Hexagonal Clouds May Explain Mysterious Disappearances Of Ships And Planes

Scientists claim that hexagonal clouds over the 1.3 million square km (500,000 square miles) of ocean between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico, could be creating huge 106kph (170mph) wind “air bombs” and can be as wide as 20 to 50 miles, which can create waves more than 45 feet high. This kind of force has the potential of destroying trees, knocking down ships and bringing planes crashing down when objects cross into the specific location between Bermuda, Miami, Florida and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Over the last 100 years, more than 75 planes and hundreds of ships are said to have disappeared and at least 1,000 people are reported to have lost their lives in accidents around Bermuda Triangle. These incidences also gave birth to intriguing theories including that of a lost empire within the depths of waters in the Atlantic and alien intervention. On average, four planes and 20 ships go missing every year.

Now, a report in the Daily Mail quotes scientists claiming that hexagonal cloud formations due to extreme weather conditions could be behind the disappearance of ships and aircraft.

“You don’t typically see straight edges with clouds,” Dr. Steve Miller from Colorado State University said. “Most of the time, clouds are random in their distribution.”

“These types of hexagonal shapes over the ocean are in essence air bombs. They are formed by what are called microbursts and they’re blasts of air that come down out of the bottom of a cloud and then hit the ocean and then create waves that can sometimes be massive in size as they start to interact with each other,” Dr. Randy Cerveny from the University of Arizona told the Daily Mail.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that something scientific and not superficial could explain what is behind the disappearances. The agency said that the disasters can likely be blamed on bad weather.

“The majority of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes pass through the Bermuda Triangle, and in the days prior to improved weather forecasting, these dangerous storms claimed many ships. Also, the Gulf Stream can cause rapid, sometimes violent, changes in weather,” NOAA said.

It would be better to take the news with a pinch of salt, as none of the theory into the clouds has been published in a peer-reviewed journal as yet.

Source: Daily Mail

Samsung Compels Video of GTA Galaxy Note 7 Mod to Be Taken Down

Samsung has apparently issued a DMCA takedown focussing on a hilarious YouTube video of a Grand Theft Auto V mod, which provides the Note 7 explosive, grenade-like capabilities.

“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and its affiliates,” the video now reads.

HitmanNiko, the Mod’s creator, clearly created the in-game feature to imitate the unfortunate situation Samsung has found itself in.

For those unfamiliar, Samsung is in troubled waters for the past one month and a half after its brand new Galaxy Note 7 phones were recalled after their batteries started exploding. The Samsung Note 7 has proved a nightmare not only for the South Korean giant but also the loyal customers who purchased the device. Note 7’s debacle has become a laughing stock in the tech world.

So much so that a “Grand Theft Auto V” mod was made by an innovative player that turns sticky bombs into Galaxy Note 7s. It just re-skins an existing weapon in the game to look like a cell phone for the sake of a topical tech joke.

While Samsung has managed to remove the video from YouTube, here’s another version of the video uploaded by a different user (via The Verge).

Soon, you may be interviewed by a robot for your next job

Jake Rosen, a recent graduate of UCLA, was taken aback when he was interviewed by a webcam, on a laptop instead of a human being while he was applying for a job at NBC. He recorded his answers and returned them to a hiring manager at NBC for evaluation at the company’s convenience.

So, how does this robo-interview work? You are given a question on the screen for which you have a limited amount of time to answer. You talk to your computer, record the responses, and send them back to the company. At times, prospective employees get a practice question to get used to talking to a camera, while at times they may not. However, most often you get a chance to re-record your answer at the end.

This kind of interview may end up being a boon for those people who are introvert, who need not go through formal greetings or be audible enough while answering a question. However, it may be a little awkward for many wherein you are compelled to stare at your big, nervous face as you wax on about why you want to work at the company. Essentially speaking it is more like performing for an invisible audience rather than having a conversation. Rosen felt nervous from the first question, as he was not used to being on camera. As a result, he was nervous for the rest of his interview, he said.

“I’m not a YouTube star, obviously,” he said. “It’s such a weird experience talking to a camera. It honestly was pretty horrible.” Jamie Black, who suffered through the video interview experience for a job at a school, said it felt “more like a game show than an interview.”

With the human-free video job interview is on the rise, it seems that this experience will soon become unavoidable for many of us.

HireVue, one of the handful of companies making video interview software, works with 600 large organizations, including JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, Under Armour, and most of the major U.S. airlines. The company is expected to do 2.5 million interviews this year, which is an increase from 13,000 five years ago. Almost 90% of those are “on demand” interviews, with nobody live at the other end.

The attraction of the video interview for a hiring manager is primarily efficiency.

“Companies want to get to know way more people,” said Mark Newman, the founder of HireVue. In a day, a recruiter can only get through so many 30-minute conversations. Further, this doesn’t include the time lost to schedule or on bad candidates.

Human resources staff members with a video interview have to only evaluate the answers, which they can do as per their own schedule and without travelling for on-campus recruiting. Hilton got down its hiring process to 4.5 days, which is almost 20 days shorter than the average interview process by using HireVue. This process helps companies save money. Cigna has cut travel expenses for recruiters from $1 million a year, in some cases, to under $100,000.

On the other hand, the advantage of robo-recruiting for a job candidate is convenience. Normally, a company will give an interviewee a day or two to complete the interview, which can happen anywhere. While this may sound like another advantage, but for Rosen it only added to his stress.

“You start to think about things you wouldn’t normally think about in interviews. I started thinking about my surroundings,” Rosen said. “I had to find a blank wall to sit in front of. … Should I put a bookshelf behind me? A plant?”

Recruiters say they don’t judge candidates on their performance, appearance, or location. “Judging is an interesting word,” said Heidi Soltis-Berner, the managing director for talent at Deloitte. “I would say the on-demand interview is truly for fact sharing.” Other recruiters said they do assess people on their eye contact and communication abilities.

The entire setup can be a bit trying even if hiring managers are instructed not to make decisions on how well a probable new employee can perform in front of a camera.

“You just see yourself and a stopwatch ticking down,” said Black, who said his answers often got cut off by the timer.

Black said that if and when he has to do it again, he would practice in front of a mirror with a stopwatch before the interview. When the interview is taking place, it may help to have someone sit behind the computer, Rosen said, as it would be like conversing with a person instead of a screen. Just stare at the camera so that you are not distracted.

However, the best advice might be to just relax.

Scott Mitchell, a recruiter for American Wedding Group, which uses video interviews to pre-screen the 1,900 independent contractors it works, said, “It’s OK to come across as uncomfortable in front of the camera, because everyone is. We all assume you’re going to be uncomfortable. We’re putting you in an uncomfortable position.”

Human interaction hasn’t be entirely replaced by the robo-interview. It is often used as a replacement for first-round screening interviews by many companies, which is later followed by more traditional one-on-ones.

However, this kind of interview might not be happening for interviewees who would prefer the traditional way of interview. With the video interviews, organizations can look at more people and a more varied set of people, and also additionally save money.

“Candidates will generally say, ‘I would have preferred an in-person interview to this,’ but that’s not the right comparison,” HireVue’s Newman said. “The alternative is no interview at all.”

Do you think the future of job interviews is here? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Source: Bloomberg

Yet Another Video Streaming Service Bites The Dust, Putlocker Shuts Down

Putlocker.is was one of the most popular video streaming services among file-sharers and torrenting community before it went offline without any explanation a few days ago. Putlocker.is has now been offline for more than three days and has shown no sign of revival. The site currently shows a CloudFlare error message suggesting that its servers are unresponsive. Similarly, the operators themselves have yet to indicate any signs of life.The website currently displays a CloudFlare error message indicating that its servers are unresponsive. The site operators haven’t indicated any signs of life either.

The website currently shows a CloudFlare error message suggesting that its servers are unresponsive and a cached copy of the website. Similarly, the operators themselves have yet to indicate any signs of life.

• Putlocker is dead | Top 3 alternatives | Watch Free Movies- 2018

Putlocker.is ranked 250 on Alexa and was visited by millions of visitors from the world over. It was particularly popular in the US, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

However, a few days ago Putlocker suddenly went offline. A brief downtime period sometimes happens to these type of websites, but the prolonged one raises concern among users, who are already voicing their frustration online after running into yet another CloudFlare downtime banner, indicating them that Putlocker’s servers are still unresponsive.

Torrent Freak reports that they could not reach Putlocker.is team at their last known support address, as the email returns an error message as well. The problems were believed to relate to the site’s servers since the domain name itself was operating as it should and hasn’t been seized or suspended. However, the Whois information of Putlocker.is has been updated and now shows a new owner.

The industry watchers noticed that the downtime occurred right after the MPAA reported Putlocker.is to the United States Trade Representative, calling it one of the largest piracy threats. The movie group revealed that Putlocker operates from Vietnam, and its servers are hosted at the Swiss company Private Layer. However, it is unknown whether there’s a direct relation between the report and the current Putlocker’s downtime.

Tech luminaries laud Legendary Programmer, Dennis Ritchie … 5 years after death

Sometimes it seems that tech big shots live in their own world. If you are following some of these tech luminaries you will find that they are paying tribute this evening to computing pioneer Dennis Ritchie.

Dennis Ritchie is a true pioneer of tech. It would not be out of place to say that the laptops and PCs that we use today is because of  Dennis Ritchie. The New-York born pioneer was among the early Bell Labs alumni and is credited with both creating the C programming language and co-developing Unix that powers much of tech today.

Unfortunately for the tech biggies mourning him today,  he actually died five years ago.

Ritchie was an internationally renowned computer scientist who created the C programming language. He also made significant contributions to the development of the Unix operating system, for which he received the Turing Award in 1983.

However, tech wizards like Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai seem to be too engrossed in their work to know this basic fact. Sundar tweeted out Wired’s five-year-old obituary on Ritchie, thanking him for his “immense contributions.”

Om Malik, a partner at True Ventures and the founder of tech site GigaOm, retweeted Pichai’s tribute before soon recognizing his mistake and tweeting an apology for “adding to the confusion and noise.”

What followed was kind of a RIP orgy with Craig Newmark, founder of the popular online bulletin board Craigslist tweeting “this guy made a huge contribution to the world.” He was followed by many more who seemed to forget that Ritchie died five years ago and would be squirming in grave seeing the second set of condolence messages he was getting.

With all due respect to Ritchie, the tweeps following these tech big shots were just playing follow the leader and tweeting out obits without trying to find out the truth. It’s sad that nobody from the tech world remembered that Ritchie died five years ago at his home in Berkeley Heights, NJ after a long fight against prostate cancer and heart disease.

Are we alone in the universe? UFO ‘120 times faster than plane captured on air traffic radar’

New Zealand news channels were abuzz with the news of UFO sighting. The news was first aired on News Now which showed a super-speed flight was picked up by a tracker website which uses radar to pinpoint where a plane is.  This irrefutable proof has led UFO hunters and enthusiasts to state that this is perhaps the best proof that aliens exist.

The air traffic radar shows an object travelling, and was said to be 120 times faster than a standard plane, from New Zealand to Canberra in Australia.As such speeds are yet out of the realm of humans, it can be safely deduced that there is some extraterrestrial intelligence at play.

In addition to the air traffic radar, a local New Zealand TV station also alleged to have captured evidence of an object around the same time that it suggested could be the UFO responsible. According to the broadcast, the tracker gave the flight the name ZED-KG-DG, which did not relate to any known flight.

Some UFO websites have described this as an irrefutable proof while UFO enthusiasts are elated at getting such a clear video. One person posting online said: “New Zealand news reported that the unknown object was travelling at a speed 150 times faster than a normal jet.

The video has it part of naysayers. One viewer also posted a comment, saying that what was shown in the video is perhaps just a technical glitch in the system. NASA was also blamed for hiding data earlier this month when they cut off a live stream when a suspected alien craft was flying near the International Space Station (ISS).

True or not, there’s no stopping UFO hunters and enthusiasts from searching for the truth and gathering significant evidence proving that UFOs and aliens exist.

Anonymous hacker in the second week of a hunger strike in prison to protest against torture and political prosecutions against late activist Aaron Swartz

Except for the hackers and Anonymous community nobody remembers late Aaron Swartz.  Aaron Swartz was a member of the online activists grouping Anonymous and was arrested in 2011 by FBI on charges of hacking. What happened after that is not known but one fine day Swartz committed suicide. The Anonymous community feels that Swartz committed suicide due to torture and political persecution by FBI and US Department of Justice officials.

What happened to Swartz and another Anonymous member, Jonathan James is now a matter of speculation. But the fact remains that the two of world’s  most wanted hackers had committed suicide and no one still knows why. Swartz and James, both hackers by profession and members of Anonymous plus both were most wanted by the FBI have committed suicide in face of the federal investigation against them for hacking crimes.

However, there is one guy, a member of Anonymous who has undertaken a fast to protest against what happened to the likes of Swartz and James. Martin Gottesfeld, 32, a member of the online hacktivist group, Anonymous, began the hunger strike on October 3 and has already lost eight pounds. Gottesfeld faces charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after allegedly being involved in the hacking of Boston Children’s Hospital in 2014 following the apparent mistreatment of one of its patients.

A video released by the hacker collective Anonymous in 2014 called for attacks against the hospital in response to the controversial Justina Pelletier child-custody case. The video claimed that 15-year-old Pelletier was held against her will by the State of Massachusetts and was “tortured physically and mentally.”

Above is a letter from Gottsfeld to all those who care about Swartz and the inhuman torture being practiced by FBI and federal authorities.  Gottesfeld says he will continue the hunger strike until two demands are met. Firstly, he has asked for the U.S. presidential candidates to promise to help ensure children are not mistreated in the way he claims Pelletier was.

“My motive for the strike is to get pledges from candidates so that something can finally happen after decades of children being tortured, abused and killed,” Gottesfeld tellsNewsweek through his wife Dana Gottesfeld.

“It’s inexcusable for the death and abuse of so many children go unpunished. We should do better for America’s youth.”

Gottesfeld’s second demand is that the authorities should end the political torture of Anonymous members. He has specifically called for an end to the “political” style of prosecution waged by Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts.

Gottesfeld faces up to five years in prison and a $380,000 fine. A FreeMartyG campaign has been launched by his friends, family and supporters to help raise awareness of his case.

Pornhub announces $50,000 reward for information about robbery at Kim Kardashian’s hotel room

If you have any information regarding the robbery that took place in Kim Kardashian’s hotel room, you stand to win a $50,000 reward from adult video sharing website Pornhub.  Reality star Kim Kardashian’s hotel room in Paris was broken into by unknown robbers on Monday who decamped with  $11 million worth of jewellery including her $4.35 million engagement ring given to her by husband Kanye West.

Pornhub’s Vice President Corey Price said in a statement: “Here at Pornhub we were deeply saddened to hear about the horrible incident involving Kim in Paris.”

“We consider Kim to be a member of the Pornhub family and want to do all that we can to ensure that the perpetrators of this heinous crime are brought to justice.

“We are calling on all of our fans from around the world to come together and work collectively to provide any and all information relating to the crime so we can capture the criminals,” the statement read further, reports dailystar.co.uk.

Mother-of-two Kim was left shaken following the horrifying incident and flew back to New York on a private jet. She is cooperating with French police.

The Pornhub currently hosts the TV star’s infamous tape which leaked back in 2007. Shot in 2003, the tape shows Kim with singer Ray J.

Chinese firm bans staff from buying iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

Can owning an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus cost you your job? Sounds ridiculous right! Well, it is not for company in Nanyang City, Henan province, in China, who has asked its entire staff from buying the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus. And, anyone who is found to have purchased the Apple products, will be sacked.

The memo, signed off by the firm’s administrative department, reads: “The American iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have been launched and official prices are between 5,388 to 6,388 yuan [£624 to £740]. As the internal storage capacity increases, the price of the mobile phone also rises accordingly.

“According to our managing director’s orders, all our employees are strictly forbidden to purchase and to use iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Anyone found disobeying this order must immediately resign from the company.

“Beloved colleagues, if our finances are healthy and our economic conditions allow it, please let us take better care of our parents’ health, be more concerned about our children’s upbringing, be more aware of how precious life is, more involved in our country’s welfare. Only if we do this, can we ensure long-term prosperity and happiness? Do not waste your effort on those luxuries that will only squeeze our hard earned money dry.

“Today, 18 September, is a day that all Chinese people will never forget. Never forget our national humiliation, make sure to remember your history. Boycotting foreign products needs to start with you.

“We cannot go to the battlefield to protect our country, but we will work hard in our own capacity and in our designated positions. In our daily lives, we must boycott products from Japan and the US. Use your actions to support our own goods, as only if you have a nation, can you have a home.

“Please take special notice of this memo and be sure to abide by it.”

After the notice was posted on Chinese social media, it raised wide debate online getting mixed reaction on the news. While some people have commended the company for its tough stand on foreign products and its patriotic views, others point out that the action was invalid since it violated China’s labour law.

The purpose of the notice was to encourage the employees to pay more attention to their family instead of material goods, explained an office clerk with surname Liu.

However, he said that the company itself was further discussing the notice.

“For those who had already bought an iPhone 7, I think the company won’t fire them,” Liu added.

Watch: 8-year-old girl accidentally knocks out drone with impressive golf shot

Never did the eight-year-old golf prodigy think that showing off her golf skills would knock a camera drone out of the sky.

Manly’s Ruby Kavanagh, who is ranked No. 1 for her age in golf in Australia, was practicing her skills at the Magenta Shores Golf Course in New South Wales when her ball collided with the camera drone that was filming her. The owner of the drone was her uncle, who is the creative director of the website Dronegear, Alex Kavanagh. As he told Mashable via email, his drone “got a bit lower than I should have and looked away for a second,” and next minute, the drone was down.

Alex Kavanagh, Ruby’s uncle, said the drone was about 40ft in front of his niece, and 25ft high, when she hit it.

“We were trying to get footage for a showreel,” he said.

“I was trying to get that front-on shot and it got a little lower that it should of … it just hit that sweet spot.”

Video of the incident, featuring footage shot both from the ground and by the felled drone, was posted to YouTube by Ruby’s uncle. The footage has also been picked up by the likes of ESPN and the Golf Channel.

The drone will cost in excess of $1,000 to repair. The Yuneec Typhoon H copped a broken leg, a broken boom on its arms, two broken propellers and a semi-twisted camera.

“We loved this drone,” said Alex. “It’s got to go in for repairs, but will be back up and running and staying clear of those golf balls next time!”

Ruby has been called a golf prodigy, as she boasts a 140m drive, and has already appeared twice at the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship.