Additional sessions judge's wife shot by 10-year-old son. PHOTO: FILE
LAHORE: Additional Sessions Judge Arif Mehmood’s wife Asia Bibi (35) died after she was shot by their 10-year-old son in Nawab Town area on Monday.
Soon after the incident at 9:15am, police reached the home of the judge in Nawab Town area and arrested the boy A*, sources told The Express Tribune. They also recovered the weapon – a 12 bore gun with an empty cartridge – from the scene.
His mother was taken to Jinnah Hospital where she died after about three hours. Police sources added that the judge reached the police station and abused police officials present, saying that the incident was an accident, while demanding to know why his son was arrested.
His wife’s body was handed over to him and he took it to his native city in Mianwali.
Sources in the police said that the judge and his wife had developed clashes over some domestic matter and used to exchange harsh words. Asia had accused her son of favouring his father. On Monday she snubbed her son as the judge had left for office. The child pulled out the gun and shot her, they stated.
However a duty officer at the police station claimed the incident was an accident as the gun went off when the boy was cleaning it in the morning
Samsung
has been forced on the defensive yet again over reports that its top-notch
smart phones are cheating at benchmark tests.
The
Korean company has denied its Galaxy Note 3 superphone exaggerates its performance when
it detects well-known benchmarks running, as was claimed Tuesday in an
extensive, well-documented report on the Web site Ars Technica.
"The Galaxy Note 3 maximises its CPU/GPU frequencies when
running features that demand substantial performance," Samsung said in a
statement to CNET UK.
A photograph of the fingerprint used to open an iPhone 5S could lead to identity theft, researchers say. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters
A German security company says spoofing the iPhone 5S's fingerprint reader can be used to beat the phone's "remote wipe" facility to carry out identity theft.
SRL demonstrates the hack on its website. It relies on the phone's owner using a number of defaults in the setup of the phone. It does not work against iPhones without a fingerprint reader.
The identity theft relies on the user enabling Touch ID on the iPhone 5S, having the "Control Center" facility available in the lockscreen so that the Airplane mode can be enabled rapidly, and not having two-factor authentication turned on for email accounts, especially their Apple iCloud account which is required to set up the device. Touch ID is an optional setting, but the others are default settings for the device.
SRL points out that Airplane mode can be enabled on a stolen phone from the lockscreen, which turns off wireless connectivity and so defeats the remote wipe facility.
It then shows that a photo taken with an older iPhone 4S of the phone owner's fingerprint can be good enough to create a "fake finger" on a laminated sheet, which is then lightly stuck to a real finger. That method was demonstrated by the Chaos Computer Club soon after the iPhone 5S's release.
Having created a spoof fingerprint to unlock the device - which must be done within three attempts or a passcode request is triggered, which is not available through a stolen phone - SRL points out that the attacker can see the owner's email address in the settings, and so can use an Apple website to request a password reset. That will be sent to the phone - and by rapidly turning off the Airplane mode to collect the email and then grabbing the password reset, and taking over the account. They could then put the phone back in Airplane mode.
Without two-factor authentication - which is an optional safeguard for iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts - there would be no way for the phone's owner to prevent the account takeover. Two-factor authentication provides a method to revoke permissions for various devices and accounts. It is presently available for iCloud accounts in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
The Control Center facility can also be removed from the lock screen in the Settings.
SRL said that the hack proved that "using fingerprints as credentials for local user authentication has two shortcomings when compared to passwords - limited revocation" (because fingerprints cannot be changed) and "credential spread" (because we leave copies of our fingerprints anywhere we touch).
They suggest that fingerprint readers still need to improve further. "Fingerprint spoof prevention would better be based on intrinsic errors in the spoof-creation process or on fingerprint features not present in latent prints (and become much harder to steal). Examples of such spoof-detection features are air bubbles contained in the glue often used for spoofs and minute details that are visible through a fingerprint sensor but not in a latent print," the researchers write. It suggests that a simple comparison of such air bubbles - which show up in their sensor data as white bubbles, which aren't found with real fingerprints - would "challenge hackers to improve their spoofing techniques
GTA Online: Rockstar has announced fixes for PS3 and Xbox 360
Rockstar has announced that an update file is now available for GTA Online, the troubled multiplayer extension to Grand Theft Auto V. Since the free download was released on Tuesday, thousands of gamers have found it almost impossible to access the new content, which allows players to meet up in an online version of Los Santos, where they can carry out out co-op missions, race cars or just chase each other through the streets with sub-machine guns.
The publisher has kept players up to date via its GTA Online Status page, where an assortment of problems, from disappearing save files to game-crashing bugs and poor connection with the Social Club service, have been reported. As the instability continued, Rockstar made the decision to disable the microtransaction feature, which allows players to buy in-game currency with real cash.
Currently, the update, which downloads automatically when GTA V loads, is only available to PlayStation 3 owners, but an Xbox 360 version is expected later today.
Until then, players are being offered a range of possible fixes for the key issue - the inability to progress past the tutorial race at the beginning. From Rockstar's site:
Some players have reported being able to get into the Tutorial race by re-downloading the Title Update, which can be deleted from Xbox Home or the PS3 XMB (Game Data Utility, NOT save data). Others reported having luck by selecting "Swap Character" from the Online tab within the pause menu, deleting the character that was unable to get into the tutorial, and then creating a new character. Going into GTAO in Solo mode may also help to allow completion of the tutorial. Some who were experience this issue have been able to get in just by trying again later.
Twitter's IPO filing has revealed a wealth of facts and figures about the company, its users and staff. Photograph: Steve Rhodes/Demotix/Corbis
After seven years of serving 140 character messages to the world, Twitter's IPO filing details the scale of its audience and its revenues for the first time.
Twitter has over 200m monthly users
As of 30 June, Twitter had 218.3m monthly active users, which marked an increase of 44% within a year.
Twitter's monthly active users hit over 218m in June 2013. Photograph: Benedict Evans/Twitter
For comparison, LinkedIn has around 240m users, but both are dwarfed by Facebook's 1.2bn users.
Around five tweets are sent per user per day
Twitter has 218.3m active users per month.
However, per day, Twitter only racks up around 100m active users, who collectively send around 500m tweets a day, which works out at 70bn characters, if everyone maximised their 140 character allowance per tweet.
That's about 22,580 War and Peaces per day.
Twitter's timeline is viewed 1.65bn times per day
When it comes to eyeballs on screen, Twitter's 218.3m monthly active users generate just under 151bn timeline views a quarter, which works out at around 1.65bn timeline views per day on average, or around 16 views per user per day.
Increasing revenues but still loss making
In 2012, Twitter's revenues increased by 198% to $316.9m (£197.4m), but the company made a loss of $79.4m for the year, although that was a reduction from a loss of $128.3m in 2011.
Advertising accounts for 87% of Twitter's revenue, of which it generates around $0.30 per 1,000 timeline views, or approximately $495,000 a day according to that metric.
Dick Costolo's not in it for the headline salary figure
Twitter's chief executive, Dick Costolo, took a large pay cut two months ago, taking his annual salary down from $200,000 to $14,000, for which Twitter gave no official reason.
Dick Costolo took a significant salary cut. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
However, Costolo received $8.4m in stock awards and $2.9m in options as of 2012. If Twitter's IPO goes as planned, both stocks and options should increase significantly in value.
Shares and millions
Evan Williams, Twitter's former chief executive and co-founder holds 12% of the company shares, while Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chairman and co-founder holds 4.9% and Dick Costolo holds 1.6%.
With the company estimated to be worth between $12bn and $20bn, that will see all three safely into multimillionaire territory.
Spam is one of Twitter's biggest threats
Spam is a problem for everyone across almost all communication methods. Twitter, however, sees it as one of its biggest threats to user growth, specifically mentioning it in the company's IPO filing.
Spam on Twitter refers to a range of abusive activities that are prohibited by our terms of service … including posting large numbers of unsolicited mentions of a user, duplicate Tweets, misleading links (e.g., to malware or click-jacking pages) or other false or misleading content, and aggressively following and un-following accounts, adding users to lists, sending invitations, retweeting and favouriting Tweets to inappropriately attract attention.
Twitter spam.
Despite the company's targeted efforts to tackle spam, Twitter estimates that around 5% of its user base is actually automated spam accounts or fake users.
Twitter is also worried that substantial spam could affect the company's user analytics and therefore the perception of performance, as well as user growth.
Growth isn't always a good thing for service
Although Twitter's service stability has improved over the past few years, the company is still worried about the infamous 'Fail Whale' outages returning due to the real-time nature of the service.
Although we are investing significantly to improve the capacity, capability and reliability of our infrastructure, we are not currently serving traffic equally through our co-located data centres that support our platform.
Accordingly, in the event of a significant issue at the data centre supporting most of our network traffic, some of our products and services may become inaccessible to the public or the public may experience difficulties accessing our products and services.
Twitter's infamous fail whale of old.
Twitter sees service availability as a key factor for its business – if Twitter is unavailable due to disruption, then users are going to go elsewhere.
Any disruption or failure in our infrastructure could hinder our ability to handle existing or increased traffic on our platform, which could significantly harm our business.
Potentially ready for Christmas
Twitter now has to carry out the traditional roadshows to court investors, but the timing of the company's public filing suggests shares could start trading in mid to late November.
The US government's shutdown might affect the timing of the IPO, however, as the US Securities and Exchange Commission must approve IPO filings
The effects of the government shutdown in Washington could also be felt on Sunday, as staff furloughs in key government departments made it difficult for journalists to obtain information.
The seizure in Tripoli of the alleged al-Qaida operative Abu Anas al-Liby prompted the Libyan government to issue an angry statement, questioning the US account that Liby had been detained with its full knowledge. The statement said: "As soon as it heard the reports, the Libyan government contacted the United States authorities to demand an explanation [for] the kidnapping of a Libyan citizen."
George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Sunday that Liby had been designated a "specially designated global terrorist" under executive order 13224 – an order issued by president George W Bush two weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Liby is also listed as a subject of the US rewards for justice programme, Little said, and is listed on the UN's al-Qaida sanctions list.
Liby was being "detained lawfully by the Department of Defense", a defence official told the Guardian on Sunday afternoon. The Libyan was indicted in New York in 2000, for his alleged role in bombings on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two years earlier.
The Department of Defence refused to give further information about Saturday's operation in Somalia, which it said was "aimed at capturing anal-Shabaab terrorist leader". US special forces approached a compound in Barawe and were engaged in a gun battle before pulling out.
A spokesman for the Department of Defense would not comment when asked why the operation used ground forces instead of drone strikes. The spokesman did not elaborate on why US special forces had been forced to withdraw before capturing the target.
The defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, on Sunday issued a statement that praised the raids in Libya and Somalia and said they showed America would "spare no effort to hold terrorists accountable".
"I want to commend all of the service members who were involved in the planning and execution of these two operations, which demonstrate the unparalleled precision, global reach, and capabilities of the United States military," Hagel said.
The Department of Justice will determine where Liby will be tried – at Guantánamo Bay or in a federal court – but reporters calling the department's press office on Sunday were met with an answer-phone message. The message said: "In the event of a lapse in appropriations this message will be listened to and responded to upon a funding resolution."
Attempts to contact the White House press office met a similar response. An answer-phone message said: "This office remains open during the lapse in appropriations but with greatly reduced staffing. We are available to handle urgent or emergency requests but no one is available at this time to take your call."
Marvel’s looking for the next Jane Foster. The character in Thor and Thor: The Dark World is an astrophysicist. Natalie Portman enjoyed getting to play a scientist, and she believes it’s a smart move to encourage girls to take on those kind of roles. Enter the Ultimate Mentor Adventure. The program will put young women interested in STEM fields (science technology, engineering, and mathematics) in the real world with successful women in those fields. They’ll get to ask questions and receive advice from women who have already blazed the trail. I think it’s one of the coolest things Marvel has done.
To enter the program, you must be 14 years or older and enrolled in grades 9-12. Once you complete an application form, you find a woman working in a STEM field in your area. Marvel has linked helpful resources to help you find someone. Finally, you create a video about yourself and submit it. The best videos will win a grand trip prize to Los Angeles to see the movie, participate in a documentary short, and to go behind the scenes of places like Disneyland.
Submissions are due by October 20 and even though winning is awesome, I think the best part will be finding a scientist to interview and receive mentorship from.
