A bored intern created the original Windows Solitaire

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Solitaire has been a staple for office distraction since Microsoft first included the game in Windows 3.0 in 1990. But the digital adaptation wasn’t made by an iconic coder or just one of the company’s many full-time employees. It was programmed by an intern.

Great Big Story has an interview with Wes Cherry, who was an intern at Microsoft in 1988. He describes the experience as “all-encompassing,” but even internships at Microsoft have lulls. He put the downtime to good use. “I came up with the idea to write Solitaire for Windows out of boredom, really,” Cherry said. “There weren’t many games at the time, so we had to make them.” Read more

Google’s AutoDraw uses machine learning to help you draw like a pro

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Drawing isn’t for everyone. I, for one, am definitely not very good at it. But with AutoDraw, Google is launching a new experiment today that uses machine learning algorithms to match your doodles with professional drawings to make you look like you know what you’re doing. Read more

Hackers can steal your password by looking at how you tilt your phone

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According to a team of cybersecurity experts at Newcastle University, the way you tilt your phone could be used by hackers to break into your device.

When it comes to security and the protection of privacy, people often worry about connecting to public Wi-Fi networks, tricking face recognition technology, or bypassing fingerprint sensors. What usually gets left out of the discussion is the multitude of basic motion and orientation sensors that can be found inside most smartphones and tablets today. Well, according to cyber-experts at Newcastle University, we should be paying more attention to these sensors that we take for granted every day.

According to the paper published by the team, they were able to crack four-digit pins with 70 percent accuracy on the first guess and 100 percent accuracy by the fifth guess.

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More university students are using tech to cheat in exams

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A growing number of UK university students are cheating in exams with the help of technological devices such as mobile phones, smart watches and hidden earpieces.

Data obtained by the Guardian through freedom of information requests found a 42% rise in cheating cases involving technology over the last four years – from 148 in 2012 to 210 in 2016. Last year, a quarter of all students caught cheating used electronic devices.

Among the worst offenders were students at Queen Mary University of London, where there were 54 instances of cheating – two-thirds of which involved technology. At the University of Surrey, 19 students were caught in 2016, 12 of them with devices. Newcastle University, one the bigger institutions to provide data, reported 91 cases of cheating – 43% of which involved technology.

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Scientists invent new material for storing data

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Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo (left) and research fellow Shawn Pollard are part of the team at the National University of Singapore working on the use of skyrmions as data carriers.

A nano-sized piece of film could hold the key to storage that is faster, holds more data and uses less power compared with current solid-state memory.

Scientists at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have combined cobalt and palladium into a film that’s capable of housing stable skyrmions, which are swirling magnetic textures a few nanometers in size that can store and process data, the university said Monday in a statement.

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NSCDC secures conviction of 18 persons accused of downloading films

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The Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), Kano State Command, has secured the conviction of 18 persons accused of downloading and sending Hausa films in Kano.

The command’s Public Relations officer, Mr Ibrahim Idris, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kano on Monday.

Idris said the convicts were arraigned before a Magistrate’s Court in Kano on Friday, April 7, after they were arrested around Dakata in Ungoggo Local Government Area of the state. Read more

Global Surveilance: North Korea Hackers Target Nigerian Banks

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A new report from a Russian online cyber security firm, Kaspersky, has observed that North Korean hackers are attacking banks in 18 countries, including Nigeria.

The organisation noted in its report that this could be regarded as the biggest bank heists in world history.

Banks and security researchers have previously identified four similar cyber-heists attempted on financial institutions in Bangladesh, Ecuador, the Philippines and Vietnam.

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