Hasta La Gadget!

Since the end of 2007, police in the UK have run a secret network of fully-furnished fake apartments and townhouses, solely for the purpose of capturing local burglary suspects. These are called "capture houses."

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The UK government announced last December that it was building a “Cyber Reserve” to protect itself, and now it has a few more details to divulge. Crucially, rather than merely focusing on defending the country from attacks, it’ll also have an “offensive capability” to help it act as a deterrent. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said Britain needs to be able to “strike back in cyber space against enemies who attack us, putting cyber alongside land, sea, air and space as a mainstream military activity.”

Although it’s a fair guess to suspect that other countries are honing offensive cyber skills too, the Financial Times reckons that the UK is the first nation to admit it’s doing so. According to Hammond, the strikes could be used to disable enemy chemical weapons, communications, planes, ships and hardware. As for the forces carrying them out, they could be given a budget of up to £500 million ($800 million). Work on the Joint Cyber Reserve is already underway, with reservist recruitment scheduled to start next month. If the required physical military test intimidates you, there’s nothing to worry about: a less rigorous version will be used to let those of us with desk-bound physiques protect (and fight for) the Queen.

Filed under: Misc

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Via: Financial Times

Source: Daily Mail

If you’ve been looking to get your hands on Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear, boom, they’re here. The company has kicked off another of its world tours to announce availability of its 5.7-inch smartphone and new smartwatch in 58 countries. In the UK, an unlocked Galaxy Note 3 will set you back £649 but it’s also available on nearly all of the major carriers (we’re still waiting to hear from Three) — starting at around £30 on a traditional contract, or free if you decide to sign up to a new early-upgrader tariff. The Galaxy Gear retails at £299, but Samsung thinks you could use a £100 discount if you bundle it with an unlocked Galaxy Note 3, for a total cost of £848. Customers in the US, Canada and Japan, however, will have to wait ’til October — though pre-orders are already open.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Samsung

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Source: Phones4U, O2

There are those with free time, and then there’s Joseph Braybrook. This fine bloke managed to recreate some 86,000 square miles of Great Britain within the Minecraft universe, and moreover, it took but a fortnight to concoct. Further justifying his work as more than goofing off, he used Ordnance Survey terrain data in the world’s construction, leading Graham Dunlop, OS Innovation Lab Manager, to proclaim the following: “We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data.” The new universe contains over 22 billion Minecraft blocks, and once players have downloaded the 3.6GB file, they’re free to build at will. Just don’t go planting any US flags — that’s just downright rude.

Filed under: Gaming, Alt

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Via: VG247

Source: BBC

Not content with flogging other companies’ tablets, today UK supermarket chain Tesco is launching one of its own. Priced at £119 and available from September 30th, the Hudl features a 7-inch (1,440 x 900 resolution) display for watching those Blinkbox titles in 720p, a quad-core Rokchip 1.5GHz processor, stock Android 4.2.2, a microSD slot for supplementing the 16GB of internal storage and, according to Tesco, a battery that’ll last around 9 hours on a full charge. Some of the specs, such as dual WiFi antennae and stereo speakers on the rear face seem carefully designed to square up against Amazon’s elderly (and soon-to-be-replaced) Kindle Fire HD, which, at £160, may suddenly look expensive beside the Hudl. Amazon, however, can claim the stronger ecosystem, while Google’s £199 Nexus 7 boasts better all-round hardware.

The device is slightly chubby and plasticky, as you’d expect, but it’s not some rebadge. Tesco says it worked directly with a manufacturer (Archos, as it turns out) to produce a tablet of its own design. Also, to the retailer’s credit, the tablet feels sturdy, which seems to be a theme of certain optional Hudl-branded accessories, too. These include a pair of headphones and a rubbery case intended to make the slate more child-friendly. Tesco says it’ll double the value of ClubCard vouchers put towards a Hudl purcahse, meaning customers can pick one up for free if they have enough points for a £60 voucher. There’s also an offer coming for Blinkbox vouchers, designed to tempt you into Tesco’s content ecosystem that complements its first foray into hardware — we hear the promotion starts next week and vouchers will be half-price, so you’ll be able to get £20 of streaming content for a tenner.

Sharif Sakr saved up all of his ClubCard points for this report.

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Filed under: Tablets

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