Mostly people play heavy game on there smartphone.But Now  ZTE brand Nubia has launched the Red Magic gaming smartphone, as it had announced earlier this week. A company known for gaming laptops, keyboards and mice – launched its very first smartphone last year called Razer Phone. The Razer Phone is a gaming smartphone aimed at mobile gamers. Well soon after the launch of Razer Phone, we are seeing a market for gaming smartphones. Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi announced its Black Shark gaming smartphone exactly a week ago, and now Nubia, yet another Chinese smartphone brand, has launched a gaming smartphone that’s called Nubia Red Magic.The Nubia Red Magic is a looker. One glance at it, and you will be able to tell it’s a gaming smartphone. It is made out of anodized aluminium and has four grilles at the back. Well, these aren’t speakers. Three of these are actually vents for heat dissipation, and the fourth one is a dummy, to maintain the look you know.

The Nubia Red Magic is a looker. One glance at it, and you will be able to tell it’s a gaming smartphone. It is made out of anodized aluminium and has four grilles at the back. Well, these aren’t speakers. Three of these are actually vents for heat dissipation, and the fourth one is a dummy, to maintain the look you know.

While Xiaomi’s Black Shark relies on liquid cooling, Nubia’s Red Magic relies on air cooling, and that’s what those vents are for. Having said that, the smartphone also comes coated with three layers of graphite that improve heat dissipation by 117%.

That being said, another element that adds to the looks of this gaming smartphone is the glowing strip of RGB LED lights on the back of this phone. I mean just look at it. And, what’s much more interesting about it is that you can customize it to your liking.

Nubia Red Magic specifications

Moving on, the Nubia Red Magic sports a 6-inch 18:9 display, but it has a resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels, and, it also doesn’t come with the 120 Hz refresh rate that’s found on the Razer Phone. However, it has a pixel density of 403 ppi, and most of the users may not have much complaints about the display.


The Nubia Red Magic comes in 6 GB and 8 GB RAM variants. The 6 GB RAM variant comes with 64 GB of internal storage whereas the 8 GB RAM variant comes with 128 GB of internal storage. Besides, the smartphone also comes with a slider at the top on its right side. Well, this slider isn’t for adjusting sound settings, but is to enable Gaming Mode for better gaming performance, and you can also choose to block message and call notifications if you don’t want interruptions while gaming.

Nubia Red Magic price, availability

I am a big fan of Apple products iphone8 is my favorite product from apple.But its a big news for mee as a iPhone lover that  a franken-gadget made of old Apple parts and billed as a more affordable iOS device: It appears that the budget iPhone lineup is finally goinApple’s next iPhones might be bigger and cheaperg to get its first refresh two years after the original model hit the market. The announcement could come as early as WWDC in June. In fact, Apple might be announcing several new iPhones.

News of the new Apple iphone comes out of a Russian-language regulatory filing with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). First reported by the French website Consomac, Apple has registered 11 new iPhones that will run iOS 11: A1920, A1921, A1984, A2097, A2098, A2099, A2101, A2103, A2104, A2105 and A2106. It’s unclear if these model numbers correspond to unique models or simply different sizes and carriers for the same model. One could easily assume that the difference in the A19** models and the A20** models is the difference between some sort of new iPhone SE and a completely new iPhone SE Plus. However, it’s also quite possible that Apple will reveal the rumored full-screen iPhone lineup based on the iPhone X form factor. Analysts expect Apple to sell a 6.5-inch “iPhone X Plus” and a cheaper 6.1-inch iPhone X (SE?) alongside the current 5.8-inch OLED iPhone X. But again, this is just conjecture at this point.

However, is the likelihood of Apple announcing new iPhones in the near future. A similar story about two new iPad model numbers registered with the EEC occurred in February, and then last month, Apple rolled out two new cheap 9.7-inch iPads . Another EEC filing last year predicted new MacBook models before Apple announced them at WWDC 2017.

Sems like Apple is about to have an iPhone surprise party. This could mean an update to the iPhone SE or it could mean the arrival of a whole new class of notch-sporting devices that you might be able to buy for less than $1,000. If it happens at WWDC, this would be the first time Apple has made an iPhone announcement in June since the iPhone 4 in 2010, although that announcement was spoiled pretty hard. We’ll have to wait and see, but if a cheaper iPhone really is imminent, that’s great news. I9:06 PM 4/19/2018 love it when Apple makes affordable products.

Twitter is back up for now. Still no word from any official channels though.

Facebook is trying to demystify the ways in which it tracks people when they aren't directly using the website or app.The company on Monday published a blog post that outlined its data collection practices less than a week after Mark Zuckerberg testified about his company in front of Congress. The CEO at the time promised to follow up on questions he couldn't answer on the spot.
The blog was written by product management director David Baser, it was mainly about third-party websites and apps that send data about their users to Facebook, regardless of whether those users have Facebook profiles.
In return for that information, Facebook helps those websites serve up relevant ads or receive analytics that help them understand how people use their services. The company gets this data from websites and apps that let people share or like posts using Facebook plugins, or log into the website with their Facebook accounts. Sites that use Facebook advertising or analytics tools also share data.Facebook also says it uses the data to improve its own ads and identify bots and bad actors.

According to Facebook, the information it receives can include the name of the website or app, your IP address, your browser, what operating system you use and whether you've visited the third-party site before.Facebook says it can match that data to a Facebook profile, if the person has one. If not, the company claims the data does not get used to create a profile.

Zuckerberg said during testimony last week that the company collects data about people who have not signed up for Facebook "for security purposes." That statement raised concerns about whether the company has "shadow profiles" with information about non-users.Facebook told CNNMoney late Monday that it does not have "shadow profiles."Related: Congress grilled Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg for nearly 10 hours. What's next?

Baser's post notably calls out other companies that it says do similar things. While Facebook has been getting the brunt of the recent outrage over its data collection and privacy practices, some methods are industry standard.

"Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn all have similar Like and Share buttons to help people share things on their services. Google has a popular analytics service. And Amazon, Google and Twitter all offer login features," Baser wrote in in the blog post. "In fact, most websites and apps send the same information to multiple companies each time you visit them."

The blog post also reviews the types of controls people with Facebook accounts have over their data. For example, users can opt out of ads or delete their profiles.

Here's some facts you need to know about:

When does Facebook get data about people from other websites and apps?

Many websites and apps use Facebook services to make their content and ads more engaging and relevant. These services include:
Social plugins, such as our Like and Share buttons, which make other sites more social and help you share content on Facebook;
Facebook Login, which lets you use your Facebook account to log into another website or app;
Facebook Analytics, which helps websites and apps better understand how people use their services
Facebook ads and measurement tools, which enable websites and apps to show ads from Facebook advertisers, to run their own ads on Facebook or elsewhere, and to understand the effectiveness of their ads.
When you visit a site or app that uses our services, we receive information even if you're logged out or don't have a Facebook account. This is because other apps and sites don't know who is using Facebook. (Emphasis added.)

 We all know about jio and there intresting producrs and services.Things like Low cost internet, free calling, SMS, phones and much many.But now according to a report Reliance is going  to bring us Jio Laptop soon.Reliance Jio is now eyeing the next big thing for the Indian market. The company is in talks with American chipmaker Qualcomm to bring out a laptop with built-in cellular connection for the Indian market.

Senior Director, product management of Qualcomm Technologies, Miguel Nunes said that Jio can take the device and bundle it with data and content. Qualcomm is already working on an 'Always Connected PC' with bigwigs such as HP, Asus and Lenovo globally. Already 14 operators have extended their support for this including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon in the US, as well as major operators in UK, Australia, Germany, France and Italy.

Why Jio Laptop?

They already did their part in the feature phone market, telecom market, smartphone market (by giving offers with smartphone purchases), now its time for the laptop.

Over 5 Million laptops are sold every year in India, and those laptops rely on outside medium to connect to the internet, like Wifi, Dongle etc.
But the Jio laptop will not need anything like that, because that will run with a Jio Sim. There are no cellular laptops in India yet, and with Jio launching them at a low and affordable price, there will be a huge rise in the numbers of the laptop sold in a year.

What will you get with Jio Laptop?

The Jio Laptop will run on Windows 10 Operating System, with integration with Cortana and Latest features.Jio will launch Special Data Packs for Jio Laptop, that will include both Calling and Internet, and other exclusive benefits.

Jio will reportedly provide content from other streaming sites like Amazon and Hotstar built in.

I was using orkut when i was in calss 9th..Orkut was a social networking website owned and operated by Google. It was a good social network and a wonderfull platform to connect with people around us. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. It was launched on January 22, 2004 by Google.But after knowing about Facebook we just changed our social networking platform becouse it as a lots of fetures and Google shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014.

After data breach scandal in Facebook, a former employee of Google- Orkut Buyukkokten who started the trend of social networking website Orkut.com many yearsago has launched a new social network “Hello” in India on last Wednesday.

hello has been set up by Orkut Buyukkokten, who was the founder of Orkut that once was a leading social networking site in India and Brazil. Interestingly, Orkut shut down its services in 2014, having lost its sheen to rivals like Facebook.

A bunch of hackers have hacked VEVO, they've changed the titles of all the popular music videos and deleted Despacito. Gangnam Style is the only song that isn't on a VEVO channel because Psy was smart enough to upload it to his own.

Hackers broke into the video for "Despacito" on Monday (Apr. 9) and defaced the clip's cover image with a picture of a masked people pointing guns, resulting in the most-viewed music video of all time being taken down temporarily. According to BBC News, the hackers, who go by Prosox and Kuroi'sh, had also broken into clips by more than a dozen other artists, including Drake, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and Shakira


The hackers, calling themselves Prosox and Kuroi'sh, had replaced some of the videos' titles with their own messages, including a call to "free Palestine" alongside their own nicknames.

It’s been about three weeks since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke and Facebook users began to truly recognize how reckless Facebook can be with their data. Zuckerberg has been frantically trying to reassure the public that Facebook knows it “needs to do a better job” and that’s why lots of features that could have rolled out years ago are going live. But for observers like Wozniak, there’s little the social network can do because its fundamental business model is the problem.

San Francisco (AP) -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is shutting down his Facebook account as the social media giant struggles to cope with the worst privacy crisis in its history.

In an email to USA Today, Wozniak says Facebook makes a lot of advertising money from personal details provided by users. He says the "profits are all based on the user's info, but the users get none of the profits back."

Wozniak says he'd rather pay for Facebook. He says "Apple makes money off of good products, not off of you."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday about the company's ongoing data-privacy scandal and how it failed to guard against other abuses of its service.

Facebook has announced technical changes intended to address privacy issues.

Hey guys.
This blog is all about how to gain followers on Instagram.Instagram has changed, and it’s harder to get followers on Instagram than ever before. But don’t worry — its not just you seeing less likes and less reach. It’s…everyone!

The game has changed, and if you want to get Instagram followers in 2018, you’re going to need a fresh approach and strategy.

Here are the tips you need to conquer the ever-changing Instagram algorithm and get more Instagram followers this year:Now this is a very simple and eazy method.
All youneed is 2 things on your Phone

1 is The app FAMEDGREAM.
This app is not available on Playstore,but u can download this app here.



 2nd thing that you will need is fake ID.Yes you will need atleast 2 FAKE ID On INSTAGRAM


Now once your app is installed open this app and login through your Fake IDs.You can fill the details of your Fake Id in Username & Password.

OnePlus 6, the upcoming flagship from OnePlus is expected to launch in the coming few weeks. Possibly before the end of Q2 2018. As always the Chinese phone maker hasn’t left much to the imagination with numerous teasers being release. The most of these reveal that the iconic hardware Alert Slider on the smartphone is set to get a cool new feature: users will be able to be “Slide to focus with the Alert Slider” on the OnePlus 6.

On Thursday, In a tweet on company’s official Twitter handle on Thursday, OnePlus has released a camera related teaser that suggests the Alert Slider will get capabilities to adjust focus in the phone’s camera. The tweet also shows a teaser hinting the OnePlus 6 naming scheme, similar to the one we saw earlier.  However, it is not clear that the new feature will be available in both rear camera and front camera or just in rear camera. As OnePlus’s OxygenOS is known for its highly customizable thing. Users might be able to disable this feature.

On OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T, the Alert Slider has been used to change the user profiles. It was named as ‘Do Not Disturb, Ring, and Silent.’ The Company could possibly roll new Alert Slider capabilities to older phones through future software updates.

Key Specification – OnePlus 6:

According to leaks up till now, OnePlus has confirmed that its next flagship will sport a front-facing notch, which according to them will help in increasing user experience and help them in taking more better selfies. It might also include Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and up to 256GB inbuilt storage. Also, rumors suggest the phone will get up to 8GB of RAM, will run  OxygenOS on top of Android Oreo out-of-the-box, and might get a battery upgrade over the 3300mAh unit in the OnePlus 5T.

Pricing – OnePlus 6:

If we talk about pricing, a recent leak has suggested that the OnePlus  6 will be slightly more expensive than the OnePlus 5T. The price of the 64GB variant will be  CNY 3,299 (roughly Rs. 34,200), the 128GB variant at CNY 3,799 (roughly Rs. 39,300), and, finally, the 256GB top-end model at CNY 4,399 (roughly Rs. 45,600).

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s state communications watchdog said on Friday it had filed a lawsuit to limit access to the Telegram messaging app after the company refused to give Russian state security services access to its users’ secret messages.

Ranked as the world’s ninth most popular mobile messaging app, Telegram is widely used in countries across the former Soviet Union and Middle East. Active users of the app reached 200 million in March.

As part of its services, Telegram allows users to communicate via encrypted messages which cannot be read by third parties, including government authorities.

But Russia’s FSB Federal Security service has said it needs access to some messages for its work, including guarding against terrorist attacks. Telegram has refused to comply with its demands, citing respect for user privacy.

Russia’s Roskomnadzor communications watchdog said it had filed a lawsuit at a Moscow court on Friday “with a request to restrict access on the territory of Russia to the information resources of ... Telegram Messenger Limited Liability Partnership.”

It said the suit was connected to statements by the FSB that Telegram was not complying with its legal obligations as an “organizer of information distribution.”

A spokesman for Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on Twitter in March: “Threats to block Telegram unless it gives up private data of its users will not bear fruit. Telegram will stand for freedom and privacy.”

The Russian court decision will be closely watched by investors as Telegram is also undertaking the world’s biggest initial coin offering - a private sale of tokens which could be traded as an alternative currency, similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The company has so far raised $1.7 billion in pre-sales via the offering, according to media reports.

Chinese symbols are appearing on the Defence Ministry website,  offline now

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s communications watchdog said on Friday it had asked Facebook to explain why access had been restricted to the Facebook accounts of some Russian media organizations, RIA news agency said.

Roskomnadzor said it considered the restrictions to be a continuation of Facebook’s “unfriendly policy toward Russian users,” RIA said.

The report did not specify which accounts had been affected, but Roskomnadzor said the move by Facebook would make it harder for Russian and foreign social network users to follow the Russian news agenda.

Facebook said on Tuesday it had deleted hundreds of Russian accounts and pages associated with a “troll factory” indicted by U.S. prosecutors for fake activist and political posts in the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

Facebook said many of the deleted articles and pages came from Russia-based Federal News Agency, known as FAN, which they linked to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Reuters on Tuesday that the agency had “repeatedly acted to deceive people and manipulate people around the world, and we don’t want them on Facebook anywhere.”



Also Read:

• Facebook: Yeah, Maybe Now Isn't the Best Time to Launch Our New Speaker Designed to Spy on You

• Facebook Has Been Collecting Your Call History and SMS Data From Android Phones For Years

• It's Time to Delete Facebook

• Facebook suffers drop of stocks amid alleged data leak crisis

• Download a Copy of Your Facebook data That Facebook Knows All About You

NEW DELHI: Amazon.com Inc may make a rival offer to buy e-commerce firm Flipkart + , which is in tie-up talks with Walmart Inc, media reported, as the two US retail giants jostle for dominance in India's booming online industry.
Amazon held early exploratory talks to buy control of Indian rival Flipkart but a deal with Walmart is more likely, a newspaper report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
One person familiar with the matter told Reuters that the probability of a deal with Amazon was low, and that any such deal could spark monopoly concerns as Flipkart and Amazon dominate India's e-commerce market. The person declined to be identified as discussions were private.
Amazon declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. Flipkart and Walmart did not respond to requests for comment.
Walmart is in talks to buy over 40 per cent of Flipkart in potentially one of its biggest overseas deals, Reuters reported in February. A deal would give the world's largest brick-and-mortar retailer access to an e-commerce market that Morgan Stanley estimated to be worth $200 billion in a decade's time.
The deal would also represent a direct challenge to Amazon in Asia's third-largest economy. Amazon has committed to investing $5 billion in India as it expands into online grocery delivery.
Walmart will buy a majority stake in Flipkart through a mix of primary and secondary share purchases in a deal that could value the Indian firm at $21 billion, the newspaper reported. 

The big question is why? With solid offerings from Google and Comodo, for instance, does the world need another DNS service? The answer is yes, because Cloudflare intends to focus on both speed, and more importantly, privacy.

"What many Internet users don't realize is that even if you're visiting a website that is encrypted -- has the little green lock in your browser -- that doesn't keep your DNS resolver from knowing the identity of all the sites you visit. That means, by default, your ISP, every wifi network you've connected to, and your mobile network provider have a list of every site you've visited while using them," says Cloudflare.

The company further says, "Network operators have been licking their chops for some time over the idea of taking their users' browsing data and finding a way to monetize it. In the United States, that got easier a year ago when the Senate voted to eliminate rules that restricted ISPs from selling their users' browsing data. With all the concern over the data that companies like Facebook and Google are collecting on you, it worries us to now add ISPs like Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T to the list. And, make no mistake, this isn't a US-only problem -- ISPs around the world see the same privacy-invading opportunity."


Sadly, DNS servers can be a weak link when attempting to surf the web securely. Cloudflare is aiming to not only create a more secure experience, but a faster one too. As you can see above, its new 1.1.1.1 service is quicker than both Google, OpenDNS, and the rest. Quite frankly, there is no reason not to give this new DNS service a try. Privacy? Speed?

If you do decide to give it a go, there are a couple of ways to do it. You should, of course, configure the DNS servers on each of your devices if possible, but you should also do so on your router. This way, anything that connects to your home network will utilize 1.1.1.1 when resolving DNS, including devices that don't provide access to DNS settings -- such as some IoT devices.

Setting it up

See https://1.1.1.1/ because it's that simple!

About those addresses

We are grateful to APNIC, our partner for the IPv4 addresses 1.0.0.1 and 1.1.1.1 (which everyone agrees is insanely easy to remember). Without their years of research and testing, these addresses would be impossible to bring into production. Yet, we still have a way to go with that. Stay tuned to hear about our adventures with those IPs in future blogs.

For IPv6, we have chosen 2606:4700:4700::1111 and 2606:4700:4700::1001 for our service. It’s not as easy to get cool IPv6 addresses; however, we’ve picked an address that only uses digits.

But why use easy to remember addresses? What’s special about public resolvers? While we use names for nearly everything we do; however, there needs to be that first step in the process and that’s where these number come in. We need a number entered into whatever computer or connected device you’re using in order to find a resolver service.

Anyone on the internet can use our public resolver and you can see how to do that by visiting https://1.1.1.1/ and clicking on GET STARTED.

Why announce it on April first?

Sure, It’s also April Fools' Day and for a good portion of people it’s a day for jokes, foolishness, or harmless pranks. This is no joke, this is no prank, this is no foolish act. This is DNS Resolver, 1.1.1.1 ! Follow it at #1dot1dot1dot1

American Actor Will Smith released a video on YouTube titled ‘A Date With Sophia The Robot’ where he is seen attempting to flirt with the world’s first robotic citizen Sophia however the charm of the ‘Pursuit of Happyness‘ actor doesn’t apparently work on Sophia, having heart of ‘deep learning’ AI.

The video shows that Smith spoofingly lean towards Sophia and try kissing her but stopped by Sophia, saying “I think we can be friends,” she interjected. “Let’s hang out and get to know each other for a little while.”

Before Sophia broke Smith’s heart, he interacted with the Hanson Robotics artificial intelligence creation. He said, “Sophia, can I be honest with you?..I don’t know if it’s the island air or the humidity, but you’re just so easy to talk you. You got a clear head…literally.”



Sophia, in her interaction with Smith –who acted in ‘I ROBOT’ — said, “I’ve heard your songs. Not for me. They show us ‘I, Robot’ just to make sure we don’t get any ideas.”

“You’re on my friends’ list now,” Sophia later added and friend zoned Will Smith.

Check out the full video below:

Imagine this:

 One night, after coming home and falling asleep, you are violently awakened by your significant other stabbing you with a sword and at least two other knives. How would you react?

Well, this exact scenario happened to Alex Lovell from Washington State in the US, a self-described “Ethelete” who often logged 12 to 13 hours a day in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, who recently survived just that. And he’s... pretty chill about it.

After waking up and realising what was going on, Lovell remarked, “I saw the look in her eyes, and it scared the living poop out of me.” Despite almost losing three fingers and suffering from multiple slashes, Lovell credits his martial arts background as the reason why he managed to endure the attack.

“I’ve been preparing my whole life for something like this,” said Lovell during a interview with the Oregon Live over Facebook Messenger. He said, “I was able to wing chun my way to survival,” before adding “I was just so proud for beating this samurai wannabe crazy lady with hate in her heart.”


Apparently, the attack was inflicted by his girlfriend, Emily Javier, who had been frustrated by Lovell’s frequent and prolonged gaming sessions. But things didn’t really escalate until, according to a police interview, Javier discovered the Tinder dating app installed on Lovell’s phone, along with mysterious red hair in the couple’s shower drain. Javier’s hair was dyed green.
This prompted Javier to go to the mall and buy a samurai sword, along with two other knives, which she taped to the side of her bed before allegedly ambushing Lovell in the wee hours of March 3rd, she reportedly told police. Then, only after fearing he was dead, Javier called 911, and emergency personnel and police rushed to the scene to find “walls splattered with blood and Lovell curled up in ball” according to the police report.

To his credit, Lovell told Oregon Live, “I barely had time to hang out with my girlfriend, let alone another girl. I didn’t see it coming, but it makes sense that it happened. She obviously didn’t want anyone else to have me, so—samurai sword.”

However, even after all this, it seems Lovell still has mixed feels about his (presumably former) girlfriend, who pleaded not guilty to first-degree attempted murder charges this week. “She called the authorities and saved my life, I hope that counts for something,” he told Oregon Live before adding that things are “a bit complicated. Regardless, I assume she needs some serious help.”

Look, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for a girlfriend who felt neglected and betrayed while her boyfriend spend his days playing video games. However, I think we can all agree that solving domestic issues with a sword is entirely off limits.

Somehow, it seems Lovell has remained unusually upbeat, who according to Oregon Live may not be able to walk for six months and will require extensive physical therapy to regain the full use of his hands.

“The feeling I had when I won the fight with my bare hands is just absolutely the best feeling,” he said. “I’ve played all the sports, won big games, landed some decent tricks on my snowboard.

Blockchain has been referred to as many things, with specific emphasis on the fact that it's much more secure than other methods of data storage because it's basically impossible to hack the entire chain. Unfortunately that extra security makes it more appealing to criminals, who are ready to exploit it for their own ends. And they have, because German researchers found that someone has hidden child abuse images inside Bitcoin's blockchain.

The Bitcoin blockhain is open source, and designed to act as a ledger for all the cryptocurrency's financial transactions. But it can be used to store other information in small quantities, including links and files, which is where the imagery in question came from. Researchers at RWTH Aachen University in Germany found that Bitcoin's blockchain currently holds around 1,600 files, eight of which were sexual. Of those eight one image was thought to have involved children and another two contained 274 links to child abuse content. 142 of those links also happened to be for services on the dark web.

The researchers noted that this could pose a threat to blockchain services as a whole, based on current legislation, saying:

Although controlled channels to insert nonfinancial data at small rates opens up a field of new applications such as digital notary services, rights management, or non-equivocation systems, objectionable or even illegal content has the potential to jeopardize a whole cryptocurrency. Although court rulings do not yet exist, legislative texts from countries such as Germany, the UK, or the USA suggest that illegal content such as child pornography can make the blockchain illegal to possess for all users.

Adding:

As of now, this can affect at least 112 countries in which possessing content such as child pornography is illegal. This especially endangers the multi-billion dollar markets powering cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Blockchain isn't necessary for users wishing to trade Bitcoin, some processes, like mining, do require users to download either the full blockchain or parts of it - illegal material and all. Naturally that causes a lot of problems, with the researchers noting that even a single instance of illegal material could automatically make it illegal to use blockchain-based systems. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have come under intense scrutiny over the past few months, and this revelation isn't likely to help matters - especially from a regulatory perspective. That probably won't do the still-fluctuating price any good either.

As The Guardian points out this wouldn't be the first time people have been warned about the potential to store non-financial data within a cryptocurrency's blockchain. Back in 2015 Interpol warned about nefarious people who might want to store malware within the blockchain, noting there currently weren't any methods that would effectively wipe the data. It too warned that blockchain technology could be exploited to host and share child sexual abuse content.

But now these researchers have shown those warning were not unfounded, and where things will go from here is anyone's guess.

Facebook “has decided not to unveil” its line of connected home speakers, which boast digital assistant and video-chat capabilities, at its developer conference in May because too many people have wised up to the fact said products will probably turn their homes into Mark Zuckerberg-surveilled Panopticons, Bloomberg reported.

According to Bloomberg, Facebook has decided that the ongoing fallout of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal—in which the shady election data firm partnered with an app to build “psychometric profiles” on 50 million users without their consent—is the wrong time to move forward with the products. Zuckerberg has been called to testify before Congress over the incident, and may find himself hard-pressed to explain why Facebook let app developers access extensive data on users who hadn’t willingly sharing it. The Federal Trade Commission is also reportedly investigating whether company’s practises constitute a violation of a 2011 regulatory agreement, something that could result in staggering fines.

So yes, this might be indeed be a bad time to introduce a line of physical products whose purpose in the home is to collect data on users. Bloomberg writes:

The Bloomberg report also mentioned that Facebook had “already found in focus-group testing” that users were wary of a “Facebook-branded device in their living rooms,” which... well, duh. It’s unlikely the recent spate of very bad PR, which could get worse if Zuckerberg does poorly during whatever congressional hearings he might eventually end up speaking at or Facebook reveals firms other than Cambridge Analytica have absconded with user data, which it has already admitted is likely.

In any case, connected smart speakers whose purpose is at least partially to harvest user data are already a slightly concerning proposition, and it’s pretty clear that Facebook in particular is treading on thin ice. While it says that new privacy rules will be announced at the May developer’s conference, Facebook has lost about $80 billion (£56.4 billion) in market value since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, per CNBC, or roughly 18 per cent.


Also Read:

• Facebook Has Been Collecting Your Call History and SMS Data From Android Phones For Years
• It's Time to Delete Facebook
• Facebook suffers drop of stocks amid alleged data leak crisis
• Download a Copy of Your Facebook data That Facebook Knows All About You

"The magnitude of the losses is significant: the Cobalt malware alone allowed criminals to steal up to EUR 10 million per heist,"  Europol said.

"This global operation is a significant success for international police cooperation against a top-level cybercriminal organisation. The arrest of the key figure in this crime group illustrates that cybercriminals can no longer hide behind perceived international anonymity," said Steven Wilson, Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).

"This is another example where the close cooperation between law enforcement agencies on a worldwide scale and trusted private sector partners is having a major impact on top-level cyber criminality."