Hasta La Gadget!

Powerful earthquakes can be terrifying, but imagine what would happen if you felt one while swimming in the sea.

A group of scuba divers exploring the ocean near the Philippines found themselves in a shaky situation on April 8 when a magnitude 5.7 earthquake rocked the sea floor below them.

The divers were nearly 60 feet deep in waters off the coast of Mabini in the Batangas province when the tremors started. The group was on their way to a depth of more than 130 feet.

“It felt like there was a huge propeller of a big boat turning around directly above us,” diver Jan Paul Rodriguez, who filmed the scary moment on camera, told Newsflare.

“We heard underwater the trembling of rocks under the ground and we felt the shock wave,” he added. “It hurt our ears, feeling heavy breathing and sudden changes in pressure.”

As seen in the video above, the sea floor appears to rumble below the divers, stirring the sand and marine life into a haze.

“The sea bed pumped up and down immediately followed by a strong shaking of the ground and the small rocks falling,” Rodriguez said.

A series of earthquakes shook the Batangas area the day the divers were rocked in the ocean, according to CNN Philippines. The strongest earthquake that day was a magnitude 5.9 and the weakest was a magnitude 5.0.

Noel Luistro, the mayor of Mabini, said the earthquake scared off tourists and forced villagers on land to retreat to higher ground in fear of a tsunami, according to The Telegraph.

“Our tourists left out of fear they may be affected by the earthquakes,” Luistro told a local radio station after the incident. “I need to declare a state of calamity.”

When the tremors stopped, Rodriguez’ dive leader aborted the dive and the group returned to ocean’s surface. No one in the group was seriously injured.

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Newly released documents offer a fascinating glimpse into how and why a national parks worker came to trigger the “alt Twitter” movement of disaffected federal employees in the age of the Trump administration.

A Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News turned up a note from one of the pioneers of the movement: a former seasonal worker at the Badlands National Park. 

The worker, whose name was redacted in the released information, highjacked the park’s Twitter account (@BadlandsNPS) four days after Donald Trump’s inauguration and tweeted several facts about climate change.

Why? Because the Department of the Interior had issued an order after Trump’s inauguration that all Twitter accounts within the department’s purview were to be suspended immediately. The order was issued after a National Park Services tweet compared photos of Barack Obama’s inauguration crowd to Donald Trump’s smaller numbers, reportedly infuriating the president.

But in an email from the “rogue” Badlands worker to a parks superintendent obtained by Bloomberg, the employee explained that he or she briefly took over the Badlands tweets because the worker feared censorship of important facts.

“Fearing a gag order on climate science I willfully sent out a series of tweets on the subject,” the worker explained. “I changed the password a few months back but when setting up a Twitter account for my own personal use discovered the cookies had left me logged into the Badlands account. I loaded the tweets … and proceeded to log out. I swear I no longer have the log-in information. I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

The tweets were quickly deleted, despite an outpouring of positive responses from the public. By the time the issue was sorted out, the worker was no longer employed by the park and no action was taken as punishment.

Within days dozens of other “alt” or alternative departments and agencies, purporting to represent the truth by rebels within the federal bureaucracy, began new Twitter accounts.

Earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a summons to Twitter ordering the company to reveal the identities of those running the Alt Immigration (@ALT_uscis) account. But Twitter refused and sued the department, and the feds backed down.

Most of the other documents obtained by Bloomberg about the Badlands’ Twitter incident praised the worker for going rogue and standing up to the Trump administration. Several hand-decorated postcards were sent thanking the site.

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Donald Trump has agreed to speak at the National Rifle Association’s upcoming annual convention in Atlanta, the organization has announced.

The NRA endorsed Trump for president last May and poured money into his campaign after he addressed the forum last year. Trump frequently spoke out in support of the right to carry guns and against “gun-free zones” on the campaign trail. At one point, he urged “Second Amendment people” to do something about Hillary Clinton — a call many viewed as urging violence against his rival, which he denied.

“If she gets to pick her judges ― nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said at a North Carolina rally last August, after suggesting Clinton would destroy gun rights. “Although, the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I don’t know.”

Trump’s Supreme Court judge Neil Gorsuch is a staunch backer of the Second Amendment. The president has also been hacking away at gun restrictions, most notably signing a law eliminating an Obama administration background check requirement aimed at blocking gun sales to certain mentally ill people.

The NRA is over the moon about Trump’s appearance on April 28.

“The NRA is honored to have the president address our annual meeting at the leadership forum,” spokeswoman Jennifer Baker told Bloomberg. “We’re excited to once again have a president who respects the Second Amendment.”

Trump’s son, Donald Jr., a big game hunter, is also a darling of the NRA. He headed up his father’s Second Amendment Coalition advisory group. He’s behind a current push to ease restrictions on the sale of silencers.

Trump is the first president to address the NRA’s leadership forum since Ronald Reagan did so 34 years ago. Dick Cheney spoke at the convention in 2004 when he was vice president. George H.W. Bush dropped his NRA membership in 1995 after an organization letter described some federal agents as “jack-booted thugs,” Bloomberg noted.

Trump’s secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, is also expected to speak at the forum, as are Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), according to the NRA website.

The convention, expected to be attended by some 80,000 people, will run from April 27-30. April 28 is the last day of government funding under the current spending bill. The government faces a partial shutdown if Congress doesn’t pass a new spending measure by then, and things could be tense back in Washington.

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The HTC U Ultra smartphone was launched earlier this year and from what we can tell, it appears to be HTC’s flagship phone for the earlier part of 2017 and does pack some pretty high-end specs. However its price of $749 does make it a bit pricey especially when you consider that there are more powerful phones out there that you can get.

However the good news is that you could potentially save yourself $150 because in a post on Reddit (via GSMArena), HTC is sending #TEAMHTC members a special code in which it basically knocks the price of the HTC U Ultra down by $150. This means that you’ll be able to get your hands on the handset for $599 which isn’t too bad of a price.

However like we said, this is only for those who received the code and if you haven’t, not to worry as some users on Reddit are giving theirs away, so you could try your luck there. Alternatively you can try and sign up to be a member here and see if you’ll get the code as well.

If you are a member of #TEAMHTC then do check your email as you should have received a code as well. Note that this is only for the US HTC store, so the coupon won’t apply to customers in other countries. If this offer intrigues you and you have the code then pop on over to HTC’s website to make the purchase.

HTC Knocking $150 Off The HTC U Ultra , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

So far Nokia’s recent handset launches scream anything but flagship/high-end, but we guess the company is easing back into things. That being said, we have heard rumors that there are a couple of flagship Nokia handsets planned in the form of the Nokia 8 and Nokia 9, and a recent post on NPU might have revealed some details.

As you can see in the diagram above, it allegedly shows sketches of both the Nokia 8 and Nokia 9 handsets. Given how sparse the drawings are, it’s quite hard to tell what the actual product will look like, but assuming they are true, both phones will be sporting some pretty different designs, such as how the Nokia 8 has a home button/fingerprint sensor on the front while the Nokia 9 does not.

However there is a portion on the back of the Nokia 9 that looks like it could be a potential fingerprint sensor, but it’s impossible to say right now. It is possible that it could have something to do with the Ozo audio feature that the handset was rumored to get. Other than that, both phones appear to feature dual cameras and near bezel-less designs.

Take it with a grain of salt for now, but details on the Nokia 8 are a bit scarce at the moment. However we have heard rumors that the Nokia 9 could be powered by a Snapdragon 835 chipset and could see a release in Q3 2017 with a price of $699.

Alleged Nokia 8/Nokia 9 Sketches Reveal The Phone’s Design , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.