The United Nations Children’s Fund Sweden division is calling people out with a powerful new ad campaign: we need money for polio vaccines and your slacktivism isn’t helping.

“Like is on Facebook, and we will vaccinate zero children against polio,” reads a press ad developed pro bono by ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors. “We have nothing against likes, but vaccines cost money. Please buy a polio vaccine at unicef.se. It will only cost you 4 euros, but will save the lives of 12 children.”

The campaign, which is running in print, television, radio, and online, also has a powerful video ad featuring a 10-year-old boy named Rahim.

“My name is Rahim. I’m 10 years old and I live here with my brother,” says the boy as the camera zooms in on a ragged apartment. “Sometimes I worry that I will get sick, like mom got sick. Then who will look after my brother?”

“But I think everything will be alright. Today, UNICEF Sweden has 177,000 likes on Facebook. Maybe they will reach 200,000 by summer. Then we should be alright.”

With the rise of social media, we’ve also seen a rise in “armchair activism” or “slacktivism,” the terms used to describe lazy attempts to support a cause via social media. One prime example was last year’s Kony 2012 campaign, which saw millions of Facebook and Twitter users share viral video about the atrocities of Ugandan LRA leader Joseph Kony.

But you can see fragmented slacktivist campaigns every day on Facebook. “Like this photo and this baby gets the transplant it needs” and so on. Sure, clicking like or sharing a status may make you feel good, but it doesn’t accomplish much more than that.

[Images via UNICEF Sweden]

TorrentFreak reports that The Pirate Bay has now moved from its old .se domain to a new .gl domain. Those attempting to visit the old .se domain will be automatically redirected to the new domain.

So, why the sudden move? The Pirate Bay thinks that Sweden will seize its .se domain in the coming days. The move was made to make sure that users experience no downtime even if a seizure were to take place.

As TorrentFreak points out, the move to a new domain may also bypass the current IP blocks in place in the UK and other countries, if only for a short while. Even if these countries were to block the new IP address, The Pirate Bay has claimed that it has hundreds more in backup to counter any blocking attempts.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here. The Pirate Bay has already moved its servers out of Sweden to make sure physical raids can’t target it, and now its moving around the digital seas to avoid domain seizures. The Pirate Bay has been playing this cat-and-mouse game for years, and it doesn’t look like it’s gonna end any time soon.

It’s a testament to Google’s dominance that most people simply say “google it” when they really mean “search it.” Because of this market domination, it’s completely understandable that a word like “ogooglebar” would emerge in the Swedish language. “Ogooglebar” translates to “ungoogleable,” as in “that was so obscure that it was ungoogleable, man.”

The word, which was added to the list of new Swedish words back in December, has officially been removed.

Google exerted pressure, asking the council to amend the definition to mean searches unable to be unearthed by Google only, not just any search engine. But instead of amending the definition, which the council said would go against their values, they decided to ax it altogether.

But just from the official list. It’s not like Swedes will stop using the word “ogooglebar.”

“If we want to have ogooglebar in the language, then we’ll use the word and it’s our use that gives it meaning – not a multinational company exerting pressure. Speech must be free!” said Swedish Language Council head Ann Cederberg.

Of course, the problem for Google is that the term “Google” is constantly toeing the dangerous line of falling into generic territory. Sure, it’s nice to be such a dominant force in your area of expertise that your company’s name becomes synonymous with the product itself.

Think Kleenex, Band-Aid, or Xerox? Those are actually trademarked names that people have gradually turned into the common name for the products they represent – tissue, bandages, and copy machines, respectively.

But it’s not so nice when your trademarks are in jeopardy of being declared generic – which is what can technically happen in situations like this. And it’s not like Google hasn’t had to deal with this before.

“It would go against our principles, and the principles of language. Google has forgotten one thing: language development doesn’t care about brand protection,” said Cederberg.

[The Local via The Verge]

Well, wonder no more. In an attempt to set a world record, 2.493 residents of Luleå, Sweden gathered atop a frozen lake in the shape of a giant Facebook thumbs up.

The Luleå residents were actually attempting to set the Guinness World Record for “biggest human hand on ice” – the Guinness record itself makes no mention of that hand needing to mimic a Facebook like.

That was simply the idea of the town, whose residents have a strong tie with Facebook. The company recently opened a huge data center in Luleå, the largest of its kind to be built in Europe.

According to The Local, the record attempt took place on March 16th, the 75th day of year, to symbolize the town of Luleå topping 75,000 residents.

“Today, we gave a thumbs up for Luleå. I’m proud of how we together, through hard teamwork, year after year manage to grow and evolve,” said the town’s mayor, Karl Petersen.

Luleå’s Facebook shoutout has received some attention – from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg:

TorrentFreak reports that The Pirate Bay has decided to move its operations to Norway and Spain after its previous host, the Pirate Party of Sweden, was targeted by anti-piracy group Rights Alliance. Why does The Pirate Bay have to move though? It’s hosted in the cloud, so it’s technically not tied to the Pirate Party or any other group, right?

The Pirate Bay addressed these concerns in its latest Facebook post:

The Pirate Bay16 hours ago

As some of you may know, where 99% cloud based today. We have though, enjoyed the great company of the swedish Pirate party. As they have gotten a severe legal threat (that will cost a lot to defend against) we’ve taken the decision to move on to Norway and Spain.

This is not permanent though. Next week (hopefully), we’ll announce some MAJOR changes to the site. Now don’t worry, everything will look the same to you. The changes are all under the hood.

Let’s just say that it will change a lot of things for a lot of people. When the bomb goes off, remember that we did it with love in our hearts and with hope of humanity. We believe we can change the world by doing this.
We’re kinda aiming for the nex Nobel peace prize…

//Winona, Winston & Winnie.

The Pirate Bay Departs Sweden And Sets Sail For Norway and Spain | TorrentFreak
Following threats of legal action in its traditional home of Sweden, a few hours ago The Pirate Bay set sail for pastures new. Sweden’s Pirate Party had been providing bandwidth to the site for the last three years but came under intense pressure last week when a local anti-piracy group threatened t…

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The Pirate Bay is now hosted by the Pirate Parties of both Norway and Spain. Of course, these aren’t the only parties hosting The Pirate Bay, but these are the official hosts for the time being. The reason being that Norwegian courts have so far refused to block The Pirate Bay, and Spain, despite having some strict anti-piracy laws on the books, does nothing to block file-sharing sites.

To reflect its resilience, The Pirate Bay has momentarily changed its name to The Hydra Bay. I wouldn’t say that losing its host in Sweden is equivalent to having a head cut off, but it’s still appropriate to say that The Pirate Bay has withstood more legal threats and take downs than any other file sharing site on the Internet.

The Pirate Bay has also taken to its blog to say the current campaign against the site in Sweden, and Europe at large, is equivalent to a big game of Whac-A-Mole. The kicker is that anti-piracy groups are bad at this game:

A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player’s score. The quicker this is done the higher the final score will be.

Current score: 0

As for the Swedish Pirate Party, its leader, Anna Troberg, told TorrentFreak that it’s happy the site is in the hands of its “two sister parties.” She continues the hyrdra rhetoric by saying that “every cut connection to The Pirate Bay will generate two new connections.” The Swedish Pirate Party also revealed that it may issue a police complaint against the Rights Alliance to “determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others.”

The holiday season was particularly big for Minecraft, as over 1.2 million copies of the game were sold during the week of Christmas. The PC version of the game, where it originated, was actually the platform where the fewest copies were sold, with 241,845 copies sold for Mac or PC over the week.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has proven to be incredibly popular with Xbox gamers. It broke Xbox LIVE sales records when it was released last may, and over 5 million copies have been sold since. 325,591 copies of the Xbox 360 version were sold during the week of Christmas.

For those who are still denying that mobile has become a legitimate form of gaming, consider that Minecraft: Pocket Edition sold almost 5.9 million copies on iOS and Android last year. The mobile edition sold 706,419 copies during Christmas week alone.

At $7 each, that’s a cool $41 Million just from mobile sales in 2012. Considering that the Xbox 360 edition costs $20 and the PC version is $27, that’s well over $200 million that the small Swedish developer raked in last year. That’s a significant increase to the $80 million Mojang made in the first 15 months after Minecraft was released.

It now appears that Sweden’s game development industry is set to grow even larger. EA has opened a new studio named Ghost Games in Sweden’s second largest city, Gothenburg. On the developer’s new website it claims that Gothenburg was chosen because of “the plethora of highly talented game developers that can be found in that part of Sweden and its southern regions.”

There is no word yet on what titles EA expects Ghost to develop, though the website does mention that the company will be developing a AAA title. From the website:

Founded on the core principles of Excellence, Fun and Respect, GHOST is working to create a world-class team of developers, an exceptional working environment and build the next big thing in AAA gaming.

GHOST is a unique proposition in the AAA development space; all the agility and creativity of a ‘start-up’, while working with industry giants like Criterion and DICE guarantee we have the tools and support to execute our creative and technical visions.

Being a new studio, Ghost is currently hiring for nearly every position a game studio might need, including creative director, gameplay designer, lead artist, and development director. The studio is trying to woo good employees by highlighting its open-plan office and stating that “a balance of work and play is core to the Ghost way of life.”

(Image courtesy the Ghost Games website)

“We have shown that individuals who have above-average levels of a protein called SFRP4 in the blood are five times more likely to develop diabetes in the next few years than those with below-average levels,” said Anders Rosengren, a researcher at the Lund University Diabetes Centre (LUDC).

According to researchers, SFRP$ plays a role in inflammatory processes in the body, but this is the first time it has been linked to the risk of type 2 diabetes. It is also the first time inflammation in beta cells and diabetes have been linked.

“The theory has been that low-grade chronic inflammation weakens the beta cells so that they are no longer able to secrete sufficient insulin,” said Taman Mahdi, lead author of the study. “There are no doubt multiple reasons for the weakness, but the SFRP4 protein is one of them.

The LUDC studies measured the level of SFRP4 in the blood of non-diabetic patients yearly for three years. 37% of patients who had higher than average SFRP4 levels developed diabetes during the study. Of those who had a lower than average level, 9% developed diabetes. The studies also showed that cells from diabetics have “significantly” higher levels of SFRP4. The protein marker risk factor was demonstrated to work independently from other risk factors, such as obesity and age.

“This makes it a strong risk marker that is present several years before diagnosis. We have also identified the mechanism for how SFRP4 impairs the secretion of insulin,” said Rosengren. “The marker therefore reflects not only an increased risk, but also an ongoing disease process.

“If we can point to an increased risk of diabetes in a middle-aged individual of normal weight using a simple blood test, up to ten years before the disease develops, this could provide strong motivation to them to improve their lifestyle to reduce the risk. In the long term, our findings could also lead to new methods of treating type 2 diabetes by developing ways of blocking the protein SFRP4 in the insulin-producing beta cells and reducing inflammation, thereby protecting the cells.”

Now, he’s taken the campaign to Sweden. In the following “ad,” you’ll see Ferrell decked out in Swedish garb, spewing Old Milwaukee beer while dancing to dubstep.

This isn’t the first of this type of ad to air in Sweden…where you can’t even buy the beer…

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Carl Henrik Ϣrethman
@carlwrethman

I really love the swedish @oldmilwaukee ads with Will Ferrell. Only aired in Sweden. Where you can’t buy Old Milwaukee. http://t.co/72BSxfn8

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18 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Also;

The study, published this week in the journal Cancer, looked at 289,866 men enrolled in the Metabolic Syndrome and Cancer Project at Umeå University in Sweden. Researchers found that during an average follow-up time of 12 years, 961 men died from prostate cancer, out of 6,673 diagnosed with the disease. Of those men, those in the highest category of body mass index had a 36% higher risk of dying from their prostate cancer, and those in the highest category for blood pressure had a 62% higher risk of dying from their prostate cancer.

“These observations suggest that cardiovascular risk factors such as overweight and hypertension are involved in stimulating the progression of prostate cancer,” said Dr. Pär Stattin, lead author of the study and a Urologist at Umeå University.

The study does not link metabolic factors to a risk of developing prostate cancer, only a higher risk of dying from the disease.

Earlier this year, metabolic abnormalities were also linked to more rapid cognitive decline as people age.