Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency details IT infrastructure upgrade

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) is looking to refresh its IT infrastructure with "contemporary" systems and services to allow the Australian government authority to adopt new and emerging digital technologies.

In a request for tender (RFT), ARPANSA announced that as part of its digital transformation, it is seeking the supply, implementation, and associated maintenance of server and storage infrastructure, as well as disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

ARPANSA, the federal government's primary authority on radiation protection and nuclear safety, is charged with the responsibility of protecting people and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation.

With six strategic objectives, ARPANSA aims to protect the public, workers, and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation; promote radiological and nuclear safety and security, and emergency preparedness; promote the safe and effective use of ionising radiation in medicine; and ensure risk-informed and efficient regulation through engaging with community and government and enhancing organisational innovation, capability, and resilience.

The RFT forms part of ARPANSA's Digital Strategy and associated Digital Technology Plan, which is aimed at providing a technology framework to develop new products and services.

"ARPANSA intends to leverage advances in technology to improve how it connects with and provides added value to its customers," the RFT says.

"The transformation to 'digital' will enable ARPANSA to generate new offerings not previously attainable with legacy technologies. This will bring the potential for new revenue streams to safeguard ARPANSA so it remains at the forefront of global radiation research and citizen protection."

With offices in both Yallambie, Victoria, and Miranda, New South Wales, ARPANSA has around 130 staff members, with its Digital Services team and IT help desk both located at the former.

Seven physical servers are currently deployed as virtualisation hosts across both sites. Internet and related services are provided by the Department of Human Services (DHS) in Canberra.

The Yallambie site is also home to the organisation's primary datacentre, while Miranda houses its secondary datacentre, which currently acts as ARPANSA's disaster recovery (DR) facility. Yallambie similarly acts as DR for the secondary datacentre.

The RFT is seeking support for existing Cisco servers, and the removal of a decommissioned server in its Yallambie site. It is also asking for the decommissioning and removal of Cisco servers in Miranda.

Dell EMC VNX5300 enterprise-class storage arrays are deployed for the two main production vSphere 6.5 clusters in Yallambie and Miranda. The storage arrays at both sites each have a capacity of around 59TB of usable storage, of which around 36TB is configured and presented to vSphere hosts. Around 24TB is currently used at both sites.

It is expected that some or all of these solutions will be retired following implementation of an alternative DR solution, ARPANSA said.

ARPANSA seeks also to acquire, build, and configure a new two-node converged or hyper-converged server platform to allow Miranda to operate in a branch office configuration; and consolidate the support and maintenance of existing server infrastructure at ARPANSA's Yallambie office under a new single support contract together with the server infrastructure supplied for the Miranda site.

The RFT closes March 5, 2018 and the final solution is expected to commence installation by April 23, 2018, and be complete by June 15, 2018.

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5 Things You Should Never Search on Google

Protecting your privacy online can be difficult. If you use Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine that records your IP address and search terms, there are some things — many things, it turns out — that you really shouldn’t search. Google, for instance, can combine your search history with more data about your identity, and associate them with a full profile that both the search engine and advertisers can use to get an idea of who you are, what you’re interested in, and what you’re most likely to buy. That should make you think twice about sharing your problems, your interests, and even inquiries born out of idle curiosity with a major search engine like Google.

It isn’t true that you can search for anything you want, delete your browsing history, and no one will know what you were reading. Google records what you search and uses that information to figure out how to target ads specifically to you. So it’s not just Google that knows exactly what you’re searching. As Google explains in its Privacy & Terms FAQs, “When you click on a search result in Google Search, your web browser also may send the Internet address, or URL, of the search results page to the destination webpage as the HTTP Referrer. The URL of the search results page may sometimes contain the search query you entered.” You might not think that the URL of a page contains a whole lot of useful information — until you consider an example like the WebMD page for an STD or the website for your hometown.

Even just for the ads displayed on Google Search, Google uses information on what you searched for, your location, and the time of day to choose ads. It also takes into account your previous web searches, your Google Web History, your history of visiting websites that advertise with Google, information from your Google accounts like your age and gender, and your previous interactions with Google’s ads and search results. With all that in mind, read on for five things that you shouldn’t ever search for when using Google.

1. Don’t search for things that clue Google into your location

As Jay Stanley reported for the ACLU, one of the earliest instances in which the powerful privacy implications of having your search history recorded occurred in 2006 when AOL released a large set of searches that had been conducted on its sites. While the identity of the searcher was replaced with an arbitrary number — so that all of the searches by an individual were still gathered around the same identifier — members of the media found that it wasn’t difficult to identify searchers’ hometowns, neighborhoods, age, sex, and other identifying details through their searches. The result was “an electrifying sense of just how intimate and revealing the information one ‘shares’ with a search engine can be.”

About a year ago, New York Times columnist David Leonhard told NPR about how search terms differ geographically, with major differences between counties where life is easiest and counties where life is hardest. A high prevalence of searches on health problems like blood sugar and diabetes, searches on “what might be called the dark side of religion,” searches about selling Avon or getting Social Security checks, and searches about “specific kinds of guns” occur in areas where people are more likely to struggle with money or suffer health problems. Your searches give your search engine a view of how economic trends manifest themselves in your everyday life — something you may not want advertisers capitalizing upon.

2. Don’t search for information on medical issues or drugs

While Google says that it prohibits advertisers “from remarketing based on sensitive information, such as health information or religious beliefs,” the company’s privacy policy reserves the right to record your search results, associate them with your IP address or Google account, and then use that information to target ads on Google properties and across the web. Neal Ungerleider recently reported that researchers have found looking up medical and drug information online is a major privacy risk.

Tim Libert, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, found that more than 90% of the 80,000 health-related pages he looked at exposed user information to third parties. The pages he researched included commercial, nonprofit, educational, and government websites, and the finding is particularly unsettling given a Pew Research Center finding that 72% of Internet users in the United States look up health-related information online. Even worse? Google collects information from 78% of the pages that Libert looked at, which gives advertisers an easy way to figure out that a user has specific health issues, and find out what issues those are. Visits to pages on HIV/AIDS, for instance, can be combined with a user’s browsing history and lead to ads for HIV and AIDS treatments, which Ungerleider notes effectively outs a user’s HIV status.

A bigger privacy issue, Libert worries, leaks that could expose people’s intimate health information to anyone willing to buy a hacked database. Stolen medical information is routinely trafficked on criminal websites, and are often used for Medicaid fraud and other scams. Third parties could match you with your medical search results, and advertisers could even discriminate against you based on your medical searches, even if they’re never connected to you definitively.

3. Don’t give your search engine hints about your insecurities

Advertising is notoriously formulated to create and capitalize upon viewers’ insecurities. Giving your search engine — and all of the advertisers that leverage the information it collects on you — easy access to the insecurities you already have just does the dirty work for them. Making things easier for advertisers who want to capitalize on your insecurities to sell you products and services don't sound like a huge deal compared to what happens when you search for medical information. But it still has some unsettling effects that you should avoid if you can.

Amanda Hess recently reported for Slate that a category of searches she’s dubbed “Google, am I normal?” is a “scintillating resource for advertisers.” Hess explains, “I’ve been tipping Google off to all the real ailments and imagined insecurities that I already have, at a pace of about once an hour, every hour of the day: celebrity diet, pants are uncomfortable, migraine difficulty speaking, before and after plastic surgery, and worst cramps ever why.” Each of those gives an easy to advertisers, who don’t even have to show you an ad first to get you to think about your insecurities, and how their products might help.

It may not seem like a big deal compared to having ads about treatments for an illness you may or may not have following you on the Internet. But if you don’t want to see ads that are specifically tailored to things that you already don’t like about your body, even if, objectively, they aren’t a huge deal, you should avoid sharing those insecurities with your search engine in the first place.

4. Don’t search for anything suspicious (especially at work)

A couple of years ago, a story on how a series of Google searches led to a visit by local authorities made its rounds online. As Jared Newman reported for Time, searches by different members of a New York family for terms including “backpack” and “pressure cooker bomb” triggered a visit by local authorities when the suspicious Google searches were reported by an employer.

Michele Catalano, the matriarch of the family in question, later wrote, “I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in ‘these times’ now.” She continued, “And in these times, when things like the Boston bombing happen, you spend a lot of time on the Internet reading about it and, if you are my exceedingly curious, news junkie 20-year-old son, you click a lot of links when you read the myriad of stories. You might just read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the Internet and you will in all probability, if you are that kid, click the link provided.”

The lesson learned? Don’t search for suspicious terms or anything that could be construed as crime-related, when someone is watching your browsing history. (The safest course of action is to assume that someone always is.) On a similar note, it’s a bad idea to search anything crime-related if you have something to hide. Obviously, we don’t condone committing a crime. But it’s worth noting that people’s Google searches have been used to convict them of crimes, especially when they just so happen to Google the crime right before or after they’ve committed it. See this Palo Alto case as an example, or read Lee Rowland’s report on how a New York case highlights the problem with finding someone guilty of a conspiracy or an attempt to commit a crime when the only evidence is words shared online. “It’s one thing to use a Google search as evidence of intent or knowledge when an actual crime has resulted and there’s a real victim.”

5. Don’t Google anything that enables Google to define your identity

If you’re really serious about finding a way around Google’s propensity for constructing a profile to define who you are and how much you’re worth to specific advertisers, then there’s not much recourse but to avoid searching anything that could give Google or advertisers a clue about your identity. As Jeffrey Rosen reported for The New York Times a few years ago, the privacy threats go beyond creepy ads. “Computers can link our digital profiles with our real identities so precisely that it will soon be hard to claim that the profiles are anonymous in any meaningful sense,” Rosen writes.

Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told the Times that companies can combine hundreds or thousands of facts about you into what he terms “a database of ruin.” With discrete and unconnected facts about you, an algorithm could sort through profiles of hundreds of thousands of users like you and accurately predict something unrelated about you or your activity. Ohm argues that there’s at least one closely-guarded secret that could lead to harm if revealed, like “a medical condition, family history or personal preference,” and the database of ruin makes that secret hard to conceal.

Even if many classifications are inaccurate, they can still harm you with effects like price discrimination, in which companies profile you and determine how much to charge you for goods or services. Rosen reports, “the new world of price discrimination is one where it’s hard to escape your consumer profile, and you won’t even know if companies are offering discounts to higher-status customers in the first place.” He imagines that “As personalization becomes ubiquitous, the segmented profiles that advertisers, publishers, and even presidential candidates use to define us may become more pervasive and significant than the identities we use to define ourselves.”

If you’re looking to minimize the amount of information that search engines and advertisers collect on you, there are a few steps you should take. Choose an alternative search engine, like DuckDuckGo, to keep your search history from being recorded and analyzed. Install an extension like AdBlock Plus, Ghostery, or Disconnect to protect yourself against companies who want to track your activity online. Check your privacy settings on popular sites, and always log out of social networks when you’re browsing the web.

Snapdragon 845 Qualcomm Most Powerful Processor Made In 2018

"Snapdragon 845 Qualcomm Most Powerful Qualcomm Processors In 2018" - Initialataata.com fellow in early December 2017 Qualcomm Inc. has officially introduced the Snapdragon 845 flagship processor at Grand Wailea, Maui, Hawaii. This processor is predicted as the fastest in 2018. Snapdragon 845 will focus on camera technology, virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence, security, wireless fiber experience, and better battery life. The main protrusion is because predicted future technological developments will lead to artificial intelligence technology (Artificial Intelligence / AI). So as to make it a lucrative business.

Weirdtapinyata.net friends with the addition of technology is certainly Snapdragon 845 can support many things, ranging from face scanning, digital assistant, to the efficiency of battery consumption. That way, the user and device interaction will take longer. To support all of these semiconductor and telecommunications companies from the United States helped bring a number of sophisticated components, among others, graphics processor Adreno 630, Spectra 280 Image Signal Processor (ISP), and AI Framework Google TensorFlow and Caffe / Caffe2. For more details here are some of the ability of Snapdragon 845 chip that will be present in a number of Android flagship and some PCs in 2018.

Immersion

Snapdragon 845's oddball.com friends are expected to produce stunning visual content with Andreno 630 graphics processing mixer (GPU) and Spectra 280 image signaling processor (ISP) 280. The combination of these two components produces a number of new features, such as the ability to record slow HD video motion up to 480 fps, Multi Frame Noise Reduction for photos, VR and AR acceleration, and ultra HD premium video with 10-bit color depth.

Artificial intelligence

Qualcomm's preplanned partner Qualcomm prepares Snadragon 845 as the artificial intelligence processing center (AI). AI processing on this chip is handled by a trio of CPU Kyro 385, GPU Adreno 630, and DSP Hexagon 685. AI Snapdragon 845 processing performance claimed three times higher than Snapdragon 835. Various new possibilities related to the implementation of AI was open, ranging from more assistant problems smart, to the effect of "bokeh" in the photo without the need for a double camera.

Security

Snapdragon in Snapdragon 845 is an embedded Secure Processing Unit (SPU), which is provided with a random number generator to generate keys in digital transactions. By implementing hardware-based security, Qualcomm claims Snapdragon 845 is better able to ward off hacker attacks than previous chips. Snapdragon 845 also supports biometric key in the form of three dimensional face mapping, ala Face ID on iPhone X. In other words, Snapdragon 845 Android-based phones that will be released in 2018 can use biometrics such as Apple's flagship phone.

Connectivity

Weirdtapinyata.net friends from the connectivity sector that became one of the core business of Qualcom did not forget to be overhauled. Snapdragon 845 has a new 4G LTE X20 modem with transfer speed reaching 1.2 Gbps, via 5x Carrier Aggregation, 4x4 MIMO, and License Assisted Access Snapdragon 845 supports dual-SIM dual-VoLTE, so both SIM cards are used upgraded can use 4G network LTE, not just one while the other is limited in 4G LTE network. In addition, with broadcast capabilities, devices can connect to many other Bluetooth devices simultaneously without the need for a gateway.

Performance

Stranger's friend like Snapdragon 835's predecessor, Qualcomm still uses 10nm fabrication process for Snapdragon 845, but its contents are overhauled. Core CPU now uses eight Kryo 385 cores, while the GPU becomes Adreno 630. Qualcomm also added level 3 cache to boost performance further. As a result, Snapdragon 845 performance was claimed 30 percent higher than Snapdragon 835, but its power consumption is lower. When the battery needs charging, the Quick Charge 4+ feature promises to fill 50 percent in just 15 minutes, assuming it has a battery capacity of 2,700 mAh.

Huawei: National Security Concerns not a Blank Cheque for Public Policy Decisions

While national security concerns are important for governments globally, Huawei has argued that they cannot be used as "talismanic" exceptions for all public policy decisions.

Speaking to the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth on Friday afternoon, Huawei Technologies VP of Global Government Affairs Simon Lacey said that governments are becoming more aware of both the benefits and risks of a connected world.

"National security is important, but cannot be used to justify every policy intervention -- so we must remain vigilant, but on the other hand we cannot live in a state of constant fear looking over our shoulders," Lacey told the inquiry into the trade system and the digital economy.

"When acting to protect national security, we must ensure this is not used as a blank cheque to justify or disguise protectionism."

According to Lacey, Huawei's submission to the inquiry was its recent whitepaper, Trade Rules and the Digital Economy.

"Governments are legitimately starting to take a broader and deeper view of what constitutes critical national infrastructure and are becoming increasingly vigilant against potential cybersecurity threats," the paper says.

"This is a very sensitive topic, and we also recognise that it must be treated as such. Equally, it should be subject to disciples which are agreed and reviewable."

Such exceptions should be regulated through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rather than under free trade agreements, Lacey argued.

"Whenever governments have invoked public policy exceptions to justify disguised restrictions on international trade, it's been in the context of [WTO] dispute settlement that we've been able to stop public policy exceptions from being abused," he explained.

"Of course communications infrastructure belongs to critical infrastructure, but there have been cases of abuses of the national security exception in international trade, some of which are actually quite laughable."

Such "laughable" examples of when the national security exception was invoked included US President Donald Trump's Muslim-majority country travel ban last year, according to Lacey.

Huawei also addressed assumptions made on its products, saying that while it is a Chinese-owned company, its products are actually produced evenly across Asia, Europe, and America.

"We're a Chinese company in origin, but our equipment is made from all around the world; it might be assembled in Cambodia, it may be assembled in Vietnam, with parts from Europe, parts from Japan, and that's the same for all out competitors," Huawei told the committee.

"We now live in a global supply chain."

A leaked paper allegedly from a senior national security official for Trump last month had expressed concern that Huawei has become a leader in 5G networking technologies due to support from the Chinese government, with Huawei having been banned from Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) due to such alleged ties.

Huawei is part of the Australian government's 5G working group, however.

The networking giant also used its time in front of the committee to push the free flow of data, with Lacey saying he hopes it will be covered by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal currently being negotiated between China, Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand.

"In the digital economy, data represents the lifeblood of the entire system, and so there must be suitable legislative and regulatory frameworks in place that support the cross-border flow of personal data," the whitepaper says.

"OECD members recognise the value of an open and global internet and have committed themselves to national and international multi-stakeholder governance frameworks that seek to uphold the open and global nature of the internet in the future."

Huawei added that the stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) could be a chance to set such regulations.

"It has only been in the last six years or so that regulatory interventions by policymakers outside of the United States have seen internet companies mobilise in an effort to directly bring about a set of targeted negotiated outcomes on issues such as the free flow of information, data localisation, and mandatory disclosure of source code," Huawei's key points paper added.

"These efforts, although stalled in ... the TPP and TiSA, are nevertheless likely to come to fruition at some point in the next few years, perhaps at the WTO, or in RCEP, or in the context of future bilateral agreements.

"The consensus on where the balance lies between internet freedom and regulatory autonomy now seems to be up for grabs all over again."

TPP 11 has since been passed, but its content -- including what is included in the ecommerce chapter -- has yet to be revealed.

Huawei lastly addressed the fragmentation of information on digital economy security across Australian government departments, with Huawei Australia director of Corporate and Public Affairs Jeremy Mitchell saying there has been "much better coordination" in the last three to four years across government.

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Digital Gold: Top 5 Cryptocurrencies to Watch Out For Besides Bitcoin

Litecoin

Often referred to as "silver to Bitcoin's gold", Litecoin was amongst the first cryptocurrencies to be introduced into the digital space, created by former Google engineer Charlie Lee in 2011.

Similar to its more popular cousin, Litecoin relies on an open source world-wide payment network that lacks centralization under a single authority.

However, unlike Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is mined (created) via "scrypt algorithm," an entirely different proof of work algorithm to Bitcoin.

At the same time, some commentators note that Litecoin is a more attractive cryptocurrency due to its faster block generation time (2.5 minutes to the Bitcoin's 10), thus it enables a more expedient confirmation of the electronic transaction.

In November 2017, Litecoin's market capitalization reached some $4 billion, demonstrating strong growth.

As of early December, the value of an individual Litecoin stood at $104.3.

Dash

Originally the DarkCoin, Dash was launched in 2014 by Evan Duffield, following a bug that hampered the operations Litecoin.

Although the code error was quickly corrected, the DarkCoin remained, though it was rebranded as Dash (Digital Cash) in light of the increasing use of cybercurrencies by criminal enterprises.

Owing to its easy and secure protocols, Dash is quite popular with the digital community, and its capitalization rests at about $4.8 billion.

Dash users also created the most vibrant "alt-coin" community with some 6,400 pages and 7.9 million reads on the BitcoinTalk forum.

As of today, a single Dash coin is worth about $696.6.

Ether

A bit of the late bloomer, Ether was launched by Russian-Canadian computer programmer Vitalik Buterin in 2015.

Ether forms an operating token for the Ethereum, an open, block-chain, decentralized software platform, which enables the network's users to codify, develop and operate applications within the system.

Ethereum was funded by the pre-sale of some 11.9 million Ethers, reflecting the high public support for the platform.

The network's market capitalization exceeds $4.46 billion and Ether's price currently stands at $430, though it has recently suffered a 4 percent drop in value.

Zcash

Introduced in 2016, Zcash is a cryptocurrency that was launched by computer security expert Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, who purported to build on the success of Bitcoin by adding further security measures.

Digital payments through Zcash are posted on a public block-chain, yet the users may choose to enact an optional privacy protocol that can conceal the sender, the receiver and/or the amount of funds transferred.

Another distinct feature of Zcash is the "selective disclosure" mechanism than allows the users to audit their payments via the cybercurrency.

Its current value is $316.5.

Monero

Monero was launched in 2014 in an effort to make the cyptocurrency mining procedures more accessible to users as well as to improve their privacy.

The mining protocols for Monero tend to be more "egalitarian," allowing its community to enjoy a more distributive mining scheme.

Unlike Bitcoin, however, it is not a public-ledger currency, thus its units are indistinguishable from each other, enhancing anonymity of users and making it a popular coin for transactions on the dark markets.

Monero's value is about $277.7.

Ten Awesome Things You Didn't Know Your Phone Can Do

You’ve had your smartphone for a while, but let’s face it: You’ve never read the manual. You take great pride that you know how to use it, and then it happens: You see someone do something extraordinary with a phone that you did not know was even possible.

Friends don’t let friends have smartphone skill envy. Here are some of my favorite secrets buried in your phone settings that you probably don't know, but will use now.

1. Take a screenshot

Have you ever wanted to capture something on your phone's screen? Maybe it's a hilarious text from a friend or an interesting Facebook post, or you want to send someone an image to show her how to do something.

iPhone

Press and hold the Home button along with the Sleep/Wake button. You should hear a shutter click. The screenshot will appear on your Camera Roll or Saved Photos section.

Android

Hold power and Volume Down buttons at the same time The image will be saved to the "Captured Images" folder in your Gallery app. That only works in Android 4.0 and higher, though. For Android 3.0, 2.3 or earlier, use an app like AirDroid.

2. Block calls and texts

Have you ever had someone who just won't stop calling or texting you, even after you asked nicely? Here's how to block him.

iPhone

To block calls on an iPhone with iOS 7 or later, open the Phone or FaceTime app. If the person is already a contact, tap his name, scroll to the bottom of the page and tap Block This Caller. Then tap Block Contact.

If the person isn't a contact, tap the Info button, then scroll to the bottom of the page and tap Block this Caller. Then tap Block Contact.

If you want to block texts, open the Messages app and tap a message from the person you want to block. Tap Contact in the upper right and then tap the Info button. Scroll to the bottom and tap Block this Caller. Then tap Block Contact.

You can edit your blocked contacts later at these locations:

Settings>>Phone>>Blocked

Settings>>Messages>>Blocked

Settings>>FaceTime>>Blocked

Android

On Android, go to Settings>>Call settings>>Call block. Under "Incoming calls" tap "Call block list" and then tap Create. You can enter a number, or tap the picture icon to find the number in your Contacts list or in your call logs.

If you don't see these steps or want more blocking options, check out these call- and text-blocking apps.

3. Use a real password

iPhone and Android both default to a 4-digit PIN for unlocking the phone. That's OK as long as you don't use something simple like 0000 or 1234. However, I know some people who want even more security.

iPhone

To set a real password on an iPhone, go to Settings>>Passcode. From there, swipe off the option that says Simple Passcode. Here, you can set your passcode with letters and special characters for better phone security.

Android

Go to Settings>>Lock screen and tap Screen lock. You can set what level of security you want, from a simple swipe to a password. Select Password and type in the password that you want. It should have a mix of letters, numbers and special characters to be safe.

4. See text more easily

Having a hard time reading things on your phone's small screen and this is affecting you? Bump up the font size to something a bit easier to see.

iPhone

Go to Settings>>General>>Accessibility and turn on Bold Text and Larger Text. You can choose either one or both, depending on your preferences. You will need to restart your phone for Bold Text to take effect.

Android

Go to Settings>>Accessibility. Under Vision, tap Font size and set it to Large. Some phones include an even more significant Huge option.

5. Read things out loud

Want to keep your eyes off your phone for a bit? Have it read things to you out loud.

iPhone

Go to Settings>>General>>Accessibility and turn on VoiceOver. You have the option to practice with VoiceOver, set the speaking rate and more.

You will need to do some playing around to get used to it. For example, you can touch and drag your fingers around the home screen to have it read what's there. Double tap to activate an app, while one tap will give you details about it.

VoiceOver will read directions to you in Maps, have your camera tell you how many people are in your shot and get spoken photo descriptions. You can also handwrite notes and letters on the screen and have VoiceOver translate your messages into text for Mail and other apps.

Android

Go to Settings>>Accessibility and tap TalkBack. If you don't see it, you can download it from the Google Play store.

Turn it on, and your phone will read whatever you touch on the screen and incoming notifications. Hint: To perform a regular swipe gesture, you have to use two fingers instead of one.

To adjust your TalkBack settings, go to Settings>>Accessibility and tap Text-to-Speech options. You can improve the voice engine and speed rate.

Then go to Settings and turn on Hands-free mode. This will tell you who is calling or messaging.

6. Customize alert vibration patterns

You've set a custom ringtone for each of your contacts, but that doesn't help when you have your phone on vibrate. Fortunately, you can create custom vibration patterns as well.

iPhone

Go to Settings>>Sounds>>Ringtone>>Vibration. You can tap out patterns to record. Or, you can go to your contacts list and hit Edit and select the Vibration option for each contact.

Android

Go to Contacts and tap on a contact name. Under Vibration Pattern, touch Default and choose a preset pattern. Or tap the Create button and tap on the screen to create your pattern.

If you don't have this built in, there are third-party apps like Vybe that can do this as well.

7. Flash camera LED for notifications

Need a quiet alert about notifications and don't want to your phone to vibrate? Have notifications trigger your phone's LED camera flash instead. Just make sure you turn this off or keep your phone hidden when you go to the movies.

iPhone

Go to Settings>>General>> Accessibility and turn on "LED Flash for Alerts." Now every time you get a notification, your phone's rear camera will flash.

Android

Go to Settings>>Accessibility and turn on "Flash notification."

8. Better ways to take pictures

Tapping your phone's screen to take a picture sounds good in theory, but in practice, it can make shots a little shaky. Here are some better options.

iPhone

Point your camera and press the phone’s Volume Up button.

Android

Open the camera app and tap the gear to see the settings. Scroll down to Voice control and turn it on. Now you can take pictures with the commands "Capture," "Shoot," "Smile" and "Cheese."

9. Take multiple pictures at once

If you're taking pictures of a moving object, squirming kid or people who tend to blink, you often want to make a bunch of images at once.

iPhone 5, 5s, and 5c

Open the Camera app. Tap and hold the shutter release button on the screen – or press and hold the Volume Up button – and the camera will start taking multiple pictures. Release the button when you want to stop.

The iPhones can take up to 10 pictures a second. It will group the photos for you automatically so you can quickly find the best ones.

Android

Open the Camera app. Tap the gear icon to open the settings and turn Burst Shot on. Then tap and hold the shutter release button and the phone will take multiple images until you release the button – or it hits the preset limit for your phone. The photos will be grouped for you in your gallery.

10. Turn off music automatically

A lot of people use their phone to listen to music as they go to sleep, or as they're doing a project. But you don't want it running forever and draining your battery.

iPhone

Go to the Clock app and click on "Timer," then "When Timer Ends." From here, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and select "Stop Playing."

Android

Open the music player and go to Settings. Look for "Music auto off" and set it to however long you want the music to play. There are also third-party apps like Sleep Timer available.

These Are Some of the Insane Things That Bitcoin Investors Are Doing Now

Nearly everyone you meet these days seems to have an opinion about which cryptocurrency is poised to be the next Bitcoin. Will it be Stellar or NEM or Ripple? The names change every week, like a parlor game.

But that implies that folks are playing an innocent game where the stakes are low and the entertainment value is high. Unfortunately, recent surveys indicate that the cryptocurrency craze is anything but harmless.

Here are all the risky things people are doing to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon:

A recent survey of Bitcoin investors found that 18% purchased their cryptocurrencies with the use of credit cards, according to the consumer group LendEDU.

It gets even worse. Of those investors that used credit cards to purchase Bitcoin, 22% had not paid off their card balances. What’s more, 70% argue that the interest they’re paying on that credit card debt is worth the price of owning Bitcoin.

Even more concerning, 88% of the survey respondents say they plan to pay off their credit card by selling their Bitcoins. In other words, to free themselves from their cryptocurrency-induced credit card debt, these investors have to see the value of Bitcoin rise considerably—since they’re also likely looking for investment gains.

Of course, these investors are ignoring one big thing: the significant risk that bitcoin could fall in price, which it has—dropping almost in half since its peak in December.

With the average credit card APR at 16.67%, borrowing $5,000 to buy Bitcoin could add potentially thousands of dollars in debt if they’re paying back the credit card bill with monthly minimums while awaiting that Bitcoin to boom.

Plastic is not the only way people are apparently taking this mania to new levels of financial insecurity.

In December, Joseph Borg, head of the North American Securities Administrators Association, said that some investors have taken out mortgages to help purchase Bitcoins.

While it’s unclear how prevalent this is, Borg made the statement near the height of the Bitcoin run.

“This is not something a guy who’s making $100,000 a year, who’s got a mortgage, and two kids in college ought to be invested in,” Borg told CNBC.

At the very least, mortgaging a home—which for many people is their most important asset—raises the stakes of what could be lost if the Bitcoin bubble bursts.

There’s another debt threat on the horizon. With the Bitcoin mania creating blockchain-ledger millionaires, a new industry is being formed.

Companies now offer ways for crypto owners to borrow against their virtual wallets to purchase large items, like cars, homes, or boats.

Bloomberg reports that the typical contract would require posting $200,000 worth of Bitcoins as collateral, with a 12% to 20% interest rate in order to obtain $100,000 in cash.

Banks have, by and large, stayed away from this sort of lending, leaving the risk to new financial startups.