Smart Mounts Country's Biggest Clash of Clans tournament with over P2 million worth of prizes

[15 July 2015] Wireless services leader Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart), the mobile subsidiary of PLDT, has announced that it is mounting the Philippine Clash 2015, the biggest Clash of Clans (COC) tournament in the country, with over P2 million worth of prizes – the largest prize pool in a local mobile gaming competition to date.

A big hit all over the world, COC is one the many mobile games which Smart Prepaid subscribers may enjoy anytime, anywhere with the Entertainment Bundle, a feature-packed offer which provides 300MB worth of access to mobile games, YouTube videos and other online apps; 30 minutes of calls to Smart and Talk ‘N Text; and 150 texts to all networks – all valid for three days for just P50.

To mount the nationwide competition, Smart is teaming up with the country’s biggest names in gaming, including the Philippine eSports Organization, Inquirer eSports, SM Cyberzone, and the Philippine Clash of Clans Battleground – the biggest online community of COC players in the country.

Mobile gaming phenomenon

“The COC phenomenon has hit the Philippines big time, with Filipinos from all walks of life bonding together to form clans and compete every chance they get – on the train, while stuck in traffic, or when they are just relaxing at home. It is just about time we put together the country’s biggest COC tournament and provide a venue for players and fans alike to showcase their skills in the spirit of friendly competition,” said Mellissa Limcaoco, head of Smart’s Innovation and Product Development Group.

“This is very much a part of our push to elevate gaming into a form of competitive sports, extolling good values like discipline and teamwork in a fun-filled arena,” she added.

Open to all Smart Prepaid, Postpaid and Smart Bro subscribers, the competition will feature several elimination legs in key cities all over the country, including Baguio, Batangas, Cebu, Davao, and Metro Manila before culminating in one big final clash in October.

Supercell, Chief Pat, Galadon

Aside from the competition, the COC legs will feature exciting activities for fans such as tutorials, games and meet-and-greet with the COC community.

Smart has also invited representatives of Supercell, the Finland-based developer of the game, as well as popular COC YouTube personalities like Chief Pat and Galadon, to grace the tournament.

Since its launch in 2012, COC has gripped millions all over the world for its stunning graphics and exciting gameplay. In the game, each player takes the role of a village chief tasked to expand his territory and train his troops. Through strategic use of resources, each player has to defend his ground and wage epic battles with other online players in a race for trophies, loot and prestige.

COC also allows players to form their own clans with their friends to compete with other clans. Each victory allows players to take home gold, elixir and gems, which they can use to level up their fortress and army.

As the country’s leading mobile network, Smart has introduced Direct Carrier Billing on Google Play, allowing Filipino COC players nationwide to buy gems conveniently using their prepaid load or charge their purchases to their postpaid account.

The full mechanics of the competition and details of the event will be unveiled soon, and interested teams may visit the tournament’s official site at www.smart.com.ph/pages/PhilippineClash2015 or follow Smart’s official accounts on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SmartCommunications) and Twitter (@SMARTCares) for updates.

source: Smart Press Release

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PAGASA Installs P50.30 Million Atomic Clock - "Currently The Most Precise and Stable Timekeeping Device"

MANILA, Philippines — A division of the state weather agency just bought a P50-million clock from a US supplier that tells time more accurately than the earth does when it spins on its axis.

A year after the project was bid out, the atomic clock arrived a month ago and was installed on Wednesday following the arrival of two engineers from the US contractor Microsemi Corp.

The unit, which is about the size of a large refrigerator, has three rows of atomic caesium clocks for holdover redundancy and is plugged into the network time protocol (NTP) of the Philippine Standard Time. The atomic clock tells the time by measuring the oscillation of energized atoms in an electromagnetic field.

The atomic clock, which can tell time up to the nanosecond, is currently the most precise and stable timekeeping device so much so that it will take 30 million years for it go off by a second. The atomic clock is even more stable than solar time, as the earth’s speed spinning on its axis is affected by the moon’s gravitational pull and large-scale disasters such as earthquakes. The instability of the earth’s rotation actually gives rise to the so-called “leap second,” a one-second adjustment to the Coordinated Universal Time to keep it in line with solar time.

“Typically, most people would use it for navigation systems, metrology, and calibration. In this case, it’s also going to be used as an authoritative time server for the Philippines,” said Kirk Montgomery, one of the two Microsemi systems engineer who installed the system in PAGASA.

Nanosecond precision has huge implications in high-level applications such as GPS, where a slight millisecond variance can set off positioning data by a million feet due to the speed of light. Telecom circuits also rely on precise clocking mechanisms to coordinate data packets with clock speeds.

Raymundo said they will coordinate with interested stakeholders in the private and public sector on how they could connect to the atomic clock through their NTP server. The country will now also be capable of being recognized as a contributor to the International Bureau of Weight and Measures in France.

ntp.pagasa.dost.gov.ph

How to Synchronize Your Computer  Router and Modem with the Philippine Standard Time Directly from PAG-ASA

Sync PC Time
1. Go to Control Panel
2.click clock, Language, and Region
3.Click Set the Time and Date
4. Click Internet Time
5.input dost server and update

Sync Router/Modem Time
1.Login via admin user on your modem or router
2.Find SNTP
3.Input DOST server
4.Choose +GMT8:00
5.Click Apply

History of PAGASA Time Service

The Time Service Division was established as one of the major units in the then Weather Bureau sometime in 1949. Its master clock was a U. Nardin Marine Chronometer, with pendulum regulator, which was utilized as a dispatch clock. A short synchrome ensemble replaced the marine chronometer in 1951 and a quartz crystal clock improved the system in 1965.

Since then, there was no major improvement that had been done with the system, except for the acquisition of a Digitizing Oscilloscope.  In 1988, the Time Service Division was downgraded to the Time Service Unit (TSU), together with the reorganization of the PAGASA.  In 1996, the TSU acquired a Luminous Digital Clock and a Global Positioning System (GPS), which were installed in 1997, as its primary reference timing system.

In 2003, TSU was transferred to the newly renovated Transit Building of the PAGASA Astronomical Observatory, equipped with the new timing equipment, known as the Rubidium/Global Positioning System Common View (Rb/GPSCV) Time Transfer System.  The detailed characteristics, components and utilization of the Rb/GPSCV are given in a succeeding section.

Functions of the Time Service Unit

Maintains the national standard of time and frequency.
Disseminates the precise time and frequency via Internet, radio broadcast and other means.
Extends time and frequency calibration and standardization services to industrial and scientific institutions.
Exchanges data on time and frequency with overseas institutions.

Services offered by the Unit

Time-of-day information disseminated to the general public through the telephone.
Time synchronization of all TV and radio broadcasting stations, using the Network Time Protocol (NTP) server system.
Transmission of time tone signal, using a Single Side Band (SSB) transceiver.
Checking through telephone or any other means, the accuracy of the clocks being displayed by TV stations and the time-of-day information being broadcast by radio stations.
Calibration/Synchronization of all working displayed clocks, chronometers, quartz clocks and other timepieces.
Assistance in disseminating astronomical information/data and other services related to astronomy and time information of foreign countries.
Assistance in astronomical observation and delivery of lectures to observatory visitors on the astronomical aspects of PAGASA services.
Assistance in disseminating official severe weather bulletins, issued by the Weather and Flood Forecasting Center, in cases where callers/inquirers cannot contact the Center during busy hours.

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Update Your Adobe Flash player plugin to version 18.0.0.209

After the discovery that Hacking Team, the recently breached surveillance software maker, had three working exploits for Adobe Flash. 

The open source organization decided to block all versions of the Flash Player plugin up to version 18.0.0.203 on Windows.

You need to Update Your Adobe Flash player plugin to version 18.0.0.209..

Link: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
For Chrome : https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?fpchrome

This is not the first time Adobe Flash has had critical vulnerabilities that needed to be fixed.  

Google’s Chrome, has not disabled its integrated Flash plugin that remained at version 18.0.0.203 at this writing. However, Google does limit Flash’s interaction with the rest of the browser via a security sandbox.

Mozilla said Flash would remain on the Firefox blocklist until Adobe fixes all known vulnerabilities.

Since that decision was made, however, Adobe appears to have updated its Flash player to version .209, which is not blocked. Adobe had previously said it would fix all known vulnerabilities later this week; It’s not clear if version .209 fulfills that goal.

Firefox users that want to re-enable Flash can do so by clicking on the RED LEGO Icon to allow adobe flash player plugin..

Adobe Flash is slowly losing favor to HTML5-based video capability built-in to modern browsers.


For some in the tech industry Flash’s life as a web-based product may come to a natural end due to the rise of HTML5-based video. How long that might take is anyone’s guess.


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Windows 10 build 10166 Microsoft Wi-Fi app

Windows 10 build 10166 Microsoft Wi-Fi, which will let folks buy Internet access through the Windows Store.
Microsoft Wi-Fi, an app that has been included in previous builds of Windows 10, has been enabled for people in the Seattle area so that users can purchase wireless internet access through the Windows Store from the wireless networking menu in the Windows 10 taskbar. While the company hasn’t provided a definitive launch date, Microsoft Wi-Fi is supposed to be available for people in the rest of the U.S. “soon.”

It will be interesting to see how popular the feature becomes, especially since many people have smartphones that can also serve as portable Wi-Fi hotspots. However Microsoft Wi-Fi works out, it will likely be less controversial than Windows 10’s Wi-Fi Sense feature, which has drawn criticism from security experts for automatically logging users into open wireless networks and allowing people to share network passwords with friends.


 

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Hyperloop Capsule Ultra High-Speed public transport with a top speed of 760 mph

The Hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system put forward by entrepreneur Elon Musk CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors.

A preliminary design document was made public in August 2013, which included a preliminary cost estimate for a passenger-only version at US$6 billion, while a version transporting passengers and vehicles was estimated at US$7.5 billion. The cost projections for the notional California route were questioned by transportation engineers in 2013, who found the sum unrealistically low given the scale of construction and reliance on unproven technology. The technological and economic feasibility of the idea is unproven and a subject of significant debate.

A notional route was used in the alpha-level design document. It runs from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, paralleling the Interstate 5 corridor for most of its length. Preliminary analysis indicated that such a route might obtain an expected journey time of 35 minutes, meaning that passengers would traverse the 354-mile (570 km) route at an average speed of around 598 mph (962 km/h), with a top speed of 760 mph (1,220 km/h).

 Watch 2013 Video Documentary
 

If you watched Kingsman: The Secret Service is a 2015 British spy action comedy film, directed by Matthew Vaughn, and based on the comic book The Secret Service they featured here the  Hyperloop as a transportation to the Kingsman  top secret base.

 AUDACIOUS PLAN TO BUILD A TRAIN THAT TRAVELS 760 MPH IN DUBAI

Dirk Ahlborn CEO of a startup, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) cut a Tony Stark-like figure as he strode through the convention hall after he spoke at the Middle East Rail conference in March. The place looked like a giant IKEA showroom devoted to the sole purpose of selling trains, wants to build hyperloop—the same scheme that Elon Musk in Dubai. The hype faded—but the outlandish idea was still alive.

  “There hasn’t been any real innovation in the rail industry for—I don’t know how long,” he said. “Either disrupt yourself or you are going to be disrupted.”

The hyperloop concept isn’t just a fantasy, says ­Hyperloop Transportation Technologies’ founder Dirk Ahlborn, shown here near the Dubai Metro. “It’s not like we want to invent an antigravity device.”

Ahlborn began to pace the stage, TED-talk style, as he explained his vision for the future of transportation. “What is the hyperloop?” he asked. “It is a capsule, full of people, in a tube, elevated on pylons, going really fast. It’s that simple.” 

Ahlborn had launched HTT In June 2014, Hyperloop Technologies (HT) entered the field, founded by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar and former SpaceX rocket engineer Brogan Bam­Brogan. And this past January, Musk himself was back, tweeting his intention to build a hyperloop test track, possibly in Texas. The two startups announced their own test-track plans shortly thereafter, with both hoping to break ground by 2016. The race for near-supersonic land travel was on.

Together they formed the industry’s elite, people who built trains and ran railways around the world, while Ahlborn was the CEO of a startup, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), that hadn’t carried a single passenger or laid an inch of track. 

The hyperloop could be an entirely new form of transportation--one that is quicker, cheaper, earthquake resistant, and more fuel efficient than anything that has come before and it feels like your on a Jet plane.

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Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has passed away at the age of 55

Nintendo has announced that its president and CEO, Satoru Iwata, died on Saturday. He was 55, and the cause of death was stated as a bile duct growth (bangungut) . Iwata took some time off for health reasons last year and had had surgery to remove a tumor, returning later in the year.

Iwata began his journey at Nintendo in the 1980s and worked on games like EarthBound. During his tenure he oversaw the launches of the GameCube, DS, Wii & Wii U systems. In 2000 he became a Director and in 2002 was appointed as the fourth president (succeeding Hiroshi Yamuchi).

Iwata was a fixture in the gaming industry and known for being one of the nicest executives around. He will be immensely missed.

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BBC Micro:bit will be given away to every child in Year 7 at schools in the U.K

British school children around age 11 and 12 are about to get a free micro-PC to learn how to code.
Micro:bit, a mini-programmable computer meant to teach children how to code and develop hardware projects.

The device will be given away to every child in Year 7 at schools in the U.K.—around one million students—beginning in October. Before the end of the year, the device will also be available for sale to customers in the U.K. and other points around the globe. Presumably that includes the U.S.

Unlike other popular boards such as the Raspberry Pi, the Micro:bit is not meant to be used as a standalone PC. Instead, it’s a basic board for embedded projects such as a gaming device or a remote control. It’s also compatible with more advanced micro PCs like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards for projects that require more processing heft.

 
A new programmable computer wouldn’t be much good without the tools to build something with them. To that end, there will be a new website to help students with their coding. The website will work on PCs or mobile devices, and lets students save and test their code on the site. Code can be written in standard languages including JavaScript, Python, C++, as well as Blocks (a visual programming language) and Microsoft’s Touch Develop. Once the code is ready for real world action, they can transfer it to the Micro:bit via Bluetooth or a USB connection.

The Micro:bit is a huge collaboration between numerous tech companies including ARM, element14 (sellers of the Raspberry Pi), Microsoft, and Samsung.

Unlike the previous computer project, the Micro:bit will be distributed to individual students thanks to the ever lowering cost of components. It will also be 18 times faster at running code, 70 times smaller, and 617 times lighter than its predecessor, the BBC says.

The 1.6-inch by 2-inch Micro:bit comes with a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 processor, 25 programmable LED lights arranged in a grid, two push buttons for user input, an accelerometer and compass, a micro-USB connector, and Bluetooth. The device was originally supposed to come with a slot for a watch battery, but the final design cut that, opting for a battery pack add-on instead that takes two AA batteries. You can find complete specs on the BBC’s website.

 

The BBC is getting into the hardware hacking craze with its second device aimed at school age children in the last 34 years.

The Micro:bit is the BBC’s second run at sparking the interest of students in computing. In 1981, the BBC worked with Acorn Computers to produce the BBC Microcomputer System (BBC Micro) sold primarily to schools in the UK as part of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project. The device was similar in form to a Commodore 64, a non-descript beige box with a keyboard that hooked up to a monitor or television.

source: BBC

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The four co-founders of The Pirate Bay have been cleared of charges

The Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström were acquitted by a Belgian court located in Mechelse after it was found that they could not be held responsible for the file-sharing website after selling it in 2006. 

The Pirate Bay’s founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, the website representative Peter Sunde and the website investor Carl Lundström were facing criminal charges related to their involvement with the torrenting site that has proven to be an elusive hub for illegal copyrighted content. 

Though the foursome is likely to face criminal charges in other courts of law, the Belgian court victory represented a little of good news for the cyber crew.

The four co-founders of The Pirate Bay, the world’s most popular torrent website, have been cleared of charges alleging criminal copyright infringement and abuse of electronic communications in a Belgian court.

After the verdict was dropped, the complainants, which is the Belgian Entertainment Association, agreed with the court decision. "Technically speaking, we agree with the court," said Olivier Maeterlinck, the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA) director.

This isn’t the first good news came from The Pirate Bay case. Last month, the third founder Fredrik Neij was released from a Swedish prison after he was detained on the Laos-Thailand border in November 2014 and spending ten months in jail.

The Pirate Bay, founded in 2003, is one of the most popular file-sharing websites in the world predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge. Despite the criminal convictions, the site remains functioning today, although it has moved to different Web domains several times.

It's still unclear how the website managed to reappear every time after shutdown, but The Pirate Bay claimed last year that it ran the notorious website on 21 "raid-proof" virtual machines, which means if the police raid one location, the site would hardly take few hours to get back in action.

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• The Pirate Bay is Down After a Server Room Raid in Stockholm
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