TWEETS

It's a sunny summer morning in the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Cicadas chirp in the trees. A lone plane flew high overhead. Then a flash of light, followed by a loud blast. Buildings are flattened, and smoke rises from crackling fires under a darkened sky. Over two years, a group of Japanese high school students has been painstakingly producing a five-minute virtual reality experience that recreates the sights and sounds of Hiroshima before, during and after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city 73 years ago. By transporting users back in time to the moment when a city was turned into a wasteland, the students and their teacher hope to ensure that something similar never happens again. The Aug 6, 1945, bombing of Hiroshima killed 140,000 people. Three days later, a second US atomic bomb killed 70,000 people in Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days after that, ending World War II. "Even without language, once you see the images, you understand," said Mei Okada,...

The next generation of Aple's mobile operating system i.e iOS 12 will come with a cool feature that can can help you customize the way Siri works with apps on your phone or tablet. For example ''Called "Siri Shortcuts," the feature lets a user define a phrase that will trigger a set of actions by the apps on a device. For example, you could say, "Game Time" to get a team schedule from TeamSnap, or "Groceries" to fulfill a standing grocery order from a grocery app.''  I think its gonna be a really cool feature and we just have to check it out, its also definitely going to have shortcuts.

Another day, another video leak of the  iPhone 8  - Apple hasn't even confirmed the phone is on the way, but we already know a ton of details about the upcoming handset, and the new clip confirms a lot of the earlier rumors that have already been swirling. Posted by YouTuber  EverythingApplePro ,  the video  shows a high-quality dummy model supposedly provided to case manufacturers by Apple, in order that they can get their new designs ready for the phone's launch. So, this isn't actually a proper  iPhone  8, but it's more or less what the iPhone 8 will look like. As  with previous leaks , we get a good look at the large front display with barely a bezel to be seen, and the vertically aligned dual-lens camera around the back, which is apparently going to help with Apple's push into the field of  augmented reality . The device shown here is wider than the iPhone 7, but not by much, and there's no sign of a home button, which sugges...

Wait, Microsoft is actually siding with the common user! In the latest turn of events, Microsoft stated on Wednesday that it will begin to warn users of its Outlook.com email service if the software company suspects that the government is attempting to spy on users by hacking into their accounts. Looks like tech companies have finally stopped helping out the government and in the process, grown a big heart in helping out the common individuals, because it was revealed a while back that companies were actually aiding the U.S. government to help spy on users. However, Microsoft is not the first tech giant to have a change of heart. Google was the first tech firm to adopt this practice, followed by social networking giant Facebook, then Twitter, followed by Yahoo. For the past two years, Microsoft has offered alerts about potential security breaches without specifying the likely suspect and in a statement, the software giant has said the following: "As the threat landscape has ev...

This video reveals that smartwatches are watching you very closely indeed With smartphones and tablets a ubiquitous entity, naturally it will draw a lot of attention to malicious hackers. However, a product preceding the convenience and technological ingenuity of these mobile devices are wearables and before you ask, not many people ponder over the security of wearables. However, this video is going to change all that because thanks to the latest research, smartwatches can actually reveal what you are typing. Despite the fact that smartwatches might not be able to store passwords, or that their owners refrain from doing so, Masters student by the name of Tony Beltramelli has proven that those things are not going to matter one bit. Studying at the IT University at Copenhagen, Beltramelli shows that our smartwatches can actually give away information about us that we did not know it had to begin with. According to Beltramelli, he refers to this as deep spying. In a nutshell, deep sp...

Steam confirms DDoS attack on Christmas day, says the attack leaked 34000 user accounts World's most popular gaming platform Steam has confirmed its servers suffered a massive denial-of-service (DoS) attack on Christmas Day. Moreover it said that the DoS attack had caused around 34,000 users to have their sensitive personal information leaked. Readers and gamer may remember that Steam servers were down on Christmas day between 11.50am PST and 1.20pm PST. At that time, many sources tried to dispel the DoS attack fears and sought to blame the outage on a "configuration error." However as per the statement released by Steam, its servers had indeed been blasted with a DoS attack and the attack allowed some users to see Steam Store pages that had been generated for other users. "The content of these requests varied by page, but some pages included a Steam user's billing address, the last four digits of their Steam Guard phone number, their purchase history, the l...

ISIS plans mass cyber attacks against US Government Islamic State intends on crippling the United States and their very first cyber-attack is expected to be launched at the national grid, which will effectively take out power for a sufficient period for the group to launch even more devastating attacks. However, it is going to be quite an arduous task because according to the latest report, their efforts are expected to be curbed thanks to the combined efforts of the U.S. military. According to Alex Kassirer, a Flashpoint terrorism analyst, who's current job is to monitor conversations on extremist forums has stated that while the group does not possess the dexterous capabilities to launch a cyber warfare against the United States, the terrorist group is slowing cultivating those skills and abiding by their time in order to plan their next move with a slow but steady pace. He states the following: "The capability's not there and that's why we're seeing these lo...

Congress Wants NASA To Develop A Deep Space Habitat For Mars Mission By 2018 NASA has received $55 million from Congress to develop living quarters no later than 2018 that can take astronauts future deep space missions. Earlier this month, the omnibus spending bill that was passed by lawmakers has increased the space agency's funding in 2016 by $1.3 billion. The money would come from the Advanced Exploration Systems program, part of the Exploration Research and Development line item in the budget that received $350 million in the bill. The agency has not explained how it will use that funding. Sam Scimemi, International Space Station director at NASA Headquarters, speaking at a Space Transportation Association luncheon on December 16, said he was not immediately aware of any specific plans for that funding. The omnibus bill that specifies how much NASA gets in the following year actually reads: "NASA shall develop a prototype deep space habitation module within the advance...

India wants a 24/7 monitoring centre to handle cyber threat from ISIS and other terror outfits The Indian government is planning to start a 24×7 monitoring room to tackle cyber threat received from ISIS, as the radical Islamic group is trying to lure young Indian Muslim men into its fold by spreading propaganda material in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati and Urdu on cyber space. Intelligence inputs point out that the terror outfit sees potential recruits from across the country due to the increasing use of Indian languages to spread the message of ISIS. Besides English and Hindi, numerous regional languages are also being used to put out pro-ISIS material. In the past, Bangla has also been used to spread ISIS' hate propaganda targeting susceptible youths in India and Bangladesh. On December 15, the government set up a committee to determine the effectiveness of setting up a multi-agency 24×7 social media analysis centre and blue print of setting up a "situation room" to analys...

WhatsApp goes down on the 31st December, its busiest day Ever since WhatsApp has appeared on the cross platform messaging arena, it has become the defacto messaging App that users turn to for wishing their near and dear ones with New Year wishes. However yesterday, even the ever resilient of WhatsApp servers could not bear the load of New Year greeting from users and went down. Users across the world reported issues while connecting to WhatsApp on New Year's Eve, with services impacted for several hours before normalcy was restored. "Earlier today, some people had trouble accessing WhatsApp. We investigated the problem and have restored access for everyone. We apologize for the inconvenience and wish everyone a happy new year," a WhatsApp spokesperson said. As is the norm now a days, WhatsApp users immediately took to Twitter to complaint about problems connecting to WhatsApp. The messaging and voice calling client seemed to be having issues sending and receiving me...

'The Hateful Eight' Leaker Hive-CM8 Apologizes To Quentin Tarantino We had reported earlier that Hive-CM8 had leaked the Quentin Tarantino opus, 'The Hateful Eight' before is theatrical release. Now, the group has apologized for leaking The Hateful Eight has apologized to Tarantino for releasing the movie screener. Hive-CM8 had leaked high quality DVD screener of The Hateful Eight on Christmas eve to the delight of torrent lovers. In an unprecedented announcement Hive-CM8 say they never intended to hurt anyone and now believe that the leak has resulted in free "media hype" on a scale bigger than Star Wars. "We feel sorry for the trouble we caused by releasing that great movie before cinedate even has begun. We never intended to hurt anyone by doing that[;] we didn't know it would get that popular that quickly," said Hive-CM8 in its apology statement. "We held back this title till 1 week after [theatrical release]to give the movie a figh...

Obama approves CISA surveillance legislation included in the spending package of a massive $1.1 trillion A $1.1 trillion spending package was signed by the President Barack Obama on Friday, which prevents a government shutdown and funds the United States funded through September 2016. The 2,000-page budget also includes the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). “There’s some things in there that I don’t like, but that’s the nature of legislation and compromise, and I think the system worked,” the president said at his year-end news conference at the White House, reported the Associated Press. “It was a good win.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican of Wisconsin, had inserted the CISA into the Omnibus Appropriations Bills in a bid to prevent lawmakers from putting a procedural hold on the CISA bill and block it from a vote. In a surprise, the House overwhelmingly approved the measure in a 316-113 vote. The bill which w...

European teens under 16 need to have parental consent for using social media under EU law It looks like lawmakers in Europe are considering banning teenagers under the age of 16 from using social media. They will need to have parental consent to use Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and email under EU laws, under last-minute changes to European Union (EU) laws. The new law comes as part of a major overhaul of data protection laws designed to create a single set of rules for the EU. The EU is on the verge of pushing through new regulations that would raise the age of consent for websites to use personal data from 13 to 16. However, the new law has drawn criticisms from the ICT Coalition for Children, a group that counts Facebook, Google and Twitter among its members, for the amendments being made so late in the process and without any discussions. In an open letter written by European internet safety organizations and experts, it explains how the internet social media are actually benef...

Microsoft’s SmartScreen can now protect Edge and Internet Explorer users against drive by Zero Day attacks It is well known that Microsoft products full of flaws and zero days which hackers exploit causing great losses to companies and individuals. Now Microsoft has tightened its zero-day defences by claiming that its product called SmartScreen can now protect its most vulnerables products, Edge and Internet Explorer browsers from zero-day attacks. The Redmond based tech giant said that though its SmartScreen system has been around for some time protecting users against phishing attacks and malware attacks. Now it has been updated to give users protection against drive-by zero-day attacks. “SmartScreen has protected users from billions of web-based attacks in the last eight years. Over time, SmartScreen has expanded its scope from phishing attacks and socially engineered malware to include warnings for deceptive advertisements and scam support sites,” said the firm ...

Woman sues Airbnb after discovering a hidden video camera in their rented apartment A German couple recently slammed Airbnb with a lawsuit, as they had reportedly found a hidden video camera during their stay in the rented Airbnb property in Irvine, California two years ago. The video camera with a wide-angle lens was placed behind a bookshelf in the living room was allegedly quite advanced. The camera not only picked up both audio and video, but also was configured in such a way that it could be controlled remotely. Filed by Yvonne Schumacher of Germany, the lawsuit also names the owners of the apartment, Fariah Hassim and Jamil Jiva as defendants. According to the complaint, Schumacher and her partner Kevin Stockton had initially reserved the apartment from December 16, 2013 through January 12, 2014. Airbnb, which has risked its company reputation on community, openness, and trust, has stated that it has a “zero-tolerance policy” for hidden cameras, and requires that ho...

12-Year-Old Sikh Boy Jailed In United States For Playing A ‘Bomb Prank’ with his friend A 12-year-old Sikh boy who is the latest victim of racism gets arrested after classmate accuses him of carrying a bomb Armaan Singh Sarai, a 12-year-old Sikh boy was arrested and jailed in Texas for three days as a result of a prank in which a classmate accused the boy of possessing a bomb. According to the Dallas News, Armaan ended up in a juvenile detention center on December 11 on charges of making “terroristic” threats after a classmate reported him for threatening to blow up Nichols Junior High School in Arlington. The school principal, reportedly, without any “questioning, interrogation, or notification to his parents”, called the police, who searched Armaan’s backpack and determined there was no bomb. Despite that fact, Armaan was detained for three days at a juvenile detention facility. While police were aware the report was part of a joke betwee...

We pick the best budget gaming headset and the best overall headset for your PC gaming pleasure The next great peripherals war is being waged over your ears. After every company on the planet put out a gaming mouse and then a mechanical keyboard, now it's time for headsets. So many headsets. We've been steadily accruing headset reviews at PCWorld for a while now, but it can be hard to sort through all the chaff and the star ratings when all you want is a simple answer: “What's the best gaming headset I can buy with my hard-earned dollars?” This page holds the answer you seek. We'll be updating our recommendations periodically as new products come in and supplant the old ones, based on the following criteria: Design/comfort: Obviously you want a headset that fits well without snapping in half the first time you put it on. Headsets are tested with our vigorous and ultra-scientific “I bent it a lot and saw if it seemed durable” ...

BlackBerry is still making a loss, but software sales are growing fast and even hardware is closer to breakeven Blackberry CEO John Chen hopes that what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas. The company is planning to push its QNX real-time operating system into the Internet of Things at CES, the giant consumer electronics show held in Las Vegas each January, and hopes it will be a break-out success. BlackBerry acquired QNX in 2010, using it first in its ill-fated PlayBook tablet before going on to build the BlackBerry 10 OS on top of it. The software also shows up in many car entertainment systems. Chen carefully did not say that BlackBerry will itself be introducing any new connected things in Vegas, merely that it will highlight its initiative in IoT, and that there will be new technology demonstrations and product roll-outs. The company saw 43 percent organic growth in its software licensing revenue in its third fiscal quarter, ended Nov. 28, Chen said, hinting that much ...

hacking The InnoTab 3 is one of many products that uses VTech's Learning Lodge app store, which suffered a large data breach on Nov. 14.   Credit:  VTech Police investigating the hacking of Chinese toy company Vtech have made an arrest in the U.K. In  the attack on Nov. 14 , someone gained access to information about Vtech customers, including names, email addresses, birth dates, photos and weakly encrypted passwords, the company said. The information was stored in a database for its Learning Lodge app store, used by many of the company’s educational toys. Later last month, Vtech said the data breach affected around 4.8 million of its customers, but by early this month  the figure had risen to 11.6 million, including 6.4 million children . On Tuesday, U.K. police arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of two offenses under the Computer Misuse Act: unauthorized access to a computer, and causing a computer to enable unauthorized access to data. Polic...

Website owners and developers who have certificates linked to the soon-to-be-retired CA should get new ones Digital key   Credit: IDGNS Very soon, the Android OS, Chrome browser and other Google products will stop trusting all digital certificates that are linked to a 20-year-old Verisign root certificate. The announcement comes after Symantec unveiled plans to retire the Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority from public use. This is a widely trusted CA that it acquired along with Verisign's SSL business in 2010. In  an alert , the company said that as of Dec. 1, it no longer was using the root certificate, which is trusted by default in most browsers and operating systems, to issue TLS/SSL or code signing certificates. The company advises owners of digital certificates that chain back to the Class 3 Public Primary CA to obtain new ones that link back to a more modern root. Such replacement certificates are available for free. According to Google, ...