IntellectBeat

In a recent study by the University of California, Irvine, researchers found that a lack of sleep is linked to a higher level of online browsing, including checking social media websites such as Facebook. Wanting to look at how sleep duration could affect internet use, rather than how internet use affects sleep, the team recruited 76 UCI students and monitored them for a one-week period. Using logging software the team could monitor participants' computers and smartphones to see how often they spoke on the phone, texted, or used applications. Sensors were used to measure their behavior, activities, and levels of stress. Participants were also asked to complete a survey every morning reporting on their sleep and to complete an end-of-day survey at night. The students also had to complete a general questionnaire and take part in an interview. The researchers collected further data by asking participants during the week about their mood, the level of engagement in their work, an...

An old bug called Error 53 is back and is troubling iPhone 6 users who have complained that their devices repaired by third-party repair shops are breaking. The bug resurfaced when a journalist, who broke his phone screen while covering a refugee crisis was forced to get it repaired in a third-party store. While the phone initially worked fine after the repair, a subsequent update of the iOS produced the Error 53 bug making the device useless. A report on The Verge notes that this isn't the first time the issue has popped up. However, the problem arises when the iPhone repaired by a third-party store gets a new version of the iOS. Once a phone is met with the error, there is nothing to do but send it back to the Apple headquarters. Following consumer complaints, Apple acknowledged the issue and in its statement said that the Error 53 was the result of security checks performed after installing an update, especially the ones that pair the TouchID to the internal Secure En...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Saturday the social media website's stream of tweets will stay live and in real time, disputing a media report that a change was in the works. News and entertainment site BuzzFeed reported on Friday that Twitter was going to introduce a timeline based on an algorithm rather than a real-time stream. The report upset some users, who created the hashtag RIPTwitter to debate the change. But Dorsey took to Twitter on Saturday to dispute the report. "Twitter is live," he tweeted. "Twitter is real-time." BuzzFeed updated its report with Dorsey's response. Twitter is facing slowing user growth and has been trying to make its service more appealing with a feature called Moments, which compiles photos, videos and messages about big news events. It's also considering other changes. The San Francisco-based social media site reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

You must have heard about the famous “six degrees of separation” theory that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by six other people. Facebook has just upended this theory, saying that world is more closely connected than you might think. After studying 1.59 billion people active on the social networking website, the team determined that the number is actually 3.57 -- meaning thereby that there is actually “three-and-a-half degrees of separation” where each person in the world is connected to every other person by an average of three-and-a-half other people. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is 3.17 degrees of separation from all Facebook users. According to researchers, our collective “degrees of separation” have shrunk over the past five years. In 2011, researchers at Cornell University, the Università degli Studi di Milano and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the website. “They and found...

Social media giant Facebook has blocked dispensary pages selling cannabis for medical purposes in the US state of New Jersey, even as medical marijuana has been legalised in the state, a media report said. "It seems high-handed to simply shut down important resources for sick patients without even saying why or giving organisations a way to ask for reconsideration," Digital Trends quoted Peter Rosenfeld, one of the 5,668 registered patients for medical marijuana programme in New Jersey, as saying on Friday. "What better use of a social media than having sites where parents of sick children can ask questions about medication and treatments," Rosenfeld added. But according to the social networking site, the reason behind blocking these businesses is that they do "not follow the Facebook community terms and standards". The community standards page of Facebook contains guidelines against drug sales, but the page says nothing with regard to authorised drug...

A selfie posted by a US teenager last month on micro-blogging site Twitter boggled minds across social media as it was hard to tell who's who among the youthful looking women in the photo. Kaylan Mahomes, 16, snapped a selfie with her twin sister and mom on January 28 and posted it on Twitter with the caption -- "Mom, twin & me." The selfie gained momentum with over 22,000 retweets and more than 37,000 likes as netizens debated on who is who in the photo, nonissue.com reported. After brainstorming on options like whether the mom is taking the selfie, or she would be sitting in the back seat, the Twittersphere finally did reach a resolution -- the answer lies in the most blatant clue: Kaylan's caption.