Internet & Websites News - Page 42

The New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks in a thrilling Super Bowl, and it looks like the game was a major success on Twitter and Facebook. There were more than 265 million posts, comments and likes on Facebook, generated by at least 65 million users, according to the company.

An interception to effectively end the game was the most popular Facebook discussion (1.36 million people per minute), while Katy Perry's halftime performance racked up 1.02 million people per minute discussing it.

There were more than 28 million tweets posted on Twitter related to the Super Bowl and Perry's halftime performance. Not surprisingly, Malcolm Butler's interception to seal the victory for the Patriots received 395,000 tweets per minute, earning the most generated Twitter moment of the event.

This brings the term "keyboard warrior" to a whole new level. The front lines are most commonly publicized, however what's going on behind closed curtains? Here's an insight - The British Army have just implemented a whole battalion of soldiers described as "Facebook Warriors."

Named as the 77th battalion, this number has some historical background. Claimed by the Financial Times as a "guerrilla unit led by the swashbuckling British commander Major General Orde Wingate, one of the pioneers of modern unconventional warfare. They operated deep behind Japanese lines in Burma between 1942 and 1945 and their missions were often of questionable success."

This new battalion will be responsible for implementing "'reflexive control', an old Soviet tactic of spreading specifically curated information in order to get your opponent to react in the exact way you want them to," as described by Gizmodo.

Ye olde trusty wooden pirateship has sailed back! The Pirate Bay, hailed as "The galaxy's most resilient BitTorrent site", is now back online at thepiratebay.se. This long hiatus has come to an end after a Swedish police raids shuttered the site, and employee infighting led to several of the original cast and crew heading for bluer waters.

The latest Pirate Bay saga began when Swedish police raided the servers, which were housed in a converted nuclear shelter in Nacka, Sweden. The Pirate Bay was taken offline and its web ratings plunged from being the 88th largest website in the world to 176. In recent weeks a timer appeared that counted down to the time that the site came online, letting the world at large know that The Pirate Bay may have been down, but it certainly was not out.

The familiar pirate ship logo can still be found throughout the site, but upon resurfacing The Pirate Bay is sporting a new homepage logo with what appears to be a Phoenix, which is unsurprising since The Pirate Bay has once again sprung from the ashes.

Islamic extremist groups still enjoy using the Internet and social media to spread propaganda and recruit, but are becoming more skilled in flying under the radar. Intelligence experts are collecting information from previous reckless Internet posts, and that is something the terrorists want to avoid in the future.

To help share propaganda, the groups are largely turning to the Dark Web - and using Skype, WhatsApp, and software that isn't as open. ISIS went a step further by issuing guidelines to its members posting on social media, such as blurring out faces, ensuring geographic tagging is disabled, and being careful what information they are providing on current operations.

"We realize that the people we are interested in are increasingly specialized in computing," said Philippe Chadrys, the head investigator of France's judicial police responsible for fighting terrorism, in a statement to the AFP. "They master encryption software and methods to better erase data. That makes our probes much more complicated."

With smartphones now accounting for over two-thirds of Facebook's total revenue, Mark Zuckerberg and his staff have just published some extremely positive Q4 2014 results.

Claimed by the social media giant to make up for roughly 69 percent of total revenue, their total number posted for this period was $3.85 billion. This exceeded the $3.77 billion consensus estimate by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters and is a 49 percent rise when compared to 12 months earlier.

Just one year ago, mobile advertisements made up for only half of Facebook's total revenue, showing that the rise of the smartphone has been sharp and expansive. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was impressed by the results, stating "we got a lot done in 2014. Our community continues to grow and we're making progress towards connecting the world."

As of today, YouTube will now default to HTML5 video on your web browser when available - if not, Flash will still be used. This is said to promote faster video loading, better compression and smoother frame rates.

Flash was was seen on almost every major website, providing a once-new aged feel and expansive additions to various companies who loved to auto-play music, display animations and provide interactive experiences. Now these features are long gone, along with Flash and their default integration with the massive online streaming service, YouTube.

Explained as a four-year development cycle, HTML5 will enable YouTube videos to load "15 to 80 percent" faster due to this process including updates for MediaSource extensions, enabling ABR and the potential for time-shifted live video broadcasts. This HTML5 inclusion supports Ultra HD and 60 frames per second streaming, hinging on Google's open-source VP9 codec - often known as WebM. WebM is said to continue the video quality trend of H.264, but will reduce bandwidth requirements by 35 percent as explained by Gizmodo.

Well, the Lizard Squad tried to take credit for the short Facebook and Instagram downtime Monday night, but Facebook admitted that the incident was its fault. The outage hit users in the United States, with members in Asia, Australia and New Zealand briefly losing access, with the problem beginning just after 12:10 a.m. ET last night.

"This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems," Facebook said in a statement following the short down time Monday evening. "Both services are back to 100 percent for everyone."

Kudos to the Lizard Squad for trying to get itself some glory for something that it had absolutely nothing to do with. Not surprisingly, users logged onto Twitter and other websites to complain about the sudden and unexpected Facebook downtime.

The FCC is attempting to expand the definition of broadband internet, but the usual suspects are lining up to oppose the move. The FCC wants broadband to be defined as 25Mbps down, and 3Mbps up, to match the reality of current generation internet connections. Unfortunately the entrenched ISP's want to leave the definition at a paltry 4Mbps download speed.

The map above illustrates just how depressingly slow the internet is at most locations in the US. The areas in blue all have access to speeds above 25Mbps, but the remainder of the map does not even have access to services that reach that speed.

The FCC has opened the floor for debate on the issue, and several cable companies have come forward to decry the new definition. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) is one of the most vocal opponents to the new classification system. This isn't surprising in light of the fact that current regulations stifle competition in many markets, a system that President Obama is trying to change through executive actions that remove much of the red tape for new telecom companies.

Google is announcing four new cities they are adding to the ultra-fast Google Fiber network. According to the Wall Street Journal the blazing-fast one gigabit connections will soon be added in Atlanta and Nashville. Lucky North Carolinians will get two cities added to the list, with Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte joining the ranks of those blessed with fast connections for as low as $80 per month.

The rollouts will not be offered to the entire city in each area, but instead will be deployed based upon customer interest. This expansion more than doubles the number of cities benefitting from Google Fiber connections, which are currently offered in Kansas City, MO, Austin, TX, and Provo, UT.

Google Fiber is challenging the status quo of normal ISP's, which charge prices well in excess of global averages for a fraction of the speed. The US lags woefully behind other developed countries in terms of speed and price, and much of that has to do with rules and regulations governing telecommunication firms. President Obama recently took to the airwaves to announce executive actions targeting these restrictive regulations, so there are some hopeful developments along that front.

After forgetting to grab a lovely ladies number on the train, Crystal Palace fan Angus Mainland took to Twitter, publishing a selfie they had taken together and asking - who's that girl?

They snapped a few selfies, shared a scarf and Mainland claimed he was in love - it seems like it was meant to be. Asking Twitter and the Cross Country Trains for help, he set out on the path to track down his one true love.

With over 4,600 re-tweets and almost 2,000 favorites, Mainland's quest was bolstered into the news-feeds of tens of thousands of would-be do-gooders, seeing this question come back with the goods and finding the girl in the end. In an interview with a local newspaper, The Croydon Advertiser, he stated that "at half time it had got 30 re-tweets and after full time it was over 100," further adding "my friend who's a Southampton fan said that if I got 2000 re-tweets then he'd get a tattoo to commemorate Palace's incredible win. I never expected to have that kind of response, it's been incredible. The majority of people responding have been supportive."