Android 4.4.3 arriving on Samsung Galaxy S5 this month and S4 in July

A leaked document online shows that the Samsung Galaxy S5 is slated to get an update to Android 4.4.3 later this month and that its predecessor, the S4, can expect it next month.
The latest update to the popular mobile operating system began rolling out to Google Nexus and Motorola devices earlier this month. It makes sense that the largest manufacturer of Android devices (and indeed smartphones in general) will begin rolling out updates to its flagship handsets as quickly as possible after launch.
Although there are no major changes, bug fixes are in plentiful supply and the Dialler has been redesigned. This won't be present in Samsung's update though as the dialer is customized through TouchWiz.

The information originates from a document leaked to Android Geeks entitled 'KTU84 Update Status Report'. It lists development of the update for Galaxy S5 models SM-G900F and SM-G900H as being 'completed' with an ETA of June and development for Galaxy S4 model GT-I9506 as being in 'final testing' with an ETA of July.
Android Geeks warns, however, that although the dates sound as though they could be correct, the document originated from an anonymous tipster and advise to take the report with a pinch of salt. It does looks similar to other leaked internal Samsung update documents though that haa since proved correct so it could be a matter of just days, or at most, weeks before both S5 and S4 owners are running the latest edition of Android once again.

How Switzerland Scored The Most Dramatic Goal Of The World Cup So Far

In a sudden turn of events in the final seconds of their opening match, Switzerland took advantage of Ecuador's own missed opportunity and scored the most improbable and dramatic goal of the World Cup so far, giving the Swiss the win with just 20 seconds remaining.
It looked like Switzerland and Ecuador were headed towards the first tie of the World Cup. But in the final minute of stoppage time, Ecuador took advantage of a bad pass by Switzerland and started what looked like a promising counter-attack.

 

Ecuador's Antonio Valencia had a full head of steam and with four defenders back, it looked like he had a direct path to the goal and a chance for an open shot as the defenders were waiting for the cross.

 

As a defender closes in on Valencia he plays a perfect cross to an open teammate.

 

But instead of taking a one-timer or an immediate shot, the Ecuadorian player hesitated, allowing two Swiss players to converge on the ball and close off any shooting lanes.

 

 A nice sliding tackle by one defender causes Ecuador to turn the ball over without even taking a shot.

Rather than defend the ball, three of the Ecuadorian players are now standing around and showing their disgust at the missed opportunity. This leaves Switzerland with an advantage on the attack.
Sensing the advantage, one player for Ecuador appeared to intentionally try to draw a foul so his team could reset.

Instead, the referee allowed the play to continue which allowed the attack to continue and effectively took another Ecuadorian player out of the play.

Amazingly, Ecuador has left themselves in a position where the Swiss have a 6-on-4 advantage in the final seconds of a tied match. A long cross to the other side sets up the final play.

However, the play almost never happened as a high bounce on the pass nearly sent the ball out of bounds. Instead, Ricardo Rodriguez manages to get a toe of his boot on the ball and keep it in bounds.

 

Rodriguez manages to control the ball and move towards the box. Meanwhile, Haris Seferovic, who delivered the pass to Rodriguez from the other side, is now sprinting past the defenders in the box.

 

A perfect pass from Rodriguez around the defender left a wide-open Seferovic with an easy shot into the top of the net.

 

 The referee would blow the whistle 20 seconds later and the match was over and the celebration was on.

 

Especially for the Swiss Cheeseheads.

Faisalabad industrial zone: Chinese group to invest $2b, set up largest spinning unit

According to officials, the textile park will create job opportunities for thousands of people, estimated at more than 35,000. PHOTO: FILE

FAISALABAD: A major Chinese group has purchased about one-fourth of land in an industrial zone, run by the Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (FIEDMC), and is expected to make an investment of $2 billion to set up a big cotton spinning facility.
Shandong Ruyi Technology Group has bought 1,036 acres of land out of the total area of 4,500 acres. It will name its part of the project as “Shandong Ruyi Textile Park”, officials say.
Overall, 72% of land has been sold in the M3 Industrial City, one of the largest schemes in the country. Many leading industrialists of the city, known as Manchester of Pakistan, have also acquired big pieces of land for setting up industrial units.

Shandong Ruyi, the fifth largest textile company of China, will establish a 600,000-spindle spinning factory in the industrial estate, which will become the largest spinning unit in Pakistan.
According to officials, the textile park will create job opportunities for thousands of people, estimated at more than 35,000. Shandong Ruyi has its own cotton fields in Australia and Vietnam from where it will import cotton to meet the needs of the spinning mill.
To meet its energy requirements and avoid disruption of work, the company will install a 135-megawatt coal-based power plant to run its unit. After fulfilling its requirements, the company plans to sell surplus electricity to other industrial units.
“This provides a huge opportunity to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply for running industrial units,” said Amir Saleemi, Chief Operating Officer of FIEDMC, in an interview to The Express Tribune.
According to him, the spinning mill will have an annual capacity to produce 157,000 tons of yarn, 500 million metres of Batik fabric, 100 million metres of denim fabric and 10 million pieces of jeans.
The Chinese group would also provide energy to other textile units, easing the pressure on Sui Northern Gas Pipelines, he said, terming it a big project that would open doors to employment opportunities and bring foreign exchange.
The group has split the project into two phases. In the first phase, it will set up the largest textile mill and in the second phase workshops and equipment, vending and packing units will be established over an area of 536 acres. Apartments for employees will be built over 200 acres of land as per international standards.
Overseas investors
“New businessmen and investors are also investing in the industrial estate, particularly overseas Pakistanis from Dubai, United Kingdom, United States and other countries,” said Saleemi.
The estate would play host to textile, pharmaceutical, food, cereal, cosmetics, electrical panel and power industries as well as rice processing factories, he said.
According to Saleemi, Pakistan’s largest private-sector steel mill has already become operational there while the biggest rice processing unit will also be set up.
Value-addition chains, spread over 225 acres, for small and medium-sized industries had already started working in designated zones, he said.
This is a gigantic project which will play a vital role in boosting national output. It will take at least two years before big industries become operational. According to the rules and regulations, businessmen, who buy plots, are bound to construct factories within two years.
Coal-based power plant
Overall, 650 mills will be established in the industrial estate. Few of them have already started working including the steel mill. They will receive uninterrupted electricity supply from a 100MW coal-based power plant that the management will develop.
To facilitate new investors, FIEDMC has sold plots on installments spread over four years, a period when investors will be able to build their units and start production, making it easier for them to pay installments. “Our motive is ‘pay as you earn’,” said Saleemi.
The company will also provide a combined effluent treatment plant to reduce the cost of production. Duty-free access to the European market would also bring new investors, Saleemi said.

iFind Bluetooth location tag throws out the batteries

We've seen wireless tags for locating items, or your smartphone, before, like Nokia's Treasure Tag or HTC's Fetch Tag. iFind, however, is a class above the rest, because without a battery, this thing, like that iconic Energizer rabbit, will just keep on going and going and going and going.

You might wonder how this tag will run without batteries. After all, it still has electronics inside it. According to makers WeTag, they are employing a patent pending process they call Electromagnetic (EM) harvesting, which gathers the kind of energy that is regularly emitted by things like Wi-Fi trasmitters, cellphone antennae, and more. The energy is then stored in specialized power banks to juice up the tag. And by using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the tag consumes even less energy than regular Bluetooth devices.

This innovation affords iFind a few interesting advantages over other tags of its kind. First is that it is promised to last a lifetime, at least in terms of operational duration. It doesn't have batteries to recharge or die on you, so that you get to use the tag 24/7 without fear of a drained tag just when you need it the most. It also keeps the tag small and thin. It can easily be slipped into a wallet without adding any bulk. In all other aspects, the tag works just as any device of its class. You can pair as many iFind tags as you want with a smartphone running Android, or iOS, as long as the device and OS version supports Bluetooth 4.0. Each tag has its own unique ID which you can pass to friends to help you look for a tag, and whatever's attached to it, using the smartphone app. Looking for a tag is like a game or Marco Polo, but the app does try to estimate directions and distance to help you. Inversely, if it's the smartphone that you've misplaced, just shake the tag vigorously to trigger the app's alarm.
For now, iFind is only a Kickstarter project, but it seems to be quite popular, managing to raise $443,000 when it was only asking for $25,000. That allowed it to hit many of its stretch goal features, including one that will let users set a configurable distance before the tag triggers the alarm. If it manages to reach the $500,000 goal before the campaign ends in 14 days, WeTag will be adding a "Last Seen GPS Location" feature that will help narrow down the location of the tag, though the tag itself will not have any GPS hardware. All in all, not that bad for an immortal, wafer-thin tag that costs $18 on Kickstarter, $30 if you want it to come in pairs.

To meet energy needs: Pakistan, China to establish Special Purpose Vehicle

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in a meeting with the Chinese officials on Saturday. PHOTO: PID

ISLAMABAD:  As a measure to ease the deepening energy crisis, Pakistan and China may soon establish a specialised company to construct the 1,100-megawatt (MW) Karachi coastal nuclear power project that would aid the work being completed on a fast-track basis.

The issue of setting up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), a company being set up to achieve limited objectives, was discussed during a meeting between the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Chinese Ambassador to Islamabad, Sun Weidong, according to officials.
The meeting was also attended by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) Chairman Ansar Pervez and Attorney General of Pakistan Salman Butt.

The officials said that China also agreed to release a loan tranche of $330 million for carrying out work on the project. The PAEC will build the power plant Karachi Coastal Power at an estimated cost of $9.5 billion or Rs958 billion with the help of Chinese assistance. Out of the total cost, China will provide a loan of $6.4 billion.
It will be the second mega project after Chashma 3 and 4 power plants, known as C3 and C4, which are also under way with the help of China. Beijing is providing $1.3 billion out of the total cost of $1.9 billion of C3 and C4.

In an attempt to increase power generation, Pakistan is turning its attention to producing nuclear energy on a relatively bigger scale. According to the Energy Security Action Plan, the share of nuclear power will be increased in electricity production by installing 8,800MW nuclear power plants by 2030.
Nuclear plants will provide electricity at cheaper rates compared to power produced from thermal sources. At present, the country is experiencing a widening gap between power supply and demand, leading to extensive outages that disrupt life and business and shaves 3% off economic growth annually.
For Karachi Coastal Power, the government has allocated Rs12.2 billion in the budget for the next financial year 2014-15, beginning July. The officials said both countries decided to set up a project specific company as the government cannot spare Rs100 billion to Rs125 billion each year out of the thin federal Public Sector Development Programme.
They added the rupee component will still be shown in the PSDP. However, it was not immediately clear whether the $6.4 billion loan will be the liability of the company or the Pakistan government.
The government has decided to adopt a fast-track policy for the implementation of the projects starting with the Chinese cooperation, an official handout of Ministry of Finance quoted Finance Minister Ishaq Dar as saying.
It added as the country was experiencing a gap between power supply and demand, there was a need for early completion of ongoing energy projects which can help tackle energy shortages.
Dar stated that that these efforts were not only creating attractive opportunities for Chinese investment but new avenues of employment and trade were also opening for the people of Pakistan.
The Ambassador discussed avenues for enhancing bilateral cooperation in various fields between the two countries and appreciated Pakistan’s plans for the development projects initiated by the present government, the handout stated.

The Leap Motion Controller

 A tiny device with huge possibilities.

The Leap Motion Controller tracks both hands and all 10 fingers with pinpoint precision and incredible speed. That wide-open space between you and your computer is now yours—to play, create and explore. Reach into another world without actually touching anything.

More details: https://www.leapmotion.com

The science behind Brazuca, the official ball of the 2014 World Cup

Brazil still needs to complete three stadiums, but their official soccer ball, the Brazuca, is perfect, scientists say.

Image:Adidas/Wikipedia

A conventional soccer ball has 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons, good enough for a friendly match with your mates. But that design is so last century when it comes to the innovation needed for the 2014 World Cup.
Researchers in Japan compared the stability of the Brazuca, the official ball of this year’s World Cup, with other soccer ball designs used over the past five years, including the 14-panel Teamgeist 2, which was introduced in the 2008 Euro Cup, and the Jabulani, which was used at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
They tested the balls in wind tunnels to see if the wind changed the trajectory mid-air or if it affected the side and lift forces. Over at the LA Times Karen Kaplan explains the results of three tests:
The wind tunnel experiments revealed that the Brazuca was tops when it came to the stability of the drag forces (or air resistance) acting on the ball. All of the balls were tested in two different orientations, and the results for the Jabulani and the Cafusa were quite different depending on which side of the ball was facing into the wind. But the plots for the Brazuca were nearly identical in both conditions.
Another set of wind tunnel tests measured the side and lift forces of the balls as their (simulated) velocity increased from 20 to 30 meters per second. (In reality, the balls remained stationary and the wind blew faster.) Once again, the Brazuca performed well (though the Teamgeist 2 was better) and the Jabulani performed poorly.
In the final set of tests, each soccer ball was struck 40 times (20 times in each of two orientations) by an “impact-type kick robot” that delivered the ball to a goal net 25 meters away. The Brazuca and the conventional ball were most likely to wind up in the same part of the net after each kick. The flights of the other balls changed quite a bit depending on which side was facing the kicking robot.
The 8-panelled Jabulani, designed by Adidas, got the worst scores when it came to drag and both players and coaches have criticised its design, claiming that its trajectory tends to change direction.
But soccer teams will be happy with the Brazuca, also designed by Adidas. It has a circumference of 27 centimetres, six X-shaped panels that guarantee constant weight and roundness.
Let the games begin!