TWIL - Week #29

This Week I Learned:

Browsers:

• The auto-fill feature in Chrome also fills hidden fields.
• Like in Nigeria, the top three browsers in India (UC, Opera Mini,Nokia Xpress) are proxy browsers —browsers that leave the interpreting and rendering to the server and only show the resulting page. This process saves their users a lot of money, both because an old device is sufficient to run a proxy client, and because they essentially get one image instead of a full web page, which leads to low data usage.

Security:

• eBooks have one feature that can't be found in print: the ability to have live hotlinks embedded in the text. And that presents an open field for scammers to spread malware.

Science:

• The technical term for the physiological study of laughter is the not-so-funny-sounding word, gelotology. In terms of what we find funny, there seems to be three general categories of what makes us laugh. 
• The incongruity theory suggests that it is humorous when logic is turned on its head, as when a joke or story takes an unexpected turn, or when non-sequitors are used.
• The superiority theory (aka Schadenfreude) focuses on laughter that arises at someone else's mistake or misfortune, as when a cartoon character slips on a banana peel or has an anvil drop on them out of the sky. 
• The relief theory posits that laughter arises as a relief to pent-up emotions or passing danger.

India:

• Overseas workers from India are expected to send back home $71 billion this year. Remittances exceed the country's earnings from information-technology exports. China is the No. 2 recipient of remittances after India, at $60 billion, according to the World Bank. (Source: WSJ)
• Only three per cent individuals pay taxes. Of this number, the government earns more than half from those earning Rs 20-25 lakh (Rs 2-2.5 million) or more, annually. Officially, there are only 42,800 individuals in the department’s records who have declared taxable income of over Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million). (Source: Rediff)
• India has the highest petrol-price-to-income ratio in the world.