MONTHLY TECH NE WS FROM BLACK KNIGHT !WHAT’S INSIDE

SPRING CLEANTECH TIP GOOGLE UPDATES LOGO

VOLUME 046 | September 2015

TechTimesLaser Pointer Hack Easily

Dupes Driverless Cars

Top 30 Ashley Madison Passwords are just as Terrible

as you think...

comparatively ingenious

The top passwords of 2014 will make you feel

Tips to

clear out

space on your iPhone

Spring clean

your PC #googlelogo

#logo

#font

6 apps to Spring Clean your house...

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/193629620/clubhub-see-your-game-in-a-new-way?ref=category

The first ever portable golf swing analysis and shot tracking system. A fully integrated personal, portable, and affordable golf sensor system, ClubHub allows golfers to:

• See real-time data for every shot - on course or on the range

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• View 3D images of their swing to instantly analyze path and motion

• Share swing and round data with an instructor or friends

See in-depth map views with GPS distances to any point on the hole

Full Swing Analysis capturing swing speed, face angle, angle of attack, tempo, transition angle

Whether you’re looking to improve your game, build on a recent golf lesson with your instructor, or just have fun diagnosing your swing data and stats from your latest round, ClubHub lets you see your game in a whole new way!

SIMPLE SETUPThe sensor on each club works with an app to automatically analyze your swing and track your shots from tee to green on the range. To get started, just place the sensors

into each of your clubs. After a quick, one-time pairing process, simply launch the app on your iPhone or iPad and you’ll be ready to play.

ACCURATE SWING ANALYSISClubHub delivers what no other club sensor can: real-time swing analysis data from the course or the driving range. Take a swing and instantly see your data on the app, including:

• Club Head Speed • Face Angle

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• Transition Angle

ClubHub - See Your Game In A New Way

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TECH TIPS TECHNOLOGY NEWS

ClubHub - See Your Game In A New Way

Laser Pointer Hack Easily Dupes Driverless Cars

A simple off-the-shelf laser pointer could be combined with a very basic computer to disrupt the multithousand-dollar laser ranging, or Lidar, systems installed in most self-driving cars, a security researcher warned last week.

A setup that costs about US$60 could trick the Lidar system, which autonomous vehicles use to sense objects in the road, into responding as though there were obstacles ahead in situations where there were none, said Jonathan Petit, principal scientist at Security Innovation.

That type of hack wouldn’t cause the driverless car to crash, but it could force the vehicle to slow down or even stop. In a worst-case scenario, the spurious signals could force an autonomous vehicle to remain stationary due to its sensing of phantom obstacles. Any sort of malicious attempt on a vehicle’s software is a concern.

The automotive industry must begin to take a more proactive and holistic cybersecurity approach. The recently announced SPY Car Act will help kick-start these efforts. Fully securing a vehicle in the next two to three years will be a difficult task, but collaboration with the security community will be pivotal to accomplishing it.

Top 30 Ashley Madison Passwords are just as Terrible as you think...

Yes, you heard it correct!First the Password Cracking Team 'CynoSure Prime' cracked more than 11 Million Ashley Madison’s passwords in just 10 days (quite an achievement, though), now a member of the team shares the same list of passwords with few calculations.

Out of 11 million passwords, only 4.6 million passwords were unique, and the rest were such weak and horrible ones that one could even think.

While going through the list of password, top 5 used were:123456 by 120511 users12345 by 48452 users

password by 39448 usersDEFAULT by 34275 users

123456789 by 26620 users

Honourable mentions in this weak list include ashleymaddison (6213), password1(5959), hello

(4425) and monkey (4296).

Article from - Khyati Jain (12.09.15) fromhttp://thehackernews.com/2015/09/ashley-madison-passwords.html?m=1

Article from - Peter Suciu (8.09.15) fromhttp://www.technewsworld.com/story/Laser-Pointer-Hack-Easily-Dupes-Driverless-Cars-82463.html

Did you notice a difference on google this month?

Don’t Google it now, but the world’s largest search giant has a new — wait for it — logo. First they changed their name, now they’ve changed their logo. Google introduced a new sans-serif and slightly toned-down four-colour logo on Tuesday in the biggest redesign since 1999.

The new font for the search giant’s name includes the same colours as the previous font. But serif font is so August, 2015 — the new font is a sans-serif variety. There is also a new compact version of the logo that shows just the letter ‘G’ in the company’s red, yellow, green and blue colours.

Google said the new design would soon be seen across all its products. Google’s homepage introduced the redesign with an animation that wiped away the old logo and drew the new one.

“Google has changed a lot over the past 17 years – from the range of our products to the evolution of their look and feel. And today we’re changing things up once again,” the company said in a blogpost.

The company said the redesign was meant to reflect the way that people interact with Google products across many different platforms, apps and devices.

Siri has interrupted a White House briefing

and you can watch the hilarious video

Hey, keep it down back there. Yeah, you with the mechanical voice, sshhh. Our requests for silence aren't working - Siri's been causing trouble again, this time interrupting a White House briefing. Fortunately the attention-seeking tech didn’t get gobby with the big man himself, President Obama, instead butting in during a media discussion on America’s foreign policy. While something of a nuisance, Siri’s comedic timing is hard to fault. Piping up during a talk on Obama’s Iranian policy, the iPhone-enabled assistant chimed in: “Sorry, I’m not sure what you want me to change.”This isn’t the first time Siri’s sassy nature has caused trouble, oh no; Apple’s digital PA has serious history. Watch Siri’s White House interruption and see if you can spot the person responsible for the gaff. Hint - the lady sat behind the speaker’s left shoulder does little to hide her guilty, Siri-stirring ways.

Luke Johnson (12.09.15) - http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/news/a668070/siri-has-interrupted-a-white-house-briefing-and-you-can-watch-the-hilarious-video.

html#ixzz3lfXFdLRD

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There are dishes in the sink, the cat is crying to be fed, the light bulb in the hallway has burned out, the trash is overflowing, the floor crunches when you walk on it, and whatever is making that smell in the fridge needs to be exterminated.

The comprehensive one: TodyGet a grip on that broom handle with Tody ($3, iOS; Android users should check out House Cleaning List), an in-depth and practical way to put frequent chores and tasks on a recurring schedule. To start, designate which areas of your home you’d to monitor—like your living room, kitchen, or office, then either select from a wheel menu of common tasks (mop floor, clean sink) or select “other” to enter in a custom task.

It works, too. After a few weeks of using Tody, my house was cleaner than it had been in years because I was regularly remembering to sweep the cat hair off of the stairs. Tody was organizing my chores according to “indicators of actual need,” so essentially I could see what needed to be done most. And because I can custom enter-in both areas

and tasks, I’ve found Tody to also be a helpful reminder for both personal grooming (Pluck e y e b r o w s ! ) , and for digital r e m i n d e r s (Defrag hard drive! Clean monitor!).

The foul-mouthed, motivational one: Unfilth Your Habitat

Everybody needs a Get-a-Grip Friend someone who will call you on your B.S. and help you suck it up and do what needs to be done. Unfilth Your Habitat ($2; iOS and Android) is the app version of that friend, essentially bullying you into upgrading your abode one small step at a time with a plethora of curses—and we are talking frequent, constant cursing, so if a blue streak is not your style, please proceed no further. After the tag line (“terrifying motivation for lazy people with messy homes”) and a profanity warning, you’re taken to a menu of six buttons: Random Unfilthing Challenge, My To-Unfilth List, Challenge By Room, Random Unfilthing Motivation, 20/10 Timer, and My Unfilthing Achievements.But does it really work? Either it’s a great app or cussing at us is really effective.

The sharing one: ChormaUnless you live alone, chances are good that you’re not the only one contributing to the general household mess—which means you shouldn’t be the only one cleaning it. Get everyone to chip in using Chorma (free, iOS; Android users should try Divvy or Fairshare) to list and schedule chores and tasks, as well as assign them. Because it’s so easy to edit, it’s also pretty easy to cheat, so it’s important that you’re trying Chorma with someone who needs organizational help, not someone who just doesn’t care (the cure for that is probably going to be getting a new housemate). However, it’s ideal for people who are on opposite schedules, who are trying to maintain accountability and avoid confrontation, and who like apps with adorable owl logos.

Maybe your day-to-day household catastrophes aren’t quite as bad, but it’s pretty likely that there’s something in your home that needs some tending to, even if you already tackled a deep spring-cleaning weeks ago. But making an old-fashioned written chore list doesn’t really do the trick anymore- but we are here to help!

TECH TIPSPRING CLEAN YOUR PC

Spring Clean your house in 6 apps ...

NEWS SPRING CLEAN YOUR PCThe routine one: HomeRoutines

Cleaning isn’t so bad when it’s done regularly, which is why having a quick and regular

routine can work wonders on day-to-day dirt. Enter HomeRoutines (free, iOS; Android users should try Chore Checklist), an app that centers on creating regular cleaning routines to keep each of your house “zones” in check. A friendly, icon-filled interface allows you to toggle between all routines and just today’s routines; you can enter in a quote, reminder, or task for each day of the week by tapping on the banner. Your default menu shows suggested tasks for both morning and evening routines, like washing the breakfast dishes or emptying the garbage. There are also suggested weekly tasks. Each task has a star next to it, and tapping the star marks that task as complete. All the happy faces and star buttons may make this app seem lightweight, but don’t be fooled. This app is heavily customizable and ideal for folks who have regular, specific times to clean, or who do best when having a set routine. And because the best way to establish good habits is to set a regular routine, HomeRoutines is helping you keep your household in order.

The honorable mention: BrightNest So, your bathroom is clean, your Unfilth

list is in control, your roommate has been assigned the kitchen, and your avatar is succeeding along their quest. Now what? Look to BrightNest (free, iOS; Android users should try Spring Cleaning Checklist) to tell you about all kinds of tasks, chores, crafts, and upgrades you can do around your home.

Instead of helping you schedule, assign, or complete chores, BrightNest is really more about giving you suggestions on a variety of tasks to help keep your home in tip-top shape. But here’s the thing: As much as I really like BrightNest’s clean, bright interface with all of its white space and brightly colored photos, and as much as I really would love to de-clutter my kitchen, or prep my grill, or learn how to make my towels fluffier, my more immediate concern is the huge pile of dirty laundry in the corner, and the collection of dust bunnies lurking under the bed. Which is to say, BrightNest is great if you’re already starting from a place of basic cleanliness and want to take it to the next level, but if you’re more in the eating-soup-out-of-a-mixing-cup-because-no-one-has-done-the-dishes-stage, it’s not going to be as helpful.

The RPG one: EpicWinSome people may tell you that cleaning is just never going to be fun. Though that may be true, that doesn’t mean your cleaning app has to be boring. Just open EpicWin ($3, iOS; Android users should try TaskDash or To Do for Sloth) and you’re hooked. That goes double if you like comics, adventure, stories, games, quests, maps, skeletons, or dramatic music, because EpicWin has all of those and much more. You pick a name and an avatar; choose from a dwarf, a warrior princess, a non-princess warrior etc. Next, you’re taken to a quest screen that provides you with a pen and paper icon in the upper left corner; tapping this will allow you to add a quest (aka a chore or task). Completing a quest moves your character along their route on a map (shown in the Loot screen). Collect loot and various items to help your avatar along the way. You, however, are actually going to have to go do the chores at some point.

Vanquished quests (completed chores) are shown in the Beaten tab, while your Profile tab gives you a larger image of your avatar and completion bars for the various types of quests (strength, stamina, intellect, social, and spirit, as well as a total).It is surprisingly fun and somewhat more entertaining that just ticking off a box. I even did a chore early one day in order to see what happened when my character got to a loot point on the app (he found a book) so I guess the system works!

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Flowers are blooming and birds are chirping, which means it’s time to start

your yearly spring cleaning extravaganza. While you’re emptying your closets,

decluttering, and getting rid of the bloat in your life, why not do the same for your computer? Here are some simple, easy to follow tips to give your trusted Windows

PC a little spring cleaning of its own.

Clean Up Your Hardware We'll start with the outside of your machine, since you probably have all those cleaning

products out for your household cleaning anyway (right? right?). Turn it off, unplug everything, and find an open area where you can easily reach everything. Whether you have a laptop or a desktop, your main priority is probably going to be the keyboard and mouse or trackpad. Luckily, you can clean them pretty easily with just a few household objects. If they're looking a little greasy, you can always clean them up with a Mr. Clean magic eraser, too.

Take a little alcohol solution and moisten an old rag or a paper towel with it. DON’T pour it into the keyboard or mouse- a wet napkin is enough. Scrub it over the tops of the keys and use a wet cotton swab to go between them. Also make sure your device is unplugged first and don’t pour liquid directly on it! You'll also want to get inside your computer's case and clean any dust out of the fans to keep everything running cool and quiet. We've shown you how to do this on a desktop before, and all you need is a little compressed air to do a pretty thorough job. Laptops, unfortunately, usually require a lot more work. You'll have to refer to your computer's instruction manual for more information on how to take it apart.

Tame Your Cable ClutterAs you head back to your desk to replace

your newly-cleaned computer, take some time to organize your cables first. We’ve shared a number of ways to do this, from simple cable shortening techniques to full workspace solutions. I can personally vouch for both the rain gutter method

TECH TIPSPRING CLEAN YOUR PC

and the IKEA Signum cable manager, though you can experiment with your workspace to see what works best. If you’re using a laptop, slapping a couple binder clips on your desk is just about the greatest way to save them from falling on the floor whenever you go mobile, too.

Get Up to DateAlright, so you’ve plugged your machine back in at your pristine workspace, and

now it’s time to get down to the good stuff: software. Before you do anything else, head to Windows Update and make sure all your software is up to date—drivers, service packs, security updates, and so on. If you’re still on Windows 7, it might be a good time to consider an upgrade. Windows 8 has been out for awhile now, and it’s really not as bad as everyone says it is—in fact, it’s pretty great. It’s faster, more secure, and has a number of useful new features. Even though Windows 8’s metro interface isn’t that great, you can easily get rid of it and make it more like Windows 7 in all the annoying spots, while keeping the great features Windows 8 brings to the table.

Uninstall Unnecessary AppsIf you’ve followed our advice about being conservative with the apps you install,

you shouldn’t have too many unnecessary ones floating around—but no matter how careful you are, it’s bound to happen. Skip Windows’ built-in Add/Remove Programs dialog and use something like Revo Uninstaller for quicker, more thorough uninstallations. This is also a great time to de-crapify your printer or scanner setup, as it undoubtedly contributes a few unnecessary apps to your hard drive.

You might also want to take a look at your startup items in msconfig and uncheck options you don’t need. This’ll decrease your computer’s boot time significantly, not to mention free up a few resources. If you’re having trouble deciding what to disable, we highly recommend checking out previously mentioned Soluto, which will help guide you through the process.

Spring Clean

www.technologyreview.com666

SECURITY MALWARE BREACH?

Reclaim Hard Drive SpaceIf you’re starting to run out of space on your drive, it’s time to take a really good

look at what might be causing it. That means ditching Windows’ built-in Disk Cleanup app (which is fine, but probably won’t net you a ton of space savings) and check out something like WinDirStat or Disk Space Fan. They’ll show you exactly what’s taking up so much space on your machine, organized by folder, file type, and more. Armed with that information, you can start deleting stuff you don’t need and getting some of that disk space back. For more information, check out our feature on how to analyze, clean out, and free space on your hard

drive.

Do Some Maintenance and Optimize Your System

Now it’s time to really dig in and start cleaning up the cruft that can slow down your machine. If you don’t already have the fantastic CCleaner maintenance tool, download it now and run through its cleaning process. This should clean up some of those extra caches, temporary files, log files, and other things strewn about your system. While you’re at it, set it to run on a schedule so you don’t have to worry about it ever again.

Apart from that, the only maintenance you need to do (besides the other things mentioned in this post) is keep your antivirus program turned on and up to date. Lastly, it’s time to back up your newly cleaned PC. Hopefully, you had a backup system in place before this whole thing, but if not, we recommend setting up a bulletproof, offsite backup system with CrashPlan. Once you set it up, you never really have to think about it again. Alternatively, you can always just back up to an external drive using the built-in Windows Backup—I personally use this to back up to my NAS—but we’d still recommend backing up your super important files to something like Dropbox, since this won’t protect you from things like fires, earthquakes, drive failures, or anything else that could destroy your backup.

That’s all there is to it. Windows doesn’t need quite as much

maintenance as it did in the old days, but there will always be a few things you can do from time to time to keep

it clean and fast.

One of the challenges many iPhone users encounter is making the most of their storage space. You’ve probably installed new updates, utilities and gaming applications to enhance your iPhone experience but, before you know it, your

storage space has quickly filled up, and it’s time do some spring cleaning. Deleting a few pictures and movies might help to an extent, but you’ve got to dig deeper if you want to make the most of your storage space.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

Check your storage usage- First things first; before you start deleting applications at random, you need to see exactly what’s hogging storage space. From your iPhone’s home screen, navigate to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage. You’ll see the amount of space you have available and how much space is being used up. After a few seconds you’ll also see a list of apps, starting with those that take up the most space. The number indicates how much space the app uses in itself, and how much data is inside the app. Determine which apps you don’t need and hit the Delete App button.

Clear Safari history- If you use Safari often and haven’t cleared its data in a while, your iPhone may be storing web history and data that you simply don’t need. Clearing the cache and history can, in some cases, help free in excess of 1GB of storage space on your iPhone. To do so, navigate to Settings > Safari. Then scroll down and press Clear History and Website Data to earn some additional space.

Clean up your iMessages- By default, your iPhone will store your messages forever. This takes up a lot of space, especially if you’ve received a lot of photos, GIFs, audio messages, and videos. Keeping a few romantic messages is understandable, but you can probably live without other spammy messages that clog up your storage. In addition, the iPhone allows you to keep messages for a period of time instead of forever. Simply head to Settings > Messages. Tap on Keep Messages and set your messages to delete themselves after 30 days or one year.

Don’t double-save photos- You may notice that your iPhone saves two of the same image: a normal one, and a second one using High Dynamic Range (HDR), if you have turned this feature on. HDR images tend to look better than normal ones but, if you always want the HDR version, you can avoid duplicated images by turning off Keep Normal Photo in your Phone & Camera settings.

Delete offline data- Remember that time you had no Internet connection, when you saved an interesting webpage to read later? As your offline reading list grows, your storage space shrinks. To clear your reading list, open up the Settings menu and go to General > Usage > Manage Storage > Safari. Then swipe left over the words Offline Reading List and tap Delete to clear the cache.

These tips will help you make the most of what little space you have left on your iPhone. Want more iPhone tips and tricks? Contact our tech

experts today.

Tips to clear out

space on your iPhone

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TECH TIPTOP PASSWORDS OF 2014

Given that it's 2015, and we have been logging onto the world wide web for decades, you'd assume people would have a healthy grasp on what makes a good password by now. But no, that doesn’t appear to be the case — if the list of the 25 most popular passwords of 2014 is anything to go by, anyway.

SplashData's annual list compiles the millions of stolen passwords made public throughout the year, and assembles them in order of popularity. This year's list is a particular doozy. It proves, among other things, that there are a lot of Michaels out there, that we're all still hung up on superheroes and that, at the very least, people have the cognitive ability to count to six.

For many people their data is their life, whether personal or professional, and protecting it is of utmost importance to help assure you that your original work will not fall into the wrong hands.

Just promise us that you’ll never ever use the password ‘password’ ever in your life.

With that, we give you the top 25 passwords (and their position relative to last year’s list) that you should probably avoid, unless you fancy being #hacked:

1. 123456 (unchanged)

2. password (unchanged)

3. 12345 (up 17)

4. 12345678 (down one)

5. qwerty (down one)

6. 123456789 (unchanged)

7. 1234 (up nine)

8. baseball (new)

9. dragon (new)

10. football (new)

11. 1234567 (down four)

12. monkey (up five)

13. letmein (up one)

14. abc123 (down nine)

15. 111111 (down eight)

16. mustang (new)

17. access (new)

18. shadow (unchanged)

19. master (new)

20. michael (new)

21. superman (new)

22. 696969 (new)

23. 123123 (down 12)

24. batman (new)

25. trustno1 (down 1)

comparatively ingenious

The top passwords of 2014 will make you feel

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