This one’s for you Mr. Zuckerberg.

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that the public’s opinion about Facebook is slowly shifting. It went from being the next best thing humanity has to offer to an absolute nuisance. Being on Facebook is a constant fight with an algorithm whose sole purpose is to sell you something. And that something is a product you would never buy unless you’re drunk or 14 years old and just stole your mum’s credit card.

LOSING CONTROL

Every second you spend on Facebook is data to be gathered in order to manipulate you to be persuaded into doing something. I used to feel completely in control of what appears on my screen when I’m on Facebook. Now it feels like a hodgepodge of ads, videos with ads in the middle, fake news and maybe, just maybe, some posts of friends. 

JUST PAY SHIPPING!

Do you like comic books or tv shows? Well good luck, because your feed will now be bombarded by cheaply made “official” merchandise of your favourite show or character with the words ‘FREE!!! JUST PAY SHIPPING’ plastered all over. Or how about those photoshopped pictures of your favourite stars holding up badly photoshopped t-shirts saying how special people born on a certain month are. Is that the point of Facebook nowadays? 

WHY AM I SEEING THIS?

Recently I’ve been getting the most bizarre notifications. Some friend liked some post of someone I didn’t know at all. They weren’t in any list of mine, I wasn’t following them or had any contact with them. Did I ever activate this feature? No. Was I ever asked if I wanted to see every random detail or event that Facebook considers valuable information I should absolutely have? Hell no. Of course, you could dig in the settings and find the dozens of things that constantly change in order to take back control of your notifications, but good luck with doing that. Facebook’s rules are ever-changing. 

THE TRUE FACE

Pardon my French, but Facebook has become a shitshow. Scandal after scandal after scandal, Zuckerberg’s empire is slowly crumbling. Facebook has lost its most valuable asset; the people’s trust. Every user in the back of their minds knows that Facebook treats them as data first and human beings second. They’ve been caught with their pants down abusing that data many times. Not only that, but the amount of micromanagement needed to get that “old” Facebook experience has increased tenfold.

NECESSARY, BUT NOT FOR LONG.

Whether it’s because of university pages, work groups or keeping in touch with grandma, we still keep Facebook installed on our phones or visit the website from our computers. We still have Messenger. We still make posts there. But we are slowly starting to hate every moment of it. And the moment you swipe that Facebook window off of your recent apps becomes a liberating event. So turn off notifications, take back control and remember, Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard with plans to sell you cheap merch with quotes of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

The post Show us on the doll where Facebook touched you appeared first on BadFive.

It hasn’t been long since Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before congress to answer a tone of questions revolving around data privacy. The now well known Cambridge Analytical scandal was the reason that has led to Mark’s questioning from the US congress.

The appearance of Facebook’s CEO in front of the congress was live-streamed. Many people watched as Mark answered successfully, most of the times, questions coming from people that clearly didn’t have a strong connection with modern technology and social media. At the end of the day, the questioning turned into an apology session where Mark “promised” that Facebook would do better in the future.

Just like that and when everyone thought Facebook’s troubles were over for now, Mark Zuckerberg has to apologize once again, this time to the European Parliament.

Facebook’s CEO has to convince the europeans, that his social media platform is going to respect all data privacy rules that were recently established with GDPR. If you’re interested in watching that again, you are in luck. The European Parliament is going to be live-streaming the meeting through its’ official website at from 6:15PM to 7:30PM CET.

The post Mark Zuckerberg is facing questioning from the European Parliament today and you can watch it live appeared first on BadFive.

Facebook has announced a new project called: “Flicks”. What are Flicks? Well, a new unit of time of course!

We've launched Flicks, a unit of time, slightly larger than a nanosecond that exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies. https://t.co/w9SDBznXRE

— Facebook Open Source (@fbOpenSource) January 22, 2018

A flick (frame-tick) is a very small unit, slightly larger than the nanosecond. It is 1/705600000 of a second, whereas a nanosecond is 1/1000000000 of a second. This unit of time was especially designed to help with the synchronization of video frame rates. When working with any kind of visual effects, it is necessary to divide simulated time into integer values instead of float. Up until now you would have to use specialized tools, with certain limitations, to achieve such a need. Flicks are here to solve this exact problem without any significant limitations.

For more details on Flicks you can head on to their related github page.

The post Facebook has invented a new unit of time appeared first on BadFive.

Germany has a new controversial law, forcing Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies to pay fines up to €50 million ($57 million) for failing to remove hate speech. The law was passed on Friday and will take effect in October of 2017.

The law describes an action or strategy needs to implemented by social networks in order to take down every  “obviously illegal” content uploaded by their users within 24 hours. The “obviously illegal” content consists of hate speech, defamation, and incitements to violence.

The pressure does not only focus on hate speech, but also on fake news, and terrorist propaganda from European Union leaders. In the past few months, Facebook and Google have launched campaigns to fight fake news and hate speech. More specifically, Facebook is ready to hire 3,000 more people in order to moderate flagged content more effectively.

Defining concepts like hate speech is really difficult and subjective. As Richard Allan from Facebook mentioned:

“Who should decide what is hate speech in an online global community?”

“People come to Facebook to share their experiences and opinions, and topics like gender, nationality, ethnicity and other personal characteristics are often a part of that discussion. People might disagree about the wisdom of a country’s foreign policy or the morality of certain religious teachings, and we want them to be able to debate those issues on Facebook. But when does something cross the line into hate speech?”

That’s a really interesting question. Any thoughts?

The post Germany’s new law has Facebook facing the “naughty corner” appeared first on BadFive.

Did you ever wonder how Facebook has managed to remain at the top for so long? What is their secret? The answer is quite simple. You. You are the main reason for their success.But you are not paying anything for their services. How can you be the reason for Facebook’s enormous income?

In order to explain this, I first need to start with a now cliché quote:

“If you’re Not Paying, You’re The Product”

What this means is that, since Facebook doesn’t have any direct revenue from your usage of their services, the only way it can make money is by manipulating your personal data in a way that helps them profit as much as possible. But how far does Facebook go with your personal data manipulation?

Starting to know each other

First let’s get the basics out of the way. You have already given Facebook information about who your friends are, what your hobbies are, how old you are, where you live and whether you are in a relationship or not.Facebook also has a clear image of what you like and dislike, your favorite movies, songs and books, as well as your overall interests. Adding to those you need to know that their app can read and store your phone number, contact details and emails.

It already sounds bad when you hear it all together but that’s nothing compared to how Facebook exploits your personal information for their own benefit. They claim to use this information to better serve you targeted advertisement but I can assure you it does not end there.

Personal Information Invasion

Stepping deeper into Facebook’s personal data mining we discover that the monitoring of their users doesn’t stop at their platform.Instead once you register to their service, Facebook starts collecting your browser and internet history.
In other words it tracts your activity on other websites recording every move you make online. Facebook then sells this information to basically anyone who is willing to pay.Rest assured that plenty of 3rd parties have already bought your personal information and proceeded to use it as they liked.

It gets a lot worse

Unfortunately Facebook’s data consumption doesn’t stop there. It gets a lot worse. From manipulating it’s users emotions to recording their private texts and conversations, Facebook does it all.

If you want to find out how much worse it gets from here, you can watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb8_mhNRsjk

The post How Facebook feeds on your private information appeared first on BadFive.

Nowadays, virtual reality projects are widely expanding their potentials day by day. Even more innovating ideas are being shown to the public through time. In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of those ideas come to life from several known companies or even new technology startups. Virtual reality seems to be trending not only in the gaming industry but also in the business in general or even for daily actions. We’ve searched a lot in order to find the 10 best virtual reality gadgets for you. Have a look and get a closer taste of what’s going on out there, in the jungle of virtual reality!

Oculus Rift
Maybe the most famous VR gadget of all. Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset developed by Palmer Luckey, funded via Kickstarter and bought by Facebook for $2 billion. This VR has several sensors that can offer a 3D environment directly through its stereo screens by tracking your head movements. It can be connected with any device that has DVI and USB port.

Cost: $599

Samsung Gear VR
Another Gear series product from Samsung but also an Oculus Rift copycat. The Gear VR headset was co-developed with Oculus having as the only difference the ability to support smartphones instead of PC or consoles. There is a number of specific smartphone models that Gear VR can support, but is this a drawback in general?

Cost: $99.99

HTC Vine
HTC in collaboration with Valve, one of the biggest companies in the gaming industry, decided to make this Steam VR headset! HTC Vive plugs into PCs and work with Valve’s gaming ecosystem. It uses up to 70 sensors in order to give you the freedom to roam around a room. Also, it uses lasers mounted on the wall to map your location and movement around the physical space, integrating this into the virtual space. HTC Vive is maybe the first and only VR system that can support this kind of freedom, the freedom of movement, that others don’t offer yet. Nevertheless, you will still need to wear additional headphones to complete the whole experience and have plenty of space in your room.

Cost: $799

PlayStation VR
It’s also known as Project Morpheus. As you can realize, Sony is trying to get in the game of virtual reality too. Games will be much prettier and real than before. Gamers should love it as this VR headset has a 5.7-inch OLED display offering less motion blur that a normal one. Display’s refresh rate gone up to 120Hz make it possible to give a 120fps gaming experience. We could also say that this is not a complete VR system, but it’s an accessory for the PS4 console. This means that it will possibly be less expensive from other complete VR systems like Oculus or HTC Vive. As Sony announced a few days ago, it will be launched on October at $399.

Cost: $399

Microsoft HoloLens
The company shows for another one time that wants to get in the hard game of technology. This time with a VR headset. Except this is not exactly a VR headset, but a hybrid of virtual and augmented reality. HoloLens merges real-world elements with virtual and holographic images, meaning you can make a skype call while you are cooking in front of a wall, designing your prototype ideas in your kitchen’s table or even walk around the surface of the Moon in your living room. The magic in Microsoft’s HoloLens is that is a system on its own. A full Windows 10 system is built into the headset and it runs off a battery. It has a 120-degree field of vision on both axes and offers high definition visuals. A whole system with all those features makes you worried about battery life. How long it lasts? We just have to wait and see…

Cost: $3,000

Google Cardboard
It’s strange, funny and yes… It’s real! Google’s VR headset is just a cardboard! It’s mainly a cardboard container that needs a smartphone inside. Are you wondering if this works? Surely yes; this can give you a low-cost taste of what it means virtual reality! As your smartphone offers all the necessary gyroscopic sensors and location systems to accurately trach your head movements, you can experience virtual world really easy.

Cost: $23.95

Unlimited Hand
This is a gadget that helps you enhance your experience in virtual reality. It’s a project that also started with the help of kickstarter. UH can be placed on the arm, synchronizing user’s hand with game world. It senses the finger motion and gives haptic feedback. Virtual reality is without a doubt funnier and even more realistic by having those enchantments!

Cost: $298

Manus VR Glove
Another similar enchantment as the previous one is Manus. It’s basically a glove that can track every movement that you can do with your hand and fingers. It includes high tech sensors of accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer on each glove, wireless connectivity through a low-energy Bluetooth. It has also a good battery quality as it offers a 5-6h average of battery life and it enables also a fast charge technology. It’s good to mention that Manus VR Glove has an open source SDK. Programmers will approve!

Cost: $250

Control VR
“A next generation wearable technology that turns your hands into the ultimate intuitive controller for PCs, VR and beyond”! Those are words by the Control VR Team which actually promoted this project via kickstarter. There are 1,161 backers that pledged $442,227 to help bring this project to life. Those gesture control gloves are using DARPA-designed micro sensors which detect small inertial changes in order to finely track your arms, hands and fingers. This makes 3D animations of virtual reality come into life and be “physically” controllable by the user. The one arm and body tracking solution will set you back $350 and if you want both your hands in the game, the two arm tier is $600.

Cost: $350/$600

Cyberith Virtualizer
In my opinion, Cyberith is a company that sees the world differently from the others. They though: “What about the freedom of movement in EVERY VR headset out there?” The solution is clear; a physical platform that allows the user to move freely and naturally! The Virtualizer’s flat base plate has a low-friction surface that enables you to walk, run, and strafe freely in every direction. As it’s flat, movement feels realistic, dramatically enhancing immersion. The uniquely constructed ring allows for vertical movements such as jumping and crouching, as well as a 360° axial rotation. The adjustable harness ensures that movement through virtual worlds is effortless…you can even sit down! The Virtualizer is made of steel and aluminum. This means that you not only can expect great strength, but also excellent build quality. The robust construction provides great stability and as a result, safety. It can be dismantled quickly and easily, making it easy to store. The Virtualizer is produced and assembled in Europe. Furthermore, it’s USB-Plug & Play and fully compatible with all software that allows controller or keyboard input.

Cost: $599

All those mentioned above are really cool things and fresh ideas of the modern world. But, is this a new start or the world’s end?

The post 10 virtual reality gadgets you should know appeared first on BadFive.

Look closely. Tell me, what do you see? Simply a room full of techies, a tech conference maybe? Look closer. There is much more in this picture to be seen. This photo has been taken at the MWC 2016 and it depicts Mark Zuckerberg walking by 5000 devoted followers , each plugged into a Virtual Reality headset. This image has caused a lot of buzz in the social media world with many linking it to movies such as the Matrix, where people live in a virtual world with overloads in control, thinking that their reality is in fact, real.

A Glimpse at Our Future!?

“A picture is worth a thousand words”, and in this case I believe it’s worth a lot more. I’m a Computer Scientist myself but I have to admit that when I first saw this picture I felt…uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about technology and innovation but seeing this photo has forced me to take a step back and think: “Are we still in control?” We love the fact that technology is evolving rapidly but have we ever thought what might come out of it? What is the ultimate goal we are trying to reach as a human species and how far can advanced technologies take us?

Mark Zuckerbergs Virtual Reality Vision

Facebook, which bought virtual reality firm Oculus for two billion US dollars in 2014, has since partnered with Samsung to create the Gear VR headset. The outcome has been great so far and many people are getting excited over this partnership, including myself. Mark Zuckerberg stated that “VR is going to be the most social platform”. In his speech at MWC he explained how technology has rapidly evolved from text to photos to videos and now to virtual reality. He used an example to introduce how virtual reality can improve our way of experiencing life. He said that when he made his first steps as a baby, his parents just took a pen and wrote down the day in the baby book. When his cousins’ baby first walked, she took a photo using a camera and when his sisters’ son took the first steps, she used a phone to record a video. Mark Zuckerberg claims that he wants to capture the whole moment and he believes that virtual reality will be the perfect way to do it. Will it though? Personally I believe that great moments in our lives need to remain as human as possible. Experiencing your baby’s first steps through a virtual reality headset makes the moment, well, less of an experience at the least.

Getting Philosophical

If you had a choice to live in an ideal Virtual World or keep living in the normal and maybe outdated by the time real world, what would you choose? Even if you chose to live in the real world, how do you know that you are not part of the Virtual Reality already and don’t really have a choice? I mean, once you plug into a VR Headset, how can you be sure that you took it off after wearing it? Are you still plugged in or are you not? Assuming that you have a choice, what is considered “real world” in the future? If the majority of the human population resides in the virtual world, does that make it more real? These and many other questions surround the controversial topic of Virtual Reality. The question you might have to answer sooner than you think is: Would you take the red pill or the blue pill?

The post A Glimpse at Our Future? Virtual Reality might be closer than you think appeared first on BadFive.

I wasn’t surprised when I first read about Facebook trying to monetize its most successful and fast-growing product. Messenger, Facebook’s messaging app, became massively popular overtime “forcing” executives at Facebook to begin considering methods to create revenue from their famous app.

A document allegedly obtained by TechCrunch details that sometime in Q2 2016, Facebook Messenger will adopt ads. It’s not 100% clear how exactly those ads are going to be distributed to the users but we have some initial information of the concept that Facebook is working on.

Targeted advertising, not spamming.

Businesses will have the ability to message users and forward their ads to them. Although this sounds terrible it will be done with a sense of control. At least that’s what is being said. Companies that want to advertise will only be able to forward their ads to people that have already messaged those companies in the past. To put it more simply, businesses will not be able to send ads randomly to Facebook users.

The outcome

This is comforting and scary at the same time. What if I have to message a company at some time? Should I be afraid to do so? Does messaging a company mean that I have to expect a huge amount of spam in the future from them? Personally I’m completely opposite to the idea of creating revenue from Messenger using advertisement but “money thirsty” Facebook wouldn’t agree with me.

Advertising isn’t the only way

Advertising isn’t the only way to create revenue from your product. Take for example Snapchat and its new paid features. So why insist of demoting the experience that users have with your product? This is a question that Facebook will probably have to answer in a few months. Let’s hope they change their plans until then.

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