Faking News » Sciences

Relationships suffer a heavy blow as Facebook fails to notify birthdays

Pagal Patrakar — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:24:17 +0000

New Delhi. 25-year-old Praveen is on verge of losing his job as he couldn’t wish his manager on his birthday today. Praveen was the only one in the office who had no idea why a cake had been ordered in the office, and he happened to ask the question to Ankit, his boss and the birthday boy of the day. A curious Praveen was left crestfallen when he realized the faux pas he had committed.

“I checked my Facebook account and there were no birthday notifications! I remember being the first one to wish Ankit a happy birthday on his wall last year. Everyone thought that the 7.54% salary hike that I got was due to that quick performance,” Praveen, a regular Facebook user with 2443 friends said.

Most birthdays are being celebrated only on Facebook, research says.

Praveen then checked Ankit’s profile and he found his date of birth listed there, visible to public. Ankit hadn’t even unfriended him, but somehow Facebook failed to remind him about the occasion – a grave miss that can now cost his job.

“Boss was already unhappy with me for missing office on first Monday of 2012; that’s how I missed the HR mail reminding of the coming birthdays in the month,” Praveen told Faking News.

Millions of other Facebook users too complained of this technical glitch that stopped birthday notifications from appearing on their Facebook profiles. Experts have rated it as the most serious bug in Facebook till date, as it could potentially ruin millions of personal and professional relationships.

“Facebook was already being blamed for one-third of divorces, but now they have to take blame for lost jobs, broken hearts, and avoidable spending,” an internet security expert predicted.

“It could even drive away users to Google Plus!” the expert further warned of the unimaginable consequences.

The predictions by experts don’t appear way off the mark as Vikas had to buy a diamond ring for his girlfriend Poonam after he failed to wish her on her birthday last night. Vikas too blames Facebook for his impending credit card bill.

“They won’t stop reminding me to add some random guy as friend or to like some stupid page that some stupid friend of mine has liked, but they forgot to remind me of my girlfriend’s birthday! This is outrageous!” an angry Vikas said.

Apart from people like Vikas and Praveen, who are battling upheavals in their personal and professional lives due to the latest Facebook bug, there are people like Manish who have started doubting their own worth after nobody cared to wish them on their birthdays.

“Man, I don’t have a single real friend!” said a morose Manish, who finally updated his status as “Happy Birthday to me” to notify his friends. His status update attracted five ‘like’s.

“The fuckers just liked it, and didn’t bother to wish me even after that!” he rued.

White dove, the symbol of peace, introduced in Angry Birds

Pagal Patrakar — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:15:06 +0000

New Delhi. Millions of peace loving people around world were outraged when Rovio Mobile, the developers of the video game Angry Birds, announced the arrival of a new angry bird – the white dove. The white dove, with an olive branch in its beak, is the life time ambassador of peace, but the latest version of the game will see the docile bird fighting it out with greedy pigs.

The new game will be released next year and will see a white dove holding a bomb in its beak as opposed to the traditional olive branch. Players can launch the bird from the catapult and it will drop the bomb on the green pigs with a tap of the finger.

Outrageous depiction of a white dove

“This will screw up our future generations as they will left confused forever whenever they see the white dove drawn for peace messages,” Ravindra Singh, a frequent player of Angry Birds in his office expressed his concerns, “This also screws up the traditional metaphors in literature. It’s almost like calling a snake the man’s best friend.”

Apart from avid gamers, poets, writers, and animal rights activists have also condemned the move to depict the white dove as an angry bird.

“This defeats the whole purpose of the game, which is anger management. They are not doing good by making the symbol of peace indulge in widespread violence,” said Mukul (name changed to protect identity), a fan of Angry Birds, who claims that he associates the green pigs with his boss and the game always helps him relax after a stressful day in his office.

While the game is yet to be released in India, the government has decided to pre-screen it and ban it. Government has issued a notification asking all the Internet Service Providers to block all those websites that allow downloading of Angry Birds.

“This can’t be allowed,” Kapil Sibal, union telecom minister objected to the move, “This can hurt the sentiments of people and incite communal passions as white is associated with Christianity and Green is associated with Islam. We will not allow this game to be played in India.”

Rovio Mobile has completely rejected the criticisms and especially trashed Sibal’s argument that the game could incite communal violence.

“That’s idiotic, now we perfectly understand why he was trending on Twitter in India,” a representative of Rovio Mobile told Faking News.

The game developers claim that the depiction of a white dove as an angry bird was actually in keeping with changing times, and people, especially those from India, should actually welcome it.

“I hear phrases like ‘Gandhi with Guns’ from celebrated writers like Arundhati Roy, and Anna Hazare, a Gandhian, supporting slapping of a union minister,” a Rovio Mobile representative argued, “We have similarly attempted to show that a white dove can continue to be the symbol of peace even if it killed pigs.”

Government to pre-screen babies before mothers can give birth to them

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:20:37 +0000

New Delhi. In order to make this world a better and cleaner place for sensitive people, government has decided to pre-screen the arrival of future generations and stop those babies from being born who could offend people’s sentiments.

This will be done through a technology that mixes elements of genetic engineering, as developed by medical science, predictive algorithm, as developed by social networking websites, and preemptive censorship, as developed by Kapil Sibal.

“We can’t allow people’s sentiments to be hurt,” Sibal said in a press conference that was attended by representatives from Google and Facebook, “While our constitution allows a person to have sex and reproduce, we can’t allow them to breed babies who can later offend religious and cultural sentiments.”

“The right to reproduce can’t be absolute; we have to put reasonable restrictions on reproduction,” he added.

Many expert believes that Sibal in inspired by the Hollywood movie Minority Report, where a crime is stopped before it is committed.

The breakthrough was achieved late last night after the union minister of various responsibilities met with experts on various domains to come up with a solution to the ongoing debate over internet censorship.

The social networking websites totally refused to take any responsibility for what their users do, which led to the conclusion that the original offender was the user – the common citizen.

Representatives from Google and Facebook claimed that they had crucial data related to a user’s past behavior that can be used to predict how a user will behave in future, but their algorithm can’t predict if the user will behave offensively.

“Our algorithm suggest them which friends to add to their network and what activities to ‘like’ based on their behavior, and most of the times we come up with relevant information,” a Facebook representative explained to Kapil Sibal, who was amazed to learn how internet has grown beyond belief.

Representatives of Google later offered that they could help the government develop a similar predictive technology if the government agreed to keep them out of this censorship business. This gave Sibal the idea of pre-screening babies.

“If you guys know users so well, why should we restrict ourselves to the internet domain?” he wondered, “After all internet is just a ‘notional’ world, let’s target the real world.”

Sources tell Faking News that Sibal immediately called on his fellow lawyers and medical science experts and decided to work on a predictive technology that could predict the behavior of a yet-to-be born child.

“Based on DNA samples of the parents and their past record of offending people, we can surely identify potential offenders,” Sibal claimed as he announced his latest plan for “Human Resources Development”.

The union minister claimed that India will be full of gentlemen and gentlewomen once this pre-screening of babies gets underway. “There will be no abusive tweets, no offensive Facebook pages, no shocking Google auto-complete suggestions,” Sibal said.

The announcement has expectedly outraged people who wondered how could the government censor their babies.

“It’s my baby and I don’t need Sibal’s character certificate,” a pregnant woman tweeted.

Political parties too have opposed the latest move with BJP claiming it to be a conspiracy to stop birth of potential BJP voters. Though privately many BJP leaders confided to Faking News that they’d love to use this technology themselves if they came back to power.

The only parties who have openly welcomed the technology are the government of China, Guardian Council of Iran, and an unknown group in the USA.

All Facebook posts to have “Kapil Sibal likes this” by default

Pagal Patrakar — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:40:23 +0000

New Delhi. Facebook has agreed to the demands of union minister Kapil Sibal to screen content before they go live on the website. The social networking website has announced that it will hire a team of young men and women to censor content being posted by millions of users from India. The team will only allow “acceptable” content to be published online, all of which will be identified by a “Kapil Sibal likes this” sign below it.

“If a status update doesn’t have a ‘Kapil Sibal likes this’ response by default, it means that our filters have somehow missed it,” a representative of Facebook told Faking News, “We appeal to our law abiding Indian users to immediately report such status updates for abuse. Our team will review it and give it a ‘Kapil Sibal likes this’ mark if they find it clean.”

If he doesn’t like it, you can’t say it

Sources suggest that government has expressed happiness over the decision by Facebook and has promised all support in implementing the grand censorship plan. Earlier, government had hired thousands of unemployed youth for Facebooking and Tweeting under NREGA, who could now become the talent pool for hiring by Facebook.

Explaining the whole mechanism, Facebook authorities informed that the company has asked for a list of “objectionable” terms from the government, which will be used by an automated bot to hold a status update if it contained any of those keywords. Such pending updates will later be manually checked by the team.

The bot, as well as the team, will get administrative rights through a profile named “Kapil Sibal”. Once the bot or a member of the team approves a post, the profile will automatically ‘like’ the post, which will cause the “Kapil Sibal likes this” sign to appear by default.

“99% of the Facebook updates will be cleaned by us, though 1% may go through,” Rahul Gandhi (not to be confused with Congress youth leader), a Facebook employee claimed, “But if people cooperate, we will purge even those remaining 1% of the updates.”

Facebook team agreed to give a demonstration to Faking News on how the censorship program will work. Our reporter logged in and wrote “Narendra Modi is a good leader” as status update, which never appeared on his profile, not even as a pending post.

“They have given us a list of blacklisted words too, which means such posts are straightway marked as spam and deleted,” Facebook authorities explained.

Our reporter then wrote “I was screwed in office today”, which appeared on his Facebook wall, but was put in moderation. “Sexually explicit terms” was the explanation. Even a status update with just the number “69” was put in moderation for the same reasons.

Finally, our reporter could get a “clean” post in his fourth attempt. He wrote “ZERO” and it said “Kapil Sibal likes this”.

New Facebook virus morphs user’s face on Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture poster

Pagal Patrakar — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:06:41 +0000

Bangalore. Many Facebook users were shocked to see their faces morphed on to the poster of the upcoming movie The Dirty Picture as a result of a new virus that seems to attack Indian users of the social networking website. The victims, mostly males aged between 18 and 35 years, were embarrassed no end when they saw themselves being kissed by Tusshar Kapoor and Emraan Hashmi.

“Man, my life is ruined now,” Kamalesh (name changed) shared his harrowing experience with Faking News, “I saw a link that said – EXPOSED AND CENSORED! Vidya Balan naked on the sets of The Dirty Picture – and I clicked it out of excitement. And all I see next is a picture of mine being liked by all my friends. That ugly Emraan was kissing me! Yuck!”

A picture uploaded by virus on the Facebook wall of a user who had Digvijay Singh’s photo as his profile picture.

Many young men desirous of seeing Vidya in nude fell for this trap as the virus spread like Emraan Hashmi’s kiss. Facebook walls of users were flooded with pictures of their friends being kissed or caressed by Tusshar Kapoor, Emraan Hashmi, and Naseeruddin Shah.

“Being kissed by Naseer is ugly too but one can bear the shock,” Ravish (name changed again on request) told Faking News, “I can claim that it was a grandfatherly peck. But man, this is so traumatizing to see your stomach being touched by Tusshar or Emraan looking at you with lust.”

“Sick people!” Ravish said, referring either to the people who coded the virus or the actor duo.

It’s not yet clear if the virus was specifically designed to target the male users only as no confirmed report of a girl being affected by the virus was received. Internet security experts were divided on the issue.

“It’s easy to make such a virus that targets only the male users because profile data of Facebook makes the gender of the user public,” Krishnan, working with Symantec said. However, Krishnan agreed that perhaps the virus designers didn’t need to incorporate such a feature as the chances of a girl clicking on a link, which promises to show Vidya Balan nude, was very low.

After the massive attack, which is second of its kind in as many days, Facebook has issued a statement asking people to get the hell out of the website if they can’t differentiate between a spam and a genuine link.

“Morons! Just f@#K off!” an official statement by the leading social networking site said.

Doctor invents pills for politicians causing instant heart pain

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:07:32 +0000

New Delhi. A doctor working at AIIMS has created a pill that can cause instant heart pain to politicians planning to avoid custody in cases of corruption. The pill, tentatively named Lokpill, can be gulped down without water or milk by an accused politician, who will instantly feel a palpable, but not fatal, pain in his heart. The politician can then rightfully ask to be shifted to a hospital instead of being taken to jail.

“We often receive requests from politicians for issuing medical certificates that can enable them to be hospitalized when an arrest warrant is issued against them,” Dr. Harishchandra Yadav, the inventor of Lokpill, told Faking News, “Many of them would be quite hale and hearty but would insist on being declared pale and sick.”

One pill a day, keeps the police away.

“We were caught between duty and safety in such situations,” he added.

Sick of such demands, Dr. Harishchandra decided to find a way out. Initially he asked Medical Council of India (MCI) to issue “Anticipatory Medical Reports” to politicians who fail to get anticipatory bail.

“Now that we have enough empirical data to find a correlation between sickness and rejected anticipatory bails, I thought MCI could use them to issue anticipatory medical reports, which can be used by politicians as an alternative to anticipatory bails,” Dr. Harishchandra explained his concept, which was rejected by the MCI on grounds of being “infeasible”.

“I tried my best to convince MCI,” he said, “Anticipatory medical reports could have been helpful to corporate employees and students as well, who are always likely to fall sick during cricket matches, outdoor picnics, or similar events; HR data from various companies or leave applications from educational institutes can prove it.”

While MCI agreed that an empirical connection between illness and events could be established in aforementioned cases, it asked Dr. Harishchandra to think something more “practical”, which led to the idea of a pill that causes non-fatal heart pain.

“The concept is plain and simple and no doctor on earth could dispute the findings,” a visibly happy Dr. Harishchandra explained, “An accused… I mean a wannabe patient can take these emergency pills the moment a police team comes knocking at the door. The police will have no other option but to take the honorary politician to the nearest hospital.”

“Although I’m not sure if corporate employees or students would like to take this pill, but they can try,” he said.

Dr. Harishchandra said that Lokpill was safe and could be used without prescription from a registered medical practitioner. The pill will be available in all medical stores after Diwali.

“It is also free from any adverse side effects such as honesty or truthfulness,” Dr. Harishchandra assured the politicians who could bulk order Lokpill.

(also read this report by Partha Sarathi Pradhan)

Facebooking and Tweeting added to the list of jobs under NREGA

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:03:57 +0000

New Delhi. Government has decided to add activities such as writing status updates on Facebook and Twitter to the list of jobs allowed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), originally NREGA.

Though this has been ostensibly done to empower the rural youth and bridge the “digital divide” between the urban and rural India, experts believe that the central government is trying to counter anti-government activists on social networking websites through this initiative.

Sources tell Faking News that the government had been mulling for long over ways to control criticism in the online world. Taking a leaf out of the US government’s book, Government of India even tried to create fake profiles on Facebook and Twitter to propagate its views, but anti-government activists could spot the fake ones.

NREGA candidates apparently being trained to tweet like hell

“This is when they decided to employ real people, and not bots, to fight the anti-government trolls,” Prasanna, a cyber-trolling expert alleged, “And they have done it cleverly by disguising it as employment for the rural youth.”

Although government officials declined to comment, Congress leader Digvijay Singh justified the decision of “paid tweeting”.

“I have documents to prove that those tweeting against Congress and the UPA government are being paid by the RSS and the BJP,” Digvijay Singh said, “We are paying them back in their own coin.”

When asked how the government could use taxpayers’ money to fund state propaganda, Digvijay Singh smiled and walked away.

While government is all set to launch the latest NREGA policy, many critics have raised questions over this being an “employment scheme”.

“It is true that Facebooking and Tweeting is for jobless people, but not for the unemployed,” Omkara Shukla, a rural opinion maker opined, “There is a thin line between being jobless and being unemployed – just like there is a thread like thin line between being bewaqoof and being chutiya.”

Omkara Shukla claims that the step announced by the government can’t be called an employment scheme as it would just transform the unemployed people into jobless ones.

“There appears a larger conspiracy,” Omi, as Omkara Shukla is fondly called, alleged, “It seems the government is trying to counter the bitter criticism it faces in the virtual world. Very soon we could see pro-government trolls fighting it out with anti-government ones.”

“The battle between bewaqoofs and chutiyas,” he explained.

Meanwhile the first batch of Facebookers and Twitterers are already being trained by the government, sources say. They are being taught key English phrases that win online debates, such as – “that doesn’t make any sense”, “lame argument by a lameass”, and “shut the fuck up”.

Kapil Sibal’s $35 computer labeled as Micromax Tablet killer

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:59:12 +0000

New Delhi. Technology experts believe that the $35 tablet to be launched by the HRD Ministry will surely prove to be a “Micromax Tablet killer” if not an “iPad killer”. This was declared in an emergency meeting of experts that took place to reassess the potential of government’s tablet after Amazon’s “Kindle Fire” didn’t appear anything like an iPad killer, as it was being projected by some experts.

“We didn’t want to go wrong again,” Harish Krishnan, a leading technology blogger and expert said, “There was complete agreement among us that Sakshat (name of the $35 tablet) will not be an iPad killer, but we had some heated discussion on whether it can be a Kindle Fire killer or a Samsung Galaxy Tab killer.”

The prototype of the $35 tablet was unveiled in September last year by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, but two months after that he replaced A Raja.

The meeting of the technological experts took place in a totally parliamentary manner, Harish informed. The motion to dub Sakshat as Kindle Fire killer or a Samsung Galaxy Tab killer was rejected by a voice vote.

“We would have had a vote to choose between one of these two options if the motion was adopted,” Harish, who acted as the Speaker in the meeting, described the proceedings.

The proceedings were not without interruptions as many experts kept on shouting to prove their point.

“We expunged the remarks of a few fellows who kept on yelling that Sakshat will surely be an iPad killer,” Harish revealed, “These were the same guys who had earlier labeled Google Wave as Facebook killer and Facebook email as Gmail killer. We don’t trust them anymore.”

A group of experts who wanted the $35 tablet to be called Casio Calculator killer or a Chor Bazaar Tablet killer staged a walkout amidst the din as the remaining experts decided to go ahead and choose a suitable sobriquet for the tablet, which could be launched next week.

“A lot of options were discussed, but we decided to play safe and chose a brand that doesn’t yet exist, so that people can’t compare the features,” Harish informed about the masterstroke that experts came up with to circumvent criticism.

“We realized that it’s not easy to outsmart Kapil Sibal. We had to play the same game, hence we decided to come up with a ‘notional’ brand,” Harish explained, “A brand of tablet that doesn’t exist, but is not too hard to imagine e.g. tablets by companies like Lava, Lemon, Zen, Carbonn, or Maxx.”

The experts finally agreed on Micromax so that its brand ambassador Akshay Kumar, who claims to be a devout follower of Maa Durga, gets some news coverage during Navratri days.

India to be renamed “Inddia” for bringing good luck to the nation

Guest Patrakar — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:28:38 +0000

New Delhi. After weeks of bickering, ruling Congress and opposition BJP have come together and announced a step that they believe would make things better for aam aadmi. Both the parties have decided to pass a resolution in the Parliament and change the country’s name from “India” to “Inddia”, based on numerological advice. The new name is expected to bring a new boost to the economy, and help get rid of the bad spirits that have been troubling the country.

“Petrol prices, interest rates, scams, terrorism, earthquakes, Indian cricket team’s performance, or Poonam Pandey – This changed name will deal with anything that has been troubling the citizens of the nation,” a joint statement released by Congress and BJP read.

Sources say that the idea was proposed by BJP’s astrological cell, which was immediately accepted by Congress core committee as the ruling party didn’t know any other way to deal with myriad of problems plaguing the nation.

Experts point out numerous successful name changes such as that of Tusshar Kapoor, who is now all set to kiss Vidya Balan on screen.

Various name changes for India were considered, and “Inddia” was found to have the most auspicious value of 5. This value is a firm driver for growth and peace. Chandragupt, the inspiring leader who led India to its golden age in medieval times had the same value.

“We needed to get the numbers right,” a BJP leader told Faking News, “The numerological value of ‘India’ is 1, which is not proving to be very auspicious. Incidentally, 26/11 comes to the same number, and so does ‘Taj Hotel’, where the worst carnage in recent times took place in 2008. Even ‘Manmohan Singh’ has the same numeric value.”

The BJP is hopeful that the name change will rid the country of negative energies, end the scourge of terror forever, boost exports, and take us into a lasting period of peace and prosperity.

When asked why it didn’t go for “Bharat”, which also has a numeric value of 5, BJP said that it will change the name of the country again if voted to power of its own.

“We came up with this number so that Congress could agree to the proposal,” the BJP leader claimed.

“Numeric value of ‘Rahul’ is 6, while that of ‘Sonia’ is 4, so we thought that 5 is something we should settle for,” a Congress source revealed the reason why Congress agreed to the BJP proposal, “Also, it is the number of future; numeric value of ‘Priyanka’ is 5!”

(author AmreekanDesi blogs here. The numeric values of names quoted in the report above are actually correct and not fake! Those interested can cross check them by substituting 1 for A, 2 for B, 3 for C… 25 for Y, 26 for Z, and then adding them up. A grand sum of say 149 will amount to 1+ 4+9=14=1+4=5 thus giving 5 as the numeric value for that name)

People with less than 32 friends on Facebook or Twitter identified as “socially poor”

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:36:07 +0000

New Delhi. After Planning Commission’s benchmarks for identifying poor people based on economic criteria drew flak, the government has come up with new set up benchmarks that will identify poor people based on “social” criteria. The government has claimed that critics should hold their horses for now, as the definition of “socially poor” would include those who were left out by Planning Commission as being “economically poor” and help those in need.

“It’s same as ‘economic backwardness’ versus ‘social backwardness’; a mixture of both goes a long way in making policies that are hallmark of a welfare state,” Mukul Wasnik, Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment told Faking News.

However, for the first time in the history of independent India, government has used “social” in a context that doesn’t include considerations exclusively based on one’s caste, religion, tribe, or other ethnic identities. Instead, it’s actually “social” i.e. the way a person’s relationships are made with the rest of the society.

While Munaf Patel comes from a modest family background, he could be declared poor due to his social relationships.

“We are willing to consider even online relationships, as that’s where the word ‘social’ is mostly used these days,” Mr. Wasnik said.

The union minister revealed that under the new set of benchmarks, a person with less than 32 friends on Facebook will be considered for being classified as “socially poor” if each one of his or her friends is having more than 32 friends.

Similarly, someone who is following more than 1000 accounts on Twitter but having less than 32 followers even after publishing at least 5000 public tweets will be considered socially poor.

“Poor status on social networking sites will increase the chances of a person to get the BPL (Below Poverty Line) card, but the final decision will be taken based on his or her status in the real world,” Mr. Wasnik clarified.

The criteria for being socially poor in the real world are quite complex but mostly revolves around quantity and quality of one’s relationships and “contacts”.

For example, a person, who fails to get even a single person to become his or her guarantor for opening a bank account, will be classified as “socially poor”, as it proves utter lack of “quantity” in relationships and contacts in urban India.

“This should cover all those people who are spending more than 32 rupees a day but are still poor for all practical purposes,” the union minister claimed.

When pointed out by Faking News that even Suresh Kalmadi could meet the same fate if he tried to open a new bank account today, the minister refused to comment if Kalmadi could be classified as “poor”. Interestingly, Kalmadi is spending less than 32 rupees right now as he is in Tihar Jail.

Not only Kalmadi, Faking News found out that some of the criteria for identifying “socially poor” were throwing up other errors especially in cases where “quality” of relationships were being considered.

For instance, Indian cricketer Munaf Patel could be declared socially poor as the only relationship he had was with Bobby Darling, while other cricketers in his social circle were having affairs with well-to-do models and Bollywood actresses.

“Even Manmohan Singh and L K Advani are turning out to be poor based on the ‘quality’ of their political relationships,” an expert pointed out the drawbacks in the criteria to identify socially poor people.

“However, Sharad Pawar is rich even here!” the expert added.

Panic strikes as Facebook allows girls to list anyone as brother on Rakshabandhan

Pagal Patrakar — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 04:57:25 +0000

New Delhi. Suraj, who had successfully added a good looking Karishma to his Facebook friend list last month, was shocked to see a “Karishma is now sister of Suraj” update on his news feed this morning. Suraj had not confirmed this relationship status change, probably initiated by Karishma, but a new feature on Facebook bypassed this requirement to celebrate Rakshabandhan – the festival celebrating relationship between brothers and sisters.

“I was shocked,” 17-year-old Suraj confirmed as he desperately tried to edit his profile to remove Karishma as a family member, “I can’t even change this shit now! What the hell is this?”

At one point of time Suraj even thought of removing Karishma as friend, but dropped the idea as that would have stripped him of the rights to see her photos albums, which contained photos of many other good looking girls.

“Her privacy options don’t allow a normal visitor to see her photos,” Suraj expressed his frustration even as hordes of his male friends ‘liked’ the ‘activity’ of him becoming the Facebook brother of Karishma.

Facebook says that implementing the new feature is as easy as tying a Rakhi on someone’s wrist

Karishma, who has over 900 friends and 1200 pending friendship requests on Facebook, confirmed that it was her who made Suraj a brother.

“His first message to me on Facebook was – plz add me and replay me – I ignored. He kept on sending me messages and I don’t know when and why I added him. And it was worse after that. He liked all my photos and commented on everything I posted!” Karishma explained her relationship with Suraj.

This morning Karishma got a personalized mail from the Facebook team that made her aware of the Rakshabandhan special feature, which allowed a woman from India to list any man from her contact list as a brother without having to wait for approval from the man concerned.

“The mail said it was in the spirit of the Rakshabandhan,” Karishma showed the official e-mailer that also said – they can run, they can hide, but they can’t escape your love.

Apart from Suraj, Karishma confirmed that she made at least seventeen more “rakhi brothers” through this new feature.

And Faking News can confirm that this phenomenon was not limited to just Karishma and Suraj, thousands of other Indian men were filled with panic as they saw themselves being listed as brothers by women they had been trying to flirt with.

“I am moving to Google Plus,” said visibly upset Mahesh, who was made brother by seven different girls, all with Priyanka Chopra profile pictures.

When contacted by Faking News, Facebook administrators confirmed that the new feature was enabled by them and that it would remain active for a day. They refused to comment what happens to the changed relationship statuses afterwards.

“We have no idea, you should know as you are from India. We just implemented something that we thought was not very different from what happens in the real world,” a Facebook official explained.

“Yes, people can edit their profile after Rakshabandhan ends,” the official clarified, which gave some of the panic stricken men a glimmer of hope.

However, sources inform that many users have already taken screenshots of the news feeds and have uploaded it on their Facebook photo albums, which might make erasing the footprints of the new relationships difficult for now-brother men.

“Hahaha, I’ve tagged both Suraj and Karishma in the photo,” Rohan, a mutual friend of the newly made brother-sister told Faking News.

Honeymoon picture on Facebook receives “Hang Kasab” comment

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:12:28 +0000

Mumbai. Supriya, who uploaded her recent Honeymoon pictures on Facebook for her friends to ‘like’ and comment upon, was left a bit confused as one of her Facebook friends commented on a picture with a message calling for immediate execution of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru.

“It was a picture of Siddharth holding me by the Sicily beach,” the 26-year-old who married her longtime boyfriend earlier this June, informed about the picture on which the comment was posted, “The comment said – How long will Indians die while terrorists enjoy biryani? Hang Kasab and Afzal. Post it all over Facebook. Jai Hind!”

Supriya had kept looking at her laptop screen awaiting cool comments after uploading her honeymoon pictures

The comment was posted by a certain Vivek Veer Singhal, who somehow has been on Supriya’s list of friends on Facebook for over two years now.

“I’ve absolutely no frigging idea who is he,” said Supriya, “I don’t even know why I added him. But what worries me more is why did he post that comment on my honeymoon pic? Worse, that comment received 37 likes as against 35 likes on the original pic.”

Supriya, whose every status update and picture used to receive dozens of likes and comments before she updated her relationship status on Facebook, admitted that she was very depressed with the numbers, and wondered if her honeymoon was not as exciting as she originally thought.

“Every time we got a picture clicked during our Euro trip, I could imagine a string of likes and comments like – ‘supercool’, ‘wow’, ‘so romantic’, ‘you guys look awesome’, ‘where is this place?’ – getting posted on the pic in quick succession,” Supriya recalled her honeymoon experience, “But I had never imagined this happening.”

“He even tagged a Facebook page called ‘Hang Kasab’ on the face of Siddharth in the picture!” a visibly upset Supriya said.

When asked why she doesn’t remove Vivek from her friends-list, Supriya said that she feared losing important data as Vivek had earlier ‘liked’ all her status updates and pictures, including the honeymoon picture in question.

While experts suspect Supriya of nursing an “identity crisis” that has pushed her to worry too much about her virtual life, leading television journalist Sagarika Ghose has blamed Internet Hindus like Vivek for the phenomenon.

Google Plus blocking entry to users who were hyperactive on Orkut

Pagal Patrakar — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:12:44 +0000

California, USA. In what appears to be a serious violation of the Equal Opportunities Act, Google Inc. has been found meting out unfair treatment to those internet users who were hyperactive on Orkut, Google’s original social networking website that got trumped by Facebook. The users, usually referred as Orkutiyas in India, are finding it hugely challenging to join Google Plus, the latest social networking initiative from Google aimed at trumping Facebook.

“I have a functioning Google account and I was invited by a friend to join Google Plus, but my G+ profile is still not active,” complained A@sHis \m/ehTa, an avid social networker and an active Orkut user. Aashish (his printable name) claims that he entered his credentials correctly on at least five occasions, but was spurned by the website each time.

A Google+ user, who imported his contact from his old Orkut account, saw this Circle automatically getting created by the system.

Many others like Aashish complain of numerous such ‘glitches’ that have stopped them from either joining or being active on Google Plus. Now they suspect some ‘organized attempt’ by Google to keep them at bay.

“How come Pratik, that guy who never used Orkut and had always used Facebook to wish me birthday, got his Google+ account created within minutes?” Aashish, who is 90% cool, 80% trusty, and 70% sexy on Orkut for the last five years, wondered.

“How can Google do this to their original patrons? Domestic chicken is equal to pulse for Plus?” he complained, referring to the Hindi proverb of “ghar ki murgi daal baraabar”.

Some original Orkut users even accuse Google of being ‘condescending’ and ‘insulting’ to them.

“When I clicked ‘Circles’ tab in my Google+ page, it took me to a page which had a quick tutorial explaining what a circle was. It showed triangles and hexagons as being different from a circle! Do they think people at Orkut don’t know that!?” Irfan, a former Orkut user who could set up his G+ profile with help of a friend, accused Google of following discriminatory policies.

Google has refused to comment over these allegations but social media experts believe that the internet giant might be taking some ‘preemptive’ and ‘precautionary’ measures to make sure that Google+ doesn’t go the Orkut, Buzz, or Wave way.

“It’s like not inviting your ex to your marriage ceremony,” a social media expert with 32 followers on Twitter claimed.

Facebook to launch its own country to take on Google Plus

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:41:37 +0000

California, USA. While everyone is talking whether Facebook will be finally tamed and “killed” by Google+, trusted sources inform us that Facebook is planning a much bigger coup. The social networking website, which has over 600 million active users, is all set to launch its own modern republic next week. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would head an interim government in the new republic till inaugural elections are held.

“While mentioning Facebook, various experts have been pointing out that if it were a country, it’d have been only behind China and India in terms of population size,” said a Facebook source, “Our team spotted this opportunity and decided to give it a go.”

Coming Monday, every registered user of Facebook would receive a mail asking to confirm if they’d like to become the citizen of the new country. If a user confirms, he or she would receive his or her passport of the new country, whereas those rejecting the offer would have to apply for “visa” to continue being a user of the website.

“Yes, those not willing to join the Facebook Nation will have to pay visa fees. We’d have different types of visas for different types of users. The social media consultants will have to apply for business visa, Twitter addicts would have to apply for tourist visa, while those who still prefer Orkut will be issued student visa,” informed our source.

Interestingly, since Facebook doesn’t yet own an independent piece of land in this world, all those who’d become the citizens of the Facebook Nation (FN) would automatically become Non Resident Facebookers (NRFs), and thus may need to apply for visa in their existing countries of residence.

“We are in talks with all the nations of the world to allow NRFs to continue living in their respective countries on immigrant visa or transit visa till we buy land and relocate all our citizens,” the Facebook source said, who further informed, “In fact, we may not need to buy land at all because countries like India are willing to offer dual citizenships for the NRFs at no extra cost.”

The new nation would uphold the freedom of its citizens, but is not so sure about privacy

“We are the fastest growing economy, so we believe we’d strike out a favorable deal with other countries, so the users willing to become citizens of the Facebook Nation should not worry,” the source added.

The new country FN will follow democracy and electoral politics with multi-party system. Any user, rather citizen, would be able to create his own party and ask fellow citizens to ‘like’ it. The parties with maximum likes (at least 10% of total population of FN) would be allowed to contest elections and form government. The first elections would be held in December 2012.

“It makes sense,” says sociologist Ashish Nandy, “people today spend more time online and socialize with virtual friends more than their real ones. Online business is growing exponentially and ‘e’ version of everything real is coming up. Soon, every action of a human being would be executed only in the online domain, so it’s better if there is an authority to regulate and govern all those actions.”

The minute details about how the new county would function are still awaited and could be announced next Monday, but experts believe that going won’t be easy for the new nation, especially if they don’t have a “physical presence” in the real world.

“Politics and business is fine, the e-country would be able to manage them,” says e-sociologist Pritish Nandy, “But what about the social aspects? Most internet users consider Google as God; they turn to Google for all their solutions. Will Facebook allow this practice or consider this as some heretic or traitorous action?”

“What would be the identity of this nation? The ethos? The symbols? Have they thought about these things?” Pritish Nandy sounded very cynical.

But our Facebook source claimed that all such issues had been discussed intensely within the team before they decided to launch a new country. The thumbs-up picture of the “like button” would be the national icon of the new country, FarmVille Cow would be the national animal, while poking would be the native way of greeting each other.

“There is a proposal to make one of the soundtracks of the movie The Social Network as the national anthem,” informed our source, who hinted that Beatles’ song “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” which appears at the end of the movie might win the race.

The not-so-cynical experts believe that the Facebook Nation would be a runaway success and would lead to creation of new e-countries, with Google most likely to follow suit and pave way for a bipolar but vibrant e-world.

“The real problem would be when companies like ibibo follow suit; it will create failed e-countries that might give rise to e-recession and e-terrorism,” warned an expert.

(Updated on July 1, 2011 to modify the script to incorporate the launch of Google+; the original script referred to the launch of email service by Facebook in November 2010. “Facebook Nation” picture source)

Scientist develops special gene to help students score over 100% marks

Simon — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 07:00:30 +0000

New Delhi. A geneticist has isolated the gene for academic excellence, Faking News can reveal. Professor Mohan Bhatt successfully found the gene after ten years of collecting DNA samples from tea cups at Jawaharlal Nehru University (although not those from the Arts Faculty).

“This is my life work,” said Professor Bhatt, “and it’s very safe – I tested it on myself,” he added, giving an interview whilst reading classical Chinese literature, doing calculus in the margins, and drafting a new Lokpal Bill with his free hand.

The scientist first isolated the academic gene and then travelled to Switzerland to shoot the new discovery at the speed of light at CERN. He had originally hoped this process would create an all-powerful “faster than a speeding bullet” Superman gene, but in the end he settled for thought processes faster than a Brett Lee bouncer at Perth.

After analyzing the logo of Delhi University, Professor Bhatt had earlier tried to fuse the genes of an elephant with that of a student, but the results were not so encouraging, he says.

Professor Bhatt is now offering injections of the gene to next year’s Delhi University applicants in order to boost their marks. “With my academic gene injections,” he said, “students could get 105% or even 110%”.

St. Stephen’s College said that although all current cutoffs are less than 100%, they “would not rule out” a 100%+ cutoff in future to trump SRCC, while Pune University has already announced a cutoff of 102%.

The current “drug policy” for exams only requires students to be neither drunk nor high in the exam hall (these states are traditionally an advantage for creative writing tests.)

“I’d love an academic injection,” said Sandeep, 17, “at the moment I have to waste time with a tutor and actually learn things! Forget that! I want results fast.”

The breakthrough has many more possible applications. Faking News called the Low Intelligence Association of India to tell them about the new discovery, but they failed to see how the breakthrough could be of use to them.

Professor Bhatt had previously sought the gene in the DNA of government officials. However, after being injected with those genes, some of the test monkeys forgot how to peel bananas.

When celebrities clicked Facebook spam links on their walls

Pagal Patrakar — Mon, 16 May 2011 15:05:32 +0000

The latest Facebook spam that appears to have started today tells you about a video in which you are looking stupid or funny or simply horrible. The spam link asks you to untag yourself from the video that is cleverly disguised as a YouTube link. Ram Gopal Varma also got such a link and he clicked it. This is what followed:

Ram Gopal Varma finds Abhishek Bachchan's funny video

A couple of weeks back, when everyone was talking about Osama Bin Laden’s death, a spam link went viral that claimed to be a WikiLeaks video of Osama being killed by the US forces. Even Pakistani President wanted to see what was happening inside his country, so he clicked the link:

Zardari tried to find out what US was doing inside his country

Another “popular” Facebook spam that appeared everywhere was a link that claimed to be based on a “technology” capable of predicting how would one’s face look like in 20 years. Only that this cutting edge technology ended up showing the same picture to everyone. This is what Rahul Gandhi found:

Rahul Gandhi tries to find out how he'd look in future

Google to make shirts that would auto-suggest matching trousers

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:07:21 +0000

California, USA. After internet, smartphones, and home appliances, Google Inc. is all set to get into clothing and fashion. The internet giant has announced the next generation of apparels that would record and analyze a wearer’s preferences, and auto-suggest wardrobe settings for him/her.

These set of “smart clothes” will be available in the market by this year end and help users dress up just right for any occasion.

“We are using a variant of our tried and tested and trusted algorithm that auto-completes Google search terms and suggests relevant advertisements based on the content of a page being viewed,” Google co-founder Larry Page informed Faking News, “Awkward sense of dressing and crimes against fashion would be a thing of past now.”

This popular image, often referred as the “Google Girl” has been chosen as the beta advertisement for the smart-clothes.

As per the proposed technology, each smart-cloth will be fitted with a microchip that will contain every minute detail about that particular piece of cloth e.g. its fabric, texture, color, pattern, price, date of manufacture, etc. apart from a wearer’s history with the cloth such as the last worn date and time, average time it was on body, locations visited by the wearer, et al.

Based on this data set, the microchip will communicate with other microchips present on different pieces of clothes owned by a user, and it will suggest the user what else to wear along with that shirt or trouser, whichever is worn by the user first.

“The moment you put our smart-shirt on, the trouser that would go along well with that shirt will start blinking in your cupboard, and you won’t need to spend even a minute thinking which combination you should wear for the party tonight,” Larry Page said.

Larry confirmed that the clothes for women would be priced higher as the algorithm required for women’s clothing and dressing is “way too complex” and requires higher processing powers, but assured that the smart clothes would not be prohibitively priced.

“It will also check instances of wardrobe malfunctions,” Larry further elaborated the benefits of smart-clothes, “You will get a 404-error (file not found) if you forget to put on your underwear.”

Google clothes are currently in beta stage and will be launched with basic features by this year end. Further technological innovations could enable the smart clothes with touch and sense technology, which would enable a person to roll up his sleeves just by tapping the cuff of his shirt.

Internet and lifestyle experts believe that Google clothes would be a runaway success and would force fashion designers and garment houses to use Google APIs while designing new clothes, while it could inspire companies like Facebook to launch similar products.

“You know, a Facebook series of clothes, which will suggest you which person to ‘like’ and be friends with based on the kind of clothes the other person is wearing,” an expert opined.

Tantrik says he can launch US like operation against Dawood using nimbu-mirchi

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 06 May 2011 13:48:10 +0000

New Delhi. A local Tantrik, who earlier worked with India TV as a bulletin producer, has claimed that he could use his “special powers” to carry out a US like operation to locate and kill fugitives like Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed, who are wanted for terrorist activities in India. And all he would need are three dead rats, one boiled egg, 50 grams of vermillion, five chilies, and one lemon.

The statement of Tantrik comes a day after Indian Army chief responded to a pointed question, where he clarified that Indian security forces had the capability to launch a precision attack in Pakistan, where terrorists wanted in India are living cozily.

“Not only the capability, I have the will too to destroy those evil souls,” Madangir Mahamaya Maharaj, also known as “Triple M” to his followers, declared. When asked if he was waiting for an order from the Prime Minister or Sonia Gandhi to launch an attack, Triple M threw powdered black pepper into our correspondent’s eyes and responded in negative.

MMM claims nothing can escape his clutches

Partially blind and convinced of the powers of Triple M, our reporter pleaded with Maharaj to divulge some of the details about the offensive he was planning.

“Right now I’m calculating the movement of planets that would help me locate the mansion of Dawood and Hafiz,” Triple M informed, making a circular movement of his index finger in the air, “Once the moon is in the third house and Saturn passes through the fire house, I would be in a position to add these terrorists’ locations on Google Maps for public reviews.”

But Triple M’s technological knowledge and dependence ends with Google Maps, as he declares that once he has finalized the locations of the terrorists and studied the vastu implications of their mansions’ layout, he would launch a “deadly attack” on them with nimbu-mirchi (lemon and chilies pierced together), vermillion, boiled eggs, and dead rats.

“Dawood and Hafiz will die a dog’s death,” Madangir Mahamaya Maharaj announced with his hands up in the air like Billy Bowden, eyes popping out like Muttiah Muralitharan, and his body shaking like Irfan Pathan going “brrr” in the latest Coke advertisement.

Even as his disciples bowed before him in awe of his proclamation, our partially blind correspondent wanted to ask how the terrorists could die a dog’s death when dead rats are to be used in the operation, but decided to call off the interview.

Pakistan, which was quick to respond to Army Chief’s statements, had not yet reacted over Triple M’s claims, but sources suggest that Pakistan has bought a Chinese voodoo doll to restrain the Tantrik.

Proposal to install “mental detectors” at polling booths to stop idiots from voting

Pagal Patrakar — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:30:46 +0000

New Delhi. A “civil society” member has proposed that all the polling booths in the country should have some sort of an idiot-detecting gadget installed at the entrance so that no idiot passes through it and casts his or her vote in favor of an undeserving candidate.

The member has further proposed setting up a joint drafting committee to design this gadget, which would be known as “mental detector”.

“Most of the Indian voters are idiots. They support any candidate who can give them a 100-rupee note or a bottle of liquor. That’s why people like Anna Hazare fear losing their deposit if they stand for elections,” Nishant Bhushan, the civil society member argued, “We don’t trust these people with good sense, and hence we must stop them from voting and corrupting the system further.”

The civil society member claims his gadget is already functional and foolproof

Mr. Bhushan said that in order to stop good people like Anna Hazare to go on fast again and again, a proper system needs to be in place that stops idiots from voting or having a say in policy formulation. For the same, he recommended designing and installing “mental detectors” at polling booths whenever an assembly or general election takes place next in India.

“I have a prototype of mental detector ready and I’m ready to have a discussion on its functioning with a few nominees from the government, but the key issue is that we must get this mental detector installed as soon as possible,” Nishant Bhushan, also a lawyer by tradition profession, told Faking News in an exclusive interview.

Government is yet to respond to the suggestions of Mr. Bhushan, but former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has rejected the proposal as “idiotic”.

“Why doesn’t Bhushan test himself with his mental detector first and share the results? And let him do that in public and not in presence of a few good friends,” Amar Singh dared Bhushan.

Meanwhile sources suggest that while the government might agree to the formation of the joint drafting committee as demanded by Mr. Bhushan, the leaders are not too keen to get a powerful and accurate “mental detector” designed.

“They fear the consequences if such a gadget is installed at the entrance of Parliament and state assemblies,” informed our source.

Father names son “Facebook” after he fails in annual exam

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:28:22 +0000

Noida. Just days after an Egyptian father named his daughter “Facebook” to acknowledge the social networking website’s vital role in overthrowing the dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak, a man in India has done the same to his teenaged son to acknowledge the website’s crucial contribution in spoiling the academic performance of his son.

Rachit, 13, now renamed “Facebook”, scored below 40% marks in each subject in his 9^th grade final exams, after which his father decided to change his name to pay a tribute to the website that he considered responsible for his son’s scholastic downfall.

“He had been sitting glued and logged into his Facebook account all these months,” Pramod Uppal, father of “Facebook” said, “Even though he had ‘liked’ the Mathematics page on Facebook, he had no idea what was Pythagoras’ Theorem!”

Report card of “Facebook”

Mr. Uppal, who is also on Facebook and friends with his son, claims that his son used to spend at least eight hours daily on the social networking site and had a network of 1427 friends, mostly girls, whose every status update he used to like and comment upon.

“Duffer didn’t use to study at all!” the angry father complained. Mr. Uppal decided to change the name of his son once he saw his son ‘liking’ a page titled “I wrote all correct answers in exam but the teacher was IDIOT. Lulz!!” the evening results were announced.

Pramod Uppal took Rachit to the nearest notary public office the next morning and undertook an affidavit to change his son’s name. Within hours, Rachit was “Facebook”.

“I want all his friends and every other student in this country to learn a lesson from his deeds,” Mr. Uppal explained and defended his actions, “I have not done anything illegal as my son was still a minor when I got his name changed, and parents have all the rights to name their wards as they wish.”

“Facebook”, formerly Rachit, was actually happy with his new name until he realized that his full name on the affidavit was “Facebook Uppal”, which not only sounded horribly absurd but was prone to be shortened to FU by his friends.

Facebook to launch genes that will genetically modify humans to use Facebook more easily

Phek Entrepreneur — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:49:29 +0000

California, USA. Mark Zuckerberg, in what could be the most significant kink in the history of evolution yet, today announced the launch of the Facebook Genes, which assists the naturally occurring sensory organs and takes people a step closer to realizing the most perfect human interactions system – the Facebook.

In layman terms, the Facebook gene can be added to an embryo during pregnancy so that the child is born mutated with certain Facebook features embedded into it, giving it an edge over its peers in communicating and “staying connected”.

Parents need to provide the name, e-mail address and Facebook ID for their fetus to sign up for the delivery, and the gene transplant is done free of cost by the Facebook Inc.

“We realized that ‘normal’ human beings are still struggling to understand and appreciate many Facebook features,” Zuckerberg explained the rationale behind launching the Facebook Genes, “Not only they fail to update and control their privacy settings, they have also proved to be utter failure in appreciating aesthetic features like black background behind pictures.”

Facebook Genes are set to revolutionize humanity

“Also, science has now confirmed that the size of your brain depends upon your social network, so we thought it was high time we helped people with their brain sizes,” he added.

FB Genes will blur the difference between the physical and the digital worlds. People will be able to continuously upload and download images, videos and information from their Facebook profiles. In the physical world, they will be able to exhibit three additional emotions – ‘Like’, ‘Poke’ and ‘WTF’ – with the help of various facial and lower body muscles.

“An advertising module, designed by our smartest programmers will directly implant a product purchase idea in the mind of the customer, similar to what Leo Di Caprio did in Inception, you know, and all that display-ads farce will be history. And I doubt Google AdWords would be able to match that,” Zuckerberg added with a chuckle. Asked if he thought people will allow such levels of intrusions into their private lives, he said, “You kiddin’ me! Haven’t they already?”

It is a well-known fact that Facebook’s influence on the lives of common people has grown significantly after people in Egypt used it to overthrow their dictatorial regime and many American businesses have started conducting business using Facebook Credits preferring it over the US dollar since it is a lot cooler and being used more frequently. Facebook also launched a mobile SIM card recently.

Zuckerberg denied any ulterior profit motives behind launching of FB Genes and termed it as an extension of his philanthropic pledge, as he was just improving the “divine creation”.

“Look, God designed us a really long time back – he missed out a few things and I am just filling in the holes,” the Facebook founder said, further denying that developing a mutant human being was like copying a software code, “Do you see any of His code in it? If He were the inventor of Facebook, He would have invented Facebook,” he added with a coy smile quoting himself from the movie, The Social Network.

IIT student develops valentine scheduling algorithm for girls

Pagal Patrakar — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 08:14:21 +0000

Kharagpur. An IIT student here has developed an algorithm to evenly distribute time spent by a girl among all the boys on campus for the coming Valentine’s Day. With this, Sudhir Das, 19, a second year B. Tech in Industrial Engineering student, has claimed to solve the acute problem of lack of girls on campus in engineering colleges, and has hoped that this Valentine’s Day would prove to be “satisfactory” for everyone.

“For the last few months I have been noticing and noting the daily routine and activities of the girls; the places they visit inside or outside the campus, the time spent on those places, times when they were ‘unavailable’, etc.” explained Sudhir, “I didn’t need to do the same for boys as I assumed they would always be available.”

Some unidentified students of an engineering college preponed Holi celebration to celebrate the solution to their original problem

Sudhir claims to have developed a constraint programming problem that aimed to come up with a “work schedule” for boys so that they happen to be in company of a girl for at least five minutes on Valentine’s Day.

“Girls just need to follow the same schedule even on Valentine’s Day and the problem would be solved,” Sudhir said.

A boarder of Nehru Hall, Sudhir says his algorithm is a complex form of simplex algorithm, which he was forced to work on when some of the students of IIT Kharagpur, who grudged a tiny minority of boys having girlfriends, started demanding a ban on Valentine’s Day.

“This could have given bad name to the institute, hence I decided to follow the girls wherever they went and came up with a precious data set to work on,” Sudhir revealed.

Sudhir is hopeful that the girls would “co-operate” and follow their general work schedule on Monday so that “balance” and “harmony” is maintained on the campus.

“I know they would be tempted to spend the whole day with their boyfriends, but they could do that on some other day,” suggested Sudhir, “Or if they could schedule meetings with their boyfriends at times when they were marked ‘unavailable’ in the data collection process.”

Sudhir refused to explain the term ‘unavailable’ and instead has requested the girls to approach him in person in case they were interested.

Zuckerberg’s Facebook fan page was hacked after he added a “suggested friend”

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:26:49 +0000

California, USA. Internal investigations into the hacking of “fan page” of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that the security breach happened after Zuckerberg added a “suggested friend” to his personal profile. Sources indicate that the suggested friend’s profile had a display picture of a rather hot looking girl, which most probably led the Facebook founder to fall into the sinister trap.

The findings has been kept as “top secret” by the Facebook management, but was leaked by a “whistleblower” to credible websites like Faking News and WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks was busy validating the leaked information, while Faking News decided to go ahead and publish it.

“Zuck was rather bored that day and fiddling with his personal profile, like updating his current professional position as ‘I’m CEO, bitch’ etc.” the leaked report read, “That’s when he saw this hot looking girl under ‘People You May Know’ and added the profile as friend without thinking too much.”

Something similar caused the Facebook fan page of Mark Zuckerberg being hacked

The name of this “suggested friend” was not disclosed in the leaked report but it revealed that Sean Parker was shown as a common friend to Mark Zuckerberg’s profile. After Zuckerberg was friends with this girl, which is now suspected to be a fake profile, he is believed to have exchanged some messages, one of which had a dubious phishing link.

“Hey Zuck, you look so sexy in this pic, please allow me to tag you,” was the message that proved to be fatal for the Facebook founder as he ended up disclosing his username/email (shockingly hackingmark123@hotmail.com) and password (privacymyfoot).

The leaked report suggests that Facebook management was in tight spot whether they should disclose these details to the general public. While disclosing the details meant assurance to the rest of users that nothing was wrong in the basic security features of the social networking website, it also risked showing the organization’s founder as a rather dumb person.

Instead Facebook decided to confuse the users further by making them randomly go through a “social authentication” process to prove that they were not fake profiles, who could hoodwink Zuckerberg again.

Orkut user humiliated in full public view by Facebook crowd

Pagal Patrakar — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:43:59 +0000

Ahmedabad. Dhiraj Joshi, 19, had to put up with a barrage of insults and ridicule for having logged into his Orkut account in presence of two Facebook users, who also happened to be his batchmates at a local engineering college. They were later joined by a bunch of other students from the same hostel, who made life hell for Dhiraj for a seemingly innocuous act of “scrapping”.

“I was sending a scrap to my friend to wish him a happy birthday,” Dhiraj (whose Orkut display name reads “coolest dude”) recalled the unfortunate moment, “Aakash, my roomie, happened to enter the room at that very moment and it seems he saw it. Before I could minimize the window, he burst into a loud laughter, almost spilling his kitli tea over me.”

Aakash is believed to have frantically called out Pratik, their neighbor, who was playing cricket outside by throwing the ball against the hostel wall and hitting it on rebound. Pratik came rushing in and then both of them laughed like crazy for next few minutes, ridiculing Dhiraj for “still” using Orkut.

Dhiraj uses a Shahid Kapoor “theme” for his Orkut profile, an act that also came for ridicule during the public humiliation

Hearing loud noises of laughter and Hindi abusive words (gaali), at least seven other students are reported to have got “attracted” and walked into Dhiraj’s hostel room in the next couple of minutes. What followed was a public humiliation of a helpless and unarmed Orkut user.

“Pratik ‘poked’ me with his bat at least three times,” Dhiraj recounted the mental and physical torture he had to go through, “They abused me by calling me chirkut, orkutiya, lodu, and gave me strange names like Baba Sehgal, Motorola Pager, and Windows 95.”

The rowdy students, all of whom are reported to be Facebook users, even tried to lift Dhiraj on their shoulders and “parade” him in the campus for his “deeds”, but the plan was later abandoned as India-South Africa match had started by then.

Meanwhile Dhiraj had written to the Hostel warden for providing him security against any such possible attack in future, but shockingly the warden refused to step in and instead suggested Dhiraj to “lock the hostel door” from inside next time he logged into Orkut.

Dhiraj alias “coolest dude” is rated 70% trusty, 40% cool, and 55% sexy on the older version of Orkut. Those who indicated themselves as “fans” of him or wrote “testimonials” for him refused to comment over the issue.

BJP launches web browser for its members and supporters

Pagal Patrakar — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:06:45 +0000

New Delhi. BJP has come up with a New Year gift for its supporters – a web browser that helps a person visit only those websites and pages that are seemed “safe” and “sympathetic” to BJP and like leaning groups. The new browser is being called Saffron Surfer and comes with hordes of pre-installed add-ons and plugins that helps a web surfer steer clear of so-called left-liberal content online.

“The mainstream media is full of left leaning pseudo-intellectuals,” BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the launch event, “This browser will alert an unsuspecting visitor landing on such a websites or blogs through search-engines or hyperlinks.”

Faking News tested the browser and found it working on the expected lines. When we tried to visit the website of “The Hindu”, there was a flash-screen alert window before the page loaded – Warning! This website could harm your computer with Maoist Trojans.

The logo of the new browser launched by BJP

There were two options given – “Take me out of here” and “Proceed at your own risk”. The first option took us to the website of “The Daily Pioneer” while the second caused the tool bar to blink at regular intervals with “Your computer and intelligence is at risk!” message till we closed the window.

“It’s lovely!” said Ravi Rajendran, a BJP supporter who downloaded Saffron Surfer and was suggested “list of possible scams” as alternative search option when he tried to search for “UPA in 2011” on the default search engine at the homepage.

“But it’s also blocking all the porn sites,” Ravi pointed at one of the possible “bugs” or shortcomings of the latest browser to hit the market.

One of the advanced add-ons coming with the browser is “NoDiggy 2.0.1” that replaces the text “saffron” or “Hindu” with “absent” whenever it appears in conjunction with the term “terror” on webpages.

“Dharmik Desktop for All” is another add-on that automatically changes the desktop wallpaper to “approved” images of Hindu gods and goddesses once such an image loads fully while surfing the net.

“It’s in beta stage as of now,” informed the developer Kaushik during the launch event, “We hope to introduce advanced plugins that would analyze a person’s web footprints to identify leftists on social-networking sites so that users know what kind of person they are talking to.”

Saffron Surfer was downloaded 55,284 times within three hours of its official launch, which also saw volumes of Rediff comments going down substantially during the same duration.

When accessed through the BJP browser, Faking News was rated as “frivolous” by its own “Web of Trust” add-on, because of which we are giving it a 0.5 star on a scale of 5 stars.

Men spent most time on Facebook watching pictures of women users

InsipidReports — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:44:34 +0000

California, USA. After releasing top status trends of 2010, Facebook has released trends on how users spend their time on the social networking site after logging into their accounts. Not surprisingly, the trends show that men, especially those from India, have been spending maximum time browsing through the pictures uploaded by women users in their network. These included engagement and marriage photo albums.

“While we expected this, this is kinda disturbing,” said Michael Luxemberg of the data-mining and analytics team of Facebook, “We see this as unfortunate Orkutization of Facebook.” Michael also blamed Google for this trend as he pointed out that a Google Image search for “Facebook girls” returned a lot of “inappropriate” results.

“Sometimes we have noticed a guy spending around 10 minutes on a single picture before clicking on it to proceed to the next; God knows what’s happening!” Michael revealed the trends.

In the Hollywood movie “The Social Network”, even the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is shown checking this girl’s profile towards the end, perhaps setting the trend for other users.

Michael informed that Facebook logs every activity of a user and they had further “interesting” insights into the way users spend time online, but would “leak” them at an appropriate time in future.

“Just after finishing browsing through a woman’s album, we have noticed guys updating their status with some random quote picked from the internet; perhaps an attempt to hide what they had been up to,” Mark leaked a few details.

Some other trends were on expected lines such as:

Activities of women users attracted 78% more ‘likes’ and comments from users than those by men.
Indian users had higher mention of English television series and movies than those from UK or US.
Many people have been using “Paul the psychic Octopus” application to get their daily predictions even after the Octopus’ death.
47% of the users have used the “Poke” feature at least once, due to which Facebook team is not retiring the feature anytime soon.
309 users ‘liked’ Suresh Kalmadi.

While such data were rather easy to mine and analyze, Facebook team is reported to be working on a technology that could read “into” the pictures. An algorithm is being developed that would identify and record patterns, such as clothes worn by a tagged user, in various pictures.

“Currently we have to rely upon users’ data, such as an album’s title, to find out what the picture is all about. But we can’t be over-dependent upon the users,” Michael said, “Say; it’s easy to find out if a picture is of an Indian wedding if more than three people are wearing excessively loud colors. We can surely develop an algorithm to find that out.”

Michael rejected that such “technological innovations” compromised the privacy of Facebook users. Michael had agreed to talk to Faking News on conditions of anonymity, but we decided to ignore his privacy options.

Appearing busy gets easier; Nokia to launch phone that talks to you

Simon — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:40:28 +0000

Mumbai. Nokia is set to launch a ground breaking new phone this week. After extensive market research, the handset manufacturer found that 67% of the times when mobile phone is removed from the owners’ pocket, it is not used to make a call or send a text. Rather it’s taken out either in an attempt to appear busy whilst waiting around – so as not to appear like poor Johnny No-mates or to try and avoid eye contact with Sunil from Accounts who’s crossing the road.

Inspired by this discovery, the “Nokia Parrot 150” records snippets of all the user’s conversations and replays them randomly when the owner dials the ‘parrot’ number. The handset will simulate an important call by ringing and flashing up “CEO”, “Muki Ambani” or “Sach (Mumbai number)” on the display.

“The Parrot 150 serves an important social function,” says developer, Manoj Kabra, “it makes the user appear busy on a call without the bother of actually calling anyone, plus some people get very lonely. It tackles the boredom of standing still, being quiet and paying attention to your surroundings.”

Pretending to talk to someone on phone while there is no one on the other end is known as “communifaking”

With the phone to their ears, users will give the impression of being deep in an important call, whilst having the reassurance of listening to a human voice on the other end, even if the random snippets make little sense. “The sense bit is not important,” says Kabra, “some people call the random playback of conversational snippets nonsense, but look at song lyrics, poetry and art, it doesn’t have to make sense for people to say it’s good… are we to believe that John Lennon was really a walrus?”

But the phone does speak some sense: if will ring and play a recorded message to the owner if it is low on battery or needs a re-charge. It will also notify the owner of several issues when it sees fit, including: “she won’t text back, best stop, this is embarrassing for Nokia too”, “your last text did not contain any vowels, please purchase a dictionary” and “yes, it was him from the party again, to change your number please visit our website”.

Faking News was given a Parrot 150 to test. The device came in useful at a prestigious media event at Delhi’s Gymkhana Club. Having offered the watchman a pack of silk cut to walk the other way, successfully scaled the back wall of the property and made it onto the lawn without trampling the flowers, our correspondent found no one was willing to talk to Faking News staff.

Fed up of this obvious jealously at FN’s diverse and unpredictable information sources, your correspondent engaged the ‘parrot’ option and appeared to have a 30 minute long ‘conversation’ with the editor of the ‘Times of London’, whilst actually listening to the best of our communications with random property agents, Merucabs, Airtel’s customer service desk, and assorted adult services.

Mobile voice changer service coming for those whose phones could be tapped

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:10:27 +0000

New Delhi. Students at IIT here have developed a mobile application that would instantly change the pitch of the voice of the speaker after pressing a designated button on the handset, thus making the voice rather unrecognizable even though intelligible. Students are planning to launch the application as a premium product for professionals, who fear that their telephone conversations could be being tapped and recorded by intelligence agencies.

“Even if the recordings are released at some point in the future, the person caught can always claim that the voice on the tape is not his or hers,” said Rani Radia, a final year Computer Science and Engineering student, who along with a three of her batch-mates has developed the application on Android platform.

Government departments are expected to adopt this latest technology at the earliest

Rani and her friends have tested their application, tentatively named SafeLobyy 1.0.1, on their mobile handsets and the initial results have been “very encouraging”, she says.

“Venu was sounding like Veena after the pitch was increased by 137%,” Rani informed, “it sounded so bizarre that a girl was telling another girl how everyone could see her (him) shaving early this afternoon in the hostel balcony.”

“It might give rise to new imagined scandals, but then the original ones are always buried due to this smokescreen,” Muthu Krishna Venu, a co-developer, justified such misinterpretations that could happen once a person activated SafeLobyy 1.0.1.

Venu further informed that the application, when activated, interferes with the microphone of the handset and alters its recorded frequency by a factor selected by the user. In such a scenario, even the caller gets to hear an altered voice.

“It could shock the caller, but I guess people would use it with complicity,” Venu suggested, and claimed that SafeLobyy 1.0.1 was far better than other gadgets, which at best made the altered voice sound look like that of a duck or some ghost from Shaktimaan.

The team of developers has refused to launch the application as a Mobile VAS (value added service) in partnership with telecom service providers as it could “defeat the basic purpose”.

“The application must be hosted locally on the handset and the service providers, who could come under pressure from investigating agencies, should have no idea if a subscriber was using such an application,” Rani explained.

Rani, Venu and their two other unnamed friends are planning to make corporate presentations and demonstration of SafeLobyy 1.0.1 to various media organizations, corporate houses, government ministries, and political parties in the coming weeks.

Commonwealth Games “a success in a parallel universe” says Stephen Hawking

Simon — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 06:40:51 +0000

Cambridge, UK. The Commonwealth Games are a popular, successful and well managed sporting event, which is doing India proud, claims world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking. Perhaps it would have been the best news for the Organizing Committee (OC) to hear on a day games open, but sadly the games Professor Hawking was referring to are happening in a “parallel universe”.

The world renowned academic told reporters gathered at a press conference at Cambridge University about his latest mind-boggling calculations and his staggering Games-related conclusions.

Professor Hawking has been making startling revelation of late

“I spent two weeks doing the deepest, most complex astro-physical calculations of my career,” Hawking said, “everyone expects weird things to occur in parallel universes, like reverse gravity, time-space wormholes and strange and frightening creatures, but I was not prepared to uncover something as shocking and counter-intuitive as this.” Indeed, Prof. Hawking repeated the calculation three times.

Asked what the OC could learn from its counterparts in an alternative reality, Prof. Hawking was quick to point out that very little useful knowledge could be gained as the OC in the “parallel universe” did not have the inconvenience of “strictly linear time”. Although, he warned that “non-linear time could also enable repeat negative phenomena, for example allowing a bridge to collapse twice”.

Besides meta-physical differences, the Delhi of Hawking’s “parallel universe” is part of a Chinese colony, “so of course everything is on time,” he explained.

However, the organizers have seized Prof. Hawking’s comments. “This proves it’s not our fault,” said OC representative, Prem Raheja, on his fifth allotted tea break of the morning, “we always knew it wasn’t us; it was just that everything we did went wrong. The Delhi Government handed us a task without a thought to the dimension in which it would occur. In fact we suspected that this was the case months back and kind of gave up.”

But Prof. Hawking was quick to point out that a margin of error was always associated with such calculations and the games could easily be a “dismal failure in multiple alternative dimensions”.

Prof. Hawking told the conference that he intends to use his “parallel universe” calculations to identify several “alternative realities” in which beta-max won out against VCR, the wheel had never been invented, and one in which everyone thought Jesus was joking.

Ayodhya case still being fought on Twitter and Facebook

Pagal Patrakar — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:10:24 +0000

New Delhi. Even though the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court pronounced its judgment in the disputed Ram Janmbhoomi Babri Masjid case today, sources inform that the same case is still being fiercely debated in virtual courts on Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and other known and unknown blogs/websites across the world, with all the parties claiming their respective victories just a few words away.

The litigants in these cases have refused to give any importance to the High Court verdict, which they though was “incomplete and illogical”, as well as the decision of the Sunni Waqf Board to appeal in the Supreme Court, and have expressed confidence that they’d soon settle the issue forever on the internet, which would be acceptable and binding on all, especially on their rivals.

“Just a few minutes more and I can get this porki eat his words,” said a verbally confident AmIt ॐ kUmAr, an internet lawyer and Orkut warrior defending the rights of Hindus to build a temple in Ayodhya, who was engaged in an “animated” debate with ~>ZakirNaikRox YaALLAH<~ on “India” community of Orkut.

An internet warrior is seen here, defending his people’s rights

According to trusted sources, the internet world was abuzz with thousands, or maybe millions, of such couples and groups of lawyers and warriors, who were determined to take the fight to a “logical” conclusion.

“It’s understandable,” says internet psychologist Satyen Sinha, “Ayodhya case took 60 years to reach this stage and the case would again be debated in the Supreme Court now, whereas most of these internet courts are not even 10 years old, and only so much old is the debate there.”

“I guess this internet battle will go on for another fifty years or so,” he added.

But the warriors disagree.

“I can already smell victory in air no matter what these guys could be claiming,” says @sexular on Twitter, who has been keeping an eye over each tweet containing the term “Ayodhya” and replying to each comment he found contrary to his beliefs and assumptions. Since “Ayodhya” had been trending on Twitter since morning today, he needed just a click to deliver what he calls as “deadly blows” to people from “the other side”.

@sexular had already replied to over 300 users with logically crafted and detailed arguments such as “STFU”, “very soon you’d know”, “Oh really?”, “LOL! Low lives you guys are”, etc. and had successfully blocked around 50 users; all adding to his strong belief and confidence that victory was coming his way for which he had even skipped his lunch earlier today.

Independent observers claim that the fight between the various groups was “delicately poised” and nothing could be said about the final outcome yet.

“An estimated 3000 new user profiles on Facebook, Orkut and Twitter was created primarily for this purpose since morning,” informs an observer Kabir Kant, “new pages, communities and groups like ‘we want all the parts’ are also coming up at a rapid rate. This battle is going to continue for now as still nobody is sure who owns the land. In fact new claimants would come up now as the High Court has partitioned the land into three parts whereas there were only two original claimants of the land.”

Administrators from the social networking websites refused to comment over the issue although many politicians offered to comment, but Faking News refused.