Tech Knock

Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario: What if your favorite cryptocurrency exchange starts offering Bitcoins at the lowest price you can imagine, i.e., zero dollars? For one user trading on a Japanse exchange, this scenario happened in reality. A massive blunder at Zaif, a government-registered exchange, allowed customers to buy Bitcoins with zero yen value for about 20-minutes. As per a  Reuters report , the exchange is run by Osaka-based Tech Bureau Corp. After discovering the error on 16th Feb, the exchange voided all the trades and corrected the balances of users. Free Bitcoins worth $20 trillion?? However, the exchange was still trying to resolve issues with one user that tried to transfer a huge amount of Bitcoins. The report states that the user in question bought about 2,200 trillion yen worth of bitcoin at a negligible price and further tried to cash it out. In US dollars, this amount converts to about $20 trillion. This is even more surprising as t...

Nest on Wednesday officially added Google Assistant to its $299/£299/AU$479  Nest Cam IQ Indoor . The necessary hardware is already  inside  the 1080p HD security camera, according to the  smart-home brand , so you simply have to launch the free software update to start using voice control.  Google Assistant  is Google's voice AI that responds to the wake phrases "Hey, Google" or "OK, Google" on the  Google Home ,  Home Mini  or  Home Max  speakers. It's also built into most Android devices and available for iOS folks via the Google Assistant app. Third-party devices like the  First Alert Onelink Safe & Sound  will offer Google-Assistant-equipped versions later this year.   Enlarge Image Your Nest Cam IQ Indoor security camera now has a built-in Google Assistant speaker. But the Nest Cam IQ Indoor is the first Nest product to offer Google Assistant natively. This is all part of a...

lthough I have a special place in my heart for this mobile operating system, I won’t say I am aware of every hidden Android feature that exists. But still, people who own a device want to explore it to the fullest. The same might go for most of the users. Being an owner of a Moto device, I am apparently deprived of the Android O update. But thanks to a friend of mine who lent me his expensive Pixel, I got to have a hand on the latest dessert from Google. Android’s most recent upgrade now runs on only 1.1% of Android devices worldwide, as per the numbers released by Google in February 2018. Certainly, it is an improvement over Nougat with features like Picture-in-Picture, system-wide autofill functionality, and Notifications improvements, and additional developments like Project Trebble. But people always have the urge find what they prefer to call hidden Android features. Personally, it has been hard for me to digest the term, as most of them are a few taps awa...

While Elon Musk might be busy making plans to take humans to Mars and impress people with SpaceX’s upcoming internet satellite launch, notorious hackers don’t know how to take a break. As detected by cloud security firm RedLock, the hackers were able to take control of Tesla’s poorly secured public cloud account to mine cryptocurrency. The hackers infiltrated Kubernetes console of Tesla, which didn’t have any password protection. Well, they can claim that it would be unfair to blame them entirely. With the help of one Kubernets pod, they were able to access Tesla’s AWS account containing important telemetry data. Hackers also used one pod to perform cryptocurrency mining. Unlike the usual mining methods, hackers installed mining pool software and configured the mining script in such a way that standard security means failed to spot the malicious activity. Moreover, they also used CloudFlare to hide the true IP of the mining pool, making the detection process more ch...

Hyperloop One’s parent company Virgin has dropped some concrete details about their plans to bring Hyperloop to regions across the globe. Last year, India bagged 2 out of 10 routes selected for laying futuristic Hyperloop tunnels. According to the  latest announcement , the Mumbai-Pune route could witness the world’s first hyperloop test track to facilitate ultra high-speed travel between the two cities. It will be built as a part of the partnership between Virgin Hyperloop One and the Maharashtra state government. The operational demonstration track is expected to get completed in a time span of three years linking Mumbai, Navi Mumbai International Airport, and central Pune. And the test rides could start as soon as 2021. Virgin’s Hyperloop pre-feasibility studies have shown that after 30 years of operation the Mumbai Pune route could provide a socio-economic benefit of INR 350,000 crores ($55 billion) and cause a reduction in the emission o...

When it comes to porting software to potentially unsupported devices, hackers are quite comfortable to push themselves beyond the boundaries set by the manufactures. In the past, determined minds have hacked their way into installing Windows XP on iPhone 7 or Windows 7 on an Android smartwatch. Now, it’s the turn of the Nintendo Switch gaming console. It seems the Nvidia Tegra-powered device can do a lot more than playing games and powering cardboard pianos: transform into a working Linux tablet. Almost two weeks ago, the collective called fail0verflow teased the first image of their booting Nintendo Switch Linux tablet on Twitter. They have released a minute long video showing off the capabilities of the Switch featuring a Linux distro, better call it ‘switchnix.’ The video shows the device supporting touch controls and working web browser. As fail0veflow said in the past, the bootrom bug they exploited to load a Linux distro on the Switch ca...

The S9 is the sole headliner of the Mobile World Congress trade show, with LG, Huawei and HTC among the big players holding back their best phones for later. If last year's Mobile World Congress trade show was a Royal Rumble of phones, this year's conference is more akin to WrestleMania -- if  Samsung is perennial winner Roman Reigns . The 2017 edition of MWC faced a giant hole when Samsung opted to launch its Galaxy S8 at a later, separate event at Carnegie Hall in New York. That vacuum gave comeback kids BlackBerry and  Nokia  the opportunity to shine. Samsung is back in a big way at MWC. But Samsung's back, and no one else really wants to play. While MWC has been a nexus of discussion about future tech like 5G, virtual reality and really, really wonky network terminology, it's a must-see for any handset fanatic because that's where you're likely to see some of the biggest phones of the year. The event, which brin...