Digit September 2017 by 9.9 Media

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THE STATIC PAGE | Siddharth Parwatay | Managing Editor

The era of digital privacy

displayed by secondary users of the Aadhaar API leaves a lot to be desired. Similar cases keep happening in the west as well. If I remember correctly, a while ago England’s NHS (National Health Service) decided to implement norms for how medical data acquired by the government body will be used by various partners within the system. At least on paper, they state that anyone using data for secondary purposes must only use data that doesn’t have personally identifiable information, i.e., anonymised data. Aadhaar needs similar access control and so does the private sector. Currently, most privacy breaches are unearthed by privacy advocates and watchdogs, resulting in a media spectacle followed by corrective measures, but little in terms of legal penalties. Sure, you’ll have the CEO of the blundering startup issue a heartfelt apology letter and a 5-point programme on how they will avoid such breaches and leaks in the future, but the fact remains that if punitive damages were involved, they’d have been much more serious about the privacy of their user-base from the get go. While it may be argued that the current IT Act already has provisions for security and privacy of data, most experts believe that the recourses and guidelines available are inadequate. In fact, in response to a question raised in the Rajya Sabha last year, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said that private companies collecting user data are “required to implement reasonable security practices and procedures to protect the information”. That’s hardly reassuring. Coming back to Aadhaar, yes, this privacy verdict comes as a result of petitions related to Aadhaar, but it only serves to define the legal status of privacy as a fundamental right. It does not immediately invalidate Aadhaar nor does it result in its scrapping (obviously). Reports suggest that a new bench will decide its fate. At a broad level I think Aadhaar isn’t as draconian as some people make it out to be. At the same time, I think a surveillance society is against the principles of freedom and liberty. Certain checks and balances have to be maintained so misuse is nipped before it begins. What was that quote again about power and responsibility? Write into me at the email address given alongside or on social media and tell me your thoughts on privacy.

M PL

AT AROUND THE SAME TIME that we were shipping off the magazine to the printers, courts in India were pretty much on a roll, dashing out one blockbuster verdict after another. The one that really interests me, because I believe it would have the biggest impact on the tech sector, is the one declaring privacy as a fundamental right. Privacy is not only a contentious topic in a society like India, I would argue that it’s an alien concept. I mean come on, privacy, in India, it’s almost oxymoronish. Not only are we over-sharers, we do not really understand the concept of space. Most of us wouldn’t peg enquiries into our lives by random acquaintances as intrusive, nor would we notice when we intrude. While “mind your own business” is a favourite Indian phrase (usually in our movies and TV serials) it just isn’t something that we really do. Anyone who’s ever travelled in a local train and had some random uncle or aunty stare unselfconsciously into their phone would know what I’m talking about. When this whole privacy debate started, I’d read an interesting article about how a school kid was forced to surrender his Facebook account because someone suspected he was being over friendly with the principal’s daughter. The kind of responses that the article got, renewed my faith in our society’s ability to change (most comments were largely sympathetic). There are of course some people who would still dismiss privacy as a rich people’s problem. But that is not true at all. As our lives become increasingly digital, privacy is now everyone’s problem. “What if terrorists misuse this new found right?” As with any constitutional freedom, the question of misuse is ever present. However, this right is not an absolute one, it comes with reasonable restrictions. This should pacify detractors somewhat. Hopefully, electronic/digital data will be considered sacrosanct going forward and thanks to this verdict, we will have data security norms, guidelines, and best practices formulated soon, which will be enforceable both on the private sector and government entities. Despite my misgivings about misuse, I’ve consistently always held that Aadhaar has its uses, especially when cross-referenced with other databases to bring in accountability and unearthing frauds. However, the lax attitude

“Thanks to this verdict, we might finally have enforceable data security norms, and best practices for both the private sector and government entities.”

Reach me at: facebook.com/ staticsid | @staticsid | editor@digit.in

www.digit.in | September 2017 | Digit | 1

THE RSS FEED | Robert Sovereign-Smith | Executive Editor

Teaching a new dog old tricks!

know that it is the rough plotline for Episode 3 that he “leaked”. While only Laidlaw knows why he posted what he did... because his plot matches with previously leaked concept art, people like me who have waited a decade for some closure, finally find some in this. I now know what would have happened in one of the most addictive game storylines in the past two decades. Call me a useless sap, but I’m still hoping that the popularity of this fanfiction, or leak, or whatever it is, will show Valve that there are hordes of people who would still happily pay good money to buy games that continue the Half-life story. Something similar happened when someone asked Bill Gates on a Reddit AMA about continuing the Age of Empires (AoE) series of games. The sheer popularity of that one single question might have spurred someone into action (or perhaps action might even have been ordered by Gates himself), because we now know that not only is the older AoE game getting a visual upgrade as Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, a new Age of Empires IV game (http://dgit.in/ AOE4Announce) is in the pipeline. AoE III was released in 2005, and thus it’s already been 12 years between games. (And don’t you dare write to me to point out all the AoE spin-offs that were released after 2005, because they were just not as good). PS: Don’t try asking about Half-life 3 on reddit though, because every mention has a bot reply and set the mock release date one month in the future. The highest I’ve seen it go is October 3510! And it’s not just games, but movies as well. We seem to have come full circle with entertainment in general, where the hottest things are stuff from yesteryear! Heck, all of the remakes and the making of old comics into movies, etc., seem to be the only good entertainment these days. It’s almost like culture decided to do a rewind, because there was nowhere to move forward to. Not that I’m complaining, of course… Write in or contact me on social media, because I’d love to hear about your favourite games and movies from yesteryear that you think need a modern reboot. Maybe we can engineer some “leaks” or start petitions to get the developers or moviemakers to take notice?

M PL

LEAKS ARE EVERYWHERE. Leaks are the new norm, honestly. In fact, it’s almost impossible to tell which leaks are the results of mistakes and hackers, and which are marketing tools used to build hype. Pretty much anything to do with the entertainment world is what I usually consider to be strategic information sharing, rather than leaks, but ever so often, something big comes along. Hackers have been after entertainment and gaming companies for years now, and when the stakes are as high as finding and releasing Game of Thrones episodes, there’s an unsurprising rise of interest. While companies like HBO must be spending a bomb on safeguarding their content and trying to prevent leaks (especially after being victims of leaks earlier), the interest of hackers and the underground army of leakers and pirates no doubt increases the attention towards them exponentially. Can anything really be secure anymore? Will we ever see the end of leaks? I certainly hope not! As I write this, the internet is breaking! Well, OK, it’s not breaking, but it’s blowing up for people above 30, who grew up playing Half-life and Half-life 2! For those of you who don’t know, Half-life was my favourite game of all time… until Valve released Half-life 2, that is. Then, when Valve went episodic, I applauded them, because I didn’t want to wait a decade to get the next Half-life installment… Half-life released in November, 1998, then Half-life 2 was released in November 2004 (6 years later). Then came Half-life 2: Episode 1, in June 2006, and finally Half-life 2: Episode 2 in October 2007. Next month will actually be a decade since we were promised Half-life 2: Episode 3. I shouldn’t have been so quick to applaud the episodic format… Although not really a “leak”, Marc Laidlaw’s supposed fan fiction (http://dgit.in/HLEP3Leak) might be the closest we get to Episode 3, ever. Or not… I still have hope! For those of you who don’t know (or don’t care to know), Marc Laidlaw was a writer for Valve, and worked on the Half-life and Half-life 2 franchises. All the excitement surrounding his “fanfiction” blog post called “Epistle 3”, is because those of us who follow Half-life news

2 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

“Can anything really be secure anymore? Will we ever see the end of leaks? I certainly hope not!”

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

PARANOID ANDROID | Mithun Mohandas | Asst. Technical Editor

What’s fair after all?

for example, if the advertiser feels that a few too many expletives were uttered during a video, then it would be deemed unworthy of monetisation. And websites like YouTube would then bury the same video in the darkest corners of the internet simply because an unmonetisable video is worthless to them. Now with AI thrown into the mix, websites such as YouTube could templatise what constitutes as monetisable content and that’s exactly what it did. What this resulted in, was a massive video purge, and one that reeked of double standards, as you’ll see. YouTube started mass deleting thousands of videos and even banned channels because these deletions triggered copyright strikes in rapid succession. And the rule of three strikes calls for a ban. Moreover, when a certain video got flagged, the algorithm started going through every video in that creator’s library to hunt for more infringements. This caused a snowball effect that led to the mass deletion. And it did not go unnoticed. The issue is not only about copyright but that of censorship on a widely used medium. YouTube is also used by many media organisations to archive videos of heinous crimes committed across the world, including situations that are currently developing such as the Syrian crisis. Many of these videos were lost in the purge, but the irony was that extremist propaganda was seemingly left behind. Hence, the double standard. Does this mean that YouTube condones extremist content? Or that advertisers are interested in such videos? Of course not. Copyright is a very complex issue, one that needs human intervention, at least until the accuracy of machine learning algorithms attains a high level of accuracy. YouTube says that videos are only autoflagged, but bans are issued by human workers. If that’s true, then Google, which was recently embroiled in a ridiculous anti-diversity controversy, needs to seriously re-evaluate all those human workers. If not, then these human workers who have a skewed logic of what constitutes proper content will drive users away to another platform. The h3h3 lawsuit and the recent video deletion controversy should hopefully convince YouTube to take their auto-flagging algorithm back to the drawing board, for the sake of their own website.

M PL

IF YOU’RE CLUED INTO the whole YouTube scene then you’ve probably heard about the lawsuit between Matt Hosseinzadeh and h3h3 over the latter’s reaction video to the former’s cringefest. Reaction videos are often one of the most effortless and mind numbing things you can watch on YouTube. However, there are some who take it up a notch and set the benchmark for how reaction videos ought to be done. h3h3Productions, is a YouTube channel run by the hilarious couple, Ethan and Hila Klein. The Kleins are the originators of many memes on the internet such as Vape Nation and Papa Bless, and for popularising others such as Hugh Mungus. h3h3 really rip into whomsoever they’re reacting to and Matt Hosseinzadeh, like the overly sensitive folks of this era, decided to sue h3h3 for copyright infringement when they ripped into one of his videos. This lawsuit required h3h3 to accept that they breached copyright, pay up $4,000 and to never rip on Matt, again. Matt then demanded that they make a video promoting his channel but h3h3 rejected that demand and thus began one of the most closely watched lawsuits on the internet. Closely watched by creators because it was about a principle – the principle of Fair Use. And it is something all creators have to deal with on a regular basis. The lawsuit stretched on for a year and a half and resulted in the judge deciding in favour of h3h3, essentially declaring that their reaction video, did in fact, constitute Fair Use. This lawsuit would have completely bankrupted the couple had it not been for another YouTuber who came to their aid by raising more than $1,70,000 towards legal fees. This lawsuit evoked the curiosity of many because of the huge precedent it would end up establishing, irrespective of which way the court ruled. We are currently in an era where social and streaming websites are building more powerful tools to automatically flag and ban videos which are deemed incompatible with the site’s marketing policies. This is regardless of the fact whether these videos are indeed against the rules put down by the site and by society in general. Advertisers are the ones who are paying for everything on these websites and the video content along with the viewers constitute the product. Simple things can get a video flagged,

4 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

“This lawsuit evoked the curiosity of many because of the huge precedent it would end up establishing, irrespective of which way the court ruled.”

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

M PL

contents SEPTEMBER 2017

ADDICTED TO TECH!

We take a look at the various aspects of what makes you...you! Say you’re a geek who is addicted to technology, but why is that the case?

VOLUME 17 ISSUE 09

COVER STORY PAGE 50-63

TECH - PAGE 16-49

SCIENCE - PAGE 86-96

18 | Origins of Modern Astronomy

91 | Rapid Evolution is upon us

We’ve been gazing at the sky for aeons, but it has become significantly more important over the years

Contrary to popular belief, it looks like some species on our planet are evolving incredibly fast...

AND MORE

6 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

SKOAR! - PAGE 97-111

ON THE DVD Serviio Universal Media Server

SCIENCE Teacher’s Pet Biology Educational videos on biology for kids from Teacher’s Pet. Cell history DNA replication Evidence for evolution Introduction to ecology Mutations in DNA Population dynamics Protein synthesis Speciation Type of natural selection

M PL

97 | The Dark Horses of Virtual Reality There’s more to virtual reality headsets than the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive.

106 | The Streisand Effect in videogames

We take a look at instances where calling to ban or censor games had the opposite effect and made them even more popular.

AND MORE

ALT - PAGE 73-85

CULTURE - PAGE 64-72

76 | Subscription Model Everything

In today’s day and age there’s a subscription for pretty much everything you might need. But is that necessarily a good thing?

66 | Are you even listening? As it turns out, sound is tricky business and has been fooling us for years!

74 | Up, up and Away! 71 | Boo-Man on Daydream Have you ever wondered what powers your favourite sci-fi spacecrafts? Fear not, we’ve found out for you!

Boo-Man’s VeRy pissed at the Google Daydream View.

AND MORE

Audiobooks Curiosities of the Sky Prehistoric Men Relativity: The Special and General Theory Stories of Inventors The Seven Follies of Science TECH Phoenix OS (64-bit) Phoenix OS is an enhanced new personal computer operating system based on the Android platform and is suitable for smart tablets, laptops and desktops. Media streaming tools Emby Server Plex PlayOn PS3 Media Server Subsonic

Essentials Calibre Comodo Firewall ConEmu FileZilla Foobar2000 IrfanView KeePass LibreOffice Notepad++ Process Hacker qBittorrent Spybot Search and Destroy VeraCrypt Waterfox WinDirStat Zipeg CULTURE Indie games A Day in the Life of a Slice of Bread Autonauts Evolve GenerativeCity Hotel Tycoon Icebroken Project Hedra Skies Stick Soldiers Yet Another Exhausted Day Zombie Barricades ALT Materials and techniques of the ancient Greek art. Sculpture Painting Printmaking The conservator’s eye and more...

www.digit.in | September 2017 | Digit | 7

TO ADVERTISE

PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH

EMAIL: sales@digit.in

SEPTEMBER 2017 • VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 09

SALES DIRECTOR: Lalit Arun Mobile: +91-9582262959

Managing Director Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha Printer and Publisher Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director Vikas Gupta

SOUTH: Ram Sarangi Mobile: +91-98864 06961 WEST: Suvarna Shringarpure Mobile: +91-93249 28247

EDITORIAL Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Managing Editor Siddharth Parwatay Multimedia Co-ordinator Abhijit Dey Writers Arnab Mukherjee, Manish Rajesh, Yangerlong Jamir

NORTH: Mayank Sharma Mobile: +91-8800661912

BlackBerry KEYone LG Q6 HP Pavillion x360 14 Infinix Note 4

EAST: Jayanta Bhattacharyya Mobile: +91-93318 29284

BAZAAR

TEST CENTRE Asst. Technical Editor Mithun Mohandas Reviewers Hardik Singh, Souvik Das, Shrey Pacheco Assistant Vikas Patil

MSI Vortex G65VR 6RF

M PL

InFocus Turbo 5

DIGIT.IN Editor Soham Raninga Assistant Editor Prasid Banerjee, Sameer Mitha News and Features Editor Adamya Sharma Senior Sub Editor Karthek Iyer Mgr - Online Shauvik Kumar DESIGN Sr. Art Director Anil VK Art Director Shokeen Saifi Visualisers Baiju NV & Manoj Kumar VP Lead UI/UX Designer Shri Hari Tiwari Sr. Designers Charu Dwivedi, Haridas Balan & Peterson PJ PHOTOGRAPHY Sr. Photographer Jiten Gandhi Intern Rohit Kajaria

Brand.......................................... Page No. Seagate...................................Inside front cover TP-Link....................................Inside back cover

Seagate.............................................Back cover Canon...............................................................3

LIC....................................................................5 iBall............................................................9, 31

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

Kaspersky.......................................................13

Meghalaya Hsg Soc........................................19 IOCL................................................................23 India Antivirus............................................... 111

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

BRAND Brand Head Mitin Kumar Asst Product Mgr Aditi Malhotra Co-ordinator / Scheduling Kishan Singh CIRCULATION SALES Head - Circulation Samir Mehta Regional Mgrs Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Norbert Joseph Manager Circulation Dharmendra Singh

READER SERVICES Team Leader Sudhir Patel Executives Poonam, Bhishm, Nilesh & Narendra +91-22-67899678 / help@digit.in 8 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

GAMES REVIEWED THIS MONTH Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

MOBILE MONTHLY Armored Kitten | Tentacles: Enter the Mind Last Day on Earth | The Hero Unmasked Zombies vs. DIY | FootRock 2

SBI.................................................................11

CONTRIBUTORS Writers Anusha Sinha, Prithvi Velsa, Ronak Gupta

ADVERTISING INDEX

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. Published at A-262, 2nd Floor, Defence colony, New Delhi110024 and printed at International PrintO-Pac Limited, C/4-11, Hosiery Complex, Phase II Extension, Noida-201306 (U..P.) INDIA. Editor: Kanak Ghosh. “We do not endorse or recommend any product or service advertised in the magazine. The advertisement’s in this magazine are for information purposes only. We do not, expressly or impliedly, warrant or assume any liability or responsibility for the quality, accuracy, completeness, legality, reliability, usefulness or claims of any product or service advertised in the magazine. Our readers are strongly advised to carry out their own independent assessment of the product or services advertised in the magazine.”

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.

CONTACT US TELL US WHAT YOU FEEL ABOUT DIGIT If you have an opinion about anything published in Digit, or about technology in general, write to editor@digit.in or call at +91-22-678 99 700. To interact with the authors of specific articles, please write to the email address specified under the author’s name SOFTWARE ON THE DVDs To submit and suggest software or any other type of content, to be included in the Digit DVDs, write to dvd@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 707

JOIN THE GROUP THAT SUITS YOUR NEED!

https://www.facebook.com/digitgeek/ Your favourite magazine on your favourite social network. When mainstream tech is not enough, come over to the geekier side.

Q&A If you’re having trouble with your PC or a gadget, our experts can help solve your problems. Just write in to sos@digit.in. Remember to include full system configurations in your email.

DIGIT FACEBOOK PAGES

AGENT001 Our very own secret agent will give you the lowdown on what to buy, from where and for how much. Send in all your buying advice or questions to the coolest agent ever. Write to agent001@digit.in

http://www.facebook.com/techkranti Let’s wake ourselves up and gather the tools of tech to change the future of our great nation. Join The Revolution!

M PL

HELP! For copy-related issues, delivery status or any other complaints regarding out service, write to help@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 678 SUBSCRIBE Want to subscribe to India’s #1 Technology Magazine? You should, because we have exciting offers for everyone, and you save money in the bargain. SMS: <DIGIT SUB> to 92200 92200 or visit www.digit.in/subscribe

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PRODUCT TESTING Want your product reviewed by Digit? Contact our Test Center at testcenter@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 708 NEWS & NEW PRODUCT LAUNCHES To announce new product launches and press releases, email us at pressrelease@digit.in

ENDORSEMENTS / REPRINTS Interested in ordering article reprints or in using our logos? Get the requisite permissions by contacting us at reprint@digit.in BUSINESS ENQUIRIES Think we can help you grow your business, or maybe you can help us grow ours? Get in touch with us at business@digit.in CAREERS Want to work for Digit? Send us your resume at careers@digit.in

SPONSORSHIP Want Digit to sponsor your tech event? Send your proposal to sponsor@digit.in

http://www.facebook.com/ consumermate Expert buying advice and some awesome offers

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INTERACT WITH TEAM DIGIT

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10 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

digit.in/forum

@digit.in

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

opening A new study on microbiome

Ahh yes I remember the `200 bet – you ask detractors of Digit to spend the same amount on the internet, books or anything else they like and ask them to bring you something equally interesting and unique within a month. I’m glad that so far we’ve met expectations and you’ve not had to fork over your hard earned cash I’m very happy that you’ve noticed the subtleties in our cover art. Not many do. Anil, Baiju, Peterson and the other designers are on cloud nine right now. Thanks again for the vote of confidence Rock Cliff. Btw that can’t be your real name, can it? –Siddharth

M PL

Feedback for the August 2017 issue of Digit

Intel recently announced their 8th-gen processors. In the video is a mysterious Microsoft Surface Book. http://dgit.in/IntelSurface

INBOX

Mysterious Surface Book

IBM has launched a study on the human microbiome and its role in autoimmune diseases. http://dgit.in/IBMbiology

Send your feedback at editor@Digit.in

The first thing I read in the mag is the Digit Diary, you guys have such a fun environment that I often feel like I want to work with you guys. The Tips and Tricks are always helpful and educational and there’s always something to learn inside them. When I got to know that my letter was featured as the letter of the month some months ago, I jumped up to the ceiling in excitement and when I read that it was circulated to everyone within the team, I felt so honoured I cannot describe. In other news, I scavenged my way and found a September 2005 issue and the dvd still works! It’s like putting on the retro glasses while reading Digit. It also made me admire Robert’s consistent style. Keep doing the good job! This mag is extremely awesome and nothing feels better than this. Remember that `200 bet I told you about? I’m still winning it every time P.S. My email got hacked and I lost access to it. This happened almost a week after I sent my last email to you guys. I kept on contacting Google and it is now that I got back the control. I want to sincerely apologize to you all, especially Sudhir, for not being able to reply in time. My birthday happens to be on 20th November and to be honest, finding my letter printed in the green box was the best birthday gift ever! –Rock Cliff

Greetings to the people of Digit! This is my second time writing in to you guys. And as you might know, this mag, for me, is something so wonderful that it would take me hours of talking yet some good aspects might be left out. The first thing I see is the cover and whoever designs them must be praised for their hard work. The ‘Become God’ and ‘Outsmarted!’ issues had some great cover art with so much detail that I spent minutes admiring it before I even opened it. The FastTracks are a really great addition to the package. They serve as a crash-course to any topic and I have a separate collection of them that come to my rescue when I’m in need of in-depth knowledge. And well, its cover helped me learn flat design (Learn Everything, Robotics, etc). These days I often get asked by friends and family to suggest some good phones or laptops. All thanks to Digit I have always given them the best suggestions. Whenever I got stuck though, digit.in came to the rescue. You guys post those monthly lists of top phones and laptops according to the price range, that is really praiseworthy. The posters are always awesome and have adorned almost 70% of my room’s walls. SKOAR! is something I always enjoy reading and the Kuvah Stories are always interesting. By the way, nice names.

12 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

How about coming out with a FastTrack on Ethereum. I think a lot of people would like a FastTrack on the new cryptocurrency and how to mine it. –Minhaz Ansari Too late. The difficulty to mine Ethereum now makes it out of reach for the majority. Only those with custom silicon chips can still find it profitable once you minus the electricity and other overheads. However if you want a general backgrounder on cryptocurrency, we’ve done a FastTrack on Bitcoin back in February 2014. The basics with any cryptocurrency remain the same, and perhaps the trick lies in getting into the mining pools when the difficulty is low and the popularity is about to shoot up. Check out or online store maybe if you are lucky a copy is still in stock. If not the PDF can be found on our special issue DVDs in June or Dec. Keep writing in. –Mithun I like your website. But I think you should add frequency filters like www.gsmarena. com and make people aware of it. I have a Redmi 3s handset. Their international versions supports all bands. Only in India they have limited it. MI phones specs are great but of no use if it does not support 4g in my circle. Idea launched its 4g services in Mumbai on band 1 (2100 MHz). Vodafone 4g in Maharashtra is also on band 1 (2100 MHz).

WHAT’S NEW

AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics cards

roughly 300MHz more and both use 2048-bit memory bus. This is due to the fact that both use 8GB HBM2 memory interface and have a transistor count of 12.5 billion each. The RX Vega 64 is priced Rs. 54,500 in India, while the price of the RX Vega 56 is yet to be announced. http://dgit.in/RXVega64

HP’s new Z VR Backpack PC

M PL

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

MD announced the launch of the company’s new Radeon RX Vega graphics cards globally. It’s capable of Rapid Packed Math, High Bandwidth Cache Controller and new Geometry and Pixel Engines to better harness lowlevel APIs and work well with DirectX 12 and Vulcan. The graphics cards sports a customisable GPU tach meter and LED illumination. The AMD RX Vega 64 and 56 come with 4096 and 3585 stream processors respectively. The RX Vega 64 has a base clock speed of 1247 MHz and the RX 56 controls a base clock speed of 1156 MHz. The boost clock on both GPUs is

TECH-LOVE

he new Z VR Backpack PC, which HP claims is the world’s first wearable PC for VR creators, is powered by a workstation grade GPU. Unlike the Omen X Compact PC (also made by HP) that boasts of Nvidia’s 10 series graphics cards, the Z VR features Nvidia’s latest Quadro P5200 with 16 GB GDDR5 of memory together with an Intel Core i7 vPro processor which makes it ideal for professional VR developers and engineers.

THIS MONTH IN TECH: Starting off with the origins of modern amateur astronomy, we also cover a guide on how to become an astronomer yourself. Not all phones are receving an Android Oreo update, but you can read our guide to get those features on older phones. Let’s not forget the monthly set of product reviews and head-ons.

Google to pay Apple $3 billion

It looks like Google is about to pay Apple $3 billion to remain as the default search engine on iOS, which, according to American brokerage and research firm Bernstein, is three times higher than the amount Google paid the Cupertino-based company in 2014 for the same. http://dgit.in/2BiOS

Dota2 bot defeats professionals

An AI bot designed by Elon Musk backed OpenAI took on the best Dota 2 pros at Valve’s ongoing tournament, The International in a best of three 1v1 tournament and won every single game. Watch the full video here: http://dgit.in/dotaAI

16 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

Backpack computers have been gaining a lot of popularity recently thanks to the success of high-quality VR headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. However, all VR backpacks currently available have

The Sarahah app

Sarahah is an anonymous messaging app that lets you get honest opinions from your co-workers, friends or even anonymous people. The site has garnered more than 270 million views and 20 million users in just a few weeks. http://dgit.in/1Sarahah

been largely focused on VR gaming. HP wants to widen this approach by bringing in a powerful all-in-one machine targeting professional designers. This allows them to work with more conveniently strapped on their backs or across a desktop display whenever they need to. Starting at a price of $3,299, HP confirms that they will start shipping the Z VR backpack PC in September, 2017. http://dgit.in/HPzVR

Autonomous cars? Not anytime soon…

Everyone seems to be claiming that a driverless future is right around the corner. That is true if only the corner is not actually a mile wide and isn’t ridden with potholes, jaywalkers and bird shit along the way. http://dgit.in/NoAutoCars

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!

M PL

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

HP Pavilion x360 14-ba073TX

35 LG Q6

PLUS

InFocus Turbo 5

MSI Vortex G65VR 6RF 32 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

33 BlackBerry KEYone 34 HP Pavilion x360 14-ba073TX 35 LG Q6 36 Infinix Note 4 36 InFocus Turbo 5 37 MSI Vortex G65VR 6RF & MORE...

tech SpaceX’s new spacesuit

Elon Musk released the first photos of SpaceX's new spacesuit and it looks like it's straight out of a Sci-Fi movie. http://dgit.in/XSuit

YotaPhone is back

The YotaPhone 3, features a 5.5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, and 5.2-inch E-ink display on the back of the phone. http://dgit.in/YotaPhone3

BlackBerry KEYone

performance of the camera is average at best. The front facing 8MP camera also clicks decent selfies in daylight although there are better selfie smartphones available at the same price.

The "key" to BlackBerry's revival?

ne look at the device and you know this is a BlackBerry smartphone. The device has a textured faux leather feel to it, which not only makes it feel premium but also allows better grip. The space bar doubles up as the fingerprint sensor and is very fast and accurate. No complaints here. The keyboard is a pleasure to type on once you get used to it. It has a bunch of nice tricks, for example, when you are reading a document or browsing a website, you don’t need to use the touchscreen to scroll. The keyboard doubles up as a touchpad too. You can also assign long press and short press shortcuts to the keyboard. This means that you have 52 shortcuts at your disposal from the keyboard.

REVIEWS

Performance

The device is smooth for the most part, but there are occasions when you will see it freeze or lag for a bit. But these moments are far and few to complain about. We watched a bunch of videos on it, played some Asphalt 8 and Fastlane, wrote some stories and browsed the web, checked email and spent some time with the BlackBerry Hub too. For all this, the phone worked well. As a productivity device, you will be happy with this phone and the keyboard is a boon. It's when you switch to the entertainment side of things that the keyboard feels like a hindrance. The KeyOne also runs on the Snapdragon 625 platform, which is disappointing at this price point.

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Price 0 39,99

Display

Battery Life

The 4.5-inch display has a resocuts to the calendar, mail, conlution of 1080 x 1620 pixels, givtacts and more. The multitasking it a pixel density of 433 ing menu also arranges the ppi. The aspect ratio is fine apps in a tile format rather FEATURE.......................76 when you work in portrait than cards, as is found on PERFORMANCE...........61 mode. Switch to landscape stock Android. VALUE............................64 and you see ugly black DESIGN..........................85 bars on either side. Playing DTEK and security games such as Asphalt Being a BlackBerry device, 8 becomes annoying bethe KeyOne boasts of cause of them. It doesn’t help that the security features but it isn’t something speaker is located below the keyboard we haven’t seen in the past. DTEK is so when you use the keyboard as a BlackBerry’s security app and it shows grip, you end up muffling the speaker. you what app is using what permisThe display has a peak luminance of sion in the background and also how 541 lux, which isn’t the highest in this secure your device is. Similarly, if you price bracket, but the display is bright haven’t set a password, pin or fingerenough for both indoor and outdoor print, or haven’t updated the security usage. The viewing angles though of the device then the DTEK app will could have been better. The colours certainly prompt you. produced on the display are crisp and vibrant and look good. Camera The rear camera on the BlackBerry KeyOne is a 12MP unit. In daylight, it Software and UI takes good photos and captures both If you have used the Blackberry DTEK details and colours. The white balance 50 or 60 in the past, then you should though wasn’t accurate in some cases. feel at home with the UI. Swiping from In low lit conditions, however, the the edge of the display reveals short-

When it comes to battery life, the device lasted for 10 hours and 33 minutes in our PC mark battery test, which is pretty good. In real world use, the battery lasted for a day with ease. But add quite a bit of gaming to the mix and you will need a charger by 6 PM.

Bottom line You have devices like the LG G6, iPhone 6S and OnePlus 5 at the same price point, and they all offer a better camera, display and other hardware. With the KeyOne, Blackberry is looking to attract the audience it once had. What remains to be seen is whether they leave their current device to reignite old flames. –Sameer Mitha

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT

BLACKBERRY | PHONE: NA | EMAIL: Web form | WEBSITE: global.blackberry.com

www.digit.in | September 2017 | Digit | 33

tech Treating poop in Antartica HEAD-ON

Seals and penguins in Antartica are being exposed to high levels of fecal bacteria thanks to all the poop from scientists in Antartica. http://dgit.in/IcePoop

Lee Jae-yong is going to jail

Samsung’s vice chairman and the company’s heir Lee Jae-yong has been sentenced to 5 years on charges of bribery. http://dgit.in/SamsungJail

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vs Samsung QLED Q8C

Sony OLED A1

Cream of the crop

Samsung and Sony have launched their flagship televisions for the year, and both take television viewing to new heights. But which one is better? Prasid Banerjee | prasid@digit.in

it in time for the magazine to go to print. The online version of the comparison will include that TV too.

s far as India is concerned, LG was the first to bring us OLED televisions. Having tested some of those OLED TVs over the past couple of years, the technology’s prowess is beyond question. However, LG’s TVs were expensive and beyond most of our reach. So are the televisions we’re comparing today, but Samsung and Sony’s new TVs are strikingly cheaper than they used to be some years ago. The hope is that companies will eventually achieve enough volumes to bring it to us, the lesser souls. The Samsung QLED Q8C is part of Samsung’s 2017 flagship line, as is the Sony OLED A1. We tested the 65-inch editions of both televisions. Note: We would have ideally had LG’s OLED E7 as well, but unfortunately the company was unable to send

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BUILD AND DESIGN

Samsung’s design language includes a curved television with a chrome metallic finish, while Sony uses an ultra-slim and minimalistic design, accented with glass on the back. Both televisions are built to hide wires from plain sight. Samsung does this using what the company calls an “invisible cable” and its proprietary OneConnect box. The invisible cable is essentially a transparent cable that connects the television to the OneConnect box, which in turn acts as the hub for all your other cables. Once connected to the OneConnect, you can hide the rest of the cable. Additionally, while the cable is really long, to allow the OneConnect to be kept far away from the TV,

it is wound around a circular frame to make it simpler to hide. On the other hand, Sony’s television uses a hybrid laptop-like approach to hide all wires. You may not notice it at first, but the TV is tilted backwards by about 5 degrees when placed on a tabletop. There’s a kickstand that fits behind the TV and remains invisible to those looking at it from the front. The kickstand attaches to the glass back of the TV, and itself has a mesh-like cover on top, which hides all the ports, barring a single USB port. The idea is to hide as much of the cable as possible, although almost all the ports here are facing downwards, making it quite difficult to attach cables to the port. While both solutions do hide cables ably, Samsung’s method seems much simpler and would be easier to manage. Neither of these TVs are meant for the average buyer.

tech

> code / creativity / community >

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

DEVWORX

Getting started with Yeoman, a scaffolding tool for web apps

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Agnibha Bose | feedback@digit.in

http://yeoman.io/generators/ Here, we are primarily focusing on how to create a generator. So the basic requirement of this article is some preliminary knowledge about nodejs and JavaScript, specifically ES6. All of the code that is written over here is following ES6 Syntax whenever possible. You need to have nodejs and npm installed on your system to follow along with this tutorial.

‘yo’ to the rescue eoman is a scaffolding tool that helps you kick-start new projects and prescribes the best practices and tools to help you stay productive. In order to achieve that goal, Yeoman basically provides you with a generator ecosystem that helps to scaffold either a complete project or at least some part of it.

WHAT IS SCAFFOLDING AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

First check whether you have nodejs installed in your system by typing $ node -v If you don’t have nodejs installed, do so from https://nodejs.org/en/ Next, you have to install Yeoman. Because it's an npm package, this is simple: $ npm i -g yeoman Now, the Yeoman team has created a generator in order to create generators! To install this, you will need to use npm: $ npm i -g generator-generator Note: If you face any kind of access rule limits then you must run the above commands with admin access. After you are done with the steps above, you can now create your own generator. Our goal is to create a basic express application. First you have to run the generator that you just installed, in the directory where you want to create the generator. $ yo generator After running the above command you will be greeted with the basic prompt for Yeoman. Prompting is a very important concept in Yeoman.

This concept basically came from Ruby, another very popular programming language where you can say something like rails generate scaffold model_name and it would basically generate the required code that your application would need to interact with the system. This is something like maven archetypes if you are coming from a Java background.

SETTING UP THE GENERATOR

WHEN TO USE YEOMAN?

It’s good to use Yeoman when you want to create an application that requires some basic configuration. Suppose there are similar types of projects being developed at your office and you know that there are some basic codes required to start off with the application, then you can create a generator for that. There are a lot of communitymade generators available that can help you to scaffold the project. You can find all of the official generators on their website or by going to:

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After running the generator

You will be asked to give some basic information about the generator here. The generator also creates a folder and performs the necessary npm installation. Additionally, there are some nifty features using inquirer.js where you can provide some checkboxes and various dropdowns and styles in your generator to enhance the user experience. After everything is done the file structure should look like this:

If we were to describe the folder structure, then the folder that you should be interested in is the generators folder. There is basically only one folder in the generators folder and that is your app folder. This folder contains the necessary files that are required to start off with your generator. The index.js contains the logic to run your generator and the templates folder

SA cover story M PL E

cover story

DECODING YOU!

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Can we really ever understand what makes you… you? Will we ever understand consciousness? Some certainly seem to think so…

Ronak Gupta and Agent001 | feedback@digit.in or many people, a discussion about consciousness immediately exits the realm of scientific discovery. This is because some scientists believe that we may never be able to understand the nature of consciousness. With so many smart people proven wrong when they make a claim about what humanity will never accomplish (or what amount of memory should be enough), you’d think people would hesitate to make such claims… yet here we are. Why do we care about understanding consciousness? Because if we’re addicted to, say, tech, as we claim, then it’s obviously appealing to us on some baser level, but without understanding ourselves, how can we ever expect to learn why we love the things we love? In fact, can we ever truly understand ourselves? This cover story will first dig into showing you theories about what consciousness might be, in order to raise your level of...err...consciousness! Then we’re going to look at why we’re addicted to technology, and also explore ideas about how we could be getting suckered into liking stuff – you’re going to love the psychological mind games we’re capable of playing on one another! Back to the theory of consciousness: the main objection people have against being able to understand it is that you cannot really use something to understand itself. Logic would dictate that a hammer cannot use itself to understand itself. (Assuming of course hammers could understand anything at all). To many of us, our ability to think, to be logical, to observe,

Illustration: Peterson PJ

to exist itself… it’s all a part of what we call consciousness. However, to others, just an ability of an organism to be able to sense its own existence is consciousness. How can we ever explain it, if we can’t even agree on a definition?

Adelson’s checkerboard shows a point A and B, and B looks far lighter than A, when in fact the two checks are identically coloured. Stop believing your eyes!

More clearly visible here with a grey line of the same colour drawn to connect them www.digit.in | September 2017 | Digit | 51

WHAT’S NEW

The Jetsons live action

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PARTY POOPER

together, and written by Gary Janetti who has worked on shows like Will & Grace and Family Guy. What remains most exciting to be seen is how the futuristic family will be represented in live action. http://dgit.in/LiveJetsons

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

he Jetsons was a cartoon about a family living 100 years in the future that aired for the first time in the 1960’s. The original show ran for just one season back in 1962-63 with new episodes added later in the 80’s. In the 1990’s, the show was taken to the big screen as a film. There was also a crossover between the Jetsons and the stone age family, the Flintstones in 1987. The one-and-ahalf-hour crossover was titled The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones. The upcoming show, however, will not be animated. It will rather be a multi-camera, liveaction reboot executively produced by Back to the Future‘s Robert Zemeckis and ABC, working

arahah is one of those trends where even mentioning the word would incite a series of cringes from a room – maybe even from those who have tried it and are now trying to hide it. This anonymous feedback app took the internet by storm last month and almost overwhelmed social media with random messages from unknown strangers. Some were good, some were bad, some were downright pointless. But

With Shepard tones going popular after Dunkirk, we explored other existing audio illusions. One of us breaks the news that autnomous cars aren’t going to be a reality soon whereas Boo man loses it over the Google Daydream. Oh and don’t forget to read our take on Sarahahahaha.

The Sarahah mania

New Justice League member?

A subreddit dedicated to the band Imagine Dragons posted a screenshot of Justice League’s IMDB page. Could a possible soundtrack leak from IMDB hint at a seventh member in the DC Cinematic Universe? With Green Lantern and Shazam up for the role, we’re already excited it! http://dgit.in/JLnew7

4 seasons for Stranger Things

While the second season of Stranger Things, the hugely popular Netflix Original, is set to premiere this October 27th, creators Duffer Brothers have indicated that the series will have no more than four seasons overall. http://dgit.in/4Stranger

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one thing that was common overall was the perception that beyond a certain ego boost (or deflation) Sarahah is harmless. In reality, it is far from that. One of the most dangerous

An Obi-Wan standalone film

According to reports, director Stephen Daldry is in ‘early talks’ to direct an Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone Star Wars film. However, Disney and Lucas Films have neither confirmed nor denied the report. http://dgit.in/ObiWanFilm

things about Sarahah is how popular it has become. It has reached a point where people can come up to you and ask you if you’re on Sarahah. You could very well be considered an outsider if you’re not. And that kind of peer pressure, or FOMO, might have pushed a lot of people onto the platform who weren’t really ready for what they were getting themselves into. http://dgit.in/Sarahah2

Necromancer is finally coming

William Gibson’s 1984 science fiction novel Neuromancer will finally see a feature film adaptation. It’s still early days, but word has it that Deadpool director, Tim Miller will be leading the cyberpunk novel’s movie project. http://dgit.in/NecroFilm

culture Best router for gamers?

NVIDIA’s ShadowPlay Highlights now captures your chicken dinners and best moments automatically on PUBG. http://dgit.in/PUBGnvidia

RANTZ

ShadowPlay update for PUBG

The WRT32X router from Linksys comes with a feature that prioritises gaming data over everything else. http://dgit.in/WRT32Xug

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Autonomous cars are far away We’re too far away from a driverless future Arnab Mukherjee | arnab@digit.in

any given time. Now, when a signal to turn right is given, an autonomous car won’t be able to make eye-contact with a trailing human driver from the opposite lane to judge whether it should make the turn before he passes or after. A lack of perception when it comes to intention has already led to accidents in autonomous car testing.

utonomous cars have been the favourite child of automobile companies and silicon valley tech giants for a while now. Even though this dream might have been in the making for some time, the last few years have seen a lot of chatter surrounding it, with the first batch tests on public streets getting the go-ahead earlier this year in a few first world countries. Since then, everyone and their uncle seems to be claiming that a driverless future is right around the corner. That might have been true, if the corner was not actually a mile wide and ridden with potholes, jaywalkers and bird shit along the way. It is not news that autonomous cars are not perfect. But what bothers us is the state in which it is right now and how it is being portrayed. Some of the problems that can throw an autonomous car off track are extremely common and happen every day. For instance, there are numerous issues that pop-up when you completely remove the human element out of the car. Take a busy intersection at a highway, where traffic is present from all directions at

68 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

AUTONOMOUS CARS CAN’T BE PRICKS AND THAT’S A PROBLEM

Sometimes, hand signals from traffic police/managing authorities form a crucial part of navigating the roads. If the situation is especially chaotic, a human driver can look to the traffic police for guidance to make sure they don’t contribute to the chaos and can make their way out of it peacefully. On the other hand, an autonomous car, even if it does have the technical ability to understand hand signals, might not be able to accommodate for the human

variation in the same signal being made by different people. That is, if it can even make the judgement call to put traffic rules aside and follow the human navigator. While Google had announced that its autonomous car can recognise a hand signal from a cyclist, a four-way traffic jam is a completely different ball-game. Additionally, as George Filip at the University of Nottingham, UK puts it, giving cyclists and pedestrians the ability to stop autonomous cars could end up making cities gridlocked. Who ever thought that overly polite autonomous vehicles would end up being a problem?

THE TROLLEY PROBLEM It is established that putting autonomous vehicles on the road would lead to a certain percentage of reduction in road accidents. But this gives rise to a new issue - how will the vehicle deal with the ones that do happen? This brings us, and the automobile industry, to the trolley problem. A thought experiment in ethics, in its most simple form the trolley problem is as follows: There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the

WHAT’S NEW

Storing 2 million gigabytes of porn

hour, and at 900,000 hours, that’s 102 years. If the quality is even lower, say 480p, then that would be about 293 years and six months of straight calendar time. http://dgit.in/2petaP

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SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE

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

hen companies offer unlimited storage plans, does unlimited really mean limitless? This is exactly what Reddit user beaston02 was determined to find out when he decided to push Amazon’s cloud storage plans to its limits. The Redditor archived over 1.8 petabytes of porn to test Amazon’s ‘Unlimited’ cloud storage. For reference, one petabyte is equal to one million gigabytes. And to gather all the data, the proud hoarder wrote special scripts that would automatically record public webcam shows from variety of adult cam sites like Chaturbate, MyFreeCams, CamSoda, etc. If you were wondering how long it would take to consume 1.8 petabytes of porn, here’s the math - 1.8 petabytes in 720p is roughly 2GB per

Skyscrapers made of wood

rchitects are working on a new kind of highrise structure built entirely out of wood on a site along the Chicago River. Up until late 19th century, timber was still the most dominant building material. However, that changed after a series of brutal city fires broke out across major cities in the US. But thanks to many new

THIS MONTH WE DIVE into how our lives revolve around subscriptions and how there’s a subscription for just about everything. Moving on, the DGT section brings to you some of the best products from around the world, some of which we even got to try at the Digit Labs! With Auto, satiate the gearhead in you.

Sharing data on mosquitoes

For decades, American biologists have been collecting data from millions of mosquitoes, creating an incredible trove of information. However, all that data isn’t in the same place, and only a small fraction of it is public. http://dgit.in/ShareBug

Sex education in animals

All animals have a powerful ‘sex drive’. But for all other animals, sex is just sex. Did you know that humans are the only species that understands ‘sex makes babies’? And could this knowledge be the cause for the change of course in human history? http://dgit.in/SexEdu1

innovations like cross-lamination and CNC milling or even its environmental properties have

Origins of playing cards

Playing cards have been known and used for centuries. From the early Chinese “game of leaves” to the French’s “carte à jouer”, today, cards are used for gambling, divination, magic tricks and even commerce. But where do they originally come from? http://dgit.in/cardOrigin

started encouraging architects to built structures at heights unimaginable a century ago. Today, the tallest building made of timber is an 18-story dormitory called Brock Commons in Vancouver. The building looks very similar to any steel or concrete building, however, it is entirely made up of wooden modules. http://dgit.in/TimberSky

Win $1 million from Coca-Cola

The popular soft drink company launched a “sweetener challenge” on its HeroX crowdsourcing platform offering a grand prize of $1 million to anyone who can find an alternative to sugar which can be safely used to sweeten food and drinks. http://dgit.in/1Mcocacola

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alt 63,000-year-old human teeth

This website only works offline

Ancient human teeth have been discovered in a small excavated cave in an island in Indonesia. http://dgit.in/oldTooth

GEEK-KEY

Created by Chris Bolin, a sofrware engineer, this website will only work when you’re disconnected from the internet. http://dgit.in/OfflineWeb

Up, up and

Have you ever wondered what powers your favourite sci-fi spacecrafts?

DARK MATTER ENGINES

Dark matter has largely been an unexplainable mystery, be it for scientists in real life or fictional worlds. It has been used as the source or explanation for everything from super-powerful guns, a city full of metahumans, and super-powerful ships that can achieve unexplainable feats. One of the most recurrent and popular cases is Futurama, where dark matter forms the primary fuel for starships. In the series, the only known source of dark matter is the excretion of Nibblonians, a species that existed even before the Big Bang (an interesting source, nonetheless). In the series, the dark matter is ‘burned’ in large furnaces, channeling it through an afterburner which gives the ship enough speed to cover the entire universe in a matter of days. But how is ‘faster than

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cience fiction is a core part of being a geek. Being a hard-core Star Wars fan, or a die hard Star Trek fan, you would know very well that most interplanetary sci-fi stories come with their own armada of awe-inspiring spacecrafts. One of the most interesting things about these spacecrafts is what they run on. It is undeniable that these crafts would be – literally and figuratively – a shell of themselves without their ‘drives’ (which is what are going to call their major operational mechanisms from here on). Despite the wide variety of options from all of science fiction, these drives can be majorly classified into several broad types.

Away! Interesting fact: Ion drive engines are real – to some extent. A number of deep space missions – current and planned – are using ion engines for propulsion.

In terms of popularity, the Star Wars universe has seen a large number of these drives. In fact, the popular TIE fighters expand to Twin Ion Engine fighters. Although, popular franchise Battlestar Galactica often incorrectly refers to ion-drive powered ships achieving light speed, which is nowhere near possible.

ION DRIVE ENGINES

Arnab Mukherjee | arnab@digit.in

Perhaps the most realistic option in sci-fi, ion-drive engines offer the direct advantage of reducing the amount of fuel needed for the same thrust, thus offering greater fuel efficiency. But how does it work? Briefly speaking, ions are charged particles of any element. And since they carry a charge, their velocity can be manipulated with electricity. Putting a magnetic field in place gives an ion-drive the ability to accelerate ions to enormous velocities. These ions are then released to provide thrust to the craft. While the acceleration is very low due to the low mass involved in the thrust, this acceleration can be maintained for far longer than what is possible with chemical engines, making it ideal for space faring people.

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MAGNETIC FIELD ENHANCES IONIZATION EFFICIENCY

IONS ELECTROSTATICALLY ACCELERATED MAGNET RINGS

ANODE

PROPELLANT ATOM

DISCHARGE PLASMA

PROPELLANT INJECTION

ELECTRONS EMITTED BY HOLLOW CATHODE TRAVERSE DISCHARGE AND ARE COLLECTED BY ANODE

ION BEAM ELECTRON ION

ELECTRONS IMPACT ATOMS TO CREATE IONS

POSITIVE GRID (+1090V)

NEGATIVE GRID (-225V)

HOLLOW CATHODE PLASMA BRIDGE NEUTRALIZER

How an ion engine works

ELECTRONS INJECTED INTO BEAM FOR NEUTRALIZATION

WHAT’S NEW

SpaceX and Boeing to launch Astronauts in 2018

• Boeing CST-100 Starliner Set to fly its first crew to space in June 2018, Boeing’s Starliner also boasts of a 7-crew capacity like the Dragon 2. http://dgit.in/Spacer2018

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WE LOVE BIOLOGY

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!

n 2014, NASA contracted both Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing to develop space crafts that could ferry astronauts into space. SpaceX came up with the Dragon program (now Dragon 2) and Boeing unveiled the CST-100 Starliner program. Owing to a multitude of different reasons including budget cuts, both companies had to postpone their first flights to 2018. • SpaceX Dragon 2 Planned to launch on an upgraded version of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, known as Block 5, the Dragon 2 can ferry up to 7 crew members into Low Earth Orbit or to the ISS.

Converting digital DNA code to print viruses

cientists have successfully built a prototype capable of transmitting genetic instructions using a digital medium and converting that data to create an actual organism. Dubbed as a biological teleporter, the machine from Scientists from Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI) is capable of sending out a digital code of DNA to have them printed or manufactured at the

GET A CRASH COURSE IN THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS in biological sciences along with things you’ve been missing out all along. Explore rapid evolution on our own planet, or head to Venus on India’s very own terraforming mission. If that isn’t personal enough for you, get down and dirty with DNA as we explore gene-editing and the concept of biological age.

Want daily eclipses? Head to Mars Phobos and Deimos, both orbit very close to Mars. While Phobos rises and sets twice every Martian day of 24hr 40m, Deimos clocks a more leisurely 30 hours or so. Because of the proximity the Martian surface, a partial eclipse happens everyday. http://dgit.in/LunarMars

Heating Moon Rocks

Scientist are exposing the lunar samples from the Apollo missions to heat. The rocks, known as regolith breccia 15498 which dates back 1 billion to 2.5 billion years were heated to over 1400 degrees in a lab chamber to study its magnetism. http://dgit.in/HeatMoon

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receiving end. The entire device is essentially a combination of smaller machines and robots. Still in prototype stage, the

“digital-to-biological converter” ensures that the conversion of the digital code is possible. After a series of experiments from

Patient care with machine learning

Two research teams from MIT’s Computer Science and AI Labs (CASIL) have come up with new techniques employing Machine Learning in healthcare. The research utilises many different types of medical data, including electronic health records to predict outcomes in hospitals. http://dgit.in/MLhealth

last year, they were successfully able to transmit genetic code digitally to the converter from another machine at a different location in the building. As a trial, the DNA of the common flu virus was transmitted and automatically printed by the machine. This was the first time when a virus was automatically manufactured using DNA. http://dgit.in/reprintDNA

Human organs on animals

The idea of transplanting organs from one species into another has been around for a very long time now, but there has always been insurmountable problems that couldn’t be solved. However, looking into these issues has become much easier thanks to CRISPR. http://dgit.in/HumanPig

sci Disable Touch ID in iOS 11

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Mucking about with DNA

Ai leaders from around the world including Elon Musk and Google signed a new agreement banning the use of robots in military. http://dgit.in/KillerBot1

CUTTING EDGE

Ban on killer robots

A new feature with iOS 11 allows users to easily change settings so your fingers can’t unlock your phone using Touch ID. http://dgit.in/TouchiOS

Sequencing genomes is all well and good, but if you had ever wondered what that information enables us to do, here are a few crazy things that are now possible Prithvi Sudan | feedback@digit.in

SEMI-SYNTHETIC ORGANISMS

Quick biology question: How many nucleobases is DNA made of? The correct is answer is four – A, C, G, T. But now, scientists have successfully created bacteria that has DNA with 6 bases (the extra two being X and Y). “Why is that interesting?” you may ask, and it’s interesting, very interesting in fact, because it gives us a glimpse of how life actually formed out of the building boxes that were present in Earth’s soup of creation. It may even lead to humans being able to create synthetic life! Oh, the humanity! Scripps Research Institute in California has had a team working on this exact same problem for a couple of years now (http://dgit.in/ItsAlivee). They had their first breakthrough in 2014, where they discovered the X and Y nucleobases. At that time, inserting them into an organism and hoping

umanity was forever set on an irreversible path when a curious Austrian started messing around with his garden plants. Mendel and his peas may have been a very basic and rudimentary grasp at understanding genetics but today, with all the modern tools and technology available to geneticists, they are able to experiment with accuracy and precision that is of several orders of higher magnitude than ever before. We are now able to actively change the DNA of organisms to achieve lots of interesting and downright baffling things. One of humanity’s greatest yet relatively unsung achievements is the development of CRISPR-Cas9. In fact, many of these achievements below wouldn’t be possible without it. If you want to learn more about this technology, here’s some background reading: http://dgit.in/

CrisprDNA. So here are some of the coolest things geneticists have achieved quite recently.

88 | Digit | September 2017 | www.digit.in

for it to survive was just a theoretical possibility but today, they have managed to achieve it. The team, headed by Dr. Floyd Romesberg, have been experimenting with a particular type of bacteria called E. Coli (it’s commonly found in your gut and is generally harmless; beneficial even, because it synthesises the vitamin B2, but some strains can cause you to have severe food poisoning). They genetically modified the E. Coli to accept the X and Y bases as a part of their natural makeup and hold onto them for their whole lifetime. The real challenge was to keep the E. Coli from rejecting the new bases after some growth – all the early experiments ended up in failure because X and Y got rejected or the resulting organism was too weak and sickly to survive. Thanks to CRISPR, they reprogrammed the bacteria to not recognise the new bases as foreign bodies and this allowed the bacteria to better assimilate the bases. Right now, the bases don’t really do anything but that could change in the future – scientists can program different attributes into those bases and that could result in a totally different organism. And that does sound slightly spooky. What if some mad scientist can now genuinely cackle in glee and cry

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