IntellectBeat

More than one million people are now connecting to Facebook through Tor "dark Web" - which maintains privacy and leaves no digital trail - every month, media reports said on Saturday. According to Facebook, the growth of Tor over the past few years has been "roughly" linear, noting that some 525,000 people who accessed the service via Tor in June 2015 rose to more than one million in April this year. "This [Tor] growth is a reflection of the choices that people make to use Facebook over Tor, and the value that it provides them. We hope they will continue to provide feedback and help us keep improving," TechCrunch quoted Facebook as saying. Tor allows anonymous Web browsing by sending data through multiple encrypted steps rather than making direct connections that shields the identity of its users. Facebook created a dedicated address for Tor access in October 2014, making it easier for users to connect via Tor and give them privacy. Facebook also exp...

In a fresh bid to recover from the stalled users' growth and declining revenue, micro-blogging website Twitter has joined hands with business listing and review site Yelp to supply location services for Japan and Britain inside its app. The Yelp integration will give Twitter users in Japan and Britain an option of selecting places provided by Yelp when they tag a location in their tweets, technology website TechCrunch reported on Saturday.  According to Yelp, the service has gone live on iOS and Android platforms and will soon be available to Twitter on internet.

At this stage, it feels like the browser wars have been fought and won. Most of you probably use  Chrome  or  Firefox , and a sad few of you may even use Internet Explorer. But there’s a new browser in town, and it actually has some features worth sitting up and take notice of.  Vivaldi  has been around for more than a year in the alpha and beta stages, but it recently hit the version 1.0 milestone. Founded by ex-Opera chief Jon von Tetzchner, it’s squarely aimed at power users, meaning its loaded with extra features for browsing pros. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux too. Here are five reasons we prefer Vivaldi over any other browser. 1) Tab Stacking We’ve all been stuck in browser tab hell before: That moment when you’ve opened way too many tabs up in your browser, and you can’t find that one website you were just looking at. Vivaldi has a great feature called Tab Stacking that tries to prevent that from happening. Tab Stacking lets you create ‘...

Acer on Thursday launched 10 new products including laptops, 2-in-1s, a Chromebook, Predator gaming devices, a smartphone, a fitness band, and more. The company at its New York event launched the Switch Alpha 12 2-in-1 laptop, Chromebook 14 for Work, Aspire S13 and R15 laptops, Predator 17x gaming notebook, Predator G1 compact gaming desktop, Predator Z1 gaming monitors, Liquid Leap fit fitness band, Liquid Zest Plus smartphone, and the Xplova X5 bike computer. Talking about the prices, the Acer Switch Alpha 12 will start at $599 and will be available in June this year. The Aspire S13 will be offered in Obsidian Black or Pearl White and will hit the shelves in May starting at $699. The Liquid Zest Plus smartphone will arrive later this year in the US at $250 (roughly Rs. 16,000). As for the Chromebook 14 for Work, the laptop's base model costs $349. For gamers, the new Predator devices will reach the US and the Europe in June. The Predator 17X and Z1 monitors will...

More and more people are set to explore the outer space in the coming years with technology offering greater chance than in the last six decades, Nasa astronaut Scott Parazynski said Ahmedabad Thursday. He was speaking on the topic 'Human Destiny in Space: Current & Future Prospects' at the Physical Research Laboratory Ahmedabad. "It is a very exciting time in the history as we are going to fly many more people, both scientists as well as tourists, into the space than we did in the last six decades," said Parazynski, who has travelled into the space five times as a  Nasa scientist. "If 550 people travelled into the space in the last six decades, we can expect 5,000 people to travel there in the next decade," he said, while sharing his experiences as an astronaut who has stayed in the space for more than eight weeks and spacewalked for 47 hours. "Imagine 5,000 people flying in the next one decade, and 50,000 in another decade. Space tourism prom...

Facebook is considering rolling out a feature that may allow users to make money from posts by letting them add a "tip jar". A Facebook's user survey hinted at several ways that users can make money or promote a cause on its website, including a "tip jar", branded content and taking a cut of the ad revenue Facebook earns from posts, The Verge reported on Thursday. The survey also asked users to indicate their interest in a "call to action" button, a way to let followers make donations and a "sponsor marketplace" to match users with advertisers, the report added. However, it is still unclear whether Facebook is rolling out this feature to all users or the company is making it available for only verified users. Currently, only publishers have been allowed to sell advertising inside its "Instant Articles" feature and Facebook recently clarified rules allowing posts sponsored by brands to be shared on verified pages. Facebook is a...

This year Google is marking Earth Day with a series of five doodles created by Google doodler Sophie Diao. Each of the doodles represent one of earth’s five major biomes: the tundra, forest, grasslands, desert, and coral reefs. "In each illustration, you’ll find one animal who’s been singled out for their 15 minutes of fame," Diao says in her post describing the doodles. Each time users visit the Google home page, they will randomly see one of the five doodles. The five doodles feature the tundra and polar bear, forest and red fox, grasslands and elephant, desert and tortoise, and aquatic/ocean, coral reef and octopus. The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970 and was founded by US Senator Gaylord Nelson. The original Earth Day was attended by about 20 million Americans. The Earth Day movement went global in 1990 and is now celebrated in over 175 countries across the globe. April 22 was officially designated as the international Earth Day by the United Nations ...