Facebook tweaks its feed to highlight news that matters, while it matters

We probably won’t confuse Facebook’s front page with a Twitter stream anytime soon, but today the social networking giant announced it’s fixing one big problem (again): surfacing posts while they’re still relevant. If you regularly log on to keep in touch with friends, family or enemies and let the site order updates by itself you’ve probably seen it — posts popping up days later with old news, or worse, something that was relevant, if it had showed up at the appropriate time. There’s nothing worse than missing out on a late night burrito run (we suggest creating an industry-wide mailing list to coordinate your activities and agendas in secret) or missing an opportunity for a joke, and Facebook is trying a couple of things to change that.

First, trending topics will become more important — now when breaking news like #Ferguson is trending, users won’t be flooded with last week’s Ice Bucket challenge videos. Also, it’s taking into account when others like posts, not just how many likes those posts have. Erich Owens and Dave Vichrey of Facebook say the changes are rolling out gradually, so you may not notice them right away. What they didn’t say unfortunately, is anything about Facebook’s annoying tendency to switch back from “Most recent” view to the curated feed, or anything about letting users have more control over their own timeline in the future. Of course, giving users the wheel might get in the way of future experiments, but for now Facebook is just trying to make sure it’s still the place to go for its billion+ users.

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Source: Facebook

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Home Depot says hack put 56 million credit and debit cards at risk

When Home Depot confirmed that its in-store payments systems were hacked, the one juicy morsel it didn’t disclose was how many people may have been affected. Well, the company finally patched the issue and ‘fessed up: some 56 million payment cards are at risk, so please keep an eye on your statements if you’ve shopped at a North American Home Depot between April and September. Just to put this whole thing into perspective, remember the gigantic data breach that Target got slammed with over the holidays? That time only (!) 40 million credit and debit cards were at risk, though millions more customers may have had other personal information compromised. The culprit in both cases was a bit of malware that had been introduced to the companies’ payment systems, but despite earlier reports that the two strains were related, Home Depot says the stuff that hit it “had not been seen previously in other attacks”.

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Via: AP

Source: Home Depot

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Catching up with DiWire Bender, Insert Coin 2013’s metal-bending wonder

Does that curious little contraption above look familiar? That’s probably because it’s DIWire Bender, the rather unusual desktop device created by Brooklyn design firm Pensa, which won our judges’ hearts at last year’s Insert Coin competition. We say unusual, because DIWire Bender boasts very specific skillset: bending metal wires for makers, crafters and just about anyone who could use it. We caught up with Pensa founder Marco Perry to talk about how the project’s been doing since the team took home $10,000 for winning Judges’ Choice. By the sound of it, its victory really got the ball rolling: the team’s Kickstarter campaign that launched right after Insert Coin, for instance, reached its $100,000 goal in just one day.

First, a bit of history: The Pensa team first thought of making a desktop metal bender when they realized that their 3D-printed furniture models can’t withstand their testing methods. Thus, DiWire was born. The machine allows you to create metal designs more quickly and efficiently, as you won’t have to twist and turn metal wires manually to make the patterns you want anymore.

After the successful crowdfunding campaign, Pensa began hiring beta testers to take the machine for a spin, including a team that won best rookie award at the First Robotics Competition. Also, Perry said that all the exposure the product got not only made its Kickstarter campaign a painless affair, but also helped drum up a lot of interest from various sectors “ranging from automotive, architecture, furniture, lighting, jewelry, orthodontics, surgical implants, robotics and STEM/STEAM.”

According to Perry, Pensa has finalized the machine’s design and engineering way back in late spring, and it’s begun gathering components for assembly in August. The company now plans to ship out the first DiWire Bender units as soon as this October. If you want to join our Insert Coin competition like Perry and his team did, you may want to put the final touches on your own hardware design. We’re accepting Insert Coin submissions until September 26th only, and there’s $25,000 on the line for the project(s) our judges and readers like the most. Once you’re done reading our submission guidelines, head straight to our entry form and turn those hardware masterpieces in.

Filed under: Misc

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