teenagers

Teen finds bugs in Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft code

When he's not at school, 15-year-old Cim Stordal spends his time playing the Team Fortress video game, shooting his Airsoft pellet gun, and working in a fish shop in Bergen, Norway. But his real passion is finding bugs in software used by millions of people on the Internet.

Stordal has made the Google Security Hall of Fame, been credited with disclosing a cross-site scripting bug to Apple, been thanked by Microsoft for disclosing a vulnerability to the company, and received an elite White Hat Visa card from Facebook with $500 credit on it.

"I got a card for … Read more

OP-1, a portable synth with motion control

These days, a humble smartphone or tablet can be used to create music that would probably have required a bulky electronic keyboard a decade ago. Having all the controls on a touch screen, however, may not be every digital-music composer's cup of tea.

That's where the OP-1 portable synthesizer by Sweden-based company Teenage Engineering comes in. The device has a minimalist aluminum chassis and modular-looking keys, which should make it look right at home next to Apple laptops. … Read more

Ruin your daughter's self esteem with this app!

Depending on your point of view, Top Girl is either a harmless game about "girl stuff" (shopping, dating, trying to look "hot") or a thoroughly offensive app promoting a stupefying array of sexist stereotypes.

Whatever your take on Top Girl's social and moral merits, this app definitely falls more under the category of time-waster (and freemium money-waster) than game. You start by choosing an impossibly curvy, underwear-wearing avatar, and then trick her out with clothes with varying "hotness" ratings (divided into "daytime chic" and "club" wear). You then go … Read more

Hyper-networking: A new teen health risk category?

Cue deep, foreboding, slightly accusatory voice: "Do you or your friends text more than 120 messages per school day? You may be at greater risk for substance abuse, permissiveness, depression, poor sleep, and more. Don't wait until it's too late. Get help now. Hyper-networking is no joke."

That's the core message behind new research out of the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine Master of Public Health program, whose findings were presented today at the American Public Health Association's 138th Annual Meeting & Exposition in Denver.

The team set out to determine whether binging … Read more

Teens: Don't call us, we'll text you

Should we still call them "phones"?

In a brief report released today, Nielsen, famous for its TV ratings, said American teens are communicating with their mobile pho-- um, mobile devices more often via texting, at the expense of voice calls.

During the second quarter, device users in the 13- to 17-year-old bracket sent or received more than six text messages every hour that they were awake, Nielsen said. That's an average of 3,339 texts a month, an 8 percent increase from last year. At the same time, voice activity decreased 14 percent--to 646 minutes, nearly 11 … Read more

Study: Hearing loss among U.S. youths has risen

A new national study has found that one in five adolescents now suffers some sort of hearing impairment, according to a report Tuesday on NPR's All Things Considered program. That's a scary statistic.

In the August 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed federal data collected from national yearly surveys of the health of American citizens. The conclusion is chilling: "The prevalence of hearing loss among a sample of U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 19 years was greater in 2005-2006 compared with … Read more

Survey: Most teens have driven while distracted

Most teenagers have driven while distracted even though most know such behavior is dangerous, according to a new survey released Monday.

Almost 86 percent admitted to driving while texting, talking on a phone, or doing other distracting things behind the wheel, according to the results of a survey conducted by Seventeen magazine and the AAA, formally known as the American Automobile Association. The teens said they texted, talked, and ate while driving even though 84 percent of them said they know it's dangerous.

Among those surveyed, 73 percent said they've adjusted their radios while driving, 61 percent said … Read more

The 404 567: Where we get caught playing with our toys (podcast)

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast resurrects our love for action figures and other toys from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Jeff's a little older than Wilson and me, but we can still bond over our mutual love for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures and our mutual hatred for picking up all those foam Nerd darts.

There's also a lot to learn about each other based on our toys. For example, Wilson's mom used to yell at him for unscrewing and tinkering with all his figures, which explains why he eventually grew up building his own computers.

Unfortunately, we're too old to play with children's toys now so we've all graduated to big-boy toys, and it's with great sadness that we have to announce the death of the floppy disk. After three decades of production, Sony announced Friday that it would end all floppy-disk sales before the end of March 2011.

Many are unaware that Sony actually pioneered the first 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, although the 1.44MB disks were quickly rendered obsolete by other types of removable media like Zip disks, USB flash drives, and of course rewriteable CDs and DVDs. Stay tuned as we deliver a heartfelt "eugoogly" to the floppy disk--a close friend that saved kilobytes of data and served as the basis for way too many nerdy pickup lines.

It's no surprise that Internet privacy is a thing of the past, but a few Blippy users are still finding that out the hard way. If you've never heard of the site before, Blippy is a new company that lets you share your online purchases with everyone on a social network. The service gleans financial data, including what you bought and where you got it, and lets you compare your purchases with others at a granular level, all with the hopes of saving you a few bucks on future purchases.

Unfortunately, five Blippy users found their credit card information published in Google's search engine cache over the weekend. A rep from the company claims that a breach in two banks' security systems caused the problem and they've asked Google to reindex the entire site to fix it, but none of us really understand the appeal of Blippy- feel free to chime in if you're a user and let us know if you've stopped using the service after hearing about this breach in security.

EPISODE 567 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Study: Teens prefer texting to talking

Like previous generations, today's teens seem to be constantly on the phone. But now they're doing a lot more texting than talking.

One third of teens in the U.S. text more than 100 times a day, according to a study released Tuesday by Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Based on a survey and focus groups conducted with teenagers between 12 and 17, Pew found that text messaging is by far the most common way that kids communicate with each other, more than chatting on the phone, e-mailing, using social-networking sites, or talking face to face.

More … Read more

Let's not create a cyberbullying panic

Recent stories in the press about teenage cyberbullying and real-world bullying are sickening. It's hard to know how much cyberbullying contributed to her decision to kill herself, but the case of Phoebe Prince brings tears to my eyes. The South Hadley, Mass., 15-year-old was reportedly the brunt of repeated cruelty at the hands of classmates (six of whom are now facing criminal charges) until she put an end to her life.

There is also the recent cyberbullying case of Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old girl from Long Island, N.Y., who committed suicide last month after being taunted with cruel … Read more