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Rogue Russian spacecraft burns up in Earth's atmosphere

The Russian space agency says that its out-of-control spacecraft has burnt up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

Re-entry was over the Pacific, it said, and only a few fragments were expected to hit the sea.

The unmanned cargo ship was launched from Kazakhstan on 28 April, but control was lost soon afterwards.

The Progress M-27M was carrying more than three tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station.

Russian space agency Roscosmos said: "The Progress M-27M spacecraft ceased to exist at 05:04 Moscow time (02:04 GMT) on 8 May 2015. It entered the atmosphere... over the central part of the Pacific Ocean."

Progress was to deliver food, water, fuel, oxygen and clothing to the crew of six people on the ISS, which orbits about 420km (250 miles) above Earth.

But after a communications failure, it began spiralling out of control.

Since then, it has been slowly descending, and orbiting Earth in a pattern that takes it over the eastern United States, Colombia, Brazil and Indonesia.

The capsules were designed to burn up in the atmosphere after delivering their cargo.

A special commission has been set up in Russia to investigate why Progress was lost.

In 2011, one of its predecessors was destroyed when it crashed soon after take-off in Siberia.

Even after Progress' loss, the astronauts have enough supplies to keep them going until the next expected delivery on 19 June.

A Roscosmos spokesman told Reuters that the loss was valued at 2.59 billion roubles ($50.7m; £32.9m).

Source: BBC news

The Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge

Constructed beautifully from metal and glass the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge were unveiled at the official launch – and this is no joke - at Raffle Le Royal Phnom Penh on April 1.

The event hosted the famous Cambodian singer Aok Sokunkanha who wore a stunning white waist jumpsuit during the product launch. The pop star expressed her pride of being brand ambassador for Samsung.

“I’m very proud of the technology and creativeness of Samsung Smartphone’s. I’m honored to be the brand ambassador of this company,” she said.

The official launch of the new technology in Cambodia followed the global announcement of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge at the Mobile World Congress held March 5, in Barcelona, Spain.

At that time, JK Shin, CEO and president of Samsung who has recently made international headlines when it was announced that his salary last year topped $13 million, spoke of the smartphone’s as seamlessly blending premium materials with the most advanced Samsung technology to offer consumers an unmatched mobile experience.

“With the all new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung is offering what’s next in mobility, along with a new standard to drive the global mobile agenda,” he said. “By listening to our customers, and learning from both our success and missteps, we continuously push forward new technologies and ideas. With a reimmagined design, robust partner network and novel services, the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge offer users the ultimate experience in smartphone technology.”

The dramatic redesign gives the carefully crafted smartphones an expensive and elegant look. What’s more, the smartphones are equipped with cutting-edge core technology, and an enhanced camera.

The thin and light weight Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge integrate the brand new 14nm Exynos chipset with 64-bit architecture, one of the most powerful in its class.

Behind the 5.1-inch active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, or AMOLED, display screen, the camera has been upgraded to 16MP while the front camera has 5MP. These incredibly vivid and fast cameras are the best option for selfie fans even in a dim light environment.

For the first time, Samsung has put away the removable battery and the micro SD card slot. The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are equipped with built-in storage options and wireless charging. For only 10 minutes of charging, the smartphone can last up to four hours.

The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are available for pre order in Cambodia. The S6 32 GB retails at $690, while the S6 Edge 32 GB, depending on the storage capacity and colour choice, starts at $800.

Source: Phnom Penh Post

Does the digital era herald the end of history?

Has the digital transformation of our society put the future of recorded history in jeopardy? Many internet observers fear so. But why, and what do they mean?

Since the 1980s our lives have grown increasingly digital, and with dizzying speed.
Most of our photos, videos, conversations, research and writings are now stored as strings of ones and noughts on local computers or in data centres distributed throughout the world.
Data specialist EMC estimates that in 2013 the world contained about 4.4 zettabytes (4.4 trillion gigabytes) of data. By 2020, it expects this to have risen tenfold.
History, in other words, has gone online.
While this means unprecedented instant access to vast stores of human knowledge and culture, it also means that mountains of digital data of crucial importance to archivists and future historians are potentially under threat from deletion, corruption, theft, obsolescence and natural or man-made disasters.
How so?

Data threats

In the past, we wrote on stone, wax tablets, parchment, calfskin vellum and paper - anything we could get our hands on. And these hard copies lasted pretty well - some cave paintings survived more than 40,000 years, while Egyptian hieroglyphics date from about 3500BC.

If online medical knowledge were lost, would we return to medieval quackery?

But anyone who's seen their photo or music collections wiped out, knows how easily digital files can be lost.
A digital version of the fire that nearly destroyed the great Library of Alexandria - and many of its culturally significant books and scrolls - in 48BC, may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a nuclear explosion, for example, could easily wipe out entire electricity networks and effectively bring civilisation to a crashing halt. Computers, unlike printed books, need power to work.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer warned his investors last year that an EMP was "the most significant threat" to the US and its allies.

Google vice-president Vint Cerf is worried that we are not preserving our digital data properly

And in an increasingly networked digital world, the same catastrophic result could be achieved by a particularly virulent piece of malware or through state-sponsored cyber-warfare.
The loss of this data could plunge the world into a "digital dark age", warns "father of the internet" Vint Cerf - one of the inventors of the net's language and architecture.

Inaccessible

Obsolescence is another threat to this data.
Many of the earliest floppy disks can no longer be read - the data they contain has been lost forever.
If data has been written or compressed using software devised by a private sector company that has since gone bust, new technologies and operating systems may be unable to "read" or interpret the data.
But at the moment there are few museums or archives for software - the Internet Archive Software Collection being an honourable exception.

Do you know your bits from your bytes?

1,000 bytes = one kilobyte (kB)
1,000 kB = one megabyte (MB)
1,000 MB = one gigabyte (GB)
1,000 GB = one terabyte (TB)
1,000 TB = one petabyte (PB)
1,000 PB = one exabyte (EB)
1,000 EB = one zettabyte (ZB)
1,000 ZB = one yottabyte (YB)

(Figures are decimal, not binary)

Future generations could be faced with an ocean of well-preserved but unreadable data because they have lost the keys to interpreting it.
As it is, the latest operating systems often cannot handle files written in earlier versions. And modern web browsers are increasingly dropping compatibility with plug-in extensions like Java and Silverlight, potentially making some older websites unreadable.
"These digital formats are certainly less durable than cave paintings," says Aaron Levie, co-founder and chief executive of data management firm, Box. "It's definitely a problem. Not having interchangeable and portable data formats is a real risk."

Long-term thinking

So what's to be done?
Mr Cerf has proposed taking "a digital X-ray snapshot" of the content, the application and the operating system all together - effectively replicating the exact system as it was when the content was written.
This "digital vellum", as he calls it, has been demonstrated by Mahadev Satyanarayanan's Olive project at Carnegie Mellon University.

EMC helped digitise 82,000 manuscripts in the Vatican library

But this would require information to be digitally preserved in virtual machines in the cloud. And to achieve this "is not exactly trivial", says Mr Cerf.
Others believe the tech industry will come up with its own solutions, driven largely by market forces.
"We don't feel there's going to be a digital dark age," says Jeremy Burton, president of product and marketing at EMC.
He believes that industry-wide data storage standards will become increasingly common as storage capacity becomes less and less of an issue.
Ten years ago storage would have cost about £30 per gigabyte; now it costs pennies.
"We're likely to see a rise in digital archiving services," he says. "There's a generation of folks growing up that will expect to get access to any information they want - not just data that's been created in the last day or month, but all data."

Data storage centres are mushrooming around the world. But how secure are they?

EMC helped the Vatican digitise 82,000 manuscripts in its library - about 45 petabytes (45,000 gigabytes) of data - and used the widely accepted FITS [Flexible Image Transport System] standard specifically with longevity in mind.
It is common standards that will be crucial to protecting data for the long term, believes Aaron Levie.

Safety in numbers

So how safe is our data?
Until Gutenberg's printing press in the 15th Century, copying and distributing written works was a laborious process, so access to knowledge was restricted to an elite few.

Handwritten manuscripts were laborious to copy and vulnerable to fire

But in the age of distributed "cloud-based" computing, we can copy files ad infinitum and store mirror images of huge databases in multiple locations and keep them updated in real time.
"These days it's pretty standard to have corporate data triple replicated and geographically dispersed," says Mr Burton.
Bomb-proof data centres protected by increasingly sophisticated physical and cyber security systems are becoming more common as banks, insurance companies, governments and others with a vested interest in keeping data safe and accessible for the long term wake up to the potential threats.
But let's face it, most of us haven't a clue where Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the other social media providers store our data, or how securely.
We're only just beginning to understand how important this data is and what the consequences might be if we lost it.

You can also set alarms and send notes to your phone from Google Search

Update: Google’s support page “Link your phone to Google” indicates that, in addition to the four commands mentioned below, you can also use the “set a reminder” command. We couldn’t get it to work on our devices, but it’s worth trying for yourself.
The page also clarifies the requirements for the feature to work:
“For now, you have to be in the United States with your browser language set to English.
The Android device you want to link needs to have:

The most recent version of the Google app
Now cards turned on
Web & App activity turned on
Google Now notifications turned on
Location reporting on “High accuracy” mode”

Original post:
It’s not just “send directions” and “find my phone.” It looks like Google is adding a slew of commands that let you control your Android phone from Google Search.
As discovered by Google Operating System, you can now quickly set alarms and send notes to your Android phone by typing in some simple commands.
For now, the features are only available in the United States, though “find my phone” works worldwide so there’s a good chance the others will follow. If you want to try them out from elsewhere, you can try adding “&gl=us” at the end of the URL of your search query, like this: “https://www.google.com/search?q=set+an+alarm&gl=us”
To set an alarm on your phone, just type “set an alarm” or “set alarm” and you will be shown an interface that lets you pick the hour and the device that you want to set the alarm on. You can also type “set and alarm for 12pm” to pre-select the hour.

It’s just as simple to send a note: type “send a note” or “note to self” and you will be shown a text field where you can type in a brief note. Click the send button and a notification with the note will appear almost instantly on your device. You can also include the note text in the main command, like “note to self visit Android Authority.” From there, you can either copy the text or share the note to Gmail or Google Keep.

To recap, you can now use the following commands in Google Search:

“send directions”
“find my phone”
“set an alarm”
“send a note”

We’ll keep an eye for more functionality, so stay tuned and let us know if these work for you.

Source: Androidauthority

Instead of an Apple Watch review

Each ring of the doorbell sends our editorial staff running to the door with screams “The Apple Watch is here!” I don’t have the heart to tell them the shipping estimate is for mid-May even though we hit the buy button mere seconds after pre-order started.

While the two unladen swallows fly the Apple Watch to our office all the way from Cupertino, we got our resident Jony Ive impersonator to help us relive the thrill of the unveiling event.

As with any good fishing story, the details get embellished with each retelling, so the following video may not be factually accurate and may contain traces of humor and wishful thinking.

Later on we’ll add a surprise Chinese dubbing for a more authentic experience. Or even better, we’ll do a proper review once the Watch arrives.
Source:GSMArena

Lenovo and Acer smartphones pack huge batteries

Lenovo and Acer have both unveiled smartphones with much larger than normal batteries.

A total of three devices from the two companies contain cells with 4,000 milliamp-hour (mAh) capacities.

That is more than a third higher than the components used in Samsung and Apple's latest flagship phones.

Customer surveys have repeatedly highlighted a desire for improved battery life at the top of shopper's most wished for smartphone features.

But until now, batteries of this size have been more commonly found in tablets rather than 5.5in (14cm)-screened phones.

Acer Liquid X2 — Acer plans to market its Liquid X2 to business travellers

"People are constantly engaged with their screens and the screen uses the most power," explained Ben Wood from the tech consultancy CCS Insight.

"And the biggest challenge right now is that people are also consuming more video content, thanks to the spread of 4G networks, meaning phone battery life is really getting hammered.

"With the bigger brands people are willing to accept some trade-offs for the phones to appear as slim and slick as possible.

"But everyone else is looking for a way of trying to differentiate their devices. And Lenovo and Acer, in particular, have an eye on the business market where employers want their workers to be available for as many hours as possible."

China-based Lenovo says its new K80 offers up to 33 hours of talk-time and its A5000 up to 35 hours. Both figures are based on the use of a 2G network, which is less energy-intensive than a 3G or 4G connection.

Taiwan's Acer has yet to provide a comparable figure for its Liquid X2, which is also unusual for supporting up to three Sim cards at once.

The firms are not the first to use bigger lithium-ion batteries to make their phones stand out.

Last year Motorola developed the Moto Maxx, ahead of its takeover by Lenovo. The handset features a 3,900 mAh battery, which the company said should allow it to survive two days between charges.

And earlier this month Huawei announced the P8 Max with a 4,360mAh battery - although the size of the device's 6.8in (17.3cm) display means that many people would consider it more a call-enabled tablet than a phone.

Some lesser-known handset-makers have opted to fit even bigger, bulkier parts.

Philips's Android-powered Xenium W6610, released last year, has a 5,300mAh cell, allowing it to endure up to three days of heavy use.

And the recently-released Elephone P5000 currently claims the lead with a 5350mAh battery, which the Chinese company says is large enough to let it stretch to four days of "continuous use".

LEADING HANDSETS COMPARED

Model	Battery capacity
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge	2,600mAh
Samsung Galaxy Note 4	3,220mAh
Apple iPhone 6	1,810mAh
Apple iPhone 6 Plus	2,915mAh
LG G3	3,000mAh
HTC One M9	2,840mAh
Microsoft Lumia 930	2,420mAh
Xiaomi Mi Note Pro	3,000mAh
Huawei P8	2,680mAh
Google Nexus 6	3,220mAh
Sony Z5	2,930mAh

At a time when it has become the norm for manufacturers to build smartphones with non-removable batteries, it might be expected that those with bigger capacities would enjoy stronger sales.

But one analyst said that despite what shoppers tell surveys, when it comes to buying a personal handset they tend to prioritise other issues such as photo quality, brand or cost.

"If a handset fails to last a minimum of a day then it won't sell, but once you get past that it doesn't really drive demand," said Tim Coulling from the market research firm Canalys.

"Most people have at least one opportunity to charge their phone within that time period and there is also a market in battery packs for power-users.

"The other thing is that the more battery life you have the more you end up using your phone anyway. It's like a pay cheque - no matter how much money you have you always spend it."

Source: BBC News

Capgemini To Acquire US-Based IGATE For $4 Billion

[A view shows the Indian headquarters of iGate in the southern Indian city of Bangalore February 4, 2013.]

French computer services and technology company Capgemini announced on Monday that it would buy IGATE Corp in a $4.04 billion transaction. The acquisition would bring the combined revenue of the merged entity to 12.5 billion euros ($13.5 billion).
After the merger, the company will have a combined operating margin of over 10 percent, and employ about 190,000 people worldwide, the company said, in a statement released Monday. New Jersey-based IGATE, which has nearly 40 percent of its workforce in India, earns about 80 percent of its revenues from North America. With the acquisition, Capgemini, which reported an 11.7 percent revenue growth in North America in the first quarter of 2015, would expand its presence in North America.
“The combination of IGATE and Capgemini increases the Group’s revenues in the region (North America) by 33 percent to an estimated $4 billion,” the company said, in the statement. This would make North America its largest market, accounting for approximately 30 percent of the combined revenues in 2015.
Capgemini is currently valued at $14 billion while IGATE, whose shares closed at $45.85 on Friday, has a market capitalization of $3.7 billion.
The merger has been agreed by the boards of both companies and a majority of IGATE shareholders, and the transaction is expected to be finalized in the second half of 2015.

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