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People who post their fitness routine to Facebook have psychological problems, study claims

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Be honest with me here: You have one or even multiple friends, who always post their gym activity to Facebook. Or maybe that person is you.

 Facebook Fitness

“Ran 15 miles before work! Yeah 💪” can be motivating to read in the morning, or incredibly annoying, depending on how much you hate that painfully overused flexed-bizeps-emoji.

Researchers from the Brunel University in London have conducted a study as to why so many people share every workout on social media. The results are unflattering, to say the least.

Addicted to attention and esteem

People who are always keen on documenting their gym activities (or every time you simply go for a good, old-fashioned run) tend to be narcissists. According to the researchers, the primary goal is to boast about how much time you invest in your looks. Apparently these status updates also earn more Facebook likes than other kinds of posts.

“Narcissists more frequently updated about their achievements, which was motivated by their need for attention and validation from the Facebook community”, the study concludes. The high number of likes doesn’t necessarily mean everyone loves seeing those bragging posts, though. Dr Tara Marshal goes on saying, that “although our results suggest that narcissists’ bragging pays off because they receive more likes and comments to their status updates, it could be that their Facebook friends politely offer support while secretly disliking such egotistical displays.”

So, unless you get creative in your workout, maybe hold back on those daily Facebook updates on your progress in the gym. Your friends will thank you for it.

Should we worry about Facebook’s growing power?

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Despite Facebook’s continuing growth and its important civic and social functions, expert Martin Moore from Kings College London says we should be worried about the social media giant’s growing power – including people’s reliance on it for communicating in emergencies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03shp1w?ocid=socialflow_facebook

Is machine learning the next commodity?

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It’s not every day you can witness an entire class of software making the transition from specialized, expensive-to-develop code to a general-purpose technology. But that’s exactly what’s happening with machine learning.Chances are, you’re already hip-deep in machine-learning applications. It’s how Google Photo organizes those pictures from your vacation in Spain. It’s how Facebook suggests tags for the pictures you took at last week’s soccer match. It’s how the cars of nearly every major automaker can help you avoid unsafe lane changes.

And it’s also the start of something even bigger.

Machine learning – which enables a computer to learn without new programming – is exploding in its ability to handle highly complex tasks. It can make houses and buildings not just smart, but actively intelligent. It can take e-commerce from a one-size-fits-all experience to something personalized. It might even find your next date.

Driving this surge of machine-learning development is a wave of data generated by mobile phones, sensors, and video cameras. It’s a wave whose scope, scale, and projected growth are unprecedented.

Every minute of every day, YouTube gains 300 hours of video, Apple users download 51,000 apps, and 347,222 100,000 Tweets make their way into the world. Those stats come from the good folks at Domo, who call the time we’re living in “an era where data never sleeps.”

Intel Capital's Sanjit Dang

Intel Capital’s Sanjit Dang

Until now, the hot topic of conversation has been how to analyze information and take action based on the results. But the volume of data has become so great, and its trajectory so steep, that we need to automate many of those actions. Now.

As a result, we expect machine learning will become the next great commodity. In the short term, we expect the cost of advanced algorithms to plummet – especially given multiple open-source initiatives – and to spur new areas of specialization. Longer term, we expect these kinds of algorithms to make their way into standard microprocessors.

Marc Andreessen once said software is eating the world. In the case of machine learning, it will have a very large appetite.

Proprietary becomes open

To understand the potential of machine learning as a commodity, Linux is a good place to start. Released as a free, open-source operating system in 1991, it now powers nearly all the world’s supercomputers, most of the servers behind the Internet, and the majority of financial trades worldwide – not to mention tens of millions of Android mobile phones and consumer devices.

Like Linux, machine learning is well down the open-source path. In the last few months, Baidu, Facebook, and Google have released sets of open-source machine-learning algorithms. Another group of high-tech heavyweights, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, have launched the OpenAI initiative. And universities and tech communities are adding new tools to the mix.

In the short-to-medium term, we see three outcomes from this activity. First, companies that need to integrate machine learning into their products will do so inexpensively – either through their engineering teams or third-party vendors.

Second, a three-tier system of available algorithms will establish itself. At the bottom layer will be open-source code. In the middle will be code with greater capabilities, available under license from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or one of the other big players. At the top will be the highly prized code that keeps these companies competitive; it will stay closely guarded until they feel it’s time to make it available widely.

Finally, we forecast a flurry of merger, acquisition, and licensing agreements as algorithm providers look to grow and defend their positions. We also expect more specialization as they attempt to lock down various markets.

In fact, that process already is well under way.

Smarter buildings & commerce

For all the talk about smarter homes and buildings, today’s technologies aren’t nearly as intelligent as they could be. Yes, they can collect data and operate within confined parameters. But they can’t adapt to the way you live your life.

If you get a new dog, for example, fixed-intelligence devices can’t tell the difference between the two of you. If your calendar shows you working from home, these devices won’t think to disable your security system without asking.

Fortunately, that’s changing. Startups such as Nuro Technologies, for example, are pairing sophisticated sensors and self-learning networks for in-home applications. Think of the sensors as mini iPhones in and around your house. You can download software into them – fire sensing, irrigation control, security and more – the same way you load apps into a phone.

Commerce is also a big opportunity for machine learning. Maybe the biggest. One of our portfolio companies, Vizury, uses machine learning to help companies display only the online ads you want to see. Awarestack is another great example: it uses data about how and where you park a car to create algorithms that can help you get around more efficiently.

Then there’s Dil Mil, an online dating app very popular in the South Asian community and growing rapidly. Unlike conventional apps that use the data they collect to make a romantic match, it looks at social behaviors – such as posting on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – to find the best possible match. All in real time.

Next stop: silicon

If the Linux of the 1990s illustrates the long-term impact of machine learning, the laptop and desktop machines of the 1980s point to their final destination. In a word: silicon.

Just as modems and graphics cards made their way into microprocessors and motherboards, so will machine learning software. There is simply too much data through which companies need to sift, too many actions they’ll need to take, and too many good algorithms already available.

It’s going to be an exciting time.

A director at Intel Capital, Sanjit Dang drives investments in user computing across the consumer and enterprise sectors. He has also driven several investments related to big data, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing.

Facebook Is Building Its Own Antennas So That More People Can Use Facebook

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Facebook-Is-Building-Its-Own-Antennas-So-That-More-People-Can-Use-Facebook

Yesterday, Zuckerberg waxed poetic about the future of global connectivity, and now day two of Facebook’s F8 developer conference is giving us more details. Two terrestrial based programs-no nifty drones needed-hope to technically leapfrog fiber with throughput speeds maxing out at a blazing 2.1Gbps.

The first-called Terragraph-uses nodes placed throughout dense urban areas, whether perched on light poles or traffic lights. They sort of look like speakers from a 50s drive-in:

Facebook Is Building Its Own Antennas So That More People Can Use Facebook

These nodes use what’s called WiGig, basically a souped-up version of wifi that can handle a 7GHz transmission. They also operate on the 60GHz band. The problem with these unlicensed high-frequency bands (most smartphones operate around 700MHz to 1.7GHz) is they can’t travel very far or penetrate obstacles, like buildings, very well. But, man, can they carry tons and tons of data.

To deal with the limitations of the technology, Facebook plans to place these nodes 200-250 meters apart. This closely knit network will then be able to redirect signal around would-be obstacles, theoretically making for a clean connection. It’s an idea not too far removed from the one proposed by Starry , the weird descendent of the now defunct Aereo. However, Terragraph works like s

Facebook Is Building Its Own Antennas So That More People Can Use Facebook
A rough mock-up of Facebook’s Terragraph network, San Jose will be the first test city starting later this year.

But what if you don’t live you’re one of millions that don’t live in a city? That’s where ARiES, Facebook’s second foray into wireless infrastructure technology, comes in. ARiES, which stands for Antenna Radio Integration for Efficiency, is like the technological middle man between 4G and 5G, specifically built to make spectrum more efficient and all-around better for rural areas.

Facebook Is Building Its Own Antennas So That More People Can Use Facebook

Long story short, this proof-of-concept would make it possible to support 24 different devices on the same band of spectrum, basically making current 4G connectivity much more efficient and more capable of handling data loads.

By Facebook’s estimation, 97 percent of the world lives less than 25 miles from a major city, and Facebook wants to use Terragraph and ARiES to address the internet needs of the many. Because obviously, more people connecting to the internet means more people can use Facebook. World domination, here it comes.

Facebook unveils “Surround 360” open source VR camera.

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How can Facebook get more 360-degree video in the News Feed and VR content on Oculus? By inventing its own virtual reality camera from scratch and open sourcing it so people can build their own and start shooting.

Today at F8, Facebook revealed the “Surround 360”, a 17-lens 3D VR camera that looks like a UFO on a stick and requires almost zero laborious post-production work, unlike most VR rigs. Facebook won’t be selling the Surround 360. Instead, later this summer it will put the hardware designs and video stitching algorithms on Github. All the parts can be bought online for $30,000.

Facebook Surround 360 17 lenses

“We do not have ambitions of getting into the camera business, but we realize there wasn’t a good reference camera” Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox told reporters Monday. The four main draws of the Surround 360 camera:

  • Extremely high-quality footage: its 17 4-megapixel lenses can shoot in 4K, 6K, and even 8K, dumping the 30-gigabit per second data to a hard drive over USB. The one fish eye lens on top and two on the bottom mean there’s no hole in the footage above or beneath you, and the pole the camera stands on disappears.
  • Durability: Its aluminum casing can be quickly assembled and disassembled, it will survive tough conditions like the desert and it can shoot for hours straight without overheating.
  • Portability: It’s designed to handle frequent plane flights, and its rolling base makes it simple to move around.
  • Near zero post-production required: By using genlocking to connect all the lenses, the software can do less work so footage is ready for distribution an order of magnitude faster, in a day rather than weeks.

The result is a camera that simplifies the VR capture process, and the footage is gorgeous. I got to see raw footage of two scenes exported from the camera and Viewed on a Gear VR headset. One showed people hanging out by the water near SF’s beautiful Palace Of The Fine Arts, and another was from Facebook’s laboratory in England where it’s building its solar-powered Aquila drones.

Facebook Surround 360 standDespite the lack of post production, the images were remarkably sharp, there were no seams where the images were stitched together, and they looked great no matter how fast I moved my head. Compared to footage I’ve seen from earlier versions of the camera built by $100 million-funded startup Jaunt, the Surround 360’s video looked clearer.

The only distraction was that some highly reflective surfaces like a metal flooring appeared to jitter and wobble slightly. However, Facebook says this “temporal aliasing” can be fixed in post-production if necessary.

Whether a big camera maker starts manufacturing and selling the design, videographers construct or modify their own, or developers just lean on Facebook’s imaging software, Facebook doesn’t care (Jaunt and the Google/GoPro partnerships that plan to sell their own VR cameras might, though). Facebook’s goal is simply to catalyze 360 and VR content production to fill its ad-fueled social network and the headsets it sells with teleportations worth your time.

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How people use Facebook social connections to find work

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When you look through your Facebook News Feed, you’ll see posts from a wide range of people — some closer to you than others in your actual, non-digital life. Those who take to Facebook for job leads might be surprised by the findings of a new joint study by Facebook, Tufts University, and Stony Brook University: a person is more likely to find employment through a “weaker tie” in their Facebook friends circle, since these acquaintances comprise the majority of that person’s social network. That being said, “strong ties,” or those who are actually close friends, would be more directly helpful in personally assist a person in finding a job.

The study was published in the Journal of Labor Economics.

“What we found collectively was that weak ties are useful, since users have a lot of them. If you went into a room in real life and asked how many people found their jobs through a weaker tie, maybe 70 percent would say they’ve used a weaker tie,” Laura Gee, assistant professor in the department of economics at Tufts University, told CBS News.

How are weaker and stronger ties determined? Gee said that one objective measure of determining just how close an individual is to a social media connection is to see how often a person tags a friend in a photo or how often a person posts on a friend’s personal page. Another measure to look at would be how many mutual friends two people share on Facebook.

It’s important to note that a site like Facebook isn’t necessarily replacing classified ads or online job postings. It’s a complement to those things, being used in much the same way to track down employment.

“The focus of our study wasn’t exactly how people were finding jobs. Of course, it intuitively makes sense that they would send private messages to close friends, or strong ties. Their coworkers might be posting photos or writing status updates. People might be posting about what careers they would like to pursue,” Moira Burke, Facebook research scientist, told CBS News.

Burke stressed that a site like Facebook presents a “particularly successful career route” for people often struggling to find an opening in a sea of postings. Social media presents an immediate, built-in network.

The study is well-timed given the results from the latest jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department. The U.S. added 215,000 jobs in March, according to the report released Friday. The unemployment rate moved up to 5 percent from the eight-year low of 4.9 percent.

In a world that is increasingly connected through social media, Gee and Burke stressed that many of those struggling to find work should look to Facebook as an incredibly accessible pathway to leads.

Gee said that weak ties are crucial — they are more than just arbitrary connections.

“I think for us, as academics, the interesting takeaway was how weak ties are really both useful collectively as well as individually,” Gee added. “Weak ties really provide individual access to new information. They offer you new information. Of course, individually, strong ties are very helpful.”

In fact, Burke obtained her own position through a combination of both strong and weak ties.

“I actually found my job through Facebook through a strong tie and a weak tie. My Ph.D advisor was my strong tie and I was connected to the head of the data science team at Facebook who talked about the great sociologist and computer scientists and statisticians who are at Facebook,” Burke said. “By listening to both of them, it sounded pretty enticing.”

Facebook affects stress hormone levels in adolescents

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Facebook use can both spike and regulate the levels of stress hormone cortisol in teenagers, finds a new study by researchers at University of Montreal, Canada.

Having more than 300 Facebook friends increased teenagers’ levels of cortisol, the study found.

Facebook

On the other hand, teenagers who act in ways that support their Facebook friends – for example, by liking what they posted or sending them words of encouragement – decreased their levels of cortisol, Techvibes.com reported.

“While other important external factors are also responsible, we estimated that the isolated effect of Facebook on cortisol was around eight percent,a said lead researcher professor Sonia Lupien.

Participants were asked about their frequency of use of Facebook, their number of friends on the social media site, their self-promoting behaviour, and finally, the supporting behaviour they displayed toward their friends.

Along with these four measures, the team collected cortisol samples of the participating adolescents.

“We were able to show that beyond 300 Facebook friends, adolescents showed higher cortisol levels,” Lupien added.

None of the adolescents suffered from depression at the time of the study.

“We did not observe depression in our participants. However, adolescents who present high stress hormone levels do not become depressed immediately. It can occur later on,” Lupien said.

How This Sixth-Grade Teacher’s Warning About the Internet Went Viral on Facebook.

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Melissa Bour was concerned by what her students were posting on Facebook. Instead of lecturing, she created a viral post to demonstrate the power of social media.

may 2015 everday heroes melissa bour

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of 2014, Tulsa, Oklahoma, sixth-grade teacher Melissa Bour received a friend request on Facebook from one of her students. She didn’t accept the request, but a quick browse through the girl’s friends list revealed the names of dozens of kids from her classroom. Many of the students’ Facebook pages were completely public, meaning even strangers could trawl through the kids’ personal photos and messages.

“I saw middle fingers, students dressed inappropriately, and extremely foul language,” Melissa says. “It was disturbing.” When she brought up her discovery in class, the students were unfazed. So she created a post of her own.

With a bright green Sharpie, she wrote on a piece of paper in all caps, “Dear Facebook: My 12-year-old students think it is ‘no big deal’ that they are posting pictures of themselves … Please help me … [show them] how quickly their images can get around.” She put a picture of the letter on her Facebook page and asked people to share it.

In hours, it was shared 108,000 times across dozens of states and four countries. She deleted it after eight hours, but it continued to circulate. “I wanted to show them that it’s on the Internet forever,” she says.

As she explained the results of her experiment in class, the students’ “eyes got bigger and bigger,” she says. “It scared a few of them into deleting their pages completely,” she says. Others have removed inappropriate posts and utilized privacy settings to manage their pages.

Her intention wasn’t to scare them off social media but to push them to be mindful of what they post. Melissa says, “I tell them, ‘Just because everyone else is sharing doesn’t mean you have to.’ ”

Facebook reaches deal to beam internet to Africa from space .

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Social network’s internet.org initiative reaches deal with French company Eutelsat that will see much of sub-Saharan Africa given internet

The AMOS 6 satellite, which Facebook will use to beam internet to Africa

Facebook Eutelsat satellite

Facebook has reached a deal to have free internet beamed to some of the most remote parts of Africa via satellite.

The social network has agreed a partnership with Eutelsat, a French satellite internet operator, to transmit internet connections to offline parts of sub-Saharan Africa from next year.

Through Facebook’s internet.org initiative, the company offers access to a number of services including weather, news, health and Facebook itself, for free. However, most connections at present come through traditional fixed and mobile telecoms networks, which provide spotty coverage especially in sparsely-populated areas.

Starting in the second half of 2016, Facebook and Eutelsat will use capacity on AMOS-6, a satellite from Israeli company Spacecom that is due to launch by the end of this year, to beam internet connections directly to smartphones in parts of West, East and Southern Africa.

Facebook Eutelsat satelliteThe range of the satellite, with dark orange areas showing regions that will be covered  Photo: Eutelsat

It will serve the most populous areas of sub-Saharan Africa, with 14 countries in total receiving the service.

It comes following reports that Facebook had abandoned plans to build its own satellite, which would have cost up to $1 billion (£660 million), earlier this year.

“Facebook’s mission is to connect the world and we believe that satellites will play an important role in addressing the significant barriers that exist in connecting the people of Africa,” said Chris Daniels, the head ofinternet.org.

“We are looking forward to partnering with Eutelsat on this project and investigating new ways to use satellites to connect people in the most remote areas of the world more efficiently.”

“It is our belief that Facebook is improperly defining net neutrality in public statements and building a walled garden in which the world’s poorest people will only be able to access a limited set of insecure websites and services,” a consortium of advocacy groups wrote in May.

Last week, internet.org rebranded its free offering as “Free Basics by Facebook”, a move it said would better distinguish the internet.org project itself from the service itself.

Michel de Rosen, its chief executive, said: “Eutelsat’s strong track record in operating High Throughput Satellite systems will ensure that we can deliver accessible and robust Internet solutions that get more users online and part of the Information Society.”

Facebook is also experimenting with drones to beam internet to remote locations, and is starting to test the technology.

Facebook’s internet.org initiative has come under fire, with critics saying it favours Facebook over rival services and violates the principles of “net neutrality” by providing some services for free.Eutelsat, which provides satellite coverage to much of Europe and Russia, said it would set up a new office in London to lead its African operations, which will be led by former Tiscali boss Laurent Grimaldi.

Facebook is testing an A.I.-based personal assistant called “M”

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You may soon have a new reason to use Facebook Messenger.The company is experimenting with a new personal assistant feature for Facebook Messenger that can complete tasks for you, Facebook’s Messenger chief David Marcus revealed Wednesday.

The assistant, nicknamed “M” can make purchases, book travel, and schedule appointments from within Messenger. The service is “powered by artificial intelligence that’s trained and supervised by people,” according to Marcus. M is able to understand conversational queries and act on them from within Facebook, according screenshots of the assistant-like service.

Facebook M

 

“Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf,” Marcus, wrote in a Facebook post. “It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.”

Facebook is just beginning to test the service, Marcus said. It’s not clear how many people it’s being tested with, though it sounds like the experiment is still in a relatively early stage. The service, which will be a direct competitor to Siri, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana, goes a long way toward explaining Facebook’s increasing emphasis on Messenger as a standalone service over the last year.

The company has been rumored to be working on a Messenger-based personal assistant feature for the last several weeks. Earlier reports suggested it was testing a shopping-focused assistant internally nicknamed “Moneypenny.”