PEDES3ANTECH

Last week was another full week of tech news still dominated by new revelations about the NSA PRISM program and what will happen to the person who leaked the intel. Last week, the US government formally charged Edward Snowden with Espionage and has requested Hong Kong for his extradition. The president of the USA, Barack Obama also gave an interview defending the PRISM program and re-assuring people that their privacy is not in danger.  There were a few significant announcements made related to the gaming industry last week- the biggest of all was Microsofts announcement cancelling the two most contentious policies it planned to implement with the Xbox One. These policies were namely i. the requirement to connect to the internet once every 24 hrs, and ii. their policy on sharing and re-selling games. The Xbox One reversal was met with mixed reactions- some people calling it a victory for the gamers while others call it the death of innovation in the gaming industry. Nvidia's ...

Read, Subscribe and Contribute to Pedes3antech weekly on Flipboard T his week was still dominated by one major story- PRISM. The US government under the Obama administration has been under a lot of heat since the leaks came out of the media. This week however, the PRISM story was made even more interesting when Edward Snowden came out and faced the world. Now the people and the government can put a face to the NSA leak. This development however has put the whole debate around PRISM on the wrong direction. The government and the public dialogue has started to shift towards questions about Snowden's decision to leak. Questions about the ethics of his decision and how he has endangered (mysteriously) thousands of lives is drowning the more serious questions about Civil liberties, Individual Privacy, Limits on government powers, Government Accountability and Corporate Social responsibility. The US Senate , in one of its more sensible decisions lately, has put pre...

At the beginning of the new year, I posted a blog about my 2013 to do/try list (see post here ). Today I am proud to say that I am able to check off one item in the list- Try an Android Smartphone.  I have been using the Samsung Galaxy Note II for the last couple of weeks now after giving up my iPhone 4S. I did not post a blog about it right away to make sure my assessment is not biased. I had to make sure I gave myself enough time to learn and understand the OS. I had used an iPhone for over 3 years before getting the Note 2 so I had to make sure I get rid of any expectations based on what I was used to getting with iOS. It was not easy but after around 3 weeks I am fairly confident I gave Android a fair chance so here is my assessment.  Hardware Design and Feel. The Galaxy Note II is huge but highly functional even for someone with small hands like myself. The feel of the material however still has a plasticky feel w/c to me diminishes its high-end value ...

Amazon.ca Widgets A few days after Jailbreaking my iPad mini, I only managed to downloaded a handful of tweaks from Cydia. There are two reasons for this slow adoption on my end: i. Cydia sources were hammered making downloads almost impossible and ii. Not too many iOS 6.1 tweeks available mainly due to the fact that most dev teams are still scrambling to develop them. So far I have downloaded tweaks I always considered essential to a Jailbroken iOS device, namely; SBSetting, Activator, and iFile. These are tweaks I have used before and still consider essential in enhancing my iOS user experience. I have also downloaded a few new tweaks I have not used before: f.lux, Mail Enhancer and Retina Pad. My favourite of the three so far is Retina Pad. Below is my review of this tweak/ app. What it is Retina Pad is a jailbreak tweak that literally unleashes the Retina display capability of your iPad/ iPad mini. What blew my mind with Retina Pad is how it enables Retina display for...

The jailbreak community has been given new life today with the release of Evasi0n, a new jailbreak software for iOS devices running 6.x. It has been a long time coming since the last major untethered jailbreak release for the masses.  Recently the jailbreak community was hit with a big change when Hackulous decided to shut-down, leading a lot of people to proclaim that the jailbreak community was going to die a slow death. ( read my take on the Hackulous shut-down in this post ). True to this diagnosis of dying slow- evasi0n was reportedly downloaded 270,000 times after less than 8 hours from its release.  The new jailbreak software was developed by a new group of hackers who call themselves @evad3rs mostly composed of veteran Jailbreakers @pod2g @planetbeing @pimskeks @MuscleNerd. This group had announced an exploit they found on the iOS 6.x releases but decided to wait it out until 6.1 was released to the masses to make sure Apple was not able to patch the exploit they us...