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Weird Wide Web: Terrorist hackers, missing children on Facebook and the anti-Tinder

All of your essential tech and social media news for the week in one byte-sized portion.

WELCOME TO THE Weird Wide Web – where we take a look at the week’s best offerings in tech and social media news.

Multilingual news of the week

Google Translate’s next update will let you translate spoken words into another language in real-time, similar to Skype.

Hack of the week

Hackers who support Islamic State broke into a Pentagon Twitter account and YouTube channel. Officials played down the incident, however, saying no sensitive networks were penetrated.

Facebook public service of the week

The social networking giant this week announced a partnership with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US. This move will see the organisation sending Amber Alerts to the Facebook community to help find missing children. The alerts will appear on users’ feeds but law enforcement will determine the rage of the target area for each alert.

Facebook Facebook

Amazing animation tool of the week

Does anyone remember Nintendo’s Power Glove? It was basically a complete failure. But animator Dillon Markey has brought one back to life, modifying it into a real impressive animation tool:


Ava Benjamin / Vimeo

Dating app with a difference of the week

This new app has been dubbed ‘The anti-Tindr’. Talk or Not aims to bring conversation back to the forefront of modern dating and reveals user’s photos piece by piece once a conversation is mutually exchanged, GeekWire reports.

Talk or Not Talk or Not

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3 Comments
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ailbhe
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:29 PM

    I once worked for a company involved with one of these devices. The ‘update’ can mean as little as requiring somebody to read a letter stating there is a minuscule chance of the device needing a service and these devices will warn you when they do anyway.

    One device once needed a full recall so that a sticker could be put on the packaging to tell people not to leave it out if temperatures are below freezing.

    My point being, though the HPRA advice makes it sound dangerous and scary, 99.9% of the time its really not. It’s a box ticking exercise because something went wrong in one machine out of hundreds of thousands.

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    Mute Arch Angel
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    Jan 29th 2019, 6:47 PM

    @Ailbhe: While you may be correct in what you say, in a hospital setting this would mean contacting the person responsible for AED’s who would make the decision to pass this onto the relevant Department for further action, if necessary. In today’s litigious society it would be acted upon.
    However if the AED is in a Shopping Centre, a sports club or meeting hall there may be some confusion over who exactly is responsible for it, perhaps it was donated. Someone may test it occasionally but have no competence beyond that, they may be unaware of HPRA alerts or of who to contact.
    These are lifesaving medical devices, we place our trust in them but when it comes to the maintenance of them and ensuring they’re fit for purpose it appears to be chaotic. The HPRA issue alerts but there doesn’t seem to be any single body assigned to check they’re being correctly maintained or removed if they can’t be fixed. The onus is placed on the owners of the AED’s to ensure they’re in good working order.
    I’m sure there are many facilities up and down the country who take the maintenance of their AED very seriously, however as the HPRA can only estimate how many there are, I’m also certain there are some out there that are forgotten. Maybe there should be someone responsible for maintaining them nationally.

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    Mute Ailbhe
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    Jan 29th 2019, 7:23 PM

    @Arch Angel: I’ve said nothing that contradicts what you’ve said and you’ve said nothing that contradicts what I’ve said. Maybe your point should be a standalone one, rather than one that pretends to correct me on something I didn’t say.

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    Mute Arch Angel
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    Jan 29th 2019, 7:43 PM

    @Ailbhe: Forgive me, I wasn’t trying to correct or contradict you on anything. In reality I suppose I took a long time to say that if an alert regarding AED’s were issued 6 months ago we can be reasonably sure that, in a hospital environment, this will be acted upon.
    We may not have the same level of confidence for an AED in the local bingo hall, yet both are life saving medical devices.
    Should the one in the hospital fail due to that alert not being implemented, that may result in a substantial compensation payment from the HSE, but would the local bingo hall be capable of paying such high compensation?

    1
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    Mute Ailbhe
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    Jan 29th 2019, 9:21 PM

    @Arch Angel: A failure of a device would be the manufacturers fault if corrective action is not taken or all reasonable efforts have been made to notify and the owners that corrective action is required.

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    Mute Etherman
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:13 PM

    This didn’t come as a shock.

    41
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    Mute Joe Ryan
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:32 PM

    Can somebody whos smarter than me create an app that shows all the locations of defibrillators around the country?

    35
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    Mute Link
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:40 PM

    @Joe Ryan: Save a selfie, you take a picture and geo tag fire hydrant and aed locations.

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    Mute Anthony Clark
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:44 PM

    @Joe Ryan: Already done – there is an volunteer made app on android that shows all this information for ireland – complete with photos and owners contact details.

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    Mute Joe Ryan
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    Jan 29th 2019, 4:00 PM

    @Anthony Clark: Do you know the name of the app? Would be handy to have especially out in the schticks

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    Mute Paraic
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:23 PM

    I blame Brexit.

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    Mute Shawn O'Ceallaghan
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    Jan 29th 2019, 4:48 PM

    How often are these things used ?

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    Mute Eoin Kenny
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    Jan 29th 2019, 2:33 PM

    600 of them you would want a lot of energy to fix all them .

    2
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