How to Sever Ties to Social Networks and Other Web Sites - NYTimes.com

How to Sever Ties to Social Networks and Other Web Sites - NYTimes.com

First you’re smitten by a social network or Web service and can’t stop spending time on it. Then it starts asking how you’re feeling, what you like, where you are, with whom, and why you don’t share as much anymore.

Pretty soon, you’re ready to call it quits.

But trying to end your relationship with some prominent online services can be like breaking up with an overly attached romantic partner — they make it pretty hard to say goodbye.

And with good reason — more users are beneficial to a company’s bottom line, which often depends on generating revenue by selling you targeted advertisements. Possibly no social network understands this better than Facebook, whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, proudly announced last October that his site had surpassed one billion active users.

“Their business model is about getting users to create content,” said Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst with the Altimeter Group. “It’s users who are creating content, liking things, and, ultimately, a brand sees this and comes to deploy advertising dollars. The product is us.”

A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR: Look at the center of this map, at the little red dot that marks Kansas City. Technically, Kansas City is at the edge of Missouri, but here on this map it's in the upper middle section of a bigger space with strong blue borders. We don't have a name for this bigger space yet, but soon we will.

Cybersecurity - A View From the Front - NYTimes.com

Cybersecurity - A View From the Front - NYTimes.com: At the same time, Estonia is also remembered as the first publicly known target of politically motivated cyberattacks in April 2007, which inundated the Web sites of Parliament, banks, ministries, television stations and other organizations.

Disruptive as the attacks were, they were by today’s standards primitive, consisting of “distributed denial of service” attacks (DDoS), which essentially overload servers with signals from hijacked, hacker-controlled PCs. Six years later, as computing power and IT dependency have increased hugely, cyberattacks are far more sophisticated and our vulnerabilities are far greater.

Rally Demands Anti-Blasphemy Laws in Bangladesh - NYTimes.com

Rally Demands Anti-Blasphemy Laws in Bangladesh - NYTimes.com

The giant rally in Dhaka took place amid heightened security in the capital and elsewhere in the country after Hifazat-e-Islam members singled out bloggers who they said were atheists.

The bloggers, who deny they are atheists, are seeking capital punishment for those found guilty of war crimes during the nation’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. They also want a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamic party, for campaigning against Bangladesh’s independence more than four decades ago. The party is an important partner of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

Pro-Palestinian Hackers Attack Israeli Sites - NYTimes.com

Pro-Palestinian Hackers Attack Israeli Sites - NYTimes.com

Officials said only minor disruptions had resulted from what a loose international coalition of pro-Palestinian groups threatened would be “a massive cyberassault” against Israel.

Daybees Aspires to Be the Google of Event Search Sites - NYTimes.com

Daybees Aspires to Be the Google of Event Search Sites - NYTimes.com

Daybees lets people fine-tune searches for things to do, using keywords, location or time and date.

French Scientist Invites Public Into Research Realm - NYTimes.com

French Scientist Invites Public Into Research Realm - NYTimes.com: “It’s crowdsourcing, but instead of crowdsourcing in a way that the owner is very passive, we want to engage them in proposing ideas and suggesting hypotheses,” he said. “It’s making them part of the research community rather than exploiting them as just data providers.”