DesiReflections

Game Changer Card Is Coming This Summer Apple is shortly going to launch a credit card that customers can use with its virtual payment service, Apple Pay. The Apple Game Changer Card Is Coming This Summer Apple is shortly going to launch a credit card that customers can use with its virtual payment service, Apple Pay. The Apple Card is made of titanium, and has no annual, late, or international fees. Apple CEO Tim Cook said last Monday that the tech company's new credit card would be "the most significant change in the credit card experience in 50 years." The card, which will push users toward Apple Pay, offers a run-of-the-mill suite of spending rewards, and the security features — while laudable — don't move the needle, according to analysts. Apple's first credit card will debut this summer in partnership with Mastercard (MA) and Goldman Sachs (GS), the issuing bank. Notably, the card is built into the iPhone's Apple Wallet app, and a physical, lase...

India has 337 million smart phones by the end of 2018,  that literally means that one out of four person is on social media. It is a source of information, entertainment as well as great connector with your relatives, friends, business associates . It has also helped to do business. But how many users know that if you are on social media platform that nothing is secret about you. Do not believe me, j ust search for yourself on www.pipl.com —you might be surprised at the number of companies that claim to have information about your family, income, address, phone number and much, much more., That’s because your personal information, including your email address, phone number and social security number, is worth a lot of money to legitimate businesses and bad guys alike. The bad guys just want to steal from you. Companies want to know as much about you as possible so they can sell you more products and services or serve you ads that are highly relevant to your needs and preferen...

Before we talk about the better sweetener alternatives, we are  going to discuss the long term health hazards of using sugar : 1. I ncreases Your Risk of Diabetes The worldwide prevalence of diabetes has more than doubled over the past 30 years . Though there are many reasons for this, there is a clear link between excessive sugar consumption and diabetes risk. Obesity, which is often caused by consuming too much sugar, is considered the strongest risk factor for diabetes. What’s more, prolonged high-sugar consumption drives resistance to insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that regulates blood sugar levels. Insulin resistance  causes blood sugar levels to rise and strongly increases your risk of diabetes. A population study comprising over 175 countries found that the risk of developing diabetes grew by 1.1% for every 150 calories of sugar, or about one can of soda, consumed per day . Other studies have also shown that people who drink sugar-sweete...

Do you remember when you walked bare foot ? If you are not in habit of  walking  bare foot, take some time off and try to walk bare foot for a while. How many among us know that  this simple pleasure is a powerful healthy habit. In fact now the scientific validations also started pouring in.  In the year 2012, The Journal of Environmental and Public Health carried review of the research on the health benefits of connecting human body to the ground.  The research shown that the grounding shows to : 1. Improve quality of sleep and feelings of restfulness 2. Significantly reduce muscle stiffness and chronic pain 3. Regulate  the secretion of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. This way it helps to regulate typical cycle of peaking in the morning and dipping lowest at the midnight, promoting more restful sleep, regulating blood sugar levels and appetite, and helping to control weight. 4. Reduce the severity of inflammatory response after the tense w...

With more than 70,000 newspapers and over 500 satellite channels in several languages, Indians are seemingly spoilt for choice and diversity. But the fact remains, that most of the channel owners have not come to the space to serve the people but to protect their business interests as well as to make more money through paid news, ad revenue which can results in skewed reporting  India is already the biggest newspaper market in the world - over 100 million copies sold each day. Advertising revenues have soared. In the past two decades, the number of channels has grown from one - the dowdy state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan - to more than 500, of which more than 80 are news channels. You might remember that 71-page Press Council investigation named many leading newspapers received money for publishing information disguised as news in favor of individuals, including senior politicians. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an independent journalist who was one of the investigators, ...

Like ‘United 93’, ‘Hotel Mumbai ‘ begins from uncomfortable premise of turning an actual terrorist incident into material for dramatized suspense feature. 10 men unleaded gunfire and grenade assault across city of Mumbai killing more than 150 people. Last time there was a documentary, ‘Surviving Mumbai’, probably the movie is inspired by it. The characters many of them are composites, are guests and staff of Hotel Taj, one of the two top hotels terrorists targeted, and where more than 30 died during seize. Story goes like :  An affluent couple played by Nazmi Boinadi and Arnie Hammer leave their new born with the nanny ( played by Tulsa CobhamHarvey) to enjoy dinner date in the hotel restaurant. A high rolling Russian (Jason Issac) plans to spend the evening cavorting with local escort.  The heroic hotel employees that include head chef ( played by Anupam Kher) and waiter ( Dev Patel) who shows up to work that day without proper footwear but begs to stay, needing the sh...

 Governments on all habitable continents have been caught snooping on their citizens. No matter where you are, there’s a reason some government agency would want to monitor you. Sometime it may be needed for securing borders but all the time it may or may not. Apart from Governments, there are private organizations, who try hard to obtain personal information of people and sell it for monetary gains. No matter how safe you are with your personal data, it’s not safe from government snooping. Some of the Anonymous hackers involved in data breaches of Stratford, HB Gary Federal, Sony, and PayPal used temporary laptops (similar to a drug dealer’s burner phone) and kept all info (including the operating system) on USB drives, and they still got caught. If these tech experts were tracked, even with all of their advanced techniques for evasion, then you don’t stand a chance. We are living in the future, and our actions are being judged by anyone with the money to access and analyze it. K...

There is a perennial debate on the merits and demerits of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. But a recent report released by United Nations definitely goes heavily in favor of vegetarian food. It says that people must adopt a more plant-based diet to protect the environment, with taxes on meat helping to deliver the shift in habits needed. United Nation's Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report recommends to grow meat in laboratories which can reduce the impact of live stock production, which accounts for 77 per cent of agricultural land globally. It further emphasizes that an emission tax on food could be transformative in reducing the greenhouse gases and loss of wildlife habitat linked to eating red meat. It quotes evidence that imposition such tax can save one billion tonnes of carbon-di-oxide-equivalent next year and deliver significant global health benefits 'due to reduced consumption of meat. It is interesting to note that beef generates at least six times the g...

Many of us are familiar with Bitcoin, a type of digital currency also known as crypto-currency that operates independently from a Central Bank. But this is also a fact that most people are not familiar to the tech behind that system. It is called Blockchain. There are many different blockchains, can be broadly summerized in two categories : 1.Public 2.Private They allow anyone to send value anywhere in the world where the blockchain file can be accessed. Think of each chain as an online database stored in a distributed, peer-to-peer fashion. The storage devices for the database are not all connected to a common processor and each block—ordered records—has a timestamp and a link to a previous block. The technique called Cryptography ensures that users can only edit the parts of the blockchain that they “own” —by possessing the private keys necessary to write to the file. It also ensures that everyone’s copy of the distributed blockchain is kept in sync. A recent World Economic Fo...