Meet Jia Jia China's Humanoid Realistic Robot

Chen Xiaoping and his colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China have redefined the word “creepy” as they unveiled an eerily realistic robot called named Jia Jia.

 jia jia Looks incredibly like a life human, Jia Jia is capable of talking and interacting with real humans besides realistic facial expressions.

The robot even poses for a picture and comments “Don’t come too close to me when you are taking a picture. It will make my face look fat ” to someone who is trying to capture her photo.

Chen Xiaoping and his colleagues has spent three years on designing the robot and has gone to the intricacies of making its mouth move when speaking and that the eyes relocate and glance around the room naturally.

The brain consists of essentially a massive online database which is connected to a cloud computing platform granting  the robot to enhance its ability to process emotions and speech as more data is uploaded.

Researchers hope they can keep improving the model, although they are not looking for mass production at the moment.  Maybe in a couple of years, we will have these robots walking among us without even recognizing them!

Airplane will Now Be Able To Fold It Wings While Flying With The Help Of Nasa's New Design

The National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA) is trying to invent a foldable wing aircraft after being inspired from  incredible nosedive  of the hawk  when it folds its wings. NASA doesn’t want to have controlled dives, but there are many other benefits to this unique design, such as increasing the efficiency and capabilities of the aircraft.

NASA name  the design Spanwise Adaptive Wing (SAW). Until now, articulating wings on aircraft was done to optimize parking area and to make them fit into smaller hangars. the articulated  wings also helps  for easier movement within  the airport infrastructure.

But NASA wants to use smaller and adjustable wing ends along with more precise specifics  articulation and control with the ability  of changing position dynamically to create the perfect balance between lift and yaw control that is  needed during different flight conditions.

One use of this concept idea will be in supersonic aircraft. When the aircraft is flying at very high speeds, it  creates a lot of lift but consequently, have lesser yaw control. By folding the ends of the wings up or down, stability and yaw control will be enhanced, creating more vertical surface to augment the rear tailfin. But this will not happen at the expense of critical lift during the difficult takeoff and landing because the wings are still capable of straightening to add the lift surface to flight.

This concept is now a reality courtesy advancements in the actuators required to move the wings, which have been changed from the more outdated and heavy hydraulic systems to more efficient and lighter electric ones.

NASA’s Matt Moholt said on the concept,

“We are revisiting folding-wing aircraft. Because new technologies that did not exist in the 1960s allow actuation to be put in tighter wings, in smaller volumes. This allows a much thinner wing and a thinner portion of the wing to become articulable. Namely the tips of wings, which are normally rigidly fixed.”

This Russian Nuclear Weapon Is 2000 Times Stronger Than The Bomb That Hit Hiroshima

It looks like another cold war is on the horizons with the battle in Syria and Iraq getting worse each day and in the process, expanding the cleavage between the world powers. It has also triggered,increased the insecurity between the enemies fighting or covertly secretly

supporting the fighters in Syria and Iraq, triggering over the top defensive measures against each other and a serious concern for another arms race.

And supporting this argument is the recent news of the Russian army announcing a massive new nuclear weapon. The new nuclear bomb comes with RS-28 Sarmat missile which has the ability of travelling at a speed of 4.3 miles per second while carrying over 40 megatons of nuke explosives. For its destructive capabilities, NATO termed the missile “Satan 2”. The weapon is considered to be capable of devastating an area of the size of France and iit is also  2,000 times more power than the bombs that ravaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The missile is reported to have a range of 6,213 miles (10,000 km), which means that the missile is capable of hitting London and other European countries as well as the American west and east coasts.

                                                    Makeyev's Design 

The Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, Russia said in a statement:    

 "in agreement with the Decree of Russian Government 'on the state Defence Order for 2010 and the planning period 2012-2013', the Makeyev ROcket Design Bureau was instructed to start the design and the development of work on the Sarmat."

                           Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the upgrade of their older weaponry with Satan 2 and its 16 nuclear warheads at a time where international tensions are rising, and the smell of distrust and betrayal has fused with the stench of Arab carcases to create a deadly aroma. UK Prime Minister Theresa May has already criticised Putin for “discouraging the West’s efforts to give a political settlement in Syria.” The tensions further worsened when both Britain and the United States Governments announced that they would be sending supplies and troops for a NATO army build-up on the Russian border.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stotenberg justified the beefing up,

“This month alone, Russia has deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad and suspended a weapons-grade plutonium agreement with the United States.”

Testing of the Sarmat missile has already started near Miass in Russia, and the Russian Defence Ministry aims to put Sarmat ready for action as soon as late 2018.

What are your thoughts on the rising escalations between the world powers? 

Comment below!

Iran New Suicide Drone

Iran unveiled its ‘suicide drone’  on Wednesday. The news was announced by the elite Revolutionary Guards saying that the Iranian suicide drone  was capable of delivering explosives to both the sea and the land targets.

The Iranian military will primarily use the new suicide drone for it  maritime surveillance. The Tasnim news agency, considered pro-Guards, reported that the suicide drone cannot carry missiles:


The suicide drone has not been designed to be armed with missiles, but it can carry heavy payloads of explosives for combat missions to launch suicide attacks. flying at a high drifting speed near the surface of the water, the aircraft can collide with the target and destroy it, either a vessel or an onshore command center.

























The Iranian suicide drone can fly as low as half a meter above the water and can attain a speed of 250 kilometers per hour. The drone can go as high as 900 meters.

The news release only included images of the unmanned aerial vehicle on the ground. No video or pictures of the flying drone were released.

'The report says that the drone can operate in both night and daytime conditions.it has an advance military camera with the ability of being used at night and during the day as well as the possibility of being in damp sea conditions.

Earlier in October, the Revolutionary Guards unveiled another attack drone named the Saegheh (Thunderbolt). The Iranians reverse engineered the Thunderbolt after the capture of the US Central Intelligence Agency RQ-170 Sentinel drone in December 2011.

Iran claimed that the US drone was taken over by the cyber warfare units and was landed safely while the US maintains that a technical problem caused the drone to crash. The images of the drone accompanied the announcement of the Thunderbolt, but no footage of the drone in flight was released.

Previously, Iran tested its first suicide drone in December 2014.

This Gadget Can Allow You To Walk Up Vertically With Its Manually Powered Elevator

Vertiwalk is a small compact manual lift that can take you to the upper storey without having to navigate the treacherous staircases. This manual gadget   can move you to the upper floor using only 10% of the energy that you are suppose to use in climbing the stairs.

 

 Vertiwalk is a pulley-operated elevator powered by your upper and lower limbs. The engineers who design this manual lift believe that it will come in handy as the migration towards highly-populated cities , and the cities keep expanding.

Vertiwalk is a hybrid between stairs and elevator. The Dutch designers have designed the pulley-operated manual lift at the Rombout Frieling Lab in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Estimates predicted that more than two billion people will migrate towards the cities in the next 25 years. With the house rent price on a  perpetual rise, the people have no option but to make the most of whatever space is available to them.

The riders propel themselves up manually using their arms and legs. The users of the Vertiwalk pull on the two ropes with their arms pushing the seat upwards. When pushed with legs, Vertiwalk propels them upwards.

The device can also be operated by those with the leg impairments. However, it could not lift the people in the wheelchair. Only a fraction of the body weight needs to be shifted between the seat and the foot plate of the Vertiwalk to push the seat upwards.
By using harmonious  movements and smart materials only 10% of the effort of walking stairs is required to bridge multiple floors. This does not only offer a solution to the growing number of people who are unable to take the stairs case BUT moreover offers new possibilities for urban architect 

Intel’s High Performance Commercial Drone

Meet  Falcon 8⁺, Intel’s New High Performance Commercial Drone

                                                                    Credit: Intel
Intel has started manufacturing their own commercial and professional drones.called the Falcon 8+, and it vows to better than all its competitors!

                                                        Credit : Intel
Falcon 8+ commercial drone is created  for industrial inspection, surveying and mapping and is an upgrade on the previous AscTec Falcon 8 drone. It is a V-form octocopter entailing high stediness, accurate  GPS and state of the art flight control electronics and components. This helps the drone achieve the best weight-to-payload ratio, with an empty weight of 1.1 kg and a maximum payload of 0.8 kg making it ideal for some of the most intense field applications.

It predecessor, t Falcon 8 already had amazing gadgets such as Intel’s RealSense cameras and the company’s 3D-mapping technology to avoid collision . Building on this,  Falcon 8+ has added on Intel’s latest water-resistant ground Cockpit system, that allows the drone better control and fortitude towards environmental effects.

                                                            Credit : Intel
The Falcon 8+  can also be controlled with a single hand joystick courtesy an Intel chipset-powered tablet at the centre of the cockpit. The chip is used for planning of complex flight patterns and also enables the users to record and send live video feed via a low latency digital link of up to 1080p resolution and within a 1 km range.

Another salient feature is its ability to replicate its travel routes by using its onboard sensors which can map surfaces down to the millimetre. The UAV is configured in a V-form and measures 768 x 817 x 160 mm. It has a takeoff weight of 2.8 kg (6 pounds) when it is fully loaded with all the gizmos such as camera and transmission gimbal sending the 1080p HD video.

                                                           Credit : Intel

Intel revealed the Falcon 8+ at the InterGeo drone conference held in Germany, but the model is yet to be approved by the Federal Communications commission for sale or use in the United States. And also the price is yet to be determined .  

Samsung Recalls Samsung GalaxyNote 7 Over The Fear Of Explosion

Get ready to say goodbye to your Galaxy Note 7, as in a recent development Samsung has issued a recall because of reports of explosions!

Okay, it is not a blowing-up-the-petrol-station kind of explosion, but it can still cause a fire depending on where your phone was when it happened. So you shouldn’t expect a smouldering crater in your den or a blown up car as you read this article, but you should still be careful using it, in case you still think you can handle the risk.

Apparently, Samsung is not recalling every single Galaxy Note 7 shipped. The Chinese version of the phones is not to be recalled as yet because they were sent with a different battery and haven’t reported any problems.

Below is the video which allegedly initially prompted Samsung to recall their phones:

Watch Video

But Samsung’s woes are not alleviated in any way, as most of the shipments were in fact made outside China. There is no official estimate on the number of recalls, but it’s believed to be in the millions. The total number of Galaxy Note 7 shipments are thought to be about 2.5 million, so that gives you an idea of the enormity of the crisis.

Given this Samsung has offered two options to their customers, they can either have their phones repaired or can replace it with a brand new unit with a better battery. Samsung’s flustered position can be judged from the fact that they are even offering full refunds to their customers.

Although stories of blowing up batteries are not uncommon but recalls on such massive scales are incredibly rare.

Have you suffered from this major recall of Samsung Note 7? Comment below!

New IPhone 7 Features

Apple has just released the new iPhone 7 at an event in San Fransisco. The IPhone 7 has some new features which include the followings.

It is water-resistant (IP67), like several Samsung and Sony phones (IP68).

The iPhone 7 has the same 12-megapixel camera, but adds a larger sensor and optical image stabilization keeps images steadier than before.

It has a 7-megapixel front-facing camera, up from 5-megapixels on the iPhone 6S, and auto-image stabilization like the back camera.

The iPhone 7 has now got a second speaker, giving it stereo sound capability. One is at the bottom, the other at the top. Twice the volume as the 6S, with increased dynamic range.

It  now has  an even greater battery capacity for enhanced talk times. Infact, iPhone 7 and 7 Plus have the longest battery life ever on an iPhone.

The iPhone 7 plus comes with two cameras, one being a wide angle camera and the other one being telephoto. The telephoto camera has got physical zoom capability. There’s also a new photo style called “portrait” that allows you to create a depth effect.

As far as the screen is concerned, the iPhone 7 has an amazing screen that is 25% brighter, wide colour palette and features 3D touch capability.

Apple is going ahead with the plan to have wireless headphones as rumoured earlier. They are called AirPods.

Apple is killing the headphone port. Users will now connect their Earpods via the lightning connector. Apple will ship a dongle in the box to ease the pain for those who want to use the 3.5mm headphones.

Here’s a summary of all the features.

You can get the new iPhone 7 in Jet Black, black, gold, silver and rose gold colours. iPhone 7 starts at $649, storage space starts at 32GB and goes to 256GB. The iPhone 7 plus 7 starts at $769, storage space from 32GB to 256GB. Preorders start on September 9th and shipping will start on September 18th.

So are you buying the new iPhone 7?

Just A Single Text Can Hack Your iPhone If You Don’t Update Now!

Your iPhone security might be in grave danger courtesy a massive security lapse in Apple’s iOS. If you didn’t know about this, leave everything and update your iPhone to the latest iOS 9.3.5 right now! For what we know, your messages, videos, photos, etc. are being tracked right now due to a flaw that has rendered almost every iPhone unsafe.
The new OS version 9.3.5 update hopes to cover the vulnerability, where your iPhone becomes susceptible to hackers via a simple text message.


A report published by analytics firm MixPanel suggests that around 86 percent of iPhone users are still vulnerable to Pegasus, as they are yet to update their phone to the latest version.
The malicious tool called Pegasus is known to be impossible to detect. It makes your handset utterly helpless and at the mercy of the attacker, who can control the device using spying tools. The threat is so severe that it can be used to control and toggle iPhone’s camera, microphone, GPS to track the user’s movements and also can log all messages on the phone.

The flaw has been named as “Trident” because it used three zero-day vulnerabilities previously unknown to Apple. Soon after the disclosure of the flaw, the Cupertino company was quick to issue an update to iOS with version 9.3.5.
So if you have an iPhone, or someone close to you does; make sure that this news reaches him/her as soon as possible!
How do you feel about this security loophole in iPhone’s OS?
Share your emotions in the comments’ section below!

John Ellenby – Innovator Of Laptops passed away at 75

The family of John Ellenby has announced that the engineer and businessman behind the Compass -- the first commercially successful laptop -- has died in San Francisco at the age of 75.
We are all too familiar with laptops today. About hundreds of millions of them sell every year. In fact, some laptop models cost much less than most high-end smartphones. Yet, it was a once an unconventional and highly expensive product.
In 1982, John Ellenby released Compass – the first ever laptop-like computer. He worked at Grid Systems at the time and his briefcase styled computer revolutionized the computer industry. Ellenby died at the age of 75 on August 17th as first reported by the New York Times.





























Today, the appearance of Compass will cause you to grin or at least smirk. It was heavy and opened like a briefcase. A protrusion at the back of the machine existed to save the laptop from overheating. The Compass had a screen and its display looked like some billboard writing. Can you guess what it cost at the time? No? It was priced at $8,150! Which amounts to $20,324 today.



The Compass computer became an important tool for corporations, government spies, White House officials and astronauts. Credit: GRiD Systems
The computer was not made for the general public but was widely used by  government agencies like NASA. The Desktop computers made their debut in the early 80’s and Ellenby released the next trend in computers simultaneously. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that he was ahead of his time as it took more than two decades for laptops to surpass desktops in production and sales.

 



 Ellenby  quest did not stop at laptops. In the 1990s, he co-founded GeoVector that worked on augmented reality, an ability of the computer to overlay information over what is visible to humans. Fortunately, Ellenby lived long enough to see augmented reality manifest itself through the most popular game on the planet – the Pokemon Go, of course!

A 17-Year Old Try To Postpone Exam By Hacking SriLankan President’s Website

We are all familiar with the fear once we hear about  an  upcoming exam.we keep asking ourselves questions like, Have I prepared enough? Will I remember all this during paper? what will the questions look like?These questions keep bugging us till we exit the exam hall heaving a sigh of relief.
While  students  prayed and hope that exams get postponed, a Sri Lankan teen went a step ahead and decided to hack President Maithripala Sirisena’s official website.
Posting under the alias “The Sri Lankan Youth”, the teenager demanded that Sri Lanka’s A level examinations should not be held in April close to Tamil and Sinhala New Year celebrations but be postponed.It was further demanded that the Sri Lankan websites should be made more secure and the President should “stop the prime minister’s irresponsible work and look more into the problems of the university students.”
The website was quickly taken offline with a maintenance notice after the hack last Thursday. The next day the website was hacked again and the message by “The Sri Lankan Youth” reappeared.

Credits: thenextweb

The 17-year-old boy was promptly arrested for his juvenile crime and now faces a fine of $2,000 along with 3 year jail time. According to AFP, this is the first time a teen has been taken into custody and questioned under the Sri Lanka’s cybercrime laws.

Drones Were First Use In WorldWar1 To Drop Bombs

Drone industry has thrived rapidly in the last couple of years. However, contrary to the popular belief, drones are nothing new. You will be surprised to know that the unmanned, remote-controlled vehicles have been around far longer than you think.

The earliest known drone aircraft was developed during the WorldWar1. Named the Kettering ‘Bug’, the unmanned biplane was a bomb carrier that could drop bombs on its target by flying on a pre-determined route.

The Kettering Bug was on its own once the Autopilot was activated. The prototypes of the Bug were successfully developed and tested. But by that time, WorldWar1 had come to an end. Though, Kettering Bug is considered to be a forerunner of the modern cruise missile.
In spite of its state-of-the-art design and high-tech autopilot used for the development of the UAV during the late 1920s, the Kettering ‘Bug’ had one major flaw; each operation assigned to the Bug resulted in the loss of a drone and some valuable machinery. Also, there was no way to alter the course of the unmanned aerial bomb-carrier once it took off. Thus, the overall cost of drone warfare was deemed too expensive for practical use.

Around the same time, the military rocket technology had achieved new degrees of perfection. However, the unpredictability of the rocket use remained a big problem. The solution was to launch dozens or even hundreds of rockets at a time, in hopes that at least some would wind up on the right target.

In 1909, Dr. Henry W. Walden, a Massachusetts dentist, was the first person to build and fly a monoplane in the US. Walden came up with the idea of a rocket that could be controlled and directed by the pilot once it was launched.
Dr. Walden visualized a radio-controlled rocket that could be steered by the mother aircraft. The pilot could activate the control (servo-motors to activate the steering vanes on the tail of the rocket) by sending the radio signals.

Dr. Walden was granted the patent for his radio-controlled missiles, but it never became official because he never paid the fee owing to the evident lack of interest of the US government.
In 1957, Dr. Walden donated the model of his rocket to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. It has never been put on display.

Indian 22,00 Pager Document Leaked Discloses All The Classified Design Details Of It New Scorpene Submarines

  The government of India is currently investigating into the colossal leak of more than 22,000 pager document that spilled the secrets of six submarines to be built by the Indian Navy, compromising one of the biggest defense projects of the world.

The news was first leaked by ‘The Austalian’ newspaper that included information about the technology used in designing the Scorpene submarines. The 3.5 billion dollars project was given to DCNS – French Defense on contract. This class of submarine is so silent that it is extremely hard to detect it underwater giving it the edge of stealth. But the leaked documents now show detail of the submarines’ sonar capabilities, communications system, combat and torpedo launch systems as well as the noise they generate.“What I understand right now is that there is a case of hacking,” said Indian Minister of Defense Manohar Parrikar in a report. “We have asked the Indian naval chief to investigate the matter and give a detailed report about the leak.”

 

    The defense ministry of India has stated that the leak has come from outside of India. The first of the six submarines was built in Mazagon shipyard in Mumbai and was named Kalvari. While Kalvari will begin operating this year, the rest five will be delivered by DCNS by 2020.
The document posted online by The Australian was redacted and contained numerous technical drawings and manuals of operation. The document “Scorpene India” also included the noise levels produced by the submarine which is a highly sensitive information. If the noise made by a submarine is known, it can be easily detected underwater and this would be nothing less than a nightmare for the navy.

  screenshot of one of the pages of the leaked dossier on India’s Scorpene-class submarine

The leak has not only damaged Indian defense system but Malaysia, Brazil, Chile, Australia are affected too as they all have ordered the same version of Scorpene. Unlike the constant defense budget in Europe, the defense budget of Asian countries is constantly increasing by 5% every year.
How will this leak affect Indian defense? Let us know in the comments section.