People nowadays use the best tool to hunt and find victims, the Internet. This includes thieves, pedophiles and all sort of bad people you can think of. Several months ago I read about a thief that was searching facebook to find who are away from home in order to break into their houses. People, without thinking the consequences, tell to everybody who is using facebook that they will be on another country via status updates. They might also have in their profile where they live or that can be easily found from all the other info in their profile. If you tell someone that you are not home for days then you make it very easy to come and rob you. This is just an example and there are many more.
Decipher this – 003
Previous ciphers are easier than this one but easy is not challenge. I suggest that you try yo decipher previous ciphers before this one to get an idea what is going on. Don’t send me email with the answer, just leave a comment. I try to encode small messages to make it a bit easier for you. This will keep you busy and I will not post more ciphers until at least three of you find the answer. Do you know that with exercise you can increase your IQ by about 35%? Force your brain to work harder and achieve greater mind fitness.
Send free SMS with JaxtrSMS
I was looking for a program to send free SMS but all I was finding was to send free text messages within the app such as WhatsApp. They require both sender and receiver to have the app and be online which is not what I wanted. Then after some digging I found JaxtrSMS which allows you to send free SMS to anyone even if he doesn’t have the app. The other benefit is that as sender you declare your phone number and receiver knows that you are the sender. Other apps show a strange number even from another country. JaxtrSMS is available for almost any mobile OS including iOS, Android and Symbian. You can find more and download it from the source link, it is completely free.
Prison guards to be replaced by robots
South Korea will try robots as prison guards for one month. Robotic prison guards are 150cm tall and have wheels. They are designed to be humane and friendly. If the trial is a success more robots will be added. The robotic prison guards will be used mainly at night and with their censors can check the condition of a cell and report to the officer in charge. They will not be used only as cameras, they have algorithms that analyze activities and can detect abnormal behavior. Inmates cannot bribe or threat robots but they might find a way to hack them or exploit any vulnerabilities. This will bring us one step closer to a world that machines rule.
Find the numbers – 002
There are two kinds of people, the ones who like numbers and the ones who hate numbers. This challenge is for those who like numbers. This one will keep you busy for some time. Try to find the 10 digit number X0X1X2X3X4X5X6X7X8X9 so that the each X shows the times its number appears in the 10 digit number. X0 shows how many times 0 appears in the number, X3 shows how many times 3 appears in the number and so on. The difficulty of this is about 60/100 so let me know if you like it and if you want more difficult problems. After you find it, post it in a comment.
Largest DDoS attack to Chinese company
A DDoS attack that targeted a Chinese e-commerce company lasted for a week. According to Prolexic this was the biggest attack launched so far, 3 times bigger than the second biggest. The attack had four waves and happened between November 5th and November 12th. The company will remember this attack on November 5th and not only V for Vendetta (“Remember remember the 5th of November”). The attack had a peak of 45Gbit/s which is more than the company can handle. The traffic can be translated to thousands of connections per second. Even though this was a huge attack I believe than soon we will have a bigger one.
Decipher This – 002
I like ciphers and I decided to give you one more. It is easier than the first cipher but every cipher has its own beauty. As an answer I like you to give me only one word and not the entire deciphered text. You will understand which one after you decipher the message. You don’t need to know which cipher this is in order to decipher the message. Enough with the introduction, the encrypted message is the following. Tell me the word you believe is the answer in a comment.
Calculations 001
A friend of mine tried to challenge me yesterday with this one but I can say that it can be barely called a challenge. It took me less than a minute to figure it out and make him very disappointed. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a mathematician to solve this. If you find the answer post it and I will let you know if it was the correct one. Also, if you have a difficult problem, cipher or puzzle you are very welcome to contact me and if I like it I will post it in my challenges. You don’t even need to have the solution and even if you have it don’t give it to me. I like to be challenged so challenge me.
Find the numbers – 001
A wise man whispers a number to each of his three apprentices, Alice, Bob and Carol. All numbers are integers larger than zero. Wise man tells to them that the sum of their numbers is 14 and ask them in order if they know all three numbers. Alice responds that she does not know the numbers but she knows that Bob and Carol have different numbers. Bob responds that he does not know but, even before hearing Alice response, he knew that all of them have different number. After hearing both responses, Carol says that she knows all three numbers. Which numbers have the three apprentices?
Galaxy Nexus has problems
Google’s new mobile phone Galaxy Nexus launched on November 17 in U.K but has many problems. Most of the people who bought it complain about it. The most annoying of them is the volume bug. Volume goes up and down auto-magically and this happens almost in every action, when the user watches a video, makes a call or listens to music. You can watch the following video that demonstrates the problem. If you want to buy a good Android phone then I recommend the Samsung Galaxy S II, avoid Galaxy Nexus. Their specifications are very similar and Galaxy S II does not have all that software bugs of Galaxy Nexus.