The Static Page
The quest for smartness plugged into the grid can get data points from your texts or emails and dim the lights in anticipation of an upcoming date. Scary? Or useful? If machines are learning about you, the corollary is that so are corporations. Data is afterall the new oil of this era. This was the privacy barter that I was hinting at earlier. While researching the story about millennials (page 137) we came across an interesting insight: 36 percent of millennials are actually ok with bartering private data in order to make their devices (smartphones in this case) know them better. Smart devices also put a new spin on the boundaries of what you can do with devices. On one hand it’ll be simpler for manufacturers to build in a kill switch, on the other it might actually be easier for people with know how to find newer ways of modifying smart devices. Similar to the way open source pioneers fought for the right to modify their printers’ source code to suit their needs better, there might be a new modder movement in the future: one that is more accessible considering coding literacy and readily available microcontroller interfaces that might be baked in for maintenance and firmware updates. On the flipside, smartness and surveillance have a positive angle. Imagine a sensor rich smart watch strapped on your kid’s wrist that immediately warns you about heightened stress levels; that helps you track your loved one’s’ location at all times. No parent I know would object to a smart device like that. Hypothetically even if a fine balance were to be achieved between what we surrender to smart devices and what we gain from them, interesting questions will get raised about what it means to be a human in this impending smart-connected era. Are we losing our autonomy? Are we outsourcing our ability to think? Let me know your thoughts… while you still can.
E
T
Siddharth Parwatay Managing Editor
M PL
he whole Internet of Things (IoT) revolution, which we’ve been on the cusp of for quite some time now, is certainly fascinating (apart from being majorly overdue). The idea that billions and billions of sensors will talk to each other, share petabytes of data, and electronic brains will churn this data into meaningful information that will silently steer our lives, is a future worth looking forward to. A major component of this impending shift is the idea of “smart devices”. For the uninitiated, smart devices are just regular devices with the gift of sentience bestowed upon them. No I’m just kidding; they aren’t sentient just yet. What they are, however, is smart. Meaning, they have some sort of processing power (embedded system) and the ability to connect to a network to share the data that they crunch. Devices have been getting smarter for quite some time now. We’ve been seeing chips being melded into an assortment of things right from shoes, toasters, refrigerators to even water bottles, sex toys, and even toilets. I can’t seem to remember whether the smart sex toy was a device purely for kinky pleasures or a genuinely useful remedy to help those suffering from incontinence. Ah well, maybe it was both. The point is the “smartification” of things around us has already begun. The smart air purifier will probably never be as revolutionary as the smartphone, but the question I’m trying to ask is: do all devices need to be smart in the first place? And if the answer is yes, are we willing to barter our privacy and sense of control over our individual lives just so that these devices become smarter? What most people don’t realise is that in order for these digital minions to serve their flesh and bones masters better, they need to keep track of every little thing that we do. Depending on how smart the device is, its continuing mission is to collect users’ information, track behavioral patterns and eventually predict our needs even before we realise them ourselves. So a frequent example given is that of a fridge reminding you that you are running low on milk. That’s just the most base level operation smart devices can do. When smart devices start talking to each other and sharing this information with a cloud hive mind, they will be able to perform almost alarming feats. Hypothetically a smart lighting system that’s
siddharth.parwatay@digit.in
SA
“When smart devices start talking to each other and sharing this information with a cloud hive mind, they will be able to perform almost alarming feats.”
Let me know at: facebook.com/staticsid | @staticsid | editor@digit.in
Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 1
Big Bytes
Of VCRs and digital death
L
Accelerated phasing out of technologies that don’t have a high impact on our lives (and the bottom line of businesses that offer them) is the new normal. Similarly, if a technology’s phased out after having a short good run, chances of there being a fast workaround are a lot more now in 2016 than ever before. For example, in the history of telephones, landlines have lasted for the longest time, followed by cordless phones, non-smart mobile phones and now smartphones – taking the device and its potential far beyond just making and receiving calls. After the death of Google Reader, several equally brilliant RSS readers jumped onto the scene satiating the need of dejected consumers before even their tears ran dry. Hundreds of thousands of gamers played Road Rash on their 16-bit consoles back in the arcade era of gaming, and when one such fan decided to make a 21st century version of the game, thousands of nostalgic gamers (also Road Rash fans, obviously) helped crowdfund the game so that they could take another swing at it. Napster truly democratized file-sharing around the world, much to the RIAA’s chagrin; but despite Napster’s shutting down, filesharing still continues till this day. Sure it may have become temporarily difficult to find good torrents after the death of Megaupload and (recently) Kickass Torrents, there seems to be no end in sight to filesharing as long as people are willing to share content. Many such examples exist where one technology’s death led to the birth of myriad others. Technology will never stand still – it will only continue to evolve. Which means we will have to get used to using and dropping technology devices and services through our lifetimes. It’s human to feel a bit sad and nostalgic when your beloved technology fix gets phased out, because anything that creates that sort of an emotional hold has to be something that mattered in your life – things that opened your eyes to a whole new way of doing things. And those are the things that are worth cherishing for as long as you can.
M PL
E
ast month, the news of the “death of VCR” reverberated around the digital world quite profoundly, as its last remaining manufacturer – a Japanese company called Funai Electric – decided to cease production. This had me a bit amused even as I was left with a bittersweet feeling. I remember reading the headlines and wondering if the writers weren’t late by a couple of decades, since the launch of DVDs back in the mid-90s is essentially when the death knell of VHS-VCR first rang out. For everyone who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, so many of our childhood memories revolve around television sets and especially VCRs, for the freedom they provided from traditional over-the-air television programming. Instead of relying on a broadcaster’s whims and fancies, VCRs allowed us to rent movies and cartoons and watch them whenever we felt like it. I could never have grown up watching the entire Tom and Jerry catalogue before even Cartoon Network launched in India, if it weren’t for VCRs / VHS players. Even Netflix owes its existence to the popularity of VCRs and the concept of movie rentals. If it weren’t for VCRs, I’m pretty sure that all of us non-millennials would miss out on some precious digital moments. Those nondescript black boxes will forever remain an important stepping stone in all of our digital journey. But the VCR is dead now and nothing’s going to bring it back. The more important question is does anyone care, for better or worse? Most of us have already moved on to different, far better modes of recording and consuming digital media which is a lot more convenient to use than the venerable VCR. It’s not so much the devices and technologies but how they affect our lives that matters ultimately, of course. We become wistful at the thought of VCR’s death because we had (some may still have) VHS tapes that recorded precious personal moments in time which now may never be revisited. Similarly, we turn nostalgic when we encounter digital relics like a 3.5-inch floppy disk in circa 2016. You’d be hard-pressed to find a brand new PC or laptop that still bundles a floppy drive to try and check if that decades old floppy still works. Now irretrievable, the disk contains the very first digital PC memories you ever created, nevertheless you try to hang on to it as long as you can. It’s human nature.
Jayesh Shinde Technical Editor – Test Centre jayesh.shinde@digit.in
SA
“Accelerated phasing out of technologies that don’t have a high impact on our lives (and the bottom line of businesses that offer them) is the new normal."
Let me know your thoughts on this column at: facebook.com/jayesh.shinde | @jshinde | jayesh@digit.in
2 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
Contents AUGUST 2016
VOLUME 16 \ ISSUE 08
QUICK
NAVIGATOR
E
001 ENTER 014 DGT Desire
M PL
Greed Temptation
TECH 052 SCI Tomorrow’s Tech Space Age From the Labs
061 WORLD VIEW 065 DEVWORX
& TESTED 080 TRIED Comparison Test Bazaar
98 Killer Rigs
Tech Story 30 Our With the 69th Independence Day around the corner, let us tell you the story of technology in India
SA
STREET SMART Top 3 Agent 001
111 ESC Unwind
Community
Zombies are very real!
One of Hollywood’s favorite type of monsters, Zombies might not be as fictious as you think! A deeper look at how the science behind zombies already exists
55
TRIED & TESTED
4 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
81 AMD RX 480
83 RHA T20
AMD has hit it out of the park with this one
84 OPPO F1 PLUS
A stellar in-ear earphone from RHA that justifies the price tag
Oppo’s latest entrant into the flagship battlefied fails to impress
ON THE DVD Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon
Linux Mint is an Ubuntubased distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components.
An imminent gaming renaissance, Best crowdfunded games, Upcoming console refresh
FILL SCREEN FILL SCREEN WITH IMAGE WITH IMAGE DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR BLIPPAR
Audacity FL Studio 12 LMMS Reaper
Discovery Compass: Which way is North? Floating magnet
Magnetic Fields
Magnet near compass Tracing a magnetic field Discovery of magnetic fields
Indie Games
Area 52 BYTE Firewing 64 Gunnihilation Image Pix Hop Polywar Revenge of a dead man Shadows 2 Splinter Zone Standby Survival Instinct The Seeker TotalMaze: Survival Walking Simulator 2
M PL
MAKE THIS ISSUE OF DIGIT COME ALIVE
Audio Mixing Tools
E
111 SKOAR! (Now inside Digit)
Properties of Magnets: Discovery of Magnets
rich, open source Python community, the Anaconda platform provides an enterprise-ready data analytics platform that empowers companies to adopt a modern open data science analytics architecture.
BLIPP...BLIPP...
FILL SCREEN IMAGE JUMPS IMAGE JUMPS WITH IMAGE TO LIFE! TO LIFE!
BLIPP...
IMAGE JUMPS TO LIFE!
DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR
Step 1
Step 2
Download the Blippar app
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!
Step 3
26 Aquaphobia
Give you gadgets a taste of the monsoon without sentencing them to early deaths!
104 Smart Video Marketing
Measuring magnetic fields
Are two magnets stronger than one? Earth’s magnetic field (how to measure) Inverse cube law (deflection method)
Electromagnetism
Discovery Electromagnetic field (above vs. below) Floating magnet
Anaconda
NVIDIA Graphics Drivers
Get the latest desktop graphics drivers for your NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics cards for 32/64-bit systems.
Built to complement the
SA
Exploring free tools to make a quick promo for your brand
AUDIO MIXING TOOLS PROPERTIES OF MAGNETS
DVD
LINUX MINT 17 ANACONDA
87 ASUS ROG G20CB
90 HP ELITEBOOK FOLIO
Powerpacked Plug-and-Play PC Gaming
A Windows powered business class ultrabook
Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 5
The RSS Feed
Pokémon No Taxi drivers have started advertising special rates for Pokémon Go players, because why not? There are accidents happening, as eager players who are driving are slamming their car brakes when they get an alert that there’s a Pokémon nearby. People have walked into traffic, poles, fallen into stuff, got injured, trespassed, got into fights… you name it. Heck, even sending obscene pictures has gotten Pokémon involved – people use the Pokémon character to hide their privates and send suggestive pictures to one another. Poképorn? You’ve probably seen the memes, where people make fun of us geeks and gamers, basically saying how we’re finally getting some fresh air! It’s actually hard to argue with that, because it’s probably true for quite a lot of us. However, although it is certainly getting people outside more, whether or not that’s good is still up for debate. Already many tourist sites are calling for Niantic to remove their locations from the list of Pokéstops, because they want people to actually appreciate the landmarks, not come there only to take screenshots of ridiculous looking cartoon devils. I can just imagine people running up and down the gardens of the Taj Mahal flinging virtual balls at cartoons, just ruining the experience for everyone else. When it eventually comes to India, please remember that our Indian cities are not exactly the safest places in which to be walking around distracted. The first thing that will happen is a lot of phones getting snatched out of the hands of people who are oblivious of their surroundings. Then, accidents galore. Think about it: there are accidents happening on Australian roads – where the entire country’s population is about the same as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Can you even imagine the chaos on our congested roads with people playing this game on foot, or on bikes and in cars? You have to decide if you want to put yourself at risk just to play some silly game that only makes some guys in the US rich. Why? Just because you have a fear of missing out on some weird cultural experience? I’m really hoping that if you haven’t already been Pokémoned you will choose to say, “Pokémon No. Hell no!”
E
A
Robert Sovereign-Smith Executive Editor
M PL
t the time of writing this column, the smash hit, augmented reality and location-based game Pokémon Go has not yet come to India (officially). It has taken the country I live in by storm, so obviously I had to play it as well. Poor me, being paid to install and play popular games… If you’re in the US, Australia or Canada, you’ve heard of Pokémon Go. Even if you live under a rock, dozens of crazy Pokémonhunters have probably already trampled all over your precious rock, and even lifted it up to look for Pokémon. I’ll be honest, I’ve totally missed out on the Pokémon craze of the last 20 years. The only one I knew of before Pokémon Go was Pikachu. However, if my observations of the people around me are anything to go by, a lot of people playing the game don’t seem to be die-hard Pokémon fans either. They seem to love the augmented reality experience of it all a lot more than the actual goal of the game, which is to go to Pokégyms and battle other players using the Pokémon you’ve collected. And please don’t send me angry letters telling me “Pokégym” is not a real word, because Pokémon aren’t real things either… so there! I’ve seen some people use the game like a tourist map, by showing more interest in visiting the interesting cultural spots shown on the Pokémap (yes, I made that word up too; sue me). Those are the type of people who seem to enjoy the travelling and the AR experience more than anything else. However, there are also another type... Since no one seems to care about accuracy anymore, quite a few media sources called it “Nintendo’s Pokémon Go” (which isn’t even true). Obviously, this caused Nintendo’s stock prices to soar, because even stock brokers couldn’t be bothered with fact checking anything. Then, on 22 July, 2016 Nintendo sent out a press release, and people realised that Nintendo wasn’t the one who would be making the big bucks off this game, it was Niantic, the gaming company who owned the game. Obviously, Nintendo shares plummeted again. BIllions of dollars gained and then lost because of a mobile game! It’s not just big companies that are affected. There are new stories of idiocy every day. People have quit full time jobs to play the game – they’re banking on the fact that some lazy gamers will be willing to pay big bucks for a phone and a Pokémon Go account that has a lot of highly evolved Pokémon.
robert@digit.in
SA
“I’ll be honest, I’ve totally missed out on the Pokémon craze of the last 20 years. The only one I knew of before Pokémon Go was Pikachu.”
6 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
Liked or hated this column? Let me know at: facebook.com/raaabo | @raaabo | robert@digit.in
August 2016 • Volume 16 • Issue 08 TO ADVERTISE
PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH
Email: sales@digit.in
Bazaar
Sales Director: Lalit Arun, Mobile: +91-9582262959
AMD RX 480 Circle Gaming CC 840
Editorial Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Managing Editor Siddharth Parwatay Multimedia Co-ordinator Abhijit Dey Writers Arnab Mukherjee, Manish Rajesh, Nikhil Punjabi Test Centre Technical Editor Jayesh Shinde Senior Reviewer Mithun Mohandas Reviewers Hardik Singh, Souvik Das, Shrey Pacheco Assistant Vikas Patil
West: Suvarna Shringarpure, Mobile: +91-93249 28247
Evidson AudioSport W6 RHA T20 Brainwavz XFit XF-200
North: Debleena Majumdar, Mobile: +91-98101 19492 East: Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Mobile: +91-93318 29284
GIGABYTE GTX 1060 G1 Gaming Oppo F1 Plus Asus ROG G20CB
ADVERTISING INDEX
Brand................................................... Page No.
RHA S500i
Dell Inspiron 15 7559 HP Elitebook Folio
M PL
digit.in Editor Soham Raninga Assistant Editor Prasid Banerjee, Sameer Mitha Features Editor Adamya Sharma
South: Ram Sarangi, Mobile: +91-98864 06961
E
Managing Director Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha Printer and Publisher Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director Vikas Gupta
Design Sr. Art Director Anil VK Visualiser NV Baiju Sr. Designers Haridas Balan, Charu Dwivedi Peterson PJ, Manjith PB & Pradeep G Nair Contributing Designer Vijay Padaya
Kyocera..........................................Inside Front Cover
Cooler Master MasterCase Maker 5
TP Link............................................Inside Back Cover
Gigabyte........................................................Back Cover
iBall.............................................................................3, 79
Online & Marcom Design Associate Art Director Shokeen Saifi Sr. Designer Manoj Kumar VP Photography Sr. Photographer Jiten Gandhi
Contributors Writers Dhinoj Dings, Mehul Bhagwani, Purusharth Sharma, Sahil Dawka, Varad Choudhari
Brand Product Mgr Soham Raninga Asst Product Mgr Sourabha Shakya Mgr - Online Shauvik Kumar 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 Cover Illustration & Design PC Anoop
8 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme
Comparison Test:
Creative Sound Blaster Roar Creative Sound Blaster Roar 2
IOCL................................................................................ 17
LIC...................................................................................19
Ultimate Ears Boom 2 B&O Beoplay A1
RDP...................................................................................23
SA
Production and Logistics Manager Operations Rakesh Upadhyay Manager Logistics Vijay Menon Asst Mgr Production & Logistics M P Singh Executive Mohd. Nadeem Ansari
SBI..................................................................................... 7
Gigabyte GTX 1080
India Antivirus.......................................................... 143
Quantum...................................................................... 144
MAKE THIS ISSUE OF DIGIT COME ALIVE FILL SCREEN Step 1 WITH IMAGE
Published and printed by Kanak Ghosh for and on behalf of the owners, M/s Nine Dot Nine Interactive 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.
“We do not endorse or recommend any product or service DOWNLOAD adverBLIPPAR tised 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 FILL SCREEN WITH IMAGE are strongly advised to carry out their own independent assessment of the product or services advertised in the magazine.” DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR
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.
DOWNLOAD BLIPPAR
FILL SCREEN WITH IMAGE
BLIPP...
IMAGE JUMPS TO LIFE!
Download the Blippar app BLIPP... IMAGE2 JUMPS Step TO LIFE!
Keep an eye out for the Blippar icon next to some images BLIPP...
IMAGE JUMPS TO LIFE!
Step 3 Blip the image and get access to video reviews, interactive games, and much more!
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
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.
http://www.facebook.com/ thinkdigit Your favourite magazine on your favourite social network. Interact with thousands of Digit readers and have some geeky fun! 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
Join the group that suits your need!
E
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
Digit Facebook Pages
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 Product testing Want your product reviewed by Digit? Contact our Test Center at testcenter@digit.in or call +91-22-678 99 708
News and 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
http://www.facebook.com/ consumermate Expert buying advice and some awesome offers http://www.facebook.com/ devworx.in Community of software programmers who enjoy writing code and want to grow their career in software development
SA
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
http://www.facebook.com/ IThinkGadgets Community of People who love mobiles, laptops, cameras & other gadgets
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
Interact with Team Digit digit.in/twitter
digit.in/facebook
digit.in/youtube
digit.in/forum
Forum
Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 9
DGT
Feedback for the July 2016 issue of Digit
M PL
) This month's mag was absolutely needed, as I am going to start my college life now. The mag is going better than ever. The Swift 2 Fast Track was not in my interest area, but as you have always said, you shouldn't be biased. I am not much of a hardcore gamer, but as I didn't see SKOAR first, I admit, I was a little baffled, but soon I found it. The last time I wrote to you, I had submitted some complaints. This time I’m going to focus on suggestions because I’m sure you are working on those complaints and I understand they need some time to implement. Some 'original' suggestions (I hope): 1. If you provide videos in the DVD, perhaps you could also include fps rate. Some videos shatter as they can't be played on my computer. 2. You could provide a Fast Track on creating, hosting, and maintaining your own website? I can help as well since I’ve created a few sites on my own. 3. You could allow a fully crowd-sourced Fast Track on any topic. I agree with what Jayesh sir says in his columns. Regarding "5 times space shocked us", I have "5 questions for when space totally shocked me": 1. Where is the universe itself? 2. Doesn't cosmic background radiation get distorted by galaxies, pulsars, quasars? 3. Don’t other star systems (apart from binary ones) gives observable gravitational waves? 4. Ain't there any chance of iron based martian life (like ours is Carbon based)? 5. Could we ever decipher alien signals, even if accidentally observe then? That's' all for now, guys. –Saksham Sneh Mandal
Facebook has detailed a way to give lazer based internet access dgit.in/FBlazer
E
14
Enter
Lazer internet?
All the latest lifestyle technology, gadgets to drool over and gizmo porn like never before. Desire, Greed and Temptation ahead...
SA
at the topic. Funny you should mention a crowd sourced Fast Track. We actually tried the exact same concept back in 2009. It was called Digit OSP (Digit Open Source Project) and aimed to create the first ever community developed FT, but it didn’t catch on as we had hoped. As for your space related questions: The Universe is everywhere. It’s all around you, in every direction. We don’t know if it’s finite or infinite, but it goes on for further than we are able to detect. If you’re asking what the universe is contained inside, or what is outside the universe, as far as we know, there’s no “outside” of the universe. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) comes from everywhere, because everywhere was once a part of the Big Bang. It’s hard to “distort” something that comes from everywhere. Plus, it’s so old that it’s red-shifted more than anything else. We didn’t detect gravity waves from binary stars colliding, we detected them from binary black holes colliding! Theoretically everything gives off gravity waves, but it’s so faint that we can, as of yet, only detect them when super-massive monsters like blackholes collide! I’ve never heard of anyone suggest ironbased life before. Carbon and Silicon are the usual choices because of how reactive
Sure, we’ll add the FPS information in the video descriptions in the DVD UI. Additionally, you can even browse it in Windows Explorer, right click properties and check FPS, data rate and other details. We’ve done a couple of FTs in the past which cover web hosting and other aspects of setting up your own website (eg. Cloud Services in Oct 2013 and Word Press in Oct 2010) but you’re right, things have changed and perhaps it’s time to take another look
10 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
they are with other elements, and because of how they can form complex molecules (very important for “life” as we know it). That said, anything is possible, it’s just not very probable. We may not even know if we are looking at alien signals to be honest. I guess we would at least be able to tell an alien signal when we found one. If the alien life form had kept the message ultra simple, and very basic – like the message we attached to Voyager. Then yes, I think we would be able to decipher it. (http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ spacecraft/goldenrec.html) –Robert ) Hi Team Digit! I got introduced to Digit last year in my school library. At first the magazine bored me but as time went by my interest grew. The first edition that I purchased was the Appsutra April edition. Now I purchase your dgt 'veda' every month and get updated with technology mantras. I liked your June special edition because the 15 anniversary edition is dedicated to 15 tech revolution. Your 'Back to school' edition is helpful in my graduation years because I just finished my 12th standard this year. Some suggestions:
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: Huawei Maimang 5, ZTE Nubia Z11, LaFerrari Spider, Sky Ya, LG X Mach and a lot more...
THIS MONTH: Movie Review: Batman vs Superman Ultimate Edition, American Gods, Legion
DESIRE
SHOWCASE
E
TECHNOLOGY WITH STYLE
M PL
NVIDIA Titan X A resurrected beast
Tangram
eople who bought spanky new GPUs for their gaming rigs a few months back, were left disappointed as NVIDIA and AMD both released their new architecture with an enormous jump in performance. While the battle between team red and team green rages on, we have already determined who is currently leading (head over to our Bazaar section to find out) the charts. It would be too soon to conclude the winner since AMD has completely immersed itself into VEGA mode and in an attempt to make team red go sweaty, NVIDIA has released their top end skew. Enter NVIDIA Titan X. But wasn’t the older skew in the Maxwell architecture called Titan X as well? In a surprising
lack of creativity, they decided to simply call it NVIDIA Titan X rather than GTX Titan X. Weird! The top of the line GPU in the Pascal architecture, the Titan X will see a 24 percent rise in performance compared to the already powerful GTX 1080. With 11 teraflops of FP32 performance, it sees about 60 percent rise from
the older Titan X. It packs in 12 GB of GDDR5X memory and a new GP102 chip housing 3583 CUDA cores. Drawing in a maximum TDP of 250W using an eight-pin and six-pin PCIe connector, the GPU chip will run at a base clock of 1417 MHz and 1531 MHz boost clock. It’s priced at $1,200, or an approx `80,000.
3Doodler
Energy XL
Roam-e
3D printing pens sound cool and they are real. XYZprinting has released the 3Doodler directed towards kids, selling at only $50. This pen literally lets you draw on air, something very cool for a kid to have.
With big battery smartphones making its way, Blu has released the Energy XL with a massive 5,020 mAh battery, claimed to last for about three days. Does it actually do so? We’ll find out when we test it.
We’ve already seen drones capable of taking selfies for you, but the Roam-e not only has built-in facial recognition technology, it also takes 360-degree panoramic photos. Who needs smartphone cameras anyway?
SA
We live in amazing times where skipping ropes have become smart too. The Tangram rope consists of embedded LEDs that light up while jumping to notify you about your jump counts. Along with that, it will also track the calories burned and let you compete with your friends using a leaderboard. And the surprising bit is it’s available in the Apple Store for $89. So the next time you head over to get the latest iPhone, try this out!
P
S7 Olympic Edition
With the Olympic games around the corner, Samsung has a new variant of theor flagship smartphone the Galaxy S7 based on the international event.
14 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
Origins
28
Gorilla Glass 5 revealed
Gorilla Glass 5 survives 80% of time when dropped from 1.6m dgit.in/Gorilla5
M PL
E
Digital life
From tracing the origin of the first emoji in the world, to their evolution into the full blown lifestyle feature they have become
Smartphone
arnab@digit.in
A quick and easy fix to protect your phone from the moisture is to put it in a ziploc bag filled with rice whenever you’re taking it out in the rain or highly humid situations. But if this is too much jugaad for you, you should check the IP rating of the smartphone you have. It usually follows the pattern “IP mn”
SA
Arnab Mukherjee
T
he rain gods have showered us with their grace in most parts of our country by now, and by chance if you live somewhere that’s still running dry, this article will hopefully be useful to you too pretty soon. After the sweltering heat we had in the summers this year, all of us are more than happy with the ample downpour that has been happening. You know who isn’t happy? Your gadgets. Electronics and water aren’t exactly on good terms and barely manage to coexist if you’re lucky. And if you aren’t, then you’re in for a big hole in your pocket. Unless you’ve prepared your gadgets with the tips that we have compiled for you.
26 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
where m is the rating for dust protection and n is the rating for waterproofing. The n needs to be atleast 7 for you to be confident that your phone can take a brief shower with you. Some of the phones that satisfy that are the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Sony Xperia M4 Aqua and quite a number of Chinese manufacturers. If you’re an iPhone user, especially from the 6 or 6s range, you’ll have plenty of good waterproof case options. For others, we advise you to look for materials like Gore Tex which are certified waterproof.
Smartwatch/Fitness band
Don’t gasp the next time your phone enjoys the rain!
What good is a fitness band or smartwatch in the monsoon if you have to immediately pack it up when the rains start? This category of devices has the highest need for waterproofing. While
INDEX:
SA
M PL
31 TOP 20 PROMISING INDIAN TECH STARTUPS 35 INDIGENOUS INGENUITY 37 UNIVERSITY WATCH 40 7 TECHNOLOGY DOMAINS INDIA WILL DOMINATE BY THE YEAR 2030 42 SOLVING INDIA’S PROBLEMS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY 46 WHAT’S ISRO UPTO? 49 10 THINGS IN TECH THAT JUST WOULDN’T BE THE SAME WITHOUT INDIANS
E
COVER STORY
30 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
COVER COVERSTORY STORY
TOP 20 PROMISING
Indian Tech Startups
E
The Indian tech startup space is bustling with innovation right now. From apps to services, and even hardware, India is now home to some of the world’s most exciting, new technology products. Here are 20 Indian startups that are betting big on technology to realise their dreams and create unconventional products and services.
01
M PL
BY ADAMYA SHARMA adamya.sharma@digit.in
CARDIAC DESIGN LABS
Winner of Google’s Grand Jury prize at the Startup India Launchpad, Bengaluru-based Cardiac Design Labs is a healthcare tech startup, on its way to great glory. The startup aims at solving one of the most crucial health
was founded by Anand Madanagopal, a graduate from BITS-Pilani, who formerly worked with Tata Elxsi. MIRCaM is Madanagopal’s brainchild, as he looks to make cardiac care more affordable and accessible in India.
02
BIOMATIQUES
SA
Biomatiques Identification Solutions recently made the cut for Government of India’s `10,000-crore ‘fund of funds’ for Indian startups. Biomatiques bagged the number 3 spot in the list of 88 startups benefiting from the enormous fund. Their forte – Iris Recognition Technology. Established in 2012, the startup brought in the wave of iris recognition tech to India.
problems, not only in India, but also the world. Their flagship device, a Mobile Intelligent Remote Cardiac Monitor or MIRCaM, is an affordable cardiac monitoring system that comprises of a body unit, patient’s bedside unit, doctor’s terminal and doctor’s mobile app. The MIRCaM is capable of providing realtime patient alerts in the form of mobile notifications to doctors and hospitals. It’s portable and is best for post-operative monitoring at home. Cardiac Design Labs
Biomantiques’ India made iris scanners were widely used during Aadhar card registrations. They are also the only company to receive the Standardization, Testing & Quality Certification (STQC) from the Department of Electronics & Technology (DeitY). Housed in Surat, Gujarat, Biomatiques has a range of iris recognition devices under its belt. The startup has had a turnover of `10 Crore till date, with more government tie-ups in the pipeline.
03
BECK
Marrying technology and logistics, BECK Technology Ventures is a startup looking to disrupt the global logistics market by helping its users send anything anywhere economi-
cally, with a community-led approach. While BECK Instant Delivery is an app-based service that gives users the comfort of same-day deliveries within city limits, BECKFriends.com is a peer-toDigit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 31
SpaceX needs landing pads
Resurrecting Mars data
SpaceX,which is preparing for commercial Falcon heavy vehicle needs more landing pads dgit.in/SpaceXlandingpads
Sahil Dawka feedback@digit.in
Introduction and a Sphex-iation
This story, spanning the farthest of human reaches, begins with a winsome wasp, the Sphex. Though it flies around quite haphazardly, the Sphex lives a very routine life. It digs a hole, lays its larvae, and then heads out to hunt. It paralyzes its prey, drags it to the entrance of the hole, and enters to check that all is well, before taking dinner all the way home. Here’s the fun part - The wasp’s behaviour only ever occurs in that sequence. If you displace the prey while
52 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
the Sphex is scouting its den, the wasp will return the body to the entrance and go in to scout again. In fact it will repeat the exact same thing again and again, as many times as you, the experimenter, care to displace its children’s future food. Clearly, biological programming exists. Yet while a wasp may not have the conscious ability to override its genetically predetermined behaviour, we mightyminded humans certainly do.. Or do we? What does our consciousness do when it encounters the inexplicable? Seeing as, even rocket scientists are superstitious (which happens to be the meat of this
article), are we genetically predisposed to such unfounded behaviour? The thought of space agencies sticking to superstitions makes it seem like they are run by the aunties next door, who incessantly suggest which stones are suitable for which character flaw or flavour of success. It’s no secret that we humans are an irrational lot, but to think that it pervades the institutions dedicated to rational thinking of the highest order! Baffling! The very reason for the existence of Science is our need to predict the future and control the outcome to the best of our ability. Of course, in the process we also
IMAGING: PETERSON PJ
SA
M PL
E
Space Age
Nasa scientists are trying to resurrect Vikings 1’s analogue Mars data after 40 years. dgit.in/viking1Data
OUR PICK OF THE BEST TECH ARTICLES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
(MUST READS)
[The Vice Corner]
E
AI, WHO’S FAULT IS IT?
SOCIAL MEDIA JOURNALISM
M PL
With social media already disrupting the news industry, technology has been serving several such tools in the hands of masses that enable them to share their opinions. But the more important questions here is, how much of it is actually true? Is technology to be blamed for the disruption of truth.
http://dgit.in/SMjourn
CURATING THE BEST MUSIC
Deep learning is the key to better and efficient AI, but do we really know how these work? In case of a screw-up, how would we decipher who’s at fault and who is to be blamed if we still don’t know how algorithms make decisions! http://dgit.in/FaultyAI
SA
Selecting what is ‘good music’ is definitely a challenge, especially here at the Digit office. The fight between 90’s rock and the currently trending pop and EDM is never ending. Anyway, here’s how professionals of the largest music streaming services curate and organise their playlists to suit your needs.
http://dgit.in/MStrSer
TO RULE THE WORLD
Focusing on artificial intelligence, commercial space travel, education and health care, here is how Founder & Chief Executive at Amazon, Jeff Bezos is planning for total world domination.
http://dgit.in/BezosRule
DEVOLVE THE INTERNET! The internet was supposed to be open to all, but now, mega corporations control everything, including access to some very sensitive information.
http://dgit.in/OldInternt
Hey there, I’m using an IM Instant Messaging platforms have become the backbone of communication in our lives. But while we’re definitely dependant on them, do we realise to what extent these IMs track our conversations, user behaviour, and settings?
Can we have a ‘safe’ self-driving car? On one hand, Google’s self-driving cars cannot be controlled manually, even in an emergency. On the other hand, other non-Google self-driving cars have got into an accident not due to software, but human errors. How do we use these cars to make our lives easier then?
http://dgit.in/IMStory
http://dgit.in/SafeSDC
Controlling your dreams with a smartphone If you ever wanted to fly like a superhero, even if just in your dreams, Lucid Dreaming apps on your phone can help. Here are stories of few active and aspiring lucid dreamers looking for an escape from the mundane. http://dgit.in/DreamCntrlr Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 61
> code / creativity / community > Hybrid OpenSource RDBMS http://dgit.in/HyRDBMS
Natural Language Processing With The Python NLTK
C
Science that deals with developing systems that can work with natural language. While most programming languages and markup is text data that computers need to process, NLP is fundamentally different since most natural languages don’t have a standardised unambiguous syntax. Natural languages like English can often be very ambiguous. Consider the sentence, “We saw her duck.” Does it reference the act of ducking. Does mean to say we saw a duck that belonged to this person. Or even that people used a saw on the duck to cut it. We sure hope it wasn’t this last one. Without additional context it’s hard to know what this means. Given our extensive experience with the world, we can say that the first interpretation is most likely and the last one is least likely. After all few people have ducks around and even fewer (one can hope) would need to cut a duck using a saw. On the other hand people duck all the time. And with that knowledge we can reason that it was the first case that happened, unless told otherwise. Computers can’t intuit the most probable meaning of this sentence like humans can. Or can they? Using machine learning it is possible to train computers to better make predictions about the meaning of text. As you can imagine they need to digest a lot of
SA
M PL
omputers have constantly been evolving to be easier to use and understand. They are now powerful enough to try and understand humans, rather than needing humans to understand them. Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Now are a new kind of interface that relies on asking your device to perform actions, or retrieve data using natural speech. Of course the first step these digital assistants do is to convert the voice data to text using speech recognition. But what then? When you ask Google Now, “What is the cost of the cheapest flight to Sydney leaving August 11th”, after converting that to text it still needs to actually recognise that you are querying flights from your current location to Sydney; that you want to travel on August 11th and that you want the cheapest flight. Traditionally this would involve filling in complex forms. Furthermore you could easily ask: “Which is the cheapest flight to Sydney on August 11th” or just “cheapest Sydney flight august 11th” and you should get the same result. Clearly Google is able to parse the key bits of data in your query and actually act on it.
E
>>The technology behind all the soulful conversations you’ve had with your phone> by Kshitij Sobti
Natural Language Processing Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the field of Computer
*Coding Matters
*Hotel search chatbot
*Microsoft’s NLP app
http://dgit.in/DMIZumata
http://dgit.in/MSCAPnlp
>> DMI works with Zumata to create hotel search chatbot with integrated NLP.
>> Microsoft launches CAP which is an IFTTT style natural language processing web app
*Niki gets NLP upgrade >> Niki, the chatbot that lets you order anything, gets advanced language processing abilities.
http://dgit.in/NikiNLP
devworx> | August 2016 | www.devworx.in 65
Valve's cease-and-desist Valve's lawyers have issued cease-anddesist to CS:GO betting sites dgit.in/CSGOBetting
Toolbox
The Flux Capacitor!
British automobile journalist Jonny Smith's fastest electric car the 'Flux Capicator!' dgit.in/FluxCapCar
Unable to get OTA updates, assembling a PC, dysfunctional ODD and more... Reset flash counter
Making a PC
Hey, I’m assembling a PC and it would be my first time doing so. I have a lot of questions and it’d be great if you could answer my queries. I’m afraid that I might mess up something and lose thousands of bucks. So here’s what I’ve decided to buy: • Processor - Intel Core i5-6400, • Motherboard - ASRock H170A-X1, • RAM - G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4 F4-2133C15D (2x4 GB), • HDD - Seagate Barracuda ST100DM003 1TB, • SSD - Kingston SSDnow UV300 120 GB, • GPU - Gigabyte GTX 960 (4 GB), • SMPS - Antec UP650p V2, • ODD - LG GH24NSD1, • Keyboard and Mouse - CM Storm Devastator, • Monitor - BenQ RL2240HE, • Cabinet - Antec X1-T Gaming, If you have suggestions to change do let me know. Could you please check this build and tell me if they all are compatible and if I can fit them all in my cabinet (Antec X1-T). This is my biggest concern, do let me know if there are any compatibility issues. I used your mid-range gaming rig in your magazine as reference and I found a website called Primeabgb. Is it fine to order components to NOIDA using this site? If not please suggest others. Would I need to buy a heat sink? If yes, then please suggest one. Also, I was wondering that the cabinet already has cooling fans so do I really need a cooling system? I'll be using http://dgit.in/OldBld as a guide. Is it good enough? Are there any cabinet specific tutorials?
I'll be really grateful if you could help me with this. I found out that the fans in the cabinet is creating air flow... So is the processor really without the heatsink? I read online and it is supposed to have one
SA
M PL
I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab A (SMT350). I recently rooted it to install CyanogenMod on it. But unfortunately, there was no ROM available, even on XDA. So I decided to Un-root it again with all the updates and all. I un-rooted using SuperSU but when I click on update, a window pops up that says “You have modified your system in an unauthorized way…” I reinstalled everything using Smart Switch on PC but still it’s the same. I know that I have to change the parameters that appear when I boot to 'downloading mode' (Bootloader) that are 'custom' values to the value written at the time of manufacturing. But I don't know how. Please help. The tablet is running Android 6.0.1 –Adityan Singla
E
Personal technology can start acting up at the weirdest of times but lucky for you we’re here to help.
Reset flash counter to get updates
On Samsung devices, you need to reset the flash counter back to zero. The flash counter keeps count of how many times the ROM has been written over. Since your OS is post 4.3 you should see “Custom Binary Download: Yes (xx Counts)” and you need to reset this counter to zero so that it says “NO”. Follow the instructions given on this page (http://dgit.in/2aiXUst) which highlights how to use Triangle Away to reset the flash counter. Do note that this isn’t a procedure with a 100 per cent success rate. Once you get that done you’ll be able to download updates OTA.
78 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
Assembled PC
but why is the unlocked versions box so thinner than normal? Also, please inform me if any of the above mentioned parts are not required. Though the build is in budget and I still have money to spare, I don’t want any wasteful spending. –Pulkit Singh
Hey Pulkit, you’re on the right path! Let’s take a look at all your queries one by one. Yes, all of the above mentioned components will fit in the Antex X1-T. As for which shop to get your parts from, you can go with Primeabgb and they will ship your components to Noida. You will have to handle RMA yourself, that’s all. As for the heat sink, the stock heat sink is more than sufficient for the Core i5 - 6400. You should regularly clean your heat sink every six months to ensure your temperatures are low. And re-seat the heat sink every two years while re-applying new thermal paste.
INSIDE
Page 83
Bazaar
M PL
THE LATEST PRODUCTS REVIEWED FOR YOU
E
RHA T20
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.
Page 87 Asus ROG G20CB
For better understanding of our ratings, hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a quick guide to our overall score to
30
31
to
50
Page 88 ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme
Extremely poor product. Keep away!
SA
10
Page 85 GIGABYTE GTX 1060 G1 Gaming
Strictly OK.
Not recommended
51
to
70
Decent product.
71
to
90
Very good product.
91
to 100
Go for it, but there may be better products out there.
Highly recommended.
Ground-breaking product.
Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen anything like it before. A definite must buy!
80 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
Page 89 Dell Inspiron 15 7559
&MORE...
Page 90 HP Elitebook Folio
DARPA’s radio challenge!
Remember BB-8?
DARPA has challenged participants to develop radio that prevents wireless congestion dgit.in/Darpachallenge
The insides of BB-8 from Star-Wars and how it works dgit.in/StarwarsBB8
Bazaar
AMD RX 480
AMD has hit it out of the park with the RX 480
M PL
E
T
he AMD RX 480 is driving AMD’s return to the desktop graphics arena. We say desktop because they’ve been ruling the console arena for quite a while as both Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PS4 run on AMD’s graphics solutions and even their upcoming console refreshes are reportedly carrying Polaris based GPUs. Priced at Rs.20,990 and Rs.22,990 for the 4 GB and 8 GB VRAM SKUs, the AMD RX 480 might not seem to be competitively priced in India. After all, these aren’t the launch prices as AMD dropped Indian prices for the RX 480 by Rs.2,000 within two days of the card’s launch and even further about a month later.
Performance
SA
We started off with 3DMark managing to score 10511 in Fire Strike, 5201 in Fire Strike Extreme and 2691 in Fire Strike Ultra. Unigine Heaven 4.0 scored 1635 with the RX 480 which is quite close to the GTX 970 and definitely better than the 960. Then came Shadow of Mordor. While the game is a bit old it still manages to tax graphics cards while running at 4K resolutions and that is exactly the case here. The game’s internal benchmark runs effortlessly at 1080p but cranking it up to 1440p brings the FPS below the 60 FPS threshold and 4K takes it down even further. However, the game is playable at 4K with very few high-NPC scenarios actually causing the FPS scores to drop below playable levels. On the other hand, Rise of the Tomb Raider was a completely different scenario. Using our extreme preset even at 1080p the game ran a little below 60 FPS. Needless to say, 1440p and 4K was even lower with the game managing roughly 13 FPS on average. We are quite eager to see how well the game performs with two RX 480 in CrossFireX. Having a closer look at the frame times, it seems that out of the tree sequences, the first two run quite smoothly. Benchmarking DOOM was quite interesting, especially since we had the option of switching between OpenGL and Vulkan APIs. The game ran quite smoothly throughout the entire benchmark sequence on either APIs at 4K. The only place we saw a bit of delay was while panning across wide open spaces with lots of objects far in the background. However, the complete eye-opener was the performance difference between the two APIs. Running the benchmarks with Vulkan
Price90 22,9
resulted in a tremendous performance increase. Throughout the benchmark across all three resolutions, we saw an increment of approximately 35%. Since Vulkan is heavily based on AMD’s Mantle, this makes us wonder how Mantle would have performed had it been adopted by the industry widely.
Verdict
AMD has truly hit it out of the park with Polaris. The new architecture coupled with the transition to 14nm FinFET has resulted in profound power savings and performance increase. The card at launch did draw an excess amount of power from the PCIe slot instead of the power connectors but that was resolved in driver version 16.7.1 and there has been a good amount of performance increment with Vulkan as well. The only factor that throws a spanner in the gears is that of pricing. While it may be $199 in overseas markets, there are countries like India and Australia where the FOB isn’t the same as overseas markets. Resulting in a price gain, add to that a convoluted distribution hierarchy and we have an even greater price rise. However, this affects both AMD and NVIDIA so the RX 480 and its counterpart, the GTX 1060, are in the same price bracket in India. Both of these cards are meant to be the sweet spot cards but that’s going to change, at least for India. The RX 480 is a great card, it runs almost all current gen AAA titles at 1080p at max with no issues. Even 1440p isn’t that taxing, and if you know which settings to tweak then you’ll enjoy 1440p gaming with no visual difference than 1080p. However, when it comes to 4K, the RX 480 needs a helping hand from another RX 480 and here’s where the AMD card has an advantage. Mithun Mohandas
70
Performance................. 70 Build................................ 75 Value for Money........... 65
Specifications
RX 480 Polaris; Stream Processors: 2304; Compute Units: 36; Core clock: 1120 MHz; Boost clock: 1266 MHz; VRAM: 4 / 8 GB GDDR5; Memory clock: 7 Gbps (4GB) / 8 Gbps (8GB); Memory bus width: 256bit; TDP: 150 W; Power Connectors: 1x 6-PIN
Contact
AMD Contact: https://support. amd.com/en-us/contact Website: www.amd.com Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 81
Column
The commodity oddity
T
mithun@digit.in
E
companies innovate, they jack up the price and expect to make a killing. So far, very few companies have managed to pull that off – aside from Apple. Another way storage devices have tried fighting commoditisation is by offering additional cloud storage space to gain an edge over the competition except for the fact that offering cloud storage space is remarkably easy and in a country like ours where making use of cloud storage is a bane thanks to our ailing internet infrastructure, this offering isn’t exactly a value addition. Portable storage is fighting a losing battle against commoditisation, while tricks like offering cloud space, colour options and easy backup solutions are all falling flat. On top of that, drive manufacturers have reduced warranty periods in order to shave off logistics, replacement and repair costs. There seems to be hardly any reason to prefer one brand over another other than price (and RMA rates for those who care). And thus, over 200 companies have come and gone with just three survivors – Seagate, WD and Toshiba. I for one am all in favour of commoditisation of certain hardware. Now before you throw that brick at me, hear me out. A standard 1 TB HDD costs $49.99 in the US, which at the time of writing this works out to `3,362 and the same device sells for `3,723 in India. The cost difference literally amounts to the import duty paid to bring this drive to India. Now imagine if every PC component underwent the same. Computers would cost roughly the same here as they do overseas. More and more Indians will have access to computers. And the effects of increasing access to ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) on communities have been well documented which not only increases the household income but also results in an impressive year-on-year growth of the economy as a direct result. The now wellquoted One Laptop per Child program from Uruguay is a shining example. Except that required the government to spend a significant chunk of money to make it a success. Commoditisation just does it for you. It results in an increased expenditure by companies to innovate while also reducing unit prices to be competitive. Sure, a few years down the line this leads to a duopoly or worse, a monopoly, but that’s a battle for another day.
M PL
Mithun Mohandas Senior Reviewer
he most abused and over-used word these days is “startup”. Everyone has one, or works for one, or dreams of one, and yet, almost all fail, and even the ones that survive are just clones of some idea that worked in some other country. Yes, exceptions exist, but they’re not the rule. So what is the rule? Seems to me the new rule is the commoditisation of everything. What’s that mean? It’s when even products with unique features start appearing just like everything else, and consumers stop seeing any real innovation in that field. Remember, this is a perception, so whether or not any innovation actually happens or not is irrelevant, what matters is what consumers think. Commoditisation is like a slow-tightening noose that tightens around a CEO’s neck over the course of time. You combat commoditisation by innovating and evolving your products or by offering freebies that your competitor can’t. The former approach can stave-off commoditisation (sometimes) while the latter only buys you a little extra time. For a business, it means that you can’t charge a premium for your product since price is all that matters anymore, and brand loyalty accounts for nothing. So your ability to make money from your product is severely curtailed. What we need to glean from this is that the lack of innovation can make ginormous institutions of our generation like Yahoo! bite the dust. Yah(ooh)? Technology journalism is at that point where half the time you end up covering upcoming technological wonders while the other half is spent writing obituaries for tech companies. However, there have been moments in the world of personal computers when hardware manufacturers tried to do something new and failed. Take WD, for example, which came out with the WD Black2, a hybrid storage device that combined an SSD and a hard drive in the same body. This was around the time SSDs were achieving mainstream acceptance and hybridisation had already started. SSHDs were quite common but the NAND chips were only used for caching, getting performance and space meant that you’d have to invest in an SSD and a HDD separately. Not an issue for form factors not constrained by space but for laptops, it was an either/or situation. The WD Black2 not only had a 120 GB SSD but also a 1 TB dual-platter 5400 RPM HDD. It could have been heralded as the new prophet of the technological world, if only it had been priced right. You don’t see products like the WD Black2 anymore, and the storage sector has moved on to the M.2 form factor. The issue here is that when
SA
“There seems to be hardly any reason to prefer one brand over another other than price"
Let me know your thoughts on this column at: @mithun_mohandas
Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 91
3D printed car!
Arizona company creates completely 3D printed car! Full story here dgit.in/car3Dprint
Bluetooth Speakers
Hacker pays Taxes!
A hacker has paid man’s taxes only to steal his refund in an interesting case of online theft. dgit.in/Hackertax
M PL
E
OF BASS AND BLUES
SA
FOUR PREMIUM BLUETOOTH SPEAKERS, EACH WITH ITS OWN SET OF ADVANTAGES, BATTLE IT OUT TO BE THE BEST IN CLASS. FIND OUT WHICH ONE COMES OUT ON TOP.
Souvik Das
souvik@digit.in
P
remium bluetooth speakers, priced upwards of `15,000, are always seen as a luxury. The niche usually brings commendable audio quality to the table, alongside premium looks and additional features that justify the hefty price tags. While you may argue that it is always worth it to pay for good speakers that churn out warm, tight and rich audio, at the premium segment, you cannot be blamed for wanting more than just the essentials.
92 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
The four speakers in question here are Boom 2 by Ultimate Ears, B&O’s Beoplay A1, and Creative’s Sound Blaster Roar and Roar 2, two generations of multi-functioning units that also happen to be speakers. Each offers a different characteristic for prospective buyers. The Boom 2 is geared more towards the youth, with water resistance, funky colours and sturdiness fused with solid, reliable audio performance. Bang & Olufsen have always excelled at luxury gadgets, and the Beoplay A1 brings luxury audio and design to the company’s most competitively priced
speaker yet. It looks gorgeous, and sounds equally good, but on the other hand, it lacks a microUSB port (in favour of USB-C) and has no water resistance of any kind. Creative’s wondrous Roar speakers, as you would probably know by now, are ridiculously feature-packed for portable Bluetooth speakers. The second generation Sound Blaster Roar 2 retains all the features that the Roar had, which include microSD playback, native audio controls, audio recording, speakerphone, power bank capabilities, and connectivity via Blue-
tooth, NFC, aux-in and USB audio. You can also charge these speakers via DC-in ports supplied in box, or standard microUSB cables, based on convenience. The Sound Blaster Roar 2 improves on the Roar with a smaller, lighter body and re-engineered mechanism to provide better audio quality. It is this diversity among these four premium portable Bluetooth speakers that makes for a compelling shootout. Should your speakers solely concentrate on delivering good audio, or do you deserve a mini gadget arsenal for the dough you shell out? Find out.
Recommended buys
Killer rigs
Street smart
100
We tell you about the best components to look for various PC rigs at different budgets.
101
The very best products you can buy right now spanning across 10 popular tech categories. Have a fun time buying!
VR Headsets To induce headache and nausea or not?
E
Agent 001 agent001@digit.in
I
M PL
n all my time exploring the length and breadth of consumer technology products and services, I’ve come across many self-professed “revolutionary” breakthroughs in technology. The most recent one that comes to mind is how stereoscopic 3D in televisions was going to be the next best thing in home entertainment. The marketers got that one wrong, obviously, as close to four years on and 3D TVs have still not caught consumer interest. VR, on the other hand, looks a lot more promising for two main reasons: it’s a whole new product category with SKUs at affordable prices. VR-driven products are being announced and launched thick and fast. A lot of the hero products, the flag bearers of VR – the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR – have still not launched in the market. But already there’s a flurry of activity from content providers in the form of VR-enabled games (Steam) and 360-degree videos (Facebook, Google, etc). And as expected, OEMs and startups are hastily trying to launch their products in the market. Apart from the Oculus Rift, which I’ve had a chance to try every year since 2013, and HTC Vive VR, which I experienced a few months earlier, everything else has been second best as far as a full-blown, immersive, 360-degree VR experience is concerned. Both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are VR headsets that need a pretty powerful PC to pump in specially created content. While both products haven’t yet started selling in the market, they’re the best that VR has to offer for all early adopters and well worth the wait. Apart from creating a highly immersive environment, the biggest challenge for any VR headset is to make the wearer feel as comfortable
SA
as possible, and these two headsets from Oculus and HTC are the only ones that have managed to overcome a substantial amount of these two obstacles. They’re by no means perfect, but it’s the best the industry has to offer for any enthusiast at the moment. I’ve also tried out Tesseract (another VR headset) from Absentia VR, a company started by a bunch of BITS Pilani dropouts. Their solution is also PC-powered, converting 2D content into stereoscopic 3D, and I tried an FPS game on it, among other things. This device was a notch below the Oculus and HTC Vive, in my books, but from the prototype I first tried in November to Tesseract’s latest iteration which sells for `20k and supports 1440p, the quality has improved substantially and if you want to try a local brand, then be sure to give this a try. What about Microsoft HoloLens? Well, I recently had a chance to try it out in a developer’s expo in Boston and I definitely liked what I saw. However, Microsoft has only just started releasing a development kit of the device, which is priced at a whopping US $3000 (or approx. `1.9 lac), which just makes it an extremely niche product that will only attract very
98 Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in
few customers to begin with. I think you shouldn’t hurry to pick this one up, just yet. It’s a good thing that it isn’t available for customers outright. Hah! Then there are a bunch of mobile VR headsets that have started flooding the market. VR headsets that essentially let you place your smartphone in the headset and you watch 360-degree videos and other content off of it – it doesn’t need a PC connection of any sort. You’ll see them being sold on Amazon, Flipkart, Ebay, Snapdeal, and other ecommerce platforms online. Just how good or bad are these early mobile VR headsets? Well, the only “good” mobile VR headset I’ve tried so far is the Samsung Gear VR, but even that suffers from slight pixelation and only supports select Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Other attempts from companies like Converge VR (from Mumbai), Procus VR, etc., are trying to undercut the expensive mobile VR headsets by offering sub-`10k and sub-`5k headsets. I’ve received both of them, and a few others which aren’t worth mentioning, and these attempts all but harden my conclusion on mobile VR headsets at the moment. Stay away from them, they’re not worth the money!
Smart SoHo
Tech@Work
104
A guide to making promo videos for free using online tools, that make the process of video making easier than ever before.
Work@tech
106
With IoT on the rise in every possible industry, now is the right time to make it a career choice. Here’s how!
Understanding the Indian camera industry
E
To more aware camera buyers, increasing count of DSLRs being sold, smartphones eating into compact camera sales and more, Mr. Andrew Koh, Vice President of Canon India’s Consumer Imaging and Information Centre, tells us how India has developed in the field of photography. Souvik Das
jump to DSLRs, instead of first choosing a digital camera and then progressing gradually. While smartphones do get you interested in photography, once you start using it, you realise the restrictions that such imaging has, which is increasing the number of people opting for a DSLR who get interested in photography and then wish to be more advanced.
M PL
souvik@digit.in
Do online stores make higher sales, or are offline stores still more important? For now, offline markets still have a bigger share, although online is catching up. We like to believe that we can have a good balance of both.
Andrew Koh, Vice President, Canon India’s Consumer Imaging and Information Centre
venient option, and that is why we are including it on our newer line of cameras like the EOS 1300D. We are constantly trying to evolve our product lineup to be in touch with the recent trends. Touchscreen is also very useful, and touch focus is a nifty addition to cameras. Seeing that you are so used to using touchscreen all the time with our smartphones, it is very easy to use and own.
SA
Ranging from entry-segment digital cameras to professional cameras like the Canon 1DX Mark II, which happen to be the most popular? The entry-segment of DSLR cameras has seen growth recently and remains the most popular, with a lot of first-time buyers entering the market. For instance, the Canon EOS 1300D is doing very well, and is aimed at first-time buyers. At the same, we have seen consistency in more professional cameras, as pro buyers are increasing and photographers are becoming more sophisticated. These buyers really know what they want, and are going for slightly higher level of cameras like the EOS 80D or even the EOS 5D Mark III. How are mirrorless cameras performing in Indian market? For now, it is still a very small market, although we do provide our users with an option to choose a Canon mirrorless camera with the EOS M3 and EOS M10.
A lot of DSLRs and professional cameras nowadays come with touch input, Wi-Fi, GPS and the likes. How big an impact do they have on the buying decision of camera users? Wi-Fi is indeed an attractive and con-
Talking about touchscreen, smartphone cameras have been steadily improving, and are impacting the entry-segment compact digital camera market. What do you have to say about this? Yes, I agree that smartphone photography has impacted the entry segment cameras, and I don’t think that you can deny it any longer. But, with that, what we have seen are users directly making a
Are there any specific lineup that Canon is thinking about to retain buyers for compact cameras? We have been observing the trend, and buyers of compact cameras nowadays prefer high zoom. This is important and smartphones cannot do this as of now. So we are targeting at providing compact cameras with more advanced features, as you will find in Canon’s G-series of compact cameras. They have more manual controls and better image sensors, hence, being better cameras beyond smartphone photography. What do you think are the key differences between the Indian camera buyers and the more advanced markets? It will not be very fair to compare, but for perspective, in markets like Japan, every family usually has three or four cameras, and naturally, this leads to more sales of compact or mirrorless cameras. In India, a lot of families may not even have a dedicated camera and are on the verge of buying their first cameras. On the other end, there are professional photographers who know exactly which camera to buy. The markets internationally are more balanced, while India is still growing. Full interview at: http://dgit.in/CanonIn Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 103
W O N K O T S T WAN
YOU
g device? in m a g d e r fer tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your pre a h W ? k e e game in a w urite quest nnection? u o o o v c y a t f o e r d n u r s o e r t y u ho like ome your In How many e ask Andinners will each get s w How fast is ll a is e r o w and a few mour efforts! 5 lucky rom SKOARâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vaults. s n io t s e u q f y to all these ssic games ewards for Responses all shower you with r Plus a handful of cla y. NPC, we sh he latest AAA titles short surve e h t e of t k a t to link below urvey16 s r a o Follow the k s / n i it.
http://dg
PLAYED Pokemon GO Zombie Age 3 Redungeon
MUST TRY Top crowdfunded games Bluestacks
VOLUME 14
08 AUGUST 2016 * ISSUE * A 9.9 Media Publication
LEARN LEGO Lore
THUMBS DOWN:
Why the upcoming console refresh isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worth your money
CONTENTS | AUGUST 2016
Pokemon Go
116
120
Top crowdfunded games of all time
LEGO
M PL
E
113
MOAR
113 | Mobile monthly 130 | Bluestacks 132 | Gaming consoles are doomed
124
A gaming renaissance
135 | SuperNova gaming carnival in Bengaluru 136 | Interview with Wicked Witch
SA
Bring SKOAR! To life by following these Simple Steps:
PICKS
Whether it is speed runs, graphics tearing or any other momentous grabs from our favourite games, we try to share it with our readers. For your viewing. 112 | SKOAR! | AUGUST 2016
Beat this Juke
Not even a scratch
Lock, stock and smoking trash can
Duration: 1 min 21 sec
Duration: 15 sec
Duration: 10 sec
For any of you who have played DOTA 2 will know how difficult is it to survive late game with Support heroes.
Some people have innate calmness that transcends those of tantric gurus. Michael De Santa is one such guy.
Post-apocalyptic Boston ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the best place to scrounge for shotgun shells, so you gotta improvise somehow.
http://dgit.in/DtaDfnce
http://dgit.in/NoScratch
http://dgit.in/TrsCan
Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/SKOAR
Follow us on Twitter: @skoar
Unwind
140
Community
142
How to use FL Studio 12 to make EDM tunes like a pro mixer. Psst, it’s not at all difficult.
M PL
E
Esc
Pokemon Go has made people do some seriously crazy acts. We talk about all that and how this month went by at Digit’s office.
Arnab Mukherjee
you’re interacting with is a millennial or not. On that note, it is really important to be able to identify a millennial when you see one, and who knows, you might be one in your heart as well! Here’s how you can identify a millennial.
ally replacing toys and action figures with buttons they could mash and screens they could tap. It is no surprise that an average kid today can handle the latest smartphones with much greater ease than an average adult.
You literally cannot live without your smartphone
Your vocabulary includes rekt, fam, lol, rofl, ttyl and fml
You sleep with it, you wake up to check it in the middle of the night, you take it into the shower, and you’ve been caught multiple times in the classroom with it. Congratulations, one of the most evident identifiers of being a millennial is strong within you. There is probably an app for everything on your phone and your version of apocalypse involves a dead battery or no Wi-Fi. The emergence of smartphones was bang in the middle of an average millennial’s lifetime, with most of them gradu-
Shakespeare has probably been rolling in his grave for quite a while now. When texting arrived on the scene, it didn’t have too many restrictions and SMS plans were quite generous. Sending a text that just says “hi” wasn’t a creepy thing to do. When the restrictions hit, people turned to millennials for a solution. Lo and behold! Therein emerged the lols, the rofls, the ttyls and the rekts. The apparent ease and the microseconds saved with this practice spread like wildfire and even got widely adopted
SA
arnab@digit.in
IMAGING: PETERSON PJ
I
t has been quite a while since the dawn of the millennium, 16 years to be precise. Much has occurred in that period – phones don’t have buttons any more, there was a new Star Wars movie, our favorite comic book heroes have come alive and you can actually go out and catch Pokemon now. But perhaps what is more significant than all of the above is emergence of a new generation of people – the millennials. Before you go up in arms – Yes, we are using the term millennial for a mindset, not for an age. This mindset has gone ahead and defined some of the biggest trends of the present day and have set a completely new (and sometimes incomprehensible) way of living. Sometimes, it is even difficult to tell whether the person
Digit | August 2016 | www.digit.in 137
Digit Subscription Form . Duration
Cover Price
You pay
Assured Gift
You Save
Money Saver offers (With Fast Tracks & DVDs)* 6 Months
` 1,250/-
` 999/-
Cash discount of ` 251/-
(20%)
1 Year
` 2,500/-
` 1,899/-
Cash discount of ` 601/-
(24%)
3 Years
` 7,500/-
` 5,499/-
Cash discount of ` 2,001/-
(27%)
Magazine - Only Package (Without Fast Tracks & DVDs)** 1 Year
` 1099/-
` 1,500/-
(27%)
You Save ` 401/-
*Includes regular issues of ` 200/- each and higher priced special issues per year ** Includes 12 regular issues of ` 125/- each per year
Start / Renew my subscription from
m m
y
y
Name ______________________________________________________________________________________________ (First Name)
(Middle Name)
(Last Name)
Occupation_______________________Company___________________________Designation_______________________ Delivery Address _____________________________________________________________________________________ City _______________________ Pin Code ___________________ State ________________________________________ Telephone_____________________ Mobile_______________________ E-mail ___________________________________ (STD Code) (Phone Number)
(Please mention an active email-id to receive your copy dispatch details)
Subscription Number ______________________________________ (Only for existing subscribers)
Payment Details
Mail this form alongwith your cheque/DD to: Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd B-205, Arjun Centre Station Road, Govandi (E), Mumbai 400 088 Board line: 022-67899666 Fax: 022- 67899667
Subscribe online at www.digit.in/subscribe OR SMS â&#x20AC;&#x153;DIGIT SUBâ&#x20AC;? to 92200 92200 For quick customer service, email us at help@digit.in OR call (022) 678 99 678
TERMS & CONDITIONS: This is a limited period offer | Rates & offer valid in India only | Allow 5-6 weeks for processing of your subscription | Free assured subscription gift will reach you within 8 - 10 weeks of commencement of your subscription | Orders once placed will not be terminated or transferred | Specific colors and features of the guaranteed free assured gifts are subject to change depending on availability of the stock with the manufacturer | Destinations not covered by courier will be serviced by post under a certificate of posting | Replacements will be made upon receipt of the damaged goods within 30 days of sale | Above schemes are valid till 31st August 2016 | Price of assured gift may vary, but specifications will be unchanged.
SUB AUGUST 16
Enclosed Cheque/DD No.________________ (Kindly add ` 50 for cheques not payable at par in Mumbai) dated ______________ favoring Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt. Ltd from Bank _____________________________