Nissan disables Leaf app after car hack risk revealed online

Nissan has suspended the functions of an app that could have been used to hack its Leaf electric cars. It has been revealed an attacker could run down the battery of a target's car and see data about its recent journeys. The security researcher who had found it believes the company should have taken the step earlier.

Mr Hunt discovered that anyone could control air conditioning systems of a Leaf because the car’s companion app was not configured to verify the owner’s identity; it only required the vehicle identification number, relatively easy to see.

Mr Hunt suggested that it would not threaten people’s lives, but after first telling Nissan about the problem he felt the company should have suspended the app at an earlier point. A day later, Nissan disabled the service.

"We're looking forward to launching updated versions of our apps very soon."

Seen: technology really provides problems. How could anyone think about hacking a car and taking energy off it? Because we know that computers, phones and stuff like this can be hacked but who could think about a car? The new world is providing us new big problems besides new tools.

Electric cars are cool talking about pollution, but maybe it’s so soon to try new things if we don’ even know how to control what we already have. 

Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35660641

Vocabulary: flaw, flagged, expeditious

GET READY FOR LONDON!

Near the Safestay London Holland Park we can visit the Opera Holland Park, the Kyoto Garden, The Orangery, The Town Hall, the Kensington Palace, etc.

The hostel is approximately 1 hour and away from the Piccadilly circus. If you take the bus to go to the centre, it takes 35 minutes to arrive, because you have to walk to Kensington High St Earls Ct Rd to take the bus, get off the bus at Trafalgar Square and walk to London. By tube it can take from 22 to 41 minutes depending on which one do you take.

London Eye

The London Eye is one of the things I want to visit because it's a giant Ferris wheel. The structure is 443 feet (135 m) tall and the wheel has a diameter of 394 feet (120 m).It is Europe's tallest Ferris wheel and it offers the highest public viewing point in London.

Another thing I would love to visit is the Madame Tussauds London. It is a wax museum in London, founded by wax sculptor Marie Tussauds. It was known as Madame Tussaud’s, but the apostrophe is no longer used. This museum is one of the major tourist attractions in London. 

Trafalgar Square

Then a really beautiful place in London is Trafalgar Square, a public square in Westminster, the centre of London. It is famous because its name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, a British naval victory in the Napoleonic Wars withFrance and Spain (21 October 1805). 

The musicals I would like to see are Billy Elliot and The Lion King. The first one seems to be so interesting because it is about a boy who wants to dance and his beautiful story, it should be amazing to see it on a theatre. Then The Lion King is a story known by everyone and it is said that the performance is so good, so that's why I would like to see it. Both prices are above 50 pounds, so we're not going to see them because they are too expensive.

"DANGEROUS" ANIMALS

Animals are what the owners want them to be. Every animal, in this case I’m going to explain dogs, are like a piece of white paper; they learn what their owners show them.

Each person is responsible for his pet, and their duty is to teach it right, it is said that that dangerous breeds have to be dangerous dogs, but it isn’t really liked this. As ÇI said before, it depends on the owner. A good example could be my example: I have a Rottweiler, and it’s a dangerous breed, but he is a really sweet and nice dog, and never bites or barks at anyone.

Some dogs just aren’t guilty of being bad. For example, ill-treated dogs are bad because they have suffered and they feel fear of being ill-treated again. It is said that if you show love and sweetness to ill-treated dogs, they reply you with the sameeven thought at the beginning it is hard.

As a conclusion, it has to be said that animals aren’t bad. They just defend themselves and learn what owners teach them. The thing is to teach them the right things.

ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING

Should we stop downloading music or it isn’t an important problem in our society? This item makes me start an important discussion in my mind.

First of all, I would like to say downloading is an illegal activity that consists of taking a song without paying anything. At first this sounds good, because you can own a song for free; but think of the other part.

Like everyone else, musicians work to sell their music and earn money. Aren’t we stealing them by downloading their songs? Even though they are rich, their work is to produce more music to earn more money and make their fans “happy”, and, if we download those songs, will musicians stop producing, or will they continue?

In my opinion, despite downloading music for free, musicians earn money in other ways. For example, do you think Elton John cares if people take his songs without paying? He travels around the world, doing concerts, going to interviews and all that stuff. Is he going to be mad because of that? He really doesn’t need it at all, because those interviews and concerts give him some remuneration too.

Downloading music is a good thing because you don’t have to pay for each song, so you can have a lot to listen to. Even though music may seem just a pastime for relaxing or having fun, it really is a way to gain culture, culture of nowadays.

To sum up I would like to say downloading shouldn’t be illegal because it’s a really good tool for having variety of music, culture and enjoyment. 

RESEARCH PAPER ABSTRACT

KEY WORDS: female beauty ideal, society, evolution, fashion

Is female beauty an abstract and superficial concept or actually a way to know society's evolution through women's appearance? This research paper shows up the evolution of women's beauty ideal from prehistory to our days and the explanation of the variables that determine this change. The main goal porposed is to know the female beauty ideal of each period, the reasons why it has been like this and discover if today's generations of teenagers are conscient of the change that it's happening in the current ideal.

CAN TECHNOLOGY MAKE A BETTER WORLD?

Nowadays our society is subdued by technology, and that means everything that happens in the real world is reflected into technology. Is this really necessary?

On the one hand, technology is, in some aspects, disgusting. First of all, half of the information we can find on the Internet is totally false, as everyone can publish anything. If any person can publish on a page or a blog talking about history, art, science... he or she can really say what he wants, as there is freedom of expression. But, who can trust that information? That happens all over internet. This is a big problem, isn't it? 

Secondly as a problem we could talk about those technological improvements that had influenced the industry because, for example, as new robots are invented, it seems there are no workers needed. This means the world is becoming poorer. All that kind of advances just makes humanity go backwards...

On the other hand, with technology has arrived the Internet; so thousands of people can access to a lot of information, even not all the information is reliable and this was unbelievable.

Thanks to technology factories can work better and faster, because new machines and producing methods are invented. This is an advantage in our society, as consuming has become a habit. Another example of a really important technological improvement could be the medical advances, as thanks to the learning on how people body's work, a lot of lives had been saved. In the past, people died due to things today we can solve so easily, such as appendicitis; that even though you have to go to the doctor and get operated, it isn't a difficult. 

As a conclusion we would like to say that technology really can make a better world, because, even though there are such a lot of disadvantages, there are also a lot of advantages. The disadvantages are so related to people's will; so they aren't disadvantages at all, because to believe or not to believe some information or to enter or not into a page really depends on the intention of each one. 

CAN TECHNOLOGY SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS?

LINK: https://www.ted.com/talks/jason_pontin_can_technology_solve_our_big_problems#t-579906 

Jason Pontin starts his speech talking about the moon trip, saying a lot of people participated in that and a lot of money had been spent. He uses it as a metaphor, because technology had brought us there, and now the question is: Can technology solve our big problems? He answers this question as he goes on with the talk.

Firstly he says mobiles, apps, and basically all social media isn't bad in our society, but it can't really solve big problems. "Sometimes we choose not to solve our big problems". He explains he could go to Mars, but: "we aren't going there because it doesn't interest to people", that people preferred to invest on technology or energy, things on Earth, before doing it on the project of going to Mars.  Then he talks about technological energy. He says it is only used because of political and economic interests, because it's cheaper to use petrol than wind energy. 

"Sometimes the problem isn't technological." He is referring to problems such as famine. We used to think it was a problem on food supply, but 30 years of investigation had told us that famines are political crisis that catastrophically affect food distribution. . In Pontin's opinion, "there would be famine so long as there are bad governments". 

"Sometimes we don't understand the problem". We can solve big problems with technology but we must consider four elements: political leaders and the public must care to solve the problem, institutions must support its solution, it must be a technological problem and we due to understand it.

Is it wrong to find humour in war?

A new film has raised questions about whether finding comedy in conflict is correct. Even though mass slaughter and widespread destruction aren’t something to laugh at, we seem to do. Dad’s Army is a Second World War comedy film that has risen very popular, even in the most family-friendly contexts.

Graham McCann, the author of the film says: “What Dad’s Army says to viewers is that, for all the frightening and confusing and alienating aspects of war, there was also a sense of continuity and familiarity. It’s a very reassuring idea that people still had their foibles, and still lead ordinary lives, even during WW2.”

Dad’s army would have been a risky proposition after de WW2, and when it was first mooted, BBC executives thought the horrors were still too fresh in viewer’s memories. The writers had been soldiers themselves, and thought they could joke about it without threating it as unimportant.

More recent wars are trickier to turn into comedy. Also, a reason contemporary wars don’t lend people to comedy is that they don’t involve conscription. Today’s soldiers have consciously elected to be in the army.

Making war comedies does raise another question: why make them? Isn’t it walking through a minefield? But, wartime settings bring depth and intensity to any comedy. John Lloyd says: “What gives Dad’s Army its comic power is that the country could be invaded by the Germans at any time. The characters are bumbling around, but what they’re doing is a matter of life and death.”

Many war veterans talk fondly of the black comic banter that helped them there. “When one character gets his leg blown off in the third series (in a war series called Bluestone 42) the team sends him a big bag of jelly babies, but they’ve bitten one leg off every one of them. You would never do that as a civilian – it would be too cruel. But that story was told to us by a soldier, and he thought it was hilarious.”

The only thing I would say regarding to war films is that, if war veterans can laugh at it, everyone should do. It is true that a lot of people died and to laugh at this isn’t good, especially if anyone in your family has gone to war, but comedy is one of the things in life that helps us get over tragedies and bad times. 

Link: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160204-is-it-wrong-to-find-humour-in-war

Vocabulary: slaughter, tasteless, mooted, adamant, tricky

Dubai's elusive fog phenomenon

Dubai’s skyscrapers have become icons of a futuristic city. A few times per year, if you are in the right place in the right time, you may see the beautiful futuristic city becoming a city in the clouds because of the seasonal thick fog.

Seeing and capturing this fog is so complicated. The few times this fog appears, it is so thick that you can’t see the ground in front of you. It can appear in summer and winter, anytime the air of the nights meets the hot humid days.

You have to be up early to see the fog in action. Just a few buildings let you see the fog above the buildings, and most of them are private apartments of hotels.

Then in the desert, to see the sun rising is so unique and beautiful. To go the desert was an ethereal contrast to the bright clouds we’d seen above urban Dubai.

This fog, amazing fog, that just appears in few moments and can be seen in few places, is a demonstration of nature to show us that we don’t know it all, because if we hadn’t had built that kind of tall buildings, we would have never know that beautiful sight. So this is one of the evidences that shows us how little we really know about all.

Link: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160210-dubais-illusive-fog-phenomenon

Vocabulary: shift, scorching, ethereal