The Defender

It’s lights, camera, action for the  2019 Ford Edge ST . This sportier new version of Ford’s midsize  crossover  was remade into a Hollywood camera car by specialist firm  Pursuit Systems . Designed to film car chases and other action footage, discussions are underway to use the Edge ST in the production of upcoming feature films, according to Ford.

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The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has agreed to pay the sum of N22, 500 as new minimum wage for workers, as against the existing N18,000. Chairman of the Forum and Zamfara State Governor, Abdul’Aziz Yari, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja. He explained that the decision followed an emergency meeting of the governors where they deliberated on the new minimum wage after a briefing from the forum’s representatives at the Tripartite Committee. The governor noted that the welfare of the people was the ultimate concern for the forum, lamenting the deteriorating economic situation experienced by the vulnerable segment of the populace. Before agreeing to a figure, he explained that the governors considered the stride of development in their states, particularly in health, education and infrastructure. Governor Yari added that the meeting did not take a position that would only reflect a figure, but also a sustainable strategy based on the ability and capacity of t

As technology and the web become more advanced, the main concern we all have is privacy. We use the internet for everything now, and we have access to it across a ton of devices: our phones, computer, televisions, game consoles, and even the security systems for our homes. On those devices we have pictures, videos, login information and passwords for the most personal and crucial accounts for things like banking and health. Nearly every service we sign up for, whether it’s for entertainment or business, requires us to do so using our email address and some of those services allow third parties to access that information. Even though a website has that little padlock symbol in the address bar and a company tells us that our passwords are encrypted, is our data really safe? Big companies like  Facebook  and  Google  have both admitted to privacy breaches this year, and many people closing down their accounts. Helm is looking to put users’ minds at ease. Helm is a 

Apple had long denied that it had purchased compromised servers manufactured in China that would have made it a victim to government surveillance after  Bloomberg Businessweek  broke the story, and now CEO Tim Cook is demanding the publication to retract its report. The publication alleged that the compromised  servers , discovered as early as 2015, would have given China a backdoor into the private networks of U.S. corporations and government agencies and that Apple had severed its relationship with San Jose, California-based Super Micro as a result of this breach of trust. “I feel they should retract their story,”  Cook told Buzzfeed  about the Bloomberg story. “There is no truth in their story about Apple. They need to do that right thing.” Cook also took issue at lack of evidence in Bloomberg’s report. Cook said that Bloomberg reporters did not provide his company with specific details about the chips that were alleged to have been discovered and removed. Following Bloomberg

The minute-long television commercial Ford released to mark the start of its new marketing campaign left us with more questions than answers. It’s not Bryan Cranston’s starring role that we’re curious about. We want to know more about the enigmatic, electric-looking, Mustang-like car shown 37 seconds into the video. The ad briefly shows footage of a  2019 Mustang  roaring down a desert road before cutting to an animation of its 5.0-liter V8 engine in action. The next scene introduces a car we’ve never seen before. It looks like a Mustang, but a body-colored panel with a back-lit emblem replaces the grille. These styling cues fall in line with the design language that nearly every car company — from Volkswagen to Mercedes-Benz — has adopted to characterize future electrified models. This could be our first look at the gasoline-electric hybrid Mustang tentatively scheduled to make its debut in 2020. We know precious little about the car because Ford won’t release technical specifi

The lines between the real world and the virtual world become more blurred every day. Researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have  revealed their design  for an “ultralight” pair of gloves that allow users to “feel” virtual objects. A video describing the gloves can be seen below: Basic prototypes of virtual tactile feedback technology have been developed in the past, but they were always bogged down by their massive bulky exoskeletons and power sources. The EFPL’s ultralight gloves are very light and flexible, weighing just 8 grams per finger. (That’s half as heavy as a CD.) The energy required to power the gloves is incredibly small, needing only a small few-milliWatt battery. The lightness of the glove highlights its form, as it’s designed to feel as natural and unintrusive as possible. In order to simulate grasping and feeling a virtual object, metal bars inside the fingers of the gloves connect and stop the fingers from moving. Basical

Tesla pledged its entry-level Model 3 sedan would cost $35,000 before federal incentives, but every example it has delivered to date has sold for at least $54,000. The company is keeping its promise of making the car more affordable over time by releasing a new variant of it priced under the $50,000 mark. Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk made the announcement on his personal Twitter account — where else? He posted a link to the Model 3’s  ordering page , which includes the new model with the midrange battery pack. The specifications sheet lists rear-wheel drive (instead of dual-motor all-wheel drive) and up to 260 miles of driving range according to estimations made by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It takes 5.6 seconds to reach 60 mph from a stop and maxes out at 125 mph. To put those figures into context, the range-topping  Model 3 Performance boasts 310 mile of range and a 3.3-second zero-to-60-mph time thanks to a dual-motor, all-wheel drive configuration

Cybercrime is on the rise. Experts predict it to be  a $1.5 trillion industry  in 2018. With big money at stake, the threat to your privacy has never been bigger. When it comes to the internet, crime really does pay Whether it’s  stealing your identity  or  hijacking your browser to mine cryptocurrencies , hackers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to track, steal, and exploit your data. Law enforcement agencies are struggling to keep up. Half the problem is prosecuting offenders – the web is an effective hiding place, and jurisdiction rules mean for every one that gets caught, thousands go free. The other challenge, of course, is you. Of the  2.6 billion data records stolen in 2017 , only 4% were secured accounts. Hackers choose their targets. Give them an opening – whether it’s a weakness in your operating system, internet connection, or browser – and they’ll use it to spy, blackmail, or steal. The first line of defence against such attacks is ensuring yo

Face ID. Fingerprint scanners. Voice recognition. When it comes to biometrics, there a whole lot of means for checking a person’s identity in a way that’s far more personalized than a four-digit security code or password. Now a nonprofit group called the  IOTA Foundation  is working with biometrics company  Iampass to introduce a system that lets users verify their identity using the veins in their palm print. As it turns out, these vein patterns are just as unique as the other biometric markers that drive technologies like fingerprint or retina scanners. “More so than any other biometric technology, palm vein authentication is highly accurate, hygienic, and designed specifically to curb impersonation, counterfeiting, and other illegal actions that may be used to access important information and secure areas,” Dominik Schiener, co-founder and co-chair of the IOTA Foundation, told Digital Trends. “[That’s especially true] since the palm veins are unable to be seen by the naked ey

President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration will continue to review obsolete laws that are hindering growth in many sectors of the Nigerian economy. President Muhammadu Buhari President Buhari spoke on Friday when he received executive members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, at the State House, Abuja. The President, who said his administration has in the last three years, worked hard to enhance the transparency and efficiency of public sector financing through strict implementation of the Treasury Single Sccount, TSA, noted that government has also introduced policies which have made significant impact on the business environment. Commending the chartered accountants for drawing public attention to the issues of the environment and climate change in their recently concluded conference, President Buhari said that steps are being taken to revive the environment in Niger Delta region even as he lamented the adverse effect of desertification in

Court documents have claimed that Facebook was aware of inaccuracies in the way it measured how many people viewed video on its site for a year longer than it has previously admitted. Newly released papers that are part of a US legal action against the social network, claimed that it knew about the problems in 2015. Facebook described the case against it as "without merit". It said suggestions it had tried to hide the issue were "false". In September 2016, Facebook admitted that it had overestimated how much video people had watched for the previous two years. "We told our customers about the error when we discovered it - and updated our help centre to explain the issue," it said in a statement. The error affected a Facebook metric called "average duration of video viewed", which was supposed to tell publishers for how long, on average, people had watched a video. However, the metric did not include viewers who had watched for

President Muhammadu Buhari is calling for calm among Nigerians ahead of the 2019 general elections. The president made the call in a message delivered by the minister of state for petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu at a conference where he stressed the need for free and fair polls. Keynote speaker at the event and human rights lawyer Femi Falana said with the recent gains in crude oil sale Nigeria has no business getting more foreign loans. As political parties prepare for campaigns ahead of the 2019 elections, the need to maintain calmness for a peaceful election took the centre stage at the oil workers CONFAB in Abuja. President Buhari re-echoed the call for rancour-free polls. Nigeria’s anti-corruption campaign was particularly of interest to Human Rights lawyer Femi Falana. Falana faulted government’s continuous quest for loans. The human rights lawyer also agreed with labour leaders that a new minimum wage must be implemented immediately to reduce the sufferings of citizens.