Artificial Mega Floating Islands... Must Watch.

It is one thing to come up with a wacky idea for transforming our cities or constructing the world’s greatest supervillain evil lair; another to have the expertise and inclination to actually research and build one for real. A new research project coming out of the Netherlands quite handily ticks both boxes. Developed by researchers at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN), their idea is to develop giant artificial islands like today’s floating docks — only on a much, much bigger scale. Like, several miles wide bigger.

And they may just pull it off, too.

“With the world’s increasing population there is not necessarily enough space in the cities, or close to the coast where a lot of people live and work,” Olaf Waals, project manager and the concept developer, told Digital Trends. “These are also areas that are susceptible to flooding with rising sea levels. We thought it was an interesting idea to look at the technical feasibility of building floating mega islands. There are lots of futuristic concepts out there for floating harbors, farms, or cities. We wanted to look at how realistic a proposition this actually is, and come up with a workable concept.”

Waals’ idea involves modular giant triangles which lock together to form sizeable land masses, up to 3.1 miles in width. At least in theory, it is a pretty nifty idea. Given that 70 percent of our planet is covered by water, floating mega islands offer a whole lot more space to play with. They could be used for housing and recreation, or for the generation and storage of sustainable energy technologies like offshore wind farms, tidal energy, and floating solar panels, or for floating farms for breeding fish and seaweed.

Right now, the MARIN team is busy running computer simulations and testing a physical scale model to try and better understand the environmental conditions such a mega island would have to contend with. These potential challenges involve working out how to develop structures that are strong and safe enough to withstand winds and currents; how best to connect them together and to the seabed; and the environmental impact a water-bound floating community would have on its surroundings.

With a consortium of around 20 companies and research institutes now attached, work on the project is set to continue for the next three years. And after that? Our childhood dream of a real-life Waterworld hopefully becomes a reality.

Is it too early to start an online petition to get Kevin Costner appointed as mayor of the first floating mega city? We think not!

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Google Life-Science Team to Release 20 Million Mosquitoes.

It may sound counterintuitive, but Alphabet’s life sciences unit Verily is releasing about 20 million mosquitoes in Fresno, California in order to fight Zika, the mosquito-borne illness. It’s part of Verily’s Debug Project, an initiative announced last October with the mission of reducing “the devastating global health impact that disease-carrying mosquitoes inflict on people around the world.” And now, Verily is launching Debug Fresno, the company’s first field study in the U.S. that will test a mosquito control method that involves sterile insect technique.

In essence, the 20 million mosquitoes Verily is releasing are all sterile males that have been treated with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacterium. The test is said to be the largest release of sterile male mosquitoes in the U.S. thus far. Over the next 20 weeks, these bugs will be released in two neighborhoods around 300 acres large. The hope is that when these sterile males mate with wild females, which can carry and transmit a number of diseases including Zika, dengue, and chikungunya, the resulting eggs will not hatch. Verily will determine the success of its test by comparing the adult population density and egg hatching of this particular kind of mosquito in the targeted neighborhoods to two control neighborhoods.

And don’t worry — male mosquitoes do not bite, so even though you might be seeing more of these critters around, you won’t be itching as a result.

Linus Upson, a senior engineer at Verily, told the MIT Technology Review that this could ultimately become a cost effective way to control mosquito populations, and get rid of diseases (though he didn’t say how much exactly this experiment actually costs). “If we really want to be able to help people globally, we need to be able to produce a lot of mosquitoes, distribute them to where they need to be, and measure the populations at very, very low costs,” he said. “We want to show this can work in different kinds of environments,” he told the magazine.

Alphabet, the holding company in charge of Google, rebranded its Google Life Sciences team as Verily at the end of 2015, and said the team would move away from Google and become its own independent division.

So look out, Fresno. You may hear a lot more buzzing in the coming weeks, but rest assured, it’s all for good purpose.

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18 Useful CMD tricks You Must Know.

When you have such an attractive interface, using Command Prompt might seem like a old fashioned thing. When you can easily navigate to a location or access different settings in your PC customize them, why go for complex commands and a dull interface? Well, it might not be as bad as one might think. Command Prompt might be a bit complex, but it makes all the manual tweaking just a single command’s work. The current users of Command Prompt understand how powerful it is, which is why they don’t mind learning few tricks or commands to take care of daily work in a snap. So learning at least basics of Command Prompt is worth saving few seconds of extra work everyday.


We have created this list of Command Prompt commands and tricks that may help you work better. Whether you just started using Command Prompt or you are a regular user, you should be able to find a trick to ease things up a bit.

Some Useful Command Prompt Tricks

 

1. Get help on almost every Command

This is especially helpful for beginners, but advanced users may get to learn few things too. You can easily get info on almost every command you provide in the Command Prompt. Information includes complete details of what a command does and what process are used, it may also show some examples.
To get the help, just type “/?” at the end of the command of which you need info. For example, you can type “ipconfig/?”, and you will get all the info.

 

2. Use Function Keys

You can use function keys (F1, F2, F3, etc.) right inside command prompt and get different results. Below are the uses of functions keys in Command Prompt:

• F1: Pastes per character last used command
• F2: Pastes last used command only to a specified command character
• F3: Pastes Last used command
• F4: Delete command only to a specified command character
• F5: Pastes last used command without cycling
• F6: Pastes ^Z
• F7: Provides a list of already used commands (selectable)
• F:8 Pastes cycleable used commands
• F9: Will let you paste command from the list of recently used commands

 

3. Save a Command to a File

If you want to save results of a command to a .txt for future reference, then it is quite easy as well. All you need to do is add “> (destination/file name with .txt extension)” at the end of the command you are about to execute.

For example, you can type “ipconfig > c:\Networkdetails.txt”, this command will create a .txt file in C drive with name “Networkdetails”.

 

4. Copy Data from the Command Prompt

                             

Copying data from the Command Prompt isn’t just a Ctrl+C away, the process is actually different. It is not that hard, just right click anywhere in the window and click on “Mark” from the menu. After that, just select the text you want to copy and hit Enter to copy it.
Important Note: With Windows 10, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V commands to copy/paste has been enabled in Command Prompt. So you don’t need to follow the above process, if you are using Windows 10. Also, In Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts for CMD are enabled by default which wasn’t the case with earlier version of Windows.

 

5. Cycle Through Folders

Specifying exact directories can be a bit frustrating task if you don’t have the destination copied. However, if you just know in which drive or folder the required folder is located, then you can cycle through all the folders to reach it. To do this, just type specified drive and start press TAB key on your keyboard to cycle through all the folders inside it.

 

6. Use QuickEdit Mode

                             

Command Prompt comes with QuickEdit Mode to quickly copy and paste content with just your right-click. In QuickEdit mode, you can highlight content and right-click to copy it or right-click in a blank area to paste content from the clipboard (if there is any).

To enable QuickEdit Mode, right-click on the top of the Command Prompt interface (where exit button is located) and select “Properties”. In the properties, check the checkbox next to “QuickEdit Mode” to enable it (you will have to disable it later).

 

7. Check IP address of any Website

                         

You can see IP address of any website just by entering “nslookup” command along with the name of the website. For example, you can type “nslookup beebom.com” to find its IP address.

 

8. Execute Multiple Commands

                       

You can easily execute one command after another by provide all the commands and putting “&&” between each command (may save some time). For example, you can type “ipconfig && dir” to execute both commands one after another.

9. Check Default Programs

                         

You can check which applications are used to open specific types of programs. For this purpose, just type “assoc” in the Command Prompt and hit enter. You will see all the extensions and their associated program that opens them written next to them.

 

10. Get PC Drivers List

                           

You can open list of all the drivers installed on your PC with just a single command. Just type “driverquery” in the Command Prompt and press Enter. After a short delay, you will see all the drivers installed in your PC along with, Name, Type and Link date.

 

11. Scan System Files

                          

The system files can also be scanned and repaired from the Command Prompt. Type “sfc/scannow” and press enter, the scan will start and may take quite some time depending on your PC speed (up to an hour may be). It will either automatically repair the files or let you know if there is a problem and provide its details.

 

12. Change Command Prompt Color

                            

You can also change command prompt color to make it look less dull and a bit easy on the eyes. To do so, right-click at the top corners of Command Prompt and select “Properties” from the menu. In the properties, navigate to “Colors” tab and you will find all the options to change color of both text and background.

 

13. Create Undelete-able Folders

                          

You can create undeletable folders using specific set of keywords. In the Command Prompt, type the name of the drive where you want to create the folder (it must not have Windows installed in it). After that, type any of these keywords “md con\” or “md lpt1\” and press Enter. So it should look something like this “D: md con\”.
This will create a folder with the same name that could not be deleted or renamed. To delete the folder replace “md con\” with “rd con\” or “md lpt1\” with “rd lpt1\”.

 

14. Get Network Details

                         

You can get quick network details, like IP address and subnet mask or Default Gateway with a single command. Type “ipconfig” and press Enter, you will see all the details of your network.

 

15. Hide Files and Folders using Command Prompt

                           

You can hide folder with the help of Command Prompt that cannot be accessed using the traditional hide feature of Windows. To do this, type the drive name where the folder is located and then enter this command “Attrib +h +s +r” and afterwards, enter the name of the file/folder you want to hide. So it should look something like this “D: Attrib +h +s +r haider”.
If the folder is inside another folder, then the command must come before the folder/file you want to hide not just after the Drive name. To again see the folder, use the same process above but change the command to “Attrib -h -s -r” from “Attrib +h +s +r”.

 

16. Compare Two Files

                          

You can also compare two text files in command prompt and see the difference. The results won’t be as good as third-party available file comparison tools, but it is worth a shot and fun do!
All you need to do is type “FC” command and then enter directories of both text files (the files must be in .txt format for proper working). For example, you can type “fc C:\haider\sample1.txt C:\haider\sample2.txt” and hit enter to get comparison of both files with answer such as, files are different or both files are identical.
In the above example, “C:” is the drive where text file is located, “haider” is the name of the folder in which the text file in located and “Sample1.txt” is name of the text file. Both files can be located anywhere in your PC, you just need to provide the right directory.
If both the files have different content then running this command will show the different content and if both the files have exact same content, the command will return this message ‘no difference encountered’.

 

17. Watch Star Wars Episode IV

                          

This is a really cool trick, although not productive, but fun to do. You can actually watch the famous Star Wars Episode IV right inside your Command prompt. It will be an ASCII version so don’t hope for a HD movie.
The process is simple, open Command Prompt and enter this command “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl” and hit Enter. The movie will start automatically without any delay.
Note: Make sure Telnet is enabled in your PC, you can get information to install and enable Telnet from Microsoft website.

 

18. Create Wi-Fi Hotspot using Command Prompt

                              

You don’t need any third-party apps to create a Wi-Fi hotspot to share your PCs internet, you can easily do so from the Command Prompt.
In the Command Prompt, enter the following command to enable Wi-Fi Hotspot.
“netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Hotspotname key=password”
Once enabled, you can start the Wi-Fi  hotspot by entering the command “netsh wlan start hostednetwork” or stop it by entering the command “netsh wlan stop hostednetwork“.
You will also need to share your internet connection to this hotspot for everyone to use. Go to “Network and Sharing” option from the “Control Panel” and then click on “Change adaptor settings” in the left panel.
Here, right click on the internet connection you are using and click on “Properties“. In the properties, go to sharing tab and check the option “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection” to share your internet connection.
Note: Using Administrator privileges for CMD is must to run this command otherwise it will show an error.

These CMD tricks will definitely help you understand Command Prompt in a better way. If you happen to know some other trick which is worthy of a mention in the post, let us know in comments section.

 

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Enhace These Skills and Get a Chance to Work @ Google. Must Read.!!

We all know that getting placed in Google is one of the most desirable employers in the world. Engineers at Google are the masters, and their salary is high enough. For Google employees salaries for Interns start from $70,000 to $90,000. Whereas for the software engineers can get from $118,000 and senior software engineers would make up for an average of amount $152,985.
Not only Google top companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft pays a good amount of salaries to the Software engineers. But, getting placed in good companies is not an easy job and takes in a lot of skill.
A lot of good skills are required from a software engineer background to get placed in the large enterprises. Happily, Google has released a list of skills required that they expect from an engineer who applies for a job at Google. The list will help to secure job in Google and other top companies if you follow and improve the list.

Check the list below:

1. First and foremost thing to do is Mastering the foundation. Go through an introduction to CS classes, from sites like Coursera or Udacity and improve your foundation skills.

2. Learn any one of the object-oriented programming languages like Java, C++, or Python.

3. Don’t restrict your limits learn few other programming languages like CSS, Ruby, JavaScript, and HTML. These programming languages will help to improve your skill levels. CodeAcademy and W3school have the best tutorials to learn.

 

4. Always Test your code and others too. It is like finding your mistake and being smart. Google wants developers to “Find bugs, make tests, and play with software.” Head over to Udacity.

5. Have a good grip in abstract math. Abstract Math is a math like logical reasoning and discrete math. This helps a lot of computer science depends on the situation. MIT has good mathematics courses available for computer science.

6. Understand data structures and algorithms. Google wants engineers to learn about data types like queues, stacks, and bags, as well as grasp, sorting algorithms like merge sort, quicksort, and heapsort. MIT provides these prescribed online resources.

7. Having good knowledge on the operating system because it is where you do most of your work at. The University of California and Berkeley provides the courses.

8. Know Artificial Intelligence. It is known from long time Google loves AI and robots. Stanford has courses on it.

9. Learn to develop compilers. By learning to develop compilers, you will learn how a program is written in a high-level language designed for humans is systematically translated into a program written in low-level assembly more suited to machines. Coursera is best for learning about compilers.

10. Learn about cryptography. These days cyber security has become a crucial part. Udacity and Coursera provide courses.

11. Learn about the parallel programming because being able to carry out a lot of computations at the same time is super powerful. The University of Illinois has good courses on it.

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How does Aeroplane WiFi Works...??

Internet has become an integral part of everyone’s life, as connectivity has become important these days. As a result, the in-flight announcement to switch off our electronic devices or put it on airplane mode while on board can become a hitch if you have to finish last minute presentations, or check e-mails, or surf through social media sites on the go.
In order to make the flight experience a less stressful and an enjoyable one, the first in-flight Wi-Fi services started in 2008 when Virgin America introduced Gogo’s Inflight Wi-Fi facility in its fleet of airplanes. Gogo Inc. is a provider of in-flight broadband Internet service and other connectivity services for commercial and business aircraft, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
With the efforts taken by Gogo and the various technologies it adapts to provide in-flight Wi-Fi, has helped a lot of airlines improve their on board services with the growing demand of always being connected. 17 airlines partner with Gogo to provide in-flight Wi-Fi, including British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, Gol linhas aereas, Beijing Capital, Aeromexico, American Airlines, Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Japan Airlines, JTA, United Airlines, Hainan Airlines, Virgin America, Vietnam Airlines and Virgin Atlantic.

So, how does exactly the Wi-Fi in an airplane work? Basically, there are two primary methods to enable a passenger with Internet connection on an airplane: Air-to-Ground and Satellite.

ATG (Air-To-Ground)
                                    
As the name suggests, ATG is the means by which people on the ground and those in airborne vehicles communicate with each other. ATG are similar to cell phone towers albeit much larger and are designed for domestic travel over land. The ground-based mobile broadband towers send signals up to an aircraft’s antennas. An antenna located on the bottom of the plane transmits and receives signals to and from towers on the ground (low-power ground transceivers). As the plane travels into different sections of airspace, the plane automatically connects to signals from the nearest tower, so there is no interruption to your browsing. However, if you are passing over large bodies of water or particularly remote terrain, connectivity can be an issue.
Also, Gogo has rolled out the newest generation system ATG-4 technology that takes advantage of multiple antennas—four of them, arranged strategically along the fuselage—to grab signals and offer faster speeds, whose bandwidth is up to 9.8 megabits per second (Mbps) per airplane (shared across all users), which is enough for email and casual web surfing.

Satellite

Unlike ATG networks, satellite networks can provide the aircraft with connectivity anywhere around the globe – over land or over water. A small satellite antenna located on the top of the plane’s fuselage under a bubble-shaped radome communicates with a satellite in orbit above the earth. That satellite, which maintains an endless connection with a ground station, acts as a bridge to supply the plane with a live link to the Internet. The nearest satellite in orbit supplies the connection to the plane as the plane moves along its defined route.
With the amount of available bandwidth increasing along with the frequency, satellite networks transmit data at different frequency bands. The two common bandwidths used for in-flight connectivity today are L-band and Ku-band. L-band – sometimes referred to as narrowband – has an operating frequency range of 1–2 GHz in the radio spectrum and has only 30 MHz allocated for use. The L band is one of the chief operating ranges used by various applications such as radars, global positioning systems (GPS), radio, telecommunications and aircraft surveillance. Comparatively, Ku-band networks utilize 500 MHz of frequency bandwidth between 11-14.5 GHz. Both narrowband and broadband networks are capable of providing global satellite coverage.
With a frequency range of 19-31 GHz and 500 MHz allocated for use, major air carriers are now starting to install cob Ka-band satellite antennas that have to reach hundreds of megabytes per second, enough for streaming even on an occupied plane where many people are trying to connect.

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World's First Fully Automated Tooth-Brush .

Say hello to Amabrush, the world’s first automatic toothbrush, and goodbye to brushing your teeth for minutes at a time twice a day. Amabrush resembles a mouthguard with soft silicone bristles in it, and it is magnetically attached to a round handle. Put the mouthpiece in, and don’t worry about the toothpaste, it’ll do that for you. It will then go to work, brushing your teeth in the way that your dentist tells you to, in every location in your mouth, all at the same time.
Using this device, brushing all of your teeth to perfection only takes about 10 seconds from start to finish, so it’s no surprise that the Amabrush is doing really well on Kickstarter. As this article is being written, they have 25 days to go and have already raised $935,891, surpassing their $56,972 goal.

 The Amabrush is just one more example of automation doing what it does best: taking over mind-numbingly dull daily tasks, freeing up humans to think about and do more compelling things. Whether it’s a significant step in automation, like self-driving cars, or just a piece of the puzzle, it’s all progress in the same direction. By extension, automation can free us from repetitive, dull jobs and free us up for more challenging careers, hobbies, passions, etc. All we have to do is be willing and ready for this change to happen.

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Difference Between Viruses and Malware

These days many of us talk about like malware and spyware a lot more than the virus. Have you ever wondered what exactly are all these?

Beginning with to understand what a virus is we will start with the original biological meaning of the word.

Biological viruses like the ones that can make you sick are parasitic. They inject their code in this case either DNA or RNA into a host cell as a means of replication this code causes the cell to make a ton of copies of the virus and ultimately burst to send new viruses everywhere. Computer Viruses operate via a similar principle unlike some forms of malware which are fully executable programs.

Viruses tend to be smaller pieces of code that confused with other programs or files and only replicate when conditions are right. So they can be triggered by a particular date and time opening a certain program or even hitting a certain amount of disk usage. After a virus is triggered, it will try to copy itself and spread infecting other files and programs along the way sometimes over a network and just like real viruses these virus copies can be a little different from the original making it hard for antivirus software to eliminate them. Some even come encrypted making detection even more complicated.

A computer virus can contain a payload that will cause some effect which could be anything from just displaying a joke to permanently corrupting your important data.

To make it simple now, Malware is any computer infection, which includes viruses and malicious software. Since other types of malware can cause these annoying effects, many people have used the terms virus and malware interchangeably, but this is incorrect. Much modern malware like ransomware and adware are also standalone programs that can be passed around and executed on their own.

For More queries about the content you can comment us below.

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