"Mouse Box" PC in a mouse

And you thought the Raspberry Pi was a neat little PC. The Mouse Box is an entire working computer that fits inside a mouse. Just plug in a monitor and a keyboard, and away you go.

Poland-based Przemysław Strzelczyk and a team of software developers working on a new concept have created what they believe is the future of desktop computing — a mouse that's also a PC.

Called "Mouse-Box", a wireless gadget that packs a 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM processor, a micro-HDMI port, WiFi up to 802.11n, accelerometer, gyroscope, two USB 3.0 ports and 128 GB storage space into a mouse. The only extra hardware needed is a monitor.

There are two USB ports on the front for hooking up peripherals, or you can use the Mouse Box as a standard mouse for your desktop or laptop. Then you can switch to your Mouse Box PC at the press of a button. Amazing.

It has huge potential for monkeying around at work, letting you play a game or work on your own project, then switch over to your business computer as soon as the boss comes sniffing around. Not that we would of course. Ahem.

Mouse-Box comes with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, and charges wirelessly using an inductive charging mat that doubles up as a mouse pad. This means the device would never run out of battery. However, the hardware also includes space for an optional battery.

It also has a micro-HDMI socket, so you can hook up a projector or an HD TV and watch movies or beam out presentations. You can transfer data to it from another PC, effectively using it as a portable hard drive. Its 128GB of flash storage should be plenty of space, and you can bolster that with cloud storage.

The firm is asking for help in terms of feedback and guidance, so it doesn't look like it'll go on sale anytime soon. But here's hoping it touches down sooner rather than later. Just don't tell the boss.

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Scam email "Police Ransomware" cause a 17 Year Old boy with Autism to commit suicide

Joseph Edwards, a 17-year-old schoolboy from Windsor, Berkshire, hanged himself after receiving a bogus email appeared to be from police claiming that he'd been spotted browsing illegal websites and that a fine of 100 pound needed to be paid in order to stop the police from pursuing him.

The scam email pushed the well-known Police Ransomware onto the boy’s laptop and also downloaded malware that locked up his system once it was opened.

As far as we all know, a Police ransomware of this type does not encrypt files and usually asks a victim to pay a small fine that last around $200 or €200. It’s normally much easier to remove the threat from infected systems by using dedicated tools specially designed to remove such infections.

Edwards was an A-level student with Autism, a developmental disability, that likely made him more susceptible to believing the Internet scam mail, supposedly sent from from Cheshire police, was genuine, a coroner heard on Thursday.

Edwards was so upset and depressed by the accusation and the extortionate demand that he hanged himself hours after falling victim to the crucial threat. He was found hanged at his family home in Windsor by his mother Jacqueline Edwards, who told the coroner that he probably didn't understand the implications of his actions.

"He didn't seem to have any worries known to me. I don't think he really understood," Jacqueline Edwards told the coroner. "Joseph was subjected to a scam on the internet, a threatening, fake police link that was asking for money," his mother said in a statement. "He would have taken it literally because of his autism and he didn't want to upset Georgia [his sister] or me."

According to Detective Sergeant Peter Wall, it will be almost impossible to trace the fraudsters behind the 'crude' email, but believe it may have originated outside the UK.

This is not first time when Ransomware has become deadly reason to take someone’s life. Over a year ago, a Romanian family faced same Police Ransomware threat and the Romanian victim hanged himself and his four-year-old son, scarring that his young son would pay for his mistake and his life would be spend in the moment of delusion.

Ransomware is one of the most blatant and obvious criminal's money making schemes out there, from which Cryptolocker threat had touched the peak, and cyber criminals have developed many Cryptolocker versions (prisonlocker, linkup, icepole, cryptobit) by which you have to safeguard your system.

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How to encrypt your hard drive, but the protection less hassle

If the PC is using Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise, or Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise, you can use BitLocker, which comes with these versions of Windows. But you have to know what you're doing.

NOTE: Encrypting the entire drive can brick your PC. Make an image backup first, and make sure you have emergency repair drives for both the encryption software and your image backup program.

That's not all. Should your computer or hard drive crash, your chances of successfully recovering lost files drops considerably. Even a Windows reinstall can leave your files inaccessible if you didn't take proper precautions.


BitLocker works best in an environment where a professional IT department serves users who may not know what the word encrypt means. You can set it up so that the user doesn't even know that the drive is encrypted. When they log into Windows with their password, they get access to the encrypted files. If they log into another account, or boot with another OS, the files are unreadable.

What's more, if you need to reinstall Windows, or restore the files from a backup, you'll need a special digital key that's created when you encrypt the drive. That key has to be stored elsewhere and someone has to know where to find it. That's where IT comes in.

Third-party encryption programs are more straightforward. When you boot the PC, you have to enter the encryption password before Windows can load. Because the password is used on a daily basis, it's unlikely to get lost.

The free and open-source VeraCrypt does a good job. The wizard to set up drive encryption is long, but reasonably intuitive.
link: https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/

But VeraCrypt has its limitations. For instance, it won't work on PCs using the newer GUID partition table.

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Coolest PC mod and build 2015

Chasing the dragon

MSI's corporate logo is a dragon. What better way to show that off than to have a custom-modded PC created in that shape? It's a Haswell-E-based rig with a pair of MSI GeForce GTX 980 cards. The dragons are plexiglass, with a rod holding them in place.

XoticPC Elysium

On the other hand, there's a good chance you'll actually be able to buy this PC. XoticPC's Elysium may look like a modded PC, but it's far more attainable—XoticPC has even hinted it may try to sell it.

And yes, because it's all about the specs, this is a Haswell-E machine with a pair of GeForce GTX 970 cards in SLI.

Off-road computing

This modded PC, built by ACE_Finland to celebrate the 500 millionth Asus motherboard sold, is a meaty little system. Inside is a Sabertooth Z97 Mark S, an Asus Strix GeForce GTX 980, and 32GB of Kingston HyperX Fury ram. What's really clever is the use of the Cooler Master V850 liquid cooler, which looks like it actually belongs on top of the Humvee. 

The chassis for the mod is a fairly large RC car. There's apparently still enough room in the car for it to function as an RC Humvee. You'll just have to make sure you disconnect it from your monitor and keyboard unless you want them dragged along behind.

Project Snowblind

Called Project Snowblind, this modded PC by DarthBeavis and Primochill was also built to celebrate Asus' 500-million-motherboards mark. The case is a laser- and plasma-cut Praxis chassis with an Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark S inside. There's also an Intel Core i7-4790K chip and a pair of Asus GeForce GTX 980 powering Project Snowblind.

CyberPower Fang Trinity

CyberPower's Fang Trinity is a radical-looking system with not so-radical parts inside. But that's actually a good thing! The Fang Trinity uses a liquid-cooled Intel Devil's Canyon CPU and a GeForce GTX 980, and it packs no fewer than four SSDs. In other words, the Fang Trinity might look insane, but it's stuffed full of off-the-shelf parts that you can replace yourself (rather than weird proprietary components). A crazy-looking chassis that's also convenient? Now that's cool. 

Rest in peace

For those who work in and around the component industry, this modded PC, commissioned by Gigabyte to honor Elaine Su, is certainly special. Elaine worked for Enermax and tragically passed away last year at a young age. The case itself is a custom-painted Fulmo GT and obviously built on an X99 motherboard. It also features closed-loop liquid cooling.

 

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MSI GT80 Titan with Mechanical keyboard and trackpad similar to the Razer Blade Pro

MSI's new huge GT80 Titan SLI integrates a Cherry MX keyboard by SteelSeries. Yes, a laptop with a mechanical keyboard. Why? Partially because they can, and partially because mechanical keyboards are awesome to type on.


MicroStar International  officially introduced CES2015 its unique GT80 Titan laptop. As the first of its kind, the MSI GT80 Titan takes a step into the future by integrating a proper mechanical keyboard with Cherrywith 18.4” display that combines incredible performance with easy upgradeability and mechanical keyboard, for the first time in history. The MSI GT80 Titan is to be powered by quad-core Intel Core i7 “Haswell” microprocessor for laptops and two GeForce GTX 980M graphics adapters in SLI configuration. The system is expected to feature up to 32GB of DDR3L memory, M.2 solid-state drives in RAID 0 mode for maximum performance and a 1TB hard disk drive with 7200rpm spindle speed for maximum amount of storage.

That just leaves one major sticking point: price. And the GT80 Dominator isn't cheap. It starts at $3300, though the version on display at CES cost $3700 thanks to a step-up Intel Extreme 4980HQ processor. The system also included 24GB of RAM, a 1TB 7200 RPM HDD and two 128GB M.2 SSDs running in RAID. A trackpad on the right side of the keyboard doubles as a 10 key numberpad with haptic feedback.

 To provide the best experience for gamers, MSI worked with our long-term partner, SteelSeries, the gaming peripherals leader who brought the first mechanical keyboards to gamers and aided in the keyboard development of previous MSI gaming notebooks. With the new GT80 mechanical gaming notebooks, the keyboards are powered by SteelSeries through its anti-ghosting design (N-key rollover) and SteelSeries Engine software suite.

The MSI GT80 Titan SLI has an offset trackpad similar to the Razer Blade Pro's, so you can use it as an ad-hoc mouse for FPS games. But what if you need a number pad for some hardcore Excel work? With the push of a button, the trackpad converts into a ten-key with haptic feedback. While this may seem like a wild PC that'll never be sold, MSI expects this heavy-duty (and just plain heavy) gaming laptop to be on sale .

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Japan's booms with high-tech funeral solutions for ageing population

With spaces costing up to $100,000, high-tech alternatives like skyscraper graveyards are becoming a necessity.They are fully automated and store thousands of urns.

Relatives are given an identity card and robotic arms retrieve the loved one's ashes from vaults deep underground.

At one temple in Tokyo at Shinjuku, thousands of tiny Buddhas illuminated with LED lights represent the family crypts.

A smartcard activates the crystal Buddha, which lights up the specified tiny vault that sits behind it.

Elderly people are increasingly taking charge of their own funerals, rather than leaving it to their families.

Kazuko Okumura tried a coffin for size at a suburban shopping centre in Tokyo to see what the journey to the afterlife would feel like.

"It felt warmer than expected, I imagined it would be much colder so I'll be comfortable when I'm sent off," Ms Okumura said.

End-of-life preparations are a booming business and in Japan the industry is worth $5 billion a year.

Supermarket chains hold regular seminars that are a one-stop shop from types of funerals to insurance to wills.

Kasuhiro Shishido from Aeon supermarkets said the event gave people a chance to think about death.

"You can choose the kind of death you want and get rid of worry, and enjoy the rest of your life," Mr Shishido said.

At the Aeon seminar, 76-year-old Ayako Senda had her funeral photo taken, saying she wanted to be remembered as a healthy, vibrant person.

"It's good to take charge and be ready for my own funeral," Ms Senda said.

"My parents didn't and didn't have what they wanted.

"Also I don't want to burden my children with funeral arrangements."

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