Dr M Khalid's global village blog

The hackers behind the NotPetya ransomware, which wiped computers in more than 60 countries in late June, have moved more than £8,000 worth of bitcoins out of the account used to receive the ransoms. The transfer has added credence to messages purporting to be from the attackers offering to decrypt every single infected computer for a one-off payment of £200,000, after security researchers suggested they may be state-sponsored actors. Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/notpetya-ransomware-hackers-ukraine-bitcoin-ransom-wallet-motives

Twenty-something men are working many fewer hours than they did a decade and a half ago, according to a new study, and the biggest reason is that they prefer to play video games. Men aged 21-30 worked 12% fewer hours in 2015 than they did in 2000, according to the study, published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, and about half the reason is the time they spend gaming. A large group of video-game-loving Americans, according to new research, play video games at home rather than work. This may help explain one of the most alarming aspects of the nation's economic recovery: Even as the unemployment rate has fallen to low levels, an unusually large percentage of able-bodied men, particularly the young and less-educated, are either not working or not working full-time. Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the ne...

Mr Ansari is in a hospital in Dhanbad, saved by the timely arrival of the police, who fired gunshots to disperse the mob. "Our men braved the crowd and immediately rescued Ansari and his family members. When the police tried to take him to hospital, there was resistance from the crowd. There was heavy stone-pelting. We had to open fire in the air," said a senior police officer RK Mullik. Two men were injured, both in the legs, in the police firing  With incidents of cow vigilantism on the rise, union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said a few days ago, that the government "is very clear that if anyone indulges in violence, then the law will have to do its job." https://www.google.co.in/amp/m.ndtv.com/india-news/jharkhand-man-beaten-his-house-set-on-fire-after-dead-cow-allegedly-found-outside-1717854%3Famp%3D1%26akamai-rum%3Doff

India, Hong Kong real estate price are in a clear bubble and are expected to come down. See charts.  See Interactive chart of global real estate prices here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/03/daily-chart-6 As per Bank for International Settlements' (BIS), Indian residential property price rise since 2007 highest in world. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday moved to boost the housing sector by reducing the amount of capital banks need to set aside for housing loans, as well as by reducing the provisions needed for such loans. The move has been welcomed since the real estate sector is in bad shape and particularly since the construction industry is a major source of jobs for the masses. But is relaxing these norms a prudent measure? The question arises from the accompanying chart, taken from the Bank for International Settlements' (BIS) quarterly review for June 2017. The chart shows the rise in real residential property prices in various countries af...

Traders rued their burnt shops, farmers mourned the death of their sons to police bullets; but as four days of violence drew to a close, both sides could only speak of one thing: demonetisation. "Notebandi destroyed the trust between farmer and trader," said Sunil Ghatiya, a soybean trader in Mandsaur's Pipliya Mandi, "It finished off our market." "The traders exploited us," said Dinesh Patidar, whose son Abhishek was killed when police opened fire on farmers demanding loan waivers and better prices for their crops, "They knew the farmers were desperate for cash." The Modi government insists the economy has weathered the shock of demonetisation of 86% of India's currency on 8 November last year, even as evidence to the contrary piles up and economists say they lack the tools to isolate its effects. In Mandsaur, where four days of rioting resulted in the deaths of five farmers and the destruction of crops, farms, shops, and trucks, the pol...

Four Arab nations ,  Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ,  cut diplomatic ties with Qatar early Monday morning, further deepening a rift among Gulf Arab nations over that country's support for Islamist groups and its relations with Iran. A look at the history of the conflict: THE TRIGGER Qatar alleged in late May that hackers took over the site of its state-run news agency and published what it called fake comments from its ruling emir about Iran and Israel. Its Gulf Arab neighbours responded with anger, blocking Qatari-based media, including the Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera. On May 27, Qatar's ruling emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, called Iranian President Hasan Rouhani to congratulate him on his re-election. The call was a clear, public rebuttal of Saudi Arabia's efforts to force Qatar to fall in line against the Shiite-ruled nation, which the Sunni kingdom sees as its No. 1 enemy and a threat to regional stability. Qatar shares a ma...

Java Java programming language is one of the most preferred language when it comes to Android app development. An object-oriented programming language developed at Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle), can be run in 2 different ways either in a browser window or in a virtual machine that can do without a browser. Objective-C The primary programming language for iOS apps, Objective-C was chosen by Apple to build apps that are robust and scalable. Being a C-language superset, it does have a number of functions that precisely deal with graphics, I/O, and display functions. Moreover, as part of the Apple development framework, Objective-C is fully integrated into all iOS and MacOS frameworks. However, it's now slowing being replaced in the Apple ecosystem by a more powerful language called Swift. Swift Swift is the latest programming language to foray into the Apple ecosystem, mainly considering its prevalence in writing code for Apple's latest APIs, Cocoa and Cocoa...