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no Google

Ever imagined what’d happen if Google was not there?

In just a short time, Google has become a seamless part of our lives, ranking somewhere between Jesus and bacon in importance. The brand has joined the ranks of Kleenex and Xerox (and if you’re in the South, Coke), with its name becoming synonymous with its product and somewhat generic as we “Google” this or that. Most of the world can’t use a smartphone without using a Google product. Some people can’t even travel across their own city without using Maps. It’s hard to fathom a life without it. Google Reader users, however, got a small taste of life would be like without the Big G in our lives.

It is very difficult to say exactly how the entire world would be able to work without Google – which is the most frequently visited website in the world. Google is a huge company which employs more than 30,000 people. There are a wide range of applications offered by Google and many of them are completely free. Users have the flexibility of using e-mail or Gmail and Google Docs for the purpose of sharing different types of documents. Google offers maps for the purpose of navigation, Calendar for organizing different activities during the week. Apart from this, Google offers Analytics for the purpose of tracking statistics about a website and Blogger for setting up an attractive blog for professional as well as personal purposes. Lineup of services offered by Google also includes Google Patents, Scholar, Finance, Groups and Google+ for social networking. You also get the Image search option which enables you to get hold of the best images that you would like to use. Not to mention, Google search engine which has completely revolutionized the whole procedure of getting useful information on the internet. There are a lot of things offered by Google for accomplishing a number of tasks without putting in much effort and also without spending much money.

The use of library card catalogs would increase because people would actually visit libraries for getting required information on different topics. Carrying out a research on a particular topic would take a long time because researchers would not get the flexibility of carrying out their researches from home. This actually means that you would have to make good efforts in trying to find an answer for even some of your minutest queries. You can use other search engines but you would not get the results as fast and as accurate as Google. It would be a financial implosion for people who work for Google and the companies who carry out their advertising campaigns of Google. Almost all the websites or online stores promoting and selling their products and services online would lose web presence.

Having lost the power to find everything on search engine, people would need to talk to each other more. Forums will start to be bombarded with small queries. People would often meet up in big groups to discuss things as there was no Google to tell them stuff. Instead of Googling everything whenever they wanted, people would try and remember more stuff. As is the case with phone book in mobiles, we no longer remember phone numbers of our family or friends. Same is with Google. We don’t even make an effort to remember stuff because we know we can Google it any time we want.

But we are glad that Larry Page invented Google.


Can you think of other fun things that might happen if there was no Google? Tell us in the comments below.

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Do you know why is the keyboard not arranged in alphabetical order?

Check out why keyboard is not arranged in alphabetical order

We use keyboard every day, be it our desktop, or laptop, or tablet or smartphone. But have you ever wondered as to why the keyboard is not arranged in alphabetical order?

The reason goes back to the time of manual typewriters. These typewriters in earlier days did have the keys arranged in alphabetical order. However, it was later discovered that the people typed so fast that the mechanical character keys got jammed very easily with this arrangement.

To prevent this, the keys were randomly positioned so that the weaker fingers were needed more frequently. This meant that people typed at a speed which the machine could handle. As a result, the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard came into existence that we find and use today.

The QWERTY keyboard layout was devised and created in the 1860s by the creator of the first modern typewriter, Christopher Sholes, a newspaper editor who lived in Milwaukee. Originally, the characters on the typewriters he invented were arranged alphabetically, set on the end of a metal bar which struck the paper when its key was pressed. However, once an operator had learned to type at speed, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another, compelling the typist to manually unstick the typebars, and also regularly blotting the document. A business associate of Sholes, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to speed up typing by preventing common pairs of typebars from striking the platen at the same time and sticking together.

There are varied opinions on this rearrangement of letters in the keyboard. The logic of the QWERTY layout was based on letter usage in English rather than positioning of letter in the alphabet. However, some sources assert that the QWERTY layout was designed to slow down typing speed to further reduce jamming. Also, the QWERTY keyboards were made so one could type using keys from the top row of the keyboard. On the other hand, there are sources who assert the rearrangement worked by separating common sequences of letters in English. Apparently, the hammers that were likely to be used in quick succession were less likely to hinder with each other. This random arrangement eventually became standard in computers later followed by the devices made after that.
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Cylinder At The End Of Your Charger
Do You Know Why There Is a Cylinder At The End Of Your Charger?

What Is This Cylinder On Your Charger For?

While my laptop charger has never bugged me, but I always felt strange at times to see a bump in my laptop charger right after it connects to the laptop. I always use to wonder why the charger has a bump and what purpose does it serve?

You normally see these “bumps” on the mouse, keyboard and monitor cables in a typical computer system found in a home or office. You can also find them on power supply wires when a device (like a printer or scanner) uses an external transformer.

It turns out that these bumps are called ferrite bead. It may also be called blocks, core, rings, EMI (electromagnetic interference) filters, or chokes. A ferrite bead has the property of eliminating broadcast signals and prevents energy loss of the same type within the charger. This makes the charger much more effective and helps charge your computer more quickly. Their purpose is to reduce EMI and RFI (radio-frequency interference). These cylinders are responsible for stopping very large deviation of power over supply through the cable and power surges in currents that pass through the cable and prevent ‘choke’ within the wire to make it any further supply the current to the device. The blocking is most effective when it is near the source of the EMI, that’s why you will only find these ferrite beads near the end of the cables.

It also acts as a choke or inductor that blocks high frequency noise in electronic circuits. Ferrite bead employs the dissipation of high frequency currents in a ferrite ceramic to build high frequency noise suppression devices.

The bead is made up of ceramic compounds, derived from iron oxide and/or oxides of other transition metals. It helps to prevent the wire behave on over floating current like aerials. It slips over the cable when the cable is made, or it can be snapped around the cable in two pieces after the cable is made. The bead is encased in plastic — if you cut the plastic, all that you would find inside is a black metal cylinder. This metal wire can possibly serve as an antenna by absorbing or releasing any radiation while passing current around it.

The radiation released by the wires without the bead could cause interference with other electronic objects around them, which act as receivers of this radiation, for instance, causing noise in speakers. This phenomenon’s example can be seen when cell phones interfere with the signal devices such as radios and speakers, producing a recurring noise well known for electronic users.

Source: The Amazing Fact
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The really interesting reason why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code

ATM PINs
Have you ever wondered why ATM PINs have 4 digit Code? Here is why

You walk into your friendly neighborhood ATM kiosk and swipe your card. You then punch in a 4 PIN code to authenticate yourself and proceed to withdraw money. You may have been doing this mechanically since the day ATM was introduced but have you given a thought why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code?  No! Then read on..

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) were first introduced in 1967 and now have emerged as a best option to disburse cash. Instead of visiting your bank and waiting in a long queue to withdraw money, you just have to swipe your ATM card, punch in your secret 4 digit PIN and take away the money you require.

But if someone was to find or steal your card, the only barrier protecting your money is your 4-digit ATM PIN. Ever wondered why most PINs have only 4 digits? Given that an ATM dishes out money wouldnt the manufacturers of ATMS have been wiser to introduce a longish PIN say six digit or eight digit one. Isn’t that why our email passwords are also expected to be 6 letters or more?

You see there is a bit of story behind it. ATM was invented by a wellknown Scottish inventor John Adrian Shepherd-Barron, the man who pioneered the development of the ATM machine. Barron was born in Shillong and was son to a Wimbledon ladies doubles champion, Dorothy Barron. When testing out his invention, Barron had also proposed a 6-digit PIN.

However, the first person to use his invention was his wife, Caroline. We all know that behind every successful man is a woman, and Caroline apparently rejected the idea of using a six code PIN for her husband’s invention because she could only remember the numbers up to four.

When Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he laughs.

Reportedly, 6 numbers stringed together were too much information for her to recall.

Although, there are many banks nowadays that offer 6 digit PINs for security purposes, shouldn’t those of us using 4 digit PINs be thanking Caroline? It gets tough to recall those 4 digits at times, imagine what 6 or more would do to us?
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A lab in South Korea clones dead dogs and replicates them into new pets for owners

South Korean cloning facility
South Korean cloning facility

For all those pet lovers in South Korea, there is good news. Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, which has an internationally acclaimed pet cloning facility, can now revive a dead dog for $100,000 (£69,000).

Over the last 10 years, the company has been running a progressing commercial business by catering to owners of dogs, who wish to have their pets forever. Pet owners around the world have utilized the facility to preserve their beloved pets in clone form.

Sooam Biotech clones many animals, including cattle and pigs for medical research and breed preservation, but is best known for its commercial dog service.

The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul headed by Dr Woo Suk Hwong has so far cloned 700 dogs to date and claim they can replicate any dog regardless of its age, size and breed. Their client list boasts of celebrities, princess and billionaires, as well as owners and agencies who want to repeat the highly trained police dogs and rescue dogs.

Through their dog cloning service that can accurately bring forth a perfect pet replacement, they offer dog owners protection against grief and loss, Phys.Org reports.

“These people have a very strong bond with their pets … and cloning provides a psychological alternative to the traditional method, just letting the pet go and the memory of them”, said the researcher and spokesman of the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation Wang Jae-Woon.
“With cloning, you have a chance to bring back the pets,” he said in the facility’s “care room” where each cloned puppy is kept in a glass-fronted, temperature-controlled pen and monitored by researchers around the clock.

The same technique that was used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996 is used in the dog cloning laboratory. The process requires a dead dog’s body to be put in the fridge and submitted to the facility. In five days, a mature cell from the dog can be successfully collected.

The process involves harvesting a mature cell from the dog to be copied and transferring its DNA to a donor egg cell that has had its own genetic material removed. The cell and the egg are “fused” with an electrical jolt, and the resulting embryo is implanted in a surrogate mother dog. Two months later, the cloned dog will be born as a new puppy.


The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation’s moral and ethical foundations are put into question not just because of the controversy in cloning pets but because of its founder, Hwang Woo-Suk. In two articles published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005, Hwang claimed to have derived stem cell lines from cloned human embryos, a world first, which was later proved to be a hoax.

The scandal disclosed numerous ethical violations. Hwang was given a two-year suspended prison sentence in 2009, after being convicted of embezzlement and bioethical violations. “I think the only way to win the public’s trust back is making more genuine scientific breakthroughs,” Hwang said.

Head researcher Jeong Yeon-Woo says Sooam’s dog cloning service remains as the company’s most fulfilling aspect.

“They look like they found a child that had been missing,” Jeong said. “The moment of pure joy like that … makes me realise again why I’m doing this.”

Sooam’s most publicised project was its creation of five clones of Trakr, a rescue dog that found the last survivor of the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy. It also joined forces with other cloning facilities such as BioArts International.

The company is now teaming up with other researchers in an ambitious plan to clone a mammoth from frozen remains found in Siberia.

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New research reveals that the internet is a source of family conflict and disconnect. The research, which surveyed over 3,700 families in seven countries, provides an insight into how the digital world is disrupting traditional family dynamics. Whereas in the past parents were the first port of call for children seeking answers to questions or advice, one-in-four (23%) of the parents surveyed say that their kids now prefer to go online rather than talk to them.



 The research also found that almost half (42%) of parents are not friends with their children on social networks, and one-in-five (18%) says this is because their children would find it embarrassing.

 All in all, a fifth of parents (21%) and children (22%) say that the Internet can cause family tension. Most concerning of all, one-in-three parents (31%) believe the Internet isolates them from their children.

 The conflict may be exacerbated by the fact that the devices used to go online are often shared. Two-thirds of the families surveyed said they share a family computer. As a result, a third of parents (31%) complain that their child has broken something on a connected device or infected it with a virus while online (30%) and a quarter (24%) has had to pay for something their child had ordered or downloaded. Similarly, 13% of kids accuse parents of breaking a device and 16% complain that their parents had accidentally deleted some of their data.

Andrei Mochola, Head of Consumer Business at Kaspersky Lab said: “It is only natural that using – and misusing – each other’s connected devices can become a cause of conflict for families. However, as we spend more and more time online, family dynamics are also changing. It is important that families maintain an ongoing dialogue about how to spot and respond to potential dangers, with parents and children together agreeing on the basic rules on how they can best navigate the digital world. It is also important to be serious about protection. We recommend installing an integrated home Internet security solution on all devices in the home. This should be enhanced with Parental Control software, which can block access to inappropriate sites or apps and prevent sensitive data from being shared or deleted.”

Janice Richardson, Senior Advisor at European Schoolnet, adds: “Although Internet becomes a source of conflict in some families, a recent study[1] by the Joint Research Center of the European Commission interestingly underlines an emerging trend, with siblings and extended family members taking on a much bigger role in children’s online activities. Unsurprisingly, children are instinctively turning to the person they perceive to be able to fix technical issues, advise on sites and security tools and provide more objective responses to delicate queries. This underlines the importance of parents and guardians developing their own technical competence and building trusting relationships with their children whilst also establishing basic rules on Internet and device usage to avoid conflicts. At the same time, software and social media providers, too, should seek to develop more ‘family-friendly’ tools.”

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#LifeHacks Here is how you can make your own cheap and effective infrared camera

How to make your own infrared camera cheaply and affordableWith 1080p cameras available at extremely affordable prices, it is extremely simple to produce your very own infrared camera. If you a look at the video given below, you will know that all cameras are capable of ‘seeing’ infrared light, but for standard photography and video, you don’t want to see the infrared light. Majority of camera sensors have an infrared filter in front of the sensor, in order to block out any excess to infrared light.

If you end up removing the filter, then voila, you have a fully converted infrared camera in the palm of your hands. The following video shows exactly how to modify a camera. However, a true infrared camera is similar to the visibility of a FLIR or Seek Thermal. This little camera hack will allow you to see a mixture of visible and near infrared light.


 As a result, you will be able to see hot things glowing through the camera, but not to the same degree as a real thermal imaging device. Regardless, it is still a pretty cool trick if you want to add something extra to your home camera.
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Autonomous-trucking start-up Otto, founded by ex-Googlers has launched retrofit-ready self-driving truck

A group of former Google engineers have launched a new San Francisco-based company called Otto to bring self-driving trucks to the road. The start-up has been founded by four ex-Google engineers, which includes self-driving-car expert Anthony Levandowski and former Google Maps lead Lior Ron along with a team of more than a dozen former Google engineers as well as a team with experience at companies like Tesla and Apple. Otto aims to automate current commercial semis with its proprietary $30,000 kit, which retrofits trucks made after 2013 with self-driving technology.
In its release, the startup said, “Otto’s aim is to solve the harder and more important self­driving challenge first by introducing the technology to the highways and making trucks fully autonomous.” Its tech includes sensors, hardware and software that can be retrofit onto current trucks to grant them full autonomy to drive more safely and efficiently, with the driver acting as more of a supervisor.
“At the heart of our vision is the belief that self-driving tech is the key for creating a more sustainable, productive—and above all, safer—transportation future,” wrote Levandowski and Ron in a blog post.

 Otto is trying to make trucking safer by letting drivers take breaks to sleep in the truck’s cabin while the automated technology takes over. The company is testing its kit with the Volvo VNL 780 on California highways, since that’s where most trucking routes are. The company is hoping to work with many so-called Class 8 trucks, which are the largest, heaviest trucks on American roads.
        
Going forward, “We intend to enhance the capabilities of the Otto truck, collect safety data to demonstrate its benefits, and bring this technology to every corner of the US highway system,” Levandowski and Ron said. 

“This is a critical effort, with wide-reaching implications for all of us, that requires cooperation between government agencies, the private sector, truck fleets, drivers, manufacturers and the brightest engineers,” they added.

 The company, which is completely self-funded, has yet to raise external funding. “We intend to enhance the capabilities of the Otto truck, collect safety data to demonstrate its benefits, and bring this technology to every corner of the U.S. highway system,” Otto’s co-founders wrote.

 Also, the company has not yet provided any information as to when this technology would be available, and how much would it cost. Only it has been said that its autonomous-driving kit would “cost only a small fraction” of a truck’s MSRP, which could be $100,000 to $300,000.
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If you ever get the chance to check out an automaker's shareholder meeting, you might find choice tidbits on future products tucked away in a CEO's statements. There's one such juicy tidbit in BMW's latest shareholder meeting, and it's all about the future of Bavarian transportation.

"[The BMW i8 Roadster] will be followed in 2021 by the BMW i Next, our new innovation driver, with autonomous driving, digital connectivity, intelligent lightweight design, a totally new interior and ultimately bringing the next generation of electro-mobility to the road," CEO Harald Krueger said during the meeting.

While details don't exist beyond Krueger's statements, it can be reasonably inferred that some of the i Next's ideas will come from the Vision Next 100 concept shown off earlier this year. This concept lays the groundwork for the future of BMW's design and engineering efforts, with a bit of flash thrown in for fun (like the wheels that hide behind moving body panels).

BMW is continuing its push into electrification with two new models over the next couple years (that we know of, at least). This year, BMW will debut a revised i3 with additional range, followed by a drop-top version of the i8 hybrid sports car in 2018. Research from these efforts have gone on to help current road cars -- for example, the new 7 Series sedan sports a carbon-fiber structure similar to that in the i3 and i8.

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A mattress company out of Spain is marketing a new smart mattress, brilliantly named ‘Smartress’, that detects whenever the bed is in “use.” As you likely realize, the main purpose of this is to see if your partner is cheating on you.

And the video promoting the smart mattress isn’t shy about that functionality.

The mattress by Durmet has sensors embedded in it to detect motion and which parts of the bed are being ‘used.’


Of course, there are far less expensive or more accurate ways to determine if your partner is cheating on you, like installing a camera. Or, for free, you can almost certainly detect infidelity by acquiring your SO’s smartphone password.



But that’s not quite as dramatic as the Smartress.

 (Side note: Can you imagine finding out that your partner is cheating from a phone notification that tells you that your bed is bumpin’?)

Re/code got in touch with a representative from Durmet that the 10-employee company is currently in the manufacturing process for the Smartress.

You can learn more about the smart mattress here.
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Volkswagen has a new concept lined up for the Beijing Motor Show. Previewed in this quartet of teaser images, the concept ostensibly paves the way for the next Touareg. And it's packing every trick that one of the world's largest automakers has to throw at it. 

For starters, the Beijing concept is being powered by a plug-in hybrid powertrain. Though its components have yet to be revealed, VW says the system will produce 376 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque. That's about the same power as the current hybrid Touareg, but much more torque. The German automaker says it would hit 62 in 6.0 seconds flat, top out at 139 miles per hour, deliver 78 miles per gallon on the NEDC combined cycle, and travel for 31 miles on electric power alone. 

 The concept is also slated to incorporate digital controls, merging the infotainment and instruments into one symbiotic system in a "lounge-style interior." Looking in these preview images like something out of Tron, VW also says the "concept moves luxury SUV design to a more sporty and elegant level." We'll have to wait until the full reveal to find out for ourselves, but with the doors set to open at the show in the Chinese capital in just a week from now, we won't have wait very long. 
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Colfax Ninja is a powerful desktop running two Intel processors equaling 72-cores of power

Latest Colfax Ninja desktop runs on Intel processor boasting 72-cores of processing power

With desktop computing getting more and more powerful (and downright expensive as well), Intel has also took it upon itself to place powerful hardware inside computer chassis. On this occasion, we have the Colfax Ninja desktop computer which features a 72-core Knights Landing processor, which according to Intel, happens to be the fastest chip in the world right now. The chip can either be used as a primary CPU, or as a coprocessor to tackle all the graphically intensive tasks which GPUs are able to handle.

 Coming to the pricing of the desktop computers, the ‘Ninja Developer Platform Pedestal’ carries a price tag of $4,983 and features a 240GB SATA SSD, a 4TB hard drive, and 96GB of DDR4 memory. The price can easily shoot up to $7,577 but you will be getting a 1.6TB SSD and two 6TB hard drives. You also get a liquid-cooling system that will include multiple PCI-Express 3.0 slots and two gigabit Ethernet ports.
CSE-GS50-000B

 The third model coming up carries a price $19,703, with the workstation featuring a 240GB SSD, 4TB hard drive and 96GB of DDR4 memory. The price will immediately go up to $25,581 and comes with a 1.6TB SSD and two 6TB hard drives. Additionally, it will also have multiple PCI-Express 3.0 slots, and storage can be hot-swapped in 12 hard drive bays.

 CSE-GS50-000B
CentOS 7.2 Linux will come running out of the bat on these desktop computers. Windows is not recommended, since Intel has stated that the 72-core chip might not be compatible with the operating system. These current models are much more powerful compared to the workstations introduced from Dell, HP and Lenovo come with Intel’s new Xeon E5-2600 v4 chips, which have up to 22 cores.

 While the hardware configuration is something that will make a gamer’s dream come true, these expensive machines are for researchers who want to write and test applications before deployment on supercomputers with Knights Landing. Unfortunately, desktops with CPUs and GPUs are still a safer option for conventional applications and games have not been made to utilize all 72-cores of the chip.
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New Type C Standard Usb

The folks behind the USB Type-C standard have a new approach to keep sketchy cables from zapping your laptop or evildoers from hacking your phone.

 USB Type-C brings new perks to the mundane chore of connecting devices to each other and to chargers, but problems have cast a shadow -- notably when Google employee Benson Leung's effort to flag faulty cables fried his laptop and testing gear earlier this year.

That's why industry powers behind the tech announced on Tuesday a USB authentication technology that will guard against that type of problem and will keep criminals from using hacked USB devices to launch attacks. The technology functions behind the scenes on your devices so you won't have to think about it, at least until your phone refuses to work with an uncertified airport charger or freebie cable.


 USB is a remarkable success, starting two decades ago as a way to connect printers and keyboards to PCs, picking up duties charging phones and syncing their data, and now in everything from cars to TVs. USB-C expands further by letting you use USB to power your PC and to send videos to TVs and external monitors. The fact that it's reversible -- there's no up or down to the connector -- is icing on the cake.

 The USB Implementers Forum is "unwavering in our mission to solidify USB Type-C as the single cable of the future," Jeff Ravencraft, president of the standards group, said in a statement.

 But the new future is messy. For example, it's not always clear what capabilities a USB port will include. Some will feature video support. Others will offer USB 3.1's new super-high data transfer speeds of 10 gigabits per second. Separately, faulty cables led Amazon to take the unusual step last month of threatening to banish sellers offering bad USB-C cables.

 Maturing technology should ease the growing pains. Cable powerhouse Monoprice announced a new Palette line of colorful USB-C cables on Tuesday. They're limited to slower 480 megabit-per-second USB 2.0 speeds for now. Later this month, Monoprice will release cables that support USB 3.0's tenfold increase to 5Gbps, and in coming months, USB 3.1's 10Gbps.
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This infographic shows the reach of Ubuntu from International Space Station to your laptop

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system and distribution for personal computers, smartphones and network servers. It uses Unity as its default user interface. It is based on free software and named after the Southern African philosophy of ubuntu (literally, “human-ness”), which often is translated as “humanity towards others” or “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”.

 Ubuntu is everywhere - InfographicThe popularity of Ubuntu is such that it is used on International space station and is behind the world’s largest supercomputer. It runs the servers of popular online services like Netflix, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, Dropbox, PayPal, Wikipedia, and Instagram, in Google, Tesla, George Hotz, and Uber cars. It is also employed at Bloomberg, Weta Digital and Walmart.The Brigham Young University is using Ubuntu to control the Mars Rover.

 To celebrate the forthcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, due for release later this month, on April 21, Canonical took the time to put together a very nice infographic, showing the world how popular Ubuntu is across the world.

 “To celebrate our upcoming 16.04 LTS we wanted to shine a bit of light on how many people in the world actually use Ubuntu,” said Alexia Emmanoulopoulou, Demand Generation Marketing Manager, Canonical. “The reality is, hundreds of millions of PCs, servers, devices, virtual machines, and containers have booted Ubuntu to date and are in use!”

 According to Canonical’s infographic, there were over 60 million Ubuntu images launched by Docker users, 14 million Vagrant images of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS from HashiCorp, 20 million launches of Ubuntu instances during 2015 in public and private clouds, as well as bare metal, and 2 million new Ubuntu Cloud instances launched in November 2015.
Ubuntu is everywhere – Infographic
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This Circuit Simulator Lets You Toy Around With Electronics Components In Your Browser

The best part about Do-It-Yourself (DIY) electronics projects is that you play around with things to learn how they work. So, if you are interested in knowing how circuits exactly work and toy around with it, then Lushprojects has a little web app just for that.
Circuit Simulator Lets You Play Around with Electronics Components in Your Browser
Circuit Simulator Lets You Play Around with Electronics Components in Your Browser
This project’s a port from a Java application, but the fact it’s built in HTML5 means it’s accessible in every modern browser. This electronic circuit simulator is highly interactive giving the feeling of playing with real components. It’s very helpful for experimentation and visualization. You can add in all kinds of components, wires, and whatever else you need to see exactly how a circuit will work with the help of the web app. This means that this could be useful when you are actually creating these things in real life.
You can go to Lushprojects site to check for more details and look through the video demo that takes you through the basics of using it.
Click here to open the simulator in a full window.
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Twitter makes it easier to share tweets privately with new button on iOS & Android

While nowhere near as big as this morning’s news that Twitter will live stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, the company is announcing another change to its service today aimed at increasing the functionality and usage of its Direct Message (private messaging) feature. Starting today, the company is adding a new “Message” button to tweets on iOS and Android which will allow users to more easily take a public conversation private.


 That is, when you click this button, you’ll be able to share the tweet via Direct Message (DM) right from your Twitter Timeline.

 To be clear, the ability to share tweets privately is not new.

 In fact, this feature was first introduced in late 2014 with support for desktop and mobile. Even at that time, the option wasn’t something Twitter users were exactly clamoring for – it served more as a nice addition, if anything. But Twitter now sees a need to promote this type of interaction – the transition from public conversations to private ones – as the feature’s usage is growing.

 Twitter claims that the number of tweets shared privately grew 200 percent in the second half of 2015. That’s faster than growth in private messaging in general, which climbed 60 percent in 2015.

 According to the company, the addition of the button is in response to user feedback about the feature. Users said they wanted it to be easier to share tweets like this, Twitter claims. Before, the option was available by tapping the “More” button, then choosing “Share via Direct Message.” Now the button is right there on the tweet itself, taking up valuable real estate on mobile’s small screens.

 The change is also one of many tweaks Twitter has been making to its Direct Messaging feature in recent months. The company has also introduced support for GIFs and emojis, group messaging, customer service features, and it removed the 140-character limit for DMs.

 Many have said that Twitter should consider breaking out private messaging as its own application, but that has yet to come to pass. Still, Twitter insiders have continued to pitch this idea internally, a report from re/code notes. This change, while far from realizing that vision, still shows that Twitter is carefully considering the importance of private messaging in a world where its app competes with things like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and others.

 The new button is arriving today in the Twitter for iOS and Android updated applications.
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Lobster, the marketplace for buying and selling user generated content, has just announced an integration with Facebook. This means that Facebook users can sign up with Lobster to sell their content to advertisers.
Here’s how it works:
Facebook users can sign up with Lobster to have their Facebook photos marketed on the platform. Advertisers (or regular folks) can then browse through those photos to license them at $2/piece or on a subscription basis. The majority of the commission goes to the content creator, with a small cut going back to Lobster for facilitating the transaction.
But let’s say that an advertiser for Pepsi stumbles upon a Facebook photo of Jack and Jill drinking a Pepsi, but it isn’t listed on Lobster. Lobster will then facilitate communication between Pepsi advertisers and Jack and Jill to see if the content creators would be interested in licensing that photo to make some money.
Lobster launched out of Disrupt Europe in 2014, starting with Instagram and Flickr content licensing.
Recently, the company expanded to include YouTube videos, with licensing costs at around $7/video.
You can learn more about Lobster here.
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Kuvee Keeps Wine Fresh For Longer
Because everything is “smart” these days, wine bottles are getting an Internet connection, too. Meet Kuvée, are fallible case that keeps wine fresh for up to 30 days.
Announcing $6 million in funding from General Catalyst, Founder Collective and others,Kuvée aims to impress your dinner guests with a built-in touchscreen that tells you the history of the wine and also suggests food pairings. Get serving tips, receive personalized wine recommendations, and reorder directly from the device.
With patented technology that keeps open bottles from spoiling, CEO Vijay Manwani tells TechCrunch that Kuvée could make it easier to drink “wine by the glass any day of the week,” since the unfinished beverage will stay crisp through the weekend.
The Kuvée system is compatible with select California wines, including Bonny Doon and Pine Ridge. The 750ml bottles are priced between $15 and $50.
Beginning today, Kuvée beverages are available for pre-order on Kuvee.com or Indiegogo, and will ship this fall. The $179 pre-sale includes the smart bottle, along with four wines.
Watch the video demonstration to see how Kuvée works.
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Hackers use websites you visit daily to attack you – here’s how to protect yourself

Here is how to protect yourself from websites that serve malware
Cyber criminals are infecting major websites with malware now a days. Over last weekend, several websites like New York Times, BBC, MSN, Answers.com, AOL.com and thousands of other sites infected by cyber criminals to serve malicious ads to visitors. Tens of thousands of users clicking on the ads ended up on sites that launched automated attacks against their computers using the Angler exploit kit.
The Angler exploit kit, once infected, will either install the TeslaCrypt ransomware or Bedep Trojan. In other words, users either found their files locked and held for ransom, or got a flood of other malware on their system.
While malicious ads are not a new phenomenon, the newly found infections are alarming. Most big ad networks have good security mechanism to deal with them but cyber criminals always find ways and means to bypass these security checks.
In the latest malvertising infections, security firm Trustwave found that the hackers bought expired domains of legitimate online marketing companies. They then used those domains to appear as valid businesses and purchase ad space on a huge number of ad networks, including Google’s DoubleClick, Adnxs, Rubicon, AOL, AppNexus and Taggify.
The hackers installed these codes in the ads on big domains to infect views with malware. The code had a unique feature to avoid infection on machines that had specific anti virus tools installed. The malware would then look of weak spots including out-of-date browsers and old versions of Adobe Flash, Java, Silverlight and other browser plug-ins.

Here is how to protect yourself against these ads

One of the best ways to protect your computer against any virus/malware including the one above is to keep your browser and your computer’s operating system updated with the latest patches. Also keep your antivirus software updated with latest virus definitions.  This leaves fewer security holes for hackers to break through.
You should also update any browser plug-ins you use, such as Adobe Flash or Java. Even better, uninstall these plug-ins or set them to only run when you allow it.
If an attack makes it through your browser, you want to make sure it doesn’t get much farther. Switching your Windows account from an administrator account to a standard account keeps most viruses from installing and immediately eliminates 86 percent of the threats out there.
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Have you heard about Boom?
Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd.
Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes.
Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5.
Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year.
But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on things like the autopilot system on the 787, fighter plane engines, and flight dynamics on Spaceship Two. Some of these guys are ex-NASA, ex-Lockheed, or ex-Boeing.
Today, another big name is getting attached to the project: Virgin.
Boom is announcing today that Richard Branson’s Virgin Group has optioned ten planes, in a deal ultimately valued at about $2 billion dollars. Boom also says they’ve optioned 15 additional planes to a European carrier that it declined to name, bringing the total value of the optioned planes up to $5 billion.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Virgin has bought the planes — it’s a bit too early for that. They’ve signed a letter of intent, meaning that, having seen the nitty-gritty specs of the plane and the company’s plans for moving forward, they intend to buy 10 planes if everything comes together as planned.
But it also looks like Virgin is going to help make that happen: Boom founder Blake Scholl tells me that Virgin Galactic’s space division, The Spaceship Company, has committed to helping build and test the planes, including helping with the supersonic testing when the time comes.
This company should be a wild one to watch. Building most real, physical things is hard — but building a passenger plane that goes faster than any before it, including the ill-fated Concorde? Thats a whole new level of hard.
Boom is funded by Y Combinator, Sam Altman, Seraph Group, Eight Partners, and other unnamed angels. Boom declined to comment on whether Virgin was providing capital as part of the deal.
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