TECHNOLOGY

Apple Watch shortage blamed on faulty parts produced in Chinese factory

 APPLE reportedly was forced to scrap a bunch of Apple Watches because of flawed parts produced by a Chinese factory.

The Wall Street Journal today reports that stock shortage problems that are plaguing the roll out of the Apple Watch is a result of a flaw in the Taptic engine by the watches produced in a factory in China.

The Taptic engine creates the sense of forced tap that alerts an Apple Watch user when they have a notification. It’s also the key to sending another Apple Watch wearer the feeling of your heart beat.

The Wall Street Journal reports reliability testing revealed the part produced in a factory in Shenzen was failing with time and production was shifted to a factory in Japan.

The report cites an unnamed source as saying Apple was forced to throw out completed Apple Watches.

It’s not clear if any of the Apple Watches shipped to customers include parts from the Chinese factory.

Apple has not made comment on the claims but has previously said it is working out to meet orders for its first all-new product since the iPad.

It’s not the first time that the launch of an Apple product has come with reports of problem.

When Apple released it’s iPhone 6 Plus phablet last year, some customers complained that the thin, large screen phone could bend if exceptional force was applied to it. That issue became known as Bendgate.

laugh it off

FAMILY PROBLEMS
Akpos and Kwame met at a bus stop and struck up a conversation. Kwame kept complaining about his family problems. Finally, Akpos said to Kwame, "You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation:

"A few years ago, I met a young widow with a grown-up daughter. We got married and I got myself a stepdaughter. Later, my father married my step daughter. That made my stepdaughter, my step mother. And my father became my stepson. Also, my wife became mother-in-law of her father-in-law. Much later, the daughter of my wife, my stepmother, had a son. This boy was my half-brother because he was my father's son. But he was also the son of my wife's daughter which made him my wife's grandson. That made me the grandfather of my half-brother. This was nothing until my wife and I had a son. Now the half-sister of my son, my stepmother, is also the grandmother. This makes my father, the brother-in-law of my child, whose stepsister is my father's wife, I am my stepmother's brother-in-law, my wife is her own child's aunt, my son is my father's nephew and I am my OWN GRANDFATHER!"

TECHNOLOGY

The latest news from Microsoft Build 2015: Windows 10, HoloLens, and more 

Check the link below

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8516325/microsoft-build-2015-developer-conference-news-announcements#microsoft-says-windows-10-will-be-on-a-billion-devices-within-three

SPORT

Chelsea closer to clinching English Premier League title with 3-1 win over Leicester City

 

Chelsea took another step towards winning the English Premier League title, as goals from Didier Drogba, John Terry and Ramires helped overturn a half-time deficit for a 3-1 triumph at in-form Leicester City.

Jose Mourinho's side can now secure the crown if they beat Crystal Palace on Sunday (local time) after overcoming a scare against a side, who looked far from relegation contenders on this evidence.

Leicester City, who had won its previous four matches, struck just before the break through Marc Albrighton and looked value for its lead until Chelsea raised its game in the second half.

The visitors opted to start with Petr Cech in goal with Thibaut Courtois not 100 per cent fit, while Diego Costa missed out with 37-year-old Drogba handed only his sixth league start of the season.

Leicester City was unchanged and not surprisingly, given its form, it started well in front of a passionate home crowd.

Jamie Vardy headed straight at Cech from Albrighton's cross before the former's snapshot from 25 yards just missed the target.

Esteban Cambiasso's intelligent long ball then found Leonardo Ulloa but the Argentine striker could not get a clean touch to take him through on goal.

Chelsea should have taken the lead though when Willian ran down the left and pulled the ball back for Drogba but his tame effort from 12 yards hit Marcin Wasilewski.

Leicester City was dealt a blow when midfielder Andy King, on his 300th appearance for the club, was forced off with an early knock and replaced by Matty James.

The hosts shortly afterwards suffered another injury with Robert Huth coming off after an innocuous challenge at a corner with Ritchie De Laet coming on to necessitate a switch to a flat back four.

Those disruptions destroyed Leicester City's early rhythm and Chelsea came closer to the opener with Drogba firing wide on the turn.

But Nigel Pearson's side shut out the danger and Danny Drinkwater's long ranger was the next chance, which went just over.

Leicester City might have taken the lead shortly afterwards as Albrighton's shot was deflected onto the post right footed by Paul Konchesky prompting a mass goalmouth scramble involving Cambiasso and Albrighton.

But it took the lead in stoppage time as James fed Vardy down the left and Cesar Azpilicueta slipped on the wet surface for Albrighton to slot in his first goal for Leicester City and first since 2012.

Chelsea, though, regrouped at half-time and was level within three minutes of the re-start.

Branislav Ivanovic cut in down the right and crossed for Drogba to finish in cool fashion and it prompted an emotional celebration at his first goal of 2015.

Drogba could have had a second as he twice went close, the first time blazing over and then firing over from a good position.

James's deflected shot raised the tempo for Leicester City but it was Chelsea who came into the match late as the hosts tired.

Ramires's deflected shot forced a 79th-minute Cesc Fabregas corner. Gary Cahill's back header was superbly saved by Kasper Schmeichel but Terry reacted quickest to scramble home his seventh goal of the season.

The match was over as a contest four minutes later as a Fabregas pull back was driven home with power by Ramires.

 ATP

NEWS

Widow wins court case to save dead husband's frozen sperm from being destroyed by fertility clinic

A woman has won a court battle to stop a Canberra fertility clinic destroying her dead husband's frozen sperm.

The man provided two sperm samples to the Canberra Fertility Centre in January 2009, after being diagnosed with cancer of the foot.

The man's doctors had recommended he make a sperm deposit before he underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy, as the treatment would likely affect his fertility.
 
After therapy he did recover for a time, but eventually died in April 2012, when he was 26 years old.

But when his wife later asked the clinic about the samples she was told that since the man had died there was a legal obligation to destroy the material.

The court heard the man had believed the samples would automatically go to his wife with the rest of his estate, despite the man not having a will at the time of his death.
 
The court also heard the couple, who had wed a month before the man's death, had discussed the possibility of the sperm being donated to two lesbian friends who were having difficulty finding a suitable sperm donor.

The ACT Supreme Court agreed and ordered the clinic not to destroy the samples as long as the storage fees were paid.

NECO SSCE (Internal) Timetable is Out!!!!!

Download it here http://www.mynecoexams.com/ssce/Docs/2015JuneJulyTimetable.xls

Time to be scared of your phone?

  The US maintained strict export controls during the 1970s and '80s to prevent countries such as India and Russia from gaining access to the Cray supercomputers which gave it a huge military advantage. These cost tens of millions of dollars, weighed hundreds of kilos, and had to be housed in large buildings with special cooling systems. The smartphones that villagers in India are using today are many times more powerful — and they fit into a pocket.  

That is how computing is progressing. The processing capability of a computer doubles every 18 months. At this rate, a $1000 laptop will have the computing power and storage capacity of a human brain by 2023.

The implications are mind-boggling. Within seven years — when the iPhone 11 is likely to be released — our smartphones will be as computationally intelligent as we are. It doesn't stop there. These devices will continue to advance, exponentially, until they exceed the combined intelligence of the human race. Already, our computers have a big advantage over us: they are connected via the internet and share information with each other billions of times faster than we can. It is hard to even imagine what becomes possible with these advances.

Some people doubt that computing will continue to advance at this pace. This progression is known as Moore's Law and has to do with the shrinking of computer circuits. Nothing can be smaller than an atom, and that is how small transistors will need to be by 2025 to keep pace. Intel acknowledges these limits but suggests that Moore's Law can keep going for another five to 10 years. So the silicon-based computer chips in our laptops will likely sputter their way to match the power of a human brain.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil says Moore's law isn't the be-all of computing and that the advances will continue regardless of what Intel can do with silicon. Moore's Law itself was just one of five paradigms in computing: electromechanical, relay, vacuum tube, discrete transistor, and integrated circuits. Kurzweil explains that technology has been advancing exponentially since the advent of evolution on Earth and that computing power has been rising exponentially: from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 US Census, via the machines that cracked the Nazi enigma code, the CBS vacuum-tube computer, the transistor-based machines used in the first space launches, and more recently the integrated-circuit-based PC.

With exponentially advancing technologies, things move very slowly at first and then advance dramatically. Each new technology advances along an S-curve — an exponential beginning, flattening out as the technology reaches its limits. As one technology ends, the next paradigm takes over. That is what has been happening, and why there will be new computing paradigms after Moore's Law.

Already, there are significant advances on the horizon, such as the GPU, which uses parallel computing to create massive increases in performance, not only for graphics but also for neural networks, which constitute the architecture of the human brain. There are 3D chips in development that can pack circuits in layers. IBM and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are developing cognitive-computing chips. New materials, such as gallium arsenide, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, are showing huge promise as replacements for silicon. And then there is the most interesting — and scary — technology of all: quantum computing.

Instead of encoding information as either a zero or a one, as today's computers do, quantum computers will use quantum bits, or qubits, whose states encode an entire range of possibilities by capitalizing on the quantum phenomena of superposition and entanglement. Computations that would take today's computers thousands of years will occur in minutes on these.

The consequences of these advances are both scary and exciting. Tech luminaries such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates worry about the creation of a "super intelligence". Musk fears "we are summoning the demon". Hawking says it "could spell the end of the human race". And Gates wrote: "I don't understand why some people are not concerned".

Kurzweil tells me he is not worried. He believes we will create a benevolent intelligence and use it to enhance ourselves. He sees technology as a double-edged sword, just like fire, which has kept us warm but also burned down our villages. He believes technology will enable us address the problems that have long plagued human civilization — such as disease, hunger, energy, education, clean water — and that we can use it for good.

These tech advances are a near certainty. They will make amazing things possible and create new nightmares. We need to do all we can to harness these technologies for bettering the world.

The writer is director of research at Duke University

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Is Nokia is Realy Making Another Android Phone?

Nokia's pretty much been lying low since Microsoft bought its mobile business then dropped the name from its Lumia phones, but a return is now imminent.

There have been rumors since last year that Nokia would re-enter the smartphone market with a new Android phone - its first in some time - and those rumors are confirmed.

Nokia's president in China, Mike Wang, said the company will use its Chinese factories to build new Android phones in 2016, reports G For Games.

We've asked Nokia to confirm it, but unless the site is way off-base this sounds like the real deal.

Given the focus on China Nokia could be looking to return to the Android market with some low-end or mid-tier devices, but we can only speculate on that front -- Wang revealed no further details.

We'll be watching for more word, and in the meantime we'll update this article if we receive confirmation from Nokia that it's really making Android phones for 2016. 

 

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