Category: technology

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This is How You Can Delete Each of Your Social Media Accounts Forever

A lot of us enjoy social media, or at least aspects of it. We might not be on every platform, and we might not like them all equally, but in this day and age it’s a popular way to pass the time.

Some folks, though, decided somewhere along the way that the benefits don’t outweigh the risks. Whether something is going on in their personal life that makes having an online presence less desirable, they’re feeling addicted, or they’re looking to live a simpler way, it’s important to be able to delete your profiles on these apps if you want or need to.

Here’s how to deactivate or delete your accounts on these popular social networks.

Facebook

Image Credit: Pexels

Facebook gives you two options if you’re feeling like you want off the site – deactivation or deletion.

When you deactivate your account, you’re hiding your information from searches and from your friends, but if you decide you want to activate it again, you’ll come back to a page that looks exactly as you left it.

If you’re just wanting a trial separation, go into your settings on Facebook and click Settings and Privacy, then Your Facebook Information. From there, click Deactivation and Deletion and choose Deactivate Account.

It will verify that’s what you want to do, and then give you some additional instructions to follow.

If you’re ready to break things off forever, you’ll want to request to delete your account altogether. From the Deactivation and Deletion menu, choose Delete Account, then Continue to Account Deletion. Enter your password, click Continue, and then Delete Account.

It will take a couple of days to complete it, and Facebook will cancel the request if you try to log in at all, so just take a few deep breaths and leave it be.

You can download all of the data on your account before deleting it, if you’re nervous. Go to Settings, then Your Facebook Information and then Download Your Information. Facebook will send you a link down download, but make sure you store it in a safe place once you do.

Instagram

Image Credit: Pexels

You have to log into your IG account via the web in order to delete it, and your settings menu will only give you the option to temporarily disable your account, which will hide your profile, photos, likes, and comments, but they won’t go away entirely.

To delete your IG forever, enter the URL https://instagram.com/accounts/remove/request/permanent into your browser, then click Permanently Delete My Account.

Done!

TikTok

Image Credit: Pexels

There are plenty of reasons to be worried about the privacy settings on this app, and if you’re ready to chuck it for good, deleting it is easy.

Open the app, click on the Me section on the bottom right, then choose Manage My Account, then Delete My Account.

Confirm your choice and move on with your life!

Twitter

Image Credit: Pexels

Twitter makes it easy for you to fly free, but before you leave the nest, you might want to download your archive – that’s all of your tweets in a chronological order.

Click your profile icon, to to Settings, then Account, and Your Twitter Data.

Once you’re ready to go, head back to Account Settings, then choose Deactivate My Account at the bottom of the list.

It takes 30 days for all of your data to be deleted, which gives you an opportunity for second thoughts if you have them.

Snapchat

Image Credit: Pexels

Snapchat has kind of fallen out of popularity with a rise in Instagram and TikTok use, and if you’re one of those who aren’t using it like you used to, here’s how to delete your account.

Just head to the company’s Accounts Portal, then type in your username and password to delete. Like with Twitter, you’ll have 30 days to change your mind before it’s gone forever.

There you have it! I don’t think I’m brave enough yet to go social media free, but I admire people who can!

Are you off many social networks? How is it going? Tell us about it in the comments!

The post This is How You Can Delete Each of Your Social Media Accounts Forever appeared first on UberFacts.

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Plant-Based “Stem Cells” Could Possibly Drive an Environmental Revolution

For the last couple of years, my family has been making a conscious effort to buy less plastic.

Certainly we try to avoid single-use plastics, but even for things that we’ll use again and again we try to find more durable, organic or metal alternatives.

But of course, there’s often an environmental cost to wooden items, too. It presents a conundrum.

Until now. Are you ready to have your mind blown? Lab. Grown. Furniture.

I warned you.

Image credit: Goashape via Unsplash

Wooden furniture is gorgeous, and plant fibers are supremely useful for other everyday items too, like clothing.

That’s why bamboo has become so popular–it grows quickly, with less environmental impact.

But now a PhD candidate at MIT, Ashley Beckwith, and her co-author, Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, have a brilliant plan to reduce waste and environmental impacts even further by growing wood in useful shapes (like 2 by 4’s) right in a lab.

The MIT research team has been working with zinnia tissue, and they published their findings recently in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

As Fast Company reports, their goal is to:

…quickly produce in a lab what would take decades to grow in nature. From there, they could even coax wood tissue to grow into fully-formed shapes—like, say, a table—in order to mitigate the environmental harm of the logging and construction industries.

It’s not a completely new concept. Velásquez-García, a scientist in the university’s Microsystems Technology Lab, explains it in pretty simple terms.

“The plant cells are similar to stem cells. They have the potential to be many things.”

And it’s not just human stem cells. Other scientists have had similar success with lab grown meat products.

So isolating the ability to reduce plants down to a version of a stem cell is just the first step.

Like the meat manufactures who want to grow only the most desirable parts of the animal, Beckwith and team have similar plans for their saplings.

“Trees grow in tall cylindrical poles, and we rarely use tall cylindrical poles in industrial applications.

So you end up shaving off a bunch of material that you spent 20 years growing and that ends up being a waste product.”

Rather than stopping with just growing trees, the team could grow planks, or, rather like 3D printing, they could even guide the development of the plant fiber into the exact shape for its intended purpose.

Of course not every manufacturer has a noble drive to safe the planet.

That’s why this new process is so exciting. It’s so easy, that when compared with the cost of logging, transportation, and everything that goes into cutting down trees to shape them into boards, lab grown trees could actually come out on top, at a lower cost!

Image credit: Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash

If the idea of lab-grown veggies freaks you out though, don’t worry. The folks in charge don’t see this being a process that is used to grow food. More like the kinds of plants used to make clothes and industrial materials. There are so many things that could be made from biodegradable plant fibers! Deforestation could become a thing of the past! At least due to human consumption.

How’s that for exciting? Did it blow your mind?

Tell us what you think in the comments!

The post Plant-Based “Stem Cells” Could Possibly Drive an Environmental Revolution appeared first on UberFacts.

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This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers

Everyone worries about data encryption and cybersecurity. I’m certainly no stranger to the concept.

I think my credit card has now been skimmed 3 times in 2 years, but 2020 was 5 years long, so I may have lost count.

That’s where cybersecurity companies like San Francisco based Cloudflare come in, bringing a very unique perspective to data encryption.

As Atlas Obscura reports:

Cloudflare covers about 10 percent of international web traffic, including the websites for Uber, OKCupid, or FitBit.

I’m betting most readers have used at least 2 out of 3 of these sites at some point.

So it’s fascinating to learn that Cloudflare has a pretty unique method for generating random encryption code to protect those sites: a wall of lava lamps.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Yes, you read that right.

The wall features over 100 lava lamps, spanning a variety of colors, and its random patterns deter hackers from accessing data.

It feels like the most hipster thing ever, but we all know the feeling of zoning out in front of a randomly swirling blob of light and color, right?

Well it turns out:

As the lava lamps bubble and swirl, a video camera on the ceiling monitors their unpredictable changes and connects the footage to a computer, which converts the randomness into a virtually unhackable code.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Who knew that kind of magic was even possible?

Someone smarter than me, that’s who.

Cloudflare might have taken it to a whole new level, but they didn’t actually invent the “LavaRand” concept, which was patented for a few years by another company in the ’90s.

As Cloudflare explains on their blog:

In cryptography, the term random means unpredictable. That is, a process for generating random bits is secure if an attacker is unable to predict the next bit with greater than 50% accuracy (in other words, no better than random chance).

True randomness, they explain, only exists in the natural, physical world. Most encryption companies rely on pseudorandomness, or the generation of random data.

Pseudorandomness is generated through the use of a deterministic algorithm that takes as input some other random value called a seed and produces a larger amount of random output (these algorithms are called cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, or CSPRNGs)

The lava lamp system, it seems, may be a little bit of both, which is kind of mind boggling all on its own.

They’ve withstood the test of academic analysis, years of being used in production, attacks by resourced adversaries, and so on.

Be sure to check out this video from Tom Scott about the lamps:

And if you ever find yourself in the Bay Area, you can go see the futuristic cybersecurity in action for yourself.

Since any kind of external disturbance affects the lamps, increasing the randomness of their patterns, the company has no problem with visitors coming to gawk.

Simply enter the lobby of Cloudflare’s San Francisco headquarters and ask to see the lava lamp display.

I definitely want to check that out.

Did this story blow your mind as much as it did mine? Let us know in the comments!

The post This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers

Everyone worries about data encryption and cybersecurity. I’m certainly no stranger to the concept.

I think my credit card has now been skimmed 3 times in 2 years, but 2020 was 5 years long, so I may have lost count.

That’s where cybersecurity companies like San Francisco based Cloudflare come in, bringing a very unique perspective to data encryption.

As Atlas Obscura reports:

Cloudflare covers about 10 percent of international web traffic, including the websites for Uber, OKCupid, or FitBit.

I’m betting most readers have used at least 2 out of 3 of these sites at some point.

So it’s fascinating to learn that Cloudflare has a pretty unique method for generating random encryption code to protect those sites: a wall of lava lamps.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Yes, you read that right.

The wall features over 100 lava lamps, spanning a variety of colors, and its random patterns deter hackers from accessing data.

It feels like the most hipster thing ever, but we all know the feeling of zoning out in front of a randomly swirling blob of light and color, right?

Well it turns out:

As the lava lamps bubble and swirl, a video camera on the ceiling monitors their unpredictable changes and connects the footage to a computer, which converts the randomness into a virtually unhackable code.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Who knew that kind of magic was even possible?

Someone smarter than me, that’s who.

Cloudflare might have taken it to a whole new level, but they didn’t actually invent the “LavaRand” concept, which was patented for a few years by another company in the ’90s.

As Cloudflare explains on their blog:

In cryptography, the term random means unpredictable. That is, a process for generating random bits is secure if an attacker is unable to predict the next bit with greater than 50% accuracy (in other words, no better than random chance).

True randomness, they explain, only exists in the natural, physical world. Most encryption companies rely on pseudorandomness, or the generation of random data.

Pseudorandomness is generated through the use of a deterministic algorithm that takes as input some other random value called a seed and produces a larger amount of random output (these algorithms are called cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, or CSPRNGs)

The lava lamp system, it seems, may be a little bit of both, which is kind of mind boggling all on its own.

They’ve withstood the test of academic analysis, years of being used in production, attacks by resourced adversaries, and so on.

Be sure to check out this video from Tom Scott about the lamps:

And if you ever find yourself in the Bay Area, you can go see the futuristic cybersecurity in action for yourself.

Since any kind of external disturbance affects the lamps, increasing the randomness of their patterns, the company has no problem with visitors coming to gawk.

Simply enter the lobby of Cloudflare’s San Francisco headquarters and ask to see the lava lamp display.

I definitely want to check that out.

Did this story blow your mind as much as it did mine? Let us know in the comments!

The post This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers appeared first on UberFacts.

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Scientists Say There Could Be 36 Alien Civilizations in the Milky Way

We’ve all wondered–could there be, not just life, but intelligent life, out there?

And while relative intelligence of life on Earth could be debatable, two scientists from the University of Nottingham have a new theory that suggests there is.

36 different potential civilizations, to be exact.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

How can scientists possibly make a prediction about the number of undiscovered civilizations?

It’s a mathematical theory based on a fifty-year-old equation called the Drake equation.

As Popular Mechanics explains:

Drake’s seven key variables, which range from how many habitable planets exoplanets there are in the galaxy to the amount of time over which intelligent life takes shape, are almost impossible to pin down.

The formula acts more like a framework for the probability of finding life; previous estimates have ranged from zero to over a billion civilizations.

But Professor of Astrophysics Christopher Conselice, his colleague Tom Westby, and their team at the University of Nottingham used new technology and assumptions about our galaxy, the Milky Way, to formulate a new hypothesis.

They published their work last summer in The Astrophysical Journal.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

As quoted in Phys.org, Conselice explains that they based their assumption on the length of time it took a civilization to develop on Earth:

“There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.

The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”

The Copernican limit guides researchers to think on a pretty large scale–where intelligent life develops in either more or less than 5 billion years.

By intelligent life, scientists mean a civilization capable of communication.

On Earth, that development took more than 4.5 billion years, thus the 5 billion year threshold.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

These calculations have been used for years, but the Nottingham team took it one step further, factoring in the specific composition of Earth’s sun.

As Westby explained:

“In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy.”

When all of the data is combined and analyzed, they believe just 36 exoplanets possess all the right conditions to support the development of an alien civilization.

Of course that means 36 alien civilizations that are enough like us to be recognizable as communicative beings.

Who knows how many are out there that are so different that we might not even recognize them if we saw them.

The problem is, a theory needs to be proven, and the exoplanets are so far away that while we can see them with high powered telescopes and gather some sensory data on them, we don’t yet have the technology to visit them–even with probes.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

If they’re so far away, why do we even care?

Well aside from the intrinsic human need to explore and discover, finding out how many other civilizations co-exist could actually tell us something about how long life on earth will last.

As Professor Conselice points out:

If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our Galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence.

By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life—even if we find nothing—we are discovering our own future and fate

This is very exciting in the world of astronomy.

But according to Popular Mechanics and The Guardian, not every scientist is convinced.

Oliver Shorttle of the University of Cambridge told the news organization that more factors need to be considered—such as how exactly life formed on Earth—before taking the new findings as fact.

That’s science for you. There’s always more to consider.

Even so, it’s pretty cool to have such a specific number, don’t you think?

Do you believe there’s life out there? Let us know your theories in the comments!

The post Scientists Say There Could Be 36 Alien Civilizations in the Milky Way appeared first on UberFacts.

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Solutions To Everyday Problems We Think You’ll Enjoy

Life can be full of obstacles.

Sometimes it feels like you take one step forward and there are a million different little things in your way trying to stop you from achieving your goals.

And that’s why we think you’ll enjoy these cool solutions to everyday problems!

Not only will you find them interesting, but we think they’ll also give you some hope because you’ll realize that folks out there are working to make our lives just a little bit easier…and we could all use a little bit of that right now.

Take a look at these photos.

1. How many times have you needed this in your life?

Can you spare a square?

This bathroom has a button that you can press if you run out of toilet paper. from mildlyinteresting

2. What are you in the mood for, Fido?

I bet they love this!

This rest stop has a vending machine for dogs from mildlyinteresting

3. From Japan with love.

A brilliant idea!

In Tokyo, sidewalks have paths for the blind from mildlyinteresting

4. You know you’re gonna need it!

We need more of these.

This plastic spoon has a built-in toothpick from mildlyinteresting

5. Try something new.

You might even like it!

This box of limes recommends a different way of cutting fruit. from mildlyinteresting

6. Never seen this before.

But I’d say it’s a good idea.

The bathroom in this restaurant has a mouthwash dispenser. from mildlyinteresting

7. Have a drink!

And now it’s easier than ever.

This coconut has a pull top from mildlyinteresting

8. Why don’t more places do this?

It’s good advertising!

This gas station sign also tells you the current price of coffee from mildlyinteresting

9. Hey, it works either way.

I’m a fan of this!

The microwave at my office is a pull out drawer from mildlyinteresting

10. Just so you’re not missing anything.

Don’t you hate it when you get home from the store and realize your milk expires tomorrow?

New Huge dates stamped on the milks in the store from mildlyinteresting

11. Those toppings are gonna stay put.

Finally! It’s what we’ve been waiting for!

This bag has the corners cut out so that the pizza sits flat. from mildlyinteresting

12. That’s a great idea.

And I’m sure the patients really love it.

This hospital has a flower vending machine from mildlyinteresting

13. As a hockey fan, I approve of this.

A genius idea, eh?

This Canadian remote control has a Hockey button from mildlyinteresting

Those are all pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

How about you?

Have you seen any really cool inventions lately that blew your mind?

If so, please share them with us in the comments. Thanks!

The post Solutions To Everyday Problems We Think You’ll Enjoy appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Share Inventions So Perfect They Actually Can’t Be Improved Upon

Has the air conditioner ever been improved upon?

Because I gotta say, that has to be one of the best inventions that humans ever came up with.

What would we do without it?

I guess some people aren’t as impressed with it as I am, but I need it during the warm months or I am a very unpleasant person to be around. Hey, I’m just tellin’ the truth here…

AskReddit users talked about inventions so good they can’t be improved upon. Let’s see what they had to say.

1. Now you know.

“The Schrader Valve used to inflate your bicycle tires, car tires, tractor tires, etc.

It was patented in 1893.

It is still used in virtually every tire on the planet. And now you know its name.”

2. You can’t beat it.

“Fire cooking.

We’ve been trying to improve it for almost 2 million years.”

3. It’s perfect.

“The wheel.

What are you going to do?

Make it rounder?”

4. Boom!

“Crocodiles, or “any apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction.

Physically unchanged for a hundred million years, because it’s the perfect killing machine.

A half ton of cold-blooded fury, the bite force of 20,000 Newtons, and stomach acid so strong it can dissolve bones and hoofs.”

5. Nice try, Swiffer.

“Brooms haven’t changed, no matter how hard Swiffer tries.”

6. Won’t be improved upon.

“Scissors are the perfect tool for cutting and shaping material that will likely never be improved upon.”

7. Works every time!

“Hoodies.

Cold? Hoodie.

Underdressed? Hoodie.

No bra? Hoodie.

Hot? Hoodie.

Rainy? Hoodie.

Dead inside? You know it, hoodie.”

8. The good stuff.

“Gaffing tape.

Leaves no reside when ripped up, extremely heat resistant and strong, but expensive as all hell (used for film projects).”

9. Still the same.

“A hair comb.

Even ones found in ancient Egypt and elsewhere are basically the same design.”

10. What an invention!

“Condoms.

Any thinner, they’d break.

Any thicker, and it’s fake.”

11. A real crowdpleaser.

“Madden NFL.

They perfected it 15 years ago so they haven’t made a single change since.”

12. Just like the old days.

“A scythe

I was at my cottage over the weekend and I had to cut some grass. I forgot my lawnmower but I had an old scythe in the garage that I inherited a long time ago. I was just keeping it as a decoration and momento and never thought of actually using it.

I was bored and I had some time so I sharpened the blade and went to work.

I don’t know the first thing about scythes or even how to properly use them … I just started swinging it.

I couldn’t believe it actually cut grass and weeds. The longer I worked, the more detailed I could get with where I swung it.

Two hours later, I had cut the lawn, cut down some tall grass on the edge of the property and had started cutting down some light brush that I thought I needed a brush cutter for.

This scythe must be decades old but it still works better than my lawnmower, edge clipper and brush cutter … all without a motorized engine.”

13. Gotta love it!

“The hammer.

The absolute tool of perfection for rapid transfer of force within a very short amount of time.

There is nothing to improve upon.”

What do you think?

What inventions are so good that they can’t be improved upon?

Tell us what you think in the comments!

The post People Share Inventions So Perfect They Actually Can’t Be Improved Upon appeared first on UberFacts.

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What Inventions Are So Good They Can’t Be Improved Upon? Here’s How Folks Responded.

I’ve never thought about this before, so I’m excited to see what kinds of responses people came up with!

And I’m curious to see what you think, so please reply in the comments after reading through these!

What invention is so good it can’t be improved upon?

Here’s what AskReddit users had to say.

1. Most likely.

“I’ve heard the Pin setter machine in bowling Alleys has never had a redesign.

It was perfect already.”

2. Good thing we have it.

“P-trap.

A simple and elegant way to prevent odor from coming into your house via sink, toilet, etc.”

3. XLR.

“The XLR cable.

Until they can beam something directly into your head, we kind of hit a dead end for perceived sound. The simplicity of what a cable can do by allowing both AC and DC power to flow through so you can power and draw signal from a microphone.

Plus the fact it’s so simple to remove the noise you get from outside interference makes it even more genius.”

4. It’s perfect!

“The paper clip.

Last major patent was in the 1880s.”

5. Use the bones!

“Those bones they use for tanning leather.

People have tried using all sorts of different materials but bone always works best apparently.”

6. After all these years…

“The brick.

It has been made of mud, then mud with straw, then mud with clay, then finally with clay alone. That is as far as progress has taken the brick, in the (guess) 8,000 years since it was invented, and it is still in use today.

Someone, lost in the obscurity of ancient history, realized that you couldn’t build really strong stone structures with irregularly-shaped small natural stones, and hewing huge lumps of stone into regular shapes was just ridiculously hard work.

That person also observed that mud that fell into a fire was left hardened when the fire died down. So they figured that if you shaped mud into regular shapes, big enough to carry one in each hand, you would have all the advantages of small irregular stones and large geometrically-carved stones, but with none of the drawbacks of either.

This thought must have taken a second to dawn on the inventor. The practical work to prove the concept must have taken a weekend, at most. Perhaps a week or two to get the shape just right. And here we are, thousands of years later, and the d*mn thing has barely changed at all.”

7. Perfection.

“Pizza.

You can change it up, you can ruin it, and you can fold it half like a crazy calzone munching madman, but you can’t beat perfection.”

8. Can’t beat ’em.

“Most professional classical music instruments are already in their final stage like piano and violin.”

9. That name, though.

“The spoon is a pretty incredible invention.

It can often sub as a fork or a knife, and it has a great name.”

10. Works just fine.

“The basic sewing needle.

It really hasn’t changed in thousands of years.

There is no need for change.”

11. We all need them.

“Windshield wipers.

My engineering professor always lectured us on how perfect the design is and how and new changes made are strictly aesthetic and don’t work any better.”

12. Steam turbine.

“The steam turbine.

It is such a useful way to convert heat into electricity that it would not be surprising to see one strapped to a fusion reactor (if one ever get built).”

13. What would we do without it?

“Gonna have to disagree with the TV remote.

It needs sharp pointy bits so people know when they’re sitting on it.

Also, less of those buttons that serve no purpose but to confuse grandparents.”

What do you think are inventions that are so good they can’t be improved upon?

Talk to us in the comments.

We’d love to hear from you!

The post What Inventions Are So Good They Can’t Be Improved Upon? Here’s How Folks Responded. appeared first on UberFacts.