100 pistols stolen from Colombia police warehouse
Bogota: One hundred US-made pistols were stolen from a Colombian police warehouse and officials are offering a reward for information that would help in solving the case, a police spokesman said.
The theft was discovered when authorities were examining several crates of the pistols that had arrived from the US, National Police Gen. Gabriel Parada said on Sunday.
The police commander did not specify the date on which the theft occurred at the police warehouse in southern Bogota.
The pistols were for the National Police, which is offering a reward of up to 20 million pesos ($10,500) for information leading to the resolution of the crime and the capture of those responsible. (IANS)
Adobe’s massive password leak becomes playable crossword puzzle
Washington: Some 150 million customer records were leaked online after Adobe was hacked, but in a clever move, some of that information has been turned into a playable crossword.
According to the Verge, the puzzle helps remind people how insecure common password choices can be.
Ben Falconer has put together the project, called simply Adobe Crossword, after being inspired by the web comic XKCD.
The collection of 10 crossword puzzles use the most common 1,000 passwords found in the leak as its answers, with up to 50 user-supplied clues serving as the questions, the report said.
According to the report, Falconer said that he is not absolutely certain that the answers in his puzzles are correct, but given the hints his choices appear to be quite clearly correct.
He added that if a person happens to notice his own password in the puzzle, he should stop using it immediately. (ANI)
Cuban hitman may have been JFK’s second assassin
London: An expert at John F Kennedy’s assassination has claimed that a Cuban hitman was the second assassin who was involved in the former US President’s “murder plot”.
Professor Robert Blakey, who has closely examined the shooting of JFK, has alleged that in 2007, from nowhere, he was contacted by a Cuban exile called Reinaldo Martnez, the Daily Express reported.
Blakey explained that Martnez was in his 80s, and told him that he wanted to get something off his chest before he died.
Martnez explained to Blakey that anti-Castro leader Tony Cuesta, a celebrated hero to Cuban exiles in the US, had told him that a comrade, Herminio Daz had confessed before dying that he had “participated” in Kennedy’s assassination.
Cuesta said that Daz was a known political assassin, a marksman and had joined the anti-Castro struggle that so many exiles felt Kennedy had betrayed.
Blakey added that Martnez’s claims were credible and “a breakthrough of historic importance”. (ANI)
How iPad got its iconic design revealed!
New York: The modern day iPad reportedly went through a lot of designing, redesigning and experimentation before becoming what iconic design it has today.
The tablet’s design history has been detailed in Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple”s Greatest Products, by Leander Kahney.
According to Gizmodo, John Ive was secretly working on the iPad while boss Steve Jobs was publicly rejecting claims of an early tablet release.
While working on the iPhone design, Ive’s team was also working on the tablets, starting with the exact size of the future-gadget.
Moving on from laptops and netbooks, Ive proposed at an executive meeting in 2008, that tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to netbook, suggesting that it was basicall an inexpensive laptop without a keyboard, an idea that appealed to Jobs and he give a go-ahead to Ive to work on the prototypes and make a real product.
Ive started by ordering twenty models made in varying sizes and screen-aspect ratios and finally decided on the future iPad’s screen to be the size of paper, thought as the right size and targeted at education and schools and e-reading.
Next came the touch factor which was based on the iPod touch feature, making the iPad to be a scaled up touch-screen iPod.
The report said that Ive’s ultimate goal was to make a device that needed no explanation and was fully intuitive, one that was breathtakingly simple, beautiful and needed no explanation.
His team then explored two different design directions for the iPad, directly akin to the twin design directions they pursued with the iPhone, by initially building a case resembling the extruded aluminum iPod mini, inclusive of plastic caps for the Wi-Fi and cell phone radios.
The team also experimented with adding a kickstand to prop the tablet up, but dropped the idea for the debut product and used it for the later version iPad 2.
Ive’s team then focused on reducing the need of having too many buttons on the gadget that distract from the display, as Ive wanted the infinity-pool illusion and the design progressed with thinner models and sharper edges.
The product then got a new aluminum back which wasn’t as tapered as Ive had decided earlier but gave the device an easier handling, giving it a thin sidewall that gave it strength but made it thicker and bulkier than the earlier planned plastic version.
The first iPad from the tech giant was released on April 3, 2010, priced from 400 dollars for 16GB unit. (ANI)