Pump on the web

ON THE WEB

Brain Pump

www.brainpump.net

Brain Pump is a website that aims to help you “learn something new and feed your curiosity”. The portal puts together a vast library of entertaining videos on several topics, ranging from math, physics, chemistry, and biology to food, nature, space, and technology. Give your knowledge bank a quick boost by finding out random astounding facts about the world around you, and learning things like why rivers curve, how much a shadow weighs, and even how to make Groot cupcakes! So turn on the Brain Pump player, kick-back, and “enjoy a continuous stream of knowledge”.

 

16 Personalities

www.16personalities.com

Have you ever wondered why you do things the way you do? 16 Personalities might be able to help you crack that mystery. The website offers a free personality test that assesses your personality type and describes how people belonging to a specific type are likely to behave. The website aims to inspire personal growth and better understanding of others through its free quiz which takes “less than 12 minutes” to answer; all you have to do is respond honestly, even if you don’t like the answer, and try not to leave any “neutral” responses. The website will then generate a personality profile based on your choices, and explain what really drives and inspires the people that fall in your category. You can learn the strengths and weaknesses of your personality and how they apply to your relationships and career, and also go through in-depth analyses of other types so you can understand how other people operate and thereby build more meaningful bonds.

 

News-e-land

• Ringing Bells launches world’s cheapest smartphone: Indian company Ringing Bells has unveiled their Freedom 251 phone which costs just INR251 rupees (around PKR 383) and is being marketed as the world’s cheapest smartphone. The device has a 4-inch display, 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage (expandable up to 32GB), 3.2 megapixel back and 0.3 megapixel front camera, and dual-SIM support.

• Facebook expands suicide support: Social network Facebook has been rolling out a new feature in various countries to try and help users who are “going through something difficult”. The suicide prevention tool lets people report troubling posts, and help options are sent to users that Facebook think are struggling.

• Apple asked to unlock iPhone: Apple has come under pressure from the United States government to break the encryption on an iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, but the company says it “oppose[s] this order” and is refusing to comply with the request to unlock the device, as this “unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers”. The company’s CEO Tim Cook has posted a letter on the Apple website (apple.com/customer-letter), saying that “while we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products”.

 

Defined

Usie

A selfie is a photograph that a person has taken of themself, a phenomenon that has become ubiquitous since the proliferation of digital and smartphone cameras. A group version of the selfie is known as an “usie”, a combination of the words “us” and “selfie”. When photographs are taken by the subject next to at least one other person, the pictures become usies. A famous example of the usie is the photo taken at the 2014 Oscars by Bradley Cooper with stars including Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, and Ellen DeGeneres. Other words used to describe group selfies include “groupfie” (which has been trademarked by Huawei Technologies) and “wefie” (trademarked by Samsung).