data plans, but inhibited overall download speeds. The settlement also details that any consumers who signed up for one of these plans before 2011 are entitled to "partial refunds".

Moving forward, the FTC has said that AT&T must disclose to customers any restrictions on speed, etc., "The disclosures need to be prominent, not buried in fine print or hidden behind hyperlinks." The FTC says that AT&T's speed restriction on "unlimited" plans are estimated to have affected more than 3.5 million customers as of 2014. "AT&T promised unlimited data -- without qualification -- and failed to deliver on that promise," said Smith.