Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The 10 most easily stolen ATM card PINs

PIN numbers with less significance are safer than popular numbers, according to a study (Reuters)

How safe are your debit and credit cards?

Identity theft and fraud affect millions of Americans every year. And depending on how much thought you put into your personalized PIN, you could be at a greater risk than you realized.

So what constitutes a safe PIN number? A new study from DataGenetics lists the top 10 most-used PINs. And because they are the most commonly used PIN numbers, they are by default the least safe PINs.

26 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012

We may never have our flying cars, but the future is here. From creating fully functioning artificial leaves to hacking the human brain, science made a lot of breakthroughs this year.

1. Quadriplegic Uses Her Mind to Control Her Robotic Arm

Quadriplegic Uses Her Mind to Control Her Robotic Arm

At the University of Pittsburgh, the neurobiology department worked with 52-year-old Jan Scheuermann over the course of 13 weeks to create a robotic arm controlled only by the power of Scheuermann’s mind.

The team implanted her with two 96-channel intracortical microelectrodes. Placed in the motor cortex, which controls all limb movement, the integration process was faster than anyone expected. On the second day, Jan could use her new arm with a 3-D workspace. By the end of the 13 weeks, she was capable of performing complex tasks with seven-dimensional movement, just like a biological arm.
To date, there have been no negative side effects.
Source: gizmodo.com

Sex seems to be more than a hormonal discharge and some short moments of pure pleasure. Scientists show that sex is extremely beneficial for our health, while the lack of an active sex life might have negative effects. But too much sex, can also be harmful: more than thrice a week it can weaken the immune system, making us vulnerable to infections...

An oil spill that has blackened beaches at a Thai holiday island was having an extreme impact on tourism and could spread to the coast of the mainland and affect the fishing industry, officials and an environmental group said on Tuesday.

Tourists were pouring off the island of Koh Samet, 230 km (142 miles) southeast of Bangkok, while soldiers and volunteers in white bio-hazard suits struggled to clear black oily sludge off the white sand.

This equation could spell your doom: (bN)(S/N)Z = bSZ. That is, if you ever found yourself in the midst of a zombie pandemic.

That's because the calculation describes the rate of zombie transmission, from one walking dead individual to many, according to its creators, Robert J. Smith?, a mathematics professor at the University of Ottawa who spells his name with a "?" at the end, and his students. Smith's work has inspired other researchers to create zombie mathematical models, which will be published with Smith's work in the upcoming book, "Mathematical Modeling of Zombies" (University of Ottawa Press, 2014).

Man Sues Fishing Group Over $1M Prize

Talk about one that got away. A n Arkansas man who caught a record 68-pound striped bass sued the International Game Fish Association for denying him a $1 million prize in their contest.

Rodney Ply, 41, of Diamond City, Ark., entered the "Hook-a-Million" contest, which offered a $1 million prize for any angler who caught a fish that broke a world record using a Mustad-brand hook .

What happens to your digital accounts—your emails, social networking posts and cloud-based files—when you die?

In the United States, authorities are already discussing what to do with these digital assets, according to a report on Time.com.

Gorilla trolling the zookeepers and runs!

Not any normal gorilla you can see and I think this gorilla knew about trolling from the internet. The gorilla grabs a fist-full of dirt and throws it to a zookeeper then runs! He really wants to piss the zookeepers by trolling them.

Now, I call him the king of the zoo troll, "Trorilla."

A Genius scavenger who can tell the Scientific Name of any plant

He can also tell you, if you ask, the scientific name of any plant—without missing a beat.

A photo of him by Debei Cargando, a student at University of the Philippines-Manila, has started going around on Facebook.

Decades ago, Manong Alfredo graduated from the University of the East with an Education degree. However, he was unable to realize his dream of teaching.

NASA and the European Space Agency have been warning the world for two years about the approaching catastrophes that may unfold during 2012 to 2013. Few listened.

Although NASA covered up the strange photon cloud that's now enveloped the solar system, the word has leaked out from some scientists.

And now, as the ominous cloud approaches it's affecting the sun and planets in measurable ways.

Amazingly, as the bizarre energy invades our space, some of the world's most famous pyramids are generating intense energy.

Several incredible incidents of visible power beams shooting skywards into space towards the region of the alien photonic cloud are well-documented.

Scientists have long been worried about the possible harmful effects of regular cellular phone use, but so far no study has managed to produce clear results. Currently, cell phones are classified as carcinogenic category 2b — potentially carcinogenic to humans — by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). A new Tel Aviv University study, though, may bring bad news.

Brain-Eating Amoeba Infects 12-Year-Old Girl

Naegleria fowleri, the parasitic microbe that causes primary amebic meningoencephalitis.

A 12-year-old girl in Arkansas has been hospitalized with a case of parasitic meningitis caused by a rare brain-eating amoeba.

NASA Needs More Women, Top Official Says

The U.S. space agency is in need of more women among its ranks, NASA's second-in-command said last week during a panel on women in space.

"Even though we have a flat budget at best, these days we have about 1,000 new hires per year," NASA associate administrator Lori Garver said July 23 during a NASA-sponsored Google+ Hangout commemorating the life of Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. "Right now 37 percent of those have been women. We need to increase that."

Stunning New Photo of Andromeda Galaxy Taken by New High-Res Instrument

A new portrait of the Milky Way's neighbor, Andromeda, shows our twin galaxy in a whole new light thanks to a new instrument on Japan's Subaru telescope at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea.

The instrument, called the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC), provides sharp images of the cosmos across a wide field of view. The new photo demonstrates that the HSC camera makes good on its promise of offering his-resolution views of objects throughout the telescope's large 1.5-degree field of view.

Well initially this might look to you like any normal girl being treated by a doctor,the girl in the photo is not any normal living girl but the mummy of a 15 year old child who has been dead for about 500 years.

Leandro Granato, an artist from Buenos Aries, paints using only his eye as a paintbrush.

First he puts the paint into his nose, next he forces the paint up through his eye and finally he squirts it onto a canvas.

No takers for 'Schindler's List' up for auction

An auction for one of “Schindler’s Lists” had no bids on eBay.

The list was put up for sale on July 18, and ran for 10 days, until July 28. The auction, which started at an eye-popping $3 million for the piece of Holocaust history, was open only to approved bidders.

The winning bidder would be required to pay a $10,000 deposit. The remaining amount owed would be due within seven days. The winner also would need to pick up the document in Israel.

ht vanity fair princess diana ll 130730 5x7 384 Princess Diana Wanted to Marry Again, According to Report

As the British royal family celebrates its newest addition, Prince George, it’s hard not to miss the grandmother he will never know, Princess Diana.

There is no shortage of pictures and stories, however, to fill the void, including the latest in the September issue of Vanity Fair, “The Grandmother Prince George Never Knew.” The story details how Diana was “madly in love” with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, with whom she was in a two-year relationship before her death in 1997.

North Korea War – Terrifying Admission – Five Million Suicide Bombers Ready To Attack USA and South Korea

North Korea's Suicide Bombers Corps wit Nuclear Backpacks show up in Parade

A lawmaker wants hoarding of Philippine coins to be criminalized and hoarders penalized with eight years imprisonment and a fine of not less than P300,000.

Rep. Jerry Treñas of Iloilo City, author of House Bill 1662, or the proposed Anti-Hoarding of Philippine Legal Tender Coins Act of 2013, said hoarding of coins of any denomination is causing an artificial shortage of small denominations of currency in the country, which is seen as the reason for the lack of small change in various establishments.

“The unscrupulous practice of hoarding of coins is tantamount to economic sabotage and is creating an artificial shortage of coins,” Treñas said.

Corey Powell, Editor of Discover Magazine, joined Bill Hemmer on America’s Newsroom this morning to explain the giant black hole, and what it means for us here on Earth.

“The reason it’s dark is that whole chunk of the sun basically ripped off, blew out and is coming our way at about two million miles an hour,” said Powell.

The SlateBook x2, Hewlett-Packard's foray into the Android convertible market, is now available on the company's Web site.

The tablet-laptop hybrid was slated to be available in August but has arrived early on HP's U.S. sales site. HP also launched the SlateBook in Japan on Monday.

This machine doesn't want your money.

At first glance, the maroon Douwe Egberts coffee machine at the O.R. Tambo International Airport in South Africa looks pretty normal. On close inspection, it's missing something important. There's no place to put money. The only currency the machine deals in is yawns.

Facial-recognition software built into the machine looks for people standing in front of it. It maps their faces and waits for the telltale signs of a yawn. A yawn triggers a hot cup of coffee.

Sony and Panasonic aim to provide a big boost to the amount of data that can be housed on a single disc.

The two companies will work together to create a new standard for an optical disc capable of recording at least 300GB of information, Panasonic announced Monday. The goal is to unveil the actual technology before the end of 2015. The new disc format will be targeted toward professional users, specifically businesses that need to archive huge amounts of data for long-term storage.

Stress-relieving bike

Some say genius, some say virgin. This guy really wants to be free from stress. He made a bike with a huge roll of bubble wrap in front of him. It goes straight to the tires popping the tiny stress-reliever bubbles. Just imagine how good it feels!

Turning a regular microscope into billion-pixel imaging system

Ah, physics. The cold, hard reality of how things work so often gets in the way of how we would prefer them to work.

But when it comes to the field of microscopy, which has been held back by the physical limitations of optical lenses, a group of engineers at Caltech say they've been able to use a computational approach to bypass these limitations -- and that the final images produced using their new system contain 100 times more information. What's more, the system costs just $200 to implement with a conventional microscope.

Giant Black Holes Spin: New Twist Revealed

A newly discovered way to determine the spin of monster black holes could help shed light on the evolution of these bizarre objects and the galaxies they anchor.

Astronomers watched as a black hole that sits at the core of a spiral galaxy 500 million light-years from Earth gobbled up gas and dust from its surrounding accretion disk. They were able to measure the distance between the inner edge of the disk and the black hole, which, in turn, allowed them to estimate the black hole's spin.

NASA Astronaut Says Spacesuit Water Leak Was 'Scary Situation'

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy describes how water leaked into the spacesuit of his crewmate Luca Parmitano …

The mysterious leak that cut a spacewalk short two weeks ago was apparently as frightening as it looked to those of us watching on NASA TV.

A prime time game show shocked audiences when a presenter gave away abandoned babies in a bid to boost ratings.

A Russian gymnast who can lift a 14kg kettleball with her private parts officially has the world's strongest vagina.

Tatyana Kozhevnikova, who is set to show off her skills on E4's The Body Shocking Show, can use just the muscles in her vagina to lift incredibly hefty weights.

The Albert kindergarten and day care center in the central Taiwan city of Taichung is as joyful and vibrant as any other, with its colorful plastic slides and trampolines, but what makes it different is the children. From five to nine years old wearing camouflage uniforms they practice crawling and handstands on foam cushions in the front yard, copying the training of army special forces frogmen.

Worst swarm of Alaskan mosquitoes ever?

It was this summer for researcher Jesse Krause as he worked North Slope of Brooks Range

In Alaska, the mosquito is the state bird, or so the joke goes because of the size and numbers of the bloodsucking insects. The mosquitoes can get so thick hikers have been known to walk while swatting them away with branches from a tree. They can be extremely annoying. Swarms of mosquitos can be particularly bad on the North Slope of the Brooks Range. How bad? This bad:

Car key immobiliser hack revelations blocked by UK court

A High Court judge has blocked three security researchers from publishing details of how to crack a car immobilisation system.

German car maker Volkswagen and French defence group Thales obtained the interim ruling after arguing that the information could be used by criminals.

The technology is used by several car manufacturers.

The academics had planned to present the information at a conference in August.

Megamos Crypto transponders are built into car keys to disable the vehicles' engine immobilisers

Apple’s Most Important New Product Isn’t a Wristwatch

But the most important product in Apple’s stable this year is the same one that’s been critical to the company’s success for the past five years – the iPhone.

The belief of a snake twin is very old, way back 17th century, when Fray Ignacio Francisco Alzina's 1668 "History of the Bisayan Islands" mentioned about it. Remember Amaya - the main character in GMA Channel 7's TV series entitled Amaya? The idea of snake twin of Amaya came from him.

While for Chinese, snake is a good-luck charm for businesses, that's the reason why some of them keep snakes in their house, more especially in bodega. Well, animals should be fed. (You'll know what I mean.)

It is a supernatural being (definitely a monster) which is almost incredible but many people do believe it exist. No one knows the exact figure of what it truly look like (maybe similar to that picture above), just, they said, it is aHalf-Human Half-Snake.

Arifa, a mother of two, has been stoned to death on the orders of Panchayat (a tribal court) for possessing a cell phone. She was executed on 11 July in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province. The victim was stoned to death by her uncle and relatives on the orders of Panchayat after she was found to have a mobile phone.

In Thailand, a buffalo gave birth to a human-like baby.This is a photo of a buffalo very similar to human especially its face which is dominantly similar to human. However, its hands and feets are more like a buffalo. But overall the buffalo-boy has most organs of a cow having human shaped.

'Every new car' connected to web by 2014

An Indian man talks on his mobile phone as he drives past a traffic awareness poster on a busy road in Bangalore

Using phones for calls, text messaging, or social media could be made unnecessary by new innovations

Five years ago mobile phones were at the forefront of technology, by 2010

the focus was on tablet computers and now billions of yen, dollars and pounds are being invested in what is seen as the next digital playground - the car.

The smartphone is now slowly becoming a necessity for consumers, and research firm GfK thinks that Southeast Asia is the driver of its global growth. In terms of the smartphone market, we have seen Apple and Samsung smartphones take the lead and battle against each other in Southeast Asia for quite some time. But it looks like this growth does not belong to Apple or Samsung, anymore.Why is that so? Michael Morgan, analyst at ABI Research says in an interview with Bloomberg, that “the days of great growth in the high end of the market are gone.”

What do people do when they're up all night? Plan and plot, obviously.

It seems intuitively obvious that people who prefer to roam around at all hours of the night would be sneaky and shady. Vampires. Burglars. Wall Street bros. These are the people you have to look out for.

Looks like there's some science behind this notion. A September 2013 study found that night owls are more likely to have "Dark Triad" traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Quick psych refresh: Narcissists feed on others' energy to build up their sense of self-worth, psychopaths have a diminished sense of remorse, and Machiavellianism is used to describe duplicity, aka backstabbing.

Sounds like a pretty awesome trio, right?

Medieval Coffin at King Richard III Site Holds … Another Coffin

King Richard III's rediscovered resting place is turning out more mysteries this summer. Excavators finally lifted the heavy lid of a medieval stone coffin found at the site in Leicester, England, only to reveal another lead coffin inside.

LG Optimus G Pro finally introduced in PH

LG is no stranger to the phablet scene, and just recently, the firm introduced the LG Optimus G Pro. It’s the Korean company’s next large-screened offering after the 5-inch Optimus Vu, which has an odd 4:3 aspect ratio instead of the traditional 16:9 affair.

The Optimus G Pro packs a 5.5-inch IPS display, and this time, LG got things right on the aspect-ratio department by opting for a 1,080 x 1,920 resolution (16:9).

One of the real-life heroes who took the spotlight in the recent State of the Nation Address of President Aquino once roamed the streets of Rizal vending balut (fertilized duck embryo).

Meet Ai Hasegawa, the Woman Who Wants to Give Birth to a Shark

With a population nearing nine billion people and food shortages becoming increasingly problematic, the human race needs sustainable solutions if it wants to survive. Japanese designer Ai Hasegawa has come up with a very controversial approach to solving environmental and food-related issues – the possibility of women giving birth to various animal species and eventually eating them.

In one of her most intriguing projects yet, “I Wanna Deliver a Shark…”, Ai Hasegawa tackles “the problem of human reproduction in an age of over-population and environmental crisis.” She envisions the possibility of humans one day giving birth to their food and satisfying both their nutritional needs and that of giving life. The 33-year-old says having a human baby isn’t as simple as some people think, especially with our world about to face a major food crisis. She argues that bringing new humans into this world is definitely not the answer, but giving birth to endangered animal species might be just what we need to survive.

“We are genetically predisposed to raise children as a way of passing on our genes to the next generation but we live in an age where the struggle to raise a child in decent conditions is becoming harder with gross over-population and difficult environmental conditions,” Hasegawa says. “We must also eat, and we are equally facing growing food shortages as a result of over-fishing, land use and a growing population. By giving birth to an edible animal it might place more value on that endangered species and help prevent it’s extinction.”

Intrigued by the Japanese designer’s bizarre idea, VICE.com contacted Ai Hasegawa to learn if she thinks giving birth to an animal is even possible. “It will be, in the near future,” she said. A human uterus is just the right size to hold one fetus. I’ve been speaking to a gynecologist about ways of making it bigger. I believe humans could use their uterus as an aquarium or incubator.” Talking about possible compatibility issues between the human placenta and a shark’s, for example, Ai said the placenta comes from the fetus, so there’s no need to modify the human DNA.

The real problem is that a woman wanting to carry an animal fetus in her uterus would have to stop menstruation, and the medicine for that has very unpleasant side-effects. Hasegawa thinks the idea candidate for this unusual experiment would be a “rich, single, and above all, menopausal woman”. Asked why she chose a shark for her project, the designer said that research shows they would be the most compatible, plus they fit all her criteria: “they’re endangered, their life-span is almost as long as that of a human, and most importantly, they’re delicious.”

Some people might think Ai’s idea is preposterous, but she has thought it through. She even came up with a bonding system which works “ by sharing the mother’s stress with the shark embryo. When the mother feels stress, a device measures a galvanic skin response and heart pulse rate, translated as a “stress signal”, that triggers the low voltage electrical signal that mimics the emergence of a predator in the sea for the shark embryo. Giving such stress works as a training device for when they are returned to the sea after delivery.” Yes, the sharks would be returned to sea for some time, in order for them to taste like the wild sharks used in Japanese cuisine. Hasegawa says she loves a good piece of shark, but she always feels guilty for eating an endangered species. This way the problem is solved, plus “it’s also less costly than raising a human, and there are fewer responsibilities”.

But would humans actually eat a shark carried in the womb of another person? Ai seems to think so: “after all, there are some animals who eat their own babies. And we do eat veal, which comes from inside a cow. We even kill people, not even for food, and they too come out of somebody’s womb. I really don’t see the problem.” If it were her giving birth to a shark, she says she would track it’s position in the sea with a GPS device, and once it’s caught and sold at the market, she would buy and eat it. This way she would have it back inside her body one last time…

SOURCE

Teen Transgender Couple: Boy Was A Girl And Girlfriend Was A Boy

TEENAGERS Arin Andrews and Katie Hill look like any loving young couple posing in their swimwear.

It is hard to believe that just two years ago he was a girl called Emerald and she was a boy called Luke.

Almost half a billion people in China never brush their teeth, according to the country's health chiefs.

The Chinese Preventive Medicine Society believes that less than half of the country's 900m rural population brush regularly while just 10% of the 400m living in cities clean properly.

U.S. and Chinese Scientists used zinc oxide vertical nanowires to generate sensitivity.

According to experts, the artificial skin is “smarter and similar to human skin.” It also offers greater sensitivity and resolution than current commercially available techniques.

A group of Chinese and American scientists created experimental sensors to give robots artificial skin capable of feeling. According to experts, the sensitivity is comparable to that experienced by humans.

Director:	Raja Gosnell
Cast:	Christina Ricci . . . Vexi Neil Patrick Harris . . . Patrick Winslow Katy Perry . . . Smurfette Anton Yelchin . . . Clumsy Sofia Vergara . . . Odile Jayma Mays . . . Grace Winslow
Companies:	Sony Pictures
Rating:	PG for some rude humor and action.

Storyline

In this sequel to The Smurfs, the evil wizard Gargamel creates a couple of mischievous Smurf-like creatures called the Naughties that he hopes will let him harness the all-powerful, magical Smurf-essence. But when he discovers that only a real Smurf can give him what he wants - and only a secret spell that Smurfette knows can turn the Naughties into real Smurfs - Gargamel kidnaps Smurfette and brings her to Paris, where he has been winning the adoration of millions as the world's greatest sorcerer. It's up to Papa, Clumsy, Grouchy, and Vanity to return to our world, reunite with their human friends Patrick and Grace Winslow, and rescue her! Will Smurfette, who has always felt different from the other Smurfs, find a new connection with the Naughties Vexy and Hackus - or will the Smurfs convince her that their love for her is True Blue?

SHOWING ON JULY 31st! Don't you dare to miss it!

Badass 67 year old Beats up a Black guy on a bus!!!!!!!

A young Black man and a 67 year old man are arguing on a bus. When the black man threatens the 67 year old and punches him, the old guy totally PWNS him and the black guy gets owned!!!!! Also the old man has something of interest writen on the back of his shirt! This old guy is badass!!!! For all the people who want to know what the back of his shirt says. It says IM a motherf**ker!!!!!

Vice Ganda pokes fun at Charo Santos-Concio

Comedian Vice Ganda cracked jokes at the expense of ABS-CBN president and chief executive officer Charo Santos-Concio, Kuya Kim Atienza, and Mommy Dionisia Pacquiao during the "Liwanag ng Pasko: ABS-CBN Christmas Special" concert.