Facebook is Probably Tracking Your Rainbow Profile Picture

The US Supreme Court ruling to legalize gay marriages all across the nation was a revolutionary step and it was received with happy emotions all over the world. The tech companies like Google and Facebook too expressed their happiness in their own way. Google showed rainbow colors on searching the term gay marriage while Facebook chose to go via a more personalized path.

As from the past few days, you would have seen your news feed full of rainbow pictures. While people found it a great way to express their support, it’s possible that Facebook might be conducting another experiment with its “celebrate pride” feature. Earlier Facebook’s data scientists are known to track the voting behavior and moods of the users.

So when Facebook does something once again, naturally Facebook is also keeping track of who’s using it. And, Facebook hasn’t denied it. According to Facebook, this  rainbow filter was built by two Facebook interns during an internal hackathon recently.

The Atlantic asked Facebook if these rainbow profile pictures are “another experiment.” A spokesperson from Facebook responded that “it’s not an experiment or test- everybody sees the same thing.” Back in the past Facebook has conducted studies on people’s profile picture and this time it’s safe to say that Facebook is also keeping track of who is using this feature.

Facebook didn’t deny that the website was tracking which users support gay marriage and it’s adding their information to its database. Based on some past research papers, we can say that Facebook is looking closely to everything you are doing on the social network.

Well, it’s a great way to celebrate an event like this but remember, Facebook is always watching.

Gizmodo reached out for clarification and Facebook still failed to deny tracking. They made sure that they won’t be using this to target ads or anything, but tracking isn’t denied.

So yeah, Facebook is watching you.

Did this rainbow profile picture tracking surprise you? Tell us in comments below.

With inputs from The Atlantic

Racket-lang: A Programmable Programming Language

You must have read our coverage on programming language and its development. If not, I would recommend you to go through it once. There are very interesting articles on Top Programming Languages on GitHub, Highest Paying Programming Languages and many more. This article is about a new programming language called Racket-lang which is gaining a lot of attention of programmers these day.

You’ve certainly heard of JavaScript, Perl, Python, and Ruby. But Racket? Probably not. Just because it’s not the most mainstream programming language doesn’t mean you should discount its capabilities. Racket allows functional programming and other different paradigms that even hard-core programmers have never seen before.

What is Racket-lang:

Racket is a descendant of Lisp, a programming language renowned for its elegance, power, and challenging learning curve. But while Racket retains the functional goodness of Lisp, it was designed with beginning programmers in mind.  It goes beyond Lisp and Scheme with dialects that support objects, types, laziness, and more. Racket enables programmers to link components written in different dialects, and it empowers programmers to create new,project-specific dialects. Racket’s libraries support applications from web servers and databases to GUIs and charts.

A glimpse of Racket-lang:

Getting started with Racket-lang is pretty easy unlike lisp which requires a substantial amount of knowledge before even you write your first hello world program. Below is a small example to get you started with Racket-lang –

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;;;hello world in Racket #lang racket "Hello, World!"

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;;;This program, taken from the Racket website, draws a Sierpinski triangle, nested to depth 8. #lang racket (require 2htdp/image) (let sierpinski ([n 8])   (if (zero? n)     (triangle 2 'solid 'red)     (let ([t (sierpinski (- n 1))])       (freeze (above t (beside t t))))))

IDE for Racket-lang:

Racket-lang has a plethora of tools and among those DrRacket is a Racket’s graphical environment for developing programs. You can get it from here.Other useful tools are –

• Futures Visualizer
• Optimization Coach
• PLaneT: Automatic Package Distribution
• Racklog: Prolog-Style Logic Programming
• RackUnit: Unit Testing
• Redex: Practical Semantics Engineering
• Scribble as Preprocessor
• Slideshow: Figure and Presentation Tools

Learning Racket is easy and the community is very active so you get your doubts clear easily. Also, the documentation of Racket is vast and complete and help you understand every bit of language.

Know more here and find the download link.

Did you like this piece on the programmable programming language Racket? Tell us in comments below.

Don’t Like Your Recorded Sound? Science Has The Explanation

Listening myself on an audio or a video is really harsh for me. And each time I’m like, seriously dude, is that guy me!! Then I realized I am not the only one dismayed by what I hear. Others experience the same thing too, with their voice.

There is a scientific explanation as to why we feel our own recorded voice as different. While listening to other people, the vibrations coming from outside hit our eardrums and inner ears which are then converted to recognizable sound by our brain.

But when we hear ourselves speak,  in addition to the above phenomenon, we hear the sound vibrations through our own flesh and bones. This gives the added bass to our sound because the higher frequencies are toned down.

We have heard ourselves for the whole lifetime through our own head. That is the reason why our own audio recording sounds more high pitched and weird. 

The same goes with the way we see ourself. Seeing your image in the mirror for a long time and then, looking at the photograph does quite a trick with your brain too.

But you need not worry because everyone around you has grown accustomed to your voice and it now seems perfectly normal to them.

So do not get fazed from your actual voice. You never know who might just love it.

Did you like this explanation? Tell us in comments.

Source: Fossbyte

Microsoft Reveals the Official Windows 10 ‘Hero’ Wallpaper: What do You Think?

When a company like Microsoft tries to recover from a disaster called “Windows 8”, it is expected to take care of every minute detail involved in the process. So Redmond thought, why not work a bit more on the official Windows 10 wallpaper.

Today, Microsoft announced the official wallpaper of Windows 10 and released a video explaining that this picture isn’t made using Photoshop of other tools- it is a real photographed picture using light, projectors and lasers to create the beautiful effect seen in the video.

The company used a studio in San Francisco to make the logo and utilized camera mapping techniques.

As seen in the image, the wallpaper consists of a Windows logo against a dark background. From the edges of the logo, there’s mist and light beaming out.

The video description on YouTube says: “Blasting lasers, pumping smoke machines, colored filters, and falling crystal dust. Not all desktop images are created equal. Take a look behind the scenes at the making of the iconic Windows 10 image in our collaboration with world-renowned, San Francisco-based design director Bradley G. Munkowitz aka GMUNK.” 

This unique Windows 10 Hero wallpaper is designed by Bradley Munkowitz, production designer and artist known for his work in Tron.

Windows 10 ships from July 29 with free updgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users.

Did you like this wallpaper? Tell us in comments below!