Digit December 2018 by 9.9 Media

THE RSS FEED | Robert Sovereign-Smith | Executive Editor

%@^$%$# phone! “While all of them will claim brilliance, none of them are actually delivering any. Innovation in this field has plateaued, and it’s just a spec war – with more of the same thing being added on to give you the feeling of innovation. ”

nectivity to the internet, runs apps and games that you don’t really need, ruins your ability to socialise, and has a battery that always runs out of juice just when you need it most. Add in 3 cameras or 20, resolutions of 720p or 8K, memory of 3GB or 12GB… it all really has become exactly what the desktop market was 15 years ago. Stagnant. Sure we went from CRTs to LEDs, or two button ball mice to laser precision fragging weapons, but in the end the desktop was still just a PC. That’s exactly what the phone has become too… a PCD (personal computing device). Specs may go up and down, but a 10k Android phone can still accomplish all the same tasks as the 1.44 lakh XS MAX. Sure, the latter feels nicer and will do things faster and better, but that’s no different from some of us having lowly entry-level GPUs playing games at 720p with all the bells and whistles turned off, while others spend more on just their GPU than the first group has spent on their last 2 PCs combined! What we need is a game changer. Not just marketing jargon. An actual one. VR promises to be that, and AI and VR together can certainly accomplish that, while big data will power it all. Yes, big data, which is just another way of saying your data, and my data, and everyone’s data all being number crunched to arrive at some pretty amazing insights about us. Eerily accurate ones at that! Forget about Tim Cook harping on about privacy, he’s just protecting his company’s interests and his business model, as are all the rest who gather your data. The privacy war was lost a long, long time ago, and you gave it up willingly when you logged on to the Internet. You can’t disconnect and live like a hermit anymore, and you don’t want to. So stop pretending like you’re a victim and embrace your Stockholm syndrome with tech. Instead, I’d rather focus on the future and be excited about the fact that very soon (in as little as 5 years from now, I think) I won’t have to suffer “smartphones” the way I do now. It will take just one real innovation to kill the smartphone (at least the current form), and I for one cannot wait for it to arrive. What about you? What do you think that innovation will be?

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YES, THAT’S A CURSE WORD and no, I’m not censoring it because I’m a prude. I want you to imagine your abuse of choice in that slot. Why? Because we’ve all said it, at some point or another. Whether you’re using a cheap Android One phone or the costs-more-than-a-bike iPhone, these things just seem to frustrate us at some time or the other. I imagine you’ve said this when your phone is unresponsive because WhatsApp decided to run a backup just when your crush messaged you. Maybe you’ve said it when your phone autoin-corrects everything you type because it just refuses to learn Hinglish, or your family’s names. Or, maybe, when you’re in a movie theatre and have forgotten to turn your stupid iPhone XS to silent, your sister sends you 47 pictures all at once! Since even the iPhone cannot recognise your super embarrassed face in the dark, and the darn swiping action to unlock is a hit and miss at times, you turn red-faced as your phone makes this almost metronome-like series of pings for each picture received, at full volume, in the middle of Bohemian Rhapsody! True story that. As much as we love our phone, and spend more time with it than we do with actual people, it’s not a “smart” phone. Yes brands will claim AI at various levels, and spend millions in ads trying to convince you that they have the next best thing... but it’s all crap. While all of them will claim brilliance, none of them are actually delivering any. Innovation in this field has plateaued, and it’s just a spec war – with more of the same thing being added on to give you the feeling of innovation. Sure, Samsung or LG will come up with something ridiculous like 600+ ppi screens with 8K resolutions, or maybe foldable displays, or some other gimmick that is designed to make you go “Wow!”. Or rather, to make your neighbour go “Wow!!!” and turn green with envy when you splash out a lakh and a half for a phone that is the current reigning champion, but will be surpassed in a few months at most, often by the same manufacturer! At the end of the day, what a phone boils down to is a touch interface device that has a screen, can click pictures, has pretty good con-

Liked or hated this column? Let me know at: editor@digit.in | facebook.com/raaabo | @raaabo

For instructions on how to claim the Paytm coupons, please turn to Page 33

PARANOID ANDROID | Mithun Mohandas | Managing Editor

Apple-dom

the bejesus out of Apple and its ecosystem. In a way, that experience is what probably made me aware of how restrictive the whole ecosystem was. The more we read about Apple with the aim to jailbreak the device, the more vitriol we’d come across. For many years, I could never figure why people would tolerate such a thing. It was certainly a company that led the charge when it came to innovation but the price that one had to pay seemed a bit too much. The most recent example of this ‘cost’ would be the T2 coprocessor that Apple is shipping with new MacBooks. If the unit is serviced then it needs to be booted via a licensed Apple diagnostic software or you run a chance to brick it. This is literally the technological manifestation of the domination fetish. People pay, exorbitant amounts that too, to be dominated by the company that made the device. It’s as if you’re never the owner of your Apple smartphone but a serf serving in the dark courts of Apple-dom where there lurks an Apple genius in every corner whose slender fingers fidget over leather whips that they’re eager to crack at you.

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I’LL ADMIT that the very first time I came across an Apple device, I was pretty clueless about the device and its ecosystem. Up until that point I’d only heard of the iOS operating system and the prowess of the device from friends and read up on articles that echoed the same. There was nothing out of the ordinary about Apple products because every other company on the surface of the earth went about marketing their devices in the same manner. Every article you’d read would mostly have a positive spin and this was way before clickbaits became a norm on the Internet. So when I did finally get my hands on an iPod Touch I could feel the excitement. This was a super expensive device that only one person in my social circle had owned. They had to be imported back then and experiencing an Apple device after having read a lot about it for so long just … felt right. It was a feeling that I’d rarely experience again in my life, one that would send a bucketload of endorphins coursing through my veins.

Alas, that experience was short-lived. My friend had brought his iPod over for a reason, to Jailbreak it! He and I were like minded; we both loved to read about tech and tinker with new devices just for the thrill of it. He wanted to check out the famed Cydia and play around with a few things. My memory deceives the exact purpose for which we wanted to Jailbreak the device. This wasn’t the first time we’d tried to subvert protective mechanisms. Every friend with a computer was doing the same, if you know what I mean (*wink*). There was no way to get games legally back then. Few of us were even experienced with hex-editors and memory editors, so Jailbreaking should have been easy.

Little did we know how excruciatingly painful that experience would turn out to be. By the end of the day, we’d soft-bricked and run into more bootloops than the limits that high-school arithmetic had taught us. Thankfully, Apple’s documentation was pretty straight forward about the whole recovery process so we could try and fail without worry. We didn’t manage to get the unit jailbroken that day, in fact, it would take us a few more days before we’d read up enough to get all the steps right. That’s when we came across the numerous online posts that had criticised

2 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

*brrrrr*

The Apple devices have some of the most powerful SoCs (that’s soon to change) among all smartphones so I’d naturally gravitate towards them, but then I’d remember what the privilege entailed and I’d stay away. Most people who know me are aware of my aversion to all things Apple. Even Robert has known about this for many years. I don’t know what got into him this month but he’s decided that I shall be forced to endure all those nightmares all over again. He has arranged for an iPhone XS MAX for me to use as my daily driver from here on out, and I am not allowed to go back to my beloved Android devices, no matter what the circumstances! His real intentions shall forever be shrouded in mystery, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s slowly starting to appear as that Apple Genius whose slender fingers … you get the drift. Anyway, since I’m being forced to endure something I hate, I’m going to take it out on you folks and rant a lot more as a prisoner of Apple-dom. I don’t see myself joining the dark side any time soon, but you never know....

“For many years, I could never figure why people would tolerate such a thing. It was certainly a company that led the charge when it came to innovation but the price that one had to pay seemed a bit too much.”

Let me know your thoughts on this column at: @mithun_mohandas | mithun@digit.in

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contents

COVER STORY PAGE 74- 111

Zero1 Awards 2018

There are some things money can’t buy – the best performance. And with a Zero1 winner, you can only expect the best in its category.

TECH - PAGE 14-55

DECEMBER 2018

32 | Recommended Buys

From gaming monitors to webcams, the top three products of every category

VOLUME 18 ISSUE 12

36 | Agent001: VR isn’t dead

Agent001 is excited about some of the new technologies in the VR world

18 | Identifying fake videos

A handy guide to help you distinguish the real videos from the fake ones

16 | Tech Watch

The best apps we’ve used this month, curated for you, along with an out of the box phone and security news.

22 | Workshop

In this month’s workshop, learn to create your own WhatsApp sticker apps on Android

30 | PC config

Everything you’ll ever need to build your own PC. Whatever your budget

4 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

42| Devworx: Elasticsearch

A step-by-step guide to the distributed multitenant full-text search engine

46 | Teardown: Microsoft Surface Pro 6

Taking apart Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 reveals that the device is both a glue monster, but also houses a few modules that are easy to replace or repair

48 | Reviews

The NZXT H700i, Samsung Galaxy Tab S4, Sony WH1000XM3, Redmi Note 6 Pro and more!

55 | Take my money

A smartphone photography pod, a self-flying camera drone and more for you to crowdfund!

AND MORE

CULTURE - PAGE 58-63

ALT - PAGE 112-127

ON THE DVD 59 | 1000 words

113 | Backtalk

60 | Wizarding World occupations

114 | Conlangs

62 | Foldable Phones Suck

116 | Where are the aliens?

TECH KDE Neon KDE neon is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution and live DVD featuring the latest KDE Plasma desktop and other KDE community software.

Take your fandom to the next level by learning these fictional scripts

M PL

If you were living in the Potterverse, what kind of jobs would you do?

Learn what Don Katz, CEO, Audible, and Shailesh Sawlani, Indian GM, Audible, have to say about their foray into the Indian market

Boo Man tells us why foldable phones raise his blood pressure

A star map to the locations of the home worlds of aliens from science-fiction or otherwise

AND MORE

SCIENCE - PAGE 64-73

FUTURE FEATURE

118 | The Fermitron Conspiracy

66 | Dust cloud moons

124 | The origins of Fake News

68 | Languages and colour perception

126 | Digital demise

65 | Vaping nutrients?!

Companies claim the science behind nutrient vapes holds strong. Experts think otherwise...

Scientists have confirmed the existence of dust cloud satellites around the Earth.

A study suggests native language might play a role in your perception of shapes in certain colours

70 | Touching the Sun

Three months after its launch, the Parker Solar Probe became the fastest man made object in the solar system

AND MORE

The Earth prepares to fight back an alien civilization by building an antimatter factory

Long before the internet and instant messaging, fake news was responsible for real events

Ever wondered what happens to your digital identity after you die?

AND MORE

CULT Platformer indie games Cosmos Arena Lost Elements Matter Monster Sanctuary Stori Unspoken Chronicles : Nora

Check out images of Jupiter taken from the spacecraft Juno in orbit around the planet

Photo editing software Fotor GIMP Paint.NET Photoscape Photo Pos Pro PhotoPad Editor PC Image Editor

Video editing software Avidemux DaVinci Resolve 15 ffmpeg GoPro Quik Handbrake HitFilm Express Free Kdenlive Lightworks Magic MediaCoder OpenShot Shotcut VSDC VSXu Windows Movie Maker ARCore SDK With ARCore, build new augmented reality experiences that seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds. Transform the way people play, shop, learn, create etc.

New York Comic Con 2018 trailers Electronyk Podcast Ep 13 & 14 ELECTRONYK PODCAST is a powerpacked mixtape of some of the best Electronic Music & Bollywood Remixes, handpicked by DJ NYK himself. SCI Video lectures on electricity Take a moment and learn about the force that holds our bodies together. Electric charge Electric field Electric potential and energy Voltage ALT Free music The Slip The Dark Side of Phobos Made by Google 2018 Event highlights and launches from the biggest event from Google.

www.digit.in | December 2018 | Digit | 5

TO ADVERTISE

PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH

EMAIL: sales@digit.in

DECEMBER 2018 • VOLUME 18 • ISSUE 12

SALES DIRECTOR: Lalit Arun Mobile: +91-9582262959 NORTH: Mayank Sharma Mobile: +91-8800661912

EDITORIAL Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Managing Editor Mithun Mohandas Features Editor Aditya Madanapalle Associate Editor Arnab Mukherjee SKOAR! Overlord Manish Rajesh Intern Dhriti Datta

EAST: Jayanta Bhattacharyya Mobile: +91-93318 29284

SOUTH: Jayanth Ramakrishna Mobile: +91-9964087233

BAZAAR NZXT H700i Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 Sony WH-1000XM3 Redmi Note 6 Pro Nokia 3.1 Plus Zenbook S FiiO F3 Samsung Galaxy Watch OnePlus 6T

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

ADVERTISING INDEX

DIGIT.IN Editor Soham Raninga Managing Editor Adamya Sharma Assistant Editor Sameer Mitha Senior Sub-Editor Shrey Pacheco Writer Shubham Sharma

DESIGN Sr. Art Director Anil VK Art Director Shokeen Saifi Visualiser Baiju NV Lead UI/UX Designer Shri Hari Tiwari

Brand.......................................... Page No. Kingston..................................Inside front cover D-Link.....................................Inside back cover Seagate....................................... Back cover, 11 Kaspersky.........................................................3 SBI...................................................................7 iBall............................................................9, 37 LIC..................................................................13 Toshiba...........................................................15 ASUS........................................................ 17, 45 Corsair............................................................19 TP Link...........................................................21 ECS.................................................................23 IOCL................................................................25 CII..................................................................27 Intel.......................................................... 28, 29 Asrock............................................................31 Paytm....................................................... 34, 35 India AV.................................................125, 127 Quantum....................................................... 128

PRODUCTION AND LOGISTICS Manager Operations Rakesh Upadhyay Manager Logistics Mahendra Kumar Singh Executive Mohd. Nadeem Ansari

CIRCULATION SALES Head - Circulation Samir Mehta Regional Managers Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Norbert Joseph

READER SERVICES Team Leader Sudhir Patel +91-22-67899678 / help@digit.in 6 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

COVER DESIGN Anil VK

Red Dead Redemption 2 Fallout 76 Hitman 2 GRIP

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.

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M PL

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8 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

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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

WHAT’S NEW

IBM to acquire Red Hat for $34Billion

been betting big on BlueMix, Watson, SoftLayer, etc. so the Red Hat acquisition adds a lot of additional software to IBM’s portfolio and they’re all opensource. Analysts worldwide have agreed that this deal makes IBM more relevant in the cloud market. https://dgit.in/IBMRH

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DOES THIS SECTION EVEN NEED AN INTRODUCTION? FROM COMPUTERS TO MOBILES, AND HEADPHONES TO GPUs, IT’S ALL HERE...

BM is acquiring Red Hat in a deal that’s currently valued at $34 Billion. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, in a joint statement, announced that the open-source software and technology company that is known for maintaining open-source projects such as GNOME, MRG, OpenShift, OpenStack, LibreOffice, etc. will become a part of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud division. Red Hat began 25 years ago with a focus on distributing the Linux and Unix software accessories. They eventually became known for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Should this acquisition go through, it will be IBM’s largest ever and the third-largest in the history of US tech companies. IBM has several software offerings and they’ve

US rallies allies to boycott Huawei

he US Government has begun speaking to allies to prevent Huawei from obtaining key infrastructure contracts. The reason for this extreme move is the fact that Huawei has close ties to the Chinese Government. Huawei is the world’s No.2 smartphone manufacturer and is rapidly gaining market share. According to Wall Street Journal, the US Government has approached Germany, Italy and Japan about Huawei.

THIS MONTH IN TECH: Learn how to make your own personalised WhatsApp sticker pack and app. Additionally, we also reveal a guide to identifying those pesky fake video making rounds on the internet and more. Read on for much more in the world of tech before this eventful year comes to a close...

Crypto massively loses value

Cryptocurrencies lost about $6 Billion over the thanksgiving weekend bringing the total loss in the crypto market to approximately $700 billion since January 2018. Bitcoin, in particular, dropped to about $4,100 per pop. Ethereum also had major loses. https://dgit.in/ CryptoNoNo

Logitech offers 2.2 Billion to acquire Plantronics

Logitech intends to acquire peripherals manufacturer Plantronics just months after it announced the acquisition of Blue Microphones. Reuters reports that Logitech has offered Plantronics $2.2 Billion in late November. https://dgit.in/LogiPlan

14 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

The current US administration is considering offering financial aid for countries to remove Huawei. One of the prime reasons for this move is Article 7 of China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law which states, “All organisations

Apple’s T2 chip blocks thirdparty repairs

The T2 coprocessor requires Apple’s diagnostic software be run while being connected to the Internet. Only then does the T2 chip get the green signal to allow the MacBook to boot properly, otherwise it might be potentially bricked. https://dgit.in/AppleT2

and citizens shall, in accordance with the law, support, cooperate with, and collaborate in national intelligence work, and guard the secrecy of national intelligence work they are aware of…”“The state will protect individuals and organisations that support, cooperate with, and collaborate in national intelligence work.” It seems Chinese companies have little say in the matter and are forced to cooperate. https://dgit.in/HuaweiUSno

Amazon exposed customer names and email IDs

Some Amazon customers have received an email informing them that their names and email IDs have been exposed because of a technical error. Amazon said that the issue was resolved but didn’t provide numbers of affected people. https://dgit.in/AmaDohn

tech

YouTube lets you stream free films

Somwear everywhere!

YouTube is competing with streaming services by allowing users to stream free movies with ad breaks. https://dgit.in/dec18-22-1

WORKSHOP

Somwear has a satellite messenger which will allow users to send messages and SOS alerts from anywhere. https://dgit.in/dec18-22-2

hatsApp’s sticker functionality has witnessed a substantial amount of traction amongst its 200 million users since it recent launch. However, the limited stickers provided by WhatsApp seem rather lacklustre. WhatsApp has now allowed third-party applications to create apps with sticker packs that can be integrated within the app itself. Creators and developers can design their own stickers for WhatsApp and effectively package them into an Android or iOS app. This creates an avenue for users to share their creations with the world and even monetise their creations by distributing the apps on the Play Store or the App Store. However, to integrate your stickers into their WhatsApp the users will be required to download your application and keep it in the app drawer to ensure usability in WhatsApp. Ensure that you adhere by the general standards of stickers on WhatsApp by creating legal, acceptable and authorized stickers. You can read their terms of service at https://dgit.in/WATerms. WhatsApp has provided a sample code that allows users to create sticker apps with minimal or possibly even no level of coding knowledge required. This allows tech-enthusiasts who are sometimes codenovices to build an app that could feature on the Play Store or App Store with their customized creations free for the world to use.

M PL

CREATE YOUR OWN

STICKER APPS

ON ANDROID

WhatsApp’s new sticker feature has gone viral with amateur and professional developers creating Sticker Apps in the Play Store. Here’s how you can create your own, and perhaps even start making money from your creations Dhriti Datta | feedback@digit.in 22 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

REQUIREMENTS

You need to follow certain requirements and abide by certain restrictions before creating a sticker app, in order to ensure that the creations are compatible with and well-structured for WhatsApp to successfully integrate them. Here are a few guidelines you must pay heed to while creating your sticker art. • Stickers are usually images with a transparent background, therefore you must download a background eraser or a PNG image creator that does the same for your images. • A sticker app can hold anywhere between one to ten sticker packs, each of which must be explicitly added to WhatsApp by the user. It is recommended to not try and use the ‘Add all packs’ functionality. • Each sticker pack must hold a minimum of three stickers and a maximum of thirty. • Each individual sticker must have an exact 512x512 pixel canvas within which the art must be contained. There must also be a 16 pixel gap between the edge of the sticker art and the border. • The sticker must be capable of rendering on a wide variety of backgrounds such as white, black, coloured and patterned since user’s tend to have different kinds of WhatsApp chat backgrounds. Add an 8px #FFFFFF stroke to the border of

tech AGENT001

Apple TV Stick?

Bendgate is back!

Apple could be working on a low cost rival to pit against Amazon Fire TV Stick and Chromecast https://dgit.in/dec18-36-1

Tech YouTuber, JerryRigEverything tested the iPad Pro by bending it, to which it succumbed rather easily. https://dgit.in/dec18-36-2

VR isn’t dead, yet

M PL

Agent001 | agent001@digit.in

here’s been a couple of reports suggesting that VR is on the verge of dying. HTC pulling out of India did certainly not help in quelling the rumours and only set off another bunch of such obituaries ringing the death knell for VR headsets. However, one thing that should have been observed was that more of the technology companies were focusing on bringing out their VR and AR technologies. The two are very much closely linked and the frameworks that support one of them do support the other as well. AR has seen an even larger adoption by smartphone manufacturers. The current gen flagship SoCs, with really good GPUs, are becoming immensely powerful. Obviously, you can’t expect the same performance from mobile SoCs as you can from a full-fledged machine, so technology manufacturers that are PC focused will continue to see a drop in numbers for the foreseeable future. Both Qualcomm and Huawei’s upcoming mobile SoCs, the 8150 and the 990 boast of beating Apple’s A12 Bionic. In fact, we have already seen some of the 8150’s benchmarks which allude to the same. To take advantage of the growing compute power of these SoCs, we’ve seen HMD manufacturers focus more on mobile. Oculus with its $399 Oculus Quest is attempting to

bridge the performance gap between the mobile and PC. In a way, it’s aiming to provide an experience that is better than both. There’s the portability of the lightweight HMD and there’s the additional power of the Snapdragon 835. Whether this bridge-building effort will pay off, remains to be seem. I can certainly see the potential. Hardware adoption is driven by

Agent001 is excited about some of the new technologies in the VR world but isn’t as confident to call 2019 the year of VR

36 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

certain developers already working on this issue. Well, not this issue in particular but towards making VR more optimised such that they run on all existing hardware. Voronium - Locust Sols is a VR game that was designed to run on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. However, the devs have been working to ensure that the game works on mainstream headsets based on mobile

Bridging the gap

content, there’s no two ways of looking at it. Some of the most popular titles that are rumoured to come to the Quest include Rec Room, Robo Recall, Superhot and Beat Saber. These are some of the most popular VR games selling right now. The very fact that established titles are coming to the Quest should be enough to make it a success. However, there’s always the fact that the hardware might be delayed, and with that, the popularity of these games may wane. It seems there are

SoCs as well. Voronium is soon to come on the Oculus Go and the Oculus Quest as well. The approach seems to stem from dropping the graphics in a way that the compute workload is reduced but the visual fidelity isn’t drastically affected. With Voronium, they’re using world elements with a low polygon count and have gone with static lighting. Even the characters on screen will be low poly. One might wonder that all of this might make the game look way too

> code / creativity / community >

FOR THOSE GEEKS WHO LIKE TO GET THEIR HANDS DIRTY IN CODE

Elasticsearch Arunava Roy Choudhury | feedback@digit.in

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ny idea how many products Amazon currently lists for sale? About a second ago they would have roughly 562 million products, and that number changes by the second! Well how then, do you get your favourite fish food when you search for it, less than within a second? You say magic, I say search. While traditionally programmers have struggled with data volumes when implementing search in their applications (yes, SQL devs I am looking at you!), recent changes have made significant advances in altering the way we optimise and search through millions and even billions of documents in a matter of seconds.

converts raw data such as log files or message files into internal documents and stores them in a basic data structure. Each document is a simple set of correlating keys and values: the keys are strings, and the values are one of numerous data typesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;strings, numbers, dates, or lists. While the actual implementation is quite complex, at its heart a full text search index consists of one or more inverted indices. When a particular string of text is indexed, it is divided into tokens, and each token becomes an entry in the lookup table for the index. A token is associated with pointers to the documents in which that token appears. How the text is divided into tokens depends on the analyser used.

A distributed multitenant full-text search engine

One such leading technology is Elasticsearch. It is an enterprise-grade and readily scalable search engine capable of running very complex queries in an extremely fast response time. Queries that would take 100s of seconds on a traditional SQL platform to run would take a few milliseconds on Elasticsearch (no, seriously!). To understand how this miracle happens, before we try it for ourselves, we have to understand the key principle behind Elasticsearch speed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Indexes. Elasticsearch indexes each document in its repository. During an indexing operation, Elasticsearch

DISTRIBUTED ARCHITECTURE AND SCALING

Elasticsearch scales up to thousands of servers and accommodates petabytes of data. Its enormous capacity results directly from its elaborate, distributed architecture. And yet the ES user remains unaware of nearly all of the

*CODING MATTERS

* Better face detection in Amazon Rekognition

*Pyro now on Watson Machine Learning

* GitHub improves merge conflict resolution

Updates to Amazon's face detection software have led to a significant increase in its performance in detecting faces from images. https://dgit.in/RekogUpdt

Pyro, a universal probabilistic programming language (PPL) written in Python, is on IBM's Watson Machine Learning platform with PyTorch 0.4. https://dgit.in/PyroWatson

More automated merge conflict resolution has been added to the GitHub Desktop client, along with an easier way to create new repositories and merges. https://dgit.in/GitDesk

42 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

reviews

THE LATEST PRODUCTS REVIEWED FOR YOU

For better understanding of our ratings, hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a quick guide to our overall score

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.

10 to 30 to 50 to

to 70 to

to 90 to

Keep away!

Strictly OK.

Not recommended

Decent product.

Extremely poor product.

Very good product. Highly recommended.

Ground-breaking product.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen anything like it before. A definite must buy!

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to 100 91 to

Go for it, but there may be better products out there.

INSIDE

Sony WH1000XM3

FiiO F3

OnePlus 6T

ASUS Zenbook S

Samsung Galaxy Watch 48 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

PLUS

52 Redmi Note 6 Pro 53 Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 54 Nokia 3.1 Plus & MORE...

Your friendly Neighbourhood app

Find your phone in malls

Google's Neighbourhood app is now rolling across a few cities in India which lets users ask questions about their neighbourhood. https://dgit.in/dec18-49-1

Find My Phone released an update with support for indoor mapping in public locations. https://dgit.in/dec18-49-2

NZXT H700i

do is press on the tab of the SSD tray and align it with the holes on the shroud. Since the perforation is present throughout the top of the shroud, you can literally place your SSD anywhere. Something that we loved on the H700i is the cable management. Attention has been given to every part of the motherboard plate so that all your cables can be easily routed without looking like a mess. Additionally, there are velcro straps at multiple places. From your motherboard power cable to the CPU power cable, routes have been created to hold and secure the cables easily.

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REVIEWS

Price 0 18,00

Being smart doesn’t make it useful ZXT hasn’t only shaken things up in terms of design but went ahead to improve cable management and added a ‘Smart’ device in the newly revamped H-series. The new ‘Smart’ device is supposed to allow the RGB lighting and fans to be controlled effortlessly using NZXT’s CAM software. It also includes Adaptive Noise Reduction that apparently monitors your system’s configuration and using machine learning, provides you with an optimised or ideal fan setting that can be applied to your system.

tech

Exteriors

case has generous space to support extra fans and radiators on both the front and top panel. However, these aren’t really PERFORMANCE...........82 the major selling point for FEATURES.....................84 NZXT. The CAM-powered BUILD QUALITY............79 Smart Device is a unique Thermal performance VALUE............................62 innovation from them, but At stock setting, the CPU probably not worth the and graphics card idled at extra price tag. 40 and 35 degrees Celsius respectively. They sell a non-i version without The three intake fans and the exhaust the smart device, and that's the one behind are capable of keeping things we'd recommend if you're OK with cool. Once we started stress testing, connecting your RGB lights to the the CPU shot up to 56 degrees, and the motherboard. If you want digital conGPU hit 71 degrees. This is satisfactrol over your fans and lighting strips, tory, but far from the best around. then choose this model with the smart As an additional test we decided device built-in. to add three additional fans on the top panel, to see what would happen. –Abhijit Dey There was no change in temperatures. If you leave the front panel open temSPECIFICATIONS MOTHERBOARD FORM FACTOR: Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, E-ATX peratures drop about 2 degrees, but | POWER SUPPLY STANDARD: ATX standard (max. length of this isn't enough to ruin the look of the 180mm) | I/O PORTS: 2x USB 3.1, 2x USB 2.0, 1x microphone, setup for. 1x headphone, power | DRIVE BAYS: 3 x 3.5-inch HDD, 7 x

The overall size looks quite big but it’s still a mid-tower ATX case. On the front panel, you won’t find anything other than a subtle NZXT logo at the bottom. The panel is removable but difficult to pull out. It felt like we would break the plastic joints when removing, but a strong fit is way better than a loose panel. The top panel is also removable and it pretty snugly fitted, though not as tight as the front panel. On the side where the motherboard sits, NZXT has an interesting removal mechanism for the side panel. Just push a button on the rear of the cabinet to remove it. It just snaps back in easily too.

Interiors

The interior follows the same minimalist approach on the outside. Removing the front panel gives you access to the magnetic dust filter placed in front of the fans. Behind the dust filter, you will get access to the three Aer F120 fans (case version) that are pre-installed in the case. The PSU shroud does a good job of covering the PSU and all the mess created by the extra cables. The SSD mounting mechanism over the perforated shroud is interesting. To install the SSD trays, all you need to

Verdict With the H700i, NZXT has stayed true to their minimalist design with some interesting features such as the cable management bar and the quickrelease button for the side panel. The

2.5-inch SSD | FAN SUPPORT: 3 x 120mm (front), 2 x 140mm (front), 3 x 120mm (top), 2 x 140mm (top), 1 x 120/140mm (rear) | RADIATOR SUPPORT: Up to 280/360mm (front), up to 280/360mm (top), up to 120/140mm (rear) | CLEARANCES: CPU cooler - 185mm, Graphics card - 413mm | DIMENSIONS (H X W X D): 440mm x 220mm x 464mm

CONTACT

NZXT | PHONE: NA | EMAIL: support@nzxt.com | WEBSITE: www.nzxt.com

www.digit.in | December 2018 | Digit | 49

WHAT’S NEW

Stan Lee’s legacy

INSIDE

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GEEK CULTURE IS OUR WAY OF LIFE, AND ENCOMPASSES MOVIES, GAMES, COMICS, AND TRENDS FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE

ast month the tragic passing of Stan Lee saw the outpour of love and respect coming in from all over the world. He was probably the most influential person for the comic book industry, who not only created and co-created new superheroes but over time, managed to build an entire fictional universe. Along with Jack Kirby and other well-known artists like Steve Ditko, Stan went on to co-create massively popular characters including Fantastic Four, Spider-man, Iron Man, Doctor Strange and more. Rather than focusing only on how powerful, he said that he wanted his superheroes to look believable so that the readers could relate to them. He also pushed for

diversity and representation a long time before it was considered cool. His characters then made their way into television and movies. The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was built on the foundations laid by Stan and his co-creators, as their characters kept evolving over the ages. Even if you aren’t a comic book fan, you would have noticed him from his many cameos in every Marvel movie. Things won’t be the same without you Stan. We miss you! https://dgit.in/Excelsior

Suicide Squad originally had Steppenwolf

B had set out to create the DC Extended Universe starting with Man of Steel in 2013. Suicide Squad was also a part of the same universe, with Batfleck making multiple appearances in the movie as well. But it looks like, Suicide Squad was intended to have stronger ties to Justice League or rather half the plot of the movie. Steppenwolf was supposed to be the final “boss fight” instead of Enchantress, the witch. This was confirmed

THIS MONTH IN CULT: RIP Stan Lee, you will be missed. We also look at what jobs you could do in the Potterverse, listen to booman whinge about foldable displays and see what the boys (and girl) were up to this month

Lion King trailer

While calling it a liveaction movie isn’t exactly accurate, the Lion King trailer made most of us nostalgic. The newer generation will go through what we did when Mufasa tries to rescue Simba. We’re also excited that James Earl Jones is returning as the voice of Mufasa. https://dgit.in/LKDsny

More leaks from Joker

Every month, a new leak comes out from the sets of the Todd Phillips’ upcoming Joker movie. In a fresh leak, Joaquin Phoenix can be seen being chased by two cops. https://dgit.in/JPJkr

58 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

by Suicide Squad director David Ayer while replying to questions from fans on Twitter. The original idea of the movie included Enchantress being under the control of a Mother Box that Steppenwolf

seeks while planning an invasion using a boom tube. Even Parademons were supposedly present in the story. However, the plan was dropped which later was evolved to fit in the Justice League arc. Suicide Squad and Justice League were both underwhelming. Looking on the bright side, Aquaman director James Wan has said that he was given freedom to work on his own vision for the movie. https://dgit.in/SSStppnwlf

Future Marvel movies from Sony

Mysterious Watchmen teasers

Sony Pictures has announced two untitled Marvel movies for a 2020 release. The first one coming out on July 10 is probably Morbius while the second one, is the sequel to Venom coming on October 2. https://dgit.in/ SonyMarvel2020

HBO dropped two new teasers for their upcoming TV series on Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ revolutionary comic book mini-series of the same name. It’s going to tell a new story in the same universe. https://dgit.in/ WatchmenHBO

culture

Diablo 4 in development

The game is being developed under the codename “Fenris”, with “Embrace the Darkness” as its tagline. https://dgit.in/dec18-60-1

With the recent release of Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, the Harry Potter universe has gotten exponentially more complex with the addition of multiple plays, books and films. The much-awaited sequel of the Fantastic Beasts franchise follows the quest undertaken by Newt Scamander, a celebrated magizoologist who was a student during this timeline, along with wizarding-world favourite, Albus Dumbledore to thwart Gellert Grindelwald’s evil plans of spreading pure-blood wizards’ domination over all non-magical beings. The original Harry Potter books and films already boasted a very extensive lowdown of magical occupations or careers only to be further convoluted by the addition of a brand new franchise. Despite the occupations being inherent to the wizarding world created by J. K. Rowling, they possess some striking similarities to numerous occupations in our world (the ‘muggle’ world).

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A GUIDE TO THE WIZARDING WORLD OCCUPATIONS

A collaboration between the two iconic companies now will allow you to raise a virtual Evee pet. https://dgit.in/dec18-60-2

FEATURE

Pokemon Tamagotchi

If you were living in the Potterverse, what kind of jobs would you do? Dhriti Datta | feedback@digit.in

MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT WORKERS*

AUROR

This wizarding world occupation is possibly one of the most coveted professions in the Potterverse, ever since Harry Potter expressed his interest in this dangerous profession. An Auror is essentially a dark-wizard catcher. The counterpart to Aurors in the Muggle world would be police officers and the military . The Aurors usually perform their responsibilities depending on the magical education they have been privy to and the kind of threats and concerns they are trained to combat. As Minerva McGonagall said in the books: the requirements to become an Auror entail studying and mastering a minimum of five N.E.W.T. (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test) subjects. Following this, the applicant will go through a host of character and aptitude tests conducted at the Auror office. The requirements were completely forgone after the completion of the Second Wizarding War.

60 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

The employees of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement work under numerous subdivisions where they work towards upholding the wizarding laws. All other departments in the Ministry of Magic are answerable to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement which grants its head with great power. Harry Potter, the former Head Auror, went on to head this department by 2019. Hermione Granger also was the Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and she partnered up with Kingsley Shacklebolt to eradicate some of the regressive, oppressive and biased laws that were mostly in favour of the pure-bloods. The ‘Muggle’ equivalent of Magical Law Enforcement workers would be lawyers, since they endorse and champion the laws of our world. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement’s counterpart in our world would be the justice system comprised of judges, courts, jurors and other such officials and departments.

WHAT’S NEW

Windmills are an alpha predator

Farewell to Kepler

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THIS MONTH IN SCIENCE:

number of the prey species of these birds, the fan throated lizards. What is happening here is known as a trophic cascade. Widespread changes occur in the food pyramid when a predator species is introduced. The windmills are essentially playing the role of a new apex predator in the region, disrupting the balance in the area. https://dgit.in/predwm

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!

ind farms are considered environmentally friendly option for generating electricity. About 8 percent of the power in India is generated using wind. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, studying the ecological impact of the wind farms found that there are far reaching consequences of these windmills. In the same plateau in the Western Ghats, researchers studied predatory birds such as hawks and kites, at locations with and without wind farms. Predatory birds were far fewer in the locations with wind farms. Also, birds in the vicinity of wind farms made fewer attempts at capturing prey, and displayed a reduced frequency of dives. Consequently, there was an increase in the

he work on Kepler actually began in 1983. The technique used by Kepler to detect exoplanets is known as “Transit Photometry”. When a planet passes in front of a star, there is a slight dip in the brightness of the star. By observing the dips in the brightness over time, a telescope could measure the frequency and intensity of the dips. These measurements, could, in turn, tell the orbital period and size of the planets. After years

A sad farewell to Kepler, discovering the dust moons of Earth, vaping can be good for you, how language changes colour perception, kids and the effect of screen time and the Parker Solar Probe

of improvements, NASA greenlit the Kepler Space Telescope in 2001. It took another 8 years to build and deploy, and began its operations by simultaneously monitoring 170,000 stars for dips in brightness,

in the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus. Within a year of its launch, Kepler had identified five exoplanets. Now, nine and a half years later, Kepler has identified a staggering confirmed 2,662 exoplanets! An additional 2,244 exoplanet candidates have also been identified. Kepler has studied 530,506 stars, collected 678 GB of data, which has been used to publish 2,946 scientific papers! https://dgit.in/keplerbyebye

X-Raying the Enigma Machine

A team of researchers have explored the interiors of the Enigma Machine, used by the Germans during WWII to send coded messages. X-Raying the machine allows the researchers to explore the individual wires and pins within the device, without destroying it. This is the first time that scientists have got such a close look at the innards of an Enigma Machine. https://dgit.in/enigmaxray

Modes of the brain

The prefrontal cortex of the brain stores multiple rules to use in different scenarios. When you drive slowly in a residential area with children playing, or when you tiptoe into a library, these rule sets kick in. Research into this cognitive flexibility can allow developers to improve artificial intelligence. https://dgit.in/brainmodes

64 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

The crisis of science

Studies in medicine, psychology, economics and other fields are increasingly showing different results when replicated. This is cause for concern, and questions the validity of these fields. Now, a pair of new studies explores the replication crisis to try and find solutions. https://dgit.in/scicrisis

Traffic frogs

Frogs, like humans, are stressed by the noise of traffic. A study shows that frogs living in ponds closer to highways have dampened stress and immune responses to traffic, while frogs living in isolated ponds are more easily affected. Researchers want to know how they adapted. https://dgit.in/frogstress

sci EARTH

Termites build massive landfill

Rare millipede found

Termites have built massive dumps on empty grounds in Brazil over thousands of years as deposition sites. https://dgit.in/dec18-66-1

A recently discovered millipede, relatively “new to science”, has only ever been found thrice – all in south Wales. https://dgit.in/dec18-66-2

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THE DUST CLOUD MOONS After over six decades of searching, scientists have finally confirmed the existence of dust cloud satellites around the Earth Aditya Madanapalle | aditya@digit.in

These positions are called Lagrangian points, and a system of any two bodies has five of them, labeled L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5. In the Earth-Moon system, the L4 and L5 points are not entirely stable, and are constantly shifting slightly, because of the gravitational pull of the Sun. Objects in these points may be under the gravitational influence of other planets as well. However, any objects at these locations would be ideal to find any additional satellites of the Earth. In the 1950s, Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski began a search for “Trojan” satellites of the Earth. The L4 and L5 points are together known as the Trojan points, and a number of other planets have satellites here. Jupiter has more than 6,000 trojan satellites. There are seventeen Neptunian trojans identified, and four Martian trojans. There are a number of trojan

ince the 19th century, scientists have been looking for a second moon of the Earth. Over the years, there have been multiple claims and sightings of additional satellites of the Earth. In the 1960s, John Bargby claimed to have spotted as many as ten previously undiscovered satellites of the Earth. These claims were never confirmed. Before going any further, we need to understand a tiny slice of celestial mechanics. A pair of bodies, such as the Sun-Earth system, or the EarthMoon system, have five special points in space around them. The combined gravitational influence of the Earth and the Sun, keep any objects located in points, in the same relative position. Essentially, anything that finds its way to these points, tend to remain there.

66 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

moons in the Saturnian system. In the 1950s, Kordylewski started looking for Earth trojans. In 1956, Kordylewski spotted a faint, diffuse patch of light at one of the trojan points, with his naked eye. This was indicative of a cloud of dust. Almost five years later, Kordylewski managed to capture the dust cloud on film. In 1966, astronomers reported seeing two faint patches at both the L4 and L5 points while flying on board a NASA plane. In 1975, the Orbiting Solar Observatory Announced the discovery of what were then called Kordylewski Dust Clouds (KDC), after a 15 month long observation campaign. The faint dust clouds were subsequently photographed, but the cloud satellites remained elusive. Then there were a number of observation campaigns where astronomers specifically looked at these points and found nothing. In 2009, the Japanese Hiten probe

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sci

ISRO sets its sights on Venus

A cloud looms over Mars

ISRO is planning to send an orbiter to Venus in 2023 and is currently looking for international collaborators. https://dgit.in/dec18-70-1

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SPACE AGE

A 1500-km long cloud looms over the Arsia Mons volcono on Mars, with staying power unlike other clouds. https://dgit.in/dec18-70-2

TOUCHING THE

SUN

perihelion. The instrument was moving at a speed of 343,000 kilometres per hour, smashing the record for the fastest spacecraft. The previous record was held by the Juno spacecraft, on its ultimate dive into Jupiter, at 266,000 kilometres per hour. The Parker Solar Probe is just getting started though. Over a series of orbits, it will become faster and faster, diving deeper into the corona in each circuit. At its first close approach, the probe was at a distance of 24 million kilometres from the Sun. Because of the intense radio emissions from the Sun, the spacecraft remained out of contact from the Earth for a few days. Advanced autonomous systems on board kept the spacecraft up and running, and safe from the sun, during the time it was out of contact with home.

Three months after its launch, the Parker Solar Probe became the fastest man made object in the solar system Aditya Madanapalle | aditya@digit.in

n 29 October, the Parker Solar Probe reached within 42.6 million kilometres of the Sun, the closest any man made object has been to the engine that powers the Solar System. Just a few days later, on 6 November, the spacecraft made its closest approach to the Sun, reaching a point in its current orbit known as the

70 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

THE MYSTERIES OF THE SOLAR CORONA

The corona is the part of the Sun that is still visible during a Solar eclipse. The high energy particles of the corona are so hot, that the temperatures are higher than even the surface of the Sun. The spacecraft is an attempt to learn more about the origin of much of the space weather in the solar system, by diving into the sun. The spacecraft will be exposed to temperatures in excess of one million degrees Celsius. Protecting the sensitive instruments on board, is a 4.5 inch thick, and 2.4 metre wide heat shield. The shield is made up of a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates. The Sun facing side of the shield has a coating of white ceramic paint, to reflect away as much sunlight as possible. The instruments on board will remain at a relatively cool 30 degrees Celsius, thanks to the shield. There are some instruments that do peek out around the shield though, such as antennas and a particle collecting Faraday cup. These are necessary to make the observations. Also

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SA 74 | Digit | December 2018 | www.digit.in

ZERO 1 AWARDS

This is unique, and nowhere else will you get a rundown of the best performing products of the year, because most others “review” products instead of testing them. This isn’t about the opinion of reviewers, this is about pure performance, and the ability of a product to just do the best job currently possible. So, for example, when you ask the question, “What’s the best performing gaming laptop in India?” you need to check out our Zero1 Award winner, because that’s the only place you will get this answer. There’s another reason why the Zero1 Awards is so important. Because we don’t look at price, but only pure performance, we get to showcase products that you might have heard about, but didn’t pay too much attention to because of budget restrictions. Yes, some have made the mistake of thinking this award only makes sense to rich kids with deep pockets, because all of the products here are usually expensive. That isn’t why we do it though. In fact, usually, a tech product that wins the Zero1 Award is considered the industry benchmark for the year. And what do brands love to do with benchmarks? Beat them of course. Think of the Zero1 Awards as a predictor of things to come in 2019. The new devices that launch in 2019 will have to better this benchmark, and not just compete in terms of performance, but also price! Remember to send us feedback at editor@digit.in.