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Saturday, July 09, 2016

The IRS filed suit in a San Francisco court against Facebook

The IRS filed suit in a San Francisco court Wednesday against Facebook to get information about the tech titan's tax arrangement in Ireland. Specifically, the agency wants documents detailing whether the social giant sold rights to its Irish subsidiaries cheaply in order to avoid paying the US' comparatively higher taxes.

By understating the value of intellectual property it transferred to Ireland by billions of dollars, Facebook's profits within the island nation would only be subject to a 12.5 percent corporate rate, far lower than the US' 35 percent. For its part, a Facebook spokesman denied any wrongdoing by the company, saying it complied with local laws.





Shifting resources between several subsidiary corporations within Ireland is a popular tax structuring strategy for big corporations. In Facebook's case, it sold rights to its platform to Facebook Ireland Holdings in 2010, which then leased the rights to its subsidiary Facebook Ireland Ltd, according to Reuters. This lets the social giant report income from the first company within the island nation, as opposed to licensing directly from the American-based Facebook itself, which would subject its revenue to the higher US rates.

Tax agencies are finally acting to try and close these loopholes. With increasing pressure from US and EU regulators, Ireland is trying to strike a balance by requiring companies to hold operations on its soil by 2019 to retain beneficial rates. Facebook even capitulated to UK demands back in March, agreeing to subject deals made with local businesses to its national tax rate. And Spanish officials just raided a Google office in Madrid to investigate the legality of its tax arrangement.

But fortunately for the tech giants, there isn't much of a united front to squeeze them out of tax havens, as an American treasury official recently slammed the Europeans' attempts to get more revenue from Google.



Source: Reuters,


Facebook Messenger will begin to offer an end-to-end encryption feature

Facebook Messenger will begin to offer an end-to-end encryption feature to a limited test group of users today. It’s a security option that’s been a long time coming for Facebook, which has considered making end-to-end encryption available for several months. The so-called “secret conversations” debuted today will be only visible to the sender and the reader, which means Facebook can’t enable some of the chatbot and payment features that are normally a part of the Messenger experience. However, end-to-end encryption boxes out law enforcement and even Facebook itself from reading users’ chats, ensuring that their conversations remain private.

‘Secret conversations’ offers users to send encrypted messages which can only be seen by the recipient for a limited time. 


Messenger has also taken steps to make sure that chats remain secure, even if a user’s device gets lost or stolen. In secret conversations, Messenger will allow users to set an expiration date for a message so that it won’t be visible in the conversation forever. Once the time runs out, the message will vanish from the devices of all users in the conversation. Facebook released technical details about its implementation of secret conversations in a white paper (PDF).




Secret conversation mode will only be available on iOS and Android, not in Messenger.com, Facebook chat, or the desktop Messenger app — at least for now. Facebook’s vice president of messaging products David Marcus told TechCrunch that the addition of end-to-end encryption is intended to help Messenger become everyone’s go-to app.


“We wanted to make Messenger your primary messaging platform, and while we currently were already using a lot of security to ensure that your messages are safe and confidential, we felt that we needed to go one more extra step with this new mode,” Marcus explained. The combination of end-to-end encryption and a message countdown clock “will truly empower people to have any type of conversation they want to on Messenger,” he added.

Secret conversations will bring stronger security to some of Messenger’s nearly 1 billion users — but only if they turn it on.




Consumer demand for strong encryption is driving Facebook, Google, Apple and other companies to reassure users that their communications are secure. “It’s a really good time to do this,” Marcus said. “We felt this was the right time to do it, to complete the capabilities with something that enabled people to have the conversations they wanted to have on Messenger.”


source:  TechCrunch,


Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's account was hijacked by hackers

The latest hacking of a high-profile Twitter account has occurred, and it's hit the company's CEO Jack Dorsey. After the hackers posted a few benign video clips, a tweet went up at 2:50AM ET saying "Hey, its OurMine,we are testing your security" and linking to their website. That tweet was quickly deleted, but it also linked to a short Vine clip which we've embedded below, and identical tweets continued to replace it. Hackers using the name OurMine have previously taken over some social media accounts of other CEOs, like Google's Sundar Pichai (via a Quora account) and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, but going after this CEO on his own platform -- he sent the first public tweet -- seems new.



All of the OurMine messages posted to Dorsey's account (which, as of 3:25AM or so appears to have been scrubbed of the hacker's tweets), came through from Vine. It's possible Dorsey had an old/shared password on his Vine account or somehow connected it to another service that was compromised, which could've given OurMine access and matches what we've seen in previous hacks.


Make sure you're using a unique password for every site



Source: @Jack (Twitter)


'Pokemon Go' global rollout delayed to fix server problems

Perhaps you and I don't live in America or the antipodes and are eagerly awaiting its international rollout? Sorry to break it to you trainers, but the global expansion of the Pokémon mobile game has been delayed until its servers recover from player overload.

US players might have already seen an error page on the login screen alerting them that servers were momentarily down. While the game is already live in the US, Australia and New Zealand, rollout to new countries is "paused until we're comfortable," John Hanke, CEO of the game's studio Niantic, told Business Insider.




And Hanke said that Niantic has already made great strides in fixing the problem, with "a great run" of server availability on Thursday evening.

Meanwhile, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels couldn't resist a joke at Niantic's expense, offering the help of the Amazon Web Services cloud-hosting service in keeping the game available:


I experience Server Error before too..





Source: Niantic (Twitter)Business Insider





MSI-ECS Now! Offers ICT Training Courses

MSI-ECS Offers ICT Training Courses

MSI-ECS, one of the country’s leading ICT distributors announces the availability of ICT training courses designed to enhance literacy and competency of participants on different IT-related topics such as virtualization, database, network and security, servers and storage, anti-virus and threat management.

The MSI-ECS Education Business started in 2008, initially offering VMware courses when it was awarded as the first VMware Authorized Training Center (VATC) in the country. Now, with more advanced courses for VMware and HPE and producing three VMware Certified Instructors (VCI) from its roster, it has conducted more than a hundred IT education and certification programs to a number of clients coming from various industries such as telecommunications, banking and finance, BPOs, government agencies and hotels. Simply put, it has certified system administrators, engineers, and managers on different subjects, applications and technologies.



With the transfer of the company to its new headquarters in Pasig, enrollees can expect a more conducive learning environment and leveled-up courses. Designed for a classroom type of learning, the new training rooms are equipped with computer workstations with fast internet connectivity. All of these training rooms are connected to the solution center or POC (Proof of Concept); where one can test-run applications, and assess and evaluate various IT solutions for acquisition purposes.





Future plans include offering formal courses for IBM, Fortinet, RedHat, Trend Micro and other enterprise solutions. For training details and inquiry, contact Louie Mae Ladio at (+632) 830-9914 or email lladio@msi-ecs.com.ph. Visit their Education webpage here.

Follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to learn more about their products and services.


Renzee Enoc
Marketing Communications Executive
Marketing & Communications Division

MSI-ECS PHILS., INC.
MSI-ECS COMPLEX
M. Eusebio Avenue, San Miguel
Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines 1600
Mobile: +63977 672 4519 | +63995 840 3306
DL: (+632) 688  3512
Email: renoc@msi-ecs.com.ph

A 19 year Old Teenage Girl Finds Body In River Playing Pokemon Go

A teenager has discovered a dead body floating in her hometown river. Shayla Wiggins, a 19-year-old Riverton, Wyoming resident, discovered a man floating in the Wind River early this morning when trying to catch pokémon from a "natural water resource," she told KTVQ.com. Wiggins called 911 and local police arrived on the scene to retrieve the body. 

"The Pokemons are all over Riverton," she said. "I was trying to get a Pokemon from a natural water resource." It was after she hopped a fence in search of some water Pokemon when the chilling discovery came.

"I was walking towards the bridge along the shore when I saw something in the water," Wiggins said. "I had to take a second look and I realized it was a body."

She went on to describe the body as an average-sized male, floating about three feet from the shore. "It was pretty shocking," she recalls. "I didn't really know what to do at first. But I called 911 right away and they came really quickly." Detectives later told Wiggins the body had been in the river for less than 24 hours.



The Fremont County Sheriff's Office confirmed the discovery in a press release given to The Verge. It notably excludes the phrase "Pokémon Go":
 
The death appears to be accidental in nature and possibly that of a drowning. There is no evidence at this time that would indicate foul play. Evidence located at the scene has led investigators to believe the man went into the water at the location he was found. The body was located in about three feet of water on the east side of the Wind River Bridge.



It's likely someone would have found the body had Wiggins not been searching for pokémon around 8:30AM. Still, it's quite remarkable that a mobile game — albeit one that encourages users to go outside and explore the real world — is resulting in such diverse experiences, both pleasant and unsavory.



Meet "Merica", a powerful Pidgeot and the new master of the White House gym

Like many famous landmarks, the White House is the site for a Pokemon gym in Pokemon GO. And now, thanks to an inventive Pokemon trainer, the White House has a proper Pokemon guardian.  Meet "Merica", a powerful Pidgeot and the new master of the White House gym. Judging by Merica's face, it means business and probably won't hesitate to deliver a hefty dose of red, white and blue freedom against anyone who tries to invade the White House.



Merica's owner, Boricua88, took control of the White House earlier this afternoon and posted a picture of his patriotic Pokemon to Reddit and Imgur.  In typical fashion, the comments were filled with plenty of snark.  One redditor posted that his new goal was to take over the White House and name his guardian Pokemon "Thanks Obama", while others made jokes about British Pokemon GO users winning the White House with Fire Pokemon (a reference to the White House's destruction during the War of 1812 by British forces).

We have also rumor Pokemon on popular landmark in Ph.



Since the White House is a popular landmark, we're sure that Merica won't stay in control of the White House for long. Let's just hope his successor is equally patriotic. 





Noah's Ark with life-size 'replica' theme park unveiled in Kentucky

A theme park in the US state of Kentucky has unveiled a 510-foot-long (155 metre-long) wooden model of Noah's Ark.

The ark was built by Christians who said they believe the biblical story was a historical event.


Critics have said the attraction should not have received tax incentives as it contradicts science education.
The ark is based on a biblical story of a man who received an apocalyptic warning from God about a massive flood.




Answers in Genesis, the ministry that built the ark, said the ship's dimensions are based on those described in the Bible.
The ark is also 85ft (26m) wide and 51ft (15m) high, according to the group.


The ark, which is about 40 miles (64km) south of Cincinnati, Ohio, in Williamstown, features displays of animals in cages as well as exhibits on the group's theories on the world's existence.







The group believes that God created everything, including dinosaurs, about 6,000 years ago.
Scientists have said the dinosaurs became extinct about 65m years before man appeared.
Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, said the total cost of the ark is more than $100m (£77m).
The attraction has been at the centre of controversy in Kentucky, where it was awarded a tax incentive in 2014 worth up to $18m (about £14m).


The incentive allowed the park to recoup taxes on money made from visitors.
The tax break was then revoked after it was revealed that Answers in Genesis would only hire Christian staff members. However, the group sued and won.


Opponents of the theme park told the AP it is a violation of separation of church and state.
"Basically, this boat is a church raising scientifically illiterate children and lying to them about science," said Jim Helton, who lives about a half-hour from the ark.
One of the park's biggest critics is science advocate and former television personality Bill Nye "the Science Guy".




Nye debated Mr Ham on evolution in 2014, attracting millions of viewers online.
The video of the debate posted on YouTube by Answers in Genesis has more than five million views.


Following the debate, Mr Ham announced that a bond offering from Williamstown had raised $62m (about £48m) for the project, allowing the group to break ground on the site a few months later.
Answers in Genesis estimates that the theme park, which debuted to the public on Thursday, will draw about two million visitors in its first year.



Amid anger at 'scientifically preposterous' museum 

For Dr Jeanson is one of the advisers of Ark Encounter – billed as “a life-sized Noah’s Ark.” The 510-ft long boat and its surrounding attractions, unveiled in Kentucky on Thursday, has sparked a wave of protests, but he insisted that, far from being an outrage, the theme park was a gift to humanity.

“This is not anti-science,” he said, speaking to The Telegraph on the eve of the theme park’s opening. “I would say we embrace all science.

“We are just teaching people to think differently.”


Indeed, he admits that his thinking is radically different to that of many of his Harvard peers.

He and his Creationist colleagues believe that the Bible is a book of historic record. They argue that Genesis tells a factual story explaining that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, that man and dinosaur co-existed, and that Noah built an ark to save animals from a flood.

Evolution, he believes, is a myth: Darwin’s work has been misinterpreted.


The movement, known as young earth creationism, emerged only about 60 years ago, and has remained a marginal creed within Christianity. Even many Bible-believers and evangelicals accept the science showing that the universe is billions of years old — some reasoning that each of the six “days” of creation in the Book of Genesis may have lasted millions of years, not 24 hours.

Dr Krupa said the theme park was intended to “advance ignorance,” and described the museum’s opening as a “very, very sad” day for the nation.

“That Ken Ham is trying to ignore vast evidence to the contrary and convince people the world is 6,000 years old is an embarrassment to Kentucky, the US, and to Christianity,” he told The Telegraph.



source : telegraph.co.uk , BBC,


Christo’s Grand- Scale Artwork Floating Piers project on Lake Iseo, Italy

Christo’s exhibit — “The Floating Piers” — which closed Monday after a 16-day exhibit at Lake Iseo, Italy, are as diverse as the artist’s grand-scale artworks. 

Christo says the artwork was a success. Others, like members of Rags Over the Arkansas River, who oppose Christo’s “Over the River” artwork planned for the Arkansas River corridor between Salida and Canon City, said the project was problematic at best.

“The Floating Piers” featured fabric-covered piers that stretched across the water of Lake Iseo and continued along sidewalks. Visitors — estimated at 1.2 million — were allowed to visit the artwork free of charge and walk over the piers, which caused unforeseen issues.



“Christo never seems to get the engineering right. Nor does he accurately factor in weather patterns, wind speeds, public health risks and the consequence of over-promoting his projects with no regard for the many negative impacts he engenders,” said Joan Anzelmo, Rags Over the Arkansas River spokeswoman. “In Italy, local authorities were forced to turn away hundreds of people trying to get to ‘The Floating Piers’ exhibit, so besieged were the nearby towns and trains.




For sixteen days – June 18 through July 3, 2016 – Italy’s Lake Iseo was reimagined. 100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric, carried by a modular floating dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes, undulated with the movement of the waves as The Floating Piers rose just above the surface of the water.


 Workers install the felt that will cover the floating cubes before the yellow fabric is installed, May 2016

From the evening of June 15 to the evening of June 17, teams unfurl 100,000 square meters of shimmering dahlia-yellow fabric on the piers and pedestrian streets in Sulzano and Peschiera Maraglio

The Walkway
A 3-kilometer-long walkway was created as The Floating Piers extended across the water of Lake Iseo. The piers were 16 meters wide and approximately 35 centimeters high with sloping sides. The fabric continued along 2.5 kilometers of pedestrian streets in Sulzano and Peschiera Maraglio.

“Those who experienced The Floating Piers felt like they were walking on water – or perhaps the back of a whale,” said Christo. “The light and water transformed the bright yellow fabric to shades of red and gold throughout the sixteen days.”



The Experience
Visitors were able experience this work of art by walking on it from Sulzano to Monte Isola and to the island of San Paolo, which was framed by The Floating Piers. The mountains surrounding the lake offered a bird’s-eye view of The Floating Piers, exposing unnoticed angles and altering perspectives.



Lake Iseo is located 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice. “Like all of our projects, The Floating Piers were absolutely free and open to the public,” said Christo. “There were no tickets, no openings, no reservations and no owners. The Floating Piers were an extension of the street and belonged to everyone.”



Source: christojeanneclaude.net



Friday, July 08, 2016

Harvard researchers built a living stingray-bot out of rat hearts

Developed by a team of researchers at Harvard University, the bio-engineered marvel looks, flexes and swims just like a tiny stingray.

The stingray-bot is made up of four distinct layers: a silicone substrate that forms its body "the same thing as the outer coating of a breast implant," a skeletal system made of gold wire, a second layer of silicone that insulates the skeleton and, finally, 200,000 genetically-engineered rat cells. Those cells are designed to contract when exposed to a specific wavelength of light. When they do, the robot effectively swims in the same undulating manner as its namesake. 


What's more, the "biological life-form," as lead researcher, Kit Parker, describes it, automatically follows the light source as it swims through the nutrient-rich liquid that keeps its cells alive, allowing it to be remotely controlled.


The bio-bot can't survive outside of the lab yet. Even if it didn't need its specialized liquid, the rat cells have no immune system and would be immediately attacked by bacteria and fungal pathogens. Even so, Parker hopes that it will lead others to develop a complete, genetically-engineered heart, among other things.


Parker believes his robot, a machine built of living animal cells, forces a strange philosophical question: Is it alive? "I think we've got a biological life-form here." he says, "A machine, but a biological life form. I wouldn't call it an organism, because it can't reproduce, but it certainly is alive."



Maybe the coolest aspect of the stingray bot is that different scientists can all learn radically different things from it. Parker says his biggest takeaway, as a researcher who hopes to engineer a fully working heart muscle, is that the robot exemplifies how certain heart-muscle can flush and flow liquid around it. "Meanwhile the roboticists and engineers can see different ways to use biological cells as building materials, and marine biologists can take a look to better understand why the muscle tissues in rays are built and organized the way they are," he says.


"We turned a rat into a light guided stingray. Hell, all they need to know is that this is the coolest thing they're going to see all year." he says.

Source: Popular Mechanics


Thursday, July 07, 2016

US athletes will get antimicrobial outfits to survive polluted Rio waters

After the National Institute of Health announced that they will study American athletes for probable Zika infection, textile engineers at Philadelphia University have made antimicrobial suits to protect US rowers from the sewage-filled water around the South American city. Unfortunately, they might not be a match for an environment with 1.7M times the level of viral presence considered "hazardous."

The Rio Olympic and Paralympic games sound like more of a nightmare every day.


That's partially because the outfits don't cover the whole body, leaving some skin exposed. Further, the suits' antimicrobial finish might not resist some of the viruses present nor may they act fast enough to block some bacteria. To completely protect themselves, athletes wouldn't just need fully-sealed uniforms — they would have to wear face masks to counter any contaminated liquid spraying up from the water's surface. 


Some athletes are taking safety into their own hands. German Olympic sailor Erik Heil vowed that he'd wear plastic overalls after a flesh-eating bacteria infected his leg at a test event in Rio last August. Others are trying to stay safe by bleaching oars, taking ineffective antibiotics or simply hosing down their bodies with clean water after competitions. Some plan to show up early and hopefully acclimate to the high levels of pollution, while others are arriving as late as possible and leaving just as quickly to avoid as much contact as possible.

“Those virus levels are widespread. It’s not just along the shoreline but it’s elsewhere in the water, therefore it’s going to increase the exposure of the people who come into contact with those waters,” said Kristina Mena, an expert in waterborne viruses and an associate professor of public health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “We’re talking about an extreme environment, where the pollution is so high that exposure is imminent and the chance of infection very likely.”

The trouble isn't that these athletes haven't been exposed to these viruses and bacteria before. They're exposed to them every day, water pathogens researcher Katherine Mena told Wired, but never in this intense concentration. But despite this very real risk of infection — 6.7 percent of the 567 rowers in a junior championship in Rio last August got sick — not one US rower has withdrawn from the upcoming games, says Wired.



source : huffingtonpost, Wired, NBCsports,


Samsung's world-first UFS almost SSD-like sequential read speed of 530MB/s and 170MB/s sequential writing

We've heard arguments for and against removable storage on smartphones, but we can all agree on the fact that the more the merrier. And we're not just talking about memory space here, as the speed becomes more crucial when it comes to capturing higher video resolutions on our smartphones and drones. 

To satisfy our need for speed, Samsung is the first to announce a series of UFS (Universal Flash Storage) removable memory cards, with its 256GB flavor boasting an SSD-like sequential read speed of 530MB/s -- that's about half a gigabyte per second and almost five times faster than the top microSD cards these days. It can also do 170MB/s sequential writing, which is almost two to three times faster.


Android has had limited support for removable storage in one form or another since the beginning. With Marshmallow, the new Adoptable storage feature lets you turn your removable SD card option into a more or less permanent (and no longer removable) part of the device.

This means Adoptable storage is really only useful for two things:

An SD card placed in a phone or tablet and never to be removed
A USB storage device attached to your Android TV box, and never to be removed.


When you insert an SD card into the HTC One A9 or something like your G4 or Flash Plus 2 that has been updated to Marshmallow, you have the choice of using it as a Portable device or an Internal device if you go to reformat it. If you choose Portable, it acts like any other SD card and you can take it out and swap it between devices at your leisure.




More importantly, Samsung claims that its upcoming 256GB card is rated with a random read rate of 40,000 IOPS, which is 20 times higher than that of a typical microSD card; and likewise, it has a random write rate of 35,000 IOPS, which is a whopping 350 times higher. But of course, we'll believe it when we see it, which may be a while since we've yet to come across devices that support this new standard. It's also worth noting that even though UFS cards closely resemble their microSD counterpart, you can see that the new pin layout means the two aren't cross-compatible. We'll just have to keep an eye out for future announcements -- here's hoping that the upcoming Galaxy Note 7 will be one of the first devices to support these awesome memory cards.




Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Google has purchased Moodstocks that helps your phone identify objects

Google has purchased Moodstocks, a French startup that specializes in speedy object recognition from a smartphone, showing (again) the search giant's intense interest in AI. Unlike other products (including Google's own Goggles object recognition app) Moodstocks does most of the crunching on your smartphone, rather than on a server. While Google seemingly has some pretty good image-spotting tech already, like the canny visual categorization in Photos, it says it's just getting started.


After introducing on-device image recognition in 2012, we've been working on extending our reach to object recognition for the past 2.5 years, using deep learning based approaches. 
Today, we're thrilled to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to join forces with Google in order to deploy our work at scale. We expect the acquisition to be completed in the next few weeks.
- Moodstocks

"There is still a long way to go [with machine learning], and that's where Moodstocks comes in," the company said in a blog post (translated). The deal seems to fall in to the "aqui-hire" category, as Moodstocks will cease its own recognition services, and its team of engineers will join Google at its R&D center in Paris. Google is rumored to be working on a feature that allows Android users to search directly from their photos (below), though the company didn't say if the acquisition is related.



Google isn't the only company pursuing deep learning and image recognition. Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon and basically most of Silicon Valley are enamored of the tech. It's already being used in voice recognition apps like Alexa, Cortana and Siri, and image recognition products like Google's Photos and Microsoft's Translator app. Other deep learning applications include driverless cars, robotic concierges, cooking, weather forecasting, writing criticism and infinitely more.

Most of those apps rely on powerful servers like IBM's Watson, but the latest trend is to speed things up by processing data on your device. Apple's iOS 10, for instance, will rely less on cloud computing and more on the iPhone's built in horsepower for image recognition. Google's purchase of Moodstocks appears to be along the same lines, as the startup has expertise in "thick client" computing, which uses a combination of cloud and "on-device" computing.




Source: Google France, Moodstocks,


'Pokémon Go' Now...rolls out on Android and iOS

With all the news surrounding Pokémon Go's beta test and wearable, you'd be forgiven for thinking the full game was already out. Until recently, it wasn't, but that's changing if you live in the United States and have an Android device, as spotted by 9to5 Google. Rocking a handset designed in Cupertino? Well, only iPhone owners in Australia have access at the moment so a measure of patience is in order.



The game that brings Pokémon collecting into the real world via developer Niantic Labs' augmented reality and GPS tech has been gestating for quite a bit. The intent, Niantic CEP John Hanke told us back in June, is to make you feel like you're venturing out into the world and capturing the pocket monsters for yourself. "You can live the story of being a Pokemon trainer," he said. Now it's time to discover how quickly can you catch 'em all.


Niantic, the former Google subsidiary behind the Ingress augmented reality game. Pokémon Go looks to follow in the footsteps of Ingress, letting players find virtual Pokémon and do battle in the real world, powered by GPS. Niantic broke away from Google after the Alphabet reorganization.


Now’s your chance to discover and capture the Pokémon all around you—so get your shoes on, step outside, and explore the world. You’ll join one of three teams and battle for the prestige and ownership of Gyms with your Pokémon at your side.

Pokémon are out there, and you need to find them. As you walk around a neighborhood, your smartphone will vibrate when there’s a Pokémon nearby. Take aim and throw a Poké Ball… You’ll have to stay alert, or it might get away! 


If Google Play Prompt NOT available in your country,
Don't worry you download the APK file here. 


Download APK from Google Docs.

Version: 0.29.0 (2016070500)

arm
Package: com.nianticlabs.pokemongo
58.06 MB (60,876,068 bytes)
Min: Android 4.4 (Kitkat, API 19)
Target: Android 6.0 (Marshmallow, API 23)

For those who haven't been following the title's development, the game uses your smartphone's camera and sensors, as well as location-based algorithms (AR mode), to place pokémon in the real world. 

Tested working sample :




In addition, While Pokemon Go is free , you can optionally purchase a wristband called the Pokémon GO Plus will also be available after the official released and will cost $34.99(PHP 1,620). This wearable device allows the players to play the game without taking out their phone every time.






Source: iTunes (Australia), Google Play, 9to5 Google,




A Man tried to set fire to one of Google's Street View cars when he thought the company was tracking his moves

If you might be concerned about Google's stance on privacy, it shouldn't cross into violence... unfortunately, however, one person appears to have taken those worries one step too far. Prosecutors have charged Raul Murillo Diaz with arson after he reportedly tried to set fire to one of Google's Street View cars at its Mountain View campus on May 19th, because he think Google invade his Privacy.

In a sworn statement, Diaz was upset that Google was supposedly watching him -- he went so far as to write journal entries when he thought the company was tracking his moves.



It's unlikely to be an isolated incident, either. Diaz's SUV was spotted when someone shot windows at a Google building on June 4th, and a hooded man set fire to a Google car on June 10th. As it stands, the police say they arrested Diaz when he was transporting both a weapon case and the parts for a pipe bomb. If all the attacks are linked, it's possible that things could have gotten much, much worse.

This kind of violence is new for Google, but it does reflect a small pattern of anti-Google sentiment boiling over and reaching the company's front door. Protestors disrupted the Google I/O 2014 keynote more than once, and Kevin Rose faced protests at his home that year for supposedly "destroying San Francisco" through his partner role at Google Ventures. The claims have been shaky at least some of the time (one I/O protestor maintained that Google was making killer robots), but it's clear that the internet giant's reach has pushed some people over the edge.



Source: Mercury News,


Ashley Madison is currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission

Infamous infidelity website Ashley Madison with the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair,"  is now under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, according to a report from Reuters.
 

A new CEO and president are being brought on to revamp the Ashley Madison site as it is currently known, but the user data that appeared on the dark web isn't the reason for said investigation: it's the fact that Ashley Madison apparently used "fembots" to up the amount of female users actually registered on the site.


Site with the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair,"

Rob Segal, who's taking over from former CEO Noel Biderman, is looking to work with a "cyber security team" to wrap up any loose ends that may still exist after the data breach that occurred, adding that he's "truly sorry" for the pain these hacks caused users.


Avid shut down the fake profiles in the United States, Canada and Australia in 2014 and by late 2015 in the rest of the world, but some U.S. users had message exchanges with foreign fembots until late in 2015, according to the report.

Another site, JDI Dating, paid $616,165 in redress for similar practices in an October 2014 settlement with the FTC.

Avid said it does not know the focus of its FTC investigation. Asked about the fembot messages sent to U.S. customers, Segal said: "That's a part of the ongoing process that we're going through ... it's with the FTC right now."

Ashley Madison seems to desire to clean up its act, but there are still some decidedly dirty things likely going on, which the FTC looks to get to the bottom of.



source: Reuters,