Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Correlation’

Hidden Backdoors On Torrent Sites Led To The Latest Twitter Attack

Early this morning, Twitter began alerting certain users to reset their passwords because of a possible phishing attack. They later elaborated on it a bit but it still wasn’t clear exactly what was going on. Now they’ve felt the need to fully go into exactly what went down — and it’s fairly interesting.

On their Twitter Status blog (interesting that it’s not the main Twitter blog), Del Harvey, Twitter’s Director of “Trust and Safety” has a post detailing the attack. Apparently, Twitter figured out that some torrent sites have been being created for a number of years by some individual who then sells them to others looking to get into the business. The problem is that this person seems to have included a backdoor into these sites so that they could access them later when the site became popular. And because people often use the same login and password across the web, a bunch of Twitter accounts were then comprimised with this data.

To make matters worse, it seems that there were also other exploits on these sites that allowed other hackers to gain access to data. Harvey doesn’t name any of the torrent sites involved (and says they likely won’t even be able to figure out all of them), but notes that if you’re a torrent site user, you should probably change your Twitter password immediately.

Harvey titles his post, “reason 4,132 for changing your password” — but really it should be, “reason 4,132 for not using the same login/password on all sites.” Here’s the main nugget:

The takeaway from this is that people are continuing to use the same email address and password (or a variant) on multiple sites.  Through our discussions with affected users, we’ve discovered a high correlation between folks who have used third party forums and download sites and folks who were on our list of possibly affected accounts.

[photo: flickr/Daquella manera]

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Kids who smoke pot like to listen to music that mentions it

All of us are awash in various media cues that exert subtle influences on our behavior and choices. But even when a correlation is found, separating cause and effect is extremely difficult—have we adopted a habit, such as smoking, because of exposure to it in (for example) movies, or does a separate personality trait predispose us to both the habit and certain movies? This is especially true in adolescents and teens, whose personality traits are still evolving. A new study on cannabis use and musical listening habits doesn’t delve in to cause and effect relationships, but it does find a correlation between musical references to the use of the drug and the tendency to actually use it.

The study involved about 1,200 high school students in the Pittsburgh area who completed a survey that included a variety of questions about demographic information, drug and alcohol use, grades, parental involvement, etc. Included in the survey were some basic questions about the students’ listening habits, such as who their favorite artist is and how much time they spent listening to music.

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Researchers Say the Social Web Improves Kids’ Literacy (Geeks Say ‘Duh’)

According to a recent survey of around 3,000 kids, those who text, blog and use social sites such as Facebook have better writing skills than their less technologically inclined counterparts.

This hardly comes as a surprise to us tech geeks who spent our younger days alternating between writing critical theses on esoteric forums and getting assaulted by grammar Nazis on said forums. Although we may take it for granted that voluminous written communication online builds writing skills, others decry the lack of formality in most tween and teen lexicons. Is “text speak” as much a concern as enhanced writing skills are a benefit?

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Of the children surveyed – a group of 3,001 young people between the ages of 9 and 16 – 24 percent maintained a personal blog and 82 percent regularly sent text messages. Seventy-three percent used IM clients to chat online.

When researchers asked the children to rate their writing skills, 47 percent of those who were non-bloggers and didn’t use social networking sites said that their writing skills were good. The online set projected higher levels of confidence; of those who maintained blogs, 61 percent said their writing was good or very good.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, told BBC News, “Our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing.”

He continued to say that online engagement can lead to offline creativity, such as story writing and song composition.

And what about the “LOL OMG c u l8r” informality of text and chat communiqués?

“Our research results are conclusive,” said Douglas. “The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills.” Or at least, the more children are accustomed to using the written word, the more confident and comfortable they will be with written communication in general.

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Google Dumps Gears for HTML5

It’s official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win.

Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn’t play nicely with Gears, Google has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn’t yet ready and isn’t supported by commercially available browsers. Oh, the humanity… or rather, the machinery.

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In the mists of time, back when Gears first launched, we wrote, “We’ve written many times before about the need for offline web app access… And guess who is most at risk with this announcement? Yes, Microsoft. Google after all has many of the top ‘best of breed’ web apps now.”

This was before Google’s Chrome browser had hit the scene, and the Gears project was a collaborative effort between Goog, Opera, and Mozilla.

But in our coverage of last year’s Google I/O conference, we wrote of Gears, “We question whether offline access is even necessary. After all… in today’s world, you’re never too far from an internet connection. We concluded that offline access is important now, but less important with each passing day.”

Not only could Gears be used to take online data offline; Google had more in store for Gears users.

A few short months later, Google announced a geolocation API for mobile devices running Gears. We wrote, “We think that location-aware software is going to be one of the most interesting markets to watch in the near future and as as location-aware devices become more ubiquitous, we will hopefully see a lot of new and innovative services make use of them.”

But the party ended with Snow Leopard’s release. A change in the newest Mac OS prevents Gears from running on newer Mac computers. Whether or not the relationship is one of causation or mere correlation, Google is now abandoning Gears.

As one Google rep told the L.A. Times, “We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites.”

Believe us Google, no one is looking forward to the cross-browser, cross-OS implementation of HTML5 as much as we are.

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Amazon’s Kindle greens reading, new report says

Using e-readers can shrink your carbon footprint, according to a new study out of the Cleantech Group that focuses primarily on the Amazon Kindle. Globally, use of e-readers bought between 2009 and 2012 could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10.9 million tons over the four years, it says.

Because e-readers are relatively new, with a little over 1 million in the field, it’s impossible to determine their long-term environmental impact. But early analysis indicates that one year of use may be enough to offset the emissions the devices produce in manufacturing, distribution and operation. If true, each following year of use could actually be preventing the release of 370 pounds of carbon dioxide per user (assuming individuals buy about 22.5 books a year).

Considering that publishing is one of the most environmentally damaging industries in the U.S., e-reader business could make a difference if it can gain traction. Amazon and Sony are leading the pack, so far, with mobile players gaining an edge as well. At this rate, the Cleantech report predicts that as many as 14.4 million people will be using e-readers by 2012. At the same time, there are no guarantees that publishers will scale back paper book production in correlation with an increase in e-readers, which would render any emissions savings moot.

There are a few other notable points to be found in the report. For example, driving to a store to buy a book doubles its footprint (which averages 16.4 pounds of CO2) — a chunk that downloading books online or straight to a device eliminates. It also touches on the impact of the Apple iPhone, which is playing a much larger role in the business than many suspect. The phone has already introduced more users to e-reading than Amazon and Sony combined, the report states — citing that the Kindle application for the 3G has been downloaded more than 1 million times. But using your iPhone or any other mobile device to read isn’t as green as using an actual e-reader device that that uses e-ink without backlighting. The iPhone’s carbon footprint is substantially larger both from manufacturing and day-to-day operation.

The Cleantech Group made some recommendations based on the data it collected — primarily that companies publishing to e-readers should make their books compatible for all devices so that more consumers will feel comfortable buying them sooner. Other than that, it encourages academic institutions to integrate e-readers into classrooms, mentioning pilot programs at Princeton, the University of Virginia and Arizona State University.

Also interesting is the data on exactly how destructive the publishing industry is today. Last year, the book and newspaper businesses in the U.S. led to the cutting of 125 million trees and the production of 153 billion gallons of wastewater — with paper eventually accounting for over a quarter of landfills in the country.

[Images courtesy of Driving Change and the Cleantech Group]

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