The Static Page
Close enough
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Siddharth Parwatay Managing Editor
Perhaps for now using 1Password is indeed the correct option even though it may not be the best one objectively. If this question was thrown at an AI, it would’ve returned a different answer, but this thought exercise brings to mind an old mathematician joke that I’ve slightly modified below. An AI and a human (who happens to be an engineer) are sitting at a table drinking when a very beautiful woman walks in and sits down at the bar. Both the AI and human start arguing over who gets to approach her. A salarian bouncer walks in and lays down one condition “you may both approach her if you abide by one condition – every five minutes, you can only cover half the distance between where we are and where she is, then after five minutes half of the distance that remains, then five minutes later half of that distance, and so on. The series is infinite.” The AI starts working on the equation, blows a chip and figures out he’ll never reach her, and gives up. The human on the other hand accepts the challenge declaring “Ah, well, I figure I can get close enough for all practical purposes within no time”. Now, I’m not saying algorithms (or AI) are entirely bad at approximations. All I’m saying is we humans are slightly better at things like operating on sentiment, feelings, and instinct – they are a quick shortcut that enables us to get by when working with limited time or limited information. For now I think I could live with this close enough. How about you?
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hanks to the in-ear headphone comparison I took up this month, an interesting aspect of the human experience came to the forefront – the constant quest for objectivity in our decision making. Since AI is our theme for this month, my mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that an artificial intelligence burdened with the same task would be able to make quick work out of such things. At least that’s what is believed. But my question is, is that truly desirable? In the case of the audio test, my job as a reviewer was to objectively tell you readers which headphone is better. Given the myriad number of personal preferences users have (bass, aesthetics, brand etc) this wasn’t an easy task as you’ll soon figure out when you read the comparison test. Given the limited resources I had at hand, I had to tread the middle ground to come up with the most objective answer possible. An AI would’ve probably settled for “insufficient data”. Take another example: Hours before we sent the magazine to print, a vulnerability was detected in LastPass (an uber-popular password manager). It gets breached so often we all might as well have www.haveibeenpwned. com listed as our default homepage, but that’s a different story. So anyway, while discussing the development in a tech-enthusiast Telegram group I’m part of, 1Password was being touted as a “better” option. Worth a try sure, but my question was, is 1Password objectively better with its security or is it just that it hasn’t attracted the attention of hackers just yet. The security pages of both services offered up the usual spiel: AES256 encryption, PBKDF2 key derivation, local storage of hash key and the works. But what brought down LastPass in this latest breach was literally a two-line JavaScript code, which exploited a vulnerability in its Chrome extension. No one on the group could objectively say whether one’s security was better than the other. Strangely enough, the quick shortcuts we humans use for decisionmaking led to a common consensus
“I had to tread the middle ground to come up with the most objective answer possible. An AI would’ve probably settled for insufficient data”
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within the group: “Even if 1Password is safer just because it hasn’t attracted the attention of truly skilled hackers, isn’t that still a good enough reason to use it?” My objective mind balked at the idea because we were completely ignoring the big implicit “for now” in that equation. This is almost like saying I’ll put all my gold in that bank in the inside gully of a nondescript area, because hey, chances are robbers haven’t noticed the bank yet. I know the analogy doesn’t fit perfectly, but you get the point: for an advanced AI this is just a nano-second run through its risk assessment subroutine. It would’ve either told you how to diversify your risk by only storing low-level passwords across multiple providers or even told you that it doesn’t have sufficient data to make an assessment. We humans on the other hand, used the quick shorthand of close enough. A member of the group was quick to point out “what would you rather use? A system that’s already been breached multiple times or a system that hasn’t been breached yet?”. Hmmm… Makes a little bit of sense doesn’t it?
Reach me at: facebook.com/staticsid | @staticsid | editor@digit.in
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 1
The RSS Feed
Aye, Robot run). Here you do everything yourself with the help of machines, because people are expensive. It’s beginning to happen in India as well. Given the lack of reliable household help that I have heard almost everyone who lives in a large city in India complain about, I think the market for dishwasher machines will go from non-existent to competitive in under 10 years. With the huge time and water savings, everyone should probably have one already. We expect AI gaining sentience to be this single event in time – Terminator style – which will forever change human history, for better or worse. However, that is as silly as someone asking to see one living species give birth to another in order to prove evolution. All species give birth to offspring of the same species; it’s only over many generations and a long time that minor changes result in a new species. Inevitably, a machine intelligence will become smarter than us humans – in many ways machines are already better than us in many aspects. However, just as all species evolve, so do machines. Every new version will be smarter than the previous, but only just, and we will eventually get over this search for “true AI” and just accept what we have as AI. “Resistance is futile”, said the Borg, and they were right. We’re already assimilated, and will only become more and more reliant on machines and AI in order to function. We’re already past the point of no return, so why even bother fighting. Our robot and software masters will take over so gradually that we will never know it happened (maybe it already has), and we still won’t believe we have achieved “true AI”, because we will always consider ourselves superior. As usual, we are wrong. Software and AI is already telling you what to buy, to like, to think, to share, where to holiday, who to be attracted to, what to eat, how to stay healthy, how to spell, whose birthday it is, etc. And all you can ever hope to say in return is “Aye, Robot.”
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Robert Sovereign-Smith Executive Editor
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hen I read about artificial intelligence it’s always either doom and gloom, or else it’s utopian sexbot, AI-slave, Siri-loving futures that make you want to try some banned substances – because being as high as the authors of those articles seems like it might be fun. It’s your fault really. Yes, I’m blaming you, the readers. Well not you Digit readers per se, but the general readers of the online gobbledegook that is called “content” these days. Call an article “A look at how AI will reshape our future”, and you will get clicks, but not as many as if you call the same article “AI will kill you, take your job, and pleasure your spouse!”. Be honest. You know you would click the second article if you saw both headlines side-by-side online. Right? It started out with just being headlines, and people figured there was no harm in that. However, once we choose a sensational headline, the pressure is on us writers to make the article sensational as well. Titillation and entertainment is what the masses want, and that forces us to give in and provide that. What’s lost in the process is the actual meat of the story (tofu, if you’re vegan). Instead of looking for what will provide you with the most useful information, a writer is forced to think instead about what will prove to be most clicked, and if he or she is lucky, what will go viral. This is also what is happening to AI, and everyone thinks we have nothing now, but a day in the not-so-distant future will come where we will suddenly have to become slaves to machines! Newsflash: it’s already happened. Certainly not to all of humanity, but most modern city-dwelling folk with access to the internet on smartphones, and between the ages of 10 and 45 (over 1 billion people) are essentially cyborgs. I didn’t say that, Elon Musk did, I’m merely repeating it because I think he’s spot on. AI has been taking away menial jobs in first world countries for ages. Living here in Australia, I make it a point to wait in line to checkout my groceries at the counter with the lone human. Checking out at the smart terminal is faster, but I like to think I’m doing my part in keeping someone employed (even if it is an exercise in pointlessness in the long
robert@digit.in
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“We expect AI gaining sentience to be this single event in time – Terminator style – which will forever change human history, for better or worse.”
2 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Liked or hated this column? Let me know at: robert@digit.in | facebook.com/ raaabo | @raaabo
Contents APRIL 2017
VOLUME 17 \ ISSUE 04
QUICK
NAVIGATOR
E
01 ENTER 12 DGT Desire
Greed Temptation
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LIFE 26 DIGITAL Origins - Hacking
Feature - Internet Speed
47 TOOLBOX Tips n Tricks Q&A
TECH 53 SCI Space Age
From the Labs
SMART 58 STREET Agent 001 Price watch Recommended Buys Killer Rigs
AND 64 TRIED TESTED
Bazaar Comparison Test
SA
97 WORLDVIEW 102 TECH@WORK Industry Connect
AI 32 Accepting It’s time to come to terms with the future and
Careers - A.I
105 ESC Feature
Unwind Community
accept the integral part AI has become of our daily lives
Start Me Up
Enterpreneurship and AI have made eye contact. What does their potential relationship hold for us?
35
TRIED & TESTED
65 MOTO G5 PLUS
67 NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti
Upping the ante
Bye bye TITAN X
68 GAMDIAS ARES ESSENTIAL COMBO Best in the budget
4 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
ON THE DVD Open source bundle
We take you back to the very beginnings of the beloved open world gaming genre
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Robotics Essentials Arduino Software Image Eagle Gazebo Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 Proteus Design Suite RoboDK
Indie games
Space Barnacle Goldrushers Demo Image V.H.S. Battle Splash Pre-Alpha Caveman Warriors Steel Ego Image Empire of the Fallen Steel Ground Floor Z Image Jump Doper Evobeasts
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MAKE THIS ISSUE OF DIGIT COME ALIVE
State of Unreal Unity GDC 2017 Keynote
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81 SKOAR! (Now inside Digit)
7-zip Celestia ClamAV Clementine FileZilla GIMP Greenshot Handbrake Juice LibreOffice Mozilla Firefox PDFCreator Pidgin Scribus Thunderbird VirtualBox Image VLC Media Player XAMPP
Step 3
Keep an eye out for Blip the image and get access the Blippar icon next to video reviews, interactive to some images games, and much more!
53 In a land far, far away...
All about the planets from the Trappist system.
102 Career in A.I
G DATA Antivirus 2017 Xinorbis BlueStacks Image Deluge Universal USB Installer ConEmu Image XYplorer
GDC 2017
AMD NVIDIA GDC 2017
Home-made robots Start your own robotics project with Spout, Spider, and Bit-zee! Bit-zee Bot Spider Bot Spout Bot with Solder
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How to make a career out of A.I before it takes over all careers for itself
Essentials
GDC 2017 OPEN SOURCE BUNDLE
DVD
ROBOTICS ESSENTIALS
71 NIKON D3400
72 AMD RYZEN 7 1800X
A neat incremental update
Competition at last
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 5
April 2017 • Volume 17 • Issue 04 PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH
TO ADVERTISE Email: sales@digit.in
Bazaar AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Sales Director: Lalit Arun, Mobile: +91-9582262959
NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition Moto G5 Plus
Managing Director Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha Printer and Publisher Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director Vikas Gupta Editorial Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Managing Editor Siddharth Parwatay Multimedia Co-ordinator Abhijit Dey
South: Ram Sarangi, Mobile: +91-98864 06961
Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro
West: Suvarna Shringarpure, Mobile: +91-93249 28247
Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS
GIGABYTE AORUS AX370-GAMING 5
GAMDIAS ARES Essential Combo(GKC6000)
North: Mayank Sharma , Mobile: +91-8800661912
Corsair Katar
East: Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Mobile: +91-93318 29284
Writers Arnab Mukherjee, Manish Rajesh,
E Brainwavz S3
Audio-Technica ATH-ANC33iS
Seagate..................................... Inside front cover
a-Jays Four+
Tekfusion Twinwoofers M2 SoundMAGIC E10C
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digit.in
Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II
FiiO EX1
Brand.............................................. Page No.
Reviewers Hardik Singh, Souvik Das, Shrey Pacheco Assistant Vikas Patil
Nikon D3400
Comparison Test
ADVERTISING INDEX Asst. Technical Editor Mithun Mohandas
Antec GX1200
Yangerlong Jamir Test Centre
Digisol HR-1070MSE
Editor Soham Raninga
TP-Link.......................................Inside back cover
Assistant Editor Prasid Banerjee, Sameer Mitha
Brainwavz B100
Features Editor Adamya Sharma Senior Sub Editor Karthek Iyer
1More Single driver piston
United Health Group...........................Back cover
Brainwavz M2
Mgr - Online Shauvik Kumar Design
Gigabyte...................................................................... 3
Sr. Art Director Anil VK
Associate Art Director Shokeen Saifi Visualiser Baiju NV
ICTS............................................................................ 7
GAMES REVIEWED THIS MONTH
Sniper Elite 4
Ghost Recon
Horizon Zero Dawn
Wildlands
Lead UI/UX Designer Shri Hari Tiwari
Sr. Designers Haridas Balan, Charu Dwivedi,
iBall - 1........................................................................ 9
Peterson PJ & Manoj Kumar VP Photography
Sr. Photographer Jiten Gandhi Contributors
Writers Anusha Sinha, Arjun Krishna Lal,
Meghalaya...............................................................15
Computex.................................................................25
Mobile Monthly
I Love Hue
Roller Coaster
Beatracer
Tycoon
Paper.io
Soul Knight
Space Marshalls 2
Hidden Folks
Rival Gears Racing
GetMeBro!
Meghana Gupta, Neha CV, Ronak Gupta,
iBall - 2......................................................................59
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Purusharth Sharma, Sahil Dawka, Varad Choudhari Production and Logistics
Manager Operations Rakesh Upadhyay
Manager Logistics Vijay Menon
India Antivirus.....................................................111
Asst Mgr Production & Logistics M P Singh Executive Mohd. Nadeem Ansari
Brand
Brand Head Mitin Kumar
Asst Product Mgr Madhuri Goel
Co-ordinator / Scheduling Kishan Singh
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 Delhi-110024 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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Norbert Joseph Manager Circulation Dharmendra Singh Reader Services Team Leader Sudhir Patel Executives Poonam, Bhishm, Nilesh & Narendra +91-22-67899678 / help@digit.in Cover Design Peterson PJ
6 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
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Disclaimer DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR 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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DGT
) Hey there, it's me Rohit again. It’s been
Adds settings for download and ability to set audio quality when streaming over WiFi. http://dgit.in/PlayAudio
Feedback for the March 2017 issue of Digit
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a pleasure reading your magazine as always. I have subscribed and literally my whole class waits for the magazine every month. Which brings me to the problem: I have yet to receive the March edition. I usually get it within the first week of the month but I have not received it yet. Will you please look into it? And I have to say, what an amazing magazine that you have created with your... you know, creativity and other higher order functions of the brain. I especially love SKOAR! and Dmystify. I always wanted to know if there is anyone from Kerala in the Digit team. Man, I always say that every rupee of the 200 rupees purchase is worth it after reading the purchase. Can you include the Win 8 version of the Nvidia driver update? I haven't upgraded to Win 10 yet and it's been awhile since I updated my graphics drivers. And..... I think I'll best stop now. Do your best making the favourite magazine of all us geek boys and girls out here and advance Happy Vishu! (just google it) – Rohit PS
Play Music Update
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Enter
All the latest lifestyle technology, gadgets to drool over and gizmo porn like never before. Desire, Greed and Temptation ahead...
Namaskaaram Maashé!
– Mithun M
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) I've been wanting to write to Digit since like thee months, so obviously this one's gon' be a long read. Digit arrived at my doorstep and I actually paused Black Ops 2, to quickly flip through it before getting back to the game. First off thanks for that Paladins poster – gifted it to my brother, believe it or not, his gameplay time's over 135 hrs and top 1 % worldwide! (meant to brag) Now for the “real” stuff: for real am sorry for the disintegration of trinity brotherhood :'( since Jayesh left it's like one column less, guess it happens for the best, we still got double brotherhood and you guys do an amazing job, hustle at the last moment, tryna show em' your triceps (we gamers got enough of those in our fingers). And for that Gaming Master Race, hate to break it to ya, but Playstation Rules! Xbox Drools! And PC Growls! Because when you just
think about it, pirates ain't willing to pay for PC games, they got cracks for that, but the same people are willing to throw their wallets at console games. So I think the day consoles fail, the entire videogame industry will fall! Enough to enlighten to ya'll! You’re welcome :) And for the finale, MY PROPHECY: Injustice 2 poster coming up for April issue right? PS: Please Don't let me down *-* – Punarnava Malhotra (Yours Biggest Fan)
10 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
We miss Jayesh too bro :’( As for your console gaming theory – interesting. However you forgot about one thing: The gaming industry generated over a whopping $90 billion last year. Guess how much consoles contributed to that amount? $6.6 billion :) Meanwhile, PC is sitting at a comfy $36 billion and mobile gaming has the crown with $41 billion. Doesn’t look like the videogame industry as a whole depends too much on consoles now does it? Happy to enlighten you :) – Manish ) Hey Digit,
I've been a long time reader and was quite excited to download the app. I
filled out my info at dgit.in/dfreemag earlier this month but failed to receive any coupon code till date. I have both the Feb and March issues in hard copy and feel cheated if I have to buy the e-mag as well. Moreover I'm sure I'm not the only one so many of your other readers must be getting frustrated as well. What did you mine our info for? I'll get to the good bits later or never but that's because of standards. I expect quality from you the way one expects clean restrooms at international airports. Being taken for granted can be a compliment. PS - I purchased a Versatyl jacket on impulse so that's on you too. – Ram Prasad
Whoa there little horsie! We didn’t mine any info. Come on, a little trust in your favourite magazine please? And we see what you did there. An ancient Indian proverb comes to mind: house chicken, lentil equal :-) Lastly about Versatyl jacket – pics or it didn’t happen. – Siddharth ) I have been reading Digit for many
years now, and happy with the dynamic changes it has been going through. Previously, technology was limited to engineering, while other branches of
SECTION
SUBSECTION
GREED
TEMPTATION
For those who just want more than should be humanly allowed, we have enough to satisfy your hunger...
If you’re wondering what to do with yourself or how to spend some time getting cultured, this section is for you...
THIS MONTH: Cars from the Geneva Motor Show coming to India soon, Louis Vuitton Escale Spin Blue, Fastrack Reflex, Oakter and more...
THIS MONTH: Iron Fist, Logan, Fate of the Furious, Persona 5, Samurai Jack S5, and upcoming stuff to watch out for in April 2017 ...
DESIRE
SHOWCASE
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TECHNOLOGY WITH STYLE
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Smartflower POP S
martflower POP claims to be the world’s first all-in-one solar powered system. Smartflower uses what is known as photovoltaic technology to convert solar energy into electricity. Smartflower POP is capable of delivering on an average of 4000 kWh per year, which is more than enough to fulfil the electricity consumption needs of an average household. Unlike solar panels or other rooftop units which come with the hassle of needing to be installed, Smartflower POP is easy. Simply plug it in, like any other device, and you’re good to go. Smartflower POP unfolds itself automatically when the sun rises. Its fan/petals automatically track the sun throughout the day, making it far more efficient than
the stationary rooftop solar panels. Once the sun has set, Smartflower automatically closes itself up. This isn’t called a “smart”flower for nothing. It comes with a host of smart features along with it to maximise efficiency. Thanks to smart tracking, the Smartflower is able to track and follow the sun for
the course of the entire day. Its “smart cleaning” feature automatically cleans itself of dust and/or snow deposits every time it folds and unfolds. Other smart features include smart cooling, smart safety and smart mobility. The Smartflower is definitely the right step to take toward the direction of clean energy.
Caavo
uArm Swift
Braeon
Pixelvar
Caavo’s goal is to unify all your devices and services and make them all easily accessible and controllable via one single remote. Do away with hassle and access everything on one device.
The uArm Swift is an open source robotic arm which is capable of a host of tasks from picking and placing things, laser engraving, writing, painting and more.
The folks who made this call it the “world’s strongest and most adaptable” material. Braeon is a lightweight plastic ribbon that molecularly fuses to itself in a matter of seconds.
Pixelvar is an app controlled handheld LED wand. Just wave it to see your image in mid air. Pixelvar works based on a human visual system called Persistence of Vision, or POV for short.
Handle
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Boston Dynamics showcased a video of their latest robot, the Handle, early this February. This 6-foot 5-inch robot is quite the creation. CEO Marc Raibert even called it a “nightmare inducing robot.” Towering over most humans at 6ft 5-inches, this robot can easily lift around 50 kgs, glide around ramps, uneven terrain and jump to up to 4 feet! With just 10 joints this robot can do more than most robots with thrice as many. If rise of the machines is something that scares you, then be afraid. Be very afraid.
12 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
GREED
AUTO Your one stop destination for a monthly dose of all your automobile launches and desires.
As with all the new cars from Suzuki and Maruti’s stable like Ignis and Baleno, the new Swift will also include a pretty comprehensive infotainment package that includes Apple CarPlay and more. It is expected to be priced higher than the outgoing Swift, and present higher fuel economy - something that is crucial for car buyers in India. We expect the car some time in early 2018, which means that there will be some wait before you get your hands on the new generation Swift. But when it is available, it promises to be worth the wait.
Tata Tigor
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Cars from the 2017 Geneva Motor Show coming to India soon
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One of the stalwarts of Tata Motors’ ongoing efforts to revamp itself, the new Tata Tigor is expected to be launched in India soon. Tata has dubbed it the ‘Styleback’ - the car itself is essentially a notchback, taking cues from the seemingly popular Tata Tiago and adding more boot space in the process - and who doesn’t like that?
(Maruti) Suzuki Swift
The new Suzuki Swift, launched at the end of 2016, is one of the most anticipated cars going forward. Based on the new, lightweight HEARTECT platform, the new Swift will include Maruti’s new mild hybrid (SHVS) system. Alongside upgraded engines and drivetrain, the new Swift also brings with itself a radical redesign of one of India’s most popular hatchbacks, although the India variant may include a few changes from the one exhibited here, including higher ground clearance. The ground clearance is a country specific requirement when it comes to India - something that all cars launched here do have to comply with.
18 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
The new Tigor is expected to take cues from the Tiago, including body-coloured inserts inside, a pretty decent ConnectNext infotainment package powered by Harman Kardon and built on BlackBerry’s QNX platform. The car looks quite intriguing from the outside, and much will depend on how Tata eventually prices the car. Also showcased at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show was the upcoming Tata Nexon, a mid-sized crossover that may take on the likes of Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza, Hyundai Creta and Ford Ecosport in India. More details about the Nexon will be unveiled soon, some time in the next few months. And when that happens, do check this space for the latest updates.
Skoda Kodiaq The new Skoda Kodiaq is aimed at providing all the necessities of a luxury SUV, taking the game right back to established Indian stalwarts like the Ford Endeavour and Toyota Fortuner, both of which have already received new upgrades. The Kodiaq is also expected to be presented in both frontwheel and four-wheel drive layouts, and the India variant is expected to come with both petrol and diesel engines producing 180bhp and 190bhp at peak power delivery. The interiors look highly plush and promising, too, and with rising focus on in-car technology, it is no surprise that the Kodiaq is expected to present a connect infotainment interface. Most cars from Skoda’s stable have a reputation for providing good drive and ride experiences, and the new Kodiaq also sports a taut, upright design that is somewhat different
Feature
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The new 200 series SoC will bring 4G to entry-level mobile phones. http://dgit.in/200series
breach which affected 117 million instead of the originally estimated 6 million or the double reveal from Yahoo totalling to a hefty 1.5 billion credentials lost to attacks in 2013 and 2014. Gone are the days when hackers were accurately depicted in popular culture. The general conception about hackers has remained unchanged – some geeks sweating their fingers out over keyboards, furiously typing out malicious code and attacks in a secret basement. As long as we hold that image in our head – we’ll never really understand hackers, and hence, their actions. So to start off, let us talk about that hacker in the basement, and why he almost no longer exists.
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Arnab Mukherjee arnab@digit.in
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t’s an ordinary day at work – you switch on your system, go through your email, check a few attachments. Eventually, you log off for lunch, and by the time you’re done and are back at your desk – congratulations, you’ve been hacked! Your system and all the files on it are being held hostage by some college kid on vacation with too much free time on his hand. Welcome to the world of modern hackers. 2016 was, by many measures, the worst year for digital security. Although every passing year is turning out to be exactly that, 2016 had its fair share of leaks and breaches. In fact, it had a good helping of revelations from years gone by as well – be it the 2012 LinkedIn
26 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Something UNIX The term ‘hacker’ is said to have originated in the 1960s in the MIT computer
labs. Hacking is defined as the act of altering a standard process or system to improve it or customize it to one’s choice. When the model train hacking enthusiasts (among others) of MIT got their hands on the new computer systems being deployed on campus, they applied the same practice to software. These, and other computer hackers were mainly programming enthusiasts who liked to alter and rewrite software code to improve and customize programs, or take them apart just to understand how they worked. One of the most elegant hacks – and perhaps the most enduring hack ever – to come out of this period was UNIX. Built on the shell of the failing Multics project from Bell Labs, MIT and General Electric, UNIX was the brainchild of Ken Thompson, who, along with
IMAGING: PETERSON PJ
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Digital life
Qualcomm 200 series
How fast is fast enough? With increasing 4G availability and high speed broadband, is it worth it?
INDEX:
ACCEPTING AI.................. Pg. 33 START ME UP!................... Pg. 35 REVERIE: 2040................. Pg. 38 LETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SHOP!..................... Pg. 42 WARNING SIGNS!..............Pg. 44
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Cover story
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Come to grips with the future...
SAHIL DAWKA
feedback@digit.in
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here’s a lot of fear-mongering about Artificial Intelligence and the very future of the human race. Heck, there will be some of it in the articles that follow, and for all we know, they might eventually prove to be well-founded fears. However, this article looks at the flip side, and plays devil’s advocate. Why? Because that’s how you arrive at truths, by looking at all the evidence, especially the evidence that goes against the premise that “AI is bad for humanity”.
AI today is so much more than the limited human-killer of fiction, or a poor little machine trying to be a human. AI is used for machine learning, perception, natural language processing, planning, social intelligence, manufacturing, etc. AI is such a broad term, that there’s no one discipline that covers it. It is each of the aforementioned fields of study, and all of them as well. AI, as we know it today, is essentially trying to replicate the functions of an intelligence – us. AI is broadly divided into three categories – Narrow AI (specialized applications of the sub-fields mentioned earlier), General AI (a universal AI with the capabilities of multiple Narrow AIs), and Artificial Superintelligence (think Skynet). Today most AI are of the first category. Virtual Assistants like Siri and Cortana are slowly graduating from Narrow NLP and aiming to be General AI, though they are a long, long way off from even a 5 year old child’s intelligence.
JUST A TOOL
Maybe a machine consciousness will someday take offense at this paragraph, but AI is still essentially a productivity tool. It is merely lines of code, written out by humans to enhance the abilities of machines to excel in areas that humans don’t. When we think AI we usually think of Skynet, the evil intelligence of the Terminator series, or else the AI of the Matrix world. Even if you think of AI as the characters from the movies A.I. or Bicentennial Man, you’re essentially feeding your own narcissism by assuming machines want to be human, when there’s no proof that machines even “want” anything.
WHAT IS “INTELLIGENCE”? How should we define intelligence itself? It stands to reason that understanding something complex requires an intelligence more complex than the thing that is being understood. This poses a problem. How can we ever understand our brains using our own brains? If you need something more
complex and “higher” than the human brain to understand it, how can we ever hope to create an AI as complex as us? Richard Feynman said, “What I cannot create, I don’t understand”, so how can we ever create what we will never understand? This itself suggests that unless we can create an AI that learns and enhances itself (evolves), we can never hope to create something more complex than us. You cannot see your eyes with your own eyes, but you can use a mirror – you will see the general shape of your eyes and how they look and behave, but you will never see the inner workings of your own eyes. This is how we approach AI. We look at external manifestations of our intelligence, try and reverse engineer it using mathematics and logic, and then figure out how to translate that to code. However, it can’t just be intelligence in a computer. One school of thought (called the embodied mind thesis) feels that our functional aspects such as movement, visualization, etc., inherently contribute to what we eventually call our ‘mind’. The experimental evidence in Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained also seems to agree with this idea. Eventually, in order to produce true AI, we might very well need to create the kind of humanoid robot that has been depicted in movies such as I, Robot and Bicentennial Man. www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 33
Tips & Tricks
CONTROL EVERYTHING WITH VOICE
Floating Apps on Android.............................................. 16
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Enable Voice Operation on PlayStation 4
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Tips & Tricks has its own page numbers, and does not follow the rest of the magazine’s page numbers. This is done to ensure that you can cut out and save T&T in a separate folder for later reference.
}
You’ll need the PlayStation Camera or a standard headset that you use while gaming to use the built-in voice operation mode. If you have the required gear, enable voice operation by navigating to Settings >
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Smart assistants have created a revolution in controlling everything with voice. From our smartphone to our living rooms, voice controlled systems are taking up everything. With the significant progress made in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, voice controlled applications can now understand different accents and do smart things. Taking advantage of that let’s try to control everything entirely with voice commands.
using an app? If yes, you can enhance the functionality of that existing app by making it listen to your voice commands. Using the Voice Access app mentioned above you can control every part of your home automation app with voice commands. Thus, saying “turn on light” will make your phone turn on the light for you. Isn’t it cool?
Control your entire phone by voice
Play Store and install. Once installed, go to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Access > Turn on. Voice Access app needs to be launched before you start controlling your phone using voice. However, launching the app needs touch intervention, thus, hindering the truly voice controlled functionality. To make everything truly hands-free, update the “Google” app on your phone. Once updated, launch it and navigate to Settings > Voice > “Ok Google” detection > and turn on “From any screen”. With this done, you can call the Google Voice Assistant and ask it to start “Voice Access” app.
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Google launched an application last year that lets you control your phone inside out using voice commands. Going beyond the features smart voice assistants like Google Now offer, Google Voice Access lets your control individual apps using your voice. Although it’s targeted towards users having problems accessing the touch screen, it isn’t a typical accessibility app. To start with, download “Voice Access” from the
Play content on your TV with your voice
Call out for these numbers to open the respective app. www.digit.in
If you have a smart TV and an Android phone, then you can create a voice-controlled media center for free. The idea here is to cast media from your phone to your TV using voice commands. To cast content from your
phone, download and install “AllCast” app from the Play Store. Start the Google Voice Access service if not already started. Open AllCast app and call out for the photo number you want to cast. Also, you might need to call out for the device you want to cast your media on.
System > Voice Operation Settings > check “Operate PS4 with Voice”.
After enabling, you can access voice operation by saying “PlayStation” or hitting the “L2” button on the controller.
You can ask PS4 to ‘take screenshot’, ‘start/stop broadcast’, ‘turn off PS4’, ‘[game name]’etc.
Activate Cortana on Xbox One
Using the same method but to control your TV
Automate your home using voice Have you installed home automation gear into your house that can be controlled
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You’ll need an Xbox compatible microphone or Kinect to voice command the console. If you have the required gear, double tap the “Xbox logo button” on the controller or if you are using Kinect just say “Xbox, go to settings”. Navigate to All Settings > System > Cortana settings > I agree > Restart now. After enabling just say “Hey Cortana!” and you’ll see Cortana listening to your commands in the top-right corner of the screen. You can ask Cortana to ‘turn on Xbox’, ‘open game’, ‘volume up/down’, ‘search store’, etc. April 2017 | Digit
RIP 16GB iPhone SE
Nat Geo maps
The 16GB iPhone SE is dead. Now get a 32GB iPhone SE for the same price. http://dgit.in/RIP16GBSE
Nat Geo launches website that offers detailed maps in printable PDFs. http://dgit.in/NatGeoWeb
Q&A
Bad GPUs, bad displays and more bad GPUs Farewell, old friend
your motherboard has an AGP port, you won’t be able to insert the newer PCI-e graphics cards. So, you’ll need a new motherboard as well if a GPU is necessary. Otherwise, you can continue using your PC using your motherboard’s display port.
you wish to enjoy Android apps to yourself, we would recommend you to use emulators such as ARC Welder for Chrome, BlueStacks or for the best experience, buy a budget Android device for yourself.
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Dear sir/madam, I have a problem in my PC graphics card which I had bought nine years ago. It was working fine until November. Whenever I connect it to my PC’s AGP slot, my PC doesn't turn on. After removing it and then connecting the monitor to the motherboard, my PC turns on. I’m not able to deduce the issue with my graphics card. Secondly, I called NVIDIA’s service center in my city Lucknow, "Rashi Peripherals Pvt. Ltd", but they are not receiving the calls. Currently, they have also shifted their office to another place. Help me in resolving my problem. – Swapnil Bansal
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GPUs are failing our readers, as we come across several of them. April is all about displays and graphics cards, well mostly.
Android on Lumia
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I have a Lumia 525 and I was wondering if there is a way to install Android on it. Most of the awesome games and apps are only available on Android (including your emag app). So, it would be awesome if you guys can help me out. Thanks in advance. – Pajas Singh
AGP video cards are a relic now
Not many developers are interested in porting Android to Windows
Hey Swapnil, looks like your GPU has finally met its end life. Since you have already determined that connecting the monitor to the motherboard’s display port does work, it’s clear that the GPU has stopped working. There are chances that only the port might have conked off but considering your GPU’s nine year old life, it’s more likely that the entire component has died. Your warranty is obviously over and repairing it won’t be a good and worthy decision. Instead, you should simply go ahead and buy a new GPU. Do note, since
Hey Pajas, an XDA user had successfully installed Android Marshmallow on the Lumia 525, that could also be run on a Lumia 520 (forum thread: http://dgit.in/ AndrdML525). The development didn’t see much light and has been discontinued for now. The build wasn’t stable enough for everyday use. We also came across guides to install Android 7.1 but source files are missing and those files haven’t been updated. It seems like not many developers are interested in this particular device to port Android. If
The hottest games
I have a Dell Inspiron One 24 5459. I have played games such as Deus Ex Human Revolution, Grand Theft Auto Episodes From Liberty City, and Sniper Elite V2 and they play very well. However, certain games have a tendency to crash after 20 minutes of gameplay such as Sleeping Dogs, Max Payne 3, and Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. I have installed the latest updates and drivers, disabled the touch screen keyboard, and even tried playing on low settings yet the games still crash after 20 minutes. I have the following specs: • OS: Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit • CPU: Intel Core i5 @ 2.20GHz • RAM: 8GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 797MHz (11-11-11-28) • Motherboard: Dell Inc. 0WCWFJ (U3E1) • Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 530 (Dell) & 4GB NVIDIA GeForce 930M • Storage: 931GB TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 (SATA) – Andy Kumar
Hi Andy. Games crashing after 20 minutes sounds something like an overheating issue on your GPU. If the PC itself shuts down, then the CPU is overheating as well. Next time, try to run a software monitor tool such as GPU-z or Speccy to keep an eye on your GPU temperatures. Games that www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 51
From the labs
Sci-Tech
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Get internet in space
Is it possible for us to bring back the Wooly Mammoth into existence? We try to explore.
SpaceX has been meeting up with the FCC for an interesting project– taking internet to space! http://dgit.in/SpaceXfcc
IN A LAND
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FAR, FAR AWAY...
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“Finding a second Earth is not a matter of ‘if’, but of ‘when’,” says Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA. But, is it really so inevitable? Is life an all-pervading incident, or are we belittling its exclusivity with our latest discoveries? Souvik Das souvik@digit.in
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This is where you may get to live, some day
were discovered in the system, bringing the total number of planets up to seven. In terms of the TRAPPIST star’s composition, it was observed and classified to be an “ultra cool” dwarf star with metallic constituency. Interestingly, all the planets that have been discovered in this solar system fall in a unique spatial distribution, and are much closer to each other than any of the planets in our solar system. This, as the discovery revealed, has significant consequences. For one, this solar system is much younger than that of ours, aged about 500 million years. In contrast, our solar system is calculated to be 4.6 billion years old, and the very first signs of life appeared approximately 3.8 billion years ago. Interestingly, the TRAPPIST-1 solar system is younger than the 800 million years it took for us to support life. The headlining discovery, however, is that three out of the seven discovered
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n recent times, not many intergalactic discoveries have received the amount of attention and craze as the TRAPPIST-1 system. The widespread fanfare of sorts was led by scientists who stated that the new solar system could be our best (and closest) bet to find life beyond planet Earth. This solar system had seven planets orbiting a tiny star in orbits in the ‘habitable zone’. Quite understandably, everyone’s excited, and also scared, mystified and keen to know if there really are more of us present in the expanding universe. The question is, are we channelling our rationale rather blindly? In this issue, we look deeper into the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, and try to reason crucial answers to niggling questions that have lingered at the back of our minds.
What is the TRAPPIST-1 discovery?
Using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) placed in La Silla Observatory, Chile, a team of scientists spotted three planets orbiting a dwarf star about 39 light years from Earth. This effort was led by astrophysicist Michael Gillion at the University of Liege, Belgium. The star itself was discovered by the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) back in 1999, and finally, on February 22, 2017, four more planets
planets lie in the habitable zone. A solar system’s habitable zone is a belt where rocky planets may exist with optimum heat, light and atmospheric conditions, all of which would lead to the planets being able to support forms of life as we know them. This is what made its discovery so celebrated, because we’ve never come across a solar system that has three Earth-like planets. It is also only 39 light years away from Earth, much closer than a number of other Earth-like exoplanets that have been discovered previously.
Gauging its significance Seeing that the TRAPPIST star is significantly cooler than other stars (even our Sun), each of these exoplanets orbit very close to it, and each other. This has led to NASA initiating further studies on how the forces interact among planets in this solar system. The planets are so close that if one looked up at the www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 53
Price Watch
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Gear for a wannabe
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The very best products you can buy right now spanning across popular tech categories.
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YouTuber
Recommended buys
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Street smart
Release the shutterbug inside you with the best cameras, and then get gaming with the best keyboards in the market
Agent001 comes to the rescue as another friend falls for the photography bug Agent 001
agent001@digit.in
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sports is huge and it’s growing in India. I’ve been following quite a few teams and streamers for quite some time. And of late, some of my friends have fallen prey to the esports bug. Even if they don’t play a particular game, they’ll still watch the stream because they like the person who’s streaming. While I’m not a fan of PewDiePie but I do follow a few streamers like QuickyBaby, The Mighty Jingles and 2mgovercsquared and I get the appeal. I understand why gamers are drawn towards such streams and I’ve contemplated streaming a few games myself. Alas, doing that might disclose a secret that has been guarded for ages – my identity. xD So earlier last month, I was chilling with a couple of friends when I got a Twitch Notification indicating that Jingles had gone live. I promptly fire up my machine and started watching the stream. Soon enough one of my mates decided that watching other people play games was juvenile and started taking my case. Yes, even I’m prone to getting my leg pulled once in awhile. I
ignored the ribbing till he realised he wasn’t going to get a rise out of me and then sat down to watch the stream along with me. Fortunately, he too played World of Tanks and was soon taken in by the stream. Watching a really good player take out half the enemy squad even when the odds are stacked against them does make for an exciting game to watch. Exciting enough to have someone completely new to livestreaming remain glued to the screen. But that didn’t stop him from spewing snarky comments. Even though the players on the stream were significantly better skilled, my friend would find some fault or the other, after all you can just do a complete turnaround from being a jerk to an ardent fan in under an hour. A week down the line I saw that very friend share a Facebook post of a game stream and soon enough, he too caught the live streaming bug. In fact, I’d get a WhatsApp message soon after a stream got over and he’d by dying to discuss some of the best moves or the stupidest moments from the stream. The addiction soon got the better of him and his conversation soon moved to how he’d do it if he were to stream. Yeah, everyone’s a backseat driver.
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So I called him out with the age old dialogue, “Kar ke dikha!”. And to my surprise, he took it upon himself to start his own YouTube channel. Pulling off a live stream is not an easy task so the first step was to get comfortable with doing videos and getting them out in a timely manner, hence, YouTube. And so began his hunt for equipment. Making videos for YouTube is easy, you have numerous free screen capture software and video editing software to help make quality videos. All that’s left is to record a voice over and then upload to YouTube. He already had a pretty decent PC so all that was left was the microphone and webcam. He tried using the embedded microphone on the SoundMagic E10M but didn’t find the audio quality up to mark. It made him sound completely weird so he went and got the Blue Yeti USB microphone. They’re a bit expensive for someone starting out but the sound captured is quite similar to source and you have the option to switch polar patterns between cardioid, stereo, omni and bidirectional modes. What was left was the webcam and that’s where he ended up getting a little confused. Confused enough to call me
INSIDE
Bazaar 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.
For better understanding of our ratings, here’s a quick guide to our overall score to
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Extremely poor product. Keep away!
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THE LATEST PRODUCTS REVIEWED FOR YOU
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Strictly OK.
51
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70
Decent product.
71
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Very good product.
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to 100
Page 69 Canon PowerShot G7X II
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Digisol DG-HR1070MSE 4G Mi-Fi
Page 72 AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Not recommended
Go for it, but there may be better products out there.
Highly recommended.
Ground-breaking product. We’ve never seen anything like it before. A definite must buy!
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Page 70 GIGABYTE AORUS AX370-GAMING 5
&MORE...
Virtual makeup with AR
Sephora’s iOS app gets new update with “Sephora Virtual Artist” that lets you try virtual makeup with AR. http://dgit.in/MakeupAR
OPM is coming to Netflix
One of the most popular anime series, OnePunch Man is now available for streaming through Netflix. http://dgit.in/NetflixOPM
Bazaar
Moto G5 Plus Upping the ante
Price99 16,9
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he fifth iteration of Motorola’s Moto G series is perhaps the biggest upgrade these devices have ever received. The dual-pixel camera on the Moto G5 Plus sets new standards for budget cameras on the market. It’s underscored by very high dynamic range, attaining high contrast in photos and warm colours when shooting in regular daylight conditions. It manages exposure well for a budget device and takes good low light photos. Quite surprisingly though, the Moto G5 Plus has a slow camera. Focusing speeds are reasonable, but not as fast as you would expect from a dual-pixel camera. It has the same camera specs as the Galaxy S7, with a f/1.7 aperture and 1.4 micron pixel size. However, this doesn’t seem like the IMX260 sensor from Sony. Processing speeds are also higher and the camera takes longer to focus under low light, resulting in blurry shots often. As a result, it’s not as dependable as you would want it to be. Overall, the camera is underscored by pleasantly warm colours, high dynamic range and good exposure controls. The G5 also manages ISO levels quite well, keeping them between 50 to 80 in regular daylight conditions. You will see noise when zooming into photos, losing finer details in images but that would matter only to those looking to enlarge and print those photos. For sharing on social media, the Moto G5 Plus’ camera is the best in the budget range. Moving on, the G5 Plus runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 SoC, clocked at 2 GHz. All eight Cortex A53 cores are kept alive at all times, ramping up to 2 GHz whenever you launch heavy apps, like games. In practice, your phone won’t freeze when launching apps like Asphalt 8 that usually take a split second more to open. Overall, performance is reasonably snappy, although, a Snapdragon 650 would have been preferred. For real world usage, there’s really nothing worth complaining about, even though this isn’t the fastest phone in this price range. It maintains a steady 30 FPS while playing games like Asphalt 8, with 80% frame rate stability over half an hour. Internal temperatures never rose beyond 37 degrees. Interestingly, despite the fact that all eight cores are kept on, the Moto G5 Plus manages an impressive battery life. Motorola chose a 3000
mAh unit, which is low by current standards. Over a day’s usage, the phone lasted us almost 24 hours on a single charge. That’s considering two hours of audio recording, about half an hour spent playing Asphalt 8, quite a few photos taken, and about 20 odd phone calls. This includes 8 hours of idle time, where the phone dropped 5% battery. The phone lasted for 7 hours and 24 minutes on the PCMark Work 2.0 Battery test, while Gamebench shows over 5 hours of gameplay time. It seems Motorola has made the best use of the balance between performance and efficiency which the Snapdragon 625 provides. Despite its fluidity and good camera, there are some shortcomings too. For one, the 5.2inch LCD panel on the Moto G5 Plus isn’t the brightest out there, and colours don’t look punchy, due to low saturation. It’s a functional display but not necessarily the most pleasant to look at. Sunlight visibility is average and Adaptive Display doesn’t really do much to improve things either. Further, the fact that Motorola is only selling 16 GB and 32 GB variants of the phone is disappointing. While 32 GB is still enough to work with, at `16,999, one should be looking at 64 GB storage nowadays. On the other hand, 16 GB is simply not enough for smartphone users any more, especially with apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime allowing you to download content onto your device. Barring storage, the Moto G5 Plus is a really good smartphone. If the camera is your priority, the Moto G5 Plus is the phone you should pick.
Prasid Banerjee
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Features........................75 Design............................77 Performance................85 Value...............................71
Specifications
Display: 5.2 inch FHD; RAM: 3/4 GB; ROM: 16/32 GB; Operating System: Android Nougat; SoC: 2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625; Battery: 3000 mAh; Camera: 12 MP dual-pixel rear camera, 5 MP front camera
Contact
Motorola India Phone: 1-800-419-6686 Email: dgit.in/MotoCntct Website: motorola.in
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 65
Column
For sale
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to serve you ads. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Your information is up for sale to whomsoever can come up with the moolah. And with privacy laws to take a beating in the near future, even more companies are going to zero-in on this new opportunity. This is where AI comes into the picture. Or if you keep up with the happenings, it already has. The amount of data being captured is so large that you have powerful machine learning systems crunching out behaviour patterns for better “targeted advertising.” It’s not just these patterns that are up for sale but even the raw data. So let’s recap, we have always-on devices capturing data about you and your family which is used to generate tera petabytes of metadata. Which in turn is up for sale. Now imagine the government getting their hands on that data. Now imagine the very same government with a very extremist outlook. And now, go and read 1984. This is the kind of stuff that dystopian novels are made of and it’s happening really fast. Countries with weak IT Laws are even more susceptible. We’re one of them. Companies operating in India can get away with a lot because of our poor laws. Take for example the McDonald’s security lapse which put the private data of 2.2 million Indians out in the open thanks to an open API endpoint. The company not only denied the issue but hasn’t resolved the issue for over a week and we’re yet to hear from any Government agencies about it. What we need is a strong legal framework for IT laws which is in line with developments in the technology sector and that’s a tall order. Especially since the people are in the dark about how bad things can turn out if no action is taken and going by how laws are influenced by vote bank politics in India, it’s high time we techies got together to form a large enough vote bank. I’m thinking of Technical People’s Party or TPP for short … wait, that didn’t come out right.
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Mithun Mohandas Asst. Technical Editor
t seems I’ve spoken about Artificial Intelligence multiple times over the last couple of months and since we’re going with AI as the theme, you’re going to be reading a lot more about AI. So I’m going to do the hipster thing and not harp about AI at all. Instead we’re going to be looking at something that’s completely nefarious – digital ads. There were two separate incidents earlier this week, one involving Google and the other involving Microsoft. The weird thing was that both incidents happened within the same week. It can be argued that both services have been subsidised by their respective companies in lieu of rights to slip in advertisements. However, these things are not explicitly made clear. Paying attention while setting up Windows 10 will bring about a few settings that mention whether you want to receive targeted advertising. Even if you disable that settings the OS still collects data. Which is why tools like Spybot Anti-Beacon exist that can put an end to all of Microsoft’s telemetry services. Since Windows 10 is a really popular OS, users can tear it apart and put an end any untoward service. On the other hand, Google Home isn’t, so we’re yet to see a thriving ecosystem of custom ROMs like we have for Android smartphones. And when that happens, these unwanted advertisements will go away if you undertake the effort of loading a custom ROM. So what’s the downside? Well, like Mr. James Comey, Director of FBI said earlier this month, absolute privacy does not exist in the US. And that’s a country with strict privacy laws. We on the other hand, have a huge mobile-first population who don’t even understand what privacy is, let alone the ramifications of having their personal data out there for sale. All of this is set to get worse in the coming years, the new FCC Chairman is a godsend for all of these ad serving companies as he just halted new privacy protection laws in the US. The matter is still being discussed so we don’t know what the outcome will be but going by how Mr. Pai has maintained a very pro-industry, anti-privacy and anti-consumer stance throughout his stint at the FCC. And we don’t see things turning out for the better for consumers. To an extent, it is fine if the information that companies store about you is used just
mithun@digit.in
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“The amount of data being captured is so large that you have powerful machine learning systems crunching out behaviour patterns for better ‘targeted advertising.’”
Let me know your thoughts on this column at: @mithun_mohandas
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iPad quietly upgraded
Apple silently upgraded their iPad with a faster processor and brighter display without much fanfare. http://dgit.in/iPadwow
University students in Spain have supposedly 3D printed fully functional human skin. http://dgit.in/3Dprntskin
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IEMs
3D printed skin?
Siddharth Parwatay editor@digit.in
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longevity take a beating in this price range. Once you decide to move on from the CX180s and EM1s of the world, you start noticing aural subtleties. This was part of the reason we set our lower price range for this comparison at `2,000. At this price point you notice the first significant bump in sound quality. In terms of build, you see instances of quality materials being used – OFC cables, thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) sheathing, maybe a bit of kevlar, housings crafted out of high density plastic if not exotic metal. We believe consumers have begun to understand this. At least it feels that way going by the number of
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ith the kind of action seen in the in-ear headphone space over the past couple of years, it was conspicuously odd that we didn’t do a comparison test for this category in so long. Yes we know, and we admit it – it’s been long overdue. And finally we have it! The road to this test however, wasn’t an easy one. The IEM space has so many price categories, so many variants, and so many models in each category, we didn’t know which category to choose. While it’s true that the largest variety is found in the sub `1000 price range, we’ve noticed that consumers are beginning to get tired of extremely entry level headphones. The finer nuances of audio fidelity and
74 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
requests we receive on a daily basis asking for recommendations in the `2000 and above price range. We also observe that the incremental quality you get per unit of money invested steadily rises till about the `5000 mark after which it plateaus for a bit. Five grand is also the magic figure to which most budding audiophiles are willing to stick their necks out in the pursuit of quality. That’s exactly what our odd ensemble of assorted in-ear headphones represents: an eclectic selection of what lies in store for you in the world of audio appreciation. Of course it’s also
a reflection of what brands managed to send to us. We asked for in-ear headphones in the range of `2000 to `5000 from all manner of manufacturers – from local brands like Tekfusion to Chinese ones like Brainwavz to even those across the seas like Sennheiser, Harman Kardon and everyone else in between. Some units like the Beyerdynamic Byron got stuck at customs. Others like JBL sadly didn’t have any review units at hand. In any case, the in-ear monitors we did end up with are some of the best in the market. So without further ado, let’s get into the first of these devices! But first you
OUR PICK OF THE BEST TECH ARTICLES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
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[Motherboard Corner]
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BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO EXTRATERRESTRIAL POST-DETECTION ETIQUETTE.
COMPUTING ON THE EDGE
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Major tech companies like Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm all see connected cars as essentially ‘the’ computing device of the next decade or so, just as smartphones have been for the last decade. Is the future of advanced-edge computing really in autonomous cars?
http://dgit.in/futureCars1
WHO ACTUALLY BUILT THE ANCIENT SILK ROADS?
The Silk Road was a series of ancient trading routes that spanned Asia, reaching as far as the Middle East and Europe. But according to anthropologist Michael Frachetti and his colleagues, previous studies used the wrong algorithm and missed an obvious hypothesis.
SA
http://dgit.in/SilkRoad4
SETI researchers think there is a good chance we’ll be hearing from ET within two decades. This possibility of contact seems closer today than ever before thanks to recent forward leaps in alien-hunting technology. But it also raises the question: You’ve just been contacted by aliens, now what? http://dgit.in/talkET
ORIGINS OF CONVERSATIONAL INTERFACE
Its 2017, and conversational interfaces/machines are everywhere. It feels like we may spend more time talking to computers than to one another in just a few short years. But how did we get to this point? Where did the conversational interface initially originate?
http://dgit.in/historyAI
How do MIDI drawings even work? Musical Instrument Digital Interface mainly known as MIDI is a digital protocol that allows digital musical instruments and tools to communicate with each other. MIDI drawing is basically making computer music while ‘drawing’ a sketch using MIDI notes. http://dgit.in/drawMIDI
Why Astronauts Burn Their Dirty Underwear In an exclusive interview, Robert Trevino, senior engineer of NASA’s Crew and Thermal Systems Division, the man responsible for what astronauts wear in outer space explains about the current state and future development of space-wear. Learn more-
What’s wrong with fossil fuel subsidies? The World is wasting trillions of dollars on fossil fuels. Government subsidies lowers the cost of production, raises the price for producers, and lowers the price to energy consumers. Essentially, it rigs the game in favor of fossil fuels compared to other energy sources.
http://dgit.in/AstroWear
http://dgit.in/fuelMath
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 97
Work@tech
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Build it, bring it
M PL
“You can’t travel the world on a PowerPoint Deck”, says Nick Earle, SVP, Hyperloop One, while announcing his company’s plans for India
The new iMessage app from Pocket’s makes browsing and and sharing stories in chat so much easier. http://dgit.in/iMsgPocket
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Tech@Work
Pocket’s iMessage App
AI is taking over our jobs, but simultaneously creating more jobs as well. Find out more.
Prasid Banerjee prasid@digit.in
SA
We just talked about connecting a billion people, but the Hyperloop can take only about 28 people at a time, right? What’s the possibility of scaling the number of passengers? Nick: To be clear, the pod doesn’t take just 28 people at a time. The pods have a variable length and it’s an autonomous vehicle. They move, let’s say about 20 seconds apart. So, the pod could take maybe 60 people at a time. But to your point, it’s not 6,000 people. However, 60 people every 20 seconds is still quite a few people. Now, if you have a network of Hyperloops, you can change the lives of a billion people. If we had a fibre access between here and the building next to us, it wouldn’t change Delhi. However, when the Internet let you reach out to London or anywhere else, it changed people’s lives. In terms of ridership, we’re looking at anywhere from low-end 6,000 passengers per hour to a high-end 20-25,000 per hour. If we need more, you just build another pipe.
tries? Or how are you going to localise Hyperloop in various countries? Nick: We’re actually open to localising the design. One of the biggest advantages of being amongst the first countries to adopt is that we actually can take inputs from these countries. For example, one of the first regulators we’ve worked with are in Dubai. They’ve set specific requirements in order for us to get safety certifications. So, we agree and accordingly start working on the redesign. Now, what we don’t want to do is design different Hyperloops for every country, based on their specific and intricate certifications. Although, the first iterations being built will definitely influence the design over the rest of the world. We’re creating a configurable system that can be adapted universally. We’re also building interoperability standards so that different transportation systems can physically connect to each other. This way Hyperloop systems from different companies can work together. Note: A study conducted by Hyperloop in connecting Stockholm to Finland found that the price of travelling in a Hyperloop was a tenth of the airfare of the same distance. The ticket
How do you plan on taking up specific challenges imposed by coun-
prices were about €28 which converts to around `2,000. Interoperability with other public transport systems is important. The existing transport systems are primitive, so how do you plan on establishing a seamless system? Nick: I wouldn’t say primitive but earlier technology, yes. We’ve actually talked to Deutsche Bahn about this at length. It was concluded that interoperability wasn’t a key requirement. We’re building interoperability from day one. Being from CISCO, we know how this is important. It wasn’t the only networking company, but it created open standards. We as a company have the opportunity to publicise our standards and while being independent bodies, others will decide the standards as well. We’ll never be able to interoperate within the software in a Siemens train. The app that allows you to get the timetable, enter your credit card info and book, can be linked through open APIs. So, an Uber can be linked. We can have interoperability at the application level and with autonomous cars in future, and between different Hyperloop suppliers, because there will be more suppliers in future. www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 101
Unwind
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Esc
Community
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This section showcases the achievements and writing contributions from our reader community.
Tech that’s just too similar to tell apart
SA
M PL
here was a time when being distinct was essential in the tech industry. Yes, people were still building phones, apps and other things that the tech industry generally does, but innovation was a key characteristic of being a technology giant. Without meaning to imply that there is absolutely no innovation, one look at the smartphone industry will show you how everything looks and feels just the same. Needless to say, this tendency to replicate what is successful is destroying innovation, not only in the device manufacturing industry, but the tech industry in general. And even where it’s not doing that, it is hilarious and irritating at the same time to see the same feature, same design, same action on every platform and device that you interact with. With that being said, let’s have a look at some of the most obvious and bothersome “me-too”s in tech.
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AI are taking our jobs! Here’s some jobs we wish AI would take over faster.
Storytime
This could possibly be what prompted this article to begin with. Snapchat began in 2011 and the disappearing picture and video format was quite popular, especially because no one else was doing it. Pretty soon, Snapchat was offering additional features on the app. One such feature was Stories, which let you present your disappearing snaps in chronological order to your friends and followers on the platform. Within a year of its introduction, i.e by summer 2014, the number of pictures and videos being shared via Stories had surpassed the earlier person-to-person private snaps.
Honestly, can you tell them apart with one look?
Although it took them a couple of years and an acquisition by Facebook, Instagram also launched their own version of stories called Instagram Stories. Sounds like they weren’t even trying to be original, right? That’s because they weren’t. “They deserve all the credit”, said Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom
to Techcrunch in an interview, when asked about the implied copying. One look at Instagram stories now, and you can tell where they are headed - geotagging, drawing tools, stickers and more are already there, and you can check out an infographic at http:// dgit.in/IvsSInfoG to understand that www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 105
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