Google Health will be use to study the impact of mobile phones on our mental health
01/06/2022Spaniards spend an average of 3 hours and 40 minutes a day connected to the mobile. This time multiplied from Monday to Sunday is the same as more than 25 hours a week, according to the Digital Consumer by Generation report. To analyze the impact of all this time of digital consumption on our mental health, a group of researchers from the University of Oregon (United States) has just announced that they will use the Google Health app to analyze how users use their smartphones and discuss how in the future, digitals products and devides can make people happier, without falling into dependency. In their work, they will measure factors such as sleep or physical activity, for which they will also use the data collected by Fitbit, the activity bracelets owned by Google. One of the researchers, Dr. Nicholas Allen, stressed that "some studies similar to the one that we are going to start, usually condem the technology based on their conviction that it must be bad for mental health and well-being." . For this reason, he believes that is not positive to focuses only on the potentially harmful effects of the use of the devices, and also is important to takes into account the benefits that they offer.
[ ... ]
Logitech
LogitechSince its inception, the Swiss company Logitech has focused on designing and manufacturing innovative and quality solutions for people's daily lives. Since 1981, Logitech creates and produces computer accessories such as keyboards, mice, speakers, and headsets from production subdivisions in different parts of the world. Through extensive pre-design studies, they analyze how people connect and interact with the digital world. Based on the information gathered, they then design the best products to improve the user experience.
[ ... ]
Video calling apps listen when the microphone is off, according to a study
25/04/2022A group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (United States) has determined that video conferencing applications can continue accessing audio data even if the user has disabled the microphone. To demonstrate this, they have studied the most popular video conferencing applications and have analyzed the behavior of the mute button until they has determined that all the applications that they has tested whether the microphone was open or closed, occasionally collected raw data and delivered it to the servers of their services. In their research they have worked with binary analysis tools to see how the audio was transferred from the application to the audio drivers of the computers and then to the network. They aslo have created, through machine learning models ( 'machine learning'), a classifier of daily activities that, with 82% accuracy, has determined which activities users were doing while their microphones were, theoretically, silenced. In relation to this, the authors of this work recall that beyond muting the microphone, you can turn off the microphone of a device through the settings menu, a safer option to limit access to confidential information and sensitive data. All the conclusions of this study will be known next July in the Privacy Improvement Technologies Symposium.
[ ... ]
Makeup causes failures in facial recognition systems
22/09/2021A research from the Ben-Gurion University of Israel has concluded that makeup reduces the effectiveness of facial recognition mechanisms. During the tests, the researchers used the ArcFace facial detection system, and they determined an effectiveness of 47,6% in people who did not use make up and 33,7% in those who did. They also confirm that applying makeup in specific face areas that algorithms analyze, the effectiveness of the facial recognition system is significantly altered and only 1.22% persons were recognized. In addition, the researchers from the Israeli university also did the test digitally, making up some photographs of the volunteers and the result was that the system was not able to recognize any of the faces. According to all these results, the researchers believe that the current level of development of facial detection systems is still below the realistic threshold.
[ ... ]