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PARANOID ANDROID | Mithun Mohandas | Managing Editor
Another Anti-trust in the making?
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games had to be developed separately for each platform. Consoles survive on video game exclusivity and convenience. As the gaming market gets crowded it’s becoming increasingly difficult for smaller studios to turn a decent profit which is why we see asinine exclusivity agreements being signed by the EPIC store in lieu of money. And guess who has more money than everyone else on the planet? While I personally don’t believe that Google will pull what EPIC did, I certainly do believe that developers wouldn’t shy away from a platform that can draw in more people than PC and Consoles combined. After all, the Play Store has access to more people than every other platform. Going by the first Stadia demo of Doom (2016), it seems like some gamers might not go for Stadia till the visual fidelity is improved. Streaming makes use of massive compression and all the niceties of current gen GPU APIs are easily lost with streaming. So Google has the money, it has the hardware and it has the widest funnel to acquire users. What could go wrong? Well, for starters, the service might be shut down out of the blue. You must’ve heard this one before. Yes, Google does shut services but only if they don’t have users. Gaming is one of the fastest growing sector in the world and there’s little reason to believe that Stadia won’t amass a large playerbase. My concern is that it might end up killing the competition and that’s one of the worst things to happen to any industry. Historically, Google Play Store has had the higher user count but the ones with deep pockets are with the Apple App Store. We all know that Apple is about to launch a video streaming service and leveraging the same infrastructure to venture into the game streaming service wouldn’t be a far out idea. Amazon isn’t far from unveiling something similar in 2020 and NVIDIA’s has been in beta for ages. What’s worrying is that if Google decides to hide the competition from search results then it could effectively cripple the competition. We’re looking at Microsoft and Sony now. After all, if something’s not on Google, then it probably doesn’t exist. Let’s just hope that the competition pulls its socks up sooner rather than later.
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EVERY ANNOUNCEMENT MADE AT THIS YEAR’S GDC (Game Developers Conference) was overshadowed by one service in particular, Google Stadia. Google’s entry into the video game streaming business is by no means a small gesture. It’s certainly not the first to come out with the concept but Google’s certainly leveraging other Google services to build a platform that appears to have a seamless integration. Google has had a lot of issues with getting people onto services in the past. Orkut didn’t do well in the US but practically every Indian kid had a profile on it and so Google killed it. Similarly, Allo fell to the axe last month owing to low adoption. To prevent something similar from happening to Stadia, Google is widening the funnel by peppering hyperlinks into existing Google services such as YouTube. This makes Stadia more visible and the convenience of getting started with just one click is too good to pass. Google already has the networking infrastructure that’s spread across the world, it’s using custom AMD GPUs which are more powerful than current gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles and it’s making the service convenient to get onto for users without any initial investment. There’s hardly any reason for gamers to not consider this service. Let’s consider the cons. Video games are best enjoyed with low latency! Majority of the gamers all over the world play casually, competitive gamers are only a small fraction of the entire gamer populace. Competitive gamers will still prefer PCs which they’ve grown familiar with, so much that the PC is an extension of their own person. So ultra low latency isn’t critical here. If you’ve been playing games on your TV, then it’s most certain that you haven’t experienced low latency. The input lag in mainstream TV units is just ridiculous. You have to enable game mode (or whatever fancy term the manufacturer uses) in order to experience lower latencies. Without that, you might as well play on a streaming service such as Stadia because the difference would be negligible. Consoles have been using the x86 microarchitecture for a while, which is why you’ve started seeing a lot more games being developed in shorter time frame since most of the development work only has to be done once. Previously, with proprietary hardware,
“My concern is that it might end up killing the competition and that’s one of the worst things to happen to any industry.”
Let me know your thoughts on this column at: @mithun_mohandas | mithun@digit.in
www.digit.in | April 2019 | Digit | 1
THE RSS FEED | Robert Sovereign-Smith | Executive Editor
The social divide
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and a camera in front of every person’s face, and saying “Tell the world what you feel.” For decades now I’ve been telling people that this is just a bad idea, especially when it is coupled with the anonymity of the internet. If you and I were given a soapbox and told to stand on it in front of our homes, while all our neighbours listened to what we said. We’d probably keep our innermost thoughts (the ones others might find disgusting) to ourselves. The real world has consequences. Online, there seem to be none, especially since you can create a totally fictitious profile and then just spray hatred everywhere. Studies done by Pew and other research companies over the years have shown that social media, contrary to what we usually believe, actually makes us less sociable, and drives a larger divide in groups than anything else. While this is especially true for politics (a subject I abhor with a passion), it’s also true for just about any difference we can imagine. The Pew study (released in 2017) also found that technology in general was causing this. You can’t just blame Facebook or Twitter, it’s also search results on YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, or any place that uses algorithms to try and give you more of what we seem to like, thus fuelling our already biased views. So what can we do about this? We cannot fix the world, we only control ourselves, and we can start by using ourselves as an improvement project. Let’s first face the facts. Almost none of us (except the bravest souls) will be deleting all their social media accounts or online accounts anytime soon. It’s an evil we need to live with because of all the good things it enables as well. Speaking personally, I’ve decided to be far more polite online than I’ve been in the past. This is because hatred breeds hatred, and it always ends in one idiot taking things too far. No matter how much I disagree with a person’s views, or how disgusting a human I think they are, I’ve decided to treat them as if they were sitting on my sofa talking to me while drinking coffee. I don’t know if this is idiotic and pointless, but I know that the old ways aren’t working. I’d love to hear any suggestions you have, and your tips for dealing with all the negativity we seem to encounter online. Write to me, and let’s discuss this as if we were having coffee or tea together.
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THE EVENTS IN NEW ZEALAND IN MARCH were despicable, but they weren’t shocking. People have been murdering people for a very long time – long before there was language or even social cohesion. The New Zealand government was quick to ban guns that could be used to mass murder people, and that was a good start, but it’s like trying to empty an ocean with a bucket. Many people have had and will have their say about what the root cause of such hatred is, and I suppose this is my version. As someone who lives in Australia, this event especially dominated the discussions of everyone, everywhere I went. It started with the killer’s live stream on Facebook. That video was shared millions of times across platforms, because although most of us are aghast that people want to watch it, let alone share it, the world is weird. More than anything else, what drives most people these days is fomo (fear of missing out). No matter what kind of content something is, if it’s trending, everyone wants to consume it. Virality is usually nothing more than a lot of people wanting to fit in with their chosen groups, and have a shared experience. While video services worked overtime to shut down the cancer from spreading, the memes started. Sadly, that’s the state of social discourse today. The Internet is an evil place, and it can bring out the worst in even otherwise good people. The isolation of people when writing comments online makes them drop all inhibitions and delete all filters, and the result is ugly. Like I said earlier, people have always been this way though, and it was probably evolutionarily advantageous to be xenophobic. After all if you were a family of prehistoric humans, and another family came along, trusting them could very well involve you getting killed or robbed. A little later when society was forming, and groups got considerably bigger, say, the size of a town, xenophobia would have blurred from family groups to much larger groups, but there was always someone new to hate. This was in decline when it was just mass media who was responsible for information spread. As much as we hate the idea of news corporations dictating what we hear about and what we don’t, there was at least accountability placed on the companies of basic human decency. The internet changed that, especially Web 2.0 as it was called. Essentially putting a microphone
2 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
“No matter what kind of content something is, if it’s trending, everyone wants to consume it. Virality is usually nothing more than a lot of people wanting to fit in with their chosen groups, and have a shared experience.”
Liked or hated this column? Let me know at: editor@digit.in | facebook.com/raaabo | @raaabo
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contents
COVER STORY PAGE 50 -61
5G and Beyond
The next generation of cellular infrastructure is designed to connect everything, not just smartphones, and we explore the promise of this incipient technology. TECH - PAGE 10-49
APRIL 2019
24| Level-up: Spotify, YouTube Music
Take your music streaming to the next level with tips and tricks for these new apps.
28 | Linux machine for PC gaming
VOLUME 19 ISSUE 04
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Playing PC games on Linux-driven machines has become much easier these days.
12 | What’s in a smartphone?
While there are hundreds of brands selling smartphones, only a small cluster of companies provide the components that make them up.
16 | A bounty of bugs
Finding bugs for a living could be a legitimate and well paying career choice.
18 | Engage all defences
India’s defence startups are aiding our armed forces and strengthening our borders.
20 | Agent001:
Agent001 is in two minds on whether he should upgrade his PC or not.
4 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
30 | Config
Everything you’ll ever need to build your own PC. Whatever your budget.
31 | Top 3 Recommended Buys
From gamepads to high-end DSLR cameras, here’s what we recommend for your next purchase.
32 | Take My Money
A MIDI kit, a mind controlled drone and true wireless earbuds are the best you can crowdfund this month.
42 | Devworx: Microsoft Game Stack
We explore Microsoft’s latest game development bid.
46 | Teardown: Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10e AND MORE
CULTURE - PAGE 62-70
ALT - PAGE 82-93
ON THE DVD 65 | Rotten Eggs
88 | The future of ASOIAF
66 | Card game versions of board games
90 | Indian Sci-Fi TV Shows
70 | 1000 words
92 | Backtalk
TECH Learn Blender Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games.
Kids who grew up in the 80s and 90s will remember these science fiction shows on DD and the early days of cable networks. .
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These card games are better than the board games they were inspired from.
Game of Thrones is coming to a conclusion, but there is a lot of content in verious forms lined up, set in the world fans refer to as Planetos.
Image composition involves taking multiple photos and putting them together into one shot.
AND MORE
Our interactions with the industry big wigs, this time with Seagate and Cleartrip.
AND MORE
SKOAR! - PAGE 94-111
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SCIENCE - PAGE 71-81
72 | The Deccan Traps
Ancient lava flows formed one of the largest known volcanic features on Earth, in the northwest part of the Deccan Plateau.
74 | Finding the cure
Recently, scientists announced the second ever patient to be rid of HIV in history. Does this mean we have a cure?
76 | Space Roar
The ancient universe is screaming, and scientists don’t know why.
78 | Seven minutes of Terror
New strategies are required for landing future manned missions, 60% of all landings so far have failed.
AND MORE
CULT Arcade indie games Continuum Danger: Destruction Site Package Man Personal Space Station Railroad Rouges Roll Playing Game Shattered Realms Starfeld Turbo Island Purger μ-DRIVE
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Easter eggs are fine, but an oversaturation of pop culture references in movies is just getting tiresome.
96 | Monopoly: GoT Edition You win or you die
98 | Metro Exodus
Another action packed addition to the popular Metro franchise.
100 | Devil May Cry 5 Smokin’ Sexy Style!
106 | Get rich streaming
Indian PUBG gamers are streaming their way to the bank.
108 | Zero2Hero
We bring to you the rising stars of the esports scene in India.
AND MORE
Tux Linux The purpose of Tux Linux is to introduce Windows users to Linux, and provide them with a comfortable and useful user experience. Educational software ActivePresenter Algodoo CintaNotes GeoGebra GoldenDict Ludwig Notion OpenCalc Qalculate! Robocode SpeedCrunch WordWeb Writefull
File storage, backup and transfer wensite 7-Zip AirDC++ AnyDesk Bandizip Comodo Backup CrashPlan for PC Double Commander
SCI Video lectures on various laws of Physics Coulomb’s Law Faraday’s Law Newton’s Law of Gravity Kirchoff’s Law Newton’s Laws of Motion Ohm’s Law Laws of Thermodynamics Hooke’s Law. ALT 20th century history lessons Beginning of World War I Other fronts of WWI Western and Eastern fronts of WWI Blockades and American entry WWI shapes the Middle East Aftermath of WWI Rise of Hitler and the Nazis
www.digit.in | April 2019 | Digit | 5
TO ADVERTISE APRIL 2019 • VOLUME 19 • ISSUE 04
PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH
EMAIL: sales@digit.in SALES DIRECTOR: Rashmi Mamgain Kumar Mobile: +91-9900567780 NORTH: Mayank Sharma Mobile: +91-8800661912
EDITORIAL Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Managing Editor Mithun Mohandas Features Editor Aditya Madanapalle Associate Editor Arnab Mukherjee
EAST: Jayanta Bhattacharyya Mobile: +91-93318 29284
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SOUTH: Jayanth Ramakrishna Mobile: +91-9964087233
BAZAAR Intel Core i9-9980XE Corsair Crystal 680X NZXT H500 HyperX Pulsefire Surge Kodak 43-inch UHD LED TV Syska Sound Cup Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB RAM Creative Stage Air Zebronics Zeb Peace Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus HP ENVY x360 (2018)
WEST: Suvarna Shringarpure Mobile: +91-93249 28247 TEST CENTRE Reviews Editor Swapnil Mathur Reviewers Abhijit Dey, Subhrojit Mallick, Vignesh Giridharan
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GAMES REVIEWED THIS MONTH
DIGIT.IN Editor Soham Raninga Managing Editor Adamya Sharma Assistant Editor Sameer Mitha Senior Sub-Editor Shrey Pacheco Writer Shubham Sharma
Devil May Cry 5 Metro Exodus Monopoly: Game of Thrones Edition
ADVERTISING INDEX
Brand.......................................... Page No. TP Link....................................Inside front cover
MOBILE MONTHLY Flip Sausage | Skylanders Ring of Heroes | Idle Wasteland | Laser Overload | Yeah Bunny 2 | Sprout: Idle Garden | Calamari Kid | LifeAfter |
Corsair.....................................Inside back cover
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DESIGN Sr. Art Director Anil VK Art Director Shokeen Saifi Visualiser Baiju NV Lead UI/UX Designer Shri Hari Tiwari
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Quantum....................................................... 112
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READER SERVICES Team Leader Sudhir Patel +91-22-67899678 / help@digit.in 6 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
Published and printed by Kanak Ghosh for and on behalf of the owners, 9.9 Group Pvt. Ltd. (Formerly known as Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Private Limited) 121, Patparganj, Mayur Vihar Phase-1, Near Mandir Masjid, Delhi - 110091 and printed at International Print-O-Pac Limited, C/4-11, Hosiery Complex, Phase II Extension, Noida-201306 (U.P.) INDIA. Editor: Kanak Ghosh.
COVER DESIGN Anil VK
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http://www.facebook.com/skoar What is life without gaming? Catch up on all the latest in gaming news, reviews and shenanigans from our test labs
www.digit.in | April 2019 | Digit | 7
WHAT’S NEW
Google unveils new game streaming platform - Stadia
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services. Google’s starting off with 1080p 60 FPS game streams in beta with 4K support being available when the service launches later this year. Moreover, Google’s also making 8K resolution available for those who need it. The GPU and CPU that powers each instance was custom developed by AMD and is reportedly more powerful than the current gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft. https://dgit.in/stadia
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DOES THIS SECTION EVEN NEED AN INTRODUCTION? FROM COMPUTERS TO MOBILES, AND HEADPHONES TO GPUs, IT’S ALL HERE...
ven before GDC 2019, one of the biggest hype generators was Google with it’s upcoming game streaming platform. Stadia is a multi-faceted platform by Google which aims to bring developers, gamers and content creators together. Project Stream, which was demonstrated publicly last October was just one facet of what Stadia was being set up to be. With 7500+ edge nodes, i.e. clientfacing data centre nodes, Google is effectively making latency a thing of the past so that gamers can simply play a supported game within seconds of coming across a link anywhere on Google’s
Crytek demonstrates real-time ray-tracing on Radeon RX Vega 56
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rytek’s new Neon Noir showcases real-time raytracing on an AMD Radeon RX Vega 64. The caveat here is that it was made using a bespoke version of the Crytek 5.5 game engine which means that not every studio can use it unless Crytek incorporates it into an update to the main branch. Close on the heels of this announcement, NVIDIA came
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THIS MONTH IN TECH: The few companies that make most of your smartphone, how to become a bug bounty hunter, defence startups in India, and how to get the most of music streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube Music.
Facebook getting data from thirdparty apps
Even if you directly don’t share data with Facebook it’ll still get access to your sensitive data from third-party apps. Data such as the user’s heart rate, intent to get pregnant, etc. is obtained via Facebook’s analytics SDK that’s used by third-party apps. https://dgit.in/fbdta
Apple silently refreshes iPad and iMac
Apple silently refreshed the iPad Air, iPad Mini and the iMac. While the iMac was spruced up with the new Intel 8th and 9th Gen CPUs and Radeon Pro and Vega 20 GPUs, the iPad Air is now available in a larger 10.5-inch format. https://dgit.in/2019mac
10 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
out with its plans on enabling real-time ray-tracing features on their graphics cards which they’d claimed were inefficient
at doing so. The AMD Radeon Vega 56 is nearly two years old and could run the demo smoothly. However, this is not indicative of its performance with games that have realtime ray-tracing since there are a lot more factors at play. Nevertheless, this is a good demonstration of what is possible with existing hardware. https://dgit.in/crytekrrt
Boeing to address 737 MAX issue
Amazon-branded products are flops
The reason for the two Boeing 737 Max crashes squarely pointing towards the faulty Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which led to the system auto-correcting all corrective compensations performed by pilots. https://dgit.in/boeingfix
A study by Marketplace Pulse that examined 23,000 products on Amazon found that buyers are not inclined to purchase Amazon-branded products even if they were elevated in search results, showing that Amazon is unable to leverage its clout. https://dgit.in/amznfail
tech
Gameboy supercomputer for AI
Try Halo before launch
A cluster of emulated Game Boys enables games to be run at high speed, speeding the training of AI. https://dgit.in/apr19-33
AGENT001
“Halo Inside Program” for fans to work with devs to improve new releases by testing them before launch. https://dgit.in/apr19-34
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The worst time to get a PC? Agent001 is in two minds on whether he should upgrade his PC or not
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Agent001 | agent001@digit.in
he desktop PC has a special place in my heart and I’ve always loved this form-factor. Primarily due to the amount of performance and flexibility that I get with desktop grade equipment. Which is why I frequently upgrade my hardware whenever there is a sizeable improvement in performance. I do own multiple computers but I only upgrade my main computer frequently while the others tend to get my attention once they start underperforming. Of late, I’ve been quite indecisive about upgrading. In the last one year, we’ve seen so many changes in terms of pricing, performance and general availability of products in India that I held out on upgrading for quite a bit. There was the nasty cryptocurrency craze that had GPU prices skyrocket and simply become a nonsensical purchase. Both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards were affected and that’s not the only component affected by “market forces”. DRAM prices were also all over the place. We heard quite a bit about supply issues at manufacturing facilities but a recent news item suggests that there was a price-fixing controversy involving some of the largest manufacturers for DRAM. The Chinese State Administration for Market Regulation
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has supposedly uncovered massive evidence that Hynix, Samsung and Micron were involved in price manipulation. This wasn’t the first time for some of the companies since a few months earlier, they were the subject of similar accusations in the US market. Over the last few months, RAM prices have plummeted overseas.
20 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
Perhaps these very manufacturers are self-correcting in an act of repentance or it could simply be the CPU shortage, the sad part is that RAM prices aren’t dropping as quickly in India as they are overseas. Then there’s the performance aspect. We saw multiple back-to-back CPU launches from Intel and AMD
with each company leapfrogging over the other. With a launch set a few months apart, investing in a CPU that was bound to be overtaken in performance in just a few months doesn’t seem like a wise decision. Obviously, this doesn’t make the CPU one would have purchased a bad CPU just because another one knocked it
off the pedestal but coming from an enthusiast, it does matter. Simply put, you feel short changed no matter when you bought a processor. As for GPUs, there really isn’t a choice since AMD has been releasing cards based on the same microarchitecture over and over again. There’s a lot riding on their upcoming Navi GPUs which are
level
A COLLECTION OF PRO TIPS FOR EVERYTHING. Without being limited to a particular topic, these tips are from popular software, to coding, to browsers, search, storage rules, password rules, mobile device hacks, bios cracking, tweaks explained and everything tech under the sun.
The Facebook of music streaming services has finally launched in India. Abhijeet Dey | abhijeet@digit.in
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Spotify
ing your account, you can play the entire song using Spotify instead of listening to only the preview, and you can also open the song in the app. When you connect your account, a playlist ‘My Shazam Tracks’ will automatically be created.
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AUTOMATICALLY CREATE DISCOVER WEEKLY PLAYLIST
NOW THAT SPOTIFY HAS FINALLY LAUNCHED IN INDIA, you might have already tried out the service, whether the free version or premium. Being one of the oldest music streaming services, it has been polished into a refined service. Spotify is featurepacked and we will be going through certain tips that will enhance your music streaming experience.
LOOK UP LYRICS IN REAL-TIME
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While Spotify does include the Behind the Lyrics feature where along with song lyrics, it shows you some trivia around the song, the database isn’t large enough. There are many songs whose lyrics aren’t available. An easier way to get the lyrics is using Shazam. Fire up Shazam while the song is playing and tap on the discover button. It will recognise the song and pop up all the details. Tap on the ‘Lyrics’ tab and it will recognise what part of the song is playing and accordingly display the lyrics in real-time as the song plays. Do note that this feature is applicable to songs playing on any music app.
QUICKLY ADD TRACKS DISCOVERED IN SHAZAM TO A PLAYLIST
If you’re a heavy Shazam user, you might want to go back to the songs that you discovered at random places. While the history of all your searches are saved in Shazam, you’d have to manually play them one by one. There’s an easier way to add them to a playlist on Spotify. Open up Shazam and go to the settings menu. Here, you can connect your Spotify account to Shazam. This requires a Spotify Premium subscription. If you don’t have one then you will have to manually create a playlist and add the discovered tracks to it. After connect-
24 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
IFTTT consists of an endless number of recipes around Spotify. So much so that it deserves its own article on the best ones. We’ll be going through only a couple of them here that can be quite useful for your listening experience. Spotify is well known to have a powerful recommendation engine. It creates a Discover Weekly playlist every Monday and resets next week. You end up losing this playlist if you don’t follow it or save the songs manually. IFTTT has a recipe that will automatically create a playlist for you called ‘Discover Weekly Archive’. To
do so, you will have to create an account on IFTTT and then connect your Spotify account. Once connected, you can turn on the ‘Automatically create a Discover Weekly archive’ applet (https://dgit.in/SptfyDWIFTTT) and the rest will be taken care by the service.
CREATE PLAYLIST OF LIKED VIDEOS FROM YOUTUBE
YouTube also has a good recommendation engine when you’re play songs from the auto-generated mixtape playlist. So, there are chances of coming across some amazing tunes while you’re at it. Rather than creating a separate playlist on YouTube or manually searching for the song on Spotify and then adding it to a playlist, you can use an IFTTT applet. Turning on the ‘Add songs from videos you like to a Spotify playlist’ (https://dgit. in/YTSpftyIFTTT) applet will create a ‘YouTube’ playlist in your Spotify account and add every song or video that’s
reviews
For better understanding of our ratings, here’s a quick guide to our overall score 10 to 30 to 50 to
51
to 70 to
71
Keep away!
Strictly OK.
Not recommended
Decent product.
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Extremely poor product.
to 90 to
to 100 91 to
Go for it, but there may be better products out there.
Very good product. Highly recommended.
Ground-breaking product.
We’ve never seen anything like it before. A definite must buy!
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The Digit Test Centre receives hundreds of products every month. Each of these products is put through a series of tests and is finally given a score. The final score is arrived at after considering a number of factors and evaluating them in terms of features, performance, value for money, build quality, and, in the case of software, ease of use.
THE LATEST PRODUCTS REVIEWED FOR YOU
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INSIDE
HP ENVY x360 (2018)
35
37
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Zebronics Zeb Peace
Corsair Crystal 680X
39
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus
PLUS
35
HyperX Pulsefire Surge RGB
34 NZXT H500 36 Creative Stage Air 36 CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM RGB RAM 38 Kodak 43-inch 4K TV 38 Syska Sound Cup 41 Intel Core i9-9980XE & MORE... www.digit.in | April 2019 | Digit | 33
tech
Android Q might get iOS like gestures
Windows defender on Browsers
Some hidden developer options in Android Q suggest that Google will make Android Q behave almost like an iPhone. https://dgit.in/apr19-69
REVIEWS
NZXT H500
Taking out the smart is smarter
Microsoft is testing Windows Defender extensions for both Chrome and Firefox to better protect PCs. https://dgit.in/apr19-70
Price 9,000
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hile the NZXT H700i that we tested earlier was a mid-tower case, the H500 is a more compact version of it compromising on fan and radiator support. If you’re wondering about the missing ‘i’ in the model name, then we should tell you that all these cases come in two variants where the non-i versions don’t have the smart module installed. The H500 follows the same minimalist design approach and looks absolutely brilliant in the white variant. It also brings convenient cable management routes with Velcro straps, making the overall build process easier.
the stress tests, we let the system stay idle for 15 minutes. The Intel Core i7-4960X idled at 36 degrees Celsius and Radeon HD 7790 stabilised at 34 degrees Celsius. In our Prime95 stress test, the CPU went up to 53 degrees while the GPU touched 69 degrees. For a better picture of how well the case performs with more fans, we installed two more 120mm fans on the front panel as intake. Surprisingly, it didn’t do much at all. Installing a radiator in the future, for your CPU, would be a better investment rather than adding fans to cool the case. Additionally, replacing the top exhaust fan with a high airflow fan later will also lower the temperature inside by a few degrees. At this price, the cooling performance of the case is way above average. You can rely on the case fans themselves to cool your system instead of replacing them with new ones.
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middle, there’s a convenient cable routing channel to accommodate all the thick cables behind Velcro Build quality and PERFORMANCE...........85 straps. Throughout the design FEATURES.....................59 build process, because of On the exterior, NZXT BUILD QUALITY............ 71 these preexisting chanhas used steel panels all VALUE............................90 nels, we were able to plan over. The ports on the top the build better. panel blend in well along In terms of cooling capability, with the tempered glass side panel. the maximum height of the radiator We liked the removal technique of that you can install is 280mm on the the glass panel. The only area where front panel. You can install only one we’ll nitpick is that the quality of the 120/140mm fan on the top panel. thumbscrews could have been better. Another feature we want to highlight There are dust filters across the case is the extremely useful IO port conwhere there’s air intake or exhaust. nector. But NZXT has bundled up the The insides are built well except cables of the power and reset button the front panel fan mount. While the into a single connector that can be motherboard plate and PSU shroud attached like the USB connectors. This were thick enough and couldn't bend is something other case manufacturers easily, the fan mount could. Although should definitely adopt. it wasn’t flimsy, the thinner gauge was surprising compared to the other internal parts. Having a fan mount is Thermal performance extremely convenient during fan or Two Aer F120 Case Version fans are radiator installation. included in the package where each of them remove hot air out from the top and rear panel. Without any air intake, Features we expected the internal temperature The cable management system in to be slightly higher than average. the new H series is brilliant. It takes However, that wasn’t the case and the care of all your cables with a generrecorded temperatures were within ous amount of tie points all across the the acceptable range. Before running back of the motherboard plate. At the
34 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
Final thoughts
The NZXT H500 offers an impressive value for money considering its features, build quality and performance compared to the other cases we tested so far. You could go ahead with the H500i if you want to splurge on the smart module. However, the convenience and usefulness of the module aren’t justified yet for the extra price. On online markets, you can spot the case for much lower than the MRP and that’s where it becomes extremely competitive. With the beautiful cable management system behind the motherboard plate and the minimalist aesthetics, the H500 deserves to be spent time on to build a neat-looking rig. –Abhijit Dey
SPECIFICATIONS
MOTHERBOARD FORM FACTOR: Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX | POWER SUPPLY STANDARD: ATX standard (max. length of 180mm) | I/O PORTS: 2x USB 3.1 Gen-1, 1x headphone/microphone combo | DRIVE BAYS: 3 x 3.5-inch HDD, 2 x 2.5-inch SSD | FAN SUPPORT: 2 x 120mm / 2 x 140mm (front), 1 x 120mm / 1 x 140mm (top), 1 x 120mm (rear) | RADIATOR SUPPORT: Up to 280mm (front), 120mm (rear) | CLEARANCES: CPU cooler - 165mm, Graphics card - 381mm | DIMENSIONS (H X W X D): 435mm x 210mm x 428mm
CONTACT
NZXT | PHONE: NA | EMAIL: support@nzxt.com | WEBSITE: www.nzxt.com
> code / creativity / community >
FOR THOSE GEEKS WHO LIKE TO GET THEIR HANDS DIRTY IN CODE
A primer to Microsoft Game Stack O
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Agnibha Bose | feedback@digit.in
Xbox using the Game-Stack then eventually with minimal effort they can transfer that game to the other ten platforms. This is a huge bonus where portability was a huge problem for any kind of software development, now companies can easily focus on the game development, and the platform can take care of the rest.
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Microsoft's game development bid
n 14th of March, Microsoft announced that they are going to launch a new cloud based platform for Game Development, where they are going to provide various software development kits (SDKs) allowing cross-platform capabilities between Xbox Live and iOS and Android games. This also includes all of their gaming-related platforms like Azure, DirectX, Havok, Mixer, Xbox, Visual Studio, Power BI, UWP, Windows ML and many more. According to Kareem Choudhry, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Gaming Cloud Platform, “We commit to bringing together Microsoft tools and services that will
KEY COMPONENT
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Microsoft recently acquired PlayFab and made it the core Microsoft's latest game development bid of its Game-Stack. PlayFab, as a core component of this empower game developers like ecosystem, is a complete backend platyourself, whether you’re an indie form to build and operate live games. developer just starting out or a AAA PlayFab is a mix of game services, data studio, to achieve more.” analytics and LiveOps, all in a unified It is worth noting that in this solution. PlayFab comes with a host of platform a developer is free to choose features to work upon. from all of the tools that Microsoft has Here is a comprehensive list of all in their arsenal. With Azure being the features that PlayFab provides you their preferred choice for a as a platform: cloud platform, the develFast: Launch your games sooner oper can easily switch beand in a more cost effective manner tween various components than doing everything by yourself. depending on the build. PlayFab simplifies development with full access to all back-end services from day one. Also you can monitor SUPPORTED and react to game data in real time. PLATFORMS Kareem Choudhry describing Game Stack Comprehensive: Everything that According to their website, you need is there in one unified device Game Stack is primarily agnostic solution. Microsoft is putting going to support these a lot of emphasis on making the platplatforms: Xbox, PlayStaform device-agnostic so that you can tion, Nintendo Switch, work across all consoles (Xbox,Switch, iOS, Android, Web, Cloud, PlayStation), PCs, and mobile devices Windows, Linux and (iOS and Android). Also, you can Smart TV. manage the entire gamer lifecycle of So what it actually acquisition, engagement, and retention translates to is that if a from an integrated command control small gaming company is Everything you get center for your entire team. going to build a game for
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Imaging: Anil VK
SA cover story M PL E 50 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
INDEX:
51 MAKING 5G HAPPEN | 54 5G APPLICATIONS 56 THE 5G, IOT & SECURITY TRIANGLE | 58 INDIA’S 5G STORY 60 THE NEXT GENERATION
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Understanding the need for 5G and its underlying technologies. Mithun Mohandas | mithun@digit.in
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he buzzword of the masses, 5G, is probably going to be one of the biggest transformational technologies of this decade. It beats the likes of RPA, Blockchain, ZB-era and is right up there with AI at the top. The simple fact is that most of the other technology buzzwords rely on 5G to be the enabling force. AI, for example, requires a massive amount of data bandwidth to derive meaningful information and train neural networks. Most of this is made possible by high-speed interconnects within data centres. However, the moment you have to rely on wireless communication, it slows down to a snail’s pace. That’s set to change with the deployment of 5G, and not just AI, every major upcoming technology is hoping for a quick deployment to avoid any bottlenecks. We’ve been hearing about 2G, 3G, 4G and now there’s 5G. What’s so special about this generation? Shouldn’t it be just another incremental update?
5G: THE WORKING
When speaking about wireless communication, we need to understand about radio bands. Every wireless device we use communicates on a fixed frequency band that’s supported by it’s radio. Your Wi-Fi router works on
2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, if it is dual-band. Or it only runs on 2.4 GHz. Not a lot of devices can communicate on this one band at any given time. So we make use of overlapping frequency bands as individual channels. Thus, the 2.4 GHz could indicate any of the 14 channels which range from 2.412 GHz to 2.484 GHz. Each channel is about 20 MHz wide. And when you have multiple signals crowding a certain channel, you simply move to one that’s not so crowded. Moreover, the signal on each channel can incorporate multiple waves by means of using QAM. That’s just one band. 5G will operate on three frequency bands. You have the mmWave which is for spectrum that’s greater than 6 GHz,
then there’s the sub-6 GHz band and lastly you have the sub-1 GHz band. Radio wave frequency has an inverse relationship with the distance that it travels. Lower frequencies travel far and even penetrate multiple layers of concrete in dense urban settings whereas higher frequencies barely penetrate even one layer of concrete and don’t travel far. However, you can only get higher bandwidth with high frequencies. 4G LTE operates around 800-1800 MHz so if you want greater bandwidth than 4G, you’ll have to switch to the higher frequencies. Doing so presents more challenges. So carriers have the option of picking three different frequency bands based on how they can best serve their www.digit.in | April 2019 | Digit | 51
WHAT’S NEW
James Gunn is back!
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happen if the alien turned evil. After a few months, DC announced that the next Suicide Squad movie as will be written and directed by Gunn. While many rejoiced this move, Deadline reported that Disney is going to rehire Gunn to finish what he started. Filming GOTG Vol. 3 will also make Gunn the only director in the MCU to have completed a trilogy. We can hardly wait for the Awesome Mixtape Vol. 3. https://dgit.in/JmsGnnDsny
Sony’s seven year Marvel projects
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GEEK CULTURE IS OUR WAY OF LIFE, AND ENCOMPASSES MOVIES, GAMES, COMICS, AND TRENDS FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE
fter several old edgy tweets surfaced from James Gunn’s Twitter account, it didn’t take Disney long to fire and disassociate themselves from him. By that time, Gunn had already finished writing the script for the upcoming GOTG Vol. 3 and was supposed to start production soon. However, the third film was left in limbo after his firing. While the entire cast of GOTG stood by Gunn to get him back to the project, Disney stood firm with its decision. Since then Gunn took a break from social media until his next superhero project, Brightburn, was announced. It explores a different take on the origin story of Superman on what would
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ooking at the incredible success of the recent Spider-man movies including Homecoming with Marvel Studios and the Oscar-winner Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse, Sony seems to be quite ambitious for the upcoming years. Sony Pictures has planned the next seven to eight years surrounding Spider-man in movies and TV shows. They are calling it ‘Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters’. After the Disney and Fox merger, Sony is the only company out
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THIS MONTH IN CULT: Booman is already fed up of 5G, a rant about the proliferation of pop culture references in movies, card game versions of board games you love and the magic of compositied photos.
there with rights to Marvel characters. With plans already set for a Venom sequel along with Morbius, the Living Vampire starring Jared Leto, we are also going to see spinoffs around the characters depicted in Spider-verse.
They can’t use Tom Holland’s Spider-man from Marvel Studios, which begs the question - will another actor be cast as Spider-man by Sony? There is no clarity on this issue yet. While the competing studios have their own streaming services coming up, Sony has not announced any such plans yet. Instead, they see this as an opportunity to create more movies as the streaming services will be looking for more content. https://dgit.in/SnyMrvl
Warrior Nun cast revealed
Netflix has been adapting comic books lately such as The Umbrella Academy and last year, they announced they are adapting Warrior Nun Areala, based on the manga series by Ben Dunn. While still under development, it has found its leading cast members. https://dgit.in/WarrrNun
MCU’s Infinity Saga With Avengers: Endgame, the story arc of Thanos and the infinity stones (Phases 1 to 3) comes to an conclusion with the possible deaths of one or more original Avengers. The upcoming arc will be known as Infinity Saga, with Captain Marvel taking the helm. https://dgit.in/MCUInfnty
62 | Digit | April 2019 | www.digit.in
Bumblebee sequel action
While the 1980’s set Bumblebee movie got critical acclaim by focusing on a character driven story, it’s sequel is likely going to be going back to the CGI-fest of Autobots vs Decepticons as seen in the older Michael Bay movies. https://dgit.in/Bmblb
Pokemon cinematic universe
The first live-action Pokémon film, Detective Pikachu, might just expand later into a cinematic universe of its own, if the movie turns out to be in the box office. Our hopes are high as anything related to Pokémon is sure to have a big following. https://dgit.in/DtctvPkch
culture
Rajot PUBG ban leads to 10 arrests
Snapchat might get into gaming soon
Ten youngsters have been arrested for playing PUBG Mobile which has been banned in parts of Gujarat. https://dgit.in/apr19-45
COMMUNITY
Snapchat may planning to announce a new gaming platform as early as this month. https://dgit.in/apr19-46
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uantum computing has become one of the most significant uses of quantum physics. Our knowledge has been growing exponentially metamorphosing the computers we use today from abacus in terms of speed and size. But this process is about to reach its physical limitations. The progression of quantum computers towards the next level will definitely be a stepping stone in modern computing. At the moment companies and researchers are trying to build the most powerful computer the world has ever seen with a handful of different approaches to quantum computing. So, here’s everything you need to know about “quantum computing”.
QUANTUM
COMPUTING
Exceeding the limits of conventional machines M. Shreenivasan | feedback@digit.in
Schrödinger imagined taking a cat and placing it in a sealed metal box with a device which had a 50 percent chance of killing the cat. At the end of the experiment he asked what the state of
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A classical computer performs functions using binary digit or bits and each bit can be a 0 or a 1. Whatever task you want it to perform, it may be booking movie tickets or ordering food the computer takes the input in the form of chains of 1’s and 0’s, which has been processed by an algorithm. A new string of 1’s and 0’s gets executed in the end in the monitor in a form of output. A quantum computer works by taking advantage of the strange ability of electrons, photons and atoms or any of the subatomic particles. Just as a normal computer performs its functions using bits, a quantum computer performs its functions using qubits. Qubits aren’t exactly limited to two states. Qubits are considered to be the quantum version of classical binary bits. Qubits make use of two key principles of quantum physics which are “superposition” and “entanglement”.
Quantum superposition In our world, bits exists in either 1’s or 0’s but in the quantum realm the 1’s and 0’s can be in any proportions of both states at once. Superposition is defined as the quantum phenomenon which is a consequence of dual particle and wave nature of everything. Erwin
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the cat was. Common sense suggests that the cat may either be alive or dead. But Erwin Schrödinger pointed out that according to quantum theory at the instance before the box was opened the cat was in a “superposition” which means that the cat was neither dead nor alive.
Source: IBM Q
WHAT IS A QUANTUM COMPUTER?
Diagram of a Quantum Computer
WHAT’S NEW
Ancient frog species discovered in Kerala
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new species. The openVertebrate project allows CT scans of skeletons to be shared with researchers and even the common public, which was helpful in the analysis of the new frog. Analysis of the CT scans and the DNA of the frog showed that it belonged to an entirely new species, and diverged from its closest relatives more than ten million years ago. The frog helps scientists better understand the Amphibian tree of life. https://dgit.in/swf
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SCIENCE IS THE PATH TO KNOWLEDGE, AND FINDING OUT ABOUT HOW OUR UNIVERSE WORKS. YOU CAN’T BE A GEEK AND NOT KNOW YOUR SCIENCE!
he Western Ghats in India are a biodiversity hotspot, with hundreds of species that are found nowhere else in the world. A team of researchers led by SP Vijayakumar from George Washington University and Kartik Shanker from the Indian Institute of Science, have identified a new species of frog which is the only known specimen of its genus and subfamily. The species is called Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, or the Starry Dwarf Frog, and was found in one of the nocturnal expeditions of the team in the Wayanad Plateau. The frog did not get much attention for a few years, during which time a research team was assembled to describe the
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cientists at NASA’s JPL have recreated the atmospheres of a particular category of exoplanets, within a lab. Hot Jupiters are gas giants in close orbit around their host stars. Their size means that they are quite easily discovered. The temperatures on these can rise beyond 2,800 degrees Celsius, and the researchers created these extreme temperatures using an oven. A mixture of hydrogen gas and
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Space is all over our science section this month, with Space Roar and the technicalities of a Mars landing being explored. We also analyse the possibility of an HIV cure as well as the connection between your brain and your gut!
Children are sometimes smarter than adults
As young kids are more preoccupied with exploring and learning about the world, they are better at solving some problems than adults, who are more focused on accomplishing particular goals. Researchers are collaborating with engineers to make AI smarter by incorporating curiosity. https://dgit.in/smartbabby
Geoengineering dosage
Scientists are seriously considering geoengineering to alleviate global warming. One way is to dump aerosols in the air to reflect sunlight. It could disrupt rainfall around the world, but is viable if smaller doses of aerosols are used, along with reduced emissions. https://dgit.in/cloudseas
0.3 percent carbon monoxide gas, which is expected to be found considering current
theories of planetary formation, was heated. The key element was exposure to UV rays, which can be expected
Eyes indicate mistakes
Researchers rigged a test where participants had to decide which ear they were hearing a click on. It was discovered that the pupil size changed when they were making a wrong decision. The eyes can indicate when we make suboptimal decisions. https://dgit.in/eyefail
from the host star. The UV light led to the formation of aerosols. The finding matches with observations, where the higher altitudes of Hot Jupiters showed opaque banks of clouds, which scientists believed were difficult to form at the low pressure regions of the higher altitudes. Scientists now understand how these hazy atmospheres were formed. https://dgit.in/alienskies
Tiny tyrannosaur discovered
The fossil record of the tyrannosaur’s ascent to the top of the food chain has been sparse. A relatively tiny tyrannosaur ancestor has been dated to about 96 million years ago, which shows they took only about 15 million years to become apex predators. https://dgit.in/tinytrex www.digit.in | April 2019 | Digit | 71
sci
Water molecules around the moon
Using the measurements from a NASA’s Orbiter, scientists observed water moving around on the bright side of the Moon. https://dgit.in/apr19-5
Seven Minutes of
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Lockheed Martin’s Mars Lander
NASA is building the world’s biggest rocket, but it won’t be launched anytime soon. https://dgit.in/apr19-6
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SPACE AGE
World’s biggest rocket by NASA
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Novel strategies are required for landing heavy payloads on Mars
such as SpaceX, Lockheed Martin and Boeing are also involved in the effort. Establishing a colony on Mars is expected to be a global scale effort, which would require international co-operation as well as support from many private companies. One of the significant problems of going to Mars is landing heavy payloads on the surface. Mars has a strong gravity, 0.38 times that of the Earth, but a very tenuous atmosphere, which is only 0.6 times as thick as the Earth’s. The heaviest payload to have successfully landed on is the Curiosity rover, which weighed one metric ton. Future expeditions would require payloads in the range of 5 to 20 tons. A manned mission to Mars would require a capacity to land somewhere between 40 to 80 tons on the surface. There are a lot of complex operations taking place in just a few minutes to execute a successful landing. The Curiosity and InSight missions for example, entered the Martian atmosphere at
Aditya Madanapalle | aditya@digit.in
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ars is the next big target for space exploration by humans. Mars is the most hospitable planet in the Solar System apart from the Earth. The space agencies of the USA, Russia and China (NASA, Roscosmos and CNSA) are all building up the capabilities of pioneering human expeditions to the red planet. Private companies
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high speeds and used a heat shield to keep the instruments inside cool. Then, the parachute popped out, and after a couple of kilometers of descent, the heat shield separated. Then radar systems on board had to figure out when to fire the retro thrusters, which boost the spacecraft away from the surface of the planet. If the thrusters were fired too soon, they would run out of fuel before the spacecraft reached the surface. The parachute then separates, and the thrusters fire at an angle to distance themselves from the parachute and backshell, to prevent the two colliding. The retro thrusters hovered above the ground, while a “sky crane” lowered the missions through bridle cables – the Curiosity rover and the InSight lander to the surface. The payloads touch the ground in a soft landing, after which the descent stage moves away by using the thrusters. Other landing operations have been complicated too, involving retro thrusters, parachutes, and airbags that deploy just before the payload hits the surface. The effectiveness of parachutes decreases with the increasing weight of payloads, as the atmosphere is just not thick enough. The thin atmosphere means using its resistance, or drag for aerobraking manoeuvres is also not very feasible. Retro thrusters are
WHAT’S NEW
Why it is ethical to wear leather and fur
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emissions of the country, in 2013. Every time an item of polyester clothing is washed, microplastics are introduced to the water cycle, which then enters the food cycle. The solution is to buy fewer clothes, and maintain them, instead of avoiding leather, silk or fur. https://dgit.in/furethics
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THIS IS TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE AND SCIENCE WITH A DIFFERENCE, AND THAT DIFFERENCE IS USUALLY ENOUGH TO MAKE MOST NORMAL PEOPLE GO “WTF?”
nimal rights activists have advocated avoiding wearing clothes sourced from animals. Top fashion brands for example, are avoiding silk, fur or leather based clothing. The simplified moral choice here is that an animal is not killed so that you get to wear what you do. By not choosing “cruel” clothing, we are polluting the environment, as the cost of manufacturing synthetic apparel also needs to be factored in. Synthetic clothing manufacturing depends heavily on petrochemicals, which introduces pollutants to the air and water, and contributes to climate change as well. For example, just one nylon factory in England was responsible for three percent of the carbon
Is the school system broken?
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his is one of those incredibly interesting questions that not too many people have bothered to ask. Every day, students go into a high school, and learn a variety of subjects broken down into short periods. This is an ancient system that has never been updated to modern standards. Imagine if adults were expected to actually work at offices in this manner, focus on task or assignment for a short time, then move on to
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What is in store for the ASOIAF/GoT Fandom after the end of Thrones, Indian science fiction TV shows, some cool stuff to pick up if you invested in Bitcoin ten years ago, and the big pop culture releases lined up.
another significantly different task. The productivity of each individual, and the company
as a whole would fall through the ground. Why should the expectations from high school
students be any different? Bernie Bleske, the author of a medium post that askes this question proposes a solution where there are two long classes - or two subjects every day for six to eight weeks. This will allow a focussed transfer of knowledge, instead of a fragmented approach where a range of topics are covered every day, but sacrificing the depth for each subject. https://dgit.in/absurdhs
Know your type
Letters are complex creatures made up of bowls, shoulders, loops, tails, beaks, arms, feet, spurs, spines and hairlines. If you cannot point out these parts, then this interactive typography cheat sheet should totally sort you out. https://dgit.in/typeanat
All hipsters look the same
A hipster sued MIT for using a picture of him without permission in an article about how all non conformists end up looking the same, only to find out later that the person in the picture - a white man with a beard, a checked shirt and a beanie, was an entirely different hipster. https:// dgit.in/hipstereffect
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How Random are you?
This is a simple exercise which involves making a single choice - either left or right. An algorithm then tries to outsmart you by predicting your next move, based on your previous five keypresses. Surprisingly, the algorithm manages to outguess most respondents. https://dgit.in/randomo
The Servant Economy
Uber heralded in a new business model, where there is an “Uber” app for everything from food delivery to dog walking. The net benefit to society is that they make life marginally more convenient for a few people. The workforce of these apps don’t have jobs, but only land gigs. https://dgit.in/gigeco
alt
100MP smartphone camera coming soon
Qualcomm’s imaging head Mr Judd Heape revealed vendors are planning to announce 100MP sensors later this year. https://dgit.in/apr19-51
Researchers at MIT have developed an AI that allows robots to identify, pick up, and handle novel objects. https://dgit.in/apr19-52
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Robots pick up unknown objects
The Future of
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Game of Thrones is coming to an end, but there is a lot of content in the offing about the world fans refer to as planetos Aditya Madanapalle | aditya@digit.in
Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) is the book series that spawned one of the most popular and critically acclaimed fantasy shows of all time, Game of Thrones. The final season is debuting this month, and is an ending of sorts for a journey that began nine years ago. George RR Martin has indicated that the show may have a
A
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“bittersweet ending”, and fans have been coming up with various theories to figure out this ending. Over the course of nine years, the show has diverged from the books that they are based on by a big extent. Many characters have been merged, and others have been written out. All the children of both Dorne and the Iron Islands are not represented in the show. Varamyr Sixskins, the skinchanger of the free folk controlled a bunch of wolves, a shadowcat (something like a leopard) and a polar bear, which would have been epic on
screen. All we got was Orell and his eagle. Caitlyn Stark lives on as Lady Stoneheart in the books, granted the gift of life by Thoros of Myr. We don’t know if anyone will claim Dawn, the sword of Arthur Dayne in the show, which is an obscure part of the story, but might end up being a Chekhov’s gun that is never fired. At least Shaggydog lived up to his name. One way or the other, we will know within the next two months, but that is not the end of the road - not by a long shot. This is what fans can look forward to, after the Game of Thrones finale.
THE REMAINING BOOKS There are two remaining books in the main series. The last released book in the series was A Dance with Dragons, which was published in 2011, when the show was just launching. That book ended with a cliffhanger, with Jon Snow dead, and an imminent battle at Slaver’s Bay (well, we know how that will turn out). One good thing to expect from the books is that many of the characters that are dead in the show, are still alive in the books. These include fan favorites such as Stannis
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