Author: Henry R. Lares

Henry Lares is still early into his career as tech reporter but has already had his work published in many major publications including Tech Crunch and the Huffington Post.  In regards to academics, Henry earned an engineering degree from Apex Technical School. Henry has a passion for emerging technology and covers upcoming products and breakthroughs in science and tech.

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News Tech

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) Comes with Android Oreo and New Features

Since Android Oreo came with a number of features that people have instantly fallen in love with it is expected that Samsung is going to slowly work to adapt their operating system to other phones that they have come up with and this time it looks like Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) is going to be on the receiving end of this update.

The Oreo update

The specific model that the company is targeting is the SM-A520F. Users from Russia have already reported that they have received the update this week. Since introducing such an update to a phone that is sold worldwide to a large number of users, it is expected that within a couple of weeks everyone that owns an A5 will receive the update notification for the Android 8.0 Oreo version.

Samsung Galaxy A5’s past

When the phone got introduced on the market back in January 2017, it came with the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and it, later on, got the upgrade to the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. We think that the update to the Android 8.0 Oreo is going to be the last one in this series, with possible securities updates to follow in the next couple of months, as we have grown accustomed to.

Samsung has promised that phones that have been released from 2015 and up will receive two operating system upgrades and three years of security updates. And when it comes to the A5, it looks like they stayed true to their promise, with the first update being Android Nougat and the latest being Android Oreo. Now if they will also stick to their security patch update period then we can safely say that users of Samsung Galaxy A5 will be safe and sound from security threats up until 2020, after that it is their responsibility to protect their phones or upgrade to another one, if they so desire.

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News

Pokémon Z Release Date Takes Longer Than Anticipated

The universe of Pokémon and its immersive role-playing features has taken the world by storm for a decade already. This is why back in 2013 Game Freak decided to work on Pokémon X and Pokémon Y as installments in the popular game series. These games were to be distributed by Nintendo and they were under the publishing right of The Pokémon Company.

The success of Pokémon X and Y

It seems like these two games took Japan by storm, selling over a million copies before the game was even released.  After the game got released, the sales total came up to more than 2 million copies in Japan alone and over 4 million copies on a worldwide scale.

With this amount of success, it is safe to say that people have high standards for Pokémon Z.

With little to no announcement being made on this particular game series fans worldwide fear that this game will be skipped completely by the game developers. However, there are a number of reasons why we may not have heard the big news yet.

The reasons

The biggest fear of Nintendo could be the fact that this game will not bring in a lot of sales. As they have seen with past first generation games, these usually sell the most while sequels or second generation games that follow up on the story do not do so well.

Another problem that we have to address is the fact that Nintendo may be simply afraid to start working on this game and release it as not that much time after the terrorist attack in France passed. Why is this relevant? Well, the game is set in one of France’s geographical locations and some may see attacks and fights going on in a virtual environment as a reflection of reality which may hurt them.

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Crypto Finance News

Bitcoin and the Banking System – What’s Next?

For a time, some people have thought that cryptocurrencies are amazing and the state of the art and that the fact that the financial system is wary of them and in some cases is even rejecting them show shows how little the financial system knows about trying to adapt and including other forms of payment. However, it now looks like the financial system knew more about the matter and that cryptocurrencies were only suffering from a form of arrogance.

Claims against Lightning

Lightning is a second-layer network that will hopefully bring Bitcoin to the mainstream level. Now we are not exaggerating when we are saying that Lightning is a very complex system that is difficult to explain both to someone with little experience that is trying to understand it and also to someone within the community. However, a claim is going around that states that Lightning is not an IOU. The argument around this issue ill-based and easy to deconstruct, it all fixates on linking this statement with a hefty discussion about how banks employ an IOU system.

There is also talk going around that Lightning has only been created so that the banking industry could have a way to get their hands on Bitcoin and operate it remotely. Yet again, this argument is flawed and far away from the truth. Have we mentioned by now that these two arguments come from an article written by Cryptoconomy where he states his opinions about Lightning? If not, it is only right that we do so because it is not fair that we do not.

One of the last argument of this discussion about Lightning that we would like to state is that Lightning does have the potential to become a worthy competitor to VISA, but that will only happen in the future with the condition that Lightning will be set on a path of constant growth and evolution.

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Crypto Finance News

The Connection Between Online Gambling, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

From what we have already seen for some time, it looks like crypto coins and blockchain technology can improve a number of aspects of our daily lives but it seems like the one of the best areas where it can be used is online gambling.

What is a blockchain?

For those that do not know, a blockchain is a list of records that is made to be secure through cryptography and some of the best uses of this technology lie in the gambling sphere. When applied to online gaming, it greatly increases the speed of transactions, including those of withdrawals, as some of you may know that for an online transaction to be finalized it may take between 3 and 5 business days.

Blockchain perks

It is well known that in order for you to be able to play in an online gambling event you will need a traditional bank account in order to get your bets and your withdrawals, if you are lucky. However, when one uses a blockchain then he or she is going to be able to play in such an event just by having a computer and an internet connection, making the process easier.

How to adopt this process

So far the number of platform that use this blockchain system are few and far in between but it looks like more and more are working to incorporate it onto their online gambling platform which means that there is hope for the future. Were we to name a couple of platform that already have this feature, we could gladly say that Lottery.com and Greentube have both made this step. However, the problem with security levels still stands since the need to stop young gamblers and problem gamblers from playing still stand. That will remain to be fixed in the near future.

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Tech

Play as Kratos, “God of War” with this GTA 5 mod

On April 20 we will have a chance to see Kratos in God of War. However, if you miss him already, you will be able to see him in Grand Theft Auto 5, thanks to a mod. This means that you can you use his godly powers in San Andreas.

The mod brings Kratos, as well as his abilities and weapons. You will be able to use the Blades of Chaos on the streets, and you will even be able to shoot fire and fly, which are all impressive advantages.

The Kratos mod

The mod is named Kratos – God of War III, and the developer behind it is Lê Tuấn Khải. Judging by the name of the mod it is easy to understand that the Kratos that is available in GTA 5 is the one from the third game. This means that you won’t see Kratos with a beard, the way he looks at the moment. Kratos was also modded to appear in other games, such as Metal Gear Solid 5, Fallout 4 and Skyrim.

This is not the first time Lê Tuấn Khải manages to bring some amazing mods to GTA 5. Previously, he added Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy, Killmonger and Black Panther, as well as Leona from Sudden Attack 2.

Mods are accepted

If you are worried that the developers behind Grand Theft Auto might have something against mods, you should know that modding is safe. Basically, modders were allowed to continue and there will be no legal consequences as long as the mods are single-player, non-commercial and respect the third-party IP rights.

Rockstar has even encouraged developers to continue to create: “Rockstar Games believes in reasonable fan creativity, and, in particular, wants creators to showcase their passion for our games.” Nonetheless, mods are still not accepted for multiplayer games and online services, and it is not hard to understand why.

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