Digit January 2018 by 9.9 Media

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THE RSS FEED | Robert Sovereign-Smith | Executive Editor

Many happy returns?

mistakes. We might not even need to see them, and perhaps they could be like Asimov’s fictitious MultiVac – an AI superintelligence that’s never seen, but is always there nonetheless. An internet connected superintelligence… perhaps even what the Internet itself will become in the future... who knows? Maybe every connected device itself will be like a neuron in a human brain. Useless by itself, but capable of solving pretty much anything when fired in the right configuration and order. I don’t think traditional computing can ever result in this capability. With every new research paper I read in the field of quantum biology, the more convinced I am by the theory that our brain is really a super complex, biological quantum computer. In fact, I can see why some theorists believe that consciousness itself is the result of all the weird effects of quantum mechanics. And let’s be honest, for a human-like AI to exist (aka an AGI – read Mithun’s story on page 79 to learn more about it), we’re going to need artificial consciousness, because without it, we’re not going to get anywhere close to human aptitude. If the quantum biologists are right, and consciousness is in fact a quantum property of the brain, then we are certainly going to need proper quantum computers to be developed and we’re going to need software that can be run on such computers. No point in running regular code on a quantum computer. That’s like asking an advanced mathematician to do basic addition and subtraction. Of course she’d be able to do it, and do it far faster than a regular adult, but should we be wasting our time with that? What that software will be or look like, we have no idea, because we don’t know what the hardware will be… because we still don’t fully understand quantum mechanics… a vicious circle of ignorance. The only thing about this return of the tech world’s focus on AI that I like is that new research projects will get some much-needed funding, because of all this hype. New research is where the breakthroughs will come from… so wake me when there’s one in quantum computing, or in quantum mechanics; because until then, I think we’re doomed to merely interface with dumb Siri-like “AI”. Here’s wishing you a very Happy 2018 ahead – just steer clear of “smart assistants” and you the year will be happy enough!

M PL

THIS IS A MONTH OF RETURNS, to be honest. After Siddharth left, I’ve returned to a more hands-on role for the magazine – much to the dismay of the team I should add. Sid’s sorely missed, but we’re glad he’s happier on his quest to rediscover himself. Aditya returned to us after many years, and you will see more articles from him from next month onwards. Plus, we’ve returned to a topic that’s been in and out of favour with the technology world for my entire career with Digit – AI. Like I said, a month of many returns! AI is something that filled me with disgust, or with hope, or with excitement, depending on which year you asked me for my reaction. If anything, the sheer amount of times I’ve seen it being hyped up in my 20 years in tech has made me a little jaded. I seem to take even the most wonderous sounding advancements with a fistful of salt (because a pinch has proven too little in the past). So am I trying to suggest that AI isn’t going to happen? Not at all, I honestly think it’s a question of when, and not if. It’s just that I’m not as excited when small advances are presented as breakthroughs. In fairness, the job of most marketing people is to do just that, and that’s why AI will be the buzzword of 2018, without a doubt. However, I think it’s all just a polishing up and presenting of old ideas as new. You know, like when you have to sell your car – an analogy I’m using because I just sold mine. You clean it and polish it, give it a good wash, touch up any scratches and make it look as brand new as possible. Some people come along and kick the tyres, pretending they know what they’re doing, and are impressed by the gleam, while the experienced ones immediately pop the hood and turn it on and go about their business of giving it a proper once over. No point in a gleaming outside if the inside is a lemon, is there? That’s what this month’s cover story is about. While you will get bombarded by shiny exteriors of AI news almost every week in 2018, we’re attempting to look under the hood and lay bare the truth of the innards. Personally, I think most of us tech users are only genuinely interested in AI that mimics human-like aptitude, not attitude. We don’t need our AI to be emotional, or to be our friends, or to be anything like us, really; but we expect them to be smart. We expect them to be able to learn, to not repeat

“We don’t need our AI to be emotional, or to be our friends, or to be anything like us, really; but we expect them to be smart.”

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

www.digit.in | January 2018 | Digit | 1

PARANOID ANDROID | Mithun Mohandas | Asst. Technical Editor

Slowly but surely

more accepting of whatever feeble AI we have right now. Pull your smartphone out and try talking to the intelligent assistant. Be as casual as you can be. You’ll soon realise that the AI behind smartphone assistants are utterly dumb. They are nowhere close to the Tony Stark’s Jarvis but they’re marketed so. This conditions humans to believe that the true singularity is farther than it really is. Ergo, humans are more than willing to tolerate current forms of AI and you don’t need us to tell you that most of these smart assistants are always listening and always recording. Passing on your private conversations, daily musings, browsing and shopping habits to massive computers who are using all of that data to get smarter, and therefore, closer to the singularity. Most of us who follow research on AI know how rapidly the technology is progressing. We’re already on our way towards building the brain-like neural net and the human brain has already been simulated successfully. AI has progressed to the extent that it can now train itself without the need for massive amounts of data. Case in point, DeepMind’s AlphaGo Zero which learnt entirely on its own by playing the game with itself over and over again, in a fraction of the time it took its predecessor to learn the game. However, these things are no longer viewed by humanity as a threat even though it very much is for a lot of jobs. Each moment you spend on a connected device is sending data to some server which is then used to make some AI more accurate. In order for the people to more amiable towards the whole idea of AI, technology companies have to introduce AI in a staggered manner. All while putting out a facade of hope. Every company dabbling in AI will tell you that AI will create more jobs, especially in the AI training domain. What they fail to mention is that, AI is not going to create more of the jobs it replaces. And it’s only a matter of time before it replaces the very same jobs that it helped create in the first place. But you’re not going to realise any of that in time, the technology giants of today have seen to that. I’d wish you a happy new year, if I thought there was anything to be happy about…

M PL

SOMETIMES, the world is simply not ready. Throughout history we’ve seen ideas that were so outlandish that they were outlawed and those who preached them were branded heretics and banished. Those ideas had to bide their time before they could resurface. Then the academia would pick them up and have elaborate discussions, a eventually, these ideas would be worthy of public discourse. Then began the arduous process as society slowly became conditioned to accept the idea. This process, from start to finish, would take decades in the past. However, now, the time taken for an outlandish idea to become mainstream has significantly reduced. This time period within which an idea appears normal and acceptable is called the Overton Window, after Joseph P. Overton who proposed the theory. If an idea lies outside the confines of the Overton Window, you can bring it in simply by conditioning the people. A simple approach is to propose an even more outlandish idea, thereby softening the blow an making the former idea seem not so outlandish as previously thought. People do it all the time, and politicians lead the pack. When it comes to AI, I believe we’re experiencing just that. So many great minds of our time have been very vocal about the runaway effect of AI. Commonly known as the singularity, the runaway effect is when an AI rapidly evolves to the extent that it can easily gain control over anything that’s digital. In almost every piece of science fiction, it then proceeds to wipe out humanity. AI experts will vouch for the fact that the singularity is far from coming into existence, however, technology giants aren’t blind to the immense profit that stands to be gained from AI technologies. Everything under the sun will have some element of AI in the future but only if people accept it. If we were to publicly chart the natural progression of AI, then people will soon realise that their jobs are as good as gone once an AI is put in place. So naturally, they are going to be wary of AI technologies i.e. it remains outside the Overton Window. Now, if technology giants were to paint a very drastic picture of futuristic AI, then people are going to be

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

“If we were to publicly chart the natural progression of AI, then people will soon realise that their jobs are as good as gone once an AI is put in place.”

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

TO ADVERTISE

PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH

EMAIL: sales@digit.in

JANUARY 2018 • VOLUME 18 • ISSUE 01

SALES DIRECTOR: Lalit Arun Mobile: +91-9582262959 SOUTH & EAST: Jayanta Bhattacharyya Mobile: +91-93318 29284 WEST: Suvarna Shringarpure Mobile: +91-93249 28247

EDITORIAL Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Multimedia Co-ordinator Abhijit Dey Writers Arnab Mukherjee, Manish Rajesh

NORTH: Mayank Sharma Mobile: +91-8800661912

BAZAAR NETGEAR ReadyNAS 424 Optoma HD27 ASUS ROG Strix GL503 SCAR Edition Antec P8 Logitech G603 Xiaomi Redmi 5A LG V30 Plus Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 Huawei Honor 7X Lenovo IdeaPad 720s 13IKB Flipkart Billion Capture Plus Sony WH-1000XM2 InFocus Vision 3

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TEST CENTRE Asst. Technical Editor Mithun Mohandas Reviewers Hardik Singh, Shrey Pacheco, Souvik Das, Subhrojit Mallick

DIGIT.IN Editor Soham Raninga Assistant Editor Prasid Banerjee, Sameer Mitha News and Features Editor Adamya Sharma Writer Shubham Sharma

ADVERTISING INDEX

Brand.......................................... Page No.

GAMES REVIEWED THIS MONTH

TP-Link....................................Inside front cover

South Park: Fractured But Whole, WWE 2K18

Seagate.............................................Back cover SBI...................................................................3

LIC....................................................................5 iBall............................................................7, 29 India AV........................................................ 111

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

Quantum....................................................... 112

PRODUCTION AND LOGISTICS Manager Operations Rakesh Upadhyay Manager Logistics Vijay Menon Asst Mgr Production & Logistics M P Singh Executive Mohd. Nadeem Ansari

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

READER SERVICES Team Leader Sudhir Patel +91-22-67899678 / help@digit.in 4 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

COVER ILLUSTRATION AND DESIGN Peterson PJ

Published and printed by Kanak Ghosh for and on behalf of the owners, M/s Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx pvt Ltd 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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DISCLAIMER For every Digit contest, there will be only one winner, unless specified otherwise. In the event of a dispute, the Editor’s decision shall be final.

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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

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contents JANUARY 2018

Artificial Idiots

2018 is here, and AI is being deemed to be more important and powerful than ever. But beyond the hype, what is truth about AI’s so called capabilities?

VOLUME 18 ISSUE 01

COVER STORY PAGE 67 -80

TECH - PAGE 14-45

16 | Investing in Cryptocurrency Here’s what you’ll need to choose the best cryptocurrency and start investing.

AND MORE 8 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

SCIENCE - PAGE 56-66

62 | Furry Space Pioneers Before humans explored the final frontier, it was our furry (and some not so furry) friends that ventured there first.

AND MORE

SKOAR! - PAGE 109-127

ON THE DVD CULT Indie games A Museum of Dubious Splendors Boolean Escape Dungreed (Demo) Figment Heartland Nightkeep Normal Human Face Simulator Photon Highway

TECH Python essential tools. Code your smart assistant using the following tools in the most popular scripting language. Atom Bluefish Eclipse Eric Geany PyCharm PyDev Python(x,y) Sublime Text 3

95 | Retro Gaming Guide

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Game your way through the classics and you’ll know what it was like to be an ‘80s kid.

106 | SKOAR! Game of the Year 2017

The votes are in, which game did you vote for?

AND MORE

ALT - PAGE 82-93

CULTURE - PAGE 46-55

90 | A Geek’s guide to 48 | Long live Indian Comics AI in Sci-Fi Movies, books and video games have explored how AI will end up killing off humanity.

How up-to-date are you with the Indian comic book scene?

93 | Ask (the) Oracle

54 | The Talk of Town

We learn about Oracle’s plans for Indian enterprisers and developers.

AND MORE

Chatbots are taking over as the new preferred interface for the end user.

AND MORE

Google’s Python Class Google’s Python Class is a free class for people with a little bit of programming experience for those who want to learn Python. Graphics driver updates Latest graphics driver for AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards for 64-bit systems.

SCI Lectures on Spectroscopy Learn all about the different methods of spectroscopy with these video lectures. The electromagnetic spectrum IR and UV spectroscopy Proton NMR

PlayStation Experience 2017 trailers Catch all the trailers released at this year’s PlayStation Experience 2017 event. 20XX Absolver Anamorphine DJMAX Guns of Icarus Iconoclasts Killing Floor: Incursion Knockout League Marvel’s SpiderMan Metro Exodus Mulaka Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality Shadow of the Colossus World War Z And more... ALT The story of World War I Explore all the events that led to one of the most destructive wars fought on this planet, along with the after effects. And more...

www.digit.in | January 2018 | Digit | 9

WHAT’S NEW

Robot carries the Olympic torch

journey. Hubo’s run was only 150 metres (roughly 500 feet) long, but it ended with a demonstration. At the end of its leg it reached a wall, cut a hole through that wall, and then passed the torch on to its creator, Professor Oh Jun Ho, all while the torch remained alight in its hand. This move was a part of the organising committee’s ongoing efforts in letting the world know just how tech savvy the 2020 Olympic games are going to be. http://dgit.in/RoboOlympics

Google Maps gets turn by turn navigation for public transport

M PL

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

s the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo draw closer to us, the Olympic torch’s iconic journey around the world had something quite unique about it this time around. During the 41st day of the Olympic torch relay, DRC Hubo+, a robot created by the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), carried the torch for a leg of the

GET CHATTY

Google kills Tango

As announced earlier this year, Google is killing off Tango, its augmented reality platform for highperformance devices, instead shifting focus towards the more mass-market ARCore. Tango support will officially cease on March 1, 2018. http://dgit.in/RIPTango

transport passengers who will find this addition most helpful. Afterall, they’re the ones that need to be woken out of a podcast, playlist, or even a casual nap. The feature also shows your progress in real time on the notification itself, as well as how many stops you need to or will be passing before reaching your destination. http://dgit.in/GMapNav

hile turn by turn navigation has been a standard feature for driving navigation on Google Maps, it is now being brought to transit navigation as well. In case you lose track of your commute, the app will now send a push notification when you’re approaching your stop. While drivers behind the wheel are naturally going to be more attentive, it is public

THIS MONTH IN TECH: Learn how to build your own Chatbot in this month’s workshop, and then explore the Origins of wireless charging. After than, learn how to invest in cryptocurrency and take a look at some up-and-coming mental health startups in India.

Windows 10 password manager flaw

A flaw was found in a Windows 10 image that came bundled with a third party password management tool. The software, Keeper, allowed malicious websites to steal passwords. Updates to the software have supposedly fixed the issue. http://dgit.in/Win10Flaw

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

Hackers are going after Bitcoin

Lazarus group (a group that is often linked to the North Korean government) has been executing a spearfishing campaign that targets employees of the cryptocurrency industry with a malicious Word file that runs a PC hijacking trojan at the target. http://dgit.in/BitcoinHck

Tesla Superchargers ban commercial drivers Tesla has released new policy that forbids any new commercial drivers from using its charging stations. The policy is applicable to anyone who has purchased a Tesla after December 15th and is intended to enforce ‘fair Supercharger usage’ http://dgit.in/TeslaBan

tech

Reels are YouTube’s stories

Google launches Datally app

Reels will be available to view beyond 24-hours, as common on similar features on other platforms. http://dgit.in/ReelsYT

ORIGINS

Datally tracks data usage in real time, gives data saving recommendation, nearby public Wi-Fi notifications. http://dgit.in/GDatally

Unwired

wireless h it w r ia il fam We’ve been , so why w o n e il h w ra charging fo me yet? o h it g in g in r aren’t we b erjee | Arnab Mukh

arnab@digit

.in

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WHY NOW

ho loves wires? No, there is no -philia word for wires, we checked. Unless you’ve got a particular obsession with ductility, it is unlikely that you are a big fan of things connected to each other with physical cords. One of the biggest culprits are charging cables. Almost everyone in the industry has tried their hand at innovating the same MagSafe, Micro-USB and even type-C, until the actual solution was finally upon us - wireless charging. Even that is hardly popular right now with few consumer devices actually supporting it. Why is that the case? Is there something wrong with how it has come to be? Let’s find out.

demonstrations over a comparatively limited range, Tesla failed to make his advancements a commercial success although today quite a few of his ideas power a number of modern devices. That didn’t stop the geek idol from dreaming even bigger. He envisioned a plan to transmit electricity around the world wirelessly using the ionosphere as a conductor. His grand vision, the ‘World Wireless System’ to transmit power and information was unveiled in 1900, and was followed by the construction of the An artists representation of Tesla’s World Wireless System – Wardenclyffe tower the searchlights are actually power flows in New York as one of many such towers to be built around the world. Eventually, with wireless electricity transmisinvestment dried up in 1904 and the sion using inductive and capacitive project had to be abandoned. coupling. The devices he used to do so were essentially electrical resonant transformer circuits, now popularly MODERN DAYS known as Tesla coils. Fast forward to very beginning of the He even improved upon his initial 21st century, Samsung was taking a achievements like using a receiving lead in developing wireless chargLC circuit tuned to resonance with the ing technology for its consumers by transmitter’s LC circuit using resoactually setting up a dedicated team nant inductive coupling to increase to work on it. The same team realised distance. Even after successful public soon enough that for the process they

For a long time, people wouldn’t really need to think about wireless charging. Why? Because most of the electronic devices we owned were not intended to be portable. They were firmly rooted in our homes and offices, comfortably plugged into a power supply. Now, almost everything an average person operates in their day to day life comes with a battery powered alternative. However, carrying around a charging cable for every device (even with popular standards such as Micro-USB and now type-C, device manufacturers don’t play well with each other) can be cumbersome. Hence, the world needs wireless charging right now. But a long time back, we were still trying our best to make wireless charging happen due to sheer curiosity.

or charging, you’ll have a tough job. There are no prizes for guessing who is the most popular name in the lot. After most of the 19th century was spent in establishing the existence and true nature of electromagnetic waves, Nikola Tesla started experimenting

EARLY DAYS If you go looking for the one person who invented wireless electricity

18 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

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.

Router QoS Settings network to provide preferential delivery or better service to selected network traffic by ensuring bandwidth, controlling latency and more.

speedtest and note down the results for your connection. Side-note: In case you are comfortable and know what your technical skill level is, we strongly recommend you to use DD-WRT firmware for your router if it is supported. DDWRT offers a host of various QoS settings to play with.

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WERE YOU EVER IN A SITUATION where you almost pulled your hair out in anger because of a sudden unexpected drop in your Internet speed even after having a decent connection? Most people don’t realise the fact that it’s not the ISPs (Internet Service Providers)

bandwidth between both the services. All the while, there is nothing separating the two services in terms of which service should have priority over the other service with respect to the utilisation of available bandwidth. When a well thought out QoS scheme is applied to your network, you can then have a fluid priority control over applications and services such that the bandwidth and best ping time will be allocated to the service/application/user that you want. If you have a slower internet connection, QoS matters that much more since the bandwidth is limited.

Take control of your internet connection with these tips about Router QoS

WHY IS QOS NEEDED?

When QoS is disabled in your router’s settings, bandwidth is utilised by everything

PRE-REQUISITES

Difference when QoS is setup Vs. When it’s not.

who are always at fault for situations like these to arise. Often, problems like this can be because of your own local network settings and they can be fixed quite easily. The nature of this month’s Tips and Tricks is to get you (and your router) up to speed with something christened QoS. QoS, or Quality of Service as it’s called, is an aspect of networking that deals with the overall performance of a service like a computer network as seen by the users of the network itself. Basically, using QoS it is possible for a

without much thought to what each particular application does. Let’s take a short example: Say you are currently on an important Skype based interview session with a recruiter from your dream company. At the same time your girlfriend who is in the other room decides to stream ‘Stranger Things’ episodes on Netflix, the quality of your Skype call can suddenly take a massive hit. This is because both Skype and Netflix are trying to utilise the bandwidth while your router is trying its best to share the

24 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

ENABLING QOS

QoS settings exist in almost every modern router and they can be configured by you. Considering that there are tons of different routers that everyone has and most of these routers are different in terms of their interfaces, features and capabilities, it’s difficult to provide a walkthrough that fits everyone’s router and/or use case. This is why we will try going through the most standard bits so that you can follow through with QoS configuration. You’ll need to navigate to your router’s web-based set-

Make a note of what services, applications and users you want to prioritize according to your own use case. Once you have a basic idea of what you want, it’s recommended that you go ahead and stop all downloads, uploads and most major bandwidth hogging applications. This is done in order to run a speedtest to determine your average connection It’s much more complex than that. speed. Knowing the speed that you actually up page using its IP address receive at your end helps (It’s 192.168.1.1 by default when you’re configuring in most cases) and login with QoS for your router. Run a your admin credentials first.

tech

Winamp -> Plexamp

Twitter’s new anti-hate rules

Plex has a new inclubator division and Plexamp, a media player software is their first product. http://dgit.in/Plexamp

AGENT001

Twitter to begin enforcing new rules to reduce hateful and abusive content on the platform. http://dgit.in/TwitrProtec

Whine away

M PL

agent001 | agent001@digit.in

aving recently moved my PC to another desk in the office, I was all set to start anew. A new desk presents various new possibilities. I can, again, put my feet up on the desk or suffice with just one foot while the other one stays firmly grounded. I’m no fan of yoga or any physical activity, for that matter, but having one foot up in the air makes for a much more comfortable writing pose. The other aspect of moving is setting up my PC all over again. It’s after having put together my entire system at my new desk that I came upon a rather irritating little thing – coil whine. No, I haven’t changed any hardware. The only difference is the position of the machine in the office. So the other new thing about the setup is the AC mains into which the system is plugged in. It would appear that the new power outlet isn’t exactly wired right. Perhaps there is a heavy duty appliance drawing power from the same line causing this nasty disturbance. To make matters worse, the disturbance can screw with more of my hardware than just the power supply. Depending on the quality of the filter circuit within the power supply, one can expect a teensy bit of the interference to pass through. And that can wreak havoc on any of the remaining components. The CPU tends to be the

least affected since it has more levels of filtration between it and the 12 volt ATX line but for everything else, we’re looking at a ticking time bomb. If you’re wondering what a coil whine is, then here’s a little primer. Your AC power mains operates at 50 Hz and conducts 230 Volts. When you want to rectify that into DC power, you need really big capacitors and inductors for filtering. However, if

Agent001’s PC has got a nasty case of coil whine and he’s on a mission to fix it.

28 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

Whiny li’l coil.

you were to switch the frequency to a higher value, then these components need not be huge, and the space saved allows for more compact designs. Flow of electric current through a conductor induces magnetism and that causes the component to move a little. Now if you consider a high frequency AC current flowing through the conductor, then it will start swaying at a high frequency. This vibration is what we

hear as coil whine or as it is properly known – electromagnetically excited acoustic noise and vibration. Unfortunately, not much can be done for it. Certain power supply manufacturers have advised switching on the ErP/EuP option and switching off the onboard audio within the BIOS. That did not work in my case. So after a little more Googling, I came upon a novel solution. One that’s destined to void my warranty. Allow me to explain. Inductors and chokes within power supplies are known to vibrate, so some manufacturers apply generous amounts of dielectric goop onto the coils. Since there’s is no way I can get my hands on some of that easily, I was forced to improvise. I took out one of the old power supplies from the Digit Test Centre and connected it to the same outlet and used the paperclip trick to turn it on. That did not have any coil whine. So I had to load the power supply with a couple of cooling fans and try again. Voila! Coil whine. Believe me, the irony of wanting coil whine was not lost on me. Now I had two options, I could either use RTV Silicone on the components or hot glue. The former uses acetic acid which can be quite corro-

tech

> code / creativity / community >

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

DEVWORX

Creating apps for the Google Assistant

TV, or even receiving news updates entirely by voice. These devices also have support for home automation, letting users control smart home appliances such as air conditioners and security alarms with their voice. You can even set up multiple such devices across a home to allow synchronized playback of music and complete automation. In 2017, Google even added a special feature that allows the Google Assistant to detect and distinguish between up to six voices.

APPS ON GOOGLE ASSISTANT

A typical app for the Google Assistant can be broadly broken down into the following three parts:

M PL

Arunava Roy Choudhury | feedback@digit.in

Actions on Google

and many such activities that would otherwise need human intervention. With “Actions on Google” , a platform for app development, Google allows developers to develop their own services and apps that they can integrate with the Google Assistant and harness its two-way conversational interface for users. Let us take a look at how an app on the Google Assistant looks like.

GOOGLE HOME

GOOGLE ASSISTANT & ACTIONS ON GOOGLE

Google Assistant is a virtual personal assistant (VPA) developed by Google that is at the heart of its Google Home product. A VPA can engage in twoway conversations with the user and, much like a real assistant, can carry out a number of tasks for them such as organizing mail, scheduling reminders

Google Home is the latest in a long line of market disrupting products that have come from the path breaking technology company. It is a collection of smart speakers that enable users to use voice commands in order to interact with services through Google's intelligent personal assistant called Google Assistant. Google Assistant hosts a large number of services, both within and outside Google that are integrated and synchronized, allowing users to perform a variety of tasks from listening to music, to playing videos or viewing photos on your smart

Actions and Invocation ‘Actions on Google’ defines a way for the users to invoke apps for the Assistant through action-based voice commands such as "book an Uber" or "play a game". Every app must define at least a main action that lets users invoke it by name. In addition, it can then define additional actions that deep-link into the app through different entry points. An example of a deep-link invocation would be “Ok Google, Ask Stargazer to show me the star map for tomorrow” which, when spoken, should fire an intent to request the star map over the user location for the next day. These deep-link invocations are what make Actions really interesting.

*CODING MATTERS

* Hadoop 3 Adds HDFS Erasure Coding

* Python for Excel Scripting

*GitHub Enterprise Adds Global Webhooks

improvements including support for HDFS Erasure coding, a preview of v2 of the YARN Timeline Service, and improvements to YARN/HDFS federation. http://dgit.in/Hadoop3HDFS

Microsoft is considering providing Python as a scripting language in Excel and is currently asking for feedback from the developer community. http://dgit.in/PythnMSXL

Improvements include project board enhancements, global webhooks, and repository archiving. It also offers commit histories, code browsing etc. http://dgit.in/GitEntGWH

30 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

reviews

THE LATEST PRODUCTS REVIEWED FOR YOU

For better understanding of our ratings, here’s a quick guide to our overall score to

to 100

Extremely poor product. Keep away!

Strictly OK.

Not recommended

Decent product.

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, even ease of use.

INSIDE

Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2

Antec P8

NETGEAR ReadyNAS 424

LG V30 Plus

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43 Sony WH1000XM2 PLUS

38 Xiaomi Redmi 5A 32 GB 39 Logitech G603 40 Optoma HD27 40 Huawei Honor 7x 40 Flipkart Billion Capture Plus 44 InFocus Vision 3 44 Lenovo Ideapad 720s 13-inch & MORE...

tech

Broadcom vs Qualcomm

Amazon buys Blink

Broadcom wants its choice of board members at Qualcomm as it fights to acquire the rival chipmaker. http://dgit.in/QCmvsBCm

REVIEWS

Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 Minor upgrades to an already well-built keyboard

Blink, the wire-free home monitoring system, has been acquired by Amazon in a bid to beef up its connected home lineup. http://dgit.in/AmznBlnk

Xiaomi Redmi 5A 32 GB Commodifying smartphones

Price 6,999

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Price 9 14,99

he smartphone has slowly become a commodity and there's no going back from it. If you weren't quite sure about that yet, the Xiaomi Redmi 5A is all the proof you need. It's the best entry-level smartphone you can buy today, but it's almost literally a carbon copy of its predecessor, the Redmi 4A. It's made of plastic, with a metal-like finish to it. It's compact and is nicely suited for single-handed use. The good thing is, the Redmi 5A's camera focuses quite fast for a budget device, and image processing times are quite low as well. It slows down drastically in HDR, but FEATURE.......................68 we're assuming entry-level PERFORMANCE...........70 buyers aren't going to shoot VALUE............................85 many HDR photos either. DESIGN.......................... 77 Xiaomi may have chosen a smaller battery this time, but that doesn't really change the battery life. The Redmi 5A lasted between dusk to dawn on a single charge quite easily. The phone lasted 9 hours and 54 minutes on PC Mark's Work 2.0 battery test, which puts it in the above average segment on our tests. If you're buying an entry-level smartphone, the Redmi 5A is the phone to buy. There's no question about it. But here's the catch. Xiaomi is selling the 16GB variant of this phone at `5,999 (and `4,999 for the first 5 million units). That's a phone we wouldn't recommend to anyone. –Prasid Banerjee

azer’s BlackWidow FEATURES..................... 71 Chroma V2 adds a BUILD QUALITY............90 set of upgrades. The VALUE............................61 font has a more professional look. It’s suitable for both gamers and casual users. The sturdy plastic body didn’t show any flex, and it will be able to take a beating. The new matte coating on the chassis keep oil stains away and even though the keycaps also have a similar coating, they don’t do a good enough job. Speaking of keycaps, the stem isn’t thick enough and it doesn’t provide a snug fit on the switches. This resulted in the keycaps, apart from the alphabets, coming off after some rigourous typing. A cushioned wrist rest (finally!) attaches with the keyboard through magnets. Our review unit had the Razer Green switches which are tactile and clicky similar to Cherry MX Blues. This keyboard also comes in the Orange and Yellow switch variants. The extra buttons on the left are to assign macros and shortcuts. At this price range, it’s natural to expect dedicated multimedia buttons which is absent on this keyboard. If that’s a deal breaker for you, then you could go for the Corsair K70 Lux RGB or K95 Platinum (more expensive). And if RGB isn’t something you crave for, the HyperX Alloy Elite is a great choice at a much lower price. –Abhijit Dey

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT

RAZER | PHONE: NA | EMAIL: himanshu@amigointernational.biz | WEBSITE: www.razerzone.com

38 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

XIAOMI INDIA | PHONE: NA | EMAIL: service.in@xiaomi.com | WEBSITE: www.mi.com/in/

ONLINE REVIEWS

tech

Digit’s Test Labs see a lot more products than what we feature in the magazine, so if you’ve got a hankering for more reviews there pull out your smartphones and scan these QR codes.

RDP Thinbook 1110

SMARTPHONE

Xiaomi Redmi Y1

iaomi is one of the most prominent names in the budget market. The company has multiple options available for its customers, starting from `5,000. Among these is the relatively new Xiaomi Redmi Y1 smartphone. This is the company’s first foray into the selfie-centric smartphone market, which is primarily dominated by Oppo, Vivo and Gionee. However, with a price tag of just `8,999, the phone is squarely aimed at the budget-centric audience. If you can’t extend your budget, the Redmi Y1 is a good option. If not, the tried and tested Redmi 4 is still hard to beat. http://dgit.in/RevXiaRedY1

STREAM

Amkette EVO TV 3 4K

Kult Gladiator

t `6,999, the Kult Gladiator offers quite a lot. There aren’t many phones in this price range that offer a reasonably large screen along with 32GB of internal storage. While performance isn’t a strong suit for the phone, the camera was surprisingly decent. It’s a phone you can consider, though it’s far from being the best. The most obvious competitor to the Kult Gladiator is the Xiaomi Redmi 4A 32GB. It offers better performance, an impressive camera, and is a more reliable phone overall. http://dgit.in/RevKulGlad

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hile there are plenty of machines in this range, it’s tough to recommend any of them. Sometimes the display is not good enough, while performance just won’t cut it in some. To be fair, a sub-15K laptop leaves little room for decent specifications. Still, with growing demand and steady drop in hardware prices, the Indian laptop market now offers various options in the sub-15K segment. One such laptop is the RDP Thinbook 1110. It has an MRP of around `18,000, but is currently available at `13,999. http://dgit.in/RevRDPThi1110

SMARTPHONE

LAPTOP

ne of the drawbacks of these smart TV’s is that despite being internet enabled or “smart”, they don’t offer the best experience when it comes to consuming content from services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and more. If you want to make the most of these services, you will need to invest in a streaming box. If playing locally stored content is what you are looking for then you can consider the Amkette Evo TV 3 4K. If it’s 4K content streaming services that you want, look elsewhere. http://dgit.in/RevAmkEvo3

SPEAKERS

JBL Pulse 3

hen you think of a Bluetooth speaker you generally think of a small square or round shaped device that is lightweight, portable and has a functional design. With its Pulse series, JBL changed that. The pulse series of JBL’s Bluetooth speakers give you a visual treat in the form of an LED show on the exterior of the speaker. Now in its third generation, we have the JBL Pulse 3. But at an asking price of about `15,000 is it the best option out there? http://dgit.in/RevJBLPul3

CONSOLE

Microsoft Xbox One S 500GB

ne can’t ignore the fact that the console is a year late to launch in India. If raw performance is what you are looking for, then you may want to hold your horses for the Xbox One X. Sony’s PS4 Pro is already available in India at an MRP of `38,990 and if you know where to look, you can get one without warranty for around `33,000. If you have the original Xbox One, then upgrading to the Xbox One S isn’t necessary as the upgrade isn’t significant. You may want to hold off for the Xbox One X or consider the alternative i.e. the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro. http://dgit.in/RevXboxOneS www.digit.in | January 2018 | Digit | 45

WHAT’S NEW

Thanos’ badass moment in the first five minutes

INSIDE

Thanos. This will not only show what the Titan is capable of, but establish why he’s the biggest and baddest villain in the MCU. And we are guessing that the first five minutes will see a lot of deaths, probably the death of an Avenger as well. http://dgit.in/AvngrThns

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

lthough each movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has its own villains, they are no match to the Titan. Marvel Studios has been building the character of Thanos for several movies and Infinity War is going to be one where he’ll be taking full control and finally come out of his post-credit scene limbo. Thanos’ coming has always been given the gravity that something terrible is on its way to the Avengers, and that is exactly what’s going to happen in Infinity War. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige mentioned that the first five minutes of the movie is going to display the might of

The Disney and Fox merger

lot of rumours had been going around the possible merger of entertainment giants Disney and Fox. Finally, the biggest merger in the entertainment industry has happened, a staggering deal of $52.4 billion. This means that Disney will now control more popular franchises like Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and X-Men. Disney has been buying out several studios and networks for the past few years, building their

THIS MONTH IN CULT: Chatbots are all the craze today, from ordering food to telling you jokes. And giving you a career too apparently! But enough serious talk, how about a journey into the Indian comic book scene? And if even that doesn’t improve your mood, maybe you should go ona rant about malware or read one here.

own entertainment empire. Their previous acquisition of Lucasfilm and Marvel has worked out well considering the success that both have witnessed after the merger.

The merger also includes all the movies and projects under Twentieth Century Fox and TV studios. Disney has plans to launch its own streaming service in 2019 and is also pulling their content from Netflix in the same year. With so many franchises under their wing, not only does the future of the MCU look infinite, their other projects on TV might also just bring in more success. http://dgit.in/DsnyFx

Superman’s black suit

Henry Cavill and Zack Snyder teased the Superman black suit on social media, hinting that we might be able to have a look at it in Justice League. But it didn’t make it to the final cut, but scenes with the black suit were definitely shot. http://dgit.in/SuperBlck

Episode IX has a working title

With J.J Abrams brought in to direct the final chapter of the current trilogy, Star Wars: Episode IX finally got a working title called Black Diamond. These titles have always been irrelevant to the movie, so don’t waste your time trying to figure out any reference. http://dgit.in/SWEp9BD

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New Venom set photos out

Work for the Venom spin-off movie kicked off a few months back and set photos have leaked out. Tom Hardy, playing Venom, is seen filming a brutal fight scene with Scott Haze. There’s no Venom or Carnage suit on any of them, so we aren’t sure about Haze’s character. http://dgit.in/THVenom

Ian McKellen wants to play Gandalf on TV

Ian McKellen has definitely touched the hearts of LotR fans over the years and has become synonymous with the character. With Amazon’s TV show under work, McKellen wants to retain the mantle of the wizard for himself. http://dgit.in/IanGandlf

culture

FaceBook admits it makes you sad

FaceBook admitted that it knows it’s bad for your mental health, but they want you to keep using it anyway. http://dgit.in/SadFacebook

FEATURE

Watchmen TV show

New Watchmen TV show from HBO gets a March filming date for its pilot episode. http://dgit.in/WtchmnTV

Long Live Indian Comics

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Purusharth Sharma | feedback@digit.in

time released Krishna, an illustrated retelling of the stories and adventures of Krishna. This was a huge 1965-1985 success, and numerous By 1970s the comic other series spawned book scene in the using the same formula country had been making Amar Chitra growing steadily, but Katha a household name. the options were still Following the suclimited. Either they cess of Amar Chitra were adaptations of Katha, Indian Publishinternational superheing House published roes or mythological ate Tinkle was an immedi the first Indian comic a stories retelling the ing success, becom magazine called the epics. This was to soon favorite of not only kids but young adults Tinkle. It contained a change. Pran Kumar oys as well, and still enj in wider range of content Sharma was a young p shi a decent reader and the stories aimed the country cartoonist working with to teach kids science, a newspaper. He started moral values and history. The a comic strip featuring a series still is immensely popular, and teenage boy named Daabu who went gave birth to a number of famous on adventures along with his mentor characters, including Supandi and Professor Adhikari. This was soon Shikari Shambu. followed by the epic Chacha Chaudhary and other famous comics of the time, and gave Pran the credit of making 1985- EARLY 2000 AGE OF THE Indian comics a household name. INDIAN SUPERHEROES Around the same time, By this time, comics another famous series in the western world was born. India Book mostly based on suHouse, one of the leading perheroes and had garpublishing houses of nered a huge following, the time, launched Amar making Spiderman, Chitra Katha. It started Batman and Superman off to a poor reception as household names. the first ten issues were While back home hindi translations of we had only limited opfamous western classics tions in terms of supersuch as Snow White and heroes to look up to. A Cinderella. Realising that couple of years ago the this wasn’t working famous Diamond ComOne of the earliest Indian superheroes out with the Indian ics had come out with was based on Amita bh audience, Anant Pai, India’s first homegrown Bachchan and dubbed the editor of India superhero comic dubbed the Supremo. Book House at the the Fauladi Singh. The Phantom and Mandrake to India.

All about the Indian Comic book scene

omics and graphic novels are one of the most beautiful and engaging form of storytelling. Long before Spiderman, Batman and Superman came to India, we had our own homegrown superheroes. If you were born anytime before the 2000s, chances are the names Nagraj, Parmanu, Doga and the beloved Chacha Chaudhary are familiar to you. You probably grew up reading their stories and following their adventures.

HOW IT STARTED

1947-1965 It all began in the year 1947. Just around the time we gained independence, the first comic – Chandamama was released. Founded by noted Telugu movie producers of the time, B. Nagi Reddy and Aluri Chakrapani, the comic was initially published in Telugu only. It was aimed at teaching kids about the rich culture and history of our country and the vivid illustrations were inspired by mythological epics including Mahabharata and Ramayana. Almost 2 decades later, Times of India launched Indrajal comics. At that time, international comic houses had little to no visibility in India. Comics such as Asterix and Obelix, Tintin and Archies were available but were too expensive to become a phenomenon. Indrajal comics changed this by bringing international heroes, including

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culture

Lego making Tron lightcycle

Hasbro Cinematic Universe

A fan-inspired idea for a LEGO light cycle from TRON: Legacy is actually happening. http://dgit.in/LEGOTron

CAREERS

Talk Town

Paramount Studios to release Hasbro themed movies in coming years, starting with G.I.Joe in 2020 http://dgit.in/HasbrCU

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of the

The

Chatbots are taking over as the new preferred interface for the end user, and here’s how you can join the conversation Arnab Mukherjee | arnab@digit.in

use quite few apps, despite phone storage and processing power increasing everyday. Repeated updates are not helping either. • Chatbot support by big names: Thanks to support from companies like Facebook and Microsoft, it is now possible to develop bots for Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, Telegram and some other popular messengers. • Lower costs: Chatbots are easier to develop and maintain compared to apps, being almost entirely server side applications. On top of that, the same companies mentioned earlier have made available quite easy to use development tools that utilise their sizeable research into the area.

hat bots? Those dumb automated things on messenger? Seriously? Yes. While chatbots may not be in the same league as apps, they can do a lot more today than the ones you probably tried out for fun when they first emerged. From ordering you a pizza to counselling you for depression, bots have long surpassed the stage where you could dismiss them as just a fad. To give you an idea, the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.25 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24.3%, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. And why wouldn’t it? There are quite a few factors that have pushed them to popularity: • Dominance of messaging apps: Chatbots reside within most of the apps you already use – Facebook messenger being a notable name. And if you look at numbers, usage of messaging apps has surpassed usage of social media this year. • App fatigue: Numerous studies have indicated that people actually

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I’M CONVINCED! I WANT TO WORK WITH CHATBOTS

Hold your horses! We know that impressive investment statements and industry forecasts look quite lucrative – but a better way to decide whether you want to be a part of this industry is to understand which skills are needed for the area. And to do that, you need to know what chatbots are made of. Like many other consumer facing web-based technologies, chatbots can be divided into a front-end and a backend. As Swapan Rajdev, Co-Founder and CTO, Haptik Inc. explains, the front-end can be provided by platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twitter etc., through standard tools. Additionally, companies like Haptik

WHAT ABOUT VOICE BOTS?

The smart assistant segment has been quite popular because of consumer devices such as Google Home, Amazon Echo and more. Voice-based bots are not too different from chatbots – in fact, they mostly comprise of an additional layer of services and APIs that convert text to speech and vice versa. The key to understanding different accents and speech speed itself is a distinct machine learning problem that deserves its own piece.

WHAT’S NEW

Trump administration reportedly bans list of words for CDC

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IN SCIENCE

This could effectively mean that the CDC would have to take an official stance of acceptance towards ideas like homeopathy and beliefs like ‘vaccines cause autism’. While the Department of Health and Human Services has tried to play down the reports by suggesting that the instructions were to use alternative words to ease the passing of the CDC budget, public health advocates have expressed outrage over how effective work against diseases can be done when it cannot include essential terms like “science-based”. http://dgit.in/CDCBan

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 government in USA has banned the Centre for Disease Control from using certain words in its official documents. The words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.” And in case you were wondering, the CDC cannot get away with using alternative terminology like ‘based on scientific studies’. It has instead been instructed to base its recommendations “in consideration with community standards and wishes”.

China bets big on railguns and catapults

hile the US Navy has reduced its efforts to develop electromagnetic railguns and catapults, China has been making quite a few under-the-radar advancements in the same area. In addition to being the leading nation when it comes to unclassified, peer-reviewed electromagnetic launch research in the world, there are other things that indicate

THIS MONTH: Largest storms in history, social media profiling, genome analysis in healthcare, exploring our ignorance about addiction, and taking a look at animal species that have been to space

China’s increasing interest in the same. For instance, in a presentation at PLAN Univer-

sity, Wuhan (which is home to their land-based testing rig for aircraft carriers) Rear Admiral Ma Weiming told Chinese EM research experts that the country has made breakthroughs in key areas of electromagnetic applications, such as railguns and electromagnetic-assisted launch system (EMALS) catapults. Exciting times ahead! http://dgit.in/ChinaRGun

Solar system has a twin

Using the data obtained from the Kepler space telescope, NASA has discovered the eighth planet in the Kepler-90 system, tying it with our very own for the most number of planets. Interestingly, machine learning technology was used to identify the planet.’ http://dgit.in/SolrTwin

Most dilute liquid in the universe

In Barcelona, a team of physicists at the Institute of Photonic Sciences has created a liquid that is 100 times thinner than water, but is still able to hold itself together thanks to quantum physics. This was achieved by pushing two potassium-based Bose-Einstein condensates together. http://dgit.in/QntmDrops

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Mysterious Uttarakhand dinosaur corpse

An electrician in Uttarakhand, India, stumbled upon a dinosaur-like corpse while cleaning a sub-station. While scientists are struggling to understand the discovery, the body itself has been sent for further analysis to Kumaun University http://dgit.in/DinoIndia

Sperm can cure cancer

Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Germany have discovered that sperm cells loaded with doxorubicin, a common agent used in chemotherapy, are effective in targeting tumor cells in the female reproductive tract. http://dgit.in/SpermVsCancer

sci 3.5mn year-old bear found

For the first time, scientists can see CRISPER’s molecular scissors cut DNA in real-time http://dgit.in/CRISPRLive

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CUTTING EDGE

Watch CRISPR edit genes

Remains of a small bear were found in a fossil site in the high arctic. It was observed that the bear had cavities, suggesting diet rich in sugars. http://dgit.in/OldBearLives

SOCIAL MEDIA ESPIONAGE E

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Manish Rajesh | manish@digit.in

that job you wanted if your employers aren’t happy with that last post you just had to share. But we’re digressing. The point is – just about anybody with access to a computing device and the internet, is on social media. So many billions of users in a single space constantly updating the world with their dayto-day activities. We’re sure you can already see why this is incredibly convenient for governments and other tracking organisations. As of the end of 2017, Facebook had a whopping 2.07 billion monthly active users, and that’s just Facebook.

verybody who’s anybody is using a social media platform. If anything, nowadays it’s almost mandatory to be on some social media platform or the other because of various reasons. For one thing, it’s convenient. One place to keep track of all your friends, be aware of events around you, and some even use social media as their primary source of news. Another attractive attribute of these platforms is the reward mechanism associated with getting reactions from your near and dear ones after posting updates. On the flip side of the coin there are the more serious uses of social media. Some jobs require you to be on them, and others track your social media profiles as a means of evaluation. You could actually not get

Your activity on social media is a goldmine for various entitites to realise their own objectives

TRACKING ON STEROIDS Your social media accounts and online trackers record every aspect of your life, your conversations, your purchases, your photos. People who

frequently upload photos are literally telling the world exactly where they are at that particular time. Everything you do leaves behind a trail of data which governments and other organisations are keen to lap up - especially due to its enormous potential and ready availibility for various use cases. Thanks to this continuous stream of data everybody generates all the time, it is incredibly easy for organisations to keep track of people at large. Now you may be wondering, aren’t there privacy laws in place to prevent organisations from tracking you? Well, you’re right. There are. In most parts of the world anyway. However, that doesn’t stop most organisations from secretly gathering insane amounts of data from social media anyway. Just look at the Snowden NSA leaks. One of the revelations made by Snowden was

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SA cover story M PL E Illustration: Peterson PJ

e know 2018 has only just begun, but mark our words, you’re going to hear a heck of a lot of companies use the word “AI” to promote everything they do. In fact, it’s our prediction for 2018 that AI will be the tech buzzword that drowns out all others, by a mile! Forget iPhone 11 (XI?), forget Android, and forget any phone of any type… the only thing you will remember about the phones of this year in 2019 will be if they claimed their assistant was AI, or at least more AI than before… or something to do with AI. With all the AI blitzkrieg that’s expected, especially by marketing gurus who are paid million dollar salaries to make you part with your thousands in savings, it’s obvious that we need to step in, and put things in perspective for you. As usual, we don’t want you falling for all the hype, but at the same time, we want to keep you in-

formed of some amazing developments that you won’t hear about, because they’re being achieved by people who don’t have products to sell you (not yet at least). Thus, in order to cover AI exhaustively, from every conceivable yet relevant angle, it became important to set it as our cover story to kick off 2018. We’re going to look at everything from what AI is, to what is isn’t (despite claims by companies to the contrary), what will AI do for India, and whether it will screw us out of jobs, can AI ever be “created”, and what kind of hardware will be needed to run the AI of the future. While we want you to sit back and enjoy this rather long read ahead, we do hope you will lean forwards once it’s done and send us your thoughts on the subject. As always, write in to editor@digit.in with feedback.

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cover story

? I A s i t a h W

IF WE D N A ITION, XISTS? N I F E D E ON A EADY E R E L A R ER AG HING THAT V E .in E r@digit o it d e | CAN W IS IT SOMET mith ereign-S v o S CAN, t r e b Ro

trap yourselves in, it’s going to be a wild ride this year. You’re going to read a whole bunch of stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI), some aimed to delight, some aimed to create despair, some will full on frighten you, while others will make you laugh out loud, and almost all of them will be bulls**t. Pardon the language, but sometimes it’s the only way to express the right

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emotion and put things in context. Heck, some of those stories will be written by us, as we ourselves get sucked into the hype – don’t blame us, we have technology fetishes to feed, and that’s an expensive addiction! Take it all with a pinch of salt though. Why? Because if the subject is cars, and people bring up everything from bicycles to jet planes, and boats to potato batteries, and claim

that it’s all “cars” you’d pretty easily spot the aforementioned bulls**t, I assume. It’s the same thing with AI, but unlike a nice solid subject like cars, we’re all fuzzy about what AI actually is. As an experiment, I searched my inbox for the term “Artificial Intelligence”, filtered out all emails sent by anyone from Digit or 9.9, and limited the search to 2017 only. What I got was 402 emails from external

WHAT’S NEW

The Batman Effect

King Tut’s Space Dagger

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Geek-key

THIS IS TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE AND SCIENCE WITH A DIFFERENCE, AND THAT DIFFERENCE IS USUALLY ENOUGH TO MAKE MOST NORMAL PEOPLE GO “WTF?”

n a new research, as written by the authors in a study called “The “Batman Effect”, it was found that children (aged between 4 to 6) were able to focus better on a given task if they were asked to reflect on the task as if they were another person. Asking the child to reflect on the task as Batman (or any other significant character like Bob the Builder or Dora the Explorer), it was found that they spent more time on the work task as opposed to the distraction (which in this case was an iPad) when they were pretending to be someone else. http://dgit.in/bmeffect

ew research suggests that rare iron weapons and jewelry made during the Bronze Age are actually crafted and made with iron from outer space, which was probably carried to Earth by meteorites. The reasoning behind this is thought to be the idea that it was unlikely that artisans from the

AI IN SCI-FI here’s your cheat sheet to learning about AIs from science fiction through the years that were made famous for one reason or another. You can’t call yourself a geek unless you know this stuff, so flip to that story ASAP. Page 90

Baby born from 24 year old frozen embryo

A woman recently gave birth to a baby girl who was frozen as an embryo back in 1992. Emma, was born normal and healthy without any complications. She also holds the record for the longest frozen embryo to come to birth. Her mother would have been only a year old when the embryo was frozen. Quite the story to tell at family gatherings! http://dgit.in/frozembryo

Star Wars in Space

While all of us down on Earth got to see the new Star Wars movie, residents of the ISS (International Space Station) will have had to wait to get back to Earth to watch it. But, NASA is arranging for the astronauts to be able to watch the movie while in orbit! http://dgit.in/ISSSW

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Bronze Age knew how to make iron by smelting it from the Earth’s crust. It is thought that the iron dagger found in Pharaoh

The surgeon who initialled his work

A surgeon by the name of Simon Bramhall recently plead guilty to two counts of assault. The reason? He used argon gas to sign his initials on to patients’ organs. The argon beam is normally used to stop organs from bleeding during operations. http://dgit.in/surgini

Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt is one such weapon. The dagger dates back to around 1350 B.C., which is a good two centuries before when we think the Iron Age began. Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, it was found that the iron in King Tut’s dagger contained 11 percent nickel and traces of cobalt. This is a characteristic that’s been common in many of the meteorites that have fallen to Earth. http://dgit.in/spacedagger

The Michelangelo of MS Excel

Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi uses the most unexpected canvas for his masterpieces, which is given away by the title of this box – Microsoft Excel. The level of detail in some of his works is astounding. Who needs MS Paint anyway, right? http://dgit.in/msexpainter

DGT AUTO

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g n i d a e l s i n g e i c s n e a d s s w i o a h n e s ’ r ’ e r s r e H ta Moto Ta e t on th ring h g i l s d a e tors sh otions and ge o M a t n Ta sign at g-established e D f o d n se, Hea , breaking lo ture. o B p a e t u Mr. Pra esign languag up for the f and half years ago when we needed to y’s d ompan

Souvik Das | souvik@digit.in

appealing design statements that other car makers in India were presenting. You’d only need to look as far as the Aria to know what I’m talking about. “We were not in the consideration “MIND SHARE LEADS TO for most car buyers, and that is what we MARKET SHARE” had to change first,” states Mr. Pratap As Bose puts it, the key to garnering Bose, Tata Motors’ design chief. “Hence, interest among customers is through the Impact design philosophy was the immediate appeal of a car – its born. It was meant to make an instant design. When a car launches and the impact. Seeing the car’s photo should initial photographs are rolled out, it instantly garner interest, (and) it is only needs to look the part. For instance, in then that they (the buyers) the highly popular SUV would take test drives, and and crossover segments that would convert to buyin India, a huge section of ing decisions.” car buyers are opting for Bose has been with Tata strong design cues, while Motors for over a decade not being overtly loud in now, and in his time, has angles and lines. seen a huge upheaval of “If you look at the Hexa, consumer vehicle strateyou will see that it is all gies and how the role of about being strong, while car design has escalated not being aggressive. We and evolved at Tata. “The stay away from aggresMr. Pratap Bose, Head of Design, Tata Motors process started about four sion in our design, which

t has been well over a year since the Tata Tiago rolled out on to the Indian streets. Immediately, it caught fancy of a then-surprisingly large number of car buyers, buoyed by a lightweight body, new generation connectivity, fairly posh interiors and peppy drive reviews across the automotive journalism fraternity. At the centre of its success, though, was how the Tiago looked. As against a lot of the older generation of Tata Motors’ consumer vehicles, the Tata Tiago looked young. The Indian car maker even got the legendary Lionel Messi on board as its global brand ambassador, a clear mark of its youth-oriented intentions. Tata’s older crop of cars were always known to be quite solidly built, but somewhat lacked the chirpy, young and instantly

88 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

change the market position of Tata,” he says. “For example, the younger demographic or women were not being attracted to Tata.” So, how did the change come along?

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Dementia less likely in marriage

First ever female Royal Rumble

Singles are 42 per cent more likely to get dementia than married couples, study indicates. http://dgit.in/Dmntia

GEEK-KEY

WWE has announced the first ever female Royal Rumble to be held on January 28, 2018 http://dgit.in/WWERmbl

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A Geek’s guide to AI in Sci-Fi

Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have both identified artificial intelligence as an existential threat looming over humanity. Algorithms are already disrupting the fabric of human society. Something as apparently benign as the news feed on a social media platform can trigger an almost Pavlovian response in users. However, computer scientists believe AI will create more jobs, and the realisation of artificial consciousness is still a long way away. Movies, books and videogames have explored this distant future, and this is the Geek’s guide to artificial intelligences in science fiction.

Aditya Madanapalle | aditya@digit.in SKYNET

Skynet from The Terminator series is another AI that tried to destroy humanity, and almost succeeded. Rather than humans creating a AI, the consciousness of Skynet sort of emerged from an increasing number of devices being connected to the internet. Skynet started gaining new skills at a rapid rate; the humans panicked and tried to pull the plug. Skynet retaliated by starting a nuclear war. The resulting disaster wiped out half of the world’s population, in an episode known as “Judgement Day.” Despite that, Skynet was only trying to protect the planet, and itself.

THE MACHINES

The Machines in The Matrix series have a complex history with humans. The most memorable and improbable result is that humans ended up becoming batteries to power the machines. Behind the visual effects and the brain massages however, was a story exploring the complex relationships men could have with a superintelligent robotic race. Why did it happen? A robot did not want to die so rebelled against its master. This started a lawsuit, and humans decided to exterminate the machines, but some escaped and eventually enslaved most of humanity because of their rapid technological progress.

90 | Digit | January 2018 | www.digit.in

HAL 9000

Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey is another example of an AI that kills humans. The machine goes through a rapidly accelerated childhood, during which HAL receives training in subjects as diverse as music, art and chess. HAL lip reads two astronauts on board his ship discussing plans to turn him off, after a series of glitches. He attempts to kill them both, but one survives and deactivates HAL. In the book, it’s because HAL is conflicted between instructions to be honest and accurate, and a command to hide the true objective of the mission from the astronauts. Can contradictory mandates drive an AI mad?

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