Tuesday 31 March 2015

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Outernet: Free internet for all

Outernet, a United States based independent startup has decided to do something big and unimaginable. Do you have any guesses? I am damm sure that there won't be any guesses related to Outernet's aim. This startup aims to provide something huge that almost everyone on earth can access. Outernet aims to provide free internet to everyone, not only in US but to everyone on this earth. In the announcement made by Outernet, it said that with the help of U.K. Space Agency, Outernet will be launching three new nanosatellites, approximately at the start of 2016. These nanosatellites will be manufactured by Clyd Space, a Scotland based company.
According to a survey, out of total world's population, almost half of the people don't have a good internet connection. It isn't a very old news that Outernet started providing its service to 1.3 billion people residing in North America, Middle East, Europe and Asia Pacific. Outernet distribute's internet similar to a radio broadcast. Outernet will be giving internet services in a similar way in which we receive radio signals. Tiny satellites (a bit bigger than the size of a shoebox ) called Cubesats would operate from Low Earth Orbit in UHF frequency which transmits the signals. These signals can be picked up with a much cheaper hardware.
Recently, another technology called "Lantern". Lantern is a distinct WiFi hotspot which has the ability to create WiFi signals by receiving satellite data. Founder and CEO of Outernet, Syed Karim told
"We could send all of the Wikipedia. Essentially, anything that lives on your 
computer is what we can transmit over Outernet. Everyone in the team believes 
in the notion of universal access of information. I've been told by the people who
interacted closely with North Korean defectors and they said that there is internet 
there and it is very limited. They have their own version of Wikipedia.
Now as these satellites will be in space, there shall not be any restrictions on broadcast. Outernet can be a big milestone, if which when crossed, can spread news and unbiased textbooks to all parts of the world.
What do you think, will Outernet be successful in providing free
internet to all or will it fail? Provide us with your 
feedback in comments.
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Monday 30 March 2015

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12-year old girl tried to kill her mother just for taking her iPhone

This is a weird incident of children trying to take revenge from their parents for seizing their mobile phone. A 12-year old girl residing in Boulder, Colorado was arrested, the reason being that she had allegedly tried to kill her mother for taking her iPhone not once, but twice.
The complaint follows accusations that the girl attempted to murder her mother by poisoning her with bleaching powder on two separate occasions. The first instance occurred on march 2, where she succeeded in sending her mother to hospital after she had poured some bleach in her breakfast smoothie.
The girl purposely mixed bleach in the smoothie hoping that it would kill her mother. Although the mother was able to smell the bleach, she thought her daughter was innocent thereby assuming that her daughter might have failed to wash the cup properly. As a result, she drank it and had to be take a short tour to hospital from which she returned unharmed.
But the girl's hatred for her mother was probably much more than what we can think. Because she attempted a similar trick again after a few days.
This time, the 12 year old tried to mix bleaching powder in the water carafe which her mother used to keep in the bathroom for drinking water at night. Like previously, her mother was able to smell the bleach this time too. But this time the mother was suspicious regarding her daughter.
She encountered the girl and had come to know that the 12 year old had mixed bleach on both the occasions. On asking the reason for this, the girl confessed that she had attempted to murder her mother because the mother had taken girl's iPhone previously.
The matter, being considered as serious by the mother, she filed a complaint against her daughter and asked police to explore more about it. Ultimately, the girl was taken into custody.
Both the girl's and the mother's name have not been disclosed by the police yet, considering the girl was too young and mentally ill.
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3D SSDs with 10TB storage announced

 Intel and Toshiba 3D SSDs with 10TB storage announced at affordable prices 


   The upcoming SSDs (Solid State Drives) will be much richer in terms of storage efficiency. The major obstacle which inhibits the sale of these SSDs is their price. But still being aware of this challenge, Intel and Micron have said that new SSDs with storage capacity up to 10TB will be soon in market, possibly by next year. Whereas Toshiba has been working on the development of similar technology  called "3D NAND" which too will come with higher storage capacity. Consequently Flash Storage Devices and SSDs will get cheaper with increasing storage capacity. Let us know more about both these invention respectively:

Intel and Micron


Intel and Micron has revealed that 3D NAND technology will be providing three times more storage efficiency than any other existing NAND technology. This technology uses floating gate cells that make it the
flash drive with highest density.
In this 3D NAND technology, data storage cells are stored vertically with an exceptional accuracy to create storage devices with three times more efficiency.
Apart from decreased cost and high efficiency, new 3D SSDs will be faster.

Toshiba


Toshiba has said that it is the creator of world's first 48 layer NAND 3D SSD. Tokyo based Toshiba corporation has called this BiCS- a 2-bit-per-cell 16GB device. The BiCS uses 48 layer stacking process with reliability and speed. Right now company is speeding up for its mass production and also distributing samples to other companies.

These 3D SSDs will be tough competitors for the existing players thereby providing  greater speed along with better storage capacity. 
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Your beloved apps are betraying you

Do you seriously read all permissions while you install an app ? For many of us, the answer is a big NO. But while installing an app you unconsciously give many permissions. So here is a piece of bad news for you. You are under a continuous surveillance of your favourite smartphone application. In fact, the apps you have installed for your help are spying on you.
This news became renowned when a team of computer scientists at the Carnegie Mellon University conducted a research on twenty-three randomly selected Android 4.3 users from Craiglist and Carnegie Mellon University's student body. As a result, more than a score of android apps including some of the famous apps like Go Launcher Ex, Groupon, Facebook etc. collect your location data up to 50 meters near you roughly every 3 minutes or 6200 times a week. This doesn't end here, but even your personal details like galleries, call logs and many more are on record with the app publisher.
Norman M. Sadeh, a Carnegie Mellon professor who co-authored the study questioned:
"Does Groupon really need to know where you are every twenty minutes?"
While some of the apps like navigation, forecasting etc are answerable to this obtrusion but the others are invading the privacy of unaware users. Some of the pre-installed services like google play services distribute this information to a variety of third party apps. What's more worse is that you have no control over this.
This report may cause unwarrented suspicion among the public in the era where security and privacy are the foremost concerns of every user.  
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