The last Venus Transit of the Century

6th June was a rare day of the century and all astronomers and astronomy lovers as the planet Venus transited between the earth and the sun for the last time of the present century. Almost everyone who has some love for astronomy was there watching for the rare phenomenon on Wednesday to preserve the moment as that was last time they saw it in their life times as the next transit would occur after 105 years.

I was up too, but due to clouds I could not see rare Venus transit of my lifetime. However, I am sharing one shot as shared from the TIME magazine:

The above photo was taken in New Delhi and Venus can be clearly seen as a black dot on the top left corner of the sun [Photo Courtesy: TIME]

TIME magazine has also shared a number of other photos of the Venus transit and arranged these in a slide show which can be seen here

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Download RedSnow 0.9.12b1 [0.9.12 Beta 1] For Untethered iOS 5.1.1 Jailbreak [Direct Link]

by Wahaab JB

The popular Redsn0w jailbreak utility has finally been updated (bringing it to version 0.1.12b1) which brings untethered jailbreak support for iOS devices running  iOS 5.1.1. 

 Following are the iOS devices running on 5.1.1 are supported by this version

•  iPhone 3GS

• iPhone 4

• iPhone 4S

• iPad

• iPad 2

• iPad 3

• iPod touch 3rd/4th

•  Apple TV1/2

If you are already jailbroken tethered with iOS 5.1.1 you can use Cydia to download the Rocky Raccoon untether, you do not need to re-run Redsn0w. Likewise, if you’ve already installed the rocky-raccoon package to untether a 5.1.1 jailbreak there is no reason to download or use the new redsnow tool.

However, if something went wrong with previous jailbreak tools like Absinthe or with Cydia package Rocky Racoon, then go ahead and download the latest RedSnow version from the below links.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.12b1 For iOS 5.1.1 Untethered Jailbreak On Windows [Direct Link]
Download Redsn0w 0.9.12b1 For iOS 5.1.1 Untethered Jailbreak On Mac [Direct Link]
[via Chip Hazard]

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What would be iPhone 5 Like?

When instead of iPhone, Apple brought out a mid way solution between iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 in the shape of iPhone 4S, many Apple enthusiasts were terribly disappointed and annoyed. Even those who opted to buy iPhone 4S were equally disappointed - but the wiser elected to wait for iPhone whenever it may come.

Now speculators are worrying what would be iPhone 5 like?

I have gone through a series of posts on iPhone 5 and thought I should combine all these to let the iPhone 5 enthusiasts know how would iPhone would look like or should I say would be expected to look.

Speculation-1: iPhone 5 to have Dual-Core CPU, 1GB RAM and SGX543 GPU Variant.

Speculation-2: iPhone 5 will have a taller glass panel as compared to iPhone 4S.

Speculation-3: iPhone 5 to have a Metal Back Plate.

Speculation-4:  The next iPhone would support a variant of A5x chip which would contain an ARM S5L8950X processing core, 1GB of RAM and “something entirely new” for the graphics subsystem. 

Speculation-5: The next iPhone would be referenced as a model iPhone 5,1 or “N41AP”.

Speculation-6: The GPU chip, which will continue to be part of the SoC, is called “SGX543RC*” (the asterisk is another sensitive number that could identify people working on the device) - This GPU technically does not exist yet.

Well people had many expectations when iPhone 4S surfaced - but their hopes and expectations were shattered. I wonder what would happen when iPhone 5 or whatever it would be called is introduced. 

In the meantime Samsung Galaxy S-III is making headlines and has enormous features. Would iPhone % beat it? What do you say? 

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Milky Way Destined for Head-On Collision

News for astronomy lovers and hobbyists!! Our Milky Way is Destined for Head-On Collision

The U.S. space agency, NASA, says our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy will crash into each other in 4 billion years in a head-on collision.

NASA scientists say the new findings end nearly 100 years of speculation about whether Andromeda would directly plow into our galaxy, or merely deliver a glancing blow as it continued moving through the cosmos.  

The study co-authors say the Earth and the other seven planets in the solar system likely will not be destroyed in the titanic pile-up, but the Sun - just like many other stars - will be flung into a different part of the galaxy. In all likelihood, the Sun will complete its stellar life-cycle in an area even farther away from the galactic core than it is now.

The NASA scientists say their findings indicate that Andromeda and the Milky Way will take about 2 billion years to completely merge into a single elliptical-shaped galaxy.

Read details: VOA

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Download aTV Flash (Black) 1.6 For Jailbroken AppleTV

by Wahaab JB

The popular app that lets you install jailbreak apps on your AppleTV, aTV Flash (Black), has been updated to version 1.6 which comes with huge number of new features and improvements over the previous version. One of the new features include the Subtitle feature which allows you to identify and download subtitles directly from the Apple TV. 

 Along with this impressive subtitle feature, support for playing DRM enabled iTunes content directly from the Apple TV has also been added (off course you’ll need Username and Pass for authentication). Following is the full changelog of the version :-

Full Changelog

• Added integrated subtitle downloads from OpenSubtitles.org

• Added support for purchased iTunes content (matching iTunes login required)

• Added video deinterlacing option

• Added Wake-on-Lan (WOL)

• Added Portuguese (Portugal) translation

• Added support for displaying subtitles in lower ‘black bar’

• Added support for .WTV files

• Added support for multiple simultaneous AFP connections

• Improved bulk fetching & added automatic artwork caching

• Improved automatic downscaling for large thumbnails

• Improved metadata reloading for images

• Improved buffering over AFP

• Resolved various audio synchronization issues

• Resolved possible overflow in 5.1 AC3 audio

• Resolved issues with zoom for 4:3 movies

• Resolved missing audio for .dvr-ms files (ASF containers)

• Resolved rare SRT file crash

• Resolved issues with slideshow animation

• Resolved file specific metadata fetching issues

• Resolved rare ISO file crashes

• Resolved issue with displaying identical thumbnails for images with the same name

• Resolved metadata loading issues for files containing non-latin characters

• Resolved rare 5ch audio file crash

• Resolved issues with incorrect metadata for files with ‘/S01E0.avi’ pattern

• Resolved auto-start issues in Couch Surfer

• Reduced memory footprint for large software-decoded videos and slideshows

• Other minor UI improvements & bug fixes

As usual you can get the new version from the FireCore’s website or if you already own aTV Flash (black), you can install the update by going into the app on your Apple TV and selecting Maintenance > Manage Extras. Remember, your AppleTV device should be jailbroken before you install the software.

[via Chip Hazard]

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£1,000 Golden Jubilee coin that costs £60,000 to buy

So you are a coin collector? If so, here is a coin for you: A £1,000 Golden Jubilee coin that costs £60,000 to buy

The Royal Mint has made it's first ever coin to weigh a kilo in pure gold as a special tribute to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

But while the heavy commemorative coin has a denomination worth £1,000 it costs £60,000 to buy because of its rarity and value as a collector's item. 

The coin required a special parliamentary bill to be passed enabling its £1,000 face value to acquire legal tender status.

Worth your weight in gold: This picture shows both sides of the Royal Mint's first ever coin to weight a kilo in gold to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee [Photo: PA / Daily Mail]

Read more / see more photos of the coin: Daily Mail

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Download Windows 8 Release Preview ISO 32-64 Bit Free [Direct Links]

by Wahaab JB

This is it folks!, the last pre-release build of Windows 8  has been released (dubbed as the Release preview) and is available for download (links given at the end). The build contains some changes and improvements over the last build dubbed as Consumer preview.

 After this build release, finally the RTM version will be released, which the company suggests will contain many more changes.Usually the RC version of Windows had been a precise reflection of the final product and is somewhat the main decisive factors which allows users to choose their future upgrade plans.

With previous RTM versions containing minor changes over the RC version, much is to be expected from the final Windows 8 build. As for this RC version, many users faced unusual problems in the Consumer preview which hopefully would have been fixed with this release.

Following are the minimum system requirements for this version :-

• Processor : 1 GHZ

• Ram : 1 GB (32bit) , 2 GB(64bit)

• HDD Space : 16 GB (32bit) , 20 GB(64bit)

• GPU : Microsoft Direct X 9 Graphics Device

Without any further ado, grab your piece of Windows 8 excitement for your appropriate architecture from the following direct official links from Microsoft :

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview (64-bit)

Sha 1 hash — 0xD76AD96773615E8C504F63564AF749469CFCCD

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview (32-bit)

Sha 1 hash — 0x8BED436F0959E7120A44BF7C29FF0AA962BDEFC9

[ via Chip Hazard]

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