Category: Science &Technology

{A massive asteroid is set to safely pass Earth Monday. According to NASA scientists, the asteroid 2004 BL86 is approximately 1,500 feet across and will come closest to Earth at 11:19 a.m. ET. }

The asteroid will be approximately 745,000 miles away – about three times the distance between the earth and the moon.

Experts at NASA’s Near Earth Object Program believe the asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye. The asteroid is expected to be visible through small telescopes and strong binoculars.

The asteroid was discovered in 2004, and Monday’s pass is believed to be the closest the asteroid will come to Earth for the next 200 years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

{Samsung announced at last week’s International CES a new line of smart TVs powered by the open source Tizen operating system. Beginning with this year’s models, all of Samsung’s smart TVs will run on Tizen.}

Samsung has taken the lead in developing Tizen, which is a derivative of Linux, and this is its first deployment as a smart TV platform. Tizen supports the Web standard for TV app development.

See More on technewsworld.com

{David Cameron could block WhatsApp and Snapchat if he wins the next election, as part of his plans for new surveillance powers announced in the wake of the shootings in Paris.}

The Prime Minister said today that he would stop the use of methods of communication that cannot be read by the security services even if they have a warrant. But that could include popular chat and social apps that encrypt their data, such as WhatsApp.

Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime also encrypt their data, and could fall under the ban along with other encrypted chat apps like Telegram.

The comments came as part of David Cameron’s pledge to revive the “snoopers’ charter” to help security services spy on internet communications today.

He said: “In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which […] we cannot read?” He made the connection between encrypted communications tools and letters and phone conversations, both of which can be read by security services in extreme situations and with a warrant from the home secretary.

But companies such as WhatsApp have remained committed to keeping their services encrypted and unable to be read by authorities, a project which has stepped up in the wake of the Edward Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance.

And privacy groups have repeatedly criticised attempts to limit the use of privacy tools in the name of security. When the government announced plans to crack down on the dark net, for example, but privacy groups have warned that much of the tools are used by people in oppressed countries and victims of crime to stay safe.

{{Independent UK}}

The technology was commercially launched through a private public partnership by the government and Korea Telecom (KT), establishing Olleh Rwanda Network (ORN) as a joint venture to deploy a high-speed 4G broadband network to cover 95 per cent of Rwandans in three years.

So far the service is retailed by six retailers with four more expected to join the market in the near future.

Rhee Dongwon, the Chief Marketing Officer at ORN, said more government and corporate users were likely to go for the service compared to private users.

Though noting that the trend was going up, he said it was still early to determine trends of uptake since the service was launched only three months back.

Retailers noted that the clients were impressed by the new service but price was a hindering factor.

Yvonne Manzi Makolo, MTN Rwanda’s Chief Marketing Officer, said they have so far had about 200 subscriptions for 4G which was slower than anticipated.

“It has been slower than anticipated with the major obstacle being the pricing. We hope that when the price eventually goes down, the uptake will be better,” she said.

On the services launch, it had been expected that the entry of multiple players into the market would help drive down costs.

“It is not an issue of more players in the market since we are all retailers of ORN and our retail price depends on how much we buy on a wholesale perspective,” Makolo said.

She noted that individuals recorded the biggest affinity for the service as opposed to corporates who are more sensitive to speed.

Gloria Ngabire, the Chief Commercial Officer at Axiom Networks (a retailer of the service), said they had established that clients liked the product during the trial phase but the pricing discouraged them from using it continuously.

So far, they also have a 4G subscription base of slightly over 200 clients, she said.

She cited the need to map out the product in terms of usage in order to attain optimum capacity.
During its launch, the service was only available in Kigali with officials promising that it will be extended to the rest of the country within three years.

“But the main issue is how much we are charging per bundle, pricing model used and the added value,” Ngabire said.

She noted that so far, most of the clients they had served were high end consumers, people who work in corporate environments but have the need to use high level connectivity at home.

“The idea was and still is to get to everybody out there including the low end clientille but as things stand, even the high end consumer finds it a little bit pricy,” Ngabire said.

She called for a shift in mentality and more client consultations in the 4G unroll process which would make the service a commodity or utility the consumers would go for without thoughts of cost.

“We need to re-assess the needs, look closely at the statistics and listen closely to the consumers. The more we satisfy their needs, the more traction we will get from the market guaranteeing sustainability no matter the cost,” Ngabire said.

The technology was welcomed as an addition to the country’s ICT ecosystem which officials believe will steer the country closer toward a knowledge driven economy and create a better business environment, among other impacts.

Source: {{The New Times}}

{There are more dangerous things than an angry woman, believe it or not. Beyond guns, you’d be surprised to learn which weapons can do the most damage. Perhaps it’s our obsession with Forensic Files or just being a curious bunch, but we decided to put together a list for all of you who are interested to learn about some of these instruments of destruction.}

1) Flamethrower

As you probably know, a flamethrower is an incendiary device that projects a long stream of fire. They were first used during World War I and then in other wars, often considered one of the most horrific ways to die. They were developed as a shock weapon and to penetrate the trench defensive. In terms of negatives: The range isn’t far when using one of these and it’s extremely dangerous to carry as you have flammable liquid on your back (not smart).

2) Lightweight Machine Gun

There are different kinds of machine guns, so we’ll focus on the smaller ones such as the above M249. It’s one of the safest to use, lightweight machine guns you can buy. It’s belt-fed, air-cooled and performs at a fast speed. Recently, in a United States desert test, one of these successfully fired a total of 104,000 rounds using a single barrel. That’s impressive.

3) Lockheed AC-130 Spectre Gunship

The sole user of this powerful weapon is the United States Air Force, specifically used in air support roles: supporting troops, transporting, escorting convoys, etc. The Spectre has helped in many wars and life-saving close air support missions. These aircrafts are heavily armed with sophisticated navigation, sensors, and fire control systems to provide firepower during bad weather conditions or loiter periods. It can also attack two targets at the same time.

4) DSR-50 Sniper Rifle

The DSR-50 is one of many kinds of sniper rifles. It fires the very powerful .50 caliber round with free-floating barrel technology and great accuracy. It’s lightweight and short in length with an adjustable butt sock and cheek piece. They do not recoil or jump when fired, one of the many reasons why one of these can cost up to $25,000.

5) Napalm Bomb

Napalm is explosive material made with Petroleum jelly. The bomb can produce a temperature of around 1200 degrees Celsius. It was developed to be used in wars, such as the Vietnam War as incendiary bombs. Later, Magnesium was added to ensure that greater harm would be made on the enemy by making the burns worse when water is added. Then, lead was added to make the bombs poisonous. You definitely don’t want to be around when one of these drops.

6) AK-47

The AK-47 assault rifle came about during World War II where the Nazi army was the first to field them in great quantity. It was desirable because it was cheap to make, requires little to no training, and could be used in terrible weather conditions. Currently, it has become the world’s most effective combat weapon and killing machine in history according to many people and experts.

7) Assault Rifle (F2000)

The F2000 assault rifle is ranked one of the most dangerous guns in the world. It’s fully automatic and was first displayed in 2001 at Abu Dhabi. You better watch out because it can make 850 rounds a minute and has an effective range of 500m. Oh, and did I mention that it has a lightweight 40mm grenade launcher that uses low velocity grenades. Pretty cool, right?

8) Taranis

It only costs around $336 million and hasn’t even made its debut on the field yet. It’s designed to go at record speeds and fly undetected by radar.

9) Advanced Heavy Machine Gun

This is the kind of machine gun (XM307 ACSW) that gets a lot of damage done. It has the ability to be mounted on a vehicle and has two usable guns. It can obliterate helicopters, vehicles, water crafts and people (of course). The machine gun is also able to fire at a constant rate of 260 rounds in a minute. In other words–watch out.

10) F-22 Raptor (Fighter Jet)

The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a twin-engine, fifth-generation supersonic fighter aircraft. Capabilities: ground attack, electronic warfare, transporting, and more. The F-22 has previously had issues, such as oxygen problems for the pilots and high production costs. However, it’s currently the Air Force’s top fighter jet. It will soon have revolutionary software capable of using long-range radar mapping to find targets and direct small bombs to enemies.

Source: {{The Richest}}

{So you’ve set out to purge your Camera Roll of all those blurry cat pics. And maybe, while caught up in a whirlwind of power, you overzealously deleted the best of the batch. You’re not alone. Luckily, iOS 8 has a safeguard for such situations.}

Here’s how you can recover (or permanently delete) those images.

{{1. Go to Apple’s native Photos app.}}

2. You’ll see your {{Moments }} section, full of all the photos you’ve taken recently. At the bottom of the screen, tap Albums.

3. You’ll see a list of albums. Scroll down until you reach {{Recently Deleted}}. Apple’s iOS 8 automatically stores away everything you’ve deleted in this folder for 30 days. Once that time passes, it’s gone for good.

This is helpful to know, because you may want to find a photo you accidentally axed. But perhaps even more important, you may want to erase an incriminating image so no snooping eyes can find it.

4. When you open the album, you’ll notice that each thumbnail image tells you how many days are left until it disappears for good (ranging from 30 days to one). Tap whatever image you want to recover or permanently delete. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see those two options. Choose one.

5. Then confirm!

Phew, glad I saved that photo. Best dang cauliflower I ever had.

By the way, Android owners don’t have it so easy. Recovering lost photos requires you to root your phone and download a third-party app. Check out the steps to make it happen here.

{{Alyssa Bereznak
Tech Columnist}}

Google announced Monday it has built its first fully-functioning driverless car.

The tech giant has been working on self-driving vehicles for several years by implanting software into existing cars but it celebrated Monday with the release of pictures and the announcement of its first autonomous vehicle built from scratch.

The finished two-door prototype looks somewhat like a golf cart built with a whimsical flair.

Google released in May a mockup of the car that wasn’t road-ready – it lacked headlights, for example. The vehicle caused a stir because it didn’t include features normally used by human drivers such as a steering wheel, brake pedals and rearview mirrors.

Since that time Google’s team has been testing various programming in different models.

“We’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car,” wrote the Google Self-Driving Car Project team in a Google+ post published Monday.

The vehicle is the first one that marries the automobile functionality and software engineering into one working car.

“We’ve now put all those systems together in this fully functional vehicle – our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving,” the team continued.

The company will be testing the car on northern California streets in 2015. Google has already logged hundreds of thousands of miles driving autonomous vehicles around its hometown of Mountain View, California, but not with homemade cars.

Now its new quirky car will be joining the fleet. Even though Google has tossed normal features such as the steering wheel, testers will be able to take over the controls.

“Our safety drivers will continue to oversee the vehicle for a while longer, using temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn,” the team wrote.

While Google’s car is strikingly different than anything on the market, Monday’s announcement marks an exciting new page in the automobile’s history.

World Bulletin/News Desk

{The government plans to introduce a programme, which will subsidise cost of smart devices to increase their usage. The target is to reduce the cost to less than Rwf69,045 }

In particular, the government is considering working with banks to buy smart devices payable in installments for 12 months. In addition, they are also exploring a possibility of initiating tax incentives to low end smart phone dealers.

The government also plans to offer incentives to phone manufacturing companies to set up shop locally to ensure affordability. This is expected to facilitate data penetration across the country that currently stands at just approximately 25 per cent largely driven by increased access to mobile phones.

Rwanda’s mobile penetration is estimated at 69 per cent.

“The goal is to increase the number of smartphone users such that more people can use Internet, Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (Rura) will come in to ensure universal access especially with the low-end smartphone users,” said Patrick Nyirishema director-general of Rura.

“It is a multi-stakeholder type of approach, a number of issues will have to be factored in, smartphone dealers, the financing side, this will not be a once off, but an ongoing effort” he said.

Despite government’s investment in laying in the ground over 4,500 km of fibre optics across the country and rolling out 4G LTE Internet, Internet connectivity especially in the rural areas has remained low. This is attributed to high digital illiteracy levels among rural population.

Didier Nkurikiyimfura, director-general in charge of ICT at the Ministry of Youth and ICT, said the campaign will be launched early next year.

“We want phone users to go beyond feature phones to smartphones. We are taking a broader approach, for instance, we are working with banks to see that they facilitate people to own smartphones payable in installments in 12 months.

“We are also exploring other avenues like tax incentives on smart devices, which will go along way to reduce prices, some haven’t matured but everything will be in motion by the time we launch,” said Mr Nkurikiyimfura.

The focus, he said, is for the general population to have access to affordable mobile phones.

“We want to start by focusing on the cheaper devices, there are those below $100, these are affordable to the masses, we believe this initiative will contribute a lot,” he added.

Rwanda is targeting 60 per cent of the population to be connected to Internet by 2018. Government recently signed a deal with a major smart Latin American device maker Positivo BGH to start manufacturing and assembling smartphones and other devices in Rwanda as a way of availing affordable devices to the Rwandan market.

The company, which will start operations in May next year, expects to make over 700,000 devices in the first year.

The East African