urbanwalk

Elite Delta Force Unit kills ISIS Leader Abu Sayyaf

2015-05-18T04:58:00.003-07:00

Members of the Army’s elite 1st SFOD-D, or Delta Force, encountered heavy resistance and had to fight “hand to hand” during Friday’s raid in southeastern Syria that killed senior ISIS commander Abu Sayyaf and 12 of his bodyguards, according to defense officials.

The Delta Force commandos flew to the scene in Ospreys and Black Hawk helicopters, landing “on the X” at a multi-story building. They immediately met fierce resistance as they entered the compound. The operators engaged in CQB, or close quarters battle, with Sayyaf and his detachment of bodyguards, even trading blows “hand to hand” as they rushed the building, two defense officials told The Daily Beast.

The vehicles were flown by pilots from the Air Force Special Operations Command and the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. All of the officials spoke off the record because they were not authorized to discuss the raid publicly.

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North Korea test-launches ballistic missile from submarine

2015-05-14T02:00:00.002-07:00

On May 9, a Korean People's Army Naval Force submarine test-launched a ballistic missile off the eastern coast of North Korea. The test launch, reported by North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, only traveled about 150 meters, according to South Korean defense officials. But it demonstrated that North Korea had developed the capability of performing submerged launches of missiles well ahead of previous intelligence estimates. Based on the launch, South Korean officials now believe that North Korea could have a limited submarine-launched missile capability deployed to its fleet of submarines within the next five years.

The test comes as South Korea nears a decision on the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system. China has been pressuring South Korea to not allow the deployment, but an earlier, barge-based test of the submarine-launchable missile (named "Polaris-1" by North Korea) on April 22 has made the deployment more likely.

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Roza Shanina From Kindergarten Teacher to the Worlds Deadliest Woman Sniper

2015-05-05T18:18:00.002-07:00

Roza Shanina in 1944 (photo wikipedia)

When a college-educated kindergarten teacher walked into a Soviet Union military center during the fire and rage of World War II, it did not seem as strange then as it may sound now. It was late 1941, a year that ended with the death of her first brother during the siege of Leningrad. She was initially turned away by the local military commissariat who knew how hot it was at the front, but after losing two more siblings, in 1942 Roza Shanina finally succeeded in joining the 2,484 Soviet women serving their motherland as snipers.

“The key thing about the Soviet snipers was their impact on Soviet morale,” said David H. Lippman, author of World War II Plus 75: The Road to War. “They provided the ‘workers’ state’ with ‘workers’ heroes.’” But after Shanina made it through the Central Female Sniper Academy, military deployment plans nearly kept her away from the raging battle entirely — despite a widely held Soviet military belief that women soldiers made good snipers because of their greater physical flexibility and, true or not, their cunning, patience and ability to endure combat hardships better than their male counterparts.

Not one to be deferred or diverted after her initial attempts, Shanina began what would be a very short but significant march to greatness. It may feel strange to measure greatness by numbers of other humans killed, but the Soviets faced a fairly existential dilemma: Win or perish. It was April 1944, near Vitebsk, where Shanina killed her first Nazi soldier. Within a month, she had taken out about 17 more.

Under heavy artillery fire, her commanders decided to withdraw, but Shanina ignored orders and continued to support advancing infantry columns — and not just as a sniper. She captured German soldiers and was wounded herself. Her exploits earned her military commendations and wide renown among her countrymen, as well as in the West. She returned to battle soon thereafter, fighting in a battalion that lost 72 out of its 78 soldiers. A battle she survived.

Though not for long. Shanina was finally felled in January 1945, her chest torn open by an exploded artillery fragment. But before her death at the age of 20, she had managed 54 — some sources say 59 — confirmed kills in less than a year’s time.

By April the war was over: Nazi Germany was defeated and in flames, and Shanina had secured a legacy for the ages. And when you consider other significantly grim records of sniper success — 109 confirmed kills by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Adelbert Waldron over two years in Vietnam and the estimated 255 kills by Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (of American Sniper fame) during his 10 years of service — Shanina stands out for dispatching the most in the least amount of time.

The Soviet Union was still fighting when she died and, all told, over the course of the conflict Soviet women snipers were collectively responsible for 11,280 kills, by conservative estimates. But if history notes anything in Shanina’s case, it is not so much her kill number but the fact that she eagerly pursued a difficult, dirty and dangerous job for a cause: the continued existence of her homeland.

M.G. Sheftall, technical adviser on the History Channel series Dogfights and author of Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze, points out that Shanina’s desire to fight was so fervent that she made the bold decision to go over her superior officers’ heads and write to Stalin personally to ask that she be deployed to the front lines. Says Sheftall, “It shows a level of stones and guts that makes the lack of a major motion picture about her damned near confounding.”

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Germany Builds A Solar City That Produces Four Times The Energy It Consumes

2015-05-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

When it comes to clean energy, most people in green communities believe the future of power usage will be solar energy. Initially, such a belief would only be delegated to a dream given the fact that the first solar panels were arguably insufficient in proficiency.

That is no longer an issue as the Inquisitr previously reported numerous upgrades solar panels have gone through over the years, especially one in which they look just like glass panels for windows. Nevertheless, some countries are not waiting for the window-like solar panels to be assimilated into green tech as certain countries like Peru and Bangladesh aim to be countries living off of older designs of said solar panels.

Though Peru and Bangladesh both have green technology endeavors that are admirable, the primary reason they are switching to solar energy is to provide electricity to their citizens who do not have access to their power grid. However, a city in Germany was made specifically to run solely on solar energy. As a matter of fact, the solar city produces four times more energy than what the city consumes.

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How to Install & Use a Chromecast

2015-05-03T12:19:00.002-07:00

The Chromecast is a $30 device that lets you wirelessly stream anything from your web browser, most likely video, to your HDTV. First let’s go over what you need in order to use and set up your Chromecast. You’ll need an HDTV, a WiFi network, and a smartphone or computer.
When you first open the box you’ll see a quick start guide on the inside cover, and you’ll see the Chromecast itself. The Chromecast is small, about the size of a thumb drive, and it has an HDMI connector on the end. The rest of the box includes a USB cable, an HDMI extender, and the power adapter.

The first step is to plug the small end of the USB cable into the Chromecast. Next, connect your Chromecast to one of your TV’s HDMI ports. If your Chromecast cannot fit into the area near your HDMI port you’ll need to use the HDMI extender to give it a little more room to fit properly.

Next step is to power the Chromecast. There are two different ways to do this: one is to use a USB port on your TV if it has one. If it does, just plug the USB cable into it and it will power the Chromecast. If your TV does not have a USB port, you’ll need to plug the USB cable into the power adapter and plug the power adapter into an outlet.

Once your Chromecast is powered on and connected, next step is to change your TV’s input or source to the HDMI port that your Chromecast is connected to. Once you’re on the correct HDMI input you’ll see a screen like this.

To set up the Chromecast you can use a smartphone, tablet, or computer but I’ve found it works best with a smartphone so let’s do that but the process is the same on a computer. Open your web browser and go to http://Chromecast.com/setup, and that will open a page with a link to the App Store so click on that. The App Store will open the Chromecast app so click on Install. It is a free app. Wait for it to download and install then open the Chromecast app. Accept the terms. It’ll scan for Chromecasts.

Click Set Up a New Chromecast. It says to go to your phone’s Wi-Fi settings and select your new Chromecast. Look for the same device name you’re seeing on your TV screen. Mine’s Chromecast8436. Yours will be different. Select it and wait for it to connect. Once it’s connected, go back to the Chromecast app and it should say it found a new Chromecast. Then hit Next and make sure your input source is showing the Chromecast so that you see the code on your TV screen then hit Next. Choose your country. Here you can give your Chromecast a custom name.

On the next screen tap choose WiFi network and select your WiFi network from the list then enter your WiFi password. The Chromecast will connect to your WiFi network, and when it’s done you’ll see that it has been set up successfully and you’re ready to start casting.
You can cast from your smartphone, tablet, and computer as long as they are connected to your WiFi network. It works with many different apps and to see the full list you can visit http://Chromecast.com/apps. To start casting from your computer you’ll need to be using Google Chrome which is a free web browser that you can get from http://Google.com/chrome.

Once you have Chrome on your computer, open it and search Google for “Chromecast extension” and click the first result. Click the “Free” button and add the extension to Chrome. Once it has been added you’ll see the new Chromecast icon in the top right of your browser. That’s what you’ll click to cast to your TV.
For example to cast a YouTube video to your TV, while on the YouTube video watch page you can click the Chromecast icon in the bottom right of the video or click on the Chromecast icon in the top right of your browser and choose your Chromecast in the drop down menu. Once you do that it will start to play the YouTube video on your TV. Pretty cool huh. And this works with any browser window in Chrome, and it also works with sites like HBOGO and just many more different websites.

Now I’ll show you how it works on your smartphone or tablet. First make sure your phone or tablet is connected to your WiFi network. Then open a compatible app such as YouTube and now you’ll see a Chromecast icon in the app or on the video that’s playing. So tap on that icon and choose your Chromecast name and it will send the video straight to your TV. And when the video is playing through your Chromecast you don’t have to keep your phone unlocked. You can lock your phone and the video will continue to play on your TV which is awesome. To stop casting just tap the Chromecast icon again and tap Disconnect. That is how to set up and use your Google Chromecast!

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First Photo of New Armata T-14 Tank from Russia

2015-05-03T11:53:00.002-07:00

Russia's Defense Ministry on Tuesday published the first official photo of the country's much awaited new T-14 Armata battle tank.

Ten Armata tanks are set to take part in Moscow's Red Square Parade on May 9, according to details published alongside a photo of the tank in an interactive section dedicated to Victory Day on the ministry's website.

The Armata is part of a massive rearmament program costing hundreds of billions of dollars that aims to restore some of the military might that Russia lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Photos claiming to show the weapon were leaked on the Internet in late March, when tanks covered in tarps and resting on a train carriage were spotted in Alabino outside Moscow.

The tanks were reportedly rehearsing their movements for this year's Victory Day Parade, when Russia celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

The ministry's newly launched interactive portal specifies the lineup for each Victory Day parade planned for 26 cities across Russia — including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and Crimea's Sevastopol.

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Introduction to Programming Languages - Infographic

2015-04-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Islamic State declares caliphate in Yemen, vows to “cut throats of Houthis”

2015-04-27T03:19:00.001-07:00

Iraq and Syria, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, the Philippines — but nothing to be concerned about: Obama and John Kerry and David Cameron and every other Western leader assures us that it has nothing to do with Islam. “ISIS Says It’s Established A Caliphate In Yemen,” by Jamie Tarabay, Vocativ, April 24, 2015:

Supporters of the Islamic State say they’ve declared a caliphate in the deserts of Yemen, where government forces are battling Shiite Houthi rebels, and Al Qaeda fighters are gaining ground amid the chaos.

In a nine minute video published online, the group calls itself Soldiers of the Caliphate in Yemen. They appear, all masked, in a desert landscape and number a dozen or so, bearing automatic rifles. They go through shooting exercises, and crawl through the sand on their elbows while carrying their weapons. In the end they face the camera and the man at the forefront sends his greetings to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph of the Islamic State. The fighter and several others direct their threats to the Houthi rebels, who are reported to be backed by Iran, and have been fighting the Yemen government for years for greater political representation….

“Yemen: Isis in New Video Says ‘We have Arrived’ to ‘Cut the Throats of Houthis,'” by Johnlee Varghese, International Business Times, April 24, 2015:

Islamic State (Isis) in its first official announcement, declaring its presence in Yemen, has released a video in which it says that the “soldiers of the Caliphate” have arrived in the country to “cut the throats” of the Shiite Houthis.

In the 9-minute-20-second video recorded and edited in top-notch Hollywood style, dozens of Isis militants are seen walking across what is claimed to be the deserts close to Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. It also claims that the high-quality clip was produced by the Isis Media in Sanaa.

In the video, posted on Friday, the Isis militants are seen carrying out military drills armed with AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle. Then an Isis fighter, who appears to be the commander of the militants, thrusts an Isis flag into the ground and declares that he will “cut the throats of all Houthis.”

“We have come to Yemen, with men hungry for your blood to avenge the Sunnis and take back the land they have occupied,” the Isis commander said in the video. Then he appeals all Sunni men of fighting age in Yemen to join them for the cause.

The new video released by Isis has come just a day after a new group calling itself the Islamic State’s Green Brigade took responsibility for a bombing in Yemen that had allegedly killed five Shiite rebels.

In a message on Twitter, the Isis Green Brigade in Yemen claims that it had struck a vehicle of the Houthi rebels in Yarim in the central province of Ibb on Wednesday, AFP reported….

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Dan Fredinburg, a respected Google executive who headed privacy for Google X and lead its product management team, has died in the avalanche on Mount Everest

2015-04-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

Dan Fredinburg, a respected Google executive who headed privacy for Google X and lead its product management team, has died in the avalanche on Mount Everest which was triggered by the huge earthquake in Nepal. The natural disaster has already killed over 2,000 people in the region and devastated infrastructure. Some 18 other climbers have been killed in what is being described as the worst earthquake to hit Nepal in the last 80 years.

By all accounts, Fredinburg was an experienced climber who had also co-founded Google Adventure, a company team that filmed Google Street View images in “extreme, exotic locations like the summit of Mount Everest or the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.”

Fredinburg’s sister Megan confirmed his death via his Instagram account, while Google’s privacy director Lawrence posted the following earlier today: “Dan Fredinburg, a long-time member of the Privacy organization in Mountain View, was in Nepal with three other Googlers, hiking Mount Everest. He has passed away. The other three Googlers with him are safe and we are working to get them home quickly.”

He added that Google’s Crisis Response team has launched Person Finder for Nepal, and “is working to get updated satellite imagery to aid in the recovery effort. Google.org is committing $1M to the response, and we’ll have gift-matching available soon.”

Fredinburg co-founded a climate change nonprofit, Save The Ice, and a startup accelerator in San Francisco called The Laundry, aimed at taking technology to emerging markets.

Some friends of Fredinburg have put up a Crowdrise allowing others to donate to causes he supported.

You can donate to other organisations working in Nepal during the disaster including

the Red Cross and Oxfam.

TechCrunch passes on its condolences to Dan’s family and friends.

full story here

Apple Watch Teardown

2015-04-26T16:45:00.002-07:00

full story source

Tesla’s Site And Twitter Account Hacked

2015-04-26T16:39:00.002-07:00

Looks like it’s going to be a rough Saturday for Tesla’s IT department: they’ve just had both their website and Twitter account hijacked.

Update, 3:50 P.M: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s personal Twitter account was seemingly hijacked briefly around this time, as well.

The first signs of the hijacking popped up around 1:52 P.M. pacific, when a tweet from the account declared that it was now under the control of its attackers, and the account’s name was changed from “Tesla Motors” to “#RIPPRGANG”.

A few minutes later, the account began promising free Teslas to those who followed certain accounts or to those who called a certain phone number. A quick search suggests that the number belongs to a computer repair shop in Illinois, and was presumably tweeted out to flood the number’s owner with calls. We’ve censored the number in the above screenshot for obvious reasons.

At nearly the same time, Tesla’s website was edited to declare that it’d been hacked by the same attackers. As of 2:15 p.m., the site had been taken offline — but in the hours since, it’s returned with the hijacked page multiple times. Its Twitter account, meanwhile, still seems to be hijacked. (We’ve avoided linking directly to any of the hacked sites in the off chance that the sites themselves were made to compromise the user’s security.)

Update: At around 2:45 P.M pacific, or roughly an hour after the Twitter account was compromised, it was restored. Tesla’s site is still offline.

It’s not unusual for a high-profile Twitter account to get hijacked — many of the most followed accounts in the world have fallen at one time or another. Taylor Swift’s account, for example, was hacked just weeks ago. That both Tesla’s Twitter account and the website were hacked simultaneously, though, points to an issue beyond a one-off Twitter security failing.

It’s unclear if the hack compromised the security of Tesla’s own servers, or if the site hijacking is a result of something like DNS/domain redirection. We’ve reached out to Tesla for comment here.

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GMAIL Cheat Sheet - Infographic

2015-04-25T11:15:00.001-07:00

How the Internet Works

2015-04-23T05:16:00.001-07:00

History of Android - Infographic

2015-04-23T05:03:00.001-07:00

Computer Hardware Chart

2015-04-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Raspberry PI - Getting Started Infographic

2015-04-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

Inside a Hard Drive Infographic

2015-04-23T04:40:00.001-07:00

found on makeuseof.com

How Do I Start Mining Bitcoins

2015-04-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

Google Operators Cheat Sheet

2015-04-23T04:31:00.001-07:00

How to Secure your Facebook Account by Kaspersky

2015-04-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Aircraft Carriers Comparison. Chart

2015-04-22T08:51:00.002-07:00

SIMDA Botnet that enslaved 770,000 PCs worldwide comes crashing down

2015-04-13T11:08:00.002-07:00

Law enforcement groups and private security companies around the world said they have taken down a botnet that enslaved more than 770,000 computers in 190 countries, stealing owners' banking credentials and establishing a backdoor to install still more malware.

Simda, as the botnet was known, infected an additional 128,000 new computers each month over the past half year, a testament to the stealth of the underlying backdoor trojan and the organization of its creators. The backdoor morphed into a new, undetectable form every few hours, allowing it to stay one step ahead of many antivirus programs. Botnet operators used a variety of methods to infect targets, including exploiting known vulnerabilities in software such as Oracle Java, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight. The exploits were stitched into websites by exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities and exploit kits such as Blackhole and Styx. Other methods included sending spam and other forms of social engineering. Countries most affected by Simda included the US, with 22 percent of the infections, followed by the UK, Turkey with five percent, and Canada and Russia with four percent.

The malware modified the HOSTS file Microsoft Windows machines use to map specific domain names to specific IP addresses. As a result, infected computers that attempted to visit addresses such as connect.facebook.net or google-analytics.com were surreptitiously diverted to servers under the control of the attackers. Often the booby-trapped HOSTS file remains even after the Simda backdoor has been removed. Security researchers advised anyone who may have been infected to inspect their HOSTS file, which is typically located in the directory %SYSTEM32%\drivers\etc\hosts. People who want to discover if they have been infected by Simda can check this page provided by AV provider Kaspersky Lab. The page is effective as long as a person's IP address hasn't changed from when the infection was detected.

full story here

Is this China’s next generation stealth fighter bomber?

2015-04-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Although China is known to be working also on a new stealth fighter bomber, we don’t know much about the H-20, as the aircraft is believed to be dubbed.

The long-range strike aircraft should be built around the concept of a subsonic, radar evading, flying wing configuration and some scale models have even appeared at aviation exhibitions.

While previous artworks depicted shapes of Beijing’s LRS (long-range strike) inspired to several existing U.S. planes, including the F-117 Nighthawk, the YF-23 and the B-2, a new image has recently popped up on the prolific Chinese Internet.

It shows a manned tactical plane, with internal weapons bay as well as external pylons which carry stand-off missiles. The cockpit reminds the one of the Soviet-era Su-24 Fencer, a side-by-side two-seater.

The “new” shape seems like an evolution of previous concepts, even though it may well be just fan art.Last but not least, the new stealth bomber is depicted as flying over the disputed Senkaku islands.

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Google kills 200 ad-injecting Chrome extensions, says many are malware

2015-04-06T13:05:00.003-07:00

Google is cracking down on ad-injecting extensions for its Chrome browser after finding that almost 200 of them exposed millions of users to deceptive practices or malicious software.

More than a third of Chrome extensions that inject ads were recently classified as malware in a study that Google researchers carried out with colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley. The Researchers uncovered 192 deceptive Chrome extensions that affected 14 million users. Google officials have since killed those extensions and incorporated new techniques to catch any new or updated extensions that carry out similar abuses.

The study also found widespread use of ad injectors for multiple browsers on both Windows and OS X computers. More than five percent of people visiting Google sites have at least one ad injector installed. Within that group, half have at least two injectors installed, and nearly one-third have at least four installed. Google officials don't bar such ad injectors outright, but they do place restrictions on them. Terms of service for Chrome extensions, for instance, require that the ad-injecting behavior be clearly disclosed. Customers of DoubleClick and other Google-operated ads services must also comply with policies barring unwanted software.

The crackdown comes less than two months after the discovery that Lenovo sold computers that came preinstalled with adware from a company called Superfish. Not only did the software inject ads into search results; it also hijacked encrypted Web sessions and made users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks that could completely bypass HTTPS protections.

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Artists secretly install 100-pound Edward Snowden statue in Brooklyn park

2015-04-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK — Dressed in reflective yellow construction gear while working under the cover of darkness early Monday, a small group of artists installed a tribute to NSA-leaker Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn park.

The Snowden bust stands atop a column at the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, a site built to honor more than 11,000 American prisoners of war who died aboard British ships during the American Revolutionary War.

"We feel that Snowden's actions really continue that story," said the artists. "It is built upon a set of ideals to live freely, not be confined or surveilled or monitored by your government. You can’t have freedom of expression to pursue liberty if you feel like you're doing it under a watchful eye."

The three artists — two of whom who planned the idea while a third created the "museum-quality" sculpture itself — spent the better part of year on the project.

Their hard work paid off: Animal New York's Bucky Turco, who exclusively documented the installation Monday morning, said it looks so official that "over a dozen people walking their dogs passed by the new bust on Monday morning without noticing the unsanctioned piece."

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