Hayabusa & Hayabusa2 – Hunting Asteroids

We have heard more about Rosetta mission and how epic it was. We landed a space probe on a comet, and that’s some achievement not only for ESA but also for whole humanity. Now another mission by JAXA (Japanese space agency) was sent yesterday (Dec 3, 2014) to pursue C-Type asteroid named “1999 JU3”. Hayabusa2 is as name suggests a second mission for exploring asteroids.

Hayabusa mission was launched in 2003 to collect samples from s-type asteroid “Itokawa” and it returned to Earth in 2010, successfully completing the mission with asteroid samples. The reason behind Hayabusa’s mission was to study about the birth of our solar system. You might ask why asteroid, why we are searching for answers for our solar system in asteroids.

Hayabusa

Only extra-terrestrial samples we have gathered so far is from our moon, but like our Earth, moon too went terrestrial transformation over the billions of years due to the thermal processes, therefore these samples from moon or anything from our Earth cannot provide more accurate data about the birth of our solar system. Asteroids were produced at the birth of the solar system and since they are so small, they went little or no transformation over these billions of years. Therefore studying the samples from asteroid will give more accurate details about our solar system.

In a technological perspective, Hayabusa mission has another feat. It used ion engine as the main propeller. Ion engines are high-efficient engines still in technological making and will become important key player in future space exploration.

Hayabusa also used autonomous navigation system, one that allow the space craft to navigate to the target without human intervention. It uses optical navigation camera for light detection and ranging.

Hayabusa2 is going after c-type asteroid, they are considered to be more ancient than s-type and is considered to contain more organic materials than that of s-type. Studying c-type asteroid will yield more details about origin of organic materials and water in our solar system. Hayabusa2 uses identical configuration of Hayabusa, but some parts are improvised, such as flat-disk high gain antenna.

Hayabusa2 will reach asteroid 1999 JU3 in mid-2018 and orbit it for one and a half years to collect samples and then return to Earth around the end of 2020. After it return with collected samples, we will have more knowledge about what and how organic materials and water came to solar system and also some questions about life formation also more likely to be answered.

Scientists explain nitrogen-rich atmosphere of Earth with plate tectonics

Earth, unlike its neighbor planets Venus and Mars, has 78% nitrogen in its atmosphere. Our current day atmosphere is a result of billions of years of photosynthesis by plants, but that only increased the amount of oxygen to almost 20% of atmosphere, but why there is too much nitrogen in the atmosphere is still not understood well.

Now scientists try to explain abundance of nitrogen with plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the reason for mountains and also volcanoes, when volcano erupts it does bring lot of deep earth stuffs into the surface of earth.

Gases like sulfur, carbon dioxide and nitrogen are the gases usually comes out of volcanic eruption.

Scientists say that nitrogen is locked into the silicate rocks in the earth’s crust. When this silicate rocks interact with oxygen based compounds, they break into water (H2O) and nitrogen (N2). This nitrogen then came out of volcanic eruption to the atmosphere.

This is why Mars and Venus have little nitrogen because they don’t have plate tectonics.

Read more at arstechnica

Image: NOAA via arstechnica

The thinnest phone yet, Oppo R5

Oppo R5 is the world's thinnest smart phone! With just 4.85 mm thickness, this phone just looks like metal plate.

The phone features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 chipset with octa-core running at 1.5Ghz. The phone also comes with 2 GB of RAM and has full HD screen (1920x1080). It also has 13MP Sony rear camera and 5MP front camera.

R5 only comes with 2000 mAh battery, most probably due to the slim size. It also has only 16 GB internal storage and no SD card slot.

Whether this phone too prone to bendgate is yet to be tested! Well the phone goes on sale in December and available off contract at $499 USD.

Source & Image: engadget

Germany Demands Google to Show Their Searching Algorithms

Heiko Mass, Germany’s justice minister, wants Google to open their searching algorithms so the way Google works will be much more transparent. Google has lot of impact on businesses lately, and depending on how businesses are shown in Google’s search results make a major impact in businesses.

With Google dominating online search market with more than 60%, Google has become a standard for online search, and many of Europe countries including Germany feels that Google take this as an advantage and promoting its own brand of services over native services in Europe.

So Germany’s minister believes that Google must expose how it’s searching algorithms works, therefore explaining the search results with high Google service dominance.

Even though Google’s many works are open source, including all famous Android OS, but very important aspects of Google’s primary income generating businesses are closed source and proprietary. Google Search is one of these deeply closed and guarded project. Showing the algorithm to authorities may ended up in technology breach and others copying the algorithms.

Microsoft’s EMET 5.0 is Released, Providing Extensive Defense Against Cyber-Attacks

Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit is Microsoft’s second layer of security that was primarily available for enterprise customers, it helps prevent damages against cyber-attacks, and providing methods to detect and block exploitations techniques that are used by cyber criminals. It provides real time protection against such attacks and help secure your system before your formal anti-virus or anti-malware get updates with the patch for such attacks.

EMET is less known by normal users, because it wasn’t much advertised by Microsoft, but now this EMET is free and anyone can use it, even on your home computers, and it gives you extra protection against hackers.

EMET is also compatible with most anti-virus and anti-malware applications, so it can work alongside to provide more security.

Download EMET 5.0 here (11MB)

More details on EMET here.

Material Design Comes to Google Chrome Beta for Android

Google revealed Android 5 in their IO conference, it is called Android L, and it has some new UI makeovers, that Google called it Material Design. It gives more attention to type and have lot of animation based UI changes.

Before releasing the actual OS, Google has already showed off few of their apps with Material Design such as Gmail and Maps. Now Google released Chrome Beta for Android with Material Design.

Chrome Beta 37 has totally new look, but the dev team said they were experimenting with some of the elements of Material Design. It seems they will continue to work with the new design and finally it will come to Chrome for Android.

Download Chrome Beta for Android here.

Here is the full gallery at arstechnica

Three Super Massive Black Holes Rotating Closely

4.3 billion light years away, in a distance galaxy, 2 black holes have been identified, they are not ordinary black holes, they are supermassive black holes, that is they are millions or billions time massive than our Sun. Usually these kind of black holes lies in the center of the galaxy.

Super massive black holes are surrounded by disk of glowing hot gas, commonly with that it forms quasar. Quasars are monstrous objects in space and with its colossal power can outshine the entire galaxy.

The quasar named SDSS J1502+1115 is in constellation Bootes, 4.3 light years away is actually 2 supper massive black holes and are almost 24,000 light years apart. But when scientists looked one black hole closely with intercontinental array of radio dishes – which can produce sharper images than Hubble Space Telescope – they discovered that one of the black hole is actually a duo.

This new found pair of black holes are actually 450 light years apart and orbiting each other every 4 million years. There is only one more tightly paired black hole we ever discovered and that is 24 light years apart.

Scientists believe that tightly paired black holes can help detect “gravitational wave” predicted by general relativity, but so far no known binary black holes are tight enough to cause detectable gravitational wave.

Source: ScienceMag

Sony Kernel Sources are Available on GitHub

Sony is really great with cooperating with open community, and they have been releasing Xperia kernel modules as zip files until now. Recently it changed and they are now available on GitHub, this is great news because now it has all the changes and history logged and it is great for developers to merge any mother modules with them.

Sony already provides official way to unlock their Xperia devices’ bootloader – allowing the device to install 3^rd party roms such as famous CyanogenMod for Xperia from FreeXperia project.

It is also noted that recently Sony hired the founder of FreeXperia project, Alin Jerpelea.

Sony GitHub

Source: Sony Mobile

MIT Researchers Shows off 36 Core CPU with “network-on-chip”

Last week, at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, MIT research group unveiled 36 core chip. What’s new about this chip is the way it communicates with its cores – it is called “network-on-chip”.

Today’s multicore CPUs are connecting and communicating with its multiple cores with single wire, called bus, when two cores are needed to communicated, they are given access to the bus. This will become an issue as the number of cores increases, because then time to wait for the access to bus will increase and it will reduced the performance of the chip.

Nexus 9 Details Leaked Ahead of Google IO Conference

The next version of Google Nexus 7 – Google Nexus 9 details have been surfaced. This 8.9 inch tables will be the successor of Nexus 7 and made by HTC – it is codenamed Volantis.

Though it is named as Nexus 9, but it may change before coming into market. It has 8.9 inch display at 2048x1440 pixels and powered by NVIDIA Logan 64-bit processor with 2GB of RAM. It also has 16GB/32GB storage configuration.

With 8MP rear camera with optical image stabilization and 3MP front facing camera.

The body is built using what they call “aluminum zero-gap construction”. It is also believed that 16GB version will be priced at $399 and $499 for 32GB

Source: Android Police

Nokia's Z Launcher for Android - Simple and Smart

Nokia has released a launcher app for Android platform, which is still in beta but this is the first Android app Nokia has made public. Microsoft bought Nokia recently and move ahead with Windows Phone / Lumia series. But Microsoft didn't buy whole Nokia. This app is from one of the original Nokia group, one of the group Microsoft hadn't bought.

Z Launcher is very customizable and simple to use. It is much different than conventional Android launcher apps. Z Launcher features clock, calendar and appointments on the top, and list of apps according to the time - Z Launcher learns the pattern on how you use your apps and shows them accordingly. It shows some sets of apps in the morning and another set of apps in the evening. It not only shows apps in the list, also contacts and meetings reminders.

Z Launcher also has finger gesture feature called "Scribble". Just draw the first letter of the app and it shows relevant list of apps and details for that letter.

Z Launcher is currently in a pre-beta release. You can head over to zlauncher.com and click on the download link to download the app to your phone directly.

Z Launcher works with app major phones and phones running Android 4.1. CyanogenMod phones or any phones which are rooted are not supported.

Amazon’s Fire Phone Will be Available on July 25th

It was rumored for long time that Amazon was making phone of its own. Now Amazon has announced it “Fire Phone” and it will be released on July 25^th, 2014. So what is in the package?

It is packed with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU at 2.2GHz with Adreno 330 GPU. It has 13MP rear camera and 720p display. But this phone has 5 front facing camera for 3D effects.

Apple Added Low-end iMac in Their Store

Apple has updated their apple store website today with new Apple iMac product which is priced at $1099.00 – which is lower than any of the previous offering.

This entry level iMac has 1.4GHz dual core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz with 8GB of memory. It also has 500GB hard drive and Intel HD 5000 Graphics.

This 21.5 inch iMac can be seen as Apple’s entry to cheaper market, though it is powered by low-end hardware, but it is pretty good comparing to the Windows machines built with the same quality.

This iMac will be shipped with Mac OS 10.9 and will be able to update to 10.10 when it becomes available.

Easy Way to Install .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 8 / 8.1

Sometimes you need to install some software that require .NET 3.5 framework, but you cannot just download and install it on Windows 8/8.1. On demand download fails most of the time, and sometimes takes much longer. Easier way is to install it from Windows 8/8.1 installation media.

By using the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) command line tool, we can install .NET 3.5 easily.

What you need to have

1. Windows installation DVD or ISO image
2. Administrative privilege to run command prompt as Administrator

How to install

1. Insert the DVD into drive, or mount ISO image, and note the drive letter.

2. Now open command prompt as administrator. Easy way is to move your mouse cursor to the left down corner (where the start button is) and right click – you will see a menu.

Click “Command Prompt (Admin)” and it will open as admin.

3. Now copy and paste the following command prompt.

DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /All /LimitAccess /Source:d:\sources\sxs

You see the last part of the command “d:\sources\sxs” – you need to change d: into whatever drive letter your installation media is in.

4. That’s all – hit enter and it will install without trouble or asking any more question.

Now you can install any app that needs .NET 3.5 – and you don’t need to restart your system after installing .NET 3.5

SwiftKey –Beloved Android Keyboard is Now Free

SwiftKey one of the most popular keyboards for android is now free, it is known for the auto predicting feature, it just works like magic. It was a paid app and cost $4.99, but now the team made it all free, for those who already paid for the app, will receive premium themes for SwiftKey for free.

SwiftKey now also features theme store where you can download free and paid themes for the keyboard. Also recently SwiftKey added emoji predictions too.

SwiftKey supports 66 languages and will also be available on iOS 8.

Download from Google Play Store

Intel’s Devil’s Canyon Processor Reaches 4.4GHz for Just $339

In the processing power in terms of clock speed, Intel did not bother much. AMD have already showed their FX processors which run at 4GHz. With the introduction of 4^th generation Haswell Core i7 – 4790K processor, Intel is entering the arena with a capable processor which runs at 4GHz and it can go up to 4.4GHz in Turbo mode.

The biggest advantage is Intel is not charging much for the processor, at the price is tagged at $339. Only downfall is that it uses slightly higher watt – 88W. But nonetheless for the price, this is really good deal.

Source: AnandTech

Intel® Core™ i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz)

Another OpenSSL Bug Discovered

You might have already heard about the Heartbleed bug, it was so massive everyone who implemented OpenSSL had to quickly fix it and asked their user to change the passwords, including Google, Facebook and others.

Yesterday, new vulnerability was found in OpenSSL, this bug could lead to an attacker on the same network to steal the decrypt data such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Researchers says that is bug is not as bad as the Heartbleed bug because, in order to exploit this new but, attacker should be on the same network as you are. This is a problem for public networks such as free Wi-Fi on restaurants and coffee shops. But on your home or office, this is usually not possible.

Another point about this bug is, that unlike Heartbleed, both server and client has to run vulnerable version of OpenSSL in order to carry on the attack.

OpenSSL is an open sourced encryption library used in server – client transactions that uses SSL and TSL protocols. The project is managed by worldwide community and are updated in fast phase.

Soruce: Neowin

Facebook App Listens to Your Surroundings and Records Audio

It is Facebook app again. It is one of the app that requires all special permissions from android to run, and now they have added one more permission, to access your microphone. Facebook app can now listen to your environment and understand what you have been listening to or watching to.

This is indeed caused a massive outcry from the community, but nevertheless Facebook added it, but Facebook says it still respect your privacy and doesn’t store the recorded audio in the servers, it just records and match the audio fingerprint so you can post it on Facebook only if you choose to.

For now this recording option is optional, you can disable it if you choose to. But it is not sure for how long this will stay optional.

Source & Images: Geek

Google’s Project Tango Tablet is Here on Nvidia Tegra K1

Few months ago, Google has demonstrated its new 3D sensing phone, which can learn the special dimensions of the surroundings by just moving with the phone. With depth sensors and motion-tracking camera it could build a 3D maps of your location.

It was just a prototype 5inch phone, but now Google’s Advanced Technologies Group is about to release a real device, which is slightly bigger than 5inch prototype, this is 7inch tablet powered by Nvidia’s Tegra K1 processor.

Google Chrome to Block Local Extensions Installations on Windows

Malicious extensions are real headache for user, such as Ask and few others, they hijack your settings and make changes that are difficult to restore for normal users. Back in October Google added “Reset browser settings” button to recover from such disaster, but malicious extension makers are finding new ways to bypass that.

Google has now announced that from today local extensions installations are no longer allowed in Chrome for Windows. In order to install the extension, it must be hosted on the Chrome Web Store. Google says with this new policy, extensions previously installed not from Chrome Web Store will be automatically disabled.

Developers are not affected by this policy though. They will be able to locally install extensions during development and websites providing extension installation on their own can use inline installs feature.

Source: Google Chrome Blog

Android Apps Can Take Photos and Videos without Your Knowledge – Potential Privacy Issue

 

Recent blog post by Szymon Sidor, showed that it is possible for an Android app to take photos and videos without any notifications and also you won’t see this app on installed applications. He also demoed how this works.

Szymon and his team wanted to try something with web cams on PCs without turning on indicator light, but later Szymon wanted t0 try it with android devices. He tried many things and succeeded at last.

Technically this is not a bug, but rather loophole in the Android SDK, which allows the workaround to actually work. He also pointed out how to identify any such culprit apps in his blog.

There is a big problem here, Android may update or patch this issue, but more than 90 percent of the devices will never get the update, only handful of premium devices are going to get updated, that is also questionable on how long for the manufacture to release the patch even after Google made it available. This is all linked to fragmentation of Android’s eco system.

Szymon also points out how some of the shady features of Android can be avoided and also he sent the photo/video issue to Android team.

Source : Snacks For Your Mind

New Windows Phone 8.1 Video Surfaces

Windows Phone 8.1 is around the corner, Microsoft is already releasing new devices with 8.1 such as Lumia 630. For all other phones such as old Windows Phone 8 family Lumia phones, the 8.1 update will come in next month.

Now Microsoft has released 2 videos explaining basic functionality of Windows Phone 8.1 and other useful features that it brings.

How to Change the Default Font in Microsoft Word

Changing the default font in MS Word 2010 or 2013 is easy as just opening the Font dialog (Ctrl+D) box and click “set as default” and then select “All documents based on Normal.dotm template?” and click Ok. Well sometime this never works. Sometimes even after setting the defaults as mentioned earlier, new documents seems to be created with same old default font.

Clover 3 Adds Tabs Support to Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer has been modified in Windows 8 and include ribbon UI and it is good, one feature that I miss still is the way to open multiple tabs. Tabs are really a neat feature and comes naturally after years of using them with advantages in the web browsers.

Tabs help organize explorer windows in logical way. I work with lot of files and opened explorer windows just grows in number and becomes very difficult to manage. I was looking at third party explorer replacements, but I didn’t like them much, the one I liked, Directory Opus, very expensive, so I was looking for a way to add tab support for my Windows Explorer and I found a great program for that.

Nodepad2 is An Awesome Tiny Replacement for Windows Notepad

Not everyone deals with plain old text documents (txt files), when it comes to documents, we use word processing software like MS Word or LibreOffice. Plain text documents, including program source codes are something few people deals with every day, and Windows has built-in notepad for opening these files, but since Windows 98 tis tiny notepad program stayed the same and it does what is supposed to do – opening plain text files.

But reading program source files are hard with there is no color coded view like the one in the IDEs and no way to change the encoding and no line numbers can be hard. That’s where this tiny notepad replacement comes in.

Moto E – Budget Phone with Good Specs for $129

After the success of Moto G, a phone with above normal spec generated quite a fuzz when it was released for just $179. Now Motorola is releasing another phone with lower spec that Moto G, but this is not a cheap and slow phone, for the price $129, it has really good specs that should deliver smooth performance for the android OS.

Image : arstechnica

It has 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 CPU coupled with Adreno 302 GPU and 1GB of RAM. It also features 4.3 inches IPS display with 960x540 pixels. It only has 4GB built-in storage, but it also has expandable Micro SD slot that can support up to 32 GB. It has 1980 mAh battery, considering the screen and hardware, and provide more than 9 hours of Wi-Fi internet surfing.

Antarctica Ice Sheet Starting to Collapse - Sea-level Rise is Unstoppable, NASA Says

Global warming has hit us again, new study by NASA shows that huge west Antarctica ice sheet is collapsing into sea, and this west Antarctica ice sheet holds enough water to increase the sea level up to 2 feet. But this also acts as an acceleration process and help melt the rest of the ice sheet and that will increase the sea level by another 10 to 13 feet – that is 3 to 4 meters.

Glaciers in Antarctica

Scientists from University of Washington says this full collapse will happen within few centuries, and the process has already begun. A NASA’s study with the help of 40 years of ground and satellite data shows that this process of gradual melting is happening much faster than scientists predicted before. This process is now like a chain of domino's and reached the critical threshold.

NASA says that there are 3 major evidence for this glaciers’ collapse –

1. The change in the glaciers’’ flow speed.
2. How much these glaciers float on the sea water.
3. The slope of the terrain these glaciers are floating over and its depth below sea level.

Researchers believe that shortest time period for the full collapse takes 200 years or so, but longest is more than 1000 years. But this is heavily depends on our global heating rate, but however long it might take, the collapse is inevitable.

Read more about this from NASA’s study

Source: University of Washington Blog

Beautiful Remnants of Star Explosions–Nebulae

When star dies in a violent cataclysmic supernova, it becomes the kitchen for the recipes of the universe, all the elements heavier than iron are produced in one of these explosive supernovae. When a star goes supernova it releases so much energy, that it outshines the galaxy it is from.

Do you know that supernova explosion can release energy as much as our star Sun can release over its entire life span – that is almost 10 billion years!

This post is not about supernovae but the beautiful remnants left behind the supernova called nebula. Nebula is a broad term, and it means interstellar clouds of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases and it is formed by many means, supernovae is one of them.

Let’s see some of the most beautiful remnants of stars.

Free Alternatives to Adobe Reader – A Guide for Lightweight PDF Reader (Windows)

When it comes to PDF files, which is a great format for sharing documents, we may use the official PDF reader from Adobe called Adobe Reader. It is really good and always updating, but it is very slow and use extra bits of resources in your PC. These days, computers are powered with lot of processing power and lot of RAM, so an app being a resource hog won’t be a bigger issue, but if you want to check out other lightweight applications which can handle PDFs and also loads faster than Adobe Reader, here is the guide.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 2.0.2 Public Beta Available to Download

Malwarebyes’s Anti-Malware is known for its aggressive malware hunting and it is a great companion for any anti-virus product you use. It is also free to use for home users and it is just $25 for 1 year for 3 PCs – that is really good price for what it does.

With version 2.0, Anti-Malware brought many new things with UI changes too. This is a small update (beta) to bring more stability, user friendliness and more effectiveness against latest malwares.

Firefox 29 is Released -Comes with New UI

Mozilla releases the 29th version of Firefox web browser, which comes with newer user interface - a major update since long time. It also has a new menu system that is far away from tradition menus, it includes easy cues for users to easily select the features they want.

Firefox is a modern full featured web browser and direct competitor for Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer. With Firefox 29, Mozilla has greatly enhanced the user experience and security.

Firefox also has a way to sync your browser customizations, bookmarks, passwords, history, add-ons and preferences. Which makes it handy to use the browser across devices.

Download Firefox 29.0

Check the release notes here

Is It An Astronaut Floating Free?

You can see an astronaut floating free in the Earth orbit, but it was not astronaut, it was just a space suite without astronaut.In 2006 a space suite floated away from the International Space Station, well it was intentionally put it in the orbit by the station crew.

ISS astronaut Mike Finke spacewalks in a Russian Orlan spacesuit in 2004

It was named Suitsat-1 and stuffed with old cloths and also armed with small radio transmitter and three batteries. It also had internal sensors to measure temperature and battery power. The readings were transmitted to ground observation center.

This SuiteSat - a space suite turned into satellite was a Russian Orlan space suite. They were used by Russian Space Program for spacewalks. SuiteSat was a Russian idea, they wanted to turn old spacesuits into useful satellites.

The suite circled the Earth 2 times before its radio signal become weak, but it continued to circle Earth every 90 minutes and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere after few weeks.

Source: NASA Apod

Brown Dwarf Star is Found 7.2 Light-years Away from Our Sun

Astronomers from Penn State University had found a new brown dwarf star very close to our Sun using NASA's WISE and Spitzer Space Telescope, just 7.2 light years away. Important thing is this star is as cold as our North pole.

This image shows the relative distance of new-found brown dwarf relative to other neighbor stars

This new found brown dwarf star is named as WISE J085510.83-071442.5 and its temperature is between -48 to -13 degree Celsius. This temperature is a new record because the previously found brown dwarf stars were about room temperature or about 20 degree Celsius.

Brown dwarf stars are like "failed" stars, they are of the size between 15 times the mass of Jupiter and 75 times the mass of Jupiter, because of the mass range the object wouldn't have enough mass to start the fusion, that powers normal stars, therefor couldn't burn nuclear fuel or radiate light.

Brown dwarf star

WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) was able to capture this brown dwarf star because it surveyed entire sky twice and also it surveyed them in infrared. These brown dwarf stars wont give off light, so we wont see them through normal light telescope, but their thermal glow can be captured using infrared.

This WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, with such low mass it could be a gas giant planet, but scientists believe that this should be a brown dwarf, because brown dwarf are common in space.

Source: Phys.org

iOS 7.1.1 Released with Smaller Improvements and Bug Fixes

Last month Apple released iOS 7.1 major update for its iOS 7 branch, now 7.1.1 brings some improvements in Touch ID (fingerprint scanning feature) in iPhone 5S, and also fixed some bugs in keyboard responsiveness.

Apple also fixes some security bugs, notably in SSL, where attacker with privileged could capture the data in the session protected by SSL. Also fixed some issues in WebKit and HTTP cookie handling.

Already, rumors about iOS 8 is already here with some screen-shots (probably fake). Apple is expected to release the developer preview version of iOS 8 in their upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June 2nd.

Fatal Flaw in Some Samsung Galaxy S5 Smart phone Cameras

Samsung confirmed there is a camera failure in limited number of Galaxy S5 devices after people started to post on forums about the camera failure particularly on the Verizon Wireless model.

Samsung spokesperson said that owners with fault camera can call 1-888-987-4357 to arrange a replacement under Samsung's warranty. Verizon also tweeted about the issue and asked the customers with fault units to contact Verizon customer support resolve the issue.

Galaxy S5's 16 megapixel camera is one of its prime feature and this "camera fault" makes it pretty useless for its camera value.

Source: The Verge

F.lux Can Save Your Eyes from Computer Screen

It is a very small software yet very important for anyone who spends time with computer. Computer screens are bring and vibrant - they are designed that way and mostly looks good on day time, but in the night it is a different story.

In the night time, we uses artificial light source to light up our rooms and then the computer screen is not designed to look good on those conditions, usually our screen gives off bright bluish light and for a long period of viewing your screen under incandescent or halogen or CFL will make your eyes strain.

F.lux is a simple software to deal with this simple yet important issue, f.lux can automatically adjust the brightness and color of your computer screen according to the time of the day.

It will make the screen looks more warm at night and normal cool colored like sunlight in the day time. It also has settings to changes the color according your light source.

According to f.lux, blue light glow that comes from computer screen affects the sleep pattern, they have intensive coverage about that research on their website, you can check that here.

This is a simple, yet worthy software to have it on your computer.

Download f.lux https://justgetflux.com/.

OnePlus One - Flagship Android Phone with Cheap Price

The long wait has come to an end. One Plus' ONE is real with impressive hardware specs. The phone comes with CyanogenMod 11S - modified version of CyanogenMod that is based on Android 4.4.

The One has super speed Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Quad-core CPU at 2.5GHz and 3GB of RAM. Adding to this super spec, 5.5 inch 1080p full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) screen protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

One is also packed with Sony's Exmor IMX 214 13 Megapixel camera with dual LED flash and f/2.0 ape on the back, which can also record 4K resolution videos and slow motion 720p videos at 120fps, and 5 Megapixel front facing camera.

For all day use, the phone has 3100 mAh LiPo battery, which OnePlus claims, "Designed to last" because of the energy efficient Snapdragon 801 chip and energy efficient display technology called Display RAM.

16GB version comes with silk white and costs just $299 while 64GB one costs $349 and comes in standalone black.

Check their website here.

NGC 2841 : One of The Massive Galaxies Known

Just 46 million light years away, NGC 2841 is a massive spiral galaxy, that is bigger than out own Milky Way galaxy. It is in northern constellation of Ursa Major, It has beautiful yellow galactic nucleus.

Click the image to see full size (2.45mb)

 

Google Cracks reCAPTCHA Codes with Google Street View Technology

CAPTCHA is a very old technological thing that is still being used in many websites to verify human presence or reduce spam and abuse of services. You have seen it with almost every registration forms you submit, there is this hard to read image with some characters that you need to enter correctly to successfully submit the form.

Java Ra – Great Way to Manage Your Java Runtime Environment

There are always problems associated with Java Runtime Environment (JRE), usually security bugs in the web plugin. JavaRa is a small piece of software developed by SingularLabs to effectively install, update and also remove JRE on demand.

With this tiny software, you can also delete the previous installation of Java in your system, it also removes files, directories and registry entries associated with Java installation JRE plugins.

Philips Introduces Smartphone with Massive 5300mAh Battery

Battery life is always the biggest issue any smartphone has, comparing with feature phones of the past, smartphones barely lasts more than a day with normal usage. The reason is the capacity of the battery – for example Galaxy S5 has 2800 mAh battery, iPhone 5S has 1560 mAh battery. With the design of thin phones it is not always possible to put bigger batteries in smartphones.

Most Earth like Planet Found So Far is Kepler-186f

About 500 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, there exists a cool and dim class M type dwarf star, it is about half the size and mass of our Sun. In that star system, there are five planets rotating this small star, especially, one named Kepler-186f orbits the M dwarf star every 130 days from 53 million km – it is about the same distance as Sun to Mercury, but this M dwarf star is much smaller and cooler, therefor this planet Kepler-186f falls within ‘habitable zone’ where the water exists in liquid form.

The planet was discovered by planet hunting spacecraft Kepler. The spacecraft uses transit technique to discover planets orbiting alien stars. When planet crosses the star, the light of the star is dimmed by slight amount and the Kepler spacecraft’s apparatus is accurate enough to detect that very tiny drop in the brightness therefore identifying the planet rotating the star. It is near impossible to directly detecting the planets light years away as they are not a direct light source and looks very dim comparing to stars.

Magnetar - Highly Magnetized Neutron Star

We all know neutron star, one of the odd objects in the cosmos, now take that neutron star, it is a remnant of a massive star due to a gravitational collapse. Magnetar is also a type of neutron star, but with extremely powerful magnetic field.

How powerful this magnetic field could be? It is one thousand trillion times stronger than our planet Earth. There are only handful of magnetars are discovered in our Milky way galaxy, about 10 but recent studies shows there should be more. Because of this intense magnetic field, the surface of magnetars are heated up to 18 million degree Fahrenheit.