Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
Reviewed by Katie from Beaverton, Oregon.
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Google’s Project Loon was unveiled in 2013 as an ambitious project to bring internet to some of the most remote parts of the world where it’s hard to get Internet access. The project’s still in full swing and you’re now able to track the balloons in real time as they travel the world. 
The helium balloons can now be tracked in real time using Flightradar24′s service, which shows a group of them being launched near Timaru, New Zealand and drifting out to sea at around 162 feet off the surface. The balloons are moving quite quickly at a rate of around 41 kilometers an hour at time of writing.
Google’s page for Project Loon shows that the balloons should keep drifting east towards South America as part of a plan to establish internet connectivity along the 40th Southern Parallel.
A previous balloon that was part of the project managed to travel past South America in just 12 days, so it’ll be interesting to track this new set of balloons in real time as they complete their journey across the Pacific Ocean.
The balloons are made to last over 100 days, so it looks like the travels of this group has only just begun.
Twitter added a new type of card to its growing platform overnight that allows users to vote on their favorite nominees, just in time for the Oscars award ceremony next week.
Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO showed off the new card which is being used by E! Online to get votes on which female actress users are predicting to win Best Female Actress at the awards on Monday. The new survey card only works on mobile and doesn’t appear using the web interface yet.
Using the card is as simple as tapping on the user’s choice to vote. Once the actress has been picked by the user, the card reloads and shows who is leading the pack right now. This new type of card is likely to be used heavily on Monday as many news organizations live tweet the Oscars and seek to engage their fans more.
The new card is provided by Poptip, a company that touts “accurate social surveys” which touts that its polls can be integrated on air for more social interaction. Expect to see more of these types of cards popping up in a feed near you, soon.
Read Next: Livefyre pushes the limits of its technology with Oscars red carpet photo booth that tweets for fans
Image credit: Joe Klamar / AFP / Getty Images
Mozilla announced back in January 2013 that it planned to eventually require all plugins to be ‘Click to Play’ by default, meaning that users will need to click on plugins in-page in order to enable them and view their content.
Today, the company revealed it will close the application window for whitelisted plugins on March 31, but will only start blocking by default no sooner than Firefox 30. In a post on Mozilla’s security blog, the company said that it “strongly [encourages] site authors to phase out their use of plugins” due to new Web technologies that make plugins less essential and the effect they can have on browser stability.
Mozilla continued in the post to say that the change is also due to stability problems. The company said that “plugins are a significant source of poor performance, crashes and security vulnerabilities” and because of this “plugins present real costs to Firefox users.”
Plugin developers have 30 days to submit a request to join a plugin whitelist, which will exempt them from the Click to Play changes and allow their plugins to load without user interaction.
Mozilla pointed out that the plugin whitelist is only temporary and will whitelist a single plugin for four consecutive Firefox releases. After that, developers are encouraged to move away to Web-based technologies or will need to apply for a continued exemption.
Some plugins, such as Adobe Flash, will be permanently exempt from the Click to Play functionality but only for the very latest version of the player. Older versions will revert to requiring users to Click to Play or will require them to update the plugin.
Mozilla’s move is a good one; many plugins are bad for browser stability and performance, so requiring them to be disabled by default should lead to a more stable browsing experience for all.
Top Image Credit: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images