Tag Archives: Technology

America Loses First Major Cyberwar?

Critics say that America has lost their first cyberwar after Sony Pictures pulled the movie “The Interview” after repeated cyber attacks by North Korean hackers.

“No one should kid themselves. With the Sony collapse America has lost its first cyberwar. This is a very very dangerous precedent,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said after Sony’s announcement.

Sony pulled the film…a comedy film about two bumbling reporters that assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il…even though it was due to open in theaters in just over a week.

The hackers had threatened to have “9/11 style attacks” on theaters in the U.S. that showed the movie.  The threats caused the five biggest movie chains in the country to say they were not going to show the film because of fears of incidents.

President Obama addressed the matter in a Wednesday interview.

“The cyber attack is very serious. We’re investigating, we’re taking it seriously,” Obama said during the interview. “We’ll be vigilant, if we see something that we think is serious and credible, then we’ll alert the public. But for now, my recommendation would be that people go to the movies.”

The Department of Homeland Security says there is no credible threat against any movie theater in the U.S.

Jewelry Converts Blood Flow Into Cell Phone Charger

Your blood flow could charge your cell phone.

It’s not science fiction any longer.

A graduate student in Jerusalem has developed a series of jewelry that can be used to charge electronics like cell phones.

The project by Naomi Kizhner is called “Energy Addicts.”  There are three pieces of jewelry: the Blinker, the E-pulse and the Blood Bridge.  The Blinker would extract energy by using the movement of the eyelids.  The Blood Bridge is connected to the veins in the lower arm.

Kizhner says there is no current plans to market the products worldwide but were designed to show that it’s possible to use the body’s ordinary functions for biometric electronics.

“I wanted to provoke the thought about how far will we go to in order to ‘feed’ our addiction in the world of declining resources,” she told Cosmo.

A Korean research unit earlier this year released a thermoelectric bracelet that could turn body heat into electricity, similar to the movie The Matrix.

New “.CHURCH” Domain Names Available

In a move that has critics split on whether it’s good marketing for churches or a way to segregate Christians online, the .church domain is now available for purchase.

The domain was first made available last week and many churches have been snapping up the domains.

“I saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of important geographic branding opportunities domains that immediately and easily identify my church with the Brookhaven and greater Atlanta area have long been taken,” said Pastor Wesley Sanders of Brookhaven United Methodist.  “I had been planning on doing a redesign of our church’s website for a while, and the release of the new dot church domain names gave me a good opportunity to implement a new online presence.”

The domain is part of what is called “generic top-level domains” or gTLDs.  As of Monday, Hover.com says .church is number 8 on the top 20 list of gTLDs.

Experts at Hover.com say it’s too early to tell if the new domain is a success.  They say you will need to wait at least a year to see the number of .church domains in use before saying they were a success.

The domains are available from all domain registrars.

Pope Francis to Youths: Get Off The Internet

Pope Francis spoke to a group of 50,000 German alter servers and gave them a surprising message.  Instead of speaking of the Scriptures or some deep theological lesson, the Pope told the youths to get off the internet.

“Many young people waste too many hours on futile things,” the Pope said in a short speech to the altar servers.  “Our life is made up of time, and time is a gift from God, so it is important that it be used in good and fruitful actions.”

The Pope also listed activities as watching TV soap operas, smartphones and other similar items as things that could pull them away from serving others and making a difference in their families and community.

Pope Francis also told the youths that it is very easy to lose track of time when you are working with electronic devices and before you realize it hours have passed with nothing constructive being done.  He said that the time wasted on the internet and with electronics could be spent connecting to the Lord through prayer, meditation and study.

He called on the youths to create “a network not of wires, but of people.”

Israel Red Alert App Drives Some To Prayer; Drives Others Nuts

It’s an app that tells residents of Israel it’s time to take cover because a terrorist rocket is headed their way.

In other parts of the world, it’s an app that some people use to pray for the people of Israel…and for others, it’s a siren that’s driving them crazy.

Red Alert Israel has been downloaded over 780,000 times in the last week, with about half of the downloads happening outside of Israel.  The app was created in 2012 by software developer Ari Sprung and his partner Kobi Snir, who feared that some residents would not be able to hear the new “Red Color” emergency sirens in their homes.

“People were having a hard time,” said Sprung. “They couldn’t really sleep because they were too afraid they were going to miss the sirens. The app allows them to go to bed knowing the phone will wake them up in case of an emergency.”

The app gives a 15 to 90 second warning dependent on how close the resident lives to Gaza.

Some users, however, say the app is driving them crazy because of the amount of times it goes off during the recent terrorist assault.

“Every time a rocket was launched, my phone went haywire,” Dor Eldar, a 22-year-old dance instructor from Tel Aviv, told the Daily Beast. “I finally had to get rid of it. It was driving me nuts.”

In America and other western nations, users of the app have been seeing the app’s siren song as a call to prayer for the Jewish people.  William Koenig recently praised the app on the Jim Bakker Show.

“The beauty of this (almost a million people now have this app on their iPhone and I’ve been reading it very closely) is the prayer of support from Christians that go on. They can respond to these alerts and encourage people through prayers and comments. And it’s beautiful to see how many Christians right now have this on their iPhones so they can pray – so they can pray to God to cover and protect the state of Israel as these rockets fall,” Koenig said.

The app is available in the iPhone app store.

Israelis Using Smartphone To Track Rocket Attacks

Under attack from Hamas rockets?  There’s an app for that.

A new app has been made available for smartphones that allow Israelis to track the incoming rockets from Hamas and give themselves time to get to shelter.  Half a million people have already downloaded the app in just three days.

Many Israelis are seeing the app as vital because the traditional ways to inform citizens about incoming rockets was radio stations and television interrupting programming.  However, with the increased use of satellite radio, iPod and other electronic devices, many Israelis do not have a television or radio on 24 hours a day.

“It gives us a sense of control in a situation where there is no control,” writer and journalist Debra Kamim, who lives in Tel Aviv, told the Washington Post. “It’s especially useful at night because people are worried they won’t hear the sirens while they sleep, and this way they can have the phone next to their beds.”

The app includes a social element where users can post comments about attacks in their area, damage from any rockets that land and requests for help if necessary.

The app is available in English for users in the West to keep track of the rockets if they wish to pray for Israelis when a rocket is approaching them.  The app is available for iPhones, iPad and Android.

Facebook Page “Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted” Removed

A Facebook page dedicated to attacking and slandering Christians featuring a picture of an aborted baby Jesus was been taken down after protests from pro-life groups.

The web page featured a photo of the Virgin Mary holding an aborted Jesus who was wearing a crown of thorns.  The Virgin Mary was smoking a marijuana cigar looking as if she was very satisfied with aborting God’s son.

A spokesman for the group Catholics & Protestants Against Facebook Religious Discrimination said that this wasn’t a case of shutting down someone’s First Amendment rights but rather a case of hate speech.

“It’s one thing to say we’re atheists and we’re proud of it,” Cary Bogue said in a statement, “It’s another to say that [Jesus’s] mother should have aborted him.”

Facebook’s policies say they encourage discussion and permit parody on their site but do have a line when it comes to hate speech.

“While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition,” Facebook’s Community Standards page states.

Experts Warn Country Not Ready For EMP Blackout

Experts say that the catastrophic destruction of an electromagnetic pulse attack on the nation could be prevented but that most non-military groups and citizens are not ready.

The executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security says that technology to avoid losing power and electronics from electromagnetic pulse exists and that it’s financially viable to upgrade the nation’s power grid for this protection.

“The problem is not the technology,” Peter Pry told Fox News. “We know how to protect against it. It’s not the money, it doesn’t cost that much. The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way.”

Pry said the total cost to upgrade the entire nation is less than what is given in foreign aid to Pakistan each year.

The worst case scenario estimated from a 2011 study on the impact of an EMP on the electric grid would be 500,000 dead within the first few minutes.

NSA Recording System Can Catch 100% Of Nation’s Phone Calls

The National Security Agency has a program that is so powerful it can record all the phone calls coming out of a nation and provide them the chance to play them back over the course of a month.

A manager for the NSA compared the program to a “time machine” and said that any individual recorded by the machine can be listened to without that person’s permission or a warrant from a court.

The program is called MYSTIC and started in 2009.  The program has a component called RETRO, which stands for “retrospective retrieval”, which allows the user to search and play back phone calls from the previous month.

The program was initially proposed as a one-off operation but according to last year’s intelligence budget, five countries have come under the MYSTIC program and a sixth country was scheduled to be put in place by the end of 2013.

The program was disclosed by the Washington Post who withheld the names of the country confirmed to be under surveillance at the request of the government who claimed national security issues.

Hackers Target Internet User’s Routers

A new report is showing that internet routers have significant security flaws that could allow a hacker to take control of your computer without ever putting a virus onto the actual computer.

Security officials have found “backdoors” in routers produced by NetGear and Linksys, two of the biggest selling router manufacturers.  The security flaws allow a hacker to take control of the router and guide your web browser to fake websites that could look like Google, Facebook or a host of other sites.

The hackers would then steal personal information that you enter into the spoofed websites.

Many internet service providers give a cable or DSL modem with a built-in router that could be compromised by hackers depending on the manufacturer.

Security officials recommend placing a password on your router with an unusually long string of letters and numbers to make it unlikely a causal hacker will take the time to try and crack the long code.