Category: Media

Google Maps Plans Greenest Route To Your Destination

Staff ReporterEntertainment, Media, Media 0

Google Maps plans to start highlighting journeys and directing drivers to routes that it calibrates to be the most “eco-friendly” based on a range of factors. Here’s how it will work. Google Maps plans to start highlighting journeys and directing drivers to routes that it calibrates to be the most “eco-friendly” based on a range of factors. The calculation of the default route that potentially generates the lowest carbon footprint would be done by assessing factors such as traffic data, congestion history, and even road inclines.

The Alphabet-owned search engine said in a blogpost that the feature would be launched first in the United States sometime later this year, “with a global expansion on the way”. Once launched, the default route that would show up on the Google Maps app will be the “eco-friendly” one. Users will have to opt out of this if they wish to take an alternative route.

Google said that when alternative routes “are significantly faster”, the mapping app will offer options, and let users compare estimated emissions on the default and alternative routes. The new feature, Google said, is part of its commitment to fight climate change.
While the tech major did mention plans for a “global expansion”, it did not offer specifics with respect to the launch timelines in specific geographies such as India.

Google is also reported to be making “new map layers for weather and air quality” that are set to roll out in the coming months on both Android and iOS. Google plans to launch the weather layer globally and release the air quality layer first in Australia, India, and the US, according to a report in The Verge.

For its new route plan, Google said it used emissions data based on testing across different types of vehicles and roads in the US, and subsequently concluded that for about 50 per cent of the analyzed routes, it was able to offer a ‘greener’ alternative without any significant tradeoffs.

“What we are seeing is for around half of routes, we are able to find an option more eco-friendly with minimal or no time-cost trade-off,” Russell Dicker, a director of product at Google, said.The search major said it used emissions data based on testing across different types of cars and road types, extrapolating insights from the US Government’s National Renewable Energy Lab. Its data incorporates details such as slopes and inclines from its own Street View cars feature alongside aerial and satellite imagery.

Also, from June 2021, Google will start warning drivers about travelling through low emissions zones where some vehicles are restricted, as is the case in countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands.In another new feature slated for launch later this year, Google Maps users will be able to compare travel options — car, cycling, public transport etc — in one place instead of having to switch back and forth between different modes with evaluating travel options.The scope of these features could be progressively widened to include Asian cities such as Jakarta, it indicated.

Banned From Social Media, Trump Launches A New Website

Staff ReporterMedia, Nation USA 0

Donald Trump, the former president and first lady, Melania Trump, have launched a website to serve their personal offices. The website, 45office.com, comes after Trump’s ban from social media sites in the aftermath of the January Capitol insurrection.

The site features a lengthy biography for the former president that starts, “Donald J. Trump launched the most extraordinary political movement in history, dethroning political dynasties, defeating the Washington Establishment, and becoming the first true outsider elected as President of the United States.”

It also includes more than a dozen pictures of himself, in which he is depicted boarding Air Force One, greeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and, yes, kissing a baby. Other photos are of the president and Melania Trump dancing at the inaugural ball and at black tie dinners in the White House. The website makes no mention of his two impeachment trials. It does reference how “the coronavirus plague arrived from China,” and says that Trump “acted early and decisively to ban travel from China and Europe, which saved countless lives.”

As of Tuesday, Covid-19 has killed at least 550,371 people and infected about 30.3 million in the United States since last January, according to data by Johns Hopkins University.

Trump has largely remained off the internet since the January 6th Capitol insurrection that killed five people and led the Justice Department to charge at least 150 people with insurrection, a number that could increase to 400 or more. In its aftermath, Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter and other social platforms, such as Snapchat.

The former president will return to social media in two to three months on his own platform, according to Jason Miller, a long-time Trump adviser and spokesperson for the president’s 2020 campaign. The new platform will attract “tens of millions” of new users and “completely redefine the game,” Miller added.

Following Trump’s ban on Twitter, Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, intervened to stop the efforts of aides who attempted to get Trump on fringe social media platforms such as Parler and Gab.

Visitors to the former president’s website can also request a personalized greeting from the president and the First Lady, or request that the Trumps attend an event. Due to the high number of requests, the greetings page says it will take up to six weeks for processing.

As for having the Trumps attend an event, the website said it there would be no status updates “due to the volume of requests President and Mrs. Trump receive. Requests must note if media will be present and if there will be any notable attendees.”

— CNN’s Jazmin Goodwin contributed to this report

India’s New Internet Rules Are ‘Digital Authoritarianism’

Staff ReporterMedia, Technology 0

The Indian government must suspend sweeping new Internet regulations, 10 international NGOs said in an open letter Thursday. The new rules, brought in by executive order in late February, give the Indian government an arsenal of muscular new powers that will force tech companies and news outlets to comply with government surveillance and censorship demands.

The rules increase the pressure on U.S. tech companies including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to comply with what the letter’s authors say is an increasingly authoritarian Indian government—or risk losing access to India, their biggest market in the world, which many see as key to future growth.

The Indian government had been preparing the new rules for years, but published them amid an escalating protest movement by Indian farmers that has captured both national and international attention. In February, the Indian government clashed with Twitter over the company’s refusal of a government request to remove hundreds of posts by activists and politicians about the protests, with the company saying they constituted freedom of expression. After the Indian government threatened Twitter employees with jail time, Twitter eventually re-blocked most of the posts.

“Why the government brought this up now is deeply linked to the farmer protests,” says Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia-Pacific policy director at Access Now, one of the groups that signed the open letter criticizing the rules. “After the pushback they received from social media firms, who were contesting orders they were receiving, the government definitely wants to send a clear signal that ‘we are going to regulate you, and if you push back, it will result in more regulation overall.’”

India’s new rules come at a time when tech platforms are facing threats of regulation by Western governments over content including hate speech, misinformation, and incitement to violence. But the Indian rules are more worrying, the open letter says, because they are part of a wider push toward “digital authoritarianism,” including Internet shutdowns and arrests of journalists. Although the Indian rules also contain useful provisions like mandating transparency in cases when user content has been removed, they come with no clear mechanisms for tech companies to push back against potentially unlawful government demands.

“The rules change the fundamental Internet experience for any average user in India,” says Apar Gupta, executive director of India’s Internet Freedom Foundation. “Social media companies, streaming platforms and online news portals are now being brought under some level of direct government supervision,” he says. “These rules are a very stark illustration of a desire of the government to control the online conversation. They extend forms of regulation over areas that enrich any kind of democracy, and encourage self-censorship.”

What do the new rules say?

The rules force companies to remove content that the government says is illegal within three days of being notified, including content that threatens “the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India,” public order, decency, morality, or incitement to an offense. The rules also state that platforms must hand over information about users to law enforcement upon request.

Encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp—which is owned by Facebook—will also be forced under the new rules to keep information on who the “first originator” of any message is, and provide it to the government upon demand. WhatsApp is already facing similar legislation in Brazil, its second-biggest market after India. And Western intelligence agencies have also pressured encrypted platforms to build “backdoors” into their messaging services.

WhatsApp did not respond to TIME’s request for comment, but its head Will Cathcart said the company was “still digesting them and understanding what they actually mean, or don’t mean,” in an interview on Big Technology, a podcast by journalist Alex Kantrowitz.

Cathcart suggested that WhatsApp may be prepared to bring legal cases in India if the rules meant breaking the end-to-end encryption that the chat service is based on. “If you’re talking about break[ing] encryption, it’s really hard for me to imagine being comfortable with it,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine even how you ask people to do that, I think it’s such a fundamental threat. So, we’ll stand and we’ll make our case, and we’ll argue.”

Facebook and Signal (an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is growing in popularity in India) did not respond to TIME’s requests for comment.

In a statement, Twitter said: “We are studying the updated guidelines, and we look forward to continued engagement with the Government of India to strike a balance between transparency, freedom of expression, and privacy … We believe that regulation is beneficial when it safeguards citizen’s fundamental rights and reinforces online freedom.”

India’s new rules also say that companies must appoint a resident Indian citizen to be a “chief compliance officer” who will be criminally liable for any failure to comply with the rules. “India’s worst-kept secret is that if you work in the Internet industry, you will face arrest threats and threats of prosecution on a regular basis,” Chima says. “They’re just trying to codify this in one place. The idea is that if you have one person, you can put them under so much pressure that it will force compliance.”

The open letter by the 10 activist groups called on tech companies to resist the new rules. “They should interpret and implement legal demands as narrowly as possible, to ensure the least possible restriction on expression, notify users, seek clarification or modification from authorities, and explore all legal options for challenge,” the letter said.

As well as social media and streaming platforms, the new rules also impose strict new limits on digital news platforms—where a small handful of Indian publications have managed to remain critical of the government. In March, India’s democracy rating was downgraded from “free” to “partly free” by the U.S.-based NGO Freedom House, which cited among other factors the government’s “rising intimidation of academics and journalists.”

Under the new rules, digital publications will be subject to oversight by government-run committees, with the power to block publication of stories, remove stories, or even shut down entire websites. One of the 10 signatories of the open letter on Thursday is Reporters Without Borders, an NGO that campaigns for press freedom worldwide.

“Digital media has been quite outspoken, and I see this clearly as a way to bring it to heel, to control it, and perhaps intimidate it,” says Sidharth Bhatia, a founding editor of The Wire, a leading online publication that regularly publishes content critical of the Indian government. “It is executive overreach of the worst kind.”

The new legislation could result in critical reporting being silenced, Bhatia says. “Let’s say we’re about to publish a story about somebody powerful,” he says. “In a normal journalistic way, we will probably send a message before publication saying we would like your point of view. That person could very well go and say ‘I fear they will publish a very damaging story against me, and it’s libelous, etc.’” If that were to happen, he says, the case would be escalated through two committees, that contain no representatives of the digital media, until it is heard by a senior bureaucrat in India’s Ministry of Information. “At that level, you’re not likely to want to go against the government,” Bhatia says.

The publisher of The Wire is challenging the government’s new rules in the Indian court system—a challenge that a Delhi high court judge upheld on Tuesday, with the case adjourned to April 16.

Bhatia says that if the new rules are allowed to stand, they will have a “terrible chilling effect” on Indian journalism. “There is already talk within the media of journalists self-censoring,” he says. “More and more will say it’s not worth the trouble.”

Hundreds In New York Rally Against Anti-Asian Hate

Staff ReporterCommunity, Media 0

More than 300 people joined some of New York’s top elected officials and community leaders on Saturday afternoon to speak out against the increase in anti-Asian violence in the city and nationwide on Saturday, Feb 27th.

The Rise Up Against Asian Hate rally, organized by the Asian American Federation (AAF), took place at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan, two blocks from where a 36-year-old Asian man was stabbed on Thursday night.

The rally was joined by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as well as victims of violence against Asian-Americans.

Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Schumer said: I’m proud to stand with the @AAFederation at today’s #RiseUpRally in New York City to stop hatred against Asian-Americans.

“The surge in attacks against Asian American communities is alarming, ignorant, and dangerous. We cannot and will not tolerate racism and discrimination.”

Addressing the rally he said: “Bigotry against any of us is bigotry against all of us … We must redouble our fight. We must stand strong.

“New York, we love diversity. We know the more of us who are together from every different background in race, creed, colour, orientation and gender, the stronger we are. We love immigrants.”

Among the speakers was a recent victim: 61-year-old Filipino-American Noel Quintana, whose face was slashed on the subway earlier this month. “I called for help, but nobody came to help,” he said. “If they took a video of this, the perpetrator would be identified easily.” He urged people to be safe and aware, and to record and report incidents. As he walked off the stage, the crowd chanted his name.

Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng, who represents New York’s 6th District and authored a resolution in the House last September to denounce hatred against Asian-Americans, said, “We need to make sure that we are not fighting racism with more racism. That we are fighting racism with solidarity. That we are not ever, ever pitting one group against the other. It is everyone against racism. We are American, too.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer harshly criticized former President Donald Trump, whose use of terms like “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” for the coronavirus helped fuel anti-Asian sentiment over the past year. “Bigotry against any of us is bigotry against all of us,” Schumer said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that “anyone who commits an act of hate against the Asian-American community will be found, will be arrested, will be prosecuted.”

Attorney General Letitia James, who AAF Executive Director Jo-Ann Yoo referred to as an “ally,” urged the community to report incidents to authorities. “Come to my office so that we can do something about it. Come to my office, so that we can go after those individuals who hate us, and shut them down,” she said.

James and many others shared messages of unity with the AAPI community. They also endorsed Yoo’s calls for more directed action, saying, “We need a patrol which is staffed by police officers. A full-time, dedicated bureau … that patrol the streets, patrol the subways and keep the Asian community safe from harm.” The AAF and a larger group of organizations have called for community-based solutions to combat bias incidents and hate crimes against Asian-Americans, including recovery programs, language services, mental health services and more.

According to data collected by AAF, Stop AAPI Hate, the NYPD and the NYC Commission on Human Rights, nearly 500 Asians in New York were targets of bias incidents or hate crimes in 2020, ranging from verbal to physical assaults, including acid attacks. The community has suffered a significant rise in unemployment since the pandemic began. Nationwide, at least half of Asian Americans continued to experience cases of direct racism, nearly 1 in 5 of which were physical assaults.

Celebrities have also gotten involved. Actor William Lex Ham, who has been leading marches and rallies across the country since last summer, made an appearance on Saturday. Actress Olivia Munn tweeted out a video of an attack on a woman in Flushing, New York. Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu put up a $25,000 reward for the identification of a suspect who fatally shoved 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee to the ground in Oakland, California. Governments have made an effort to stand with the community, passing resolutions at the state and federal levels. But these, and President Biden’s executive order in February denouncing anti-Asian hate, are largely symbolic, and more concrete action is needed, activists say.

Late last year, the NYPD established an Asian Hate Crimes Task Force. In California, another state that has seen an exponential rise in attacks against the AAPI community, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will devote nearly $1.5 million to tracking anti-Asian hate crimes.

Bhumi Pednekar Joins Efforts By UNESCO To Educate Girls On Menstrual Hygiene

Staff ReporterCinema, Media, Women 0

With an aim to raise awareness and educate girls on menstrual hygiene management, UNESCO has joined the #KeepGirlsInSchool mission, being supported by Bollywood actress Bhumi Pednekar.

 

The movement, launched by feminine care brand Whisper, begins with shedding light on the impact of 2.3 crore girls dropping out of school due to lack of period education and protection.

 

According to studies, even today, 71 per cent of adolescent girls in India remain unaware of menstruation till they get their first period. This affects their confidence and self-esteem adversely, leading to 2.3 crore adolescent girls dropping out of school every year, at the onset of the puberty. In addition to this, the ongoing pandemic has led to the closure of schools and lack of structured learning process, making these girls even more vulnerable to dropping out.

 

According to the UNESCO, the global pandemic has impacted 74 crore schoolgirls, and could severely affect their return to school.

To bring to light the struggles of young girls as they reach puberty, Whisper and

 

UNESCO released a film that illustrates the journey of the playful innocence of a schoolgirl with boundless dreams coming to a grinding halt due to the lack of period education and protection. The film underscores the importance of empowering young girls to achieve their full potential and not let periods get in the way of 2.3 crore dreams.

 

Continuing to share her support for the cause, Bhumi Pednekar said: “For the past one year I have been working closely with Whisper to drive awareness on the importance of menstrual hygiene education and protection. This gave me an understanding of the on-ground reality of crores of girls who drop out of school and unfortunately give up on their dreams of becoming a pilot, doctor, teacher, designer, etc. Every girl in India should be able to complete her education like I did and not have to drop out just because of periods. I strongly believe that empowering young girls with menstrual education and protection will give them wings to transform into leaders of tomorrow. It is great to see that Whisper and UNESCO are enabling this change at a ground level, which will not only accelerate the cause but also encourage wider participation. I urge everyone to come forward and be part of the #KeepGirlsInSchool movement.”

 

Emphasizing UNESCO’s commitment to right to Education, Eric Falt, Director and UNESCO Representative to Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka, said: “During puberty and the start of menstruation, a girl’s confidence and self-esteem can be affected in many different ways, sometimes even leading to her dropping out of school. UNESCO and Whisper are on a mission to change that. The #KeepGirlsInSchool initiative builds on our strong commitment to ensuring everyone’s fundamental right to education. Investing in girls’ education is an investment for society as a whole.”

 

Sharing her thoughts on the movement, Chetna Soni, Senior Director and Category Head, P&G Indian Subcontinent, Feminine Care, said: “Whisper believes in empowering girls and women to unleash their confidence and ensure that nothing comes in the way of achieving their dreams. With this mission, we continue to challenge the barriers surrounding menstrual hygiene through education and multi-stakeholder engagement to advocate for change.

 

To widen the impact, we are delighted to be joining hands with UNESCO to further our force for female good movement #KeepGirlsInSchool. We strongly believe that we all have a role to play in breaking menstrual stigma and normalizing periods so nothing can come in the way of girls fulfilling their dreams and achieving their full potential.” (IANS)

Why Journalists In India Are Under Attack

Soutik Biswas, India correspondent for BBCCommunity, Media 0

A month after taking office in the summer of 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India’s “democracy will not sustain if we can’t guarantee freedom of speech and expression”.

Six years on, many believe, India’s democracy looks diminished, by what they say are persistent attacks on the freedom of the press.

Last year India dropped two places and was ranked 142 on the 180-country World Press Freedom Index, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. It’s an unflattering commentary on a country that often prides itself on a vibrant and competitive media.

The latest crackdown has happened after violence during a recent rally by farmers to protest at a raft of agriculture reform laws. One protester was killed and more than 500 policemen injured in the clashes.

Now police have filed criminal charges – including sedition and making statements inimical to national integration – against eight journalists who covered the protests in Delhi.

The cause of the protester’s death – at the rally on 26 January – remains disputed. While police say he died when the tractor he was driving overturned, his family alleges that he was shot. His family’s account, which has been published by various newspapers and magazines, appears to have become the basis of these charges.

Some of the journalists were involved in reporting or publishing the story, and others only shared it on social media.

Six of them – and a prominent opposition Congress party MP who is accused of “misreporting” facts surrounding the death – are facing cases in four BJP-ruled states.

“Is it a crime for media to report statements of relatives of a dead person if they question a post-mortem or police version of the cause of death?” Siddharth Varadarajan, editor-in-chief of The Wire and one of the journalists charged by police, said.

Rights groups and many fellow journalists are outraged. “The Indian authorities’ response to protests has focused on discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government, and prosecuting those reporting on the events,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The police cases, the Editors Guild of India said, were “an attempt to intimidate, harass, browbeat, and stifle the media”.

A case in point, many say, is Caravan, an investigative news magazine which has often been in the crosshairs of Mr Modi’s government.

Ten sedition cases have been brought against three of its senior-most editorial staff – the publisher, editor and executive editor – in five states for a story and tweets relating to the death of the protester. One of the magazine’s freelance reporters was arrested from a protest site for “obstruction”, and released on bail after two days. The magazine’s Twitter account was suspended for a few hours in response to a legal notice by the government, citing objections based on public order.

Last year, four of Caravan’s journalists were attacked in two separate incidents while reporting on the aftermath of religious riots and a protest concerning the alleged rape and murder of a teenager in Delhi. “There is a narrative here which is very dangerous. We live in polarised times where critics of the government are branded as anti-nationals. It is the job of journalists to ask questions to people in power,” Vinod Jose, executive editor of Caravan, told me.

The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) denies that journalists are being targeted and believes that much of what is happening is part of “orchestrated propaganda” against the government.

“All journalists with avowed political affiliations and evident slant against the government have continued to write and speak freely in newspapers, television, and online portals,” Baijayant Panda, national vice president of the BJP, told me.

Mr Panda says police have filed complaints against journalists in a “couple of recent cases” because there have “been serious criminal allegations of fake news peddling in a riot-like situation, with the intent of fanning violence”.

He pointed to the case of a senior anchor of a leading news network who was taken off air and his pay docked because of an “incorrect” tweet relating to the death of a protester.

“This was not just blatant peddling of a false narrative, but one that had real and imminent potential to inflame large-scale violence. The said journalist and others of his ilk have also had a pattern of promoting such false narratives on earlier instances, and in fact have had to apologise on the record after being taken to court by affected parties,” Mr Panda said.

He said some state governments, run by political parties opposed to Mr Modi’s government, and “for whom these journalists have shown unabashed sympathy, have in fact been hounding journalists with the blatant misuse of power”.

Critics say a number of journalists seen as sympathetic to the government have consistently got away with broadcasting and publishing inflammatory material, often targeted at minorities.

Also, they wonder why the colonial era sedition law is being so widely used to crack down on dissent. An overwhelming majority of sedition cases filed against 405 Indians for criticising politicians and governments over the last decade were registered after 2014, when Mr Modi took power, according to data compiled by the website article14. Opposition politicians, students, journalists, authors and academicians have borne the brunt of the repressive law.

In a polarised environment, journalists are more divided than ever before. Much of the mainstream media, including a clutch of partisan news networks, is seen to be uncritical of Mr Modi’s government. “India, the world’s most populous democracy, is also sending signals that holding the government accountable is not part of the press’s responsibility,” a report by Freedom House said.

Many believe India is becoming unsafe for journalists. Sixty-seven journalists were arrested and nearly 200 physically attacked in 2020, according to a study by Geeta Seshu for the Free Speech Collective. A journalist, who was on his way to cover the gang rape of a girl in Uttar Pradesh state, has been in jail for five months.

Journalists – especially women critical of the government – face fierce online trolling and threats. Delhi-based freelance journalist Neha Dixit says she has been “stalked, openly threatened with rape and murder, viciously trolled”, and an attempt made to break into her apartment. This week, the police arrested a law student for allegedly sending death and rape threats to Rohini Singh, another freelance journalist.

The protection afforded to freedom of expression in India has never been robust, according to Tarunabh Khaitan, vice-dean of law at Oxford University.

Although this is a constitutionally guaranteed freedom, its scope was drastically restricted by the First Amendment under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951. It was then that India’s government “discovered that mouthing platitudes to civil liberties was one thing, and upholding them as principles was quite another,” notes Tripurdaman Singh in his book Sixteen Stormy Days.

And the colonial police and criminal justice system inherited from the Raj continues to see “human rights as an obstacle rather than their first duty to defend”, says Prof Khaitan. India’s Supreme Court, too, has had a poor track record on protecting civil liberties in comparison with courts in many other democracies, he says.

“The biggest sufferers are the two truth-seeking institutions whose autonomy from political as well as corporate power is critical to a democracy: the media and the universities. The role of these knowledge institutions is to challenge power and seek discursive accountability from power. But once captured, they serve as the instruments of power instead. Weak protection of free expression makes it relatively easy to capture or compromise them,” Prof Khaitan told me.

India’s media was gagged for 21 months when then prime minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties and imposed a nationwide Emergency in 1975. “What is unusual about our current political moment is that, unlike a formal emergency that undermines rights openly, all our rights are supposed to still be functional. There is no formal suspension of rights. But their corrosion in practice has become overwhelming. We are living in an extra-legal, informal, emergency. During a formal emergency, a citizen can perhaps hope that things will go back to normal once it is lifted,” says Prof Khaitan.  “How do you even ‘lift’ an informal emergency, one that was never promulgated in the first place?”

(Picture: New Indian Express)

Stop Facebook From Tracking You On Apps And Websites

Staff ReporterMedia 0

Facebook was recently under fire for having access to a lot of user data than it really needs for basic functioning. There are a few ways to stop allowing Facebook to track your daily activities or data. You can turn off most of the permissions for Facebook that are not required for it to operate properly. For this, you just need to visit the settings section on your phone > Apps & notifications > Facebook > Permissions.

Users are also advised to disable ‘Off-Facebook activity’ if they don’t want the social media giant to track the apps or websites they are using. Though, Facebook will still be able to get some of your data as third-party apps or sites to share your data with Facebook as they use the company’s tools to track your usage. Facebook claims it will never ask third-parties to share the health or financial data of users.

The company itself says, “We receive activity from businesses and organisations who use our business tools so that can better understand how their website, app, or ads are performing. We use your activity to show you relevant ads and to suggest things you might be interested in.”

While Facebook has clearly stated its intention, you don’t really know if your data is safe. Last year, Facebook admitted sharing users’ data with third-party developers.

So, what data is Facebook collecting?

If you visit a site or an app, Facebook knows when you opened it or logged in, searched for an item, what item you added to a wishlist or cart, made a purchase or donation. So, if you are using an online banking app or the MakeMyTrip app to book flight tickets, Facebook can see all your activity and target ads to you accordingly. On Facebook, it knows your purchase history, contacts, search history, ads or products you interact with, precise location, physical address and more.

Android: How to stop Facebook from tracking your activities

Step 1: Open the Facebook app on your smartphone and tap on the hamburger icon, which is located on the top right corner of the screen.

Step 2: Scroll and tap on ‘Settings & Privacy.’

Step 3: Visit settings > scroll > tap on off-Facebook Activity

*Once you land on this page, it will show you which apps or sites you have visited and are sharing user data with Facebook. You can tap on each app to get additional information on what data is being shared, and what Facebook is doing with all of it. The app also lets you download all your activity details. For this, you need to tap on the three-dotted button located in the ‘Off-Facebook Activity option.’ Then, tap on ‘Download your Information’ of your off-Facebook activities.

Step 4: Tap on Clear History. This will make sure that you delete all the data that Facebook has collected. Once you clear the history, you will see all the apps disappearing from the top of the screen.

Step 5: Now to disable the option, you need to tap on ‘More options’ and then ‘Manage Future Activity.’

Step 6: Tap again on Manage Future Activity and tap on Future Off-Facebook Activity.

The iOS users can also follow the same steps. The only difference is you will find the hamburger menu at the bottom of the screen once you open the Facebook app on your device.

What will happen if you disable ‘Off-Facebook’ activity’?

Once you turn off the ‘Off-Facebook activity’ option, a Facebook user won’t get personalised advertisements based on their daily online activity. If you want your ads to be personalised, you basically have to pay for it with your data.

(From: The Indian Express; Picture: Reclaim The Net) 

India Uses Muscle Power To Silence Voices of Journalists

Staff ReporterCommunity, Media, Nation, Nation India 0

India continues to use “force” to silence the media across the nation. Journalists around the nation are being silenced when they write/report about policies nof the government that are not democratic and not in the interests of the larger public. 

The FIRs were filed across three BJP-ruled states against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, India Today journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, National Herald’s senior consulting editor Mrinal Pande, Qaumi Awaz editor Zafar Agha, The Caravan magazine’s editor and founder Paresh Nath, its editor Anant Nath and executive editor Vinod K. Jose, and one unnamed person. On Saturday night, the Delhi police also filed a similar case.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has registered an FIR against journalist Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire, for “provocative” tweets over the death of a Rampur farmer during the tractor rally in Delhi on Republic Day. The FIR, registered by the Rampur police, invoked Sections 153-B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) and 505(2) (inciting for violence) of the Indian Penal Code, Varadarajan said in a tweet. 

The tweet referred to the FIR had quoted the grandfather of the deceased farmer alleging that one of the doctors who conducted the autopsy told him that the man died of a bullet injury, along with a link to the full story. The Wire article included statements by the police and doctors rejecting the claims. Varadarajan described the FIR as “malicious prosecution”.

The development follows FIRs against television journalist Rajdeep Sardesai; National Herald’s senior consulting editor Mrinal Pande; Caravan’s editor and founder Paresh Nath, its editor Anant Nath and executive editor Vinod K Jose; and Qaumi Awaz’s editor Zafar Agha for ‘misleading’ tweets on the death of the farmer. 

 “This is a clear case of overreach by the police and administration of the state governments which allowed the registration of the FIRs. If sedition charges are going to be invoked at the drop of the hat, where will we head to?” T.K. Rajalakshmi of the IWPC told The Wire.

The sedition cases that have been slapped on journalists for sharing “unverified” news during the farmers’ tractor rally in Delhi on January 26 reeks of a conspiracy, observed a host of media and journalists’ bodies at a press conference on Saturday.

The joint press meeting was organized by the Press Club of India (PCI), the Editors’ Guild of India, the Press Association, the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC), the Delhi Union of Journalists and the Indian Journalists Union, which was packed with the country’s best known journalists.

The FIRs have been filed in relation to the reporting of the farmers’ tractor rally, held on January 26 in Delhi, in which some early reports had suggested that a young farmer had died from a police bullet. Later, it was claimed that he died because his tractor overturned.

The PCI has expressed shock over criminal charges being pressed against journalists even as a reliable post mortem report in the case has not yet come out. “This is a pathetic excuse on the part of the concerned state governments. In a moving story, things change on a regular basis. Accordingly, the reporting reflects the circumstances, when large crowds are involved and the air is thick with suppositions, suspicions, and hypotheses, there can sometimes be a divergence between earlier and later reports. It is criminal to ascribe this to motivated reporting, as is sought to have been done,” the PCI said in a statement.

There are writers and media personnel, human rights defenders and activists, academics and others, from every corner of the country, who despite all odds, face fascists fearlessly. They are the ones genuinely concerned about what is happening in the country today, writes Cedric Prakash in “Facing Fascists Fearlessly. 

The Editors Guild of India had termed the FIRs an “attempt to intimidate, harass, browbeat, and stifle the media”, and demanded their immediate withdrawal.

WhatsApp vs Signal vs Telegram: Which is More Secure?

Staff ReporterMedia 0

Facebook-owned WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy updates have prompted unhappy users to look for alternative apps. Find out which of the three most popular messaging apps is more secure. Whatsapp currently is the largest messaging service in the world with over 2 billion monthly active users. Following that, Telegram accounts for 400 million and Signal stands at a ballpark of 10-20 million monthly active users. Simply looking at the raw numbers would suggest that WhatsApp is hugely popular and almost ubiquitous while Telegram is catching up and Signal seems to have just joined the million downloads race. However, numbers do not often tell you the entire story, hence here we do a comprehensive comparison of the three app’s security and features.

Whatsapp

WhatsApp offers almost every feature you might need. You get support for group chats with up to 256 members. You can also broadcast messages to multiple contacts at the same time. It also supports voice and video calls, both for individuals and groups. However, for group video calls, you are restricted to 8 users at any time. Further, WhatsApp also offers a Status feature (also called WhatsApp stories) similar to Instagram stories.

Whatsapp also allows you to share all sorts of files and documents, but there are file size limits to adhere to. For photos, videos, and audio files, the limit is 16 MB. However, documents can be up to 100 MB. You can also share live location with your contacts and I am sure many users find this feature helpful.

And since WhatsApp is meant for general users, it offers seamless backup and restore functionality through cloud services like Google Drive and iCloud. And the best part is that cloud backup is completely free.

Telegram

Telegram app offers so many features that it’s incredible. Similar to WhatsApp, you get the basics such as chats, group chats, and channels. However, unlike WhatsApp’s 256 member limit, Telegram brings support for groups with up to 200,000 members. It also offers multiple group-specific features such as bots, polls, quizzes, hashtags, and a lot more which can make group experiences a lot more fun.

The app also offers a unique feature, self-destructing messages (like Snapchat) which is great if you’re sending messages that you don’t want to remain on the recipient’s device for eternity. The size limit for sharing files on Telegram is a whopping 1.5 GB. The app now has both voice and video call on Android and iOS devices, which is great because video call support was a big omission from the app.

Signal

Signal offers its users secure messaging, voice, and video calls and all communications are end-to-end encrypted. Further, you can create groups, however, you don’t have the option to broadcast messages to multiple contacts at once. Plus, Signal has recently added support for group calling as well.

It has a feature similar to the self-destructing messages of Telegram. The best feature of Signal is “Note to Self”. Unlike WhatsApp, you don’t have to create a single-member group to send notes to yourself. On Signal, the feature is available natively and you can jot down your thoughts and ideas while messaging with your friends and family.

Apart from that, Signal allows you to relay voice calls to its servers so your identity remains concealed from your contacts. The feature is somewhat similar to what a VPN does. There are also emojis and some privacy stickers, but they are very limited in comparison to WhatsApp and Telegram.

Security:

Whatsapp

The end to end encryption (E2E) introduced in 2016 on WhatsApp is available on every single mode of communication that the app enables. So all your messages, video calls, voice calls, photos, and anything else you share are end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp uses the E2E protocol developed by Open Whisper Systems, which is the name behind Signal messenger. That’s a good thing, because the Signal protocol is open source, widely peer-reviewed, and is generally considered one of the best protocols for implementing end-to-end encryption in messaging platforms.

However, WhatsApp does not encrypt backups (cloud or local). Also, it does not encrypt the metadata which is used to carry communication between two endpoints. This is one of the major criticisms of WhatsApp’s security model. While metadata does not allow anyone to read your messages, it lets authorities know whom and when you messaged someone, and for how long.

All in all, WhatsApp does a pretty decent job of ensuring security for its users. That being said, WhatsApp has suffered a couple of major privacy nightmares, especially the recent issue with group chats getting indexed on Google search. That issue has been fixed, however, it was not a good look for the messaging app.

Telegram

Telegram does offer some level of protection to its users. While Telegram supports E2E encryption, it’s not enabled by default. The only way to use E2E encryption on Telegram is to use its secret chats feature. However, Telegram states that it manages its message storage and decryption keys in a way that one would require court orders from multiple legal systems around the world to be able to access any of your data. The company says that it has shared 0 bytes of data with third-parties and governments to this date.

Telegram groups are not encrypted because Secret Chats are only supported for single-user communication. Moreover, Telegram’s desktop client doesn’t support E2E encryption on any platform other than macOS.

Signal

Signal is by far the best when it comes to security, be it on the back-end or the user-facing side of the service. Signal uses the open-source Signal Protocol to implement end-to-end encryption. And just like WhatsApp, the E2E encryption covers all forms of communication on Signal.

Signal goes one step further than others and encrypts your metadata too. To protect user privacy from all corners, Signal devised a new way to communicate between the sender and the recipient and it’s called Sealed Sender. Basically, with Sealed Sender, no one will be able to know not even Signal who is messaging whom, which ensures ultimate privacy. Signal by default encrypts all the local files with a 4-digit passphrase. And if you want to create an encrypted local backup then you can do that as well. The app now also supports encrypted group calls.

All in all, in terms of security and privacy protection, Signal stands head and shoulder above WhatsApp and Telegram and that makes it the most secure messaging app between the three.

What data does each app collect?

Following is the list of data that each of the three messaging apps collects from their users:

WhatsApp
Device ID
User ID
Advertising Data
Purchase History
Coarse Location
Phone Number
Email Address
Contacts
Product Interaction
Crash Data
Performance Data
Other Diagnostic Data
Payment Info
Customer Support
Product Interaction
Other User Content

Telegram
Contact Info
Contacts
User ID

Signal
None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

(Story Courtesy: India Today; Picture Courtesy: Tech Life)

Trump Scrambles To Find New Social Network After Twitter Ban, As White House Prepares To Blast Big Tech

Staff ReporterMedia 0

Twitter’s decision to ban President Trump mere days before the end of his term sparked a fierce political backlash among his most fervent allies on Saturday, sending some of his supporters — and the White House itself — scrambling to find another potent tool to communicate online.

Many prominent conservatives — including Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Rush Limbaugh, the leading voice in right-wing radio — reacted to Trump’s suspension by blasting Twitter, quitting the site outright or encouraging the president’s loyal following to turn to alternative services. Trump himself signaled he is in negotiations to join other social networks, and he raised the possibility he could create a new online platform on his own.

For now, the White House is considering an early push as soon as Monday against Twitter and other tech giants, blasting it for having silenced the president’s ability to reach supporters while calling for fresh regulation against Silicon Valley, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Trump, who is apoplectic about being banned, plans to spend the final days of his term in office railing against the industry, the person said.

Yet Trump’s threats also underscore his reliance on the very social media sites he has long disparaged for perceived political biases. On Twitter, the outgoing president frequently leveraged his more than 88 million followers to savage his rivals, boost allies, and sometimes spread falsehoods on a viral scale.

This vast online reach offered Trump an online megaphone that was unparalleled in American politics. But his rhetoric was also vitriolic — the consequences of which turned deadly after a mob of his supporters seized on his baseless tweets about the 2020 election and stormed the U.S. Capitol this week.

The president and his allies now face a daunting technical and logistical challenge in relocating to a new social network or setting up their own online hub, which is likely to be much smaller than the grand audiences Trump had enjoyed until recently. A shift away from mainstream platforms would mark a retreat to more insular conservative communities and threaten to exacerbate the partisan divisions in a country that Trump already had left on edge.

“For more casual supporters of the president, I think they will receive his messages less frequently,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies issues including disinformation.

“Obviously, he will have millions of hardcore supporters tuned into broadcast sources still carrying his messages, or [they will] go into whatever online space he occupies … but that is going to be a smaller, more devoted group,” Brooking said, expressing fears they may become “extremely radicalized.”

Trump’s removal from Twitter came as part of a broader reckoning late Friday across much of the mainstream Web, as tech giants including Apple, Facebook and Google took unprecedented steps to discipline apps, users and accounts seen as instrumental in stoking the violence that left lawmakers under lockdown earlier in the week.

Before it banned Trump, Twitter removed a slew of users affiliated with QAnon, a prominent conspiracy theory. Google-owned YouTube suspended channels associated with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager. And Apple and Google both removed Parler, a pro-Trump app where users have threatened further violence, from their portals for smartphone software downloads. Apple announced its move late Saturday, saying the app is suspended until it improve its content-moderation practices. Amazon delivered the biggest blow Saturday, saying it would stop offering its web hosting services to Parler, a move that threatens to darken the conservative site indefinitely. (Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post).

The actions reflect a new vigor on the part of Silicon Valley to punish those that have peddled harmful content — from election disinformation to hate speech and violent threats. Congressional lawmakers, digital researchers and human-rights groups praised the moves this week, even as they decried them as too little, too late, coming near the end of Trump’s term.

But the bans amounted to a digital massacre in the eyes of Trump’s conservative allies, many of whom decried them as censorship. One of Trump’s top allies, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), pledged he is “more determined than ever” to try to terminate legal protections for Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, faulting them for censorship. Limbaugh deleted his Twitter account, and fellow talk-radio host Mark Levin also announced he would leave, encouraging users to do the same. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., posted a widely watched video on Facebook that warned supporters it is only a matter of time until social media companies “inevitably throw us all off the platforms they so heavily censor and regulate only one way.” He solicited Trump supporters to sign up for alerts on his website.

“I’ll let you know where I end up, my father ends up, where we can direct ourselves so we can keep this going,” Trump Jr. said. On Friday, Trump threatened to decamp to a new social networking serving almost immediately after Twitter banned him, vowing he would “not be SILENCED!!” — and promising a “big announcement soon.” More than any other social service, the loss of Twitter seemed to strike a personal note: Trump had been obsessed with the platform, and he loved to post a tweet and time how long it would take to command attention on television. He often would pull out his phone and say, “Watch this, bingbingbing,” recalled senior administration officials. And Trump regularly would tell senators, world leaders and others about his most popular posts, scrolling through his mentions for feedback and ideas. The White House on Saturday declined to comment on the president’s plans or timing.

Already, though, Trump’s team has been inundated with requests for him to join alternate social networks — and his emissaries have entertained conversations with other companies. But Trump has told allies he prefers to launch his own services, according to two aides, who cautioned it may be infeasible and expensive. He also plans to hammer lawmakers in the coming days for failing to repeal Section 230, a provision of federal law that spares tech giants from being held liable for the content posted by their users. Such a repeal could have backfired on Trump, some experts note, resulting in his removal from Twitter sooner.

Parscale, his former campaign manager, encouraged the president on Saturday to strike out on his own. “I believe the best avenue for POTUS is to use his own app to speak to his followers,” he said. If Apple or Google block the service, Parscale added, Trump has “a clear path to a victorious lawsuit against them.”

Even before the Capitol riot led to his suspension, Trump had weighed turning to other social media services. In the summer of 2019, aides to Trump at the White House and others on his reelection campaign discussed joining Parler, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump even invited Parler’s top executive to the White House as part of a broader social media summit that summer where he blasted Silicon Valley over unproven allegations that they censor conservatives online.

A locked, private account with the name @realDonaldTrump — the same username the president once had on Twitter — appears to have sat dormant on the site since this June. The president’s campaign — under the account Team Trump — also has had an active account on Parler dating back to 2018. On Saturday, the Team Trump account blitzed their roughly 3 million followers with posts that faulted Twitter for having censored the president. Parler did not respond to a request for comment.

Another conservative hub online, Gab, took to Twitter to reveal it had a “big call with someone very special” scheduled on Saturday. The company did not mention Trump or anyone else by name, but later tweeted a story mentioning the president’s negotiations with potentially new social services, fueling speculation.

Like other pro-Trump online communities, Gab departs from much of Silicon Valley by eschewing aggressive enforcement against content that its critics see as harmful, dangerous and violent. Asked about Gab’s tweet, the company’s chief executive, Andrew Torba, responded with an insult and otherwise declined to comment. Gab later tweeted Saturday that “threats of violence have no place” on the site, noting it has “tens of thousands of volunteer users” who monitor it.

Several advisers said they believed Trump is unlikely to quickly join an outlet like Parler because he feels it doesn’t have the influence. Earlier this year, the president himself also told aides from the 2020 campaign, the White House and the Republican National Committee that he would have his own platform, but repeatedly declined to name it, saying only it would be coming “soon.”

But the president also would face a daunting task in standing up his own social network, which could be an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. Social media sites are attractive to users only insofar as they manage to capture a large number of them and their friends. Trump may struggle to incubate such an audience given the overtly political nature of his digital endeavor, some experts said.

“It’s very hard to build a new network,” said Yochai Benkler, the co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “Maybe he’s so big and important he could get some millions of people to join a network. The economics will make it much more insular and internal. … Networks benefit from being an option for people to reach lots of different people.”

But Trump’s quest to rebuild his online reach — securing himself a prominent voice as he prepares to relinquish the presidency — marks only the latest effort on the part of Republicans to serve as their own information gatekeepers. The party and its allies dominated talk radio starting in the late 1980s, set their sights on cable news in the ’90s and in more recent years have stood up a wide array of websites that operate under the banner of conservative news. Social media, experts said, is simply the next frontier.

“The quote-unquote liberal bias of the media is not simply an assertion, it’s a taken-for-granted reality on the right,” said Lawrence Rosenthal, the chair of the Center for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, adding that many conservatives now see the same bias in Silicon Valley. “It is the current incarnation of something that has been taken for granted on the right for decades and decades.”

(Story Courtesy: https://oltnews.com; Picture Courtesy: The Day)

WHO ARE YOU?

Staff ReporterLifestyle, Media 0

This question, when I heard it for the first time, really raised my blood pressure with a bit of anger raged in my subconscious mind. He was staring at me as if I am a stranger, seeing him for the first time. I have been reading his favorite books and sometimes feeding him for the last few months, all turned futile and null today.
I have been volunteering in a reputed Retirement Home in Kentucky, often with my boss Robert Meihaus during our weekends. This Resident who has been an Executive Officer with Reserve Bank of India for more than 30 years is now under the grip of Alzheimer’s disease. He very rarely speaks and his soft and feeble talks in Kannada and Hindi, could not be recognized by the Caregivers; that is where my services were of great importance to the facility.

Once I understood the depth of the disease tormenting his brain; gradually I became very patient and did spend my time according to his wishes. Every time I went to his room, miserably I was a stranger to him.
In the United States, an estimated 5.4 million people have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. This catastrophic figure is growing rapidly with the aging population.
Let me reiterate some thoughts on this tormenting disease I recently read, which elaborates the importance of our Coconut Oil to deal and manage this hiding enemy, which might have already hooked some of our relatives, or maybe awaiting for us at the threshold to creep in at any moment.
One of them to be a model patient on this topic is Mr. Stevenson. His wife, Dr. MarIanne learned that her husband had severe Alzheimer’s disease. (Thanks Dr. Mary and Steve Newport)
“When the doctor examined her husband at the hospital, he asked Stevenson to paint a clock. Instead, he drew a few circles and then drew a few figures without any logic. It was not like a clock at all!.
The doctor pulled her aside and said: “Your husband is already on the verge of severe Alzheimer’s disease!”
It turned out that it was a test of whether a person had Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. MarIanne was very upset at that time, but as a doctor, she would not just give up. She began to study the disease. She found out Alzheimer’s disease was associated with glucose deficiency in the brain.
Her research says: “The dementia of the elderly is like having diabetes in the head! Before one has the symptoms of diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease, the body has already had problems for 10 to 20 years.”
According to Dr. Marianne’s study, Alzheimer’s disease is very similar to Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. The cause is also an insulin imbalance. Because insulin has a problem, it prevents the brain cells from absorbing glucose. Glucose is the nutrition of brain cells. Without glucose, brain cells die. As it turns out, these high-quality proteins are the cells that feed our bodies. But nutrition for our brain cell is glucose. As long as we have mastered the source of these two kinds of food, we are the masters of our own health!
The next question is, where to find glucose? It cannot be the ready-made glucose that we buy from the store. It is not from fruits such as grapes. She started looking for alternatives. Ketones are necessary for brain cells. Ketones cannot be found in vitamins. 
*Coconut oil* contains triglycerides. After the triglycerides in *coconut oil* is consumed, it is metabolized into ketones in the liver. This is the alternative nutrient for brain cells!
After this scientific verification, Dr. Marianne added *coconut oil* to her husband’s food. After only two weeks, when he went to the hospital again to do painting and clock tests, the progress was amazing.
Dr. Marianne said: “At that time, I thought, has God heard my prayers? Wouldn’t it be coconut oil that worked? But there is no other way. Anyway, it’s better to continue taking the*coconut oil*. Dr. Marianne clearly knew the capabilities of traditional medicine. 

This progress was not only intellectual but also emotional and physical.: “He could not do his running earlier, but now he can run. He could not read for a year and a half, but he can read again now after taking *coconut oil* for three months.”
Her husband’s actions had already begun to change. He did not speak in the mornings. Now she noticed a lot of changes: “Now after he gets up, he is spirited, talking and laughing. He drinks water himself and takes utensils for himself on his own.” On the surface, these are very simple daily tasks, but only those who have come to the clinic or have demented relatives at home can experience the joy: It is not easy to see such progress!
After frying the greens & onions in coconut oil, making cakes with coconut, after taking 3 to 4 tablespoons of coconut oil per meal, 2-3 months later, his eyes too can now focus normally.
Her studies proved that *coconut oil* can improve the problem of dementia in the elderly. Apply *coconut oil* to bread. When coconut cream is used, the taste is unexpectedly good.
Dementia is caused because nutrients cannot be transported to brain cells, and nutrients must be passed from the body to the brain by insulin. Especially for diabetic patients it’s not easy to get insulin secretion. “Nutrition cannot get to the brain. When brain cells are starved to death, they are deprived of intelligence.”
*Coconut oil* contains medium-chain triglyceride, which can supply nutrients to the brain without using insulin. So, it can improve Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. You won’t lose anything by trying this, as coconut oil is natural and has no side effects.
I also hear that many scientific studies are happening in clinical trials, to stop the hidden death clock that is inside each of our cells: because many experts affirm that the same death clock is the root cause of virtually all aging and chronic diseases.
Be not be scared to survive in an increasingly dangerous world: though we do not know what is in store for us!

Anshumali Shrivastava Discovers New Way to Filter Fake News

Staff ReporterEducation, Media 0

Using machine learning, a team of U.S. researchers led by Indian American computer scientist Anshumali Shrivastava at Rice University has discovered an efficient way for social media companies to keep misinformation from spreading online.
Their method applies machine learning in a smarter way to improve the performance of Bloom filters, a widely used technique devised a half-century ago.
Using test databases of fake news stories and computer viruses, Shrivastava and statistics graduate student Zhenwei Dai showed their Adaptive Learned Bloom Filter required 50 percent less memory to achieve the same level of performance as learned Bloom filters.
To explain their filtering approach, Shrivastava and Dai cited some data from Twitter.
The social media giant recently revealed that its users added about 500 million tweets a day, and tweets typically appeared online one second after a user hit send.
“Around the time of the election they were getting about 10,000 tweets a second, and with a one-second latency that’s about six tweets per millisecond,” Shrivastava said.
“If you want to apply a filter that reads every tweet and flags the ones with information that’s known to be fake, your flagging mechanism cannot be slower than six milliseconds or you will fall behind and never catch up.”
If flagged tweets are sent for an additional, manual review, it’s also vitally important to have a low false-positive rate.
In other words, you need to minimize how many genuine tweets are flagged by mistake.
“If your false-positive rate is as low as 0.1%, even then you are mistakenly flagging 10 tweets per second, or more than 800,000 per day, for manual review,” Shrivastava said.
“This is precisely why most of the traditional AI-only approaches are prohibitive for controlling the misinformation.”
The new approach to scanning social media is outlined in a study presented at the online-only 2020 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020).
Shrivastava said Twitter doesn’t disclose its methods for filtering tweets, but they are believed to employ a Bloom filter, a low-memory technique invented in 1970 for checking to see if a specific data element, like a piece of computer code, is part of a known set of elements, like a database of known computer viruses.
A Bloom filter is guaranteed to find all code that matches the database, but it records some false positives too.
“A Bloom filter allows to you check tweets very quickly, in a millionth of a second or less. If it says a tweet is clean, that it does not match anything in your database of misinformation, that’s 100% guaranteed,” Shrivastava noted.
Within the past three years, researchers have offered various schemes for using machine learning to augment Bloom filters and improve their efficiency.
“When people use machine learning models today, they waste a lot of useful information that’s coming from the machine learning model,” Dai said.

The Truth Behind The Indian Farmers Protests: Experts Weigh In At Webinar By IAPC

Staff ReporterCommunity, India, Media, Nation India 0

“Media projection is more important on the Farmers’ agitation in India; and as a responsible media club, Indo American Press Club is prompted to impact the mainstream western media for global narrative,” Ambassador Pradeep Kumar Kapoor said while presiding over the Zoom Meeting hosted by Indo-American Press Club (IAPC) on “ What’s the truth behind the Indian Farmers Protest?” on Saturday 26th December 2020.
Since 26 November, farmers have been protesting outside Delhi’s borders, demanding the Farm Bills’ repeal. Indo American Press Club hosted several Zoom Meetings on this complex current issues facing the nation, with vibrant participation by diplomats and political analysts from different parts of the world.
Dr. Joseph Chalil, Chairman of Indo American Press Club introduced and welcomed the invited guest speakers. In his introductory remarks, Dr. Chalil shared with the audience about some of the initiatives under the new leadership, including the series of discussions by world renowned experts from around the world on several current topics including Indo-US Relationship under Biden-Harris administration.
Ambassador Pradeep Kapur, a Best Selling Author of Beyond Covid 19 Pandemic and former Ambassador of India to Chile and to Cambodia, and Secretary at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, was the chair leading the discussions. In his initial observations, he said that the struggle of the Indian farmers has gained much global attention, but remain uncompromised. Instead of holding on the ‘no discussions, until repealing all the bill’ both the farmers and the government need direct discussion for an amicable settlement.
Mr. Yogesh Andley; Director, WHEELS Charitable Foundation, Co-founder of Nucleus Software, explained the background of APMC and the evolution of Mandis nearly 50 years ago. He educated the audience as to how the rice and wheat procured at Rs.18 or Rs.19 reaches at Rs.35 at retail level, but distributed at Rs.2 or Rs.3 providing food security to millions of Indians. He also expressed the fear of the farmers that the private sector may buy at higher prices in the beginning, but lower down the prices dangerously.
Mr. Khanderao Kand, Director of the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS), a Washington DC-based think tank working on India and Indian-related studies on socioeconomic, political and international security matters, elaborated about how the Indian situation has changed from a poor country to an exporter of food products like rice and wheat. He condensed the view that the Indian government is not closing the ‘Mandis’, but encouraging to open more local markets in each village. He stated that the farmers are afraid that the new laws will lead to contract farming and losing their farmlands to few corporates eventually.
Mr. Vimal Goyal; CPA and also industrialist from Long Island, NY expressed a different perspective on economic considerations. He affirmed the view that the latest one is the most comprehensive farmers bill, as the farmers were left behind with no recognitions so far. He was of the opinion that this bill is going to promote the abundance of rice and wheat. He also mentioned that the poor farmers do not have resources of e-commerce or transporting facilities, and hence they have to resort on the greedy private middlemen, most often.
Dr. Nishit Choksi; a world renowned Interventional Cardiologist from Michigan raised the question who is actually leading the protest- the poor farmers or the greedy middlemen or dalaals?. He narrated the history that no development happened in Punjab or Haryana during the last 30 years, even though many rivers and dams are provided years back. According to him, these laws are nothing new, but good for the nation: the government should properly educate the farmers.
Mr. Narender Kapoor expressed his views to escalate the importance of the situations rather than concentrating on academic discussions. He alerted that the movement and agitation shall not be vulnerable to hijacking.
Dr. Shyam Klvekar from London urged that we need more communication with end-users. Many of the participants raised different questions and were answered by the learned panelists. Ambassador Pradeep Kumar Kapoor summarized the salient features of the diplomatic and analytical discussions.
Dr. Renee Mehrra, a tenacious broadcaster with a burning passion and one of the most prominent broadcast journalists in the tri-state area was the moderator of the event balancing the various issues and views expressed by the participants. The zoom meeting was concluded with the vote of thanks expressed by Ajay Ghosh, Founder President and Present Director of IAPC.

30 Writing Prompts about Love: What is a writing prompt?

Staff ReporterLifestyle, Media 0

A prompt is a writing exercise in the form of a single word, phrase, or even a photo used as a starting point to focus and practice creative writing. This exercise is important for writers of any level to expand their craft and explore new grounds. It can be the inspiration behind an idea, an article, or even a whole work of fiction. The point is to begin writing whether it is on the specific topic of the prompt or an entirely different one that you wander to.
Why use writing prompts?
Overcome writer’s block. There is nothing more daunting than a blinking cursor on your screen. Whether you are in the middle of your piece or trying to come up with something new, a prompt can get you going in a new direction. Resetting your brain to a new angle can be just what you need to finish your work or turn on a creative light bulb.
Expand creatively. Working with prompts can actually be a great way to start building your own ideas. Some prompts can lead you to new avenues that you have not yet explored as a writer. The more you wander into new territories, the more imaginative and creative your writing can be. In addition, the materials you end up writing following a prompt can in fact prove to be worth pursuing. You never know what could come out once you start writing, sometimes, it can be way more than you expected.
Form a habit. If you are an aspiring writer, you might be struggling with making a habit out of writing or finishing your pieces on time. Doing more and more writing exercises can be genuinely beneficial to improve your skills as well as help you write more regularly. The more you train your brain using these prompts, the easier you will find writing to be.
Get immersed in the community. During your search for writing prompts, you will encounter many blogs, forums, and Facebook groups that share ideas, review writing and offer support. Getting involved in these communities can be great for any writer in order to meet like-minded people and form meaningful relationships with fellow writers.
30 writing prompts about love and relationships
Writing about love may seem trivial to some, but it is actually one of the most sought-after genres of fiction. Love is at the core of the human condition, and it is what drives us to do a lot of what we do even if it is irrational or strange. That’s why love is at the center of any powerful story from Wuthering Heights to Star Wars.

It is not the easiest thing to write about love especially with so many clichés out there. To write a realistic and moving love story, whether it is romantic or Platonic, a writer must dig deep within themselves and be truly vulnerable in their expression. It means to look past the clichés and tropes and find the truth between characters.

Even if writing about love is not your forte or your preferred genre, a spice of love in your horror, thriller, or adventure piece of fiction is necessary for an emotional dimension to your storytelling.
So without further ado, here are 30 writing prompts that can inspire your next piece of writing:

  • Friends with benefits: happily ever after or a terrible idea?
  • Enemies forced to work on a common goal: will they or won’t they?
  • Their break up was a mistake but is it too late?
  • They are from different worlds. Can they find a way?
  • Lies have corrupted their relationship. Is there room for a second chance?
  • Forced apart by reasons beyond their control. Will they ever find their way back?
  • Afraid of rejection: what happens when you risk it all for love?
  • Fighting for a cause: romance within the wreckage
  • What happens when they reveal their true supernatural selves?
  • When time travel and love collide in a single second. Can they find each other?
  • They found love in a lucid dream. Can it become a reality?
  • Can love survive with a workaholic partner?
  • How to hold on to the person of your dreams?
  • How to choose the perfect partner for you?
  • How to make your partner feel loved?
  • Signs your relationship is healthy
  • Red flags that mean you need to run from your relationship
  • How does love make you a better person?
  • How can an unhealthy relationship affect you?
  • Communication: the key to a successful relationship
  • Love clichés that actually ring true
  • Unexpected places to meet new people
  • Finding love in a hopeless place
  • The most challenging parts of maintaining a relationship
  • The unforgivable sins of love, lust, and betrayal
  • How to save a failed relationship?
  • Can long distance really work?
  • How to revive romance in a dead relationship?
  • How to heal a broken heart?
  • The power of ‘I love you’

Love is all around us wherever we look. From the love our mothers give us to the support we shower our friends with finding the one, love is an essential part of your story. When you write characters, love has to be part of their story too. These prompts can help you find the angle of romance in your fiction piece or inspire you to write your own version.

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