Explosion

Discord.com: The digital communities platform saw a staggering 700,702.5% growth in 2020. It went from 443,387 visits in 2019 to 3,107,267,589 in 2020. HBOmax.com: 71,655.0% growth. Thanks, Wonder Woman. Ebssw.kr: The Korean-based software learning platform saw 48,212.8% growth. Redgifs.com: The NSFW porn gif site saw 18,350.8% growth. Worldometers.info: The site continuously tracks various metrics including world population, deaths, births, government spending, emails sent, and more. It grew 13,657.7% as people grew more curious about the world in 2020. Newsbreak.com: The popular news aggregation site grew 6,463.9%. Thepirate-bay.org: The 17-year-old torrent sharing site saw 5,074.2% growth in 2020. Lockdown peeps searching for more content to pass the time, perhaps? Rrys2019.com: A Chinese media site grew by 4,729.7%. Picuki.com: The Instagram-editing site saw a 2,904.5% growth in 2020. Note.com: The Japanese media platform that allows users to post texts, images, and videos grew … [Read more...] about These were the top 10 fastest growing websites in 2020

If brands do want to use your newly collected information to target you on Facebook, there are a lot of ways this can go wrong. Businesses may now be able to use information such as your transaction history and profile photo to send ads that are “more relevant.” Most modern targeting systems in this space often make use of a field of artificial intelligence called deep learning, where many behavioral features can strongly correlate to race, gender, or socioeconomic class. If WhatsApp Business allows brands to use your profile photo or chats for targeting, it’s possible that the skin color of your profile photo or the nuances of your chat style may allow them to inadvertently infer sensitive information about you, resulting in a different and potentially harmful experience between people of different genders or race. … [Read more...] about WhatsApp and Facebook’s ultimatum to users reveals a privacy disaster

Why isn’t the ocean boiling? It’s only because of how vast it is, Cheng says in a statement, which highlights how much energy the ocean can absorb and how big an impact on the environment it will have as it releases it. That also shows why we need to pay special attention to the oceans as more countries pledge to reach carbon neutrality. “Any activities or agreements to address global warming must be coupled with the understanding that the ocean has already absorbed an immense amount of heat, and will continue to absorb excess energy,” Cheng writes, until we reach a point where the carbon levels in our atmosphere are significantly lower. … [Read more...] about Ocean temperatures hit another record high in 2020

“I think that having been burned one time by not being adequately prepared for the level of violence, they will more likely be ready to deal with the protest turning violent with plans to handle that,” says Kenneth Gray, a retired FBI special agent and senior lecturer in the University of New Haven’s criminal justice department. “I think you’ll potentially see the use of chemical gases, or rubber bullets, or more severe types of response.” … [Read more...] about Security experts weigh in on how to prevent more right-wing violence on Inauguration Day