Rare galaxy with 2 black holes has 1 starved of stars

 

This image provided by CU-Boulder shows the galaxy SDSS J1126+2944 taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, with an arrow placed by the source pointing to a black hole that lost most of its stars

An astrophysicist has discovered something even rarer than a double-black hole galaxy: a skinny black hole.

The University of Colorado at Boulder's Julie Comerford reported her findings Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Kissimmee, Florida.

To date, only 12 galaxies are known to exist with two black holes in their midst, Comerford said. Normally galaxies have a single supermassive black hole at the center, equivalent to 1 million to 1 billion times the mass of our sun.

But in this newly identified galaxy about 1 billion light-years away, one of the two black holes is significantly smaller than the other and apparently starved of stars. Black holes typically are surrounded by stars; this one appears "naked."

Comerford speculates the slim black hole lost mass in the collision of two galaxies that merged into this one —" a crash diet." Or it's a rare example of an intermediate-sized black hole that likely will morph over time into a supermassive monster.

Astronomers have yet to confirm an intermediate-size black hole, which makes Comerford's streamlined target extra tantalizing. Intermediate black holes are 100 to 1 million times the mass of our sun.

Comerford used the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in her study. She discovered this latest two-black hole galaxy — her fourth — last year. Finding a potential intermediate-size black hole inside was "an extra bonus," she told reporters.

The first double-black hole galaxy was found in 2003 by accident, according to Comerford. She is trying to systematically uncover more. The findings should shed light on the evolution of black holes.

Child development portal Flintobox now on android platform!

 

Flintobox, which promotes early child development and engages parents with meaningful content, makes sure that the products reaching children are relevant and enhanced to meet their needs and wants so that it significantly improves the child’s growth.

“We want Flintobox to be a complete package and one-stop destination for everything on early child development. Our objective is to make early learning a fun experience for kids. Our app will be a value-added resource to a Flintobox purchase and by itself a complete pool of early learning and development resources,” Flintobox Co-Founder Vijaybabu Gandhi said in a statement.

To engage parents more with the portal, Flintobox has created a complete digital interface to add value to a customer’s purchase by engaging them through ‘Flintobox Early Learning App’. The app will assist in providing contextual information focusing on language development and providing engaging weekly activities for children.

The android app is the first step in Flinto’s digital offering for early child development. This app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store for free.

Lenovo K4 Note launched in India at Rs 11,999; registration open for sale on January 19

 

Putting an end to all speculations and anticipations, Chinese handset maker Lenovo on Tuesday launched the much touted  K4 Note in India.

The phone has been very attractively priced at Rs 11,999.

Here are the key features of Lenovo K4 Note

Fingerprint sensor

Octa-core processor

3GB RAM

5.5-inch display with virtual reality support

5.5-inch Full HD (1080x1920p) display

Gorilla Glass 3 protection

16GB internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via microSD card)

64-bit octa-core Mediatek 6753 chipset.

3MP rear camera

5MP front shutter

3,300mAh battery

Intex Cloud Champ announced in India at Rs 3,999

 

Indian company Intex Technologies announced its new smartphone Intex Cloud Champ in India.

The smartphone is available at an affordable price of Rs 3,999. It has four colour options – champagne, silver, white, and black.

The Intex Cloud Champ sports a touch screen display of 4.50 inch with 480x854 pixels resolution.

The device is powered by 1GHz dual-core MediaTek MT6572X processor and runs on Android 4.4.2 version. It packs 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal memory storage which is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card.

The smartphone features 5 megapixel rear shooter and 2 megapixel front camera for selfies.

Cloud Champ is a dual SIM phone that supports Wi-Fi, GPS, FM and Bluetooth connectivity along with sensors including Proximity, Ambient light and Accelerometer.

Virtual Reality technology could rule 2016

 

The HTC Vive, Sony's PlayStation VR, Facebook's Oculus "Rift" and Samsung's "Rink" headset will be seen in the market in the next few months, BBC reported on Saturday.

Virtual reality is a computer-simulated reality (in a device) that replicates, via photos, an environment that simulates a physical presence in places in the real world or an imagined world, allowing the user to interact in that world.

Virtual reality artificially creates sensory experiences which can include sight, hearing, touch and smell.

For example, with a VR device you can climb Mount Everest making your way gingerly across a shaky bridge while trying not to look down into an icy chasm -- all while sitting on a couch in your house.

The devices may be showcased at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that will be held from January 6 to 9 in Las Vegas.

The HTC Vive is seen as the device providing the best VR experience. Its launch, slated for last year, was delayed for some further tweaking.

Sony's PlayStation VR and Facebook's Oculus "Rift" headsets can be seen in the markets in the next few months while Samsung has big plans to unveil its "Rink" at the CES.

Apart from gaming, Virtual Reality technology may prove to be a ground-breaking technology in many areas of life, the report said.

Two psychologists from London, Ashley Conway and Vanessa Ruspoli, developed a system that uses Oculus' Rift headset to treat patients with phobias.

Their company Virtual Exposure Therapy aims to give patients exposure in a virtual world to the thing they fear.

"It is not the real world but a very visceral experience. You get a physiological reaction. It is a really good bridge between not being able to do something and doing it in the real world," Conway explained.

But we will have to wait a little longer for the launch, price and feedback details of the respective devices.

New World Hackers claim responsibility for BBC website attack

 

A day after the cyber-attack (DDOS) on BBC’s website, an “Anti IS” group has claimed responsibility of the hit which took down the entire network of the British broadcaster’s websites for several hours.

On Saturday, a group named New World Hackers claimed the responsibility of the attack in a tweet to BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellar-Jones.

In another tweet to Jones, the group also said: "We are based in the US, but we strive to take down Isis [IS] affiliated websites, also Isis members. We realise sometimes what we do is not always the right choice, but without cyber hackers... who is there to fight off online terrorists? "The reason we really targeted [the] BBC is because we wanted to see our actual server power."

The BBC's online services, including its news website and iPlayer catch-up TV platform, were taken down on Thursday by a large web attack, the British broadcaster reported.

The BBC's sites, which rank only behind Google and Facebook in visitor numbers in Britain, according to Internet analytics firm comScore, were hit from 0700 GMT, with many users receiving an error message rather than content.

The broadcaster itself reported it had been hit by a "distributed denial of service (DDoS)" attack, citing sources within the organization.

DDoS attackers typically target sites by flooding servers with messages from multiple systems so they are unable to respond to legitimate traffic.

Earlier, the BBC press office said it would not confirm or deny it had been hit by an attack.

"We're aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and we are working to fix this now," the BBC press office said.

It said at 1145 GMT its sites were back up and operating normally.

Mobile phone subscribers in India exceed one billion

 

New Delhi: India notched up its billionth mobile phone subscriber in October, the country's telecoms regulator said, underscoring the importance of its fast-growing mobile market, the world's second largest after China.    

Mobile phone subscriptions have boomed in India in recent years as aggressive cost-cutting by its 12 hyper-competitive operators has driven down prices, leading to some of the cheapest tariffs in the world.       

The number of mobile subscribers rose by nearly 7 million in October from the previous month to surpass one billion, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said Wednesday, hitting a milestone that China reached in 2012.              

"It is a matter of great pride for us. It shows an empowered India and an engaged India and a tech-savvy India," Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the Times of India newspaper.         

"It will mean more data, more government-to-government connectivity, more broadband," he said.       

The figures do not indicate that India has one billion individual mobile phone users, however, as many people have more than one connection.              

"Dual sim" phones are particularly popular, allowing the country's cost-conscious consumers to use two different mobile plans to get the cheapest rates for local or national calls, for example.       

In poorer Indian states such as Bihar, "teledensity"—the penetration of telephone connections for every hundred people—is as low as 54 percent, with a stark urban-rural divide.        

But it still represents remarkable growth in the market since 2000, when there were just two million mobile subscribers in the country, according to research firm Ipsos.

India is adding 10 to 15 million mobile subscribers every quarter—that's big," Bhasker Canagaradjou, head of business consulting at Ipsos in Mumbai, told AFP.      

"It is the fastest-growing market globally—even China is not growing as fast," he said.      

With more than 200 million Indians mostly in rural areas yet to get their first phone and others rushing to trade up to smartphones, growth is unlikely to slow down dramatically, Canagaradjou said.

Netflix likely to make India debut announcement at CES 2016

 

 American online on-demand video streaming service Netflix is all geared up to launch their services in India at CES 2016 to be held in Las Vegas starting January 6. However, no details regarding how it plans to expand in India was revealed.

Since June 2015, several reports indicated that Netflix will start its services in India, but nothing tangible has devised yet. Previously, Netflix made an announcement regarding expanding their original content base.

Also, the company is now looking to expand its services outside US to other countries like India, where 4G LTE services are speculated to replace previous 3G connections. As of December, more than 69 million users were subscribed to Netflix’s services.  

For users who have limited knowledge about Netflix, it is a web streaming service that offers streaming content in partnership with major TV networks and movie studios. As mentioned earlier, the company also produces original content—Orange is the new balck, House of Cards, Daredevil, and Marvel’s Jessica Jonoes.

A user has to pay approximately Rs 600 ($8.99) per month to avail streaming services. However, with myriad content available on free video streaming sites, it is expected that Netflix will try to offer cheaper tariff rates to users.

Facebook fights for free Internet in India, global test-case

 

  India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the front line against Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country's masses.

The Indian government has ordered Facebook's Free Basics plan to be put on hold while it decides what to do.

The program, launched in around three dozen developing countries, offers pared-down web services on mobile phones, along with access to Facebook's own social network and messaging services, without charge.

But critics say the program, launched 10 months ago in India in collaboration with operator Reliance Communications, violates principles of net neutrality, the concept that all websites on the internet are treated equally. It would put small content providers and start-ups that don't participate in it at a disadvantage, they say.

"India is a test case for a company like Facebook and what happens here will affect the roll out of this service in other smaller countries where perhaps there is not so much awareness at present," said Mishi Choudhary, a New York-based lawyer who works on technology and Internet advocacy issues.

Also at stake is Facebook's ambition to expand in its largest market outside the United States. Only 252 million of India's 1.3 billion people have Internet access, making it a growth market for firms including Google and Facebook.

Record submissions

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Thursday it had received record submissions for a public consultation that precedes the rule-making process.

But more than three quarters of the 1.8 million comments submitted by users via Facebook will be disregarded as they did not follow the proper format, TRAI Chairman Ram Sevak Sharma told a news conference.

In the past week, Facebook has urged users in India to send a response to the TRAI both through its social networking platform and through mobiles by dialling a number that automatically generates a response on the users' behalf.

However, the social media giant faces stiff resistance. In a letter seen by Reuters, the heads of nine start-ups including Alibaba-backed Paytm and dining app Zomato have written to the TRAI urging it to ensure Internet access was allowed without differential pricing.

The executives said in the letter, dated Tuesday, that differential pricing for Internet access would lead to a "few players like Facebook with its Free Basics platform acting as gate-keepers."

"There is no reason to create a digital divide by offering a walled garden of limited services in the name of providing access to the poor," they wrote. Zuckerberg has got personally involved.

"We know that for every 10 people connected to the Internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty," he wrote in The Times of India newspaper this week. "We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the Internet. "What reason is there for denying people free access to vital services for communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming and women’s rights?"

Both sides

A Facebook spokesman said the aim of the Free Basics initiative was to give people a taste of what the internet can offer. And Facebook has issued a series of full-page newspaper advertisements and billboard banners in an aggressive campaign to counter the protests.

"Free Basics is at risk of being banned, slowing progress towards digital equality in India," said an advertisement published in Mumbai newspapers on Wednesday, urging Internet users to support the initiative.

Launched last year in Zambia, Free Basics, earlier known as internet.org, has run in to trouble elsewhere on grounds that it infringes the principle of net neutrality. Authorities in Egypt effectively suspended the service when a required permit was not renewed after it lapsed on Wednesday.

The TRAI has asked Facebook and Reliance Communications to suspend Free Basics until a final policy decision is made next month.

"In a democracy you have both sides - you have Facebook spending so much on the campaign and on the other side you have internet activists making their own efforts," the TRAI's Sharma told Reuters on Wednesday.

"Our job is to make a policy that is in the interest of telecom operators and end users in India."

TRAI gets record public submissions for net neutrality rules

 

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said it had received record submissions on a consultation paper for framing differential pricing rules that will decide the fate of Facebook Inc's free Internet in India.

The telecommunications regulator said it will finalise the new rules by end of January after a hearing process with stakeholders that will extend through the month.

India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the frontline against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country's masses.

TRAI has asked Facebook and its India telecom partner Reliance Communications Ltd to put on hold the launch of the Free Basics service till the final rules are in place.

Some WhatsApp users still facing service disruption

 

The problems were primarily centered in the UK and Western Europe.

WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook Inc, said some users were still facing issues while accessing its messaging service.

The problems were primarily centered in the UK and Western Europe, according to DownDetector, a website that provides realtime overview of Internet and mobile services.

"We appear to be having issues again," a WhatsApp spokesman said.

The company had earlier said it had completely restored the service.

WhatsApp, however, did not provide any details on what led to the outage, which began shortly after 4.30 pm. UK time on New Year's evening.