The Static Page
Close enough
T
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 imme-
diately 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 thats
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 prefer-
ences users have (bass, aesthetics, brand
etc) this wasnt an easy task as youll 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 wouldve probably set-
tled 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 thats a different story. So anyway,
while discussing the development in
a tech-enthusiast Telegram group Im
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
hasnt attracted the attention of hackers
just yet. The security pages of both
services offered up the usual spiel: AES-
256 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 vul-
nerability in its Chrome extension. No
one on the group could objectively say
whether ones security was better than
the other. Strangely enough, the quick
shortcuts we humans use for decision-
making led to a common consensus
Siddharth Parwatay
Managing Editor
I had to tread the middle
ground to come up
with the most objective
answer possible. An AI
wouldve probably settled
for insufficient data
within the group: Even if 1Password is
safer just because it hasnt attracted the
attention of truly skilled hackers, isnt
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 equa-
tion. This is almost like saying Ill put
all my gold in that bank in the inside
gully of a nondescript area, because hey,
chances are robbers havent noticed the
bank yet.
I know the analogy doesnt fit
perfectly, but you get the point: for an
advanced AI this is just a nano-second
run through its risk assessment sub-
routine. It wouldve either told you how
to diversify your risk by only storing
low-level passwords across multiple
providers or even told you that it doesnt
have sufficient data to make an assess-
ment. 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 thats already been
breached multiple times or a system that
hasnt been breached yet?. Hmmm
Makes a little bit of sense doesnt it?
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
wouldve returned a different answer,
but this thought exercise brings to mind
an old mathematician joke that Ive
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 dis-
tance 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 equa-
tion, blows a chip and figures out hell
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, Im not saying algorithms (or
AI) are entirely bad at approximations.
All Im saying is we humans are slightly
better at things like operating on senti-
ment, 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?
Reach me at: facebook.com/staticsid | @staticsid
| editor@digit.in
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 1
 The RSS Feed
Aye, Robot
W
hen I read about artificial intelli-
gence its always either doom and
gloom, or else its utopian sex-
bot, 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. Its
your fault really. Yes, Im blaming you, the
readers. Well not you Digit readers per se,
but the general readers of the online gobble-
degook 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 head-
line, 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.
Whats lost in the process is the actual meat
of the story (tofu, if youre 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: its 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 didnt say that, Elon
Musk did, Im merely repeating it because I
think hes 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 Im doing
my part in keeping someone employed (even
if it is an exercise in pointlessness in the long
2 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
run). Here you do everything yourself with
the help of machines, because people are
expensive. Its 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 Robert Sovereign-Smith
which will forever change human history, for Executive Editor
better or worse. However, that is as silly as robert@digit.in
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 We expect AI
species; its only over many generations and gaining sentience to
a long time that minor changes result in a
be this single event
new species.
Inevitably, a machine intelligence will
in time Terminator
become smarter than us humans in many style which will
ways machines are already better than us in forever change
many aspects. However, just as all species human history, for
evolve, so do machines. Every new version
better or worse.
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. Were already assimilated,
and will only become more and more reliant
on machines and AI in order to function.
Were 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 wont 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.
Liked or hated this column? Let me
know at:
robert@digit.in | facebook.com/
raaabo | @raaabo
 8-CORE SUPPORT WITH EXTREME
DIGITAL POWER OVERCLOCKING

GREATNESS WITHIN
GIGABYTE AM4 MOTHERBOARDS

120dB 120dB
Rear Panel Audio Front Panel Audio

Product features may vary by models. The above photos are for reference only.

Tel: +91-22-40633222 l Toll Free: 1800-220966 l Visit us: www.gigabyte.in

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Contents
APRIL 2017 VOLUME 17 \ ISSUE 04

QUICK
NAVIGATOR
01 ENTER
12 DGT
Desire
Greed
Temptation

26 DIGITAL LIFE
Origins - Hacking
Feature - Internet Speed

47 TOOLBOX
Tips n Tricks
Q&A

53 SCI TECH
Space Age
From the Labs

58 STREET
Agent 001
SMART
Price watch
Recommended Buys
Killer Rigs

64 TESTED
TRIED AND

32 Accepting AI
Bazaar
Comparison Test
Its time to come to terms with the future and
97 WORLDVIEW accept the integral part AI has become of our
102 TECH@WORK
Industry Connect daily lives
Careers - A.I

105 ESC
Feature
Unwind
Start Me Up
Enterpreneurship and AI have made eye 35
Community contact. What does their potential relationship
hold for us?

TRIED &
TESTED 65
MOTO G5 PLUS
67
NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti
68
GAMDIAS ARES
Upping the ante Bye bye TITAN X ESSENTIAL COMBO
Best in the budget

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

 ON THE DVD
Open source bundle State of Unreal
7-zip Unity GDC 2017 Keynote
Celestia
ClamAV Robotics Essentials
Clementine Arduino Software Image
FileZilla Eagle
GIMP Gazebo
Greenshot Microsoft Robotics
Handbrake Developer Studio 4
Juice Proteus Design Suite
81 SKOAR! (Now inside Digit) LibreOffice RoboDK
We take you back to the very beginnings of the Mozilla Firefox
beloved open world gaming genre PDFCreator Indie games
Pidgin Space Barnacle
MAKE THIS ISSUE OF DIGIT COME ALIVE Scribus Goldrushers Demo Image
BLIPP...BLIPP... BLIPP...
Thunderbird V.H.S.
FILL SCREEN
FILL SCREEN FILL SCREEN
IMAGE JUMPS
IMAGE JUMPS IMAGE JUMPS
WITH IMAGE
WITH IMAGE WITH IMAGE
TO LIFE! TO LIFE! TO LIFE! VirtualBox Image Battle Splash Pre-Alpha
DOWNLOADDOWNLOAD
BLIPPAR BLIPPAR
DOWNLOAD
BLIPPAR VLC Media Player Caveman Warriors
XAMPP Steel Ego Image
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Empire of the Fallen Steel
Download the Keep an eye out for Blip the image and get access
Blippar app Essentials Ground Floor Z Image
the Blippar icon next to video reviews, interactive
to some images games, and much more! G DATA Antivirus 2017 Jump Doper
Xinorbis Evobeasts
BlueStacks Image
53 In a land far, far Deluge Home-made robots
away... Universal USB Installer Start your own robotics
All about the planets from the ConEmu Image project with Spout, Spider,
Trappist system. XYplorer and Bit-zee!
Bit-zee Bot

102 Career in A.I GDC 2017

AMD
Spider Bot
Spout Bot with Solder
How to make a career out of A.I
NVIDIA GDC 2017
before it takes over all careers
for itself

GDC 2017
OPEN SOURCE BUNDLE

ROBOTICS
DVD ESSENTIALS

71 72
NIKON D3400 AMD RYZEN 7 1800X
A neat incremental update Competition at last

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 5

 April 2017 Volume 17 Issue 04
TO ADVERTISE PRODUCTS REVIEWED THIS MONTH

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
South: Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro
Ram Sarangi, Mobile: +91-98864 06961
Managing Director Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha GIGABYTE AORUS AX370-GAMING 5
Printer and Publisher Kanak Ghosh West: Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS
Publishing Director Vikas Gupta Suvarna Shringarpure, Mobile: +91-93249 28247 Digisol HR-1070MSE
GAMDIAS ARES Essential Combo(GKC6000)
Editorial
North:
Mayank Sharma , Mobile: +91-8800661912 Corsair Katar
Executive Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith
Antec GX1200
Managing Editor Siddharth Parwatay East:
Nikon D3400
Multimedia Co-ordinator Abhijit Dey Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Mobile: +91-93318 29284
Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II
Writers Arnab Mukherjee, Manish Rajesh,
Yangerlong Jamir
Comparison Test
ADVERTISING INDEX
Test Centre
FiiO EX1
Brand ............................................. Page No. Brainwavz S3
Asst. Technical Editor Mithun Mohandas
Reviewers Hardik Singh, Souvik Das, Shrey Pacheco Audio-Technica ATH-ANC33iS
Assistant Vikas Patil a-Jays Four+
Seagate .................................... Inside front cover
Tekfusion Twinwoofers M2
digit.in SoundMAGIC E10C
Editor Soham Raninga TP-Link......................................Inside back cover 1More Single driver piston
Assistant Editor Prasid Banerjee, Sameer Mitha Brainwavz B100
Features Editor Adamya Sharma Brainwavz M2
Senior Sub Editor Karthek Iyer United Health Group ..........................Back cover
Mgr - Online Shauvik Kumar

Gigabyte..................................................................... 3
Design GAMES REVIEWED THIS MONTH
Sr. Art Director Anil VK
Associate Art Director Shokeen Saifi Sniper Elite 4 Ghost Recon
ICTS............................................................................ 7
Visualiser Baiju NV Horizon Zero Dawn Wildlands
Lead UI/UX Designer Shri Hari Tiwari
Sr. Designers Haridas Balan, Charu Dwivedi, iBall - 1 ....................................................................... 9 Mobile Monthly
Peterson PJ & Manoj Kumar VP
I Love Hue Roller Coaster
Photography
Beatracer Tycoon
Sr. Photographer Jiten Gandhi Meghalaya ..............................................................15
Paper.io Soul Knight
Contributors Space Marshalls 2 Hidden Folks
Writers Anusha Sinha, Arjun Krishna Lal, Computex ................................................................25 Rival Gears Racing GetMeBro!
Meghana Gupta, Neha CV, Ronak Gupta,
Purusharth Sharma, Sahil Dawka, Varad Choudhari
iBall - 2 .....................................................................59

MAKE THIS
Production and Logistics
Manager Operations Rakesh Upadhyay
India Antivirus ....................................................111
Manager Logistics Vijay Menon
Asst Mgr Production & Logistics M P Singh ISSUE OF DIGIT
Executive Mohd. Nadeem Ansari

Published and printed by Kanak Ghosh for and

COME ALIVE
Brand on behalf of the owners, M/s Nine Dot Nine
Brand Head Mitin Kumar Mediaworx Pvt Ltd. Published at A-262, 2nd Floor, Step 1
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Asst Product Mgr Madhuri Goel Defence colony, New Delhi-110024 and printed at Download the Blippar
International Print-O-Pac Limited, C/4-11, Hosiery DOWNLOAD
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INDIA. Editor : Kanak Ghosh.
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6 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

Contact us
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8 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 DGT
All the latest lifestyle technology, gadgets to
Enter 12 drool over and gizmo porn like never before.
Desire, Greed and Temptation ahead...
) Hey there, it's me Rohit again. Its been
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
Namaskaaram Maash!
Mithun M
) 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 % world-
wide! (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 brother-
hood 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
10 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Feedback for the March 2017 issue of Digit
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! Youre 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)
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. Doesnt 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
Play Music Update
Adds settings for download and ability
to set audio quality when streaming
over WiFi. http://dgit.in/PlayAudio
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 interna-
tional 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 didnt
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 Ver-
satyl jacket pics or it didnt 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
 Apology
It has come to our notice that some subscriber copies of the Digit March 2017 issue are missing certain
components from the pack. Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused. To those
readers affected by this oversight on our part we have dispatched replacement copies immediately. Inbox

science especially Biology, were treated
as poorer cousins. As a Biology PG and
with a long career in environment and
pollution, I feel happy to see these areas
getting their due attention in digit.
I have been thinking about a few
ideas in the field of bio and enviro tech-
nologies which could result in a few (at
the least 4) Dmystify editions.
I love digit and the changes it has
been going through with the changing
times. So all the best to Digit.
Anirudha Cheoolkar
Thanks for noticing Anirudha. In fact
in this edition youll find a report on the
various techniques being employed to
resurrect an extinct species. As an expert
in the field wed love to hear your feed-
back on the same. As for the dmystify
topics, please do send us your ideas and
we can take the conversation forward.
Siddharth
) I was a very casual reader of the digit
until I took seriously the January 2017
issue of the magazine. Back story: I was
introduced to the magazine on August
2013 on a bookstore at a railway station
when the phrase Invisible Technology
on the cover (of July 2013 issue) grabbed
my attention.
With the new year I resolved to regu-
late the number of hours I spend online,
which gave me more time to do things.
I started with the January 17 issue
welcomed with an article upon writers
vision on tech trends for 2017 written by
Mr. Parwatay. The very next one written
by Mr. Smith tends to be more on how a
political event affects technology which
in turns results in some socio-economic
impact. Above two left me astonished
about the wide variety of content you
serve to the reader and pushed me to
continue reading. Then, came the sec-
tion (enter) which motivated me to write
this mail. The flow-chart like depic-
tion of a thought-provoking article on
e-books was a good idea and the back-
story pointed out in this article inspired
me to write my own.
Finally! The realization of how I was
keeping myself away from knowledge
pushes me to read the older editions of
the magazine that I already have. So, Ill
be writing to you based on my experi-
ence with them, if that is fine (consid-
ering things may go irrelevant at times
as Ill be reacting on the older issues of
the magazine)?
Note: There is one problem though -
reduce the glossiness of the magazine!
Chandresh S
Ahh yes the good old new years reso-
lution. But glad to see you sticking to it
and even more glad that we are playing
a part in your awakening of sorts. As
for your offer to send feedback on older
issues a resounding hell yeah!. Wed
love to hear your thoughts, criticisms
and any other feedback you may have.
Siddharth
) Hi Team Digit I want to tell you
DIGIT IS THE BEST TECH MAGA-
ZINE IN THE UNIVERSE! It's
been six months now since I started
reading your magazine and I still
remember the day I got my first issue
(august 2016). Actually, my father
subscribed to it as my birthday pre-
sent. When my father noticed I was
reading magazines too much, he took
up an issue of digit and opened it, I
could see his eyebrow raise in aston-
ishment and at that time my birthday
was nearing so he subscribed to digit
as my birthday present.
Some suggestions:
1) Why don't you change the digit
logo and give a little tech-like look.
2) Why don't you give some articles
on the history of some technology
devices, like how apple computers
were started.
Also, when I received this month's
issue (march 2017), the poster and
the FastTrack was missing from the
packet, please help me, as I am dying
to see this month's poster!
Once again, I want to thank you for
making me who I am. BEST OF LUCK
Archit Mishra
Sorry about the poster and Fast-
Track mix up. Hopefully you'll have
received our replacement copy long
before you are reading this. Thanks for
your kind words! Keep Digitizing.
Siddharth

LETTER OF THE MONTH

) Hey, I've been a frequent reader of your magazine
for the last two years and always got my issue
with no problems whatsoever. Today I received
my March issue and only to find it with pages
missing.Also the pages were flipped. Con-
sidering that your magazine costs higher
than others, There should have been a better
quality inspection.
And No, I don't want to download the app
for the e-book copy.
Now that we're complaining already, will like to
add that this is possibly the worst cover story idea with
all the Normie memes from 2013. 1/10, not dank at all and
so cringe worthy. Could have asked me instead fam, I have
a dank stash of freshly picked creamy memes always
at my disposal. Absolutely Disgusting Normie.
Shivanand Pegu
Hey fam,
You're right. Our memes weren't dank enough.
But get ready to cringe some more cuz we
were doin ourselves a heckin nostalgia. We
have failed our Kekistani brothers and let down
Pepe. We had to make do with pleb memes from
like, forever ago. We know, we know, absolutely bar-
baric. We'll be sure to do you a bamboozle if we ever get
access to your stash of dank memes in the future.
Team Digit

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 11

SECTION SUBSECTION
TECHNOLOGY WITH STYLE
Handle
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.
Caavo
Caavos 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.
12 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
DESIRE SHOWCASE
Smartflower POP
S martflower POP claims
to be the worlds 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 youre 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
uArm Swift
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.
GREED
For those who just want more
than should be humanly
allowed, we have enough to
satisfy your hunger...
THIS MONTH: Cars from the
Geneva Motor Show coming
to India soon, Louis Vuitton
Escale Spin Blue, Fastrack
Reflex, Oakter and more...
the stationary rooftop solar
panels. Once the sun has set,
Smartflower automatically
closes itself up. This isnt
called a smartflower 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
Braeon
The folks who
made this call
it the worlds
strongest and
most adaptable material.
Braeon is a lightweight
plastic ribbon that
molecularly fuses to itself in a
matter of seconds.
TEMPTATION
If youre wondering what to do
with yourself or how to spend
some time getting cultured,
this section is for you...
THIS MONTH: Iron Fist,
Logan, Fate of the Furious,
Persona 5, Samurai Jack S5,
and upcoming stuff to watch
out for in April 2017 ...
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.
Pixelvar
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.
 DESIRE

TAKE MY
MONEY!
Here is where we keep an eye on crowdfunded
projects that will make you go Shut up and
take my money!

Pebby MonsterBorg
P ebby is robotic pet sitter that helps you track, monitor and
even play with your pet remotely. Considering how important
pets are it comes as no surprise that we dont want to make
M onsterBorg is, in the words of PiBorg, The Ultimate
Pi Robot. This little monster truck has an aluminium
chassis, off-road wheels, fast motors, a self-driving code
any compromises when it comes to their well-being. Especially and a powerful motor controller. They call the controller
if we have to leave them alone at home alone for long hours. the ThunderBorg. The ThunderBorg and MonsterBorg have
This is where Pebby comes in. Pebby is a smart collar and ball both been built to suit any skill level. You can control the
system, which lets you monitor your pet through your mobile MonsterBorg via game controllers or joysticks, like you would
phone. You can even capture for any remote controlled car. Or you could control the Borg
images and videos with the via a web-based browser. You can even let the Borg drive
Pebbys wide-angle fisheye itself using a self-driving code. Theres a lot you can do here.
lens. Other features include The robot comes with access to several examples of code for
a bark/nudge notification, you to experiment and mess around with, from self-driving,
activity tracker, auto-play to robot racing if you plan on getting more than one of these.
and auto-follow features, Other than that, the MonsterBorg has up to three hours of
night view and more. You runtime, 4-inch off-road wheels, 4x 300 RPM Zhengke 37mm
can find this robotic pet motors, and is designed for the Raspberry Pi 3, Pi 2, B+ or P
sitter on Kickstarter. Zero. You can find MonsterBorg on Kickstarter.

PLEN Cube
P LEN Cube is a personal, customizable, palm-sized assistant
robot. Its size means that you can take it with you wherever
you go; your very own portable personal assistant if you will.
This tiny cube is capable of a lot of things. It can take panoramic
pictures and is capable of face detection. It can set notifications
and reminders for you. You can share your photos and videos
through the PLEN Cube, and listen to music. Its even got
an action camera. This 3-inch cube packs a lot of hardware.
Youve got a Full-HD camera, a display, a microphone array and
speakers. Its WiFi and Bluetooth enabled for instant sharing to
social media. Of course, theres an accompanying app as well
which helps you connect the PLEN Cube to the web services.
PLEN Cube can notify you though its display, movements,
sounds, or even send notifications directly through your mobile if
you so prefer. Interested? Look for PLEN Cube on Kickstarter.

www.digit.in| |April
www.digit.in 2017| |Digit
April2017 Digit| |13
13
DESIRE TAKE MY MONEY
Titan Note
N ow this is something anyone attending lengthy classes or
lectures will definitely want to have. How the Titan Note
works is simple. Just place it on your desk or table during class
or a lecture, and the Titan Note will not only record the entire
thing, but accurately convert the whole thing to text and even
summarise the whole thing for you! This effectively makes the
whole note making process a lot easier, and of course, your life
as well. The Titan Note is
capable of taking notes,
distinguishing whos
speaking, summarising
your notes for you,
translation, note sharing,
editing, organising and
more. Its small and
compact so its easy to
carry around. You can
access your notes via
an app thats available on both iOS and Android as well. But
thats not all, with the Titan Note you can also listen to music,
and even charge your mobile devices via its USB port. Were
definitely interested in picking one of these up. If you are too,
look for the Titan Note on Indiegogo.
Teslas Insight
T eslas Insight is a top, which is capable of generating
electricity by spinning. Its a tiny top for you to fiddle
around with on your desk. The Insight is capable of producing
between 1V to 6V of AC output. Output depends on how fast
the top is spinning and the orientation of its arch. The spinning
magnet is what generates the power. It was Tesla who realised
over a 100 years ago that a spinning magnet would generate
Alternating Current (AC) in nearby coils. Its the same principle
with the Insight. You dont have worry about getting a shock,
6V isnt shocking anyone. However, 6V is enough to power
some electronics, like LEDs for example. How long its powered
depends on how long you can get the top to spin. So as you get
better at your spin technique, stuff will stay powered longer.
Might be too much of a distraction at work though. Look for
Teslas Insight on Indiegogo if you want one yourself!
14 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Smart Sleeper Travel
Pillow
T he Smart Sleeper
is a travel pillow
for those who cant
sleep during transit
due to uncomfortable
seats, lack of neck
support, etc. Its one of
the reasons we dread
long journeys, i.e, travelling by train or bus. The Smart Sleeper
Travel Pillow comes with a built-in hoodie and sleep-mask.
Theres pockets on the side for you to slide your phone into.
Ideal for those who like listening to music while travelling. The
removable cover of the travel pillow is machine washable so
you dont have to worry about it getting dirty over time. The
base, or the meat of the travel pillow, is made out of memory
foam. Its everything that you would want from a travel pillow.
From the basics, to extra convenience, the Smart Sleeper has
got it. You can back the Smart Sleeper on Indiegogo.
Makeblock Neuron
M akeblock Neuron is an electronic building block
platform that utilizes easy-to-use tools for STEM
education. STEM education focuses on Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Makeblocks
goal is to make this easy and fun with its programmable
building blocks. It consists of over 30 types of blocks,
each with a different function, which creators can put
together however they want, to perform whatever
function they want. This is great for not just beginners,
but creators of any level to utilize. Neurons blocks are
software independent so they can work with or without
an accompanying software. However, paired with
the Neuron App, the blocks can perform much more
complicated functions. Neuron blocks are compatible
with Lego bricks as well, via the Neuron board. Neurons
protocol and library are open-source and can be found
on GitHub. If Neuron interests you, its on Kickstarter.
 DESIRE
MOBILE
WATCH
Stylish, glamorous and interesting
smartphones are always on the horizon. We
take a closer look at whats hot in this space...
Nokia 3310
T he Nokia 3310 was announced in
its new avatar. The 3310 is more
colourful now and has a colour display,
with a new design. It has a 2.4-inch
curved display on the front with a
polarised layer for better screen legibility.
Theres an all new UI and support for 2G
calling. Its all about going back to the
basics. Nokia claims one month stand-by
time and up to 22 hours of talktime. The
phone will have FM radio and will support
microSD cards of upto 32GB. The humble
feature phone will feature a 2MP rear
camera with a single LED flash. There is
no word on the pricing for the device, yet.
Oh and one more thing, Snake is back in
a new avatar and will come pre-installed.
16 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Nokia 6
N okia has announced that all three of its phones including
the Nokia 6 will be coming to India later this year. The
Nokia 6 smartphone, which is already available in China,
shares the same design as the Nokia 3 and 5 smartphones,
but offers slightly better specifications than the other two. The
variants available for this device are differentiated on the basis
of colour. Nokia 6 Arte Black Edition supports 4GB RAM and
64GB Internal memory whereas all the other colours, namely
Matte Black, Tempered Blue, Silver and Copper support 3GB
RAM and 32GB Internal memory. Arte Black Edition will sell
for approx `21000 while the other colours will retail for approx
`16000. The rest of the specifications for both the variants are
the same.
SPECIFICATIONS
Display: 5.5-inch, 1080p | SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 |
RAM: 3/4GB | Storage: 32/64GB, microSD supported |
Camera: 16MP, 8MP | Battery: 3000mAh | OS: Android 7.1.1
Price: 229 Euros (`16,200 approximately)
Nokia 5
B esides the 3310 and the Nokia 6, the Nokia 5 is the next
new Android phone from the company. Like the Nokia 6,
it features an all metal build. Priced at 189 Euros (`13,300
approx), the device is seemingly aimed at the mid-range buyer.
All the new Nokia Android phones use an almost stock like
UI, which Nokia claims will be updated regularly. All Android
based Nokia phones will also support Google Assistant.
While the Nokia brand does come with a lot of promises, the
specifications do look like they could do better at first glance.
SPECIFICATIONS
Display: 5.2-inch, 720p | SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 |
RAM: 2GB | Storage: 16GB, microSD supported |
Camera: 13MP, 8MP | Battery: 3000mAh | OS: Android 7.0
 DESIRE MOBILE WATCH

Nokia 3
T he Nokia 3, like the Nokia 5,
is another Android-based
smartphone targeted at the budget
market. Priced at just 139 Euros
(`9,800 approximately), the device
is likely to compete with sub-10K
phones in India. The Nokia 3 will come
with a 5-inch HD IPS LCD capacitive
touchscreen display with a resolution
of 720 x 1280 pixels at a pixel density
of 294 pixels per inch. The screen is
also protected by a Corning Gorilla
Glass Scratch Resistant display.

SPECIFICATIONS
Display: 5-inch, 720p | SoC: MediaTek 6737 | RAM: 2GB |
Storage: 16GB, microSD supported | Camera: 8MP, 8MP |
Battery: 2650mAh | OS: Android 7.0
The Nokia 3, 5 and 6 smartphones will also come with
unlimited storage on Google drive.

Huawei P10 and

P10 Plus
H uawei has also launched two new smartphones, the
Huawei P10 and P10 Plus. Both of them look like refined
versions of the Huawei P9. There is also a new chipset
powering the two new smartphones Huaweis custom-
fabricated Kirin 960 SoC. The Huawei P10 and P10 Plus
feature metal unibody designs and measure 7mm in thickness.
Huawei P10 uses a higher grade of Leica lenses, classified
under its SUMMILUX lineup. The P10 gets a pair of f/2.0
lenses, and the P10 Plus gets wider, f/1.8 lenses. Alongside,
you get upgraded sensors, and the P10s dual-camera

LG G6
mechanism now uses a 20-megapixel monochrome imaging
sensor for more emphasis on fine details and contrast levels.
The phones are also available in a number of colours
(Huawei partnered with Pantone to come up with two new and
radically different ones). The design, especially the minimized
antenna bands, particularly resemble Apples iPhone 7, and
T he second flagship phone to be announced at
MWC 2017 is LGs new G6. Moving away from
modularity, this year LG is betting big on display. The
so does a new Portrait mode with its camera for bokeh. The LG G6 features a 18:9 Univisium display, which is
home button has an integrated fingerprint scanner under the enabled by Dolby Vision and supports HDR 10. There
glass, and functions as the back button as well. Overall, its a is the signature dual camera setup at the back and all
significant upgrade in a good direction for the lineup. metal and glass design. Also, the LG G6 also becomes
the first smartphone, other that the Google Pixel, to
SPECIFICATIONS have the Google Assistant built inside the phone.
Huawei P10 Plus
SPECIFICATIONS
Display: 5.5-inch, 2560 x 1440p | SoC: HiSilicon Kirin 960 |
Display: 5.7-inch, QHD (2880 x 1440p) | SoC: Qualcomm
RAM: 4GB / 6GB | Storage: 64GB / 128GB | Rear Camera:
Snapdragon 821 | RAM: 4GB LPDDR4 | Storage: 32GB
20MP + 12MP | Front Camera: 8MP | Battery: 3750mAh |
or 64GB (2TB microSD card supported) | Rear Camera:
OS: Android 7.0 Nougat
13MP Wide (F2.4 / 125) / 13MP Standard OIS 2.0 (F1.8 /
71) | Front Camera: 5MP Wide (F2.2 / 100) | Battery:
Huawei P10
3300mAh | OS: Android 7.0 Nougat | Weight: 163 grams
Display: 5.1-inch, 1920 x 1080p | SoC: HiSilicon Kirin 960 |
| Size: 148.9 x 71.9 x 7.9mm
RAM: 4GB | Storage: 64GB | Rear Camera: 20MP + 12MP |
The phone supports LTE, Quick
Front Camera: 8MP | Battery: 3200mAh
Charge 3.0 and 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC
OS: Android 7.0 Nougat

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 17

 GREED
AUTO
Your one stop destination for a monthly
dose of all your automobile launches
and desires.
Cars from
the 2017
Geneva Motor
Show coming
to India soon
(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
Marutis new mild hybrid (SHVS) system. Alongside upgraded
engines and drivetrain, the new Swift also brings with itself a
radical redesign of one of Indias 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
As with all the new cars from Suzuki and Marutis 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
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 seem-
ingly popular Tata Tiago and adding more boot space in the
process - and who doesnt like that?
The new Tigor is expected to take cues from the Tiago,
including body-coloured inserts inside, a pretty decent Con-
nectNext infotainment package powered by Harman Kardon
and built on BlackBerrys 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 neces-
sities of a luxury SUV, taking the game right back to estab-
lished 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 front-
wheel 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 Skodas 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

from the curves exhibited by the Endeavour and Fortuner.
With the SUV market being one of the most popular in India,
Skodas new luxury offering has every potential to be one of
the most interesting prospects here. Whether it will fulfil that
expectation or not is something we can only tell once it is
launched for the general public.
Range Rover Velar
Falling in between the Range Rover Evoque and Sport in
terms of pricing, the new Range Rover Velar is expected to
enter India some time around Q3 2017. It is expected to be
made available in India with five variants - three with petrol
engines and two with diesel. The peak variant is expected
to produce impressive figures of 296 brake horsepowers of
power and 700Nm of torque.
Inside, it is expected to house Land Rovers custom
InControl infotainment suite, along with some of the intuitive
features that we have already seen in the new Land Rover
Discovery lineup. The new SUV is expected to offer all the
luxuries, and will be built completely in our very own JLRs
manufacturing plant in the United Kingdom.
This essentially means that the Range Rover Velar will
be a completely built unit imported to India, and as such, is
expected to open pricing at somewhere between `45 to 50
lac. with further variants priced higher.
Volvo XC60
The Volvo XC60 is only one of the most popular mid-sized
SUVs across the world, and a much-due facelift along with a
new infotainment package makes for yet another promising
entrant in the luxury SUV segment.
Interestingly, the Volvo XC60 will be a direct competitor to
the Range Rover Velar, alongside the Porsche Macan, Jaguar
GREED AUTO
F-Pace and others. Volvo has taken a number of cues from
the bigger XC90, all of which is evident in the design. The rear
still remains immediately recognisable as a Volvo, and its
new infotainment unit is well-stocked in face of its tech-laden
competition in the market.
Technological advancements on the new XC60 continue
with the drivetrain as well, with a T8 Twin Engine plug-in
hybrid engine that produces 401bhp, which takes the car
from 0-100kph in 5.3 seconds. With the luxury SUV competi-
tion ramping up in India, it remains to be seen how the XC60
fares against its competition.
Jeep Compass
The Compass is expected to be a more affordable Jeep SUV,
after the Wrangler and Grand Cherokee were introduced in
India as completely built units. The Jeep Compass will join
Indias SUV portfolio alongside the Skoda Kodiaq, and will be
built in Fiat Chryslers Ranjangaon plant in India.
To go with its all-terrain stance, the Jeep Compass is
expected to present all-wheel drive, and is internationally
available in both petrol and diesel trims. It is not clear yet as
to which variants will come to India, but there is a possibility
that Jeep introduces only the diesel variant here.
The category it will fall in will be a more competitive one
than the luxury segment, and Jeep will be up against already
established companies such as Toyota and Ford, who main-
tain a stronghold in this segment. It will be interesting to see
how Jeep ends up faring with its first competitive launch in
the country.
All of these launches promise an exciting season ahead
for automobiles in India. Whether youre looking out for a
hatchback, an SUV or a notchback, there is something for
every gearhead out there.
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 19
GREED AUTO
Tatas new hybrid
buses, and its Smart
Cities initiative
A t the launch of its new Starbus Hybrid and Electric
production units and the Hydrogen Fuel Cell bus
concept, Tata put a lot of emphasis on how it intends
to promote smart cities in India. The talk was centered
around Indias steadily worsening traffic situations, growing
concerns on pollution, sustainable means, and the pros-
pect of converting Indian metros into smart cities.
Each of Tatas new buses are equipped with GPS
modules that will relay traffic info, along with public
Wi-Fi network. Seats will have USB ports installed
for charging devices on the go, and Tata has also pro-
posed the making of a transit card - one which will
be valid across every mile of your commute.
First mile commutes will be covered by e-bikes and
e-rickshaws, taking you to a smart bus depot. These depots
are placed in regular intervals, and lead to transit hubs
that connect to different districts. The last mile con-
nectivity also works similar to first mile measures. You
Indias new tech-laden sports car, the
TaMo RaceMo
T ata was the surprising show stopper at the 2017 Geneva
Motor Show, with its snazzy new sports car, the TaMo
RaceMo. Developed by Tata Motors new subsidiary, the TaMo
RaceMo uses a new, flexible composite material in its Multi-
Material Sandwich chassis. The company claims that this
will allow faster production time, and its claimed 22-month
20 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
will get an app and constant Wi-Fi access to pre-book a
bus seat or electric van seat, recharge your transit card,
check timings and traffic, pay for all your commutes with
one card, and get personalised content services too.
A central traffic management system will monitor
the entire public transport system, and all the vehicles in
transit will be electric or hybrid, relying on clean energy
sources. It is this that Tata is aiming for with its new
buses, already having received orders for a fleet of 25 new
Tata Starbus Hybrid, and more is expected by it, soon.
development time from scratch for the RaceMo is itself quite
impressive for starters.
Shifting focus from its modular designing, the RaceMo is
the first car under Tata Motors and Microsofts connected cars
platform. Under this, the RaceMo will present advanced satel-
lite navigation, cloud storage services to backup and store drive
statistics and on-road driving details. This will allow predictive
maintenance assist, cues to improve car performance and in
future, even relay live road info and talk to other cars based
on the same platform.
Inside, the car has three TFT displays behind the sporty
steering wheel, something gamers would relate to. The mid-
engine RWD RaceMo is powered by a 3-cylinder, turbocharged
1.2-litre Aluminium intercooled petrol engine. The car is rated
to deliver 187 brake horsepower at 6500rpm, and 210Nm of
torque at 2500rpm, and has a 6-speed AMT gearbox.
All put together, the RaceMo is a good step ahead for the
Indian automobile industry, and a major one for Tata Motors.
With TaMo, the Indian carmaker is looking to change its market
perspective, and the new RaceMo is aimed for a March 2018
production launch at the India Auto Expo. Safe to say, we are
mighty excited for it!
 GREED
DROOL
MAAL
Get your drool on and behold some
of the fanciest, ostentatious and drop
dead gorgeous things money can buy.
Droolworthy?
Louis Vuitton
Escale Spin Blue
L ouis Vuittons Escale Spin Time watches are powered by
a newly developed, in-house, automated movement. Each
of the Escale Spin watches feature 12 rotating cubes, which
tell the time. The 2017 Escale Spin Time Blue however, also
features a flying tourbillon in the centre of the dial. The
flying tourbillon V-shaped carriage floats over the dial and
Louis Vuitton have enhanced this effect by using a specially
designed sapphire crystal. Time is indicated by one of the 12
cubes, each representing an hour.
While the cube that represents the current hour is white-
faced with the hours numeral on it, the faces of the rest are
blue and decorated with nautical flag motifs. The Escale
Spin Time Blue is accompanied by a navy blue alligator
strap with calfskin lining and a white gold pin buckle. The
watch case is 41mm in diameter. The case bezel, lugs and
crown are made out of platinum while the middle is made
out of titanium. The Louis Vuitton Escale Spin Blue will cost
you $123,000 or $182,000.
APP WATCH
AmpMe
Sometimes, to throw a party, all
you need are a bunch of friends
with smartphones. Oh, and
also the AmpMe app. The idea
behind AmpMe is pretty simple -
synchronized music playback on
multiple smartphones - something
many of us have tried to do so far
purely relying on the sync skills
of our friends. But if youve got
AmpMe, you can bid goodbye to
that trigger finger and let the app
do all the hard work. All participants need to open the app
and one of them needs to host a party. The app supports
playback from Spotify, YouTube and SoundCloud and also
your local music library.
Play Store: http://dgit.in/AmpMePS
App Store: http://dgit.in/AmpMeAS
Pocket Code
Ever wanted to create your own
games but balked at the sight of
programming books? Pocket Code
is an app that wants to help you
understand the basics of coding
while making you build games in a
fun and simple way. Once you start
the app, you should actually go to
the help section. In the help section,
topics are divided into areas as well
as expertise levels. For example,
Game Design covers a lot of things
like Character animation, collision detection and more,
with a dedicated subsection to each that contains a brief
explanation, an instructional video, and the option to
download the program used in the said video.
Play Store: http://dgit.in/PocketCodePS
Planner 5D
Is VR merely restricted to being
an entertainment platform right
now? Planner 5D doesnt agree.
The Android and iOS app might look
like just a home planner to begin
with. However, it is a pretty handy
one at that. Hit the new project button and you will see a
coloured blueprint of a typical 5m x 5m room in front of
you. The red plus + button is where most of the stuff that
you can add to your house lies. You can switch the view
to 3D anytime with the 3D toggle button. But the real fun
begins when you hit the cardboard icon - you are thrown
into the middle of a VR representation of the house you
were just designing! Explore your dream house in VR if
youre patient enough to design it in the first place.
Play Store: http://dgit.in/Planner5DPS
App Store: http://dgit.in/Planner5DAS
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 21
 GREED

EXAMINED
Some very cool products come to the
Digit Test Centre which dont really fit into
the standard product categories that we
review in the Bazaar section. We write
about them here mostly to make you turn
green with envy.

FiiO X5 3rd gen a bit depth of 32-bits are rare, but hey, props for futureproofing.

T he FiiO X5 3rd Gen is a Hi-Res Digital Audio Player directed at

Audiophiles who dont want to compromise on audio playback
quality even when on the move. Sporting a 4-inch IPS full touch
display, the device runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop. Interestingly, the
UI for the device is simply an app called FiiO Music, which is quite
user friendly. The build quality is top notch with a sturdy chassis and
a PU leather cover thrown in. It features two concealed microSD
card slots on one side and a solid volume knob on the other. At max
supported values, the cards together up the capacity of the device
to a whopping 512GB. This brings us to the most important bit
about the device whats inside. The FiiO X5 3rd Gen doesnt use
just a single DAC chip, it uses two! One DAC AK4490 will decode
sampling rates of 44.1/88.2/176.4/352.8 kHz while the other will
be dedicated to the 48/96/192/384 kHz rates. Files sampled at
The audio playback time you get from the 3400mAh battery
is quite impressive but the standby time was a little troubling
especially after we upgraded to the 1.1.2 firmware build. Hope-
fully, its a small niggle that future software updates will solve.
SPECIFICATIONS
Dimensions/Weight: 114.2mm x 66.2mm x 14.8mm; 186g
| Display: 3.97-Inch IPS TFT touchscreen, 480x800p |
DAC: AKM AK4490EN | SoC: Cortex A9 SoC Rockship
RK3188 | RAM: 1GB | Storage: 32GB; expandable to 512GB
via two microSD slots | Battery: 3400mAh Li-Polymer
battery | Format support: DXD, DSD, FLAC, WMA, AAC,
DTS, WAV, APE, OGG, etc | Playback: 3.5mm, balanced
2.5mm TRRS, 3.5mm line out, DLNA, Bluetooth (aptX)
Price: `27,299/- (www.fiio.co.in)

R.E.V makes use of a rechargeable Li-ion

battery pack. Together you can play
around for about 15 whole minutes

Q uirky and different, R.E.V. is

a combination of two toys in
one package. You get a toy drone
and a car one of which one you
control and the other can either
be controlled by another human
player or you can leave it to the AI.
You can even club multiple sets
together and the app UI colour
indicates which unit is currently
being controlled. The set up is easy, all
you need to do is install the app, switch
on Bluetooth and youre set to begin an
epic game of cops and robbers. You can
run either toy solo, in which case, the car
is a lot easier than the drone. The chase
begins when you move the car around
and the drone initiates the chase. Both
devices have weapons to fight back. The
car runs on 4 AA cells and the drone
before youll need to recharge the
drone. If you havent ever flown a
drone then the two player mode
will either end up being a lot more
fun or ridiculously frustrating based
on how good the drone driver is.
So its better you practise with
the drone solo before you decide
to mouth off to someone about
your mad flying skills. There are a
few game modes available currently
with more to follow in future updates.
R.E.V is sold in India by Hamleys.
Price: `18,999/-

22 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 GREED EXAMINED

Oakter Basic Smart Home Kit

W hen it comes to setting up an automated home, it doesnt
get more plug-n-play than this. The basic kit from Oakter
comprises of a hub, a 6 amp smart plug and a 16 amp smart plug.
You also need to install the Oakter app from the Play Store or the
App Store to start using it. Before anything, you need to connect the
hub to a power source and then fire up the app.
Your exclusive control over this setup is ensured by a login ID
and password located within the package, which is required to sign-
up on the app. Post that, you need to provide access to your home
Wi-Fi from within the app. Once that is done, you can connect and
operate your smart plugs just like enabling and disabling any par-
ticular toggle on your smartphone. You can also set up schedules
for the switches to power on and off. For example, youre on your
way home and you want a hot shower the moment you get back
just switch on the geyser at the right time from the app.
The setup is pretty basic in terms of whats available on the
market right now, but it is reasonably priced too at `5,700/-. The
only con in the setup are the switches themselves which are quite SPECIFICATIONS
big. You may have to take into account the neighbouring switches Hub - WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n | Input: 5V 2A DC; Firmware
and their accessibility if youre using one of these. But if you dont upgrade: OTA
6 amp smart plug - Input: 200-250V AC | Peak Load: 10A
mind the size and the additional bulk on your switchboards, Oakters
16 amp smart plug - Input: 200-250V AC | Peak Load: 20A
Basic Smart Home kit is a pretty good way to boost your homes
smartness quotient. Price: `5,700/- (www.oakter.com)

Fastrack Reflex
notifications, and so on. At that price point, a similar tracker
from Xiaomi, the Mi Band 2, also offer a heart rate sensor but
calling that a deal breaker would be too harsh, especially since
we rarely use that feature anyways.
The design is the strongest thing the Reflex has going for it,
with a textured dual-color band upping the style quotient. The
size of the band itself is a differentiating factor. The width is
closer to that of the Microsoft Band, as compared to the generic
design in fitness bands that is seen in most competitors. The
metallic latch design adds an element of style to an already
well designed band. To be fair, the rigidity does become an
issue when you are trying to release the capsule from the strap
to charge it, but in a few tries, you will be able to master the
technique without risking damage.
The step and sleep detection are pretty standard and rea-
sonably accurate. The app could use some work. The manual
sync method is to refresh the data screen by pulling it down,

W earables are the eternal new-things in the tech market

and every company even remotely related to this area
is seemingly interested to dive in. So it isnt a surprise that
Fastrack, a youth oriented Titan subsidiary, launched an activity
tracker recently. Priced at Rs. 1995/- it sports pretty much
the standard feature set you find in such devices, namely,
step counter, sleep tracker, vibrating alarms, call and SMS
which will, in turn, update the numbers from the band. The auto
sync, however, was quite unpredictable.
Overall, if you are looking for an activity tracker that catches
eyeballs while offering you the basic features reliably, made by
a brand familiar from your teenage years, go for the Reflex.
Price: `1995/- (www.fastrack.in)

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 23

 TEMPTATION
CRITIQUE
In this section, we put stuff through the
grinder and closely examine what comes
out; everything except gadgets, because
theres more to life than just that
TV SHOW
Iron Fist
everything has changed and
everyone thinks hes crazy
for impersonating a dead
guy. Did we mention that
Danny is also heir to Rand-
Meachum Incorporated, a
multi-million dollar con-
glomerate? The Meachum
in Rand-Meachum Incorpo-
rated, is Harold Meachum,
who supposedly died of
cancer. The corporation is
now run by his kids who
promptly have Danny sent
to a mental hospital, because
I
pfft, not buying that whole
n Marvels latest TV Im Danny Rand! thing.
Show Iron Fist the No more spoilter, although,
story is about one there isnt much that we
Danny Rand, who missed with just the first two
survives a plane crash at the episodes, which do a good
young age of ten. Unfortu- job of making you interested.
nately, the crash claims the Were definitely hooked.
lives of both his parents.
Fifteen years later Danny Rating:
returns home to find that Manish Rajesh
The Fate of the Furious
If you thought Fast 7
was going to be the last
movie in the franchise,
you my friend were
deeply mistaken. This
will be the first movie
since Tokyo Drift to not
star Paul Walker. Lets
see how this one goes.
Release: April 14, 2017
24 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
MOVIE
Logan
T
he first time we
ever saw Hugh
Jackman as the
Wolverine was
way back in 2000, and 17
years later we can safely say
hes still got it. Logan is the
third and final movie in the
Wolverine solo movie series.
Its also the last time well ever
be seeing Hugh Jackman as
the Wolverine. This is both
sad, because hes going, and
exciting, because we get to
look forward to a new Wol-
verine. Anyway, back to the
movie, without attempting
to give away too much of the
plot its the year 2029 and
mutants are a dying breed.
Professor Xs iconic school is
no more and mutants have to
live a life of hiding and being
hunted (again). Dont expect
to see a lot of other X-Men in
this movie.
Most of the movie
revolves around Logan, who
now drives a Limousine for
Persona 5
If youre a JRPG fan of
any kind, chances are,
youve heard of Persona.
Youre not going to get an
experience like Persona
anywhere else. After
taking Japan by storm,
Persona 5 is finally
coming to the west.
Release: April 4, 2017
a living, and Charles Xavier,
whos suffering both mentally
and physically and needs to
take pills to keep his psychic
powers in control. Of course,
thats not all, but anything
more would involve giving
away major spoilers so well
stop there. The movie itself
is action-packed and has no
shortage of gore. Youll be
seeing a lot of mutilations,
courtesy of a pair of adaman-
tium claws (for the most part).
However, what gets you about
Logan isnt the action, but the
emotions of the characters.
Then of course theres Hugh
Jackmans performance, not to
say the others didnt perform
well. But this is his last and
he knows it, so of course, he
had to make it the best movie
in the franchise to date. You
dont have to be a comic book
nerd to enjoy this one.
Rating:
Manish Rajesh
Samurai Jack S5
Jack is back! And it
looks like unlike all other
reboots, the newest
Samurai Jack season
still maintains the
charms of the original.
The final season to the
story, that began in
2001 Will Jack finally
get back to the past?

Digital life 29
Arnab Mukherjee
arnab@digit.in
I
ts 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 youre done and are back
at your desk congratulations, youve
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
Feature
How fast is fast enough? With
increasing 4G availability and high
speed broadband, is it worth it?
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 key-
boards, furiously typing out malicious
code and attacks in a secret basement. As
long as we hold that image in our head
well 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.
Something UNIX
The term hacker is said to have origi-
nated in the 1960s in the MIT computer
Qualcomm 200 series
The new 200 series SoC will bring
4G to entry-level mobile phones.
http://dgit.in/200series
labs. Hacking is defined as the act of
altering a standard process or system
to improve it or customize it to ones
choice. When the model train hacking
enthusiasts (among others) of MIT got
their hands on the new computer sys-
tems 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 soft-
ware 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
IMAGING: PETERSON PJ
to come out of this period was UNIX.
Built on the shell of the failing Multics
project from Bell Labs, MIT and Gen-
eral Electric, UNIX was the brainchild
of Ken Thompson, who, along with
 Vodafone and Idea merger
Vodafone India reaches with an agreement to
acquire Idea to form Indias largest operator with
377 million customer. http://dgit.in/VodaIdea
Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis
Ritchie working together at a PDP-11
a team of researchers led by himself
and Dennis Ritchie, wanted to build
a system around which a fellowship
could form. One can safely say that
they were successful.
Hello phreak
Come the 1970s, hacking temporarily
took a new direction telephone
networks. While phone phreaks had
existed since the 1950s, it was AT&Ts
implementation of fully automatic
switches which used a tone dialing
system which galvanised their popu-
larity. One of the internal-use tones was
of 2600 Hz, which caused a telephone
switch to think the call had ended,
leaving an open carrier line. This line
could then be exploited to provide
free long-distance, and international,
calls. At that time, long-distance calls
were quite expensive. Some of the
most notable phone phreaks are Joe
Engressia (a blind seven year old who
had the perfect pitch needed for the
hack), William Bill Acker (who discov-
ered that the recorder he owned could
play the tone) and John Capn Crunch
Draper (who discovered, through his
friendship with Engressia, that the
whistle in Capn Crunch cereal boxes
could also work).
Rise of the PC hacker
The 1980s essentially saw the first
democratization of the computer they
The first selfie
werent out of reach anymore and the
introduction of turnkey personal com-
JPEG sized reduced
Google has developed a new JPEG
algorithm that reduces file size by about 35
percent. http://dgit.in/35jpeg
Captain Crunch at Maker Faire Berlin
(2015)
puters by Radio Shack, IBM, Apple and
others had made computing accessible.
With the advent of the ARPANET and
modems connecting computers with
each other being increasingly available,
a hackers reach was further expanded.
Movies and novels that glorified
hackers, or at least their abilities,
increased in number around this time.
War Games, a movie about an oblivious
hacker almost starting World War III, is
now held in cult status among hackers.
Neuromancer, a hacking related novel
released in 1984 is also credited by
many as one of the main factors behind
popularisation of the hacker among the
general masses. Tron, Blade Runner,
Cyberpunk and Terminator also rose in
popularity around this time.
With this democ-
ratization came what
can be termed as the
golden age for hacking,
although some of that
gold might not have
benefited everyone.
The 1980s saw some of
the first convictions for
cyber crimes, including
the first hacker con-
victed as a felon.
Good hacker
bad hacker
In 1980, Ian Murphy
(a.k.a. Captain Zap)
along with three A first edition copy of the title
other hackers, got into Neuromancer
Origins
AT&Ts computers and altered their
internal clocks. AT&T users suddenly
started receiving late-night discounts
in the afternoon, while others who
waited until midnight to use the phone
had to deal with massive bills. For
his role in the crime, Murphy was
greeted with 1,000 hours of commu-
nity service and 2 1/2 years probation
(considerably less than what hackers
would receive today). He also inspired
the movie Sneakers.
In another first, the FBI busted the
Milwaukee-based 414s (named after
the local area code), with the accusation
of 60 computer break-ins ranging from
the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center to the Los Alamos National
Laboratory. The 1980s saw more such
criminal convictions of hackers who
had, in some way, had a malicious effect
on computer systems. The public were
now more aware than ever of being
hacked and the demand for security
measures soared.
The wrong side of the law
In 1986, in response to all the hacking
related felonies and convictions
emerging across the country, the U.S
Congress passed the Computer Fraud
and Abuse act, the first legislation
related to hacking. By then, the first
major hacking groups had also been
formed - the Legion of Doom in the
United States and the Chaos Computer
Club in Germany.
Pretty soon the two
sides would face off
in multiple instances.
Operation Sundevil,
which took place in
1990, was publicised as
the largest crackdown
on hackers. The crack-
down took place in 15
cities and resulted in 3
arrests. As a response,
the Electronic Frontier
foundation was formed
to fight for those
accused of hacking in
the very same year as
Operation Sun Devil.
Empowered by the
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 27

Origins
new law, the 90s would see more high
profile hacker arrests. One such arrest
was that of prolific hacker Kevin Mit-
nick. He was charged with obtaining
unauthorized access to computers
belonging to numerous computer
software and computer operating
systems manufacturers, cellular
telephone manufacturers, Internet
Kevin Mitnick, like many of his fellow
convicted hackers, now runs a high
profile security firm
Service Providers, and educational
institutions; and stealing, copying, and
misappropriating proprietary com-
puter software from Motorola, Fujitsu,
Nokia, Sun, Novell, and NEC. Mitnick
was also in possession of 20,000 credit
card numbers.
Hacker<>Cracker/Script
Kiddies
What was evident, from the 80s to the
90s, was a clear division within the
hacker community. Apart from the
benign hackers whose sole objective
was to explore, improve, and learn,
there was a new, younger group of
hackers who were in it for the personal
gain. While this divide was pretty
evident within the community, popular
media and culture viewed any kind of
tampering done with any system under
the broad umbrella of hacking. This
is something that traditional hackers
didnt take too well and came up with
a new monicker for the other group
crackers. Their intentions varied from
personal gain and vengeance to stealing
data for criminal purposes, targeting
universities, government agencies, and
large corporations.
28 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
GoPro cuts jobs again
The action-camera maker chopped
about 15 percent of its employees.
http://dgit.in/GoProjobs
Script kiddies were another break
off group that were misrepresented to
be hackers by the mainstream media
and popular culture. This segment isnt
particularly skilled, technology wise,
and generally uses ready to use tools to
find weak spots in internet connected
systems. They dont usually have
particular targets and run sweeping
attacks to find loopholes. Most attacks
reported by the media are of this type.
Globalisation
Enthusiasts all around the world have
taken time to learn the skills and get
their hands on the equipment neces-
sary to make their presence known.
Today, China alone generates more
(41%) attacks than the next nine coun-
tries combined. Although, to be honest,
the target hasnt changed much, with
U.S being the most targeted country,
and the UAE being a surprise second
on the list.
Hacktivism
Many of you might have
seen the show Mr Robot.
While were not advocating
what the protagonist does,
that is pretty much what
hacking stands for in
todays world. Pretty much
any famous hacker group
today stands for an agenda.
However, the definition of
hacktivism, the broad word A real world Anonymous protest, where anyone can
for agenda driven hacking, be Anonymous
in itself is highly debated.
For example, take DDoS attacks.
Groups like Anonymous, which is the
biggest hacktivist group out there now,
frequently use it as a method of protest
against those they disagree with. It is
argued that this particular method is
against free speech, at times referred to
as the poison gas of the internet.
Questionable methods apart, hack-
tivist groups have done some pretty
significant stuff in recent years.
During the 2009 Iranian election
protests, Anonymous played a role in
disseminating information to and from
Iran by setting up the website Anony-
mous Iran; they also released a video
The Frame
Samsungs classy new gadget which is
half TV, half work of art. Learn more:
http://dgit.in/TheFrameS
manifesto to the Iranian government.
During the Egyptian Internet blackout,
January 28 February 2, 2011,
Telecomix provided dial up services,
and technical support to the Egyp-
tian people. The hacktivist group also
announced that they were closely
tracking radio frequencies in the event
that someone was sending out impor-
tant messages.
Anonymous and New World
Hackers claimed responsibility for the
2016 Dyn cyberattack in retaliation
to Ecuador denying Internet access to
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at
their embassy in London.
Harbingers
Over the years, hackers have been
denoted as a lot of things from com-
puter tourists and network voyeurs
to dangerous criminals and nihilist
anarchists; computer nerds to cyber-
punks; public nuisance to catalysts for
technology advancement. But amid all
these roles, the confusion, and pros-
ecution, there lies a simple answer
hackers are necessary.
Hackers work towards exposing
the flaws that lie in the digital
systems our lives are completely
enmeshed in. Each revolution has
its own form and practices. Since
todays world is digital, so are todays
revolutionaries. Perhaps someday,
despite the occasional malpractices
and the persistent misportrayal, we
will be looking back at hackers as the
ones who brought about the change
we were waiting for.
 Fifth Beta of iOS 10.3 Looney Tunes stream
iOS 10.3 beta available from Apple Developer Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera
Center or OTA with profile installed. classics get their own streaming service.
http://dgit.in/iOS103dev http://dgit.in/LooneyTV Feature

Too fast, too furious?

when does high speed connectivity stop mattering?

Arjun Krishna Lal Indias Digital Transformation particularly interesting conversation:

feedback@digit.in In the early 2000s, a digitally con- India continues to be ranked dead last

H
ow fast, really, is too fast? With
the impending rollout of Jio
GigaFibre and the ongoing
price war in the 4G space, the
question is more relevant now than
ever. Our analysis showed us that
even with the rise of ever-faster con-
nections, there are other tech issues
regarding data delivery that are at play
and need to be solved first. Besides, as
with any technology of the past be
it 3D or 4K for example the content
is important too. Have you wondered
just what do you plan on doing with
a gigabit connection in the first place?
Do you really need a gigabit connec-
tion to do the things youve always
done? Probably not. But the answer
isnt that simple. Read on...
nected India wouldve been hard to
conceive. Forget digital connectivity:
providing reliable physical infrastruc-
tureroads without the tar sliding off
them and telephone networks thatd
actually connect your callswas often
beyond the capacity of the state.
According to the TRAI, there are
nearly 462 million internet users in the
country, as of January. With every-
thing from governance mechanisms
to consumer entertainment products
going digital, its important to not just
look into the figures: More Indians are
online today than the population of
the United States. But how fast is their
internet access? How reliable is it?
And, most importantly, does it enable
people to do what needs doing? If were
here to talk about speed, it wont be a
in terms of average broadband speeds
in the Asia-Pacific region. Going by an
Akamai report, the average connec-
tion speed in India was 4.1 Mbps, as of
Q3 last year. The year-on-year figures,
however, paint a brighter picture: India
registered among the highest rates of
change. In 2014, average connections
speeds were below 2 Mbps. Still, what
does a 4.1 Mbps average actually mean
in the here and now? Forget about
latency, reliability, or even the fact that
gentle wind can knock out your con-
nection for hours in tier-II and tier-III
cities (which has happened to us too
many times to be dismissed as acci-
dents). At the end of the day, you need
at least a certain amount of bandwidth
in order to even be able to do certain
things. At all.

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 29


Feature
You need exactly this much
bandwidth
Back in the day, a 56K dialup connec-
tion was enough to take of your IM
needs and to navigate many text-heavy
websites. But you have 2017s rich web
content to contend with today: A 1 Mbps
connection loads most modern websites
at a tolerably fast rate. Its enough to
stream MP3-quality audio. Its also the
bare minimum to stream SD-quality
videos. Go up a notch to 2 Mbps and
youre able to stream 720p videos.
Considering the sizes of games these
days, this is also the bare minimum if
you expect to download anything off
Steam before the end of the century.
At 4 Mbpsthe apparent national
averageyou can just about manage
Internet adoption rates in India over time (COURTESY: DAZEINFO)
a 1080p stream. 4-5 Mbps is also the
minimum for a decent experience with
cloud gaming and desktop solutions
like LiquidSky and GeForce Now. If
your bandwidth-intensive use cases end
with 1080p video streams, a 4 Mbps
connection is more than enough to
provide you with a good browsing expe-
rience. This is all assuming low latency
and a connection that doesnt conk off at
the slightest excuse.
Indian Internet Use Cases
Lets put this another way: is a 4 Mbps
connection enough to ensure a decent
internet experience for an average
Indians use cases? What do Indians
actually use the internet for, anyways?
As of last year close to 200 million
Indians were on Facebook, the most
from any country. The majority of these
users accessed social media content
30 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Gaming on your Wrist
Gameband smartwatch lets you play
simple games on a wrist-mounted screen.
http://dgit.in/Gameband1
from mobile devices. The main Indian
use case, then, is mobile access to social
media. If we take that into considera-
tion, the connection speed question (and
the reliability and latency questions)
become a lot less clear: were not talking
about users on 4 Mbps broadband
connections here. Were talking about
people on 2G, 3G, and 4G connections.
Unfortunately, despite Jios efforts to
offer 4G in exchange for your soul for
kinda-sorta free, the majority of these
mobile internet users are on the slower
variety of connection. Fortunately, most
social media use-cases, apart from live
streaming and video uploads, dont
require much raw bandwidth. Also,
Lite apps and sites like Facebook
Lite ensure that you get a reasonable
social media
experience, even
if youre on a
2G connection.
What else do
Indians use the
internet for?
Under the aegis
of the Digital
India program,
both state and
central govern-
ments bodies
are shifting
documentation, registrations, and pay-
ments online. From sad experience, the
majority of these portals look like they
were designed before Y2K. Although,
that means you dont need much band-
width to avail the governments entire
bouquet of digital offerings. So, social
media consumption and filing govern-
ment documents: The way things stand,
a 4 Mbps connection is more than
enough for an average Indians internet
use cases, even if thats a metered con-
nection thats less reliable than a Jio
voice call. But, what about what, say, an
average reader of Digit needs in terms
of internet connectivity? Well, that
changes things. A lot.
Speed can matter
YouTube has over 60 million unique
users in India, 70 percent of whom are
under the age of 35. For the upwardly
Rico is Aquaman!
Justice Leagues Aquaman actor, Jason
Momoa to star in Just Cause movie.
http://dgit.in/JustCauseM
mobile millennial crowd, internet use
means a lot more than checking Face-
book and paying your gas bill. Were
looking at fundamentally different use
cases here, not just in the present, but
in the immediate future. Do Indian
internet connections have what it takes
to cater to these requirements? What
are they? If YouTube usage statistics
are anything to go by, video streaming
is one such use case. Its here that
connectivity starts meaning a lot more
than peak bandwidth figures. Lets
frame this simply: for a video to stream,
you not only need to have connection
with enough bandwidth to handle the
stream without buffering, you need to
have a stable connection that provides
the necessary bandwidth for as long as
your videos being streamed.
While both mobile and broadband
users might experience good peak
broadband speeds, load variations
mean that your streaming experience
can differ significantly at different
points in time. Personally, this writer
remembers spending good money on a
BSNL EVDO connection to avail their
promised FUP-free connection at up to
3.5 Mbps. That up to is important: in
practice, we never experienced speeds
that were significantly higher than
EDGE during the day, with occasional
peaks around 1 Mbps. The situation
might not be quite as extreme with
most broadband or mobile connections,
but your actual connection speed at a
given point of time is often just a frac-
tion of peak throughput. With that in
mind, a 4 Mbps connection may or may
not be enough to take care of your basic
streaming needs. If reliability was the
only issue, wed still be quite happy. It
isnt, however
Bandwidth Capping: The Real
Problem.
Bandwidth capping is the Indian
internets worst bugbear. This, more
than anything else, shapes peoples
usage patterns. It only takes a 2 Mbps
downlink to stream a YouTube video
in 720p. The flipside to this is that you
use up over 100 MB to stream just ten
minutes of video content. If you limit
 Doppler sues Bose
Doppler Labs claims Bose backed Kickstarter,
took meetings to access technology.
http://dgit.in/DLsueBose
yourself to the occasional Cyanide &
Happiness short, youre unlikely to run
into your data cap. However, change in
the very nature of content delivery cre-
ates problems. With the rise of Netflix
and Amazon Prime, millions of people
are watching feature-length content in
HD, streamed over their internet con-
nections. How many episodes of The
Man in the High Castle can you watch
until the bandwidth Gestapo throttle
your connection to 512 Kbps? People are
increasingly ditching TV to watch TV
shows online, and TV channels them-
selves are available for streaming. 4G
vendors promote their video and music
streaming services as value adds to
utilize 4G connections. But how can you
possibly use Airtel Movies, for instance,
if you have a 10 GB monthly data cap?
So long as you stick to relatively low
resolutions (and if youre frugal with
what you stream), a 20-50 GB cap can
take you a long way. The arrival of
HEVC-encoded content has brought
down the bandwidth and data thresh-
olds for streaming good quality video.
But 4Ks where its at, going by
media reports. And youre going to run
through any data cap in a few days if
you try to stream 4K content. One thing
we often overlook is that digital TV
set-top boxes are piped data, essentially
unlimited quantities of itenough to
deliver a 1080p stream of reasonable
quality at all times of day, for a fixed
price. In that sense, FUP-free data con-
nections do exist. Theyre just not for
services you want to use. FUP limits
are fundamentally incompatible with
the idea of streaming services, and if
the likes of Netflix are to make inroads
here in India, more than upping
Check it out, something youll never be able to do!
Pinterest acquires Jelly
The human powered search engine Jelly
expands its search and discovery platform.
http://dgit.in/PinJelly
bandwidth on connec-
tions, FUP limits need
to either be relaxed or
eliminated. The rumour
mill suggests that Jio
GigaFiber will feature
a 10 Mbps FUP-free
plan. That is precisely
whats needed for a solid
streaming experience.
The Indian Gaming Theyve got horrible ping and theyre losing. Trust us, we
Experience: Drop in, just know
Drop out
We havent even touched on gaming
yet. There are roughly 1 million active
Steam users in India, comprising
approximately 0.5 percent of the global
Steam user base, and a paltry 0.25
percent of the total number of internet
users in India. While gamings huge for
us personally, its most definitely not
the average Indian use-case, even by
factoring in internet-cafe CS gamers.
That being said, the nature of Indian
internet connectivity has a significant
impact on your gaming experience:
Average bandwidth is enough to get
the job done with regards to Steam
downloads...to an extent. Games
frequently exceed 50 GB in size. At 4
Mbps, youre looking at leaving your
system on for at least 24 hours. Manda-
tory updates can leave your games in
an effectively unplayable state for quite
a bit of time, and thats just the single
player experience.
While e-Sports titles like DotA 2
have Indian servers, youll often have
to connect to Asia-Pacific or European
servers to play multiplayer in many
AAA titles. Here, latency becomes
incredibly important. Ping, of course,
scales with your distance to
the server. Ideal servers are
within 1,000 kilometres of
your location. When looking
at connecting to a European
or Australian server, that
increases by a factor of ten.
When youre looking at a
ping in the 300 ms range,
instead of competing based
on your skill, youre actively
fighting latency. With many
Feature
AAA games blurring the lines between
MMOs and single player experiences,
this can turn games like Destiny into
nightmares. Latency has absolutely
nothing to do with your bandwidth, but
it can make or break your multiplayer
experience. Cloud game streaming
solutions are even more of a reach.
For starters, neither GeForce Now
nor LiquidSky servers are anywhere
near India. When youre streaming
the actual gaming experience, latency
becomes even more importantany-
thing higher than 100 ms and the
illusion that youre playing on local
hardware is completely shattered. At
present, its physically impossible to
have a decent cloud-streamed gaming
experience in India, regardless of band-
width availabilitythe servers are just
too far away.
Conclusion
There is, indeed a point where fast
becomes too fast. Typical Indian use
cases dont actually need more band-
width than a bog-standard 4 Mbps
connection. In more niche areas like
gaming and HD streaming, you run
into regulatory issues like the FUP, and
reliability issues long before bandwidth
becomes a constraint. Fiber providers
increasingly try to sell us high-band-
width connections. But when your 100
Mbps fiber connection can only stream
a few Netflix episodes before throt-
tling, when youre on the phone with
customer service every time theres
so much as a strong wind; when you
struggle to play multiplayer because
of impossible latency, ask yourself: is
investing in speed really worth it?
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 31
Cover story

INDEX:
IMAGING: PETERSON PJ

ACCEPTING AI ................. Pg. 33

START ME UP! .................. Pg. 35
REVERIE: 2040 ................ Pg. 38
LETS SHOP!..................... Pg. 42
WARNING SIGNS! .............Pg. 44

Come to grips with the future...
SAHIL DAWKA
feedback@digit.in
T
heres 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 devils advocate. Why? Because
thats 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.
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 abili-
ties of machines to excel in areas that
humans dont. When we think AI we
usually think of Skynet, the evil intel-
ligence 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, youre
essentially feeding your own narcis-
sism by assuming machines want to
be human, when theres no proof that
machines even want anything.
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 lan-
guage processing, planning, social
intelligence, manufacturing, etc. AI is
such a broad term, that theres 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 men-
tioned earlier), General AI (a universal
AI with the capabilities of multiple
Narrow AIs), and Artificial Superin-
telligence (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 childs intelligence.
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?
How should we define intelligence
itself? It stands to reason that under-
standing 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
Cover story
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 dont 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 work-
ings of your own eyes. This is how we
approach AI. We look at external mani-
festations of our intelligence, try and
reverse engineer it using mathematics
and logic, and then figure out how to
translate that to code. However, it cant
just be intelligence in a computer. One
school of thought (called the embodied
mind thesis) feels that our functional
aspects such as movement, visualiza-
tion, etc., inherently contribute to what
we eventually call our mind. The
experimental evidence in Daniel Den-
netts 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
 Cover story

REASONING AND LOGIC solution, or even to take a call on a path

Its safe to say that the most describable that incurs losses, but minimises overall
aspect of our intelligence is reasoning damage. AI is terrible at this (so far).
and logic, and thus, it is the part most Artificial Creativity can, however, be
easily artificially replicated. Computers programmed by unnatural selection.
are built on a foundation of logic, which Just like the evolution of life molecules,
is why they are able to beat us at, say AI could evolve (a certain problem, if
Chess and Go logically-driven games. not itself) by making as many dis-
Even the most intelligent AI robot similar random changes as possible and

TELL US WHAT
today, if you permit us the over sim-
plification, still just follows lines as TELL US WHAT
Faking it: Kismet the emotive robot
applying that to the problem-case to
see if the solution is a better fit than the

YOU THINK
our skills in coding increase the lines
are becoming ever more complicated
Take our reader survey
curves, but theyre still directives. But
whos to say humans dont work exactly
the same way, right? and win prizes!
The AI that exists today is logic-based
Go to:
Narrow AI, and excels in domains such
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
as Chess or Go (as we mentioned earlier),
but pales in comparison to humans, for
example, in the area of facial recognition.
The Turing Test still holds the key for
General AI testing whether or not an AI
can successfully convince humans that
they are interacting with another human.
But are we there yet?
ARE WE THERE YET?
YOU THINK
can be tied into all of the advantages of
Take our reader survey
robotics, you arrive at super produc-
tive individuals who never tire, never
and win prizes!
eat, need not be paid, and cost much
less than the average human in the
Go to:
long run. The need to make a buck and
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
keep shareholders happy should see AI
replace humans in every field, right?
Even without strong AI (one that
can pass the Turing
Test), robotics and AI
are already taking away
thousands of jobs. In fact
in a recent meeting, the
World Economic Forum
discussed this very issue.
existing solution. This would be a kind
of creativity captured mathematically..
There is already research into AI that
makes Art, thanks to Google. Neural
networks, deep learning algorithms and
scruffy techniques are paving the way,
as evidenced by an AI developed at MIT
that can dream based on a given image
(after having gone through millions of
videos on Flickr), or the AIs at Google
Brain who developed
their own encryption
systems by themselves.
NOW WHAT?
Taken to its extreme,
assume that AI can

TELL US WHAT
The first industrial revolution was The bulk of the worlds
TELL US WHAT indeed replace humans

YOU THINK
steam powered, the second was elec- stock trading is being
YOU THINK
tricity and peteroleum driven, the third carried out by Narrow AI
Take our reader survey
was internet and robotics/automation whose algorithms react Take our reader survey pletely replaces all
caused, but a fourth is coming in the and win prizes!
to changes faster than and win prizes!
form of AI. But why not as a subset of human thought. Compa-
the third revolution? Go to:nies like Ross Intelligence
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
The Fourth Industrial Revolution are already using AI to http://dgit.in/dsurvey17 robots, as does every
will be due to all our advancements in enhance their paralegal
nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, practice, as software can look through a
3D printing, IoT, and of course AI. How- ton of past files (as long as they are digi-
ever, each industrial revolution created tized) faster than any human associate
new job categories, will the fourth take or intern, and makes less mistakes too.
them all back? Self-driving cars are going through hot
If we arrive at AI that is capable of and cold phases, but we can all see the
mimicking human intelligence, but eventuality of it being one of the first
human jobs to be made redundant.
Even in healthcare, an industry one
would think would be the least affected
by AI and robots, doctors are off-loading
the tedious task of looking at a patients
genetic history to determine the most
suitable drug (from hundreds available)
for anti-cancer treatment. You cant even
be sure that youve been chatting with a
human customer care agent these days.
Creativity and ingenuity is where AI
fails however. When faced with a new
problem, the human mind is capable
Guess which dog can do more tricks? of thinking out of the box to find a
at most professions
Lets say Apple com-
humans in its company
(except say, designers
Go to: and technical staff) with
other big company
With so much unemployment, who is
really going to buy an iPhone? Of course
there will always be rich people, but will
they be the teeming millions who buy
their phones now? They sell about 80
million iPhones a quarter, and if they
were reduced to 1 million buyers, and
even after their costs went down, theyd
still need to price the iPhone much
higher to make the same profit. Weak AI
is good for business and bottom lines,
but strong AI that makes billions jobless
is terrible for business! You can count
on greed to reduce the pay that you
get, but their greed will also keep you
employed and seeking retail therapy.
For now, it seems like acquiring mul-
tiple skills and using creativity will keep
you employed for the longest Were
just dreading the day they teach AI to
write about technology...

34 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in


Entrepreneurship and AI are booming but
what happens when the two meet?
MEGHANA GUPTA
feedback@digit.in
H
ephaestus (a mechanical
Greek mythology god),
Mary Shelleys Franken-
steins Monster, Pygmal-
ions Galatea, and countless
other examples are testa-
ment to the human fascination with
AI. Mathematical calculators were first
devised in Ancient China in the form
of an Abacus. In 1642, Blaise Pascal
invented a clever calculator made of
gears. Charles Babbage designed the
Analytic Engine in the 19th century,
and it is widely considered to be one of
the first designs for a general-purpose
computer. Ada Lovelace, the first
programmer in the world who wrote an
algorithm for a machine to print Ber-
noulli numbers, believed that machines
could compose complex pieces of
music. Needless to say, machines, or
the ideas of them, have fascinated
us for all of known human history.
ORIGINS
Mathematicians like Gottfried Leibniz
and Thomas Hobbes were extremely
interested in the systemisation of
thought and logic as early as the 17th
century. The question of whether
thought could be broken into mathe-
matics was unanswered for almost 200
years before an Austrian of the name
of Kurt Gdel gave us something called
the Incomplete Theorems. Its implica-
tions were twofold one, that there is
a definite limit to what can be achieved
using logic, and two that within these
limitations, the formal approach works
remarkably well.
In his seminal paper Computing
Machinery and Intelligence, Alan
Turing proposed a different way to
determine whether an entity is human
or a machine. In the introductory sec-
tion he considered the question Can
machines think?. He wrote that such
a question was all but redundant in the
quest to differentiate the two. Instead,
he proposed a replacement that he
called The Imitation Game. It is now
commonly known as the Turing Test.
This was in 1950.
The Dartmouth Workshop was
held in 1956. It was the birthplace of
the field of the AI that we are familiar
with nowadays. It was an eight week
brainstorming session, with scientists
discussed neural networks, natural
programming language, theory of com-
putation, and creativity.
Today, AI touches everyones lives
in some way, pretty much on a daily
basis. The ads you see, the manipula-
tion of big data, the fuzzy logic sensor
that washes your clothes almost
every service, smartphone and mass
produced product has varying levels
of AI involved in the process, some-
where. However, if you thought it was
already all pervasive, wait a few years,
its set to take over.
Cover story
STARTUPS
With AI taking over every field, its
no surprise to anyone that startups
working on AI are hot right now.
The future is AI, and the future giant
companies of the world (the Facebook,
Apple and Google of tomorrow) might
start off as a small AI startup today.
That said, Google, Microsoft, IBM,
Facebook, Apple, Uber, and even Shell
are investing heavily in AI. Heres a
video of some smart people talking
about AI that you should watch http://
dgit.in/elonmskai including Elon Musk
and Sam Harris.
But enough of that. Lets take a look
at the most interesting AI startups that
we feel are doing very interesting work.
01
ECHOBOX
Founded by two Cam-
bridge graduates, this
startup claims to have developed the
worlds first AI that truly under-
stands the meaning of content.
Echobox understands the constantly
evolving landscape of social media so
as to try and maximise every brands
reach. Even casual users of Facebook
and Twitter know that there is are
a number of different variables that
allow ones post to have the max-
imum possible reach. Echobox takes
into account all of these variables so
as to direct different content to the
required target audience.
It is a sign of the times that social
media accounts have gone from being
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 35
 Cover story
run by adolescent interns to being
a campaign orchestrated by an AI.
Clients such as Le Monde, Le Figaro,
Axel Springer, and San Jose Mercury
News are all seeing the benefits of
using Echobox.
02
VIV LABS
In 2016, Samsung agreed to
acquire Viv an assistant
system created by the same people
who made Siri. When one reads a sen-
tence like that, the first question that
comes to mind is,How is it different
TELL US WHAT
from Siri? Well, the difference is
YOU THINK
twofold: First, it allows for more com-
plex, conversational queries because it
assimilates the information gathered
Take our reader survey
by all the different applications on the
and win prizes!
phone to interlink into one vast web of
information it can work on. Secondly,
Go to:
because it can literally write its own
code, Viv can create and apply new
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
programs without ever having heard
of them before. Its founders say that
Viv is a software that builds itself.
Watch the impressive launch video
here: http://dgit.in/SiriViv
03
MAD STREET DEN
Launched in 2013 by wife-
husband duo Ashwini
and Anand Chandrasekaran, Mad
TELL US WHAT
Street Den was originally based out of
YOU THINK
Chennai. Within its ranks, Mad Street
Den has a fascinating group of Data
Take
Scientists, our reader survey
Neurologists, Designers,
and win prizes!
and all round computer geniuses.
They aim to buildGoa to:
visual identifica-
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
36 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
tion intelligence so that the fashion
and lifestyle industry is able to better
customer relations. They want to
also build tools to accurately under-
stand and predict the way a customer
behaves, thereby giving the corpora-
tion a competitive advantage.
literally rewind the flow of informa-
tion to accurately plot past events.
This is a relatively newer startup Take for example, a terrorist
that acquired their seed funding in attack. Banjo could be used to create
2016. However, helmed by a CMU a blueprint of the situation using
graduate, it has to potential to become the millions of social media updates
a global entity. Already it has physical available to it. It would essentially be
representation in Europe, the US, able to play with our fourth dimension
and India. Heres a video about them: whenever it pleases.
http://dgit.in/MSDSystems
05
DEFINED CROWD
Siri, Cortana, and the
aforementioned Viv all need
millions of hours of well curated lan-
guage input. Defined Crowd is filling
this niche need by creating compli-
cated pipelines that accurately filter
and interpret data. This is done partly
through their AI, and partly through
TELL US WHAT
actual real human beings. Amy Du,
Co-founder and CEO, said that there
YOU THINK
is a very subtle difference between an
excited tweet and a happy tweet. This
is where the companys crowdsourcing
Take our reader survey ability comes in. Theyre already in
and win prizes! almost 50 countries with 50-100
people working on language data
Go to: in each of these countries. After the
initial kinks are ironed out from each
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17 country and their human workforce
start delivering consistently, they
receive almost real time information
04
BANJO about the language.
This startup has a really
bold aim to create an Alex-
andrian Library worth of information
via social media. It was founded in 2013
after the Boston Marathon bombings,
and sounds like the real world manifes-
TELL US WHAT
tation of the AI that controls everything
YOU THINK
in Jonathan Nolans Person of Interest.
Creating a web of information that
includesTake our reader
Facebook, survey
Twitter, Russias
and win prizes!
VKontakte, and Chinas Weibo, it can
classify locationsGo
andto:photos to quite
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17

It is part of the Microsoft Acceler-
ator program, which means they have
a bright future. Besides, its a heart-
warming (CPU-warming?) story about
robots and humans working hand-
in-hand? Were going to need a few of
those to convince the superintelligence
that were useful!
06
STEP SIZE
Stepsize Layer is a desktop
application that automati-
cally adds context to code by using its
tools to develop software and attach
historical data to a piece of code. Using
this AI tool, Developers can select a
piece of code, run it through Step Size,
contact the original author and find the
context. This will ultimately lead to a
community of coders where all code is
properly contextualized and connected
to all other pieces of code. Step Size is
fully integrated with Slack so that it can
use it to do its job.
07
GALAXY.AI
When symptoms appear, it
is already too late. Galaxy.
ai uses its own proprietary software
to aid the world to become a better
place to live in. It collects data from
traditionally difficult areas such as the
sectors of medical care and insurance
to help doctors worldwide make better
choices. They are building the worlds
first ever AI prognosis engine that will
help doctors treat patients better. It
also helps provide better, more-afford-
able insurance by studying the data
provided by insurance companies.
08
BENEVOLENTAI
Every 30 seconds, a sci-
entific paper is published.
Over 10,000 a day are added to just
the medical portion of research.
Because of this ungodly number, the
amount of research that becomes
usable is only a small portion of
this. BenevolentAI wants to solve
just this by developing a tool that
combs through all this data to provide
researchers and scientists with up-
to-date information. This leads to a
much faster rate of drug discovery,
which in turn leads to a better health-
care system for all. Learn more about
them here: http://dgit.in/BenevolentAI
09
NIKI.AI
This Indian firm was
founded in 2015 by 4 IIT
Kharagpur graduates and is a chatbot
that allows for a simpler customer
experience. Its core functionali-
ties include mobile recharge, travel
services, and all bill payments. Ratan
Tata recently gave this startup a hefty
Cover story
amount of seed money, so they must
be doing something remarkable.
While this doesnt sound unique, their
natural language processing power
is aimed specifically at how Indians
talk and type. It has partnered up
with Ola, Uber, as well as PayTM to
provide their facilities through their
app. Currently, it provides services to
around a hundred thousand cus-
tomers. Learn more about them here:
http://dgit.in/NikiAIApp
10
CLARIFAI
You know how Facebook
either asks you to, or auto-
matically tags people in your pictures?
Remember how often its wrong?
Clarifai is hoping to have a foolproof
solution for that. It claims that it can
teach its AI to identify an object with
less than 10 input images, without
additional code to help it. It also keeps
collecting data, and learns as it goes.
Heres a video you should watch about
this: http://dgit.in/ClarifaiCass
What weve presented here is
merely the tip of the iceberg. There
are probably hundreds more who we
havent even heard of yet, but may
potentially hold the key to finally
achieving general AI an artificial
super intelligence that is as intelli-
gent as a human (or more). Whether
we like it or not, 2017 is the year
when thousands of companies will
work on AI more seriously than ever
before. Humans dont come much
smarter than Stephen Hawking, and
hes already stated, The develop-
ment of full artificial intelligence
could spell the end of the human
race.(http://dgit.in/StephHawkDoom).
Of course, Hawking is only human,
and fallible, so we can only hope he
is wrong this time, because none of
the companies weve listed here or
thousands more that we havent are
paying any attention to his warning
Should they be? Whats your take?
Write in and tell us before these bots
take over our jobs!
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 37
 Cover story
Just another day in a future AI-assisted India
for a Digit writer
SAHIL DAWKA
feedback@digit.in
B
EEP! BEEP! said
some stupid thing
in my dream. Shut
up! I mumbled.
It shut up. Then
my favourite song
came on. It started of soft, but grew
louder. I couldnt help it, and my feet
started tapping to the beat. As much
as I wanted to sleep, I had no choice
but to wake up. Thats new, I said out
loud as I opened my eyes. I thought
youd like it, said APSaRA. Even in
my thoughts I hated that acronym
Artificial Public Services and Robotic
Assistant. It was obvious someone
called her Apsara first, and later made
it an acronym for something longer,
but it had just grown on all of us now.
I was determined to undo the brain-
washing though, and forced myself to
think Apsara, like a normal name.
Good morning Dear! said an
almost strange, but sweet voice. I was
startled back to reality and looked
in no particular direction to find
this new voice with no body, before I
remembered that I had signed up for
the new Life Coach feature of Apsara
last night. I was already missing my
38 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
earlier High School Sweetheart hack,
but I was done testing it, had written
my article, and as much as I missed
her, I knew that hacking the APSaRA
network was very illegal. Darn it. That
damn acronym.
Ive turned the water heater on, it
will take 15 minutes. Do you want to
take a quick jog in that time? Youve
gained 1.3 kilos since last week, and all
of it around your stomach area, sang
Apsara. Apparently this modifica-
tion had her sounding like a modern
mother. Why on earth would people
pay to be nagged by a mother? I
thought to myself. No I dont want to got ready in autopilot mode. Why did
jog, and remind me to call mum this
evening, I barked at Apsara. I imme-
diately felt guilty. Its a good thing I
got rid of the sweetheart mod guilty?
Why was I feeling guilty for ordering
a machine around? I decided to switch
to the Slave Mod the minute I was
done testing this silly Life Coach one. I
couldnt afford therapy, and developing
feelings for a machine that was omni-
present would require a lot of therapy
to fix. Nothing like an AI calling you
Master to remind you that it was
nothing more than a service.
I stepped into the shower, and was
lost in the feeling of warm water as
my state government mandated auto-
bather went to work. Maharashtra was
officially a water conserving state, and
these auto-bathers, which were also
controlled by Apsara, used under 25%
of water as a regular shower. Suddenly
the water turned off. Apparently my
bath was done.
Get dressed soon, or else youll be
late for work, demanded APSaRA.
I didnt mind the acronym format
anymore. She was irritating me. I
would probably delete this avatar of
her the instant the mandatory week of
reviewing was done. I could already
foresee a low rating for this mod.
I went back to daydreaming as I
we have to work? People in Germany,
Sweden and Denmark didnt work. I
wished I could go live there to experi-
ence it. Was almost impossible since
the world shut down all borders. Most
of Europe could still freely travel, but it
was an exclusive club. Everyone wanted
to go there. Being paid to sit at home and
paint, or create music, or follow your
passions sounded like a dream. Indias
population was too large, it would
never happen here. Heck, our cities had
already closed borders to village folk.
Life outside the cities was hard, and
unforgiving. Suddenly I felt lucky again.
None of India was as bad as the US
though. It was anarchy there, and theyd
almost destroyed themselves. Once AI
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took all the jobs because the one percent
wanted more money, it was like the
French Revolution again. All the bank
owners, CEOs and rich were publicly
lynched, and there was no economy left
to speak of. Mexico and Canada allied
and attacked the US to seize control of
the nuclear arsenal. Almost all of the
US military establishment migrated to
the two countries, and then they had to
build walls to keep the gun toting popu-
lation out! They were all but forgotten
now. Probably dead, or in the process of
dying. I was lucky indeed!
Youre late! Hurry up! whined
APSaRA. I gritted my teeth as I dressed
and left the house. The DNA analyser
automatically unlocked the garage door
as I approached and my car drove out. I
got in, and ordered my breakfast at the
drive in I usually stopped at.
This car had cost me a decades
salary. Very few people owned cars. I
had saved and planned ahead. In just
two more years the car would have paid
for itself, and Id be in the green again.
APSaRA darkened the windows, and a
screen popped up displaying my stock.
I couldnt do anything with the infor-
mation, it was all APSaRA controlled,
based on my target earnings I had set.
The higher the goal, the more risks
APSaRA would take with your money,
and the more likely you were to lose
it all. I was sensible, but it was still a
higher than normal target. I had no clue
why she showed me my stocks, because
it was all Greek to me. Must be a legal
requirement or something, I muttered
to myself. I was already at the drive
through, and the window rolled down
and my food was placed on my table
by a robotic arm. I read the days news.
There was too much to make sense of
it. APSaRA would give me a summary
when I needed ti for work.
I felt like something different today.
I had a craving for sugarcane juice. I
told her to find the closest street vendor.
I felt sorry for them. They lived on
meagre earnings, and hardly got any
business now that the global chains had
taken over all food and drink outlets.
India and China were the only places
in the world where street vendors were
still visible in the cities. It was deli-
cious! Theres just something about
human-hand made food!
With only 15 minutes of my hour
long commute remaining, I checked my
email. My vehicle insurance premium
was auto-paid last night. The occa-
sional horn by one of the few human
driven cars left reminded me why I
was paying such high premiums. They
were ruining it for everyone!
Oh no! My first appointment of the
day just emailed to cancel. I adjusted
my schedule accordingly. No doubt
my boss would find something to fill
my time.
When I reached the office, my car
immediately zoomed off again. Con-
trolled by APSaRA, making me money
TELL US WHAT
YOU THINK
Take our reader survey
and win prizes!
Go to:
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
as a passenger taxi. I walked into my
office to hear a colleague squeal with
excitement as he told people about his
annual trip home to his village. It was
so nostalgic! I had to press actual phys-
ical switches to turn the lights on and
off! I would always forget to turn them
TELL US WHAT
off when I left the room though, and my
YOU THINK
parents got a hefty bill. Im so used to
APSaRA, I cannot even imagine how
they liveTake our reader
without survey its
her. Seriously,
and win prizes!
insanely backward!
Go to:
The Digit offices were almost the
same as they were 25 years ago. Well,
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
apart from the little bots and micro-
drones that are sent in for review whiz-
zing about. And of course APSaRA and
the holographic displays that we work
on. Thankfully, humans hated reading
AI-written articles. If youd read one,
Cover story
youd read them all, and that kept me
in a job. APSaRA wrote press releases
and news items, but articles, reviews
and columns were still our forte.
In fact, APSaRA had selected Digit
to be the national technology informa-
tion service, and she translated our
content into all languages. We now had
a billion plus readers thanks to her!
My boss broke my daydream.
Arent you supposed to be meeting
the Health Minister today? he asked.
I explained that his PA had postponed
for the second day in a row. Third
times the charm! he said, clearly fond
of cliches, and then walked away. He
stopped to turn around and remind
me and the other writers that he was
going to whoop our backsides in
Quake VI, and we had no reason to
doubt that he would.
I sat and wrote articles all day. It was
much easier now that you could just
hook up to APSaRA in the interface
corner just place the cranium cap on
your head. Start thinking and APSaRA
TELL US WHAT
does the rest.
YOU THINK
I felt a little uneasy towards the
end of the day, and left a little early.
APSaRA informed me that I would
Take our reader survey
probably develop a fever tonight as I
and win prizes!
had some stubborn pathogen in my
blood. My doctor had seen my details
and the blood test that APSaRA had
Go to:
done without me even knowing, and
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
my medicines would be dispatched
via microdrones and waiting for me
at home. Must have been that damn
ganna juice, I muttered. No more
feeling sorry for anyone.
At home APSaRA played some
soothing music, ordered me a hot soup,
just the way I liked it, and then set the
room temperature absolutely perfectly
so that I would be comfortable through
TELL US WHAT
the night despite my mild fever. She
YOU THINK
fussed over me, said I will handle
tomorrows appointments. I have
alreadyTake our reader
informed survey
your boss and your
sick leave has andbeen
wingranted.
prizes! You just
rest and recuperate, and tell me what
Go to:
you want for breakfast. I was enjoying
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
the fussing. Maybe the Life Coach mod
wasnt that bad after all! .
Goodnight dear, she said softly
as I closed my eyes. Just before I fell
asleep I mumbled. Goodnight Apsara.
Thank you.
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 41
 Cover story
What if a bot could be your go-to
ARNAB MUKHERJEE
arnab@digit.in
F
irst day in a new city, youre
there to attend a party. After
a styling session that you
booked earlier using the
chatbot for the best salon in
town, you walk into a clothing
retail store to get yourself some new
threads for a party. Theres no-one
there except you and a couple of other
customers. The moment you enter, you
are identified, youve already specified
what you need to one of the innumer-
able chat kiosks and a convenient
in-store navigation screen pops up on
your smartphone to guide you to the
partywear section. The mechanized
gallery highlights the ones that will
suit you the best, according to size and
past preferences, and once you make
a choice, it suggests a couple of other
outfits and accessories for you to try
on as well. Once youve decided, you
walk out wearing your new outfit.
You have a self-driven cab ready and
waiting, and on the way your digital
assistant suggests that you get some
flowers or wine for the occasion. You
agree and ask for the flowers and wine
to be delivered to you at the venue
itself. Theyre waiting for you when
your cab pulls up to the address.
This isnt sci-fi or the future; the
technology to do this already exists.
42 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
shopping partner?
You could literally do half of this right to Haptik, it also has a chatbot SDK.
now if you walked into the Amazon Go Explaining the direction in which the
store in Seattle, Washington (which platform is headed, Sachin Jaiswal,
is not open to the public yet), and get Co-Founder, Niki.ai, says In the very
a ride on one of the many driverless near future, Niki will also learn about
vehicles being tested. AI and online the user so that the recommendations
shopping are already inseparable. are much more accurate. For example,
When was the last time when you saw if you frequently travel on Fridays
a completely suggestion-free shop- and by night buses, just a show me
ping experience online? According some buses to Mumbai will get you
to Gartner, by 2020, 85 per cent of responses tailored to your needs.
customer interactions will be managed
without humans. And its predicted WHY DOES IT WORK?
that by 2018, AI technology will The growing popularity of chatbots
advance to the point where service might have a couple of local factors
bots can recognise the voices and behind it. We all seek shopping tips
faces of customers.
ALL THAT CHATTER
While AI and robotics still have a
long way to go, chatbots are pretty
advanced right now. Talking to a bot is
not new, but the improved chat AI has
made this a customer service neces-
sity! Its why so many sites have chat
options in their service menus. Chat is
also the preferred way of interacting
TELL US WHAT TE
Y
with real customer service people as
well. Haptik is a platform that offers
this, but have shifted to a human aug-
YOU THINK
mented intelligence model recently. Take our reader survey Tak
While dedicated services such as
Haptik are doing it independently, it
and win prizes!
is startups like Niki.ai and Talespin
who are truly bringing chat to you by
Go to:
implementing it for any service. While http://dgit.in/dsurvey17 http
Niki.ai also has a mobile app similar

One of the highest rated apps in India, Haptik provides a lot of services via chat
to help us, be it from the local grocery
shop owner who suggests the fruit, or
the tailor who tells you about trending
fashion. Another factor is that Indians
especially, are already used to off-
loading work onto maids, drivers, and
other blue-collar job workers. How-
ever, chatbots are becoming popular
among millennials, who have neither
gone to the kind of stores mentioned
earlier, or utilised dedicated blue-
collar services as much. So what fac-
tors influence chatbots?
First - Instant messaging platforms
have become ubiquitous and people
have mastered texting as a platform
long ago. Even language isnt a barrier
anymore, with multilingual keyboards
and support for multiple languages
on virtual assistants becoming quite
common. Second - and more impor-
tantly, it removes the paradox of
choice. Were so spoiled for choice, that
we often cant choose anything!
MISTAKEN
If you were waiting for the section
with the cons, congrats, you finally
got there. However, if youre looking
for a shoulder to cry on while you say
AI will take our jobs, leave our shoul-
ders out of it.
Also, in their current state, AI
chatbots are not truly creative. AI still
cannot perform any task that requires
creativity, or coming up with new
ideas that are not resolved using a set
pattern, says Jaiswal. For example,
using the previously stated bus
booking case, if the user was a 60-year
old man making the booking for him-
self and his wife, a human being may
not recommend a night bus to them
due to various concerns. An AI bot on
the other hand, cannot make this dif-
ferentiation unless specifically told to
do so by the creators.
GOING FORWARD
Developments in deep learning, AI,
and natural language processing
are showing a lot of promise when it
comes to enhancing the average shop-
ping experience. Thinking of chatbots
as the only possible AI implementa-
tion when it comes to shopping is
sheer short sightedness. There are
quite a few new applications that are
gradually gaining popularity.
eBays shopping bot Shopbot lets you
shop while you chat
Cover story
Visual search is one such area.
Machine learning has taken a step
forward by being able to identify
objects and patterns within images.
Take the example of Pinterest Lens a
technology based on the previously
implemented visual search, related
pins, and guided search on Pinterest
which uses your smartphone camera
to identify real world objects in your
images and serve up similar images
from websites, making it easier for you
to find and purchase the object online.
Beyond direct retail, AI will also
affect purchase decisions indirectly
with deep learning. As Gaurav
Gandhi, COO, Viacom18 Digital
Ventures explains about Voot, an OTT
content platform, We now better
understand levels of ad fatigue, ideal
places to insert advertising between
content, making user/audience groups
for targeting , better targeted mar-
keting plans for our shows, levels
of cross promotion and cross usage
between genres, best time to publish
new shows, how many notifications
to send out and at what time among
others all thanks to data insights.
SHOP TILL YOU DROP
As with other aspects of AI, chatbots
arent perfect yet. Recent debacles like
that of Tay prove how machine learning
could easily go wrong if not monitored.
On the other hand, even with proven
results, traditional stores arent really
eager to jump onto the AI bandwagon.
As Tanay Dixit, Co-Founder and
Product Head, Talespin puts it, While
investors are generally excited about
AI, deep learning, and chatbots, many
remain cautious and the same can
even be said about customers. Having
said that, the lack of access to reams of
data to build solutions for particular
use cases is a challenge. In the search
of data, companies may move into
uncharted territories leading to privacy
and infringement issues.
That being said, there is no doubt
that in the coming years, youll most
likely be shopping, and living, aided by
bots on your phone and in your stores.
Make sure to keep those credit cards
handy, and those bank accounts filled -
because the last time we checked, bots
dont maintain tabs.
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 43
 Cover story

So far weve been telling you about how

splendidly well get along with our silicon-based
buddies. But what if we dont?

and warnings and decide for yourself taking 5 astronauts and scientists
PURUSHARTH SHARMA whether this is a serious problem or to Jupiter. The AI goes rogue and
feedback@digit.in

O
not. After all, it is you who will have to starts trying to kill all of them. They
run for survival when it happens, for somehow survive and reach Jupiter.
ne of the most common by then, your friendly Siri and Google Theres a whole lot more in the movie
themes in sci-fi movies and Assistant wont really be helpful. and you should watch it if you havent.
literature is that of a dysto- But this was a classic case of handing
pian world, where humans MOVIES your life over to an AI, and then real-
have been enslaved by robots 2001: A Space Odyssey ising that it wants to kill you.
controlled by an all knowing Touted as one of the greatest movies of
super smart artificially intelligent entity. all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey was Matrix
We all enjoy watching these movies and an amazing sci-fi space adventure with This movie was a groundbreaking one
maybe have had a nightmare or two an AI computer onboard a spaceship and way ahead for its time. It set the bar
about such a future. But were here to
tell you it might be possible!
We are trying to create something
that is better and smarter than us.
We are still far away from creating an
AI that is conscious about itself, but
sooner or later we will succeed. And
once the AI realizes that it is better
and smarter than us, and doesnt need
us what will stop it from eliminating
us and taking over the world? After all,
isnt it about survival of the fittest?
Over the ages a lot of smart people
have warned us about this fate. Even
pop culture has been trying to warn
us about the impending doom that
is coming when AI goes rogue. Take
a look at some of these predictions HAL 9000 is one of the most evil AI of all time.

44 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in


for action and VFX real high. Its story
was a complete twister too. It shows
a futuristic world where robots have
finally taken over and realized that-
they need human beings to survive, but
only to harvest energy from us. Whats
worse is that the humans are unaware
of this fate, and made to believe that
they lead wholesome lives through a
digital simulation of life. It is every bit
as twisted as it sounds. But the director
makes it so believable that you are left
with a lingering question What is real?
There is more to Matrix than the cool
bullet-time stunts
Avengers : Age of Ultron
This Marvel movie shows that even
superheroes cannot save the planet
when an AI decides to go rogue and
destroy all of humanity. Tony Stark and
Bruce Banner are working on a peace
keeping program which if completed,
could mean that there would be no
need for Avengers. This program,
called the Ultron is an AI that comes to
life and somehow realizes that the only
way to save humanity is by destroying
it and starting afresh. Dung hits the
fan, we lose a couple of Avengers, but
somehow they (barely) save the day. In
the real world, however, we dont have
superheroes flying down from the skies
to save us, do we?
Behold the overlords who will rule over
all of us someday
Her
Somehow the directors of the movie
made a sci-fi rom-com movie on a
*SINGULARITY
The techoloogical singularity is that
moment in time when the invention
of artificial superintelligence will
abruptly trigger runaway technolog-
ical growth, resulting in unfathom-
able changes to human civilization.
topic that could have been weird, but
ended up being fresh and quirky.
Jump into the future where we have
phones made of crystal clear glass and
everyone goes to office on time. A very
advanced personal AI is developed
that is synced across all your devices.
And suddenly people start treating it
as their friend and even lovers. The
movie is from the perspective of a guy
who is going through a divorce and
falls in love with his Operating System
AI named Samantha, who is beauti-
fully voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The
AIs start interacting with each other
and after some time develop and learn
so much that they attain something
An operating system achieving
singularity seems way more right now
similar to technological singularity.
They decide they are too smart for
this world and leave all of us saying
goodbye. Probably one of the very
few movies where AI doesnt do any
harm to us and instead leaves us with
an important lesson in todays time
(real human relations are necessary).
An interesting plot idea, but can we
be sure that the AI we make will be as
good to us?
Ex Machina
This psychological sci-fi thriller sees
Nathan, a CEO of a software com-
pany invite Caleb, a programmer, to
his isolated, luxurious house to test
an android named Ava that he has
developed. Through the course of the
Cover story
Dont treat her feelings lightly
movie *Spoiler alert* Caleb falls in love
with the android and also realizes that
Nathan was evil and had been abusing
and tormenting the previous models
of the android robots. Ava escapes the
house with help from Caleb, killing
Nathan in the process. The twist in
the movie comes when the Ava leaves
Caleb locked in the house alone. Dont
fall in love with your AI robots.
Westworld
It is difficult to talk about the show
without revealing too many spoilers.
The show has an amusement park
where there are android robots who
Westworld shows how easily the
masters become the slaves
act as hosts for the tourists that come
there. Eventually the androids realize
what is being done to them and try to
overthrow the humans.
What we learnt from the show:
When we build an AI, we should at
least tell it that it is a robot, not lie to it
to make it believe it is a human.
There are a lot of other movies that
have explored this concept in a lot of
different ways and some of them have
even garnered a cult following. Some
of these include Tron, Terminator and
Transcendence.
FAMOUS SMART PEOPLE
Elon Musk
The Tony Stark of real life, Elon Musk
has been telling people about the risks
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 45
 Cover story
Musk has gone as far as equating AI
with demons
of trusting AI too much for quite some
time. During an MIT symposium, he
went on to say, With artificial intel-
ligence we are summoning the demon.
In all those stories where theres the
guy with the pentagram and the holy
water, its like yeah hes sure he can con-
trol the demon. Didnt work out. He
called for researchers and companies
working on AI to come together to form
an international regulatory framework
so as to keep a check on the advances
in the field and make sure that we dont
unleash the demon upon ourselves.
He had also tweeted Worth reading
Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need
to be super careful with AI. Potentially
more dangerous than nukes.Well, that
is one hell of a warning.
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking is one of the most
respected physicists and cosmologists
in the world. And when he warns you
about AI going rogue, you shut up and
listen to him!
When Stephen Hawking warns you you
shut up and listen
In an interview to BBC, he said The
development of full artificial intelli-
gence could spell the end of the human
race. It would take off on its own and
re-design itself at an ever increasing
rate. Humans, who are limited by slow
biological evolution, couldnt compete,
and would be superseded. Definitely
sounds scary, doesnt it?
46 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
After the release of the sci-fi Movie
Transcendence, he went on to criticize
AI researchers in a newspaper column
saying If a superior alien civilisation
sent us a message saying, Well arrive
in a few decades, would we just reply,
OK, call us when you get herewell
leave the lights on? Probably notbut
this is more or less what is happening
with AI.
Nick Bostrom
A famous Swedish Philosopher who is
a Director at University of Oxford and
has spent a large amount of time theo-
rizing and thinking about what will
happen when technological singularity
is attained. Many famous technolo-
gists have also quoted him before. He
said that once AI surpasses the human
brain, they would kill us easily in dif-
ferent ways, leaving Earth like a Disn-
eyland without children. Shudder.
Nick Bostrom has painted a grim picture
of AI surpassing human intelligence
Isaac Asimov:
One of the most famous sci-fi writers
TELL US WHAT
YOU THINK
Take our reader survey
and win prizes!
Go to:
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
One of the most prominent sci-fi authors
of all time, Isaac Asimov predicted that
robots could turn against us and came up
with the 3 basic laws of robotics.
of all time, he wrote the famous novel
I, Robot that was later turned into
movie. He came up with the 3 basic
laws of robotics which have been
widely accepted by AI researchers and
scientists. The first and most important
law is A robot may not injure a human
being or, through inaction, allow a
human being to come to harm.
James Barrat:
Author of the book Our Final Inven-
tion: Artificial Intelligence and the End
of the Human Era (the name screams
doom and gloom), James Barrat inter-
viewed a number of AI researchers and
philosophers and documented it. He
goes on to state that Without meticu-
lous, countervailing instructions, a self-
aware, self-improving, goal-seeking
system will go to lengths wed deem
ridiculous to fulfil its goals.
Gary Marcus:
Ex-head of AI at Uber, Gary Marcus
wrote in a column in the New Yorker
Once computers can effectively
reprogram themselves, and succes-
sively improve themselves, leading to
TELL US WHAT
a so-called technological singularity
YOU THINK
or intelligence explosion, the risks of
machines outwitting humans in battles
for resources and self-preservation
Take our reader survey
cannot simply be dismissed.
and win prizes!
All these views and depictions,
while based on fiction and conjecture,
are based in the current state of science
Go to:
and technology - making it a very real
http://dgit.in/dsurvey17
future we might be looking at. When it
comes, will you welcome it or fight?
 Tips & Tricks

CONTROL using an app? If yes, you can

EVERYTHING
WITH VOICE
Smart assistants have cre-
ated a revolution in control-
ling everything with voice.
From our smartphone to our
living rooms, voice controlled
systems are taking up every-
thing. With the significant
progress made in Machine
Learning and Natural Lan-
guage Processing, voice con-
trolled applications can now
understand different accents
and do smart things. Taking
advantage of that lets try to
control everything entirely
enhance the functionality of
that existing app by making
it listen to your voice com-
mands. 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. Isnt it cool?
Enable Voice
Control everything with voice.....................................14 Operation on
PlayStation 4
Floating Apps on Android ............................................. 16
Youll need the PlayStation
Camera or a standard headset

with voice commands.
Control your
entire phone
by voice
Google launched an appli-
cation 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 con-
trol individual apps using
your voice. Although its tar-
geted towards users having
problems accessing the touch
screen, it isnt a typical acces-
sibility app.
To start with, download
Voice Access from the
Call out for these numbers to
open the respective app.
{ }
Tips & Tricks has its own page numbers, and does not follow the rest
of the magazines page numbers. This is done to ensure that you can
cut out and save T&T in a separate folder for later reference.
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. How-
ever, launching the app
needs touch intervention,
thus, hindering the truly
voice controlled function-
ality. 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.
Play content
on your TV
with your voice
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.
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
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 >
System > Voice Opera-
tion Settings > check
Operate PS4 with Voice.
After enabling, you can access
voice operation by saying Play-
Station 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
Youll need an Xbox compat-
ible 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 set-
tings > I agree > Restart
now. After enabling just say
Hey Cortana! and youll
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.

www.digit.in Vol 17 | 14 April 2017 | Digit

Tips & Tricks
Ask Cortana
what your
friends are doing
While you are using your
Xbox One, you may ask
Cortana to check what your
friends are doing. Just ask
Hey Cortana, is (friends
name) online? or What
is (friends name) doing?.
Shell tell you whether your
Xbox Live friend is online
and what he is doing. For
example, watching TV.
Create
custom
Google Now
commands
If you are bored with the
Google-offered limited
Google Now commands,
you may create your own
commands to enhance the
functionality of the voice
assistant. To do this youll
need two apps - AutoVoice
(free app) and Tasker (paid
app). Download and install
the required apps from the
Google Play Store. After you
are done installing both the
apps navigate to Settings
> Accessibility > Auto-
Voice Google Now Inte-
gration > Turn on > OK.
After this, open Tasker
app > hit the + button
located at the bottom-right
corner > Event > Plugin >
AutoVoice Recognized > hit
the pencil button > Speak
Filter. Now say the custom
command you want to create
> choose the Voice Command
you just said > hit the tick
button located at the top-
right corner.
Once you have created
the custom command, youll
have to associate the action
for that command. Hit the
back button > tap New Task
+ > tap the tick button > tap
the + button > select the
action from the given list,
and if your action doesnt
appear in the given list you
Digit | April 2017
Tap Event to create a new
profile as Plugin
may search for it > select the
action > provide an action to
it > Exit Tasker.
Your custom Google Now
command is ready to be exe-
cuted. Just say Ok Google
followed by your custom
command to execute it.
Make your
own Amazon
Echo using
Raspberry Pi
Amazon Echo is an amazing
device. Unfortunately, it
is not officially available
in India yet. If you want
Amazon Alexa to be the part
of your living room you can
make your own using a Rasp-
berry Pi and some hardware
you can find in your home.
It is a lengthy procedure
but not at all complex. Just
follow the guide at http://dgit.
in/GuideAEcho.
Control Echo-
Pi using your
smartphone
If you have built the Amazon
Echo using Raspberry Pi,
you know it doesnt wake
up to the Alexa command.
Pressing a button on the
Echo-Pi every time isnt
convenient. To deal with
this, you can use your smart-
phone installed with Alexa
Vol 17 | 15
companion app. As Echo-Pi
offers nearly all the features
from the original Echo, youll
also be able to use the com-
panion app to voice control
Alexa from your phone.
Control
Google
Chrome using voice
commands
Why type URLs when you
can just call them? Adding
voice commands to Google
Chrome is easy and reliable.
Once added, it will be one of
the most extensively used
features. To make Chrome
listen to your commands,
youll need an extension.
Although there are many
voice commands extensions
available, we will recommend
Voice Actions for Chrome
extension as it is more reli-
able than others. Add this
extension to Chrome from
http://dgit.in/VAChrome.
After adding, a small
microphone icon will be
placed next to the settings
button. Click on it and say
your command. You can ask
it to go to [website],
switch to [tab title],
A window acknowledging
your command will pop-up.
pictures of [topic],
calculate [expres-
sion]. Rather than manual
access each time you want to
use it, go to chrome://exten-
sions/ > scroll to the end of
the page > Keyboard short-
cuts > add a shortcut to Voice
Actions for Chrome exten-
sion > OK. At least now its
assigned to a shortcut.
Let Cortana
automatically
remind you of your
commitments
Cortana on Windows 10 is
updated with a cool new fea-
ture that will automatically
remind you to do things that
you mentioned in email. This
latest feature is handy if you
rely on Outlook or Micro-
soft 365 for mail. To do this,
first sign in to Cortana using
your Microsoft account, go to
Notebook > Permissions
> check Communications
History. Go back to Note-
book > Connected Ser-
vices > turn on Outlook and/
or Microsoft 365.
Once you have enabled
this, Cortana will scan
through your emails to auto-
matically create a reminder
based on your communica-
tion. Just ask Cortana show
my reminders and it will
give you the list of things that
you have committed to.
Cortana will remember your
promises
Use voice
commands to
install Windows 10
The Creators Update for
Windows 10 is going to bring
a cool feature in April that
lets you install a fresh copy
of Windows 10 assisted by
Cortana. This means you go
through the operating system
installation using your voice.
www.digit.in

You dont need to be con-
nected to the internet to use
this feature. Creators Update
is scheduled for April and
starting then youll be able
to install Windows 10 using
voice commands. We have
tested it on the insider pre-
view of the Creators Update
and it works just as expected.
Make Siri talk
to you like
LEGO Batman
Siri just learned a new trick.
It will talk to you as if youre
LEGO Batman if you say
Hey computer.
Find your
Android
phone using
Cortana
Microsoft has released Cor-
tana for Android and iOS. If
you are bored with Google
Now or Siri you might like
to try Cortana for a change.
However, apart from this, if
you are a Windows 10 and
Android user, you can ask
Cortana to find your phone
from your Windows 10 PC.
To do this, download and
install Cortana from Play
Store, login with the same
Microsoft account you use on
your Windows 10 machine.
Once you have set up Cor-
Say Hey Cortana and ask
for where is my phone it
will locate it and notify its
location on your desktop
www.digit.in
tana, go to your Windows 10
PC and ask Cortana Find my
phone. It will automatically
find it for you on the map.
Use Siri on
Mac to quickly
search files
As Siri is now a part of Mac
you can use it to quickly
search files for you. Instead
of going through the Finder
to get your file, just ask Siri
show the file that I was
working on yesterday and
it will quickly show you all
the files that you have modi-
fied the last day. This is a
neat feature and an advanced
search query that will save
a lot of time looking for the
file. It even works if you ask
Siri to find files that you were
working last week or even
last month.
FLOATING APPS
ON ANDROID
Most of you should be pretty
familiar with Facebooks
Messenger App. Although,
there are a couple of concerns
for some users like random
crashing, delayed notifica-
tions, certain bugs, etc, one
cannot deny the usefulness
of the chat-head bubble fea-
ture in Messenger. Basically,
your chats appear as a pop-up
bubble that floats on top of
other application so you can
easily keep your conversation
going without having to mini-
mize or switch between apps.
This feature makes chatting
much faster and sending/
receiving messages becomes
easier than on a browser.
Similarly, there are plenty
of Floating apps on the Play
Store that offers similar
kind of functionality. Say
you want to take some notes
while watching a tutorial
video on YouTube, trying
to complete a game but cant
ignore a special someones
chat, calculating some scores
Vol 17 | 16
Create multiple windows
with all running different
application at the same time
using Tiny Apps.
from an online spreadsheet,
etc. There are many instances
where floating apps can be
very useful for multitasking
or increasing workflow and
here is a quick guide how to
use a few of them.
Float any
messaging
app on your phone
Using Flychat, you can create
chat bubble-heads (similar
to Facebooks Messenger)
for different messaging
applications. To get started
with Flychat, simply down-
load the application from the
Play Store, open the applica-
tion and it will automatically
detect all the messaging apps
that are installed on your
phone. On the application,
you can select for which-
ever messengers you want
the chat heads, and you can
even put in different themes,
change the chat color, set
notifications or even block
particular contacts.
Flychat currently works
for messengers like What-
sApp, Telegram, Hangouts,
Line, Allo, Slack, Twitter,
Skype, Facebook, and many
more. However, note that the
Application isnt perfect and
Tips & Tricks
it might not work flawlessly
for every messenger. In our
testing, we noticed that it
didnt display videos on
WhatsApp and also it didnt
always create chat heads for
Hangouts. Another issue we
noticed was that it wouldnt
create separate chat heads for
a single app. For example, if
you would have more than
two different conversations
going on in WhatsApp, you
cannot have multiple chat
heads for each conversation.
All your conversations are
laid out in different columns
but the transition between
them isnt as fluid.
Float your
notes
As the name suggests, Sticky
Notes is a simple hassle free
app that can be used to take
notes and save them. Similar
to the Windows Sticky Notes,
your notes can be easily
resized, minimized or dragged
anywhere on the screen. You
can even share your notes
directly to other applications
and the best feature is the
ability to take notes instantly
on top of other applications
be it any games, whether you
might be watching a video on
Can you play a YouTube video
and browse the web while
taking notes at the same time
on your phone?
April 2017 | Digit
Tips & Tricks
YouTube, browsing the web
or even while taking a call.
Watch
YouTube
videos in a floating
video player
Say you want to stream
YouTube while fiddling on
Twitter at the same time?
You can do that using Back-
ground Floating Tube. Basi-
cally, it is an app that allows
you to play any YouTube
Videos on a floating re-siz-
able player that can play on
top of any other application.
The video player is movable
and can also be minimized.
The player also gives all of the
controls similar to the mobile
YouTube app and so you can
easily share, adjust volume,
video quality, enable/disable
subtitles, straight from the
floating screen itself.
Float your
web browsing
with floating tabs
Flyperlink and Flynx are ba-
sically web browsers specifi-
cally designed for multitask-
ing on smartphones. Using
these apps you can open any
links or websites as bubble
heads that can also be mini-
mized. The heads float on top
Float multiple websites in
tiny bubble heads using
Flyperlink and Flynx
Digit | April 2017
Hook up your smartphone to a keyboard, mouse, external monitor and download the multi-
window Leena launcher for a desktop like appearance.
of other apps so you can eas-
ily multitask. Using Flyper-
link, you can have multiple
links opened and switching
between them is only a swipe
away. Another cool feature in
Flyperlink is that it supports
adblock and also includes
Chrome Custom Tabs.
Float specific
apps and even
folders
There is an completely
free app called Fast Access
(Floating Toolbox) on the
Play Store using which
you can create a fast access
launcher/toolbox for your
Create shortcuts for your
favourite apps with Fast
Access Floating Toolbox
Vol 17 | 17
apps and even specific
folders. The application will
detect all your installed pro-
grams and you can easily
select the ones for which you
want a quick launch shortcut.
Once you have selected a list
of applications, they should
be available for fast access
from the apps floating icon.
The icon is translucent, mov-
able and can be activated by a
simple tap. A long tap to the
icon will close it while a quick
double tab will take your
phone to the home screen.
There is another similar
app called Floating ToolBox-
Floating App which gives
similar functionality with a
slightly different look.
Get multiple
floating
window apps
With this application you
can create multiple windows
like on a computer with all
running different applica-
tion at the same time. The
app currently has 32 indi-
vidual apps that you can
access and operate in smaller
windows. For instance, you
can have an browser, a stop
watch, YouTube, calculator,
and even a phone dialer all
operating at the same time.
The application offers a lot
of customisations and from
the settings you can change
the theme, font size, trans-
parency, language, even add
a launcher notification bar,
enable or disable hardware
acceleration, etc. Tiny Apps
is another similar applica-
tion that might not include
as many features as Floating
Apps but offers a more intu-
itive and responsive UI.
Set a multi
window
launcher for large
screens
Leena Desktop UI (Mul-
tiwindow) is an interesting
theme that gives your Android
device a desktop (thatll
strongly remind you of the
MacOS) like appearance. The
launcher comes included with
its own browser, file manager,
a native video player, image
viewer and also a couple of
web apps. The primary aim
of this beta launcher is to use
your smartphone to replace
your desktops for all basic
tasks. To get started with the
whole Leena UI experience,
hook up your smartphone to
a keyboard, mouse, external
monitor and be blown away
with how much mobile oper-
ating systems have grown
over the last decade.
www.digit.in
 RIP 16GB iPhone SE
The 16GB iPhone SE is dead. Now get
a 32GB iPhone SE for the same price.
http://dgit.in/RIP16GBSE
Bad GPUs, bad displays and
more bad GPUs
GPUs are failing our readers, as we come across several of them. April is all about
displays and graphics cards, well mostly.
Farewell, old friend
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 PCs
AGP slot, my PC doesn't turn on. After
removing it and then connecting the
monitor to the motherboard, my PC
turns on. Im not able to deduce the
issue with my graphics card. Secondly,
I called NVIDIAs 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
AGP video cards are a relic now
Hey Swapnil, looks like your GPU
has finally met its end life. Since you
have already determined that con-
necting the monitor to the mother-
boards display port does work, its
clear that the GPU has stopped
working. There are chances that only
the port might have conked off but
considering your GPUs nine year old
life, its more likely that the entire
component has died. Your warranty is
obviously over and repairing it wont
be a good and worthy decision.
Instead, you should simply go ahead
and buy a new GPU. Do note, since
Nat Geo maps
Nat Geo launches website that offers
detailed maps in printable PDFs.
http://dgit.in/NatGeoWeb
your motherboard has an AGP port,
you wont be able to insert the newer
PCI-e graphics cards. So, youll need a
new motherboard as well if a GPU is
necessary. Otherwise, you can
continue using your PC using your
motherboards display port.
Android on Lumia
I have a Lumia 525 and I was won-
dering 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
Not many developers are interested in
porting Android to Windows
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 didnt
see much light and has been discon-
tinued for now. The build wasnt
stable enough for everyday use. We
also came across guides to install
Android 7.1 but source files are
missing and those files havent been
updated. It seems like not many
developers are interested in this
particular device to port Android. If
Q&A
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.
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. How-
ever, 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 min-
utes. I have the following specs:
OS: Windows 10 Home Single Lan-
guage 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
 Periscope Producer API
Twitter announces API that'll allow
cameras and other hardware to share live
Q&A videos directly. http://dgit.in/ProducerAPi
Frequently cleaning up your laptop is a
good idea
require a lot of rendering will task the
GPU with load even though on low
settings, and after a while overheat it.
You should probably get your PC
cleaned since dust accumulation can
also overheat components. If you have
experience, you can do it yourself
otherwise we would suggest you to
consult someone who tinkers around
with PC components. If the over-
heating still remains, contact customer
support. There might be something
specific wrong with your device, in
which case customer support should
have a better idea on how to guide you
regarding this.
Not on display
Dear Team Digit, I am a great fan
of yours and really appreciate the
work done by you guys to update us
on latest technology. Currently my
Dell Inspiron 15R N5010 laptop is
not booting up. When I switch it on,
there is no display on the screen. The
processing indicator LED (middle of
the three LED indicators) glows for
3-5 seconds then goes off. Initially, I
thought the problem is with the power
adapter (battery is not working since
the past 4-5 months). I performed all
the checks related to power as recom-
mended by Dell but in vain. Power LED
is glowing (blinking, amber colour due
to battery malfunctioning), internal fan
is also working.
Ive also performed a screen
display check by connecting the laptop
to my TV with an HDMI cable but
there was no display on the TV. I also
tried to remove and re-insert the RAM
modules, but that also did not produce
any result. Is there a way this issue
52 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
can be resolved with your help? I took
my laptop to a Dell Authorized Service
Centre in Ahmedabad and they think
the issue is with the motherboard. A
new motherboard costs around 15K.
I brought back the laptop and mailing
you the issue with a hope. Please
help me in whatever way you can. If
you know any reliable local laptop
repair shop in Ahmedabad, please do
let me know.
Following is the laptops system
configuration:
Model Dell Inspiron N5010
BIOS Version: A12
BIOS Date: 1/25/2011
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home
Basic
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M
480 @ 2.67GHz
RAM: 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3, 1333MHz
HDD: 500GB 5400RPM
BATTERY, PRIMARY, 48WHR, 6C,
LITHIUM ION,
Ankur Jain
Hey Ankur, youve managed to
troubleshoot the entire problem by
following the steps you have men-
tioned. If the screen isnt lighting up at
all, it directs towards a damaged
display. This could be because of a bad
connection between the screen and the
motherboard. Since the power LED is
glowing, it doesnt seem like you have
a booting issue. We always recom-
mend our readers to completely geek
out with electronics but under
supervision with an enthusiast or
expert to prevent huge losses. It could
be worth your time trying to open up
the laptop and determine whether the
display is connected properly. To
completely figure out the problem you
should connect another laptop screen
and check whether it lights up. This
will help you eliminate almost all the
possibilities. If all else, fails then you
will have to get it repaired at an official
Dell service center to ensure genuine
parts for your laptop. Even though
that might seem to take more time
than you would prefer, that would be
the safest and surest way to ensure
genuine parts for your device.
New iOS app Clips
Clips is a new video-sharing app made by
Apple that doesn't have a social media
network attached. http://dgit.in/ClipsiOS
A panel problem
Hey guys! This is my second mail to
you and Im really in dire need of your
expertise. I'm an avid reader of your
great tech magazine. So my problem
is I own a Lenovo Y50-70 laptop with
8GB of RAM and a NVIDIA GTX860M
GPU. Now the problem is its display.
It's a TN panel, its viewing angles are
pretty much sore in the eyes. Colour
production is damn poor. I don't know
what to do with this screen. I'm really
in a confused state about this display.
Should I replace this one with an IPS
panel or should I buy an external mon-
itor for it? Also, if I go with the IPS
panel one, will I get the same refresh
rate? Please let me know whether I
can get one. I mainly want to use that
for gaming and movies. Help! :(
P.S. Y'all are doing great job. Love
your magazine!
Ankit
TN panels are great for gaming
Hey Ankit, thank you for all the
praise. Its readers like you for whom
we love creating content. Coming to
your problem, you should know that
TN panels are great for gaming which
is why the Y50-70 has one in the first
place. Youre right that these panels
offer poor viewing angles, but the
primary use-case of your laptop is
dedicated towards gaming. We
wouldnt recommend you to replace
the panel on the laptop but if viewing
angles are a huge concern and affect
your experience significantly, then we
would suggest you to go for an
external monitor with an IPS display.
You can go for the HP 22es IPS 21.5
inch display selling for around `9k,
which has a resolution of 1920x1080
and a refresh rate of 60Hz.

Sci-Tech 56
IN A LAND
FAR, FAR AWAY...
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
I
n recent times, not many interga-
lactic 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, everyones 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 Plan-
etesimals 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 astro-
physicist 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
From the labs
Is it possible for us to bring
back the Wooly Mammoth into
existence? We try to explore.
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 stars
composition, it was observed and classi-
fied 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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planets lie in the habitable zone. A solar
systems 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 weve 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 signifi-
cantly 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
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sky from one planet, they would spot
the other planets as massive orbs on the
night sky. While this sounds fantastic for
aesthetic and romantic appeal, the main
significance of this discovery is that the
planetary forces would react with each
other, because of the proximity.
Because of the forces interlocking, the
planets, they may not exhibit rotation on
their individual axes. This is a hindrance
in our hopeful calculations of spotting life
in the TRAPPIST-1 system. It is quite
possible that without rotational move-
ment, the planets in the habitable zone
may experience day on one half and night
on the other for eternity. This would fur-
ther lead to vicious winds and devastat-
ing tidal waves (if these planets contain
water) on the night half of the planet,
making it unsuitable for supporting life as
we know it.
Other significances of the TRAP-
PIST discovery also lies in the nature of
the solar system. An ongoing study by
researchers at Harvard University has
claimed that the proximity of all the plan-
ets mean interplanetary panspermia is
highly probable, or maybe even possible.
Interplanetary panspermia is the hypoth-
esis that life can exist across wider zones
of the universe, spread by agents like
meteoroids and comets. When it comes
to the TRAPPIST-1 system, panspermia
seems even more possible because of
how the planets are lined up, and this
further increases the chance for more
planets to support life.
How are these planets discovered?
The first peg in the discovery of the
TRAPPIST-1 system was the discovery
of the star back in 1999 by 2MASS, one
of the most ambitious space research
projects. 2MASS surveyed the entire sky
in the infrared spectrum. Subsequent
studies were taken up by Prof. Gillon
and his team at the University of Liege,
who used the Chile-based TRAPPIST
to make observations in 2015 based on
the 2MASS J23062928-0502285 star
discovered in 1999.
Subsequent studies and observa-
tions also involved the Spitzer Space
Telescope and the Very Large Telescope,
both belonging to NASA, following which
54 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
the announcement was made in February
2017. Data from the Spitzer telescope
also relayed planetary sizes of those in
the TRAPPIST-1 system, which have
given astronauts a first estimate of the
mass of each of these planets. Six of the
seven discovered planets are being said
to be rocky in composition, and the last
one may be gaseous, falling on the outer
edge of the system.
Further observations and studies are
being made to make more confirmed
calculations on these planets, and
NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has initi-
ated observation of the planets to study
the atmospheric compositions. Most of
these discoveries follow a similar path of
discovery with the Kepler telescope being
particularly prolific in the discovery of the
planets. Until now, about 15 rocky exo-
planets have been spotted orbiting stars
in the habitable zone, the most notable of
which till date was the Kepler-452b.
Discovered in 2015, the planet orbits
a Sun-like star nearly 1,400 light years
away, and is presently being studied by
observatories and researchers.
Is mankind really a multi-planetary
species?
Dangers surrounding the longevity of
Earth has been at the back of our minds
for a long time now, and that has brought
out the all-important question is man-
kind a multi-planetary species?
Thousands of science fiction novels
and movies have suggested the pres-
ence of intelligent humanoid entities in
Heres how our present home compares to possible future ones
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faraway solar systems, who somehow
muster the ability to understand human
speech, context, compassion and more
such specifics. Wishful thinking aside, it
may be highly improbable to think of life
forms existing in different stellar sys-
tems in a similar way as it exists here.
Mankind, however, has lately set its
sight on Mars, with some of the great-
est minds in the world targeting to set
up colonies in the red planet in the near
future. There is a need for mankind to
be a multi-planetary species, and that
primarily spawns from the fact that our
universe grows on complexity. From our
perception of the universe, and not the
other way round, complexity is a way of
evolution that ensures greater heights to
be reached in future generations.
As a result, converting mankind into
a multi-planetary species is crucial to
ensure that our branch of evolution can
continue even in the incident of a gargan-
tuan calamity that can threaten life on
Earth. This would ensure that evolution
continues for mankind, and much time
and devotion is to be spent on ensuring
the survival of all branches of mankind
for as long as possible. As celebrated as-
trophysicist Carl Sagan once stated, We
are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
Mankind is what defines the meaning
and significance of interstellar discover-
ies, and it is this, apart from evolutionary
needs, that make mankind the perfect fit
for being a multi-planetary species.
Incidentally, at a nearby distance
and with seemingly optimum conditions
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The entire solar system spans lesser than the distance between the Sun and Mercury
upon first impressions, the TRAP-
PIST-1 system could not have been
more ideal in mankinds galactic coloni-
sation plans.
Are we asking the right questions?
Every wrong question asked would
mean that somewhere, a right question
remained unanswered. Its true that the
TRAPPIST-1 discovery is indeed unique
in nature, and no such systems have
been discovered before. It is also impor-
tant to consider complex details before
simply being fascinated by the details of
the latest system.
Should we really be asking whether
there is life on these planets, or should
we first look into the finer details that
may prohibit life, and move ahead ac-
cordingly? Space research is expensive,
without having given much concrete
outcome to significantly alter the course
of life. As such it is important for us to
know that we need to ask the right ques-
tions, and choose them very carefully.
Alongside this lies the all-important
discussion on how will extraterres-
trial life actually look like, if we actually
stumble upon it in the future? Are we
narrowed down upon our perception of
life and life forms in order to discover
what is unknown? Even if we do find life
somewhere outside our Solar system,
how would we communicate? Would it
lead to any good, or are we hunting down
our own nemesis?
The TRAPPIST-1 system is being
seen as an optimistic ground for re-
searching on extraterrestrial life, and
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answering a lot of questions for which
mankind has been searching answers.
Extraterrestrials; Fermi Paradox
The prospect of discovering extraterres-
trial life in TRAPPIST-1 brings us back to
the Fermi paradox. It states the contra-
dictions presented by high probability
estimates and clear lack of evidences in
our hunt for intelligent life forms.
The Fermi paradox states the clear
observation of billions of stars in the
universe, along with the probability that
a few billions of them are similar to the
Sun in terms of composition. This further
generates very high probability that at
least a few millions of the Sun-like stars
What mysteries would these planets behold?
would have planets that lie in the habit-
able zone, exhibiting Earth-like qualities.
In turn, at least some of them would run
high probabilities of developing intelligent
life forms.
This would place our Solar system as
one of the many intelligent life-support-
Space Age
ing systems, and leave TRAPPIST-1 with
the prospect of being able to support
life, subject to further discoveries. The
Fermi paradox further states that many
of these intelligent life forms may have
set out on interstellar explorations. This
means establishing contact with extra-
terrestrial life should prove fruitful at
some point of time or the other.
The question, though, remains.
Whether such extraterrestrial life would
have the means to receive our mes-
sage or not. This has remained a major
thorn in our quest for extraterrestrial
life, leading to questioning whether the
TRAPPIST-1 system is too young, or
maybe too old in accordance to its star, to
support intelligent life forms.
Mankind was born on Earth, it was
never meant to die here
Taking a leaf out of Christopher Nolans
screenplay, it is not too wrong to be
optimistic on the TRAPPIST-1 system. It
is, after all, the most striking discovery of
Earth-like planets.
Much work and studies still remain,
and so do a number of questions sur-
rounding our sudden flux of interest in
discovering extraterrestrial life. The likes
of Elon Musk are taking to the skies to
begin space tourism, and even aiming
for Mars to spread out mankinds arm of
evolution. Will we stumble upon intel-
ligent life in our near future, or are we
actually all alone in the vast universe?
Much of these answers may lie within the
confines of TRAPPIST-1.
Mankind was certainly born on Earth,
but was it really not meant to die here?
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 55

From the labs
BRINGING BACK
THE WOOLY
How Manny from Ice Age could one day
be walking amongst us
Neha C V & Ronak Gupta
feedback@digit.in
W
hen Jurassic Park released in
1993, moviegoers were spell-
bound looking at the dino-
saurs brought back to life
on screen. Micheal Crichtons science
fiction book had a fanciful and thrilling
plot that translated into pure cinematic
joy. Scientists somehow revive T-Rex
and Velociraptors and all hell breaks
loose. Besides entertaining the hell out
of cinema lovers, the movie planted eve-
ryone with an idea. Can we bring back
extinct animals from the dead?
As it turns out, we probably can.
Scientists at Harvard are trying their
best to revive the Wooly Mammoth
(Remember Manfred Manny from
Ice Age). Wooly Mammoths are one of
the most easily recognizable extinct
creatures and were wiped out in one
of the five mass extinction events.
And now, we can possibly see them in
flesh - thanks to a revolutionary tool
that can modify the code of life - DNA.
This tool, CRISPR, has been making
the news lately for being a means of
genetic engineering that precisely
modifies available DNA samples with
minimum errors, enabling scientists to
model and find a cure for many genetic
diseases. But how is this achieved? We
have broken down the process of this
seemingly magical technology in the
November issue of Digit and although
56 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
SpaceX Dragon
Dragon Capsule was recovered with
research from the International Space
Station. http://dgit.in/SpaceXdragon
the inner workings of this process seem
sound enough, there is a nagging ques-
tion that remains where will the DNA
of the dead animals come from?
The DNA Question
The Jurrasic Park technique of mining
dinosaur DNA from fossilised mos-
quitoes doesnt quite work in reality,
as Dino DNA doesnt quite survive the
vagaries of age. In the case of Mam-
moths, being from the Ice Age comes
with its own benefits. The Wooly Mam-
moths that went extinct during this
period got buried under
huge chunks of ice and
snow leading to proper
preservation of their tis-
sues. One such specimen,
that of a 39,000-year-old
female baby mammoth
was discovered in Siberia
in 2010. The specimen,
named Yuka has been the
source of all information
we need to reconstruct An artists impression of the Wooly Mammoth
these species. Equipped
with the power and precision of
CRISPR, the DNA encoding for mam-
moth features is being engineered into
the embryo of an Asiatic elephant to
produce a hybrid a Mammophant.
The chosen one
The reason for choosing an Asiatic
elephant over its cousin The African
Elephant, for making the hybrid is
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that the Asiatic Elephant is genetically
closer to the Mammoth, similar to
how humans are more closely related
to chimpanzees than to gorillas. This
reduces the number of genetic changes
needed. The group of scientists at
Harvard have made 15 edits in the
Asiatic elephant DNA and they hope to
increase it to 45 edits soon to make the
Mammophant as close to a mammoth
as possible. With these edits in place,
they then wish to grow this hybrid in
an artificial womb in a laboratory. That
is quite a massive task. The time taken
(CC 2.5, credit : Mauricio Antn - Wikipedia)
for a mammoth/elephant embryo to
grow is around 660 days, and using
current state of art only mice embryos
have been cultured this way, that too
for only 10 days out of which half the
time they originally spend within their
mothers womb. Is there any reason
why scientists want to embark on this
difficult line of research beyond the
novelty factor?
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be at top. http://dgit.in/TimCookAI with his. http://dgit.in/UberQuit From the labs

in temperatures. Grass, have serious implications, ethically as

instead, does not absorb
as much sunlight causing
much of it to be reflected.
These findings unravel
(CC 3.0, credit : Nandaro - Wikipedia)
well as physiologically. Mammoths,
like elephants, are highly social ani-
mals and these new-age hybrids might
lack social skills owing to the absence

how intimately the flora, of peers. Critics remark that the entire
fauna and climate of an project would reduce to creating a
ecosystem are linked miniscule amount of hybrids to be used
and how introduction of as show ponies for wealthy individuals.
a species like the Wooly Then there is this annoying thing called
Mammoth could be the chaos. Chaotic systems show a sensi-
just the element needed tive dependence on variables - small
Yukas skull and lower jaw on display in Japan in 2013 to sustain it. changes lead to massive deviations.
On paper, the reanimation of a species
Motivation All the problems and subsequent reintroduction into
The original idea of reviving crea- Though resurrection biology seems to the environment might seem straight-
tures of the past, especially the Wooly have caught the fancy of a lot people, forward, but because the number of
Mammoth, is to the credit of a Russian not all are convinced by its tall claims. variables that the system depends on is
scientist, Sergey Zimov. He envisioned Conservation biologists believe that so huge, a small variation could throw
the Pleistocene Park (similar to Jurassic the governments around the world the entire ecosystem into disarray.
Park but named after the Ice Age), should try and preserve the present
an area where human intervention is day fauna. Also, even if the mammoths A resurrection - a revival
restoring the habitat to the grassland return, owing to their limited source Like any new bold science project that
like Mammoth Steppe, a form of cold DNA (obtained from only few indi- catches the public attention, the Wooly
climate African savanna. He believes viduals), all the mammoths will end up Mammoth resurrection project surely
that reanimating this ecosystem have identical genetic makeup. Hence, has its pitfalls and has attracted its
could potentially help prevent climate mistakes in their DNA code will get share of brickbats as well has having
change. It was this radical idea, that accumulated over time leading to their large scale benefits. Enthusiasts of
convinced George Church (the leading ultimate wipeout. Additionally, the the field believe that resurrection and
scientist of this group at Harvard), to process of generating this hybrid uti- re-animation (restoration of animals
take up the revival of the mammoth. lises Asiatic elephant embryos, which belonging to a region) are important
Mammoth like creatures could help is a nightmare for conservation biolo- as they garner attention and generate
preventing the underground layers gists as these elephants are shrinking resources for conservation efforts as
in tundra (permafrosts) from melting. in terms of their numbers. On the other people might be interested in funding
Tundras are the highest source of hand, nurturing an animal ex- vivo such cool programmes. Mammo-
carbon in the Arctic owing to their (outside a living being) would make the phants would bring back useful traits
being a rich burial ground for a mas- baby mammoth devoid of the essential into the genetic pool, in turn helping
sive amount of flora and fauna of the contact it harbours with its mother the Asiatic elephant recover from the
past. If these melt, the sheer amount right from its conception. This could brink of extinction by making them
of methane released will exacerbate more resistant to habitat change.
the damage done by carbon dioxide Wooly Mammoths were prey to a
to the atmosphere by manifold. By the fifth mass extinction event. We are
punching through the snow, these now in midst of a sixth, triggered not
huge herbivores let cold air pass over by natural causes but by mankind.
it, restoring these permafrosts to their Any experiment that can reverse the
original frozen state. During summer damage done to Earth by humankind
(CC 2.0, credit : Steve Jurvetson - Wikipedia)

months when trees replace grass, they is worthy and no monetary based argu-
were responsible for knocking down ment should be a valid one against it.
trees, either when they sharpened Sometimes betting on the future of sci-
their tusks/horns, indulged in a show ence can reap rich dividends. It worked
of strength or just cleared their path. for LIGO, for the LHC. We continue
This helped in clearing the forests, pumping money to the ITER project for
which in case of the Arctic tundra is nuclear fusion based energy. Trying to
beneficial as the forest cover absorbs a bring back a creature from the Ice Age
lot of sunlight and heat leading to rise George Church - Harvard Biologist as a biological experiment...Why not!

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 57


Street smart 61
Gear for
a wannabe
YouTuber
Agent001 helps you kick start your game
streaming career with the basics.
Agent 001
agent001@digit.in
E
sports is huge and its growing in
India. Ive 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 dont play
a particular game, theyll still watch
the stream because they like the person
whos streaming. While Im 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 Ive 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 Im prone to
getting my leg pulled once in awhile. I
58 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Price Watch
Release the shutterbug inside you with the
best cameras, and then get gaming with
the best keyboards in the market
ignored the ribbing till he realised he
wasnt 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 didnt 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,
Id get a WhatsApp message soon after
a stream got over and hed 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 hed do it if he were to stream.
Yeah, everyones 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 thats
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 didnt
find the audio quality up to mark. It
made him sound completely weird
so he went and got the Blue Yeti USB
microphone. Theyre 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
thats where he ended up getting a little
confused. Confused enough to call me
 Killer Rigs
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63 your money for various PC builds spanning
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up. Since he was trying out OBS on the
side, he decided to use the embedded
webcam in his laptop. Theres nothing
wrong with using that to get the hang
of OBS except for the fact that his
laptop was a 15-year old IBM Thinkpad
with a VGA camera. Kudos to IBM for
building laptops that last more than a
decade but the video resolution was so
bad, that for a moment it felt like the
90s and we were back to watching ani-
mated GIFs. The cringe was worse than
going through a hundred dank memes.
We checked out all the webcams avail-
able on Amazon and it was pretty
evident that Logitech was ruling the
top-selling list. We needed a webcam
that could capture widescreen too since
my friend planned on streaming co-op
games as well with two hosts in front of
the camera. Another need was for the
camera to be able to capture at least 30
FPS at 1080p to avoid ghosting.
There were quite a few contenders
that fit the role. The Brother NW-1000
is a decent webcam but it lacks expo-
sure compensation and face tracking.
The latter being an important feature
for any webcam these days. So we
moved on to the HP HD 4310. Again,
this too was a decent webcam and we
nearly bought it but a quick glance
through the user reviews revealed that
the front panel was made of plastic.
A GTX 1050 laptop
Hello there Digit!
When will a GTX 1050/1050 Ti laptop be
released in India? Do you have any idea
about the expected starting price?
Febin S
Hey Febin, gaming laptops
embedded with NVIDIA GTX 1050 and
1050 Ti GPUs are already here. Weve
already covered six of them in a recent
slideshow that you can check out here:
http://dgit.in/GTX1050LapDgt. Most of the
laptops mentioned here havent been
listed on online stores but the following
can be found:
Asus ROG GL553VD-FY103T
Asus FX553VD-DM483
Agent 001
Plastic scratches very easily and a few
months down the line youll be be left
with a foggy lens. Next up was the
Genius WideCam F100 which is pretty
good for getting a wide angle but quite
a few users mentioned that it was prone
to stuttering, an issue that has plagued
the unit for a long time. And we skipped
that too. Then we checked out the Log-
itech C920. And boy, was it good. It has
everything 1080p at 30 FPS with the
option to tweak the resolution, expo-
sure compensation is good and theres
face tracking as well. Moreover, it comes
with a glass plate and has a tripod
mount on the bottom. Jackpot! All that
was left was to go through the user
comments and it turns out the the C920
is the gold standard for webcams. So we
went ahead with the C920. You might
wonder, why not the C922? It records at
720p 60 FPS and has a built in green
screen filter. Well, since we were using
OBS, the stream was going to be at 30
FPS and OBS has built in green screen.
Hence, the extra features on the C922
were redundant with our setup.
My friend hasnt begun lives-
treaming yet but every now and then
he shares an unlisted video to show
that hes closer to making good on his
promise. Who knows, one day he might
invite me to play co-op on his stream.
Till then, ciao!
MSI GP62 7RD
MSI GL62 7RD
MSI GL62M 7RD
MSI PE60 7RD
The MSI GL62M 7RD is the most
affordable GTX 1050 gaming laptop.
 Betty Smart-Plug
Beyond Evolutions new smart-plug lets you
control your home appliances from anywhere.
Agent 001 http://dgit.in/BettyPlug
The lowest price online is for the MSI
GL62M 7RD at `72,990.
Gaming for good
I want to build a budget PC for gaming.
Im a very big fan of Digit and my family
reads your magazine. My parents decided
to buy me a gaming PC so help me with it.
Heres the rest of my specs that Im plan-
ning to purchase:
CPU: Intel Core-i7 6700K
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA Z170X
Gaming 7
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212X
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1
gaming
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (1x
16GB) 3000MHz
HDD: WD Blue 4TB WD40EZRZ
SSD: SanDisk Ultra ll 480GB SATA 6
Gbps
Speakers: Marvo SG-201 (USB 2.0)
Blue
Optical drive: ASUS DRW-24D5MT
Cabinet: Cooler Master MasterCase
Pro 5
Case fans: 2x Cooler Master Sickle-
Flow
Keyboard: Logitech G910 Orion Spark
Mouse: Logitech G502 Proteus Core
Headphone: Logitech G633 Artemis
spectrum
Do recommend me a PSU and UPS
as well. They should each be under `10k
as Ive already spent the rest. Is the Acer
G257HU good enough? Is WQHD good
for gaming? I hope it doesnt create any
problem. Can my screen handle the G502
(please consider the CPI and resolution
of the screen whether its size is good for
me or not). Also, I have no problem with a
heavy mouse.
Gems Duniya
Looks like youre building a serious
gaming rig. From your list of compo-
nents, we would suggest these changes:
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K
Motherboard: MSI Z270 Gaming M5
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 or
Corsair Hydro Series H100i V2
SSD: Samsung 960 EVO Series -
250GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti
Founders Edition
60 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Speakers: Logitech Z506 Surround
Sound 5.1
Cabinet: Cooler Master MasterCase
Maker 5
PSU: Seasonic S12II Series 620W
UPS: APC Back-UPS BR1500G-IN
1500VA
Monitor: Acer XB270HU 27-inch
144Hz 4K G-Sync
The rest of it look great. The Acer
G257HU is good but the Acer XB270HU
is better. You wont face any CPI issues
with the resolution of the screen since
the CPI level is adjustable on the G502.
You can go for the RGB version of the
G502 named Spectrum at the same price.
If you really need a UPS then go for an
expensive pure sine wave UPS.
YouTube aspirations
Hey Digit life savers! Im just a newbie
to YouTube, thanks to your Become a
successful YouTuber FastTrack edition.
Ive started recording videos on my Xiaomi
Note 4. The videos are not stable. Hence,
Im here to ask you about buying a smart-
phone stabiliser. I did some research and
found the flow motion one which is a bit
expensive. Recommend me a less expen-
sive one which is around 3-4k. Thanking
you in advance.
Sharan
Hey Sharan, mobile stabilisers are
more of a luxury. If youre recording still
videos then you only need a tripod with
Smartphone stabilisers are expensive
and not worth investing in the initial
YouTuber days
Jabra Talk 2 headset
Jabras new handsfree bluetooth
headset is now available in India for `2099.
http://dgit.in/JabraTalk2
a phone mount. You can go for the
AmazonBasics 60-Inch Lightweight
Tripod and any selfie stick that lets you
attach the mount to a tripod. If youre
shooting videos on the go then you can
do so by getting a selfie stick that offers
some amount of stability.
Friendly match
Hello Digits Overlords, my best friend
shifted to the PC Master Race, and I
am planning on following him, as we
both play nearly same games and share
accounts to save money, I thought about
changing my title from a console peasant
to a PC overlord. I looked at the killer rigs
section and decided for the following rig.
Processor: Intel Core i3-6100
Motherboard: MSI Pro H110
RAM: HyperX Fury
HDD: WD Blue 2TB internal hard disk
GPU: ZOTAC GTX 1060 3GB
PSU: Corsair CP-9020098-WW VS
Series VS650
Keyboard: Cooler Master Devastator
II (bundle)
Monitor: AOC I2279VWHE 22-inch
Is this the best possible rig for
`60,000? Please suggest me a good
case. Looks dont matter but it should
have a USB 3.0 port. I dont need an
optical drive as I already have one. Lastly,
can you play Tom Clancys Wildlands (co-
op) if one has an Xbox and the other has a
PC? Please reply as soon as possible.
Anubhav
Hey Anubhav, heres a better configu-
ration that you should consider for a rig
under `60,000.
Processor: Intel Core i3-7100
Motherboard: ASRock H170 Pro4S
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Red
8GB DDR4 2400
HDD: Toshiba DT01ACA100
GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Turbo
PSU: Corsair VS450
Speakers: F&D F-203G 2.1
Keyboard/Mouse bundle: Gamdias
Ares 7 Essential Combo
Monitor: HP 22es IPS 21.5 inch
Cabinet: Antec VSK 4000B U3
Crossplay between different plat-
forms isnt supported yet.
 Huawei P10 Lite HTC U Ultra Sapphire
It's an affordable version of their HTC is selling limited-editions of the
latest flagship with the Kirin 658 chip. U Ultra with a sapphire glass display.
http://dgit.in/P10LiteH http://dgit.in/SapphireHTC Price Watch

SPEND SMART
It's time to channelise your inner photographer. Pick any one of the
following listed DSLR cameras and go for it. It's also time to up your
gear with a new gaming keyboard. Fret not, we have another list.

DSLR
Brand Model Megapixels Sensor size (mm) Maximum ISO Shutter speed Video resolution Display screen Price (`)
Nikon D3300 24.2 MP 23.5 x 15.6 12,800 1/4000 to 30s 1080p 3.0 inch LCD 22,995/-
Sony Alpha a58Y 20.1 MP 23.2 x 15.4 16,000 1/4000 to 30s 1080p 2.7 inch TFT 40,990/-
Nikon D5500 24.2 MP 23.2 x 15.4 25,600 1/4000 to 30s 1080p 3.2 inch LCD 47,200/-
Sony A68 24.2 MP 23.5 x 15.6 25,600 1/4000 to 30s 1080p 2.7 inch LCD 47,468/-
Canon EOS 750D 24.2 MP 22.3 x 14.9 6,400 1/8000 to 30s 1080p 3.0 inch LCD 47,799/-
Canon EOS 80D 24.2 MP 22.3 x 14.9 25,600 1/8000 to 30s 1080p 3.0 inch touch LCD 67,999/-
Nikon D7200 24.2 MP 23.5 x 15.6 102,400 1/8000 to 30s 1080p 3.2 inch LCD 69,995/-
Sony Alpha 77 II 24.3 MP 23.5 x 15.6 25,600 1/8000 to 30s 1080p 3.0 inch LCD 71,990/-
Canon EOS 6D 20.2 MP 36.0 x 24.0 102,400 1/4000 to 30s 1080p 3.0 inch LCD 1,08,900/-
Nikon D500 20.9 MP 23.5 x 15.7 1,640,000 1/8000 to 30s 4K 3.2 inch touch LCD 1,27,000/-
Pentax K-1 36.4 MP 35.9 x 24.0 204,800 1/8000 to 30s 1080p 3.2 inch LCD 1,57,000/-
Nikon D810 36.3 MP 35.9 x 23.9 51,200 1/8000 to 30s 1080p 3.2 inch TFT 1,69,995/-
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV 30.4 MP 36.0 x 24.0 102,400 1/8000 to 30s 4K 3.2 inch LCD 2,88,786/-
Nikon D5 20.8 MP 35.9 x 23.9 3,280,000 1/8000 to 30s 4K 3.2 inch touch LCD 3,99,999/-
Canon EOS 1DX II 20.2 MP 35.9 x 23.9 409,600 1/8000 to 30s 4K 3.2 inch LCD 4,55,995/-

GAMING KEYBOARDS
Brand Model Switch type Switch name Illimunation Macro keys Anti-ghosting Multimedia keys Price (`)

Zebronics Max Mechanical Outemu Blue Multicolor NA 10-key rollover With modifier key 2,400/-
Redgear MK881 Mechanical Kailh Blue 8 Modes RGB NA 10-key rollover With modifier key 2,995/-
Logitech G213 Prodigy Membrane Mech-Dome Full RGB NA 13-key rollover Dedicated 3,861/-
Gamdias Hermes Lite Mechanical Gamdias Switch Multicolor NA 21-keyrollover With modifier key 4,940/-
Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro L Mechanical Cherry MX Blue White blacklight 4 Keys N-key rollover With modifier key 8,071/-
Thermaltake Poseidon Z RGB Mechanical Kailh Blue Full RGB NA N-key rollover With modifier key 8,600/-
Logitech G 310 Mechanical Romer-G Blue backlight NA N-key rollover With modifier key 8,995/-
Corsair K70 Rapidfire Mechanical Cherry MX Speed Red backlight NA N-key rollover Dedicated 9,320/-
Corsair K65 LUX Mechanical Cherry MX Red Full RGB NA N-key rollover Dedicated 10,066/-
Corsair Strafe Mechanical Cherry MX Silent Full RGB NA N-key rollover With modifier key 11,980/-
Corsair K95 RGB Mechanical Cherry MX Red Full RGB 18 Keys N-key rollover Dedicated 12,940/-
Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2 Mechanical Razer Green Switch Full RGB 5 Keys 10-key rollover NA 13,300/-
Razer BlackWidow X Chroma Mechanical Razer Green switch Full RGB NA 10-key rollover NA 13,440/-
Steelseries Apex M800 Mechanical Steelseries QS1 Full RGB 6 keys N-key rollover With modifier key 14,110/-
G.Skill Ripjaws KM780 RGB Mechanical Cherry MX Brown Full RGB 6 keys N-key rollover Dedicated 14,770/-

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 61

 RECOMMENDED BUYS
From smartphones to gaming laptops, heres what we recommend for your next purchase!

TOP 3 TOP 3
SMARTPHONES UNDER BUDGET MONITORS
20-30K (UNDER 10K)
Brand Model Price (in `) Brand Model Price (in `)
OnePlus 3T 29,999/- ASUS VZ229H 9,600/-
Honor 8 29,999/- BenQ GW2470H 9,262/-
Moto Z Play 24,999/- HP 22ES 9,500/-

TOP 3
TOP 3 GRAPHICS CARDS
DESKTOP PROCESSORS UNDER 25K
Brand Model Price (in `) Brand Model Price (in `)
Intel Core i7-6950X 1,30,000/- MSI GTX 1060 8GB Gaming X 23,151/-
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 39,779/- Sapphire RX 480 8G D5 OC NITRO+ 23,999/-
Intel Core i7-7700K 28,248/- Zotac GTX 1060 3GB AMP Edition 19,699/-

TOP 3 TOP 3
HIGH-END 4K TVS WIRELESS ROUTERS
Brand Model Price (in `) Brand Model Price (in `)
LG Signature 77G6T 77" 19,99,900/- ASUS AC-5300 26,599/-
Samsung Series 9 KS9000 65" 4,40,900/- TP-Link AC-5400 29,690/-
Sony Bravia Z9D 65" 5,04,900/- D-Link AC3200 18,199/-

TOP 3
HIGH-END GAMING TOP 3
CABINETS (MID-TOWER) ACTION CAMERAS
Brand Model Price (in `) Brand Model Price (in `)
Thermaltake Core V51 10,875/- Garmin Virb Ultra 30 33,990/-
NZXT H440 (Red and Black) 12,450/- GoPro Hero5 Black 33,399/-
Corsair Spec-Alpha (Black/Red) 6,999/- Xiaomi Yi Action Sports 20,999/-

TOP 3 TOP 3
MID-RANGE ULTRABOOKS POWER BANKS
Brand Model Price (in `) Brand Model Price (in `)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 1,86,000/- Xiaomi Mi 20,000mAh 2,199/-
HP Spectre 1,52,290/- Anker PowerCore 10,400mAH 1,870/-
Lenovo Ideapad 710S 73,390/- TP-Link TL-PB10400 1,699/-

62 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 KILLER RIGS
Everything youll ever need to build your own PC. Whatever your budget.

Basic rig = 31,597 Entry-level gaming = 56,017 Mid-range gaming = 77,882 Basic Video Editing / CAD Rig = 1,74,965 Ultra high-end gaming = 2,94,263 Digit test rig= 5,35,916

BASIC RIG ENTRY-LEVEL GAMING

Processor Intel Core i3 - 7100 8,700 Processor Intel Core i3 - 7100 8,700
Motherboard ASRock H170 Pro4S 6,899 Motherboard ASRock H170 Pro4S 6,899
RAM Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Red 8GB DDR4 2400 3,970 Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Red 8GB DDR4
RAM 3,970
HDD Toshiba DT01ACA100 3,590 2400 UDIMM
HDD Toshiba DT01ACA100 3,590
Graphics Card Intel HD Graphics 630 0
Sapphire Radeon RX 470 4GB
PSU Corsair VS450 2,450 Graphics Card 15,850
DDR5 OC
Speakers None 0 PSU Corsair VS450 2,450
Optical Drive None 0 Speakers F&D F-203G 2.1 1,029
AmazonBasics Wired Keyboard and Wired Optical Drive LG GH24NS95 DVD Writer 24X SATA 990
Mouse 779
Mouse Bundle
AmazonBasics Wired Keyboard and Wired Mouse Gamdias ARES 7 Color Essential (GKC6001) 1,299
Keyboard 0 Keyboard Gamdias ARES 7 Color Essential (GKC6001) 0
Mouse Bundle
Sub-total (Excluding Monitor) 27,623 Sub-total (Excluding Monitor and Cabinet) 46,012
Monitor BenQ G615HDPL 15.6-inch 4,209 Monitor HP 22es IPS 21.5 inch 8,755
Cabinet OEM Cabinet 1,000 Cabinet Antec VSK 4000B U3 2,485
Total `31,597 Total `56,017

MID-RANGE GAMING BASIC VIDEO EDITING / CAD RIG

Processor Intel Core i5 7th Gen 7400 13,450 Processor AMD Ryzen 7 1800X + Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 46,119
Motherboard MSI H270M BAZOOKA 9,450 Motherboard GIGABYTE AORUS AX370-GAMING 5 21,100
Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Red 8GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance DDR4 8GB x2 (CMK-
RAM 3,970 RAM 16GX4M2B3000C15) 19,400
2400 UDIMM
Zotac SSD 120GB ZTSSD-A4P-120G + Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 2TB +
HDD 6,280 HDD 11,175
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 ADATA Premier SP580 240GB
Graphics Card ZOTAC GTX1070 AMP! Edition 37,700
Graphics Card ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Turbo 22,600
PSU Corsair SMPS CS750M 8,190
PSU Antec VP550P 550 Watts 3,933
Speakers F&D F550X 2.1 3,849
Speakers Philips MMS-4040F/94 2.1 2,879
Scratch Disk Toshiba XG3 128GB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 9,099
Asus DVD-Writer 24X
Optical Drive 1,120 Mouse Logitech G100s Wired Gaming Combo 1,500
(DRW-24D5MT)
Mouse Logitech G100s Wired Gaming Combo 1,500 Keyboard Logitech G100s Wired Gaming Combo 0
Keyboard Logitech G100s Wired Gaming Combo 0 Sound Card None 0
Sub-total (Excluding Monitor) 67,232 Sub-total (Excluding Monitor) 148,212
Monitor Benq GW2470H 24 inch 9,400 Monitor Dell UltraSharp 2415 19,499
Cabinet Corsair Spec 1 Red CC-9011050-WW 3,300 Cabinet Corsair Carbide SPEC Alpha 5,454
Total `77,882 Total `1,74,965

ULTRA HIGH-END GAMING PRIMARY DIGIT TEST RIG

Intel Core i7-7700K + Cooler Master Seidon Processor Intel Core i7 - 6950X (Extreme Edition) 130,000
CPU+Cooler 32,250
120V Plus
Motherboard Gigabyte X-99 SLI 19,950
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-Z270X-Gaming 5 21,600
Apacer Panther 2666 MHz 32 GB
Corsair Vengeance (8 x 2) 16GB CMU16GX- RAM 15,840
RAM 8,370 (4x 8 GB)
4M2A2666C16R 2666 MHz
HDD Western Digital WD40EZRZ 12,444
HDD WD30EZRZ + Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD 37,960
SSD SanDisk Extreme II 480GB (2x 240GB) 34,000
Monitor Acer XB270HU 27-inch 144Hz 4K G-Sync 62,665
Intel 750 NVMe + Kingston HyperX
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FE 62,999 PCIe SSD 118,199
Predator 480 GB
Cabinet Corsair Graphite 760T 14,073 Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FE 62,999
PSU Corsair SMPS RM1000 12,600 Cabinet+ Cooler NZXT H440 + Noctua NH-D15 18,086
Speakers JBL LSR305 15,399 PSU Corsair HXi1000i 1000W 16,699
Optical Drive LG Blu-ray WH14NS40 RW 5,875 Monitor Acer Predator X34 89,000
Mouse SteelSeries Rival 300 4,806 Optical Drive NA NA
Keyboard Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS 8,999 Mouse Razer DeathAdder Elite 4,700
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Audigy PCIe RX 7.1 6,667 Keyboard SteelSeries APEX M800 13,999
Total `2,94,263 Total `5,35,916

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 63

 INSIDE

Page 67
NVIDIA GTX
1080 Ti FE

Bazaar Page 69
Antec GX1200

THE LATEST PRODUCTS

REVIEWED FOR YOU
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 Page 69
Canon PowerShot
of factors and evaluating them in terms of features, G7X II
performance, value for money, build quality, and, in Page 70
the case of software, even ease of use. GIGABYTE AORUS
AX370-GAMING 5

For better understanding of our ratings, heres a

quick guide to our overall score Page 70
Digisol
10 to 30 Extremely poor product. DG-HR1070MSE 4G
Keep away! Mi-Fi

31 to 50 Strictly OK. Page 72

Not recommended AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

51 to 70 Decent product. &MORE...

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

71 to 90 Very good product.

Highly recommended.

91 to 100
Ground-breaking product.
Weve never seen anything like it before.
A definite must buy!

64 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Virtual makeup with AR
Sephoras iOS app gets new update with
Sephora Virtual Artist that lets you try virtual
makeup with AR. http://dgit.in/MakeupAR
Moto G5 Plus
Upping the ante
T
he fifth iteration of Motorolas 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. Its 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 reason-
able, 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 doesnt 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, its not as
dependable as you would want it to be.
Overall, the camera is underscored by pleas-
antly 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 Qualcomms
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
wont 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, theres really
nothing worth complaining about, even though
this isnt the fastest phone in this price range.
It maintains a steady 30 FPS while playing
games like Asphalt 8, with 80% frame rate sta-
bility 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
OPM is coming to Netflix
One of the most popular anime series, One-
Punch Man is now available for streaming
through Netflix. http://dgit.in/NetflixOPM Bazaar
Price99
16,9
mAh unit, which is low by current standards.
Over a days usage, the phone lasted us almost
24 hours on a single charge. Thats 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
77
which the Snapdragon 625 provides.
Despite its fluidity and good camera, there
are some shortcomings too. For one, the 5.2-
inch LCD panel on the Moto G5 Plus isnt the
brightest out there, and colours dont look Features .......................75
punchy, due to low saturation. Its a functional Design ...........................77
display but not necessarily the most pleasant to Performance...............85
look at. Sunlight visibility is average and Adap- Value ..............................71
tive Display doesnt really do much to improve
things either. Specifications
Display: 5.2 inch FHD;
Further, the fact that Motorola is only selling RAM: 3/4 GB; ROM:
16 GB and 32 GB variants of the phone is disap- 16/32 GB; Operating
pointing. While 32 GB is still enough to work System: Android Nougat;
with, at `16,999, one should be looking at 64 SoC: 2 GHz Qualcomm
GB storage nowadays. On the other hand, 16 Snapdragon 625; Battery:
3000 mAh; Camera:
GB is simply not enough for smartphone users 12 MP dual-pixel rear
any more, especially with apps like Netflix and camera, 5 MP front
Amazon Prime allowing you to download con- camera
tent onto your device.
Barring storage, the Moto G5 Plus is a really Contact
Motorola India
good smartphone. If the camera is your priority, Phone: 1-800-419-6686
the Moto G5 Plus is the phone you should pick. Email: dgit.in/MotoCntct
Prasid Banerjee Website: motorola.in
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 65
 A Red iPhone 7 Plus?
Apple is now selling the iPhone 7 and iPhone
7 Plus 128 GB model in red which they call it
Bazaar (Product)Red http://dgit.in/red7Plus
HyperX Alloy
FPS
A serious portable gaming keyboard
minus the gimmicks
Price9
8,99
T
he HyperX Alloy present on the keyboard to
FPS has all the charge your mobile devices.
basic features Do note, you wont be able
that one needs for to transfer data through this
typing and gaming. Back- port. The most interesting
lighting is bright and dif- feature about the keyboard
ferent modes and brightness is its portability. The cable
levels are present as well. can be detached and stuffed
You get to switch between inside a spongy-meshed
6-key rollover and full pouch (included) along with
n-key rollover, with 100% the keyboard.
anti-ghosting. A USB port is After the TVS Gold
keyboard, the HyperX Alloy
FPS becomes the second
most affordable keyboard
62 with genuine Cherry MX
switches. The keyboard sup-
ports three Cherry MX vari-
Features ....................................66 ants Red, Brown and Blue.
Build quality ............................70
Value ..........................................50
In India, only the Cherry
MX Blue variant is listed
for now and we believe the
Specifications other variants might pop up
Keyboard size: Standard, based on demand. Theres
Numpad included; Keyboard not much to complain about
backlighting: Red LED (Single the keyboard except the
colour, five modes); Switch
type: Mechanical (Cherry MX quality of the keycap stems.
Blue 50-million lifecycle); Poor moulding resulted
Polling rate: 1,000 Hz (1 ms); in few keys getting stuck
Key-rollover: 6-key rollover/N- midway, but over time the
key rollover; Interface: USB 2.0; edges will anyway grind
Dimensions: Wide 44.1 cm,
Length 12.9 cm, Height 3.55 away and smoothen out.
cm; Cable length: 1.8m; Weight: If youre looking forward
1.04 kg to buy a mechanical key-
board for gaming, and prefer
Contact genuine Cherry MX Blue
Kingston Technology
Phone: 1860 233 4515 switches, then you should
Email: sales_india@kingston.com definitely consider this.
Website: www.kingston.com Abhijit Dey
66 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Radiant Historia II
The cult-classic Japanese RPG Radiant Historia
developed by Atlus is finally getting a sequel.
Learn more here: http://dgit.in/HistoriaII
Corsair Katar
Average sensor in a well-built body
T
he Corsair Katar
has an average
sensor. There are
no distinct anoma-
lies in sensor tracking and
no spinning out, apart
from jitter at higher CPI
levels. This wont be an
issue if you play at lower
CPI levels around 800. Ini-
tially, we faced issues while
tinkering with the Corsair
Utility Engine software as
the changes werent being
saved onto the mouse.
Corsair is quite regular
with updates, so a future
firmware and software issue
should resolve it.
The ambidextrous
design is comfortable if you
have a palm grip. And since
there arent any prominent
grooves for the ring and
little finger, claw grip gets
uncomfortable after a while.
The Katar is a really small
50
Performance.......................... 48
Features ...................................29
Build quality ............................71
Value .........................................50
Specifications
Sensor type: Optical; Sensor:
A3090; Switch type: Omron
D2FC-F-7N; LED lighting: RED
LED (Single colour); Cable
length: 1.8m; Dimensions: Width
6.39 cm, Length 11 cm, Height
3.84 cm; Weight: 85 g
Contact
Corsair
Phone: NA
Email: corsairindia@gmail.com
Website: www.corsair.com
Price9
3,29
mouse that has a good build
quality. At 85 g, the weightis
ideal for FPS gamers who
have a habit for lifting
their mice a lot. By default,
the lift off distance is high
which can be and should be
lowered in the software. The
mouse feet are smooth and
have a large surface area,
so gliding is effortless. One
thing to note is that there
arent any macro buttons
on the mouse, not even the
conventional forward and
backward buttons, which
could be a let down for
some users. Also, theres no
RGB lighting support and
the lighting options in the
software are limited.
The Katar is directed
towards gamers who are
limited to a budget. For
competitive gamers, the
sensor performance will
only favour lower DPI users
which form the majority.
It is priced at `3,299 and
you can find it for less than
`3,000 on online stores,
though its a little difficult to
find stock available at most
of the places. In this price
range, the only other option
to look at is the Gigabyte
XM300, which has a better
performing sensor, RGB
lighting and a more ergo-
nomic design.
Abhijit Dey
 Android O is here
The first few images from the Android O Developer
Preview are here. Notification channels, Autofill
APIs and more: http://dgit.in/andriodoh
NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti FE
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti effectively renders the GTX 1080 and
GTX TITAN X worthless for `62,999
A
nnounced at GDC 2017, the NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti falls in line
as yet another successful launch for
NVIDIA. The company has been on
a roll ever since Maxwell cards came out more
than two years ago. And the lack of competition
in this high end segment has been working out
really well for NVIDIA which has enjoyed the
lions share of the enthusiast GPU market.
A TITAN X with one less limb
The GTX 1080 Ti is based off the same GP102
that the NVIDIA TITAN X is based off of except
for a few minor changes. And the GTX 1080 Ti
is clocked at 1480 MHz which is 63 MHz higher
than the Pascal based GTX TITAN. With GPU
Boost, the clock speed goes up to 1582 MHz
which is 51 MHz greater than the GTX TITAN.
The TITAN X had 12 GB of GDDR5X RAM
clocked at 1251 MHz and the GTX 1080 Ti
retains the use of GDDR5X but the clock speed
has been increased to 1376 MHz which effec-
tively takes the bandwidth from 10 Gbps to 11
Gbps. This is a significant increase in memory
clock and when clubbed with the GPU clock,
the overall processing power is more than the
TITAN X. Yep, this little beast is more powerful
than the TITAN X when it comes to gaming.
To add perspective, the TITAN X had a single
precision processing power of 10157 GFLOPs
and the for GTX 1080 Ti that number is 10609
GFLOPS. Also, since NVIDIA has done away
with 1 GDDR5X RAM chip it does away with a
few ROPs as well. The TITAN X had 96 ROPs in
the GPU so with 1 less chip, the ROP count goes
down to 88.
DirectX 12 Ahoy!
Now that DirectX 12 has become really wide-
spread thanks to Microsoft forcing it down
everyones throats, it only makes sense that
NVIDIA should start devoting more resources
to it. And this is exactly what theyve done with
the new driver update.
Build
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti doesnt vary
much from the previous Founders Edition cards
released. Flipping the card around to its I/O
Hyperloop is a go
Hyperloop is actually happening;
mysterious images reaffirm its progress.
http://dgit.in/HTTImg Bazaar
Price99
62,9
plate shows a missing port! NVIDIA has done
away with the DVI-D connector. Instead, theyre
shipping a DisplayPort++ to DVI-D adapter in
the package. NVIDIA says this design decision
allows for 2x the area for improved airflow.
Turns out, the new design does in fact result
in better air flow as the temperature recovers
faster than the previous design. Theres a dif-
ference of 25.35 seconds so the cooling is 16.06
percent faster with the new design.
Performance
It should be noted that in none of the games are
the 1080p FPS scores worth mentioning since
they are all above 150. Rise of the Tomb Raider
run really well on 1440p and every FPS score
was above 100. On Ultra we managed to get
114.68 FPS and then we see the 4K benchmarks
which finally brought the FPS scores down to
double digits. On Ultra, we scored 63.8 FPS
which is above the magical 60 FPS figure. In our
compute tests, between the GTX 980 Ti and the
83
GTX 1080 Ti, we recorded a 65% increment.
Performance.............. 90
Verdict Build ..............................75
NVIDIA has had a great year in 2016 and by the
looks of it seems that 2017 is going to the same. Specifications
The GTX 1080 Ti provides great value to the GPU: GP102; CUDA
consumer, especially since its nearly a TITAN X Cores: 3584; TMUs: 224;
Pascal (even better in certain benchmarks) for a ROPs: 88; Core clock:
1480 MHz; Boost clock:
lot lower price tag. 1582 MHz; Memory Data
One thing that stands out is that in all of rate: 11 Gbps; Memory: 11
our 4K benchmarks at Ultra settings, the GTX GB; TDP: 250 W.
1080 scored above the bare minimum of 60 FPS
which means that you can now have the best 4K Contact
NVIDIA India
no-compromises experience with the NVIDIA Phone: 022 4376 4567,
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. All you need is `62,999. Email: NA
Mithun Mohandas Website: www.nvidia.in
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 67
 GOG cloud save
GOG Galaxy now allows you to save
your games over the cloud for classic
Bazaar games. http://dgit.in/GOGCloud
Gamdias Ares Samsung Galaxy
Essential Combo C9 Pro
The best budget keyboard/mouse
combo under `3k
Price9
2,99
T
he Gamdias Ares is almost the same in terms
Essential Combo of typing and gaming perfor-
(GKC6000) goes mance. It has better lighting
head to head against options but the stark differ-
the Cooler Master Devastator ence lies with the switches.
II combo where the keyboard The Ares Essential keyboard
wont be able to give you
mechanical feel offered by
65
the Devastator II through
its mem-chanical switches.
If the key switch type isnt a
concern then you wont have
Gamdias Ares Essential
any problem with the Ares
Keyboard
Essential keyboard.
Features ....................................50
While the keyboard is
Build quality ............................54
almost the same in perfor-
Value ..........................................90
mance, the Gamdias Ourea
mouse performs better than
the Devastator II mouse by
66 30 per cent. The Ourea and
the ASUS Cerberus both use
Gamdias Ourea Mouse
the same A5050 sensor, so
they scored almost the same
Performance............................48 in our tests. The sensor does
Features ....................................53 spin out with quick flicks,
Build quality ............................71 which should only be a con-
Value ..........................................90 cern if you play at low DPI
levels of around 800.
Specifications With just an MRP
Switch type: Membrane of `3,000, the Gaming
(10-million keystrokes); Polling
rate: 125 Hz (8 ms), Sensor: Avago Ares Essential Combo
A5050; Switch type: Huano. (GKC6000) is a great
bundle if you are restricted
Contact to a tight budget. Although,
Gamdias if you want mem-chanical
Phone: NA
switches, then go for the
Email: himanshu@
amigointernational.biz Cooler Master Devastator II.
Website: www.gamdias.com Abhijit Dey
68 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Supersonic commercial flight
Boom Supersonic a startup recently secured $33M
funding to build a supersonic commercial airliner.
http://dgit.in/2fast2supr
Phablet done right
W
ith 5.5-inch
becoming
the regular
screen size for
smartphones, 6-inch is the
new phablet category, and
the Galaxy C9 Pro
is Samsungs take
on it. It is also our
Price00
first tryst with the 36,9
Snapdragon 653
SoC, which is the
plus version of Qual-
comms Snapdragon 652.
Samsung has used
some clever engineering
to optimise performance.
The high power Cortex A72
cores are off at most times
but Samsung turns them The best thing about
on during UI transitions or the C9 Pro is its 6-inch
for animations, keeping lag AMOLED display. We
at bay. It has 6 GB of RAM, would have preferred a
to guarantee good multi- QHD panel but FHD works
tasking. There were times just fine here. Its bright,
when we found an app open with punchy and pleasantly
in the background, 24 hours oversaturated colours, that
after we first used it. many prefer.
The same cannot be
said of the 16MP camera on
the back. While it can take
74 decent photos in well lit situ-
ations, most other photos
have more noise than is
Features ....................................81 warranted. That leads to loss
Design ........................................90 of detail and the phone also
Performance............................59 messes up white balance at
Value ..........................................69 certain times.
The device lasts a minute
Specifications longer than 9 hours in the
Display: 5.2-inch FHD; SoC: 1.9
GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 653; PCMark battery test. In pure
RAM: 6 GB; ROM: 64 GB; Battery: comparative terms, that
4000 mAh; Camera: 16 MP rear, doesnt justify almost double
16 MP front the pricing, but if you do
want a premium phablet, the
Contact
Phone: 1800-40-7267864 Galaxy C9 Pro is indeed the
Website: http://www.samsung. best you can get.
com/in/info/contactus/# Prasid Banerjee
 Mars had a ring? CIA over CISCO
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existing ring; could form a new one in the future over 318 models of CISCO switches with one
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Antec GX1200
63 Almost the best implementation of the fan/LED hub

Performance...............62
Features .......................56
Build Quality ...............73
Value ............................ 60
Specifications
Motherboard form
factor: ATX, Micro-ATX
and Mini-ITX; Front I/O:
2 x USB 3.0, Mic in and
Audio Out, LED control;
Fan support: 3 x 120mm
(front), 2 x 120mm (top), 1
x 120mm (rear), 1 x 120mm
(PSU shroud); Radiator
support: 360mm (front),
240mm (top), 120mm
(rear)
Contact
Antec India
Phone: N/A
Email: N/A
Website: www.antecindia.in
T
he GX1200 serves as a
good gaming cabinet
for mid-range users.
The absence of sup-
port for 140 mm fans might be
a bummer for few enthusiasts
but the cabinet does support
up to 360 mm radiators on
the front panel and 240 mm
radiators on the top. Another
limitation of the cabinet is low
number of drive bays. You only
have two trays for 3.5-inch
HDDs and three trays for 2.5-
inch SSDs.
Other than these shortcomings, the
magic box is the only feature that stands
out in the cabinet. Its great to have sup-
port for six fans since the motherboard
usually leaves out one or two spare ports for
cabinet fans. The fan hub also gives you control
over the fan speeds but in
order to toggle between the fan
speeds, youll need to open the
side window panel every time.
A dedicated button on the front
IO panel would have been great,
just like the light control button.
The light control lets you cycle
through the seven colours on the
two fans and light strip on the
bottom, giving you a gorgeously
illuminated cabinet.
The GX1200 sells for around
`7,400 on online stores. If you
want more drive bays, you
P r i c e should spend more and get the
0
8,00 Core V51 instead. It has immense poten-
tial for air and liquid cooling support. If
budget is an issue then you can definitely
go with the GX1200 in this price segment.
Abhijit Dey

Canon PowerShot G7X II 78

Pint-sized performer

C
ompact cameras with 1-inch sensors sive, particularly noticeable when you shoot Features .......................76
have their own place in the imaging under falling light conditions. Performance...............75
market, being fast, sharp shooters Compression of photos into JPEGs lead to a Value ............................ 80
without the hassle of changing lenses, loss in colour vibrancy and richness. The pho- Design .......................... 80
and being small enough to fit in pockets. The tographs are slightly oversaturated by default,
Canon PowerShot G7X II here produces bold, although white balance algorithms work accu- Specifications
warm colour tones which retain good vibrancy rately and seamlessly as per situations. How- Sensor: 20.1MP CMOS,
and are accurate as well. Reds ever, when you shoot amidst a vibrant array of 1.0-inch type; Lens: Canon
24-100mm f/1.8-2.8; ISO:
are clearly favoured, and colours and highly con- 125-12800, 1/3 stops;
greens are a bit subdued trasting light areas, you Shutter Speed: 30 to
from what would have do encounter the slightly 1/2000; Flash Range:
been optimum. The limited dynamic range. 7.0m; Continuous
vibrancy somewhat makes The PowerShot G7X Shooting: 8fps JPEG;
Max Video Output: 1080p,
up for the lack of emphasis II also offers good battery 60fps; Battery Rating
and as a result, photos do life. The viewfinder is (CIPA): Approx. 265 stills;
not look bleak. more versatile, and touch Weight (CIPA): 319 grams
You can also shoot response is really smooth.
RAW for post production, making All of this makes the G7X Contact
Price95 Canon India
the G7X II versatile. Dynamic range is , 9
40 SRP) II a really impressive compact camera, Phone: 1800-180-3366
noticeably superior than its predecessor (M particularly for its price. Email: Web form
and noise performance is equally impres- Souvik Das Website: www.canon.co.in

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 69

 New VAIO phones Netflix and fox
VAIO is going to release new Android Netflix will finally support Firefox on Linux
phones in early April but only in Japan. machines without installing any plug-in.
Bazaar http://dgit.in/VAIOphn http://dgit.in/NetflixFox

GIGABYTE Digisol DG-

AORUS AX370- HR1070MSE 4G
GAMING 5 Mi-Fi Portable
All aboard the Ryzen express
Broadband
O Router
ne of the
high-end
mother-
boards
An upgrade in some aspects
for AMDs new

R
Ryzen processors, the eliance Jios disrup-
GIGABYTE AORUS tive strategies
AX370-GAMING 5, have caused a
as they name indi- huge demand
cates has the X370 for portable Mi-Fi
chipset. And it has Price00 routers. We tested
Price0
a lot of customis- 21,1 headers to bal- the Digisol HR- 4,50
ability options which ance the power load 1070MSE against
makes the GIGABYTE should you go for a lot the new Reliance JioFi at the exact same loca-
AX370-GAMING 5 a great of cooling fans / pumps / 4G Hotspot that costs tions, the indoor speeds
motherboard for those controllers. Both, the RAM `1,999. Indoors, the Digisol were at 15.46 / 3.44 Mbps
jumping onto the Ryzen and the PCIe slots have HR-1070MSE managed to and the outdoor speeds were
bandwagon. metal shielding to add channel 15.88 / 1.90 Mbps 23.53 / 9.48 Mbps.
Theres a lot of open rigidity and we didnt find on uplink/downlink and The Digisol HR-
space around the CPU area, any worrisome issues with outdoors this jumped to 1070MSE is an upgrade
allowing compatibility with the component placement. 19.97 / 9.56 Mbps. When the over the older HR-1070MS
more aftermarket coolers The audio section JioFi 4G Hotspot was tested in terms of compatibility
and there are plenty of makes use of two ALC1220 with more LTE bands, how-
chipsets but neither of them ever, the battery capacity
are shielded which seems has been reduced from
to be a slight oversight. 72 2800 mAh to 2000 mAh.
80 The BIOS has some minor We saw the internals of
issues which we expect to the device to be quite well
be ironed out in the coming Build ...........................................75 built. Also, wed have liked
Features ....................................81 months as more Ryzen Performance............................60 to see the power and WPS
Build ...........................................78 CPUs hit the market and Features ....................................80 buttons to have been either
more bugs get reported. A flush with the surface or
Specifications much welcome feature is the Specifications better yet, slightly recessed
Chipset: AMD X370; Memory Model: DG-HR1070MSE; Wi-Fi:
support: 4x3200(OC) MHz upto dual BIOS and U.2 ports. It 802.11n; FDD: B3/TDD: B38, to avoid accidental presses.
64GB; LAN: Killer E2500 + comes with plenty of acces- B40; WCDMA: 2100 MHz; GSM: Performance wise, the deci-
Intel I211-AT Gigabit Ethernet; sories including multiple 900/1800 MHz; WPS support: sion to modify the modem
Audio: ALC 1220 7.1; SATA: 8x thermistors, a 1-year XSplit Yes; Battery: 2000 mAh Li-ion; and drop TDD uplink
SATA III; Expansion: 3x PCIe license and even an SLI MicroSD slot support: 64 GB; speeds does bottleneck the
X16(x16+x8+x4); Dimensions Dimensions: 106 x 65 x 16 mm;
(LxWxD): 305 mm x 244 mm; bridge. Overall, the GIGA- Weight: 105 gm; Warranty: device. The huge price tag
Warranty: 3 years BYTE AX370-GAMING Product lifetime. of `4,500 certainly can
5 scores quite well in our drive away customers as the
Contact benchmarks and we see no Contact Reliance JioFi 4G Hotspot
GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY reason to not recommend it Smartlink Networking Systems with its severely subsidised
(INDIA) PVT. LTD. Ltd.,
Phone: 022-40633222 to be paired with an AMD Phone: 022-3061-6666, price tag of `1,999 is a more
Email: sales@gigabyte.in Ryzen 7 1800X CPU. Email: helpdesk@digisol.com, attractive buy.
Website: www.gigabyte.in Mithun Mohandas Website: www.smartlink.co.in Mithun Mohandas

70 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Periscope live tweet
Periscope now allows external devices and
third-party apps to connect and broadcast on
the service. http://dgit.in/PerisTwitter
Nikon D3400
A neat incremental upgrade
T
he Nikon D3400 is an incremental
upgrade to its predecessor, the D3300.
It houses the same, 24.2 MP image
sensor that powers the D3300, along
with the EXPEED 4 image processor which is a
generation old now. That, though, does not deter
the D3400 from still delivering best-in-class
colour and ISO performance, without having
changed much about its build, operations and
photography performance.
Colours produced by the Nikon D3400 look
crisp and punchy, and thanks to good dynamic
range, the camera manages to retain highlights
and shadows with proficiency. Saturation levels
are well balanced, and the accuracy of tones
ensure a fairly neutral balance between warmer
and cooler shades that most would like. For
instance, dominant red tones are not over-
emphasised, and predominant yellow shades
retain the accuracy of shade without affecting
the overall colour tone of the composition.
RAW files are particularly impressive for
its category, leaving you with ample room to
tweak highlights to save dark areas, adjust fine
details and post process photos well. The Nikon
D3400 does tend to slightly overdo sharp edges,
which combined by the good contrast levels may
look a tad bit too vivid. When shooting under
contrasting light conditions, you can underex-
pose subjects to balance highlights to remove
clipping, and adjust exposure in post-processing
to provide ample light in darker subject areas
without compromising on minute details, col-
ours and image noise.
However, you do encounter slight softening
of sharp edges when you export your RAWs
to JPEGs, owing to lossy compression. Despite
good production of fine details, subject edges
tend to lose sharpness, and shooting directly in
JPEG also reveals this slight weakness. This is
particularly noticeable when you shoot sharp
objects in clean environments, although the viv-
idness of colours and clean noise performance
ensures that you somewhat make up for it. Low
light photography is as good as it can get in this
segment, surpassing cameras from competitors.
The automatic ISO performance is good,
adjusting well with the available light within
frames to keep it as low as possible even in
low light. Thankfully, there is minimal colour
NASAs origami robots
Mars Rover is having a tough time handling
sharp corners; NASAs new origami robots can.
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Price50
36S,9
RP)
(M
distortion even at ISO levels above 3200, which
also leave with the ability to post-process
photos to salvage some details and colours.
Invariance, as you would expect, is certainly
unobtainable here, and produces unfavourable
results if you attempt it.
The 11-point autofocus system, however,
is a slightly weak link to an otherwise fine
entry-segment DSLR. Although it does get
the work done with decent subject locking
75
and tracking, it is not the fastest, and slightly
more expensive Nikon DSLRs with the Multi- Features ...................... 64
CAM 4800DX with 39 focus points is what Performance.............. 77
we sorely missed here. The central cross-type Value .............................75
point aids fast lenses in shooting, and this gets Design ...........................83
the job done fairly well in well-lit situations.
However, you do struggle a bit when you shoot Specifications
in darker conditions, or while shooting in or at Sensor: CMOS, 24.2
fast-moving subjects. million effective pixels;
It also gets Bluetooth, which allows easy Viewfinder: Eye-level
pentamirror, 95% frame
photo sharing with Nikons Snapbridge app coverage; Shutter:
for Android and iOS. However, it sorely misses Electronically controlled
out on a swivelling LCD display, which is not vertical travel focal
even touchscreen - surprising exclusions from plane; ISO sensitivity:
Nikon. Battery life is pretty good, with us 100 to 25600 (native);
Autofocus: Nikon Multi-
obtaining nearly 1,000 stills and 85 minutes of CAM 1000, 11 focus points,
1080p video recording at 60 FPS. Everything 1 cross-type
taken into account, the Nikon D3400 is the best
entry-segment DSLR to buy in India right now. Contact
That said, you may want to consider the Nikon Nikon India
Phone: 1-800-102-7346
D3300s dual-lens kit that sells for about the Email: nindsupport@
same price, for more versatility. nikon.com
Souvik Das Website: www.nikon.co.in
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 71
 Mac to Windows Liquid batteries
Microsoft wants to make it easier for you A new concept of liquid battery technology
to migrate from macOS to Windows 10 called flow will cool the battery while
Bazaar with a new tool. http://dgit.in/MacToWin powering it. http://dgit.in/FlowBatt

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

AMD promised to deliver, and deliver they did.
a much more granular level of clock speeds. It
moves in 25 MHz steps as opposed to the higher
100 MHz steps weve seen so far.
Extended Frequency Range kicks in to provide
an additional 100 MHz clock boost taking the
Ryzen 7 1800X to 4.1 GHz at peak performance.
Price99
37,9
Performance
Single threaded applications are where the Kaby
Lake Core i7 7700K gets ahead of the Ryzen
7 1800X but the overall margin of difference
is within 2-6 per cent. However, with multi-
threaded applications, the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
really does a number and races past the 7700K.
Cinebench R15 in single threaded scenario
scores 158 on the Ryzen 1800X running at stock,

T
his is the moment that every PC enthu-
siast has been waiting for. It has been a
while since AMD had a product worthy
of being pitted against the flagships from
Intel so AMD fans had to settle for mid-range
SKUs and entry level APUs. Say hello to the
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, an 8 Core / 16 Threaded
beast of a CPU thats giving Intel a run for
their money, literally. AMD started off the new
architecture with a goal of achieving 40 per cent
IPC improvement, a goal which they not only
achieved but went the extra mile and clocked in
an impressive 52 per cent IPC improvement.
but with a minor overclock on the memory the
score rises to 161. Intel Core i7 7700K, however,
retains a significant lead at 180. And when
you switch to multi-threaded benchmarks, the
Ryzen 1800X climbs to a whopping 1638 points
and the Intel 7700K only gets to 989. This, is
a huge difference which is the result of having
twice the number of cores and threads.
PCMark 8 Home when run on accelerated
has quite similar scores. However, when we
overclock the RAM from 2667 MHz to 3000
MHz, we see an increment of approximately
500 points!

87
Performance.............. 84
Value for money........ 90
Specifications
Cores: 8; Threads: 16;
Base clock: 3.6 GHz;
Boost clock: 4.0 GHz;
XFR: 4.1 GHz; Process
node: 14nm
Contact
AMD
Phone: NA
Support: support.amd.com
Website: www.amd.com
Architecture
AMD Ryzen CPUs are based off the Zen archi-
tecture which is a ground up redesign. This is
one of the primary reasons for getting this huge
IPC performance increase.
The Zen Core is capable of fetching 4 x86
instructions, and has four integer units with
large registers, enough to have 192 instructions
in flight. Each core has two threads and has a
large L3 shared cache.
Overall, the architecture helped improve
power efficiency by 1.31x, moving to 14nm
FinFETs helped by a factor of 1.7x, the array of
sensors helped by another 1.4x and lastly, the
better power design methodologies helped with
another 2.29x.
The X at the end of the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
and the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X indicates that
theyre are capable of utilising XFR to give you
the little extra performance. The Zen core has
Verdict
AMDs RYZEN marks a new era for com-
puting bringing back competition to a segment
that has missed it sorely for quite a few gen-
erations. While it may not perform equally in
single threaded applications and games, multi
threaded applications really excel on the 1800X
and thats what the whole industry is moving
towards. Right now if youre in the market for a
jack of all trades workstation then a Ryzen based
system should be your choice as the extra cores
and threads will immensely help your produc-
tivity. Overall, when compared to the i7 6900K
and the i7 5960X, the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X pro-
vides way better performance/price. As more
software vendors adopt this new architecture
and optimise their offerings for Ryzen like they
do with Intel, we expect to see this performance
value increase even further.
Mithun Mohandas

72 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Column
For sale
Mithun Mohandas
Asst. Technical Editor
mithun@digit.in
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
I
t seems Ive spoken about Artificial Intel-
ligence multiple times over the last couple
of months and since were going with AI
as the theme, youre going to be reading a lot
more about AI. So Im going to do the hipster
thing and not harp about AI at all. Instead
were going to be looking at something thats
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 adver-
tisements. 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 Microsofts
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 isnt, so were yet Companies operating in India can get away
to see a thriving ecosystem of custom ROMs
like we have for Android smartphones. And
when that happens, these unwanted adver-
tisements will go away if you undertake the
effort of loading a custom ROM.
So whats the downside? Well, like Mr.
James Comey, Director of FBI said earlier
this month, absolute privacy does not exist
in the US. And thats a country with strict
privacy laws. We on the other hand, have
a huge mobile-first population who dont
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 pri-
vacy protection laws in the US. The matter is
still being discussed so we dont know what
the outcome will be but going by how Mr. Pai
has maintained a very pro-industry, anti-pri-
vacy and anti-consumer stance throughout
his stint at the FCC. And we dont 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
to serve you ads. Unfortunately, thats 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. Its
not just these patterns that are up for sale
but even the raw data. So lets 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 govern-
ment 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 its happening really
fast. Countries with weak IT Laws are
even more susceptible. Were one of them.
with a lot because of our poor laws. Take
for example the McDonalds 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 hasnt resolved the issue for
over a week and were 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 develop-
ments in the technology sector and thats 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,
its high time we techies got together to form
a large enough vote bank. Im thinking of
Technical Peoples Party or TPP for short
wait, that didnt come out right.
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 73
 iPad quietly upgraded 3D printed skin?
Apple silently upgraded their iPad with a University students in Spain have
faster processor and brighter display without supposedly 3D printed fully functional
IEMs much fanfare. http://dgit.in/iPadwow human skin. http://dgit.in/3Dprntskin

Siddharth Parwatay
editor@digit.in

W
ith the kind of action
seen in the in-ear
headphone space
over the past couple
of years, it was conspicuously
odd that we didnt do a com-
parison test for this category
in so long. Yes we know, and
we admit it its been long
overdue. And finally we have it!
The road to this test how-
ever, wasnt an easy one. The
IEM space has so many price
categories, so many vari-
ants, and so many models
in each category, we didnt
know which category to
choose. While its true that
the largest variety is found
in the sub `1000 price
range, weve noticed that
consumers are beginning to
get tired of extremely entry
level headphones. The finer
nuances of audio fidelity and
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 mate-
rials 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 con-
sumers have begun to under-
stand this. At least it feels that
way going by the number of
requests we receive on a daily
basis asking for recommenda-
tions 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 audio-
philes are willing to stick
their necks out in the pursuit
of quality.
Thats exactly what our
odd ensemble of assorted
in-ear headphones repre-
sents: an eclectic selection
of what lies in store for you
in the world of audio appre-
ciation. Of course its 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 didnt 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, lets get into the first of
these devices! But first you

74 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Apple tax evasion 1,500 banned For Honor
Apple evaded tax payments in New Zealand Ubisoft issued a three-day ban to 1,500 players
in spite of bringing in $4.2 billion in sales for AFK farming and further gave warnings to
http://dgit.in/ApplTax 4,000+ players. http://dgit.in/banForHonor IEMs

HOW WE TESTED

T
esting audio gear and especially head-
phones is a minefield to navigate. Audio
is so subjective that the old adage of one
mans food being another mans poison actually
holds true here. Personal preferences over-
whelmingly dictate what is considered good or
bad. To give you an example of how this does
not apply to other product categories we test,
consider the case of LCD displays. If a particular
display happens to have a slightly warm hue,
such a deviation from a neutral colour tem-
perature would be thought of as an inaccuracy
and even penalised no matter how pleasing the mix in order to properly represent multiple
that inaccuracy would appear to the reviewer.
Doing so in audio raises innumerable heckles.
This phenomenon of whatever is pleasing
getting better reviews, has pushed some audio
manufacturers to tune their gear to produce
those particular sound signatures. But the
fact remains that such headphones are tech-
nically inaccurate and might not work well
with certain genres of music or certain mixes.
While testing audio, reviewer bias or subjectivity
comes in as a result of preferring say bass over
treble (in the most simplistic form). Though in
an ideal scenario, headphones should be judged
by how true-to-source their audio output actu-
ally is. That is, does the headphone reproduce a
particular audio track the way the sound engi-
neer mixing it intended it to sound. How can
one know that?
Instruments that output frequency response
curves is one way, but the trouble with those
is unless the equipment is top notch, such
tests produce very little variance for it to be
meaningful at all. In this case a reference
speaker or headphone helps assign a bench-
mark against which to map deviations. This
reference device should be one thats gener-
ally known or proven to be flat response. Flat
response is a simple concept to understand: it
means that the frequency curve produced by
the speaker or headphone is flat (or near flat).
That is, no frequency range lows (bass) or
highs (treble) is favoured over the other.
Minimising subjectivity is the holy grail of audio
testing but as you can imagine this is a difficult
task because as they say, ultimately the proof of
the pudding is in the eating. Currently, listening to
an audio device is the only way evaluate it. Thus
to put our in-ear headphones through their paces
properly, we revamped our test process this time
around. A few more test tracks were added to
genres. The tracks had a sampling rate of at least
96 kHz (some even 192 kHz when available) and
a bit depth of 24 bits (as opposed to the standard
bit depth of 16 bits). A few legacy tracks were
still deliberately kept in the mix for reproducing
real world scenarios but even those necessarily
had a minimum bitrate of 320kbps.
As for track selection we used a series of
tracks (some of which weve been using for years
now) to test specific attributes such as stereo
separation, vocal tonality, detail (when instru-
ment density is high), dynamic range etc. As
most of you already know, we have a penchant
for guitar driven music, but for this test weve
deliberately diversified our genres than ever
before. Theres Ed Sheerans latest chartbuster
thrown in (gasp!).
Apart from these performance tests the build,
comfort and features were rated. Longer, woven
cables for instance got a better score. This time
around we also scored attributes such as isola-
tion and subjective ones such as soundstaging
and aesthetics; although the last two didnt get
too much weightage in the overall score.
For testing these IEMs we decided to ditch our
trusty old ASUS Xonar Essence STX and go with
the trendy, portable new high resolution digital
audio player from FiiO the X5 Gen 3. Its got
some of the best internals in the industry today
and helps isolate against any random buzz or leak
that might creep in because of faulty wiring in
the AC supply. Its able to drive headphones with
high impedance and lastly its just convenient to
quickly be able to change headphones on the fly.
As for other equipment used in the test, youll
keep finding mentions to a few reference head-
phones such as the RHA S500i, M6Pro, Bose
QC20, and the UE 900. These headphones are
used for comparison but not specifically thrown
into the scoring mix because they have been
tested previously with our older test process
comprising of a different source and sample track
list. They still however make for a good reference
point with which to assess these latest models
to enter the audio arena.
Very well, not that you know all about our test
process, heres another important question: How
should you, as a reader and prospective buyer,
interpret these scores? Firstly think of the scores
assigned as ordinal numbers rather than cardinal
ones. The winner of this test (whatever it may be)
is the headphone thats best adept at producing
a wide range of genres. However some genres
and types of music thrive only when a particular
frequency range has been boosted. What wed
suggest is look for the row with your type of
music in the table and see which headphone
fared better. Beyond that for the undecided buyer
we also have a ready reckoner chart which
simplifies the choices even further.
To evaluate the best buy, we have ignored
the MRP, which is often inflated. Instead we
have taken the undiscounted street price or
typical online selling price to reach our value
for money justifications.
Lastly a small note on nomenclature: the
terms in-ears, IEMs and headphones have been
used interchangeably in this test. Purists hold
your peace and the rest of you - enjoy.

should definitely read our
test process above.
BRAINWAVZ S3
Weve been seeing quite a
few nice offerings from this
Chinese manufacturer of
affordable audio gear (eg the
Omega). The Brainwavz S3 is
from its midrange offerings.
From the packaging itself you
can see that there is emphasis
on quality.
Build & Design: The metal
housing on the S3 feels solid,
while the flat cable remains
reasonably tangle free. In
order to avoid cord micro-
phonics (a common problem
with flat cables) you get a
shirt clip in the box. Theres
are also a number of bi-flange
and tri-flange tip options
including a set of Comply
tips from its T-Series. The
housing may feel a bit large
but it isnt heavy, making it
feel comfortable in spite of
the bulk. In terms of looks,
we have to agree the S3 looks
sleek it was one of the better
looking IEMs in the test.
The tips with their trans-
lucent grey design go very
well with the overall design
language of the headphones.
The three button in-line
remote is designed to work
with Apple iOS devices and
theres a clear warning on
the box which says volume
control might not work with
Android. But guess what,
they worked just fine on a
Galaxy S6 Edge and a Google
Pixel. The double tap for for-
ward track and triple tap for
rewind didnt work fine on
the Pixel though. The buttons
are annoyingly hard to press
but that might just make
them last longer I suppose.

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 75

 IEMs
APRIL 2017 APRIL 2017 APRIL 2017

Brand FiiO Brainwavz Audio- a-Jays Tekfusion SoundMAGIC 1More Brainwavz Brainwavz
Technica
Model no. EX1 S3 ATH-ANC33iS Four+ Twinwoofers E10C Single driver B100 M2
M2 piston
MRP 4999 4999 4999 4999 2499 1999 2799 4,199 3,499
Selling at: 4299 4999 3995 4999 1999 1999 2799 4199 3499
Features (10) 82 88 63 53 80 81 85 57 55
Performance (80) 84 86 83 86 82 79 84 88 84
Build (10) 88 83 67 78 80 77 85 75 76
Value For Money Score 42 37 43 35 88 86 65 43 49
Total (100) 84 86 80 82 81 79 84 84 80
Specifications
Impedance (ohm) 16 16 32 16 16 16 32 50 20
Frequency response 20Hz-30kHz 16Hz-22kHz 20-20kHz 20-20kHz 19-21kHz 15-22kHz 22-22kHz 15-22kHz 20-22kHz
Cord length (m) 1.2m 1.3m 1.3 m 1.15 m 1.2m 1.2m 1.25m 1.3 m 1.3m
Weight (in grams) 18g NA 26 g 17 g 9.5 g 11g 15g NA 10g
Driver diameter (mm) 13mm 8mm 13mm 8.6mm 10mm 10mm 8mm NA 10.7mm
Sensitivity 102dB/mW 96dB/mW 105 dB/mW 96dB/mW 113dB/mW 100dB/mW 98dB/mW 110dB/mW 115dB/mW
Type (balanced amature / dynamic) Dynamic Dynamic Dynamic Dynamic Dynamic Dynamic Dynamic Balanced Dynamic
Armature
Performance Tests (100)
Audio Tracks (80)
Dream Theater - Pull me under 77 80 80 82 75 72 75 85 79
(layering and separation)
Chris Rea - Call On Me (vocals) 80 80 79 80 78 78 80 84 78
Ed Sheran - Shape of you (pop) 82 84 80 84 80 77 82 84 82
BTBAM - Selkies (metal instrument density) 78 81 80 83 76 73 76 86 79
Motherjane - Mindstreet (guitar string bass) 84 80 77 82 75 70 78 80 78
Pink Floyd - Pulse - Shine On 78 80 79 76 74 72 78 80 77
(detail and postitioning)
Edward Maya Feat. Vika Jigulina - 78 81 79 83 78 76 81 85 84
Stereo Love (Dance/electronica)
Nuforce sample 1 (Complex Tonal Purity) 81 82 79 80 80 77 80 80 80
Nuforce sample 2 (Harmonic Group Unity) 80 81 80 80 80 78 80 82 80
Misc. (20)
Passive isolation 80 85 78 80 80 78 82 83 78
Mic quality 85 75 80 78 80 75 76 0 0
Build (100)
Materials used 90 85 70 80 80 80 85 80 80
Aesthetics 85 80 60 75 75 70 90 60 65
Cable quality - sheathed / wowen etc 90 85 70 80 85 80 85 80 80
Features (100)
Hard case (yes - 10- no 0) 10 10 0 0 10 10 10 10 10
Tangle resistant (yes - 10 no - 0) 7 9 5 10 7 4 8 6 5
Cord length (8 for 1.2m 10 for >1.2m) 8 10 10 7 5 5 9 10 10
ANC 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mic 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 0 0
Bundled airplane adapter 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0
Bundled computer adapter 0 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 0

76 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Gameboy Apple Watch Mclarens new 720S
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Features & Performance: The
S3 feels fairly mellow when
you compare it to the sharp,
hard hitting sound signature
of say the RHA S500i. This
was immediately noticed on
our crunchy metal track, Sel-
kies by Between The Buried And
Me. While the S3 is broad and
expansive, the other similarly
priced Brainwavz device in
the test, the B100, is tighter
with its bass and slightly
more accurate. When playing
Stereo Love by Edward Maya
feat. Vika Jigulina we noticed
that the whooshes and echos
sound more pleasing on the
S3 as compared to the more
upfront presentation of the
B100. The passive isolation in
APRIL 2017
Brainwavz S3
the S3 is excellent. The finesse
in reproduction and level of
detail is surprisingly good for
a regular consumer focused
IEM. Overall the sound sig-
nature was decidedly mid-
boosted but not in a bad way.
While listening to Shine On
You Crazy Diamond from the
Pulse Live concert, I found the
ambience to be present but
certain details went missing
for instance the sharp edge on
Wrights Organ was very sub-
dued. In terms of microphone
capture quality, it fell behind
the Cowon EX1.
Verdict: The Brainwavz S3 is
a solid performer in terms of
tonal accuracy and presenta-
tion. Sure, you wont get the
analytical type sound sig-
nature of true monitors but
the question is are you really
looking for that? With the S3
you get a pair of nice sounding
trendy looking in-ears that
can easily be your daily driver.
PROS
Fairly detailed sound
Feels solid and durable
Cable relatively tangle free
Looks nice
CONS
Remote buttons hard to
press
Bass couldve been more
accurate
FIIO EX1 (2ND GEN)
If the Brainwavz S3 felt pre-
mium, the FiiO EX1 just took
it a notch further. The box is
well designed and the head-
phones themselves feel solid
to hold. FiiO, at least for us,
has always been that company
which makes high quality
portable headphone amps.
The EX1 was our first experi-
ence with a headphone from
FiiO. And quite a pleasant
experience it was.
Build & Design: The FiiO
EX1 goes to great lengths to
tell you that its made from
the very best materials. Its
apparently got nanotech
titanium diaphragms which
are supposed to be nanom-
eter-thin. The housing is
crafted from aircraft-grade
duralumin which makes the
earpieces fairly lightweight.
FiiO has even slapped on a
Hi-Res Audio logo on the
box, which even today feels
funny to us when it accompa-
nies analog devices. We have
to admit the headphones look
stylish, and feel comfortable
even over extended periods.
However there are a few flaws.
The volume control pod for
instance has too much play
and feels like it might be the
first thing to give way. The car-
rying case although rock solid,
is too slim. You really need to
carefully wind the cable in
order to make sure it doesnt get
caught in the lids while closing
the case.
Performance: Performance-
wise the EX1 is not bad at all,
and very much in the region
of the S3. The detail and bass
response was quite nice on
Mindstreet by Motherjane. The
bass was tight, the cymbal
tapping at the beginning
fairly detailed, and the gritty
nature of the electric guitar was
maintained. Quite impressive
honestly. Overall the lows and
lower-mids seem enhanced.
They falter slightly when it
came to live performances. The
illusion of space was lacking
and vocals seemed less rich but
more upfront not unpleasant;
just different.
Though not quite the bass
king of this shootout, it defi-
nitely packs a decent punch.
The microphone on the EX1
was hands down the best in
the test.
Verdict: For the price the
FiiO EX1 (2nd Gen) is not a
bad purchase at all. It repro-
duces most genres fairly well
and does better with guitar
/ bass driven rock. They are
a little more livelier than the
Brainwavz S3 with fairly
decent bass.
PROS
Does well on tracks with
string bass
Good build quality on
driver housing and cable
Tangle free
Stylish design
CONS
Carrying case feels a little
too small
The volume rocker feels
flimsy
BRAINWAVZ B100
Build and design: The Brain-
wavz B100 is perhaps the
most inexpensive balanced
armature IEM in the market
today. Its got a purely func-
tional design basic Y cable
and plugs that have a memory
cable at the end which func-
tions as additional support by
going around the ear. In fact,
the headphones are downright
plain looking to be honest.
While the B100 is certainly
not going to win any design
awards, what it lacks in looks,
it makes up in audio chops.
Features & performance:
From our test tracks, it
became pretty apparent that
the B100 was likely to be the
most precise IEM in the test.
Chris Reas vocals on Call on
Me felt more natural than
any of the other headphones.
Even the live track Shine On
sounded quite nice. The only
track where the headphone
faltered a bit was Mindstreet
from the Maktub album. The
twangy bass didnt have that
oomph. Ahh well, you cant
have it all.
Verdict: The Brainwavz
B100 is an incredibly accu-
rate in-ear for its price. For a
budding audiophile wanting
to try out balanced armature
type IEMs (as opposed to reg-
ular old dynamics) the B100
could be the perfect starting
point. The sound signature
was fairly neutral and han-
dled most of genres we threw
at it. It seems to be positioned
as a serious headphone and
even drops the in-line micro-
phone all together. At 50 Ohms
the rated impedance is on the

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 77


IEMs
higher side, but the head-
phone being fairly sensitive
shouldnt be difficult to drive,
even for a phone. In which case
a microphone wouldve been a
welcome addition. That being
APRIL 2017
Brainwavz B100
said, its only a small niggle.
If you are in the market for a
great sounding pair of head-
phones, you cant go wrong
with the Brainwavz B100.
PROS
Accurate, true to source.
Good for any genre
Affordable for a balanced
armature IEM
CONS
No microphone
Doesnt look all that great
AUDIO-TECHNICA
ATH-ANC33IS
The Audio-Technica ATH-
ANC33iS is a unique IEM
when compared to all the
others featured in this test. It
is one of the most affordable
Active Noise Cancellation ear-
buds out there.
Build & Design: The design
for the ANC33iS is very simple
and functional. The ear piece
looks typically like any of the
other Audio-Technica in-ears
weve seen before. The Active
Noise Cancellation unit is in-
line and hardly heavier than
the single AAA battery that
78 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
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it houses. It comes with a clip
that can let you securely fasten
it to you to say a pant pocket.
The ANC33iS also comes with
an in-line microphone and
single button remote.
Features & Performance:
The ANC33iS is possibly the
warmest sounding in-ear in
the test. It lacks that crisp
detail in the higher ranges but
isnt all that bad. In the lower
end of the spectrum there is
adequate bass but the bass
couldve been punchier. Its
present in the right amount
but just not very tight or hard-
hitting. The passive isolation
on the ANC33iS is quite bad,
but since it has active cancel-
lation it doesnt matter all that
much. The ANC doesnt apply
any amping or DSP like Ive
seen a couple of other ANC
units do. With or without
the sound signature remains
the same.
Our newest addition to the
test tracks repertoire Shape of
You by Ed Sheeran sounded
fairly decent but the vocals
sounded a little recessed.
Incidentally, in case you are
curious, we tried testing the
mic with and without the
ANC on, but it made no dif-
ference to the audio quality.
So the ambient cancellation
is only for the audio drivers.
How good is the ANC
you ask? Its fairly decent at
blocking out constant low
rumble noises like say the
hum of the Air Conditioning.
To a certain extent it can even
subdue traffic noises, but if
you expect total silence that
not what ANC does anyway.
To draw a comparison I had
my trusty Bose QC 20 active
noise cancellation in-ears
with me. Of course the QC20
is much better at blocking
out ambient noise. It would
be unreasonable to expect
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the 33iS to be as good at one
fourth the cost. But is it 1/4th
as good? Id say it is.
Verdict: Would I recommend
buying these if not for the
ANC? Probably not. Youd
certainly get better in-ears
for the same price. But if you
are looking for a pair of decent
sounding in-ears and ANC is
an essential feature for you,
this is the headphone you
must pick up.
PROS
Active noise cancellation
works fairly well
Great for flights with air-
plane adapter bundled
CONS
A bit too warm
Detail and precision
couldve been better
No hardcase
A-JAYS FOUR+
Jays is a Swedish company
known for making mini-
malist yet beautiful audio
gear. I remember their over
the ear u-Jays headphone and
it too had the same attention
given towards aesthetics.
But is beauty skin deep? Not
at all. Id say the a-Jays Four+
is a misunderstood device.
Because of the kind of hip-
ster appeal it seems to have,
most audiophiles might be
inclined to dismiss it as one of
those mindless upgrades over
bundled in-ears. I found their
sound quality to be much
more than a simple upgrade.
Build & Design: Lets start
with the box. For such a huge
carton, you get very little
inside. Theres no carry case
(gasp!). We got the white var-
iant, and I have to admit, they
exude a certain understated
classy appeal. The tangle
free flat cable is absolutely
tangle free. In fact, its got the
highest score in the test in this
department. The three button
remote is specifically wired
to be compatible with either
iOS or Android depending on
the version you opt for, so pick
carefully when purchasing.
In terms of build quality the
a-Jays Four Plus seems tough.
You could get away with just
throwing them in your back-
pack without a case and be
just fine.
Features & Performance:
There nothing much to speak
of with respect to features
its just a basic pair of in-ears.
The performance bit does
need elaboration. The pres-
entation on the a-Jays Four+ is
super aggressive. Its like this
nice deep U shaped sound sig-
nature. Sure the sound loses
out being full bodied but the
a-Jays more than compensates
for it by performing excep-
tionally in the two extremes
that it produces well. Take
for instance our EDM-esque
track Stereo Love. It didnt
sound as spacious as on the
Brainwavz S3, but the thump
was accurate and hard hitting.
Itll get anyone moving and
grooving. Live performances
sounded hollow and lacking
body. Our live sample - Pink
Floyds Shine On from the
Pulse Tour sounded like a few
microphones on stage got
accidentally turned off. At the
same tracks like Ed Sherans
Shape of You sounded sharp
and detailed; sparkly even
(guess the mix was right for
the a-Jays). The headphone
had one of the better micro-
phones in the test but cable
microphonics was a problem
Verdict: So yes in the end the
a-Jays Four + do make for a
worthy upgrade over your
bundled but they are much
more than just that. They
are hardy, stylish and sound
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pretty neat. If you like a fun
or playful presentation this is
what you should go for. If you
are a bass fanatic the Brain-
wavs M2 is a better option. If
you like the analytical or neu-
tral type of sound the RHA
S500i and MeeAudio M6 Pro
is always there. For a broader
soundstage the Brainwavz S3
is your best bet.
PROS
Bright sparkly sound
Minimalist, yet seems
quite durable
CONS
Cable noise is a problem
No carry case
1MORE SINGLE DRIVER
1more is the OEM manu-
facturer that designed (and
possibly manufactured)
Xiaomis Piston and Hybrid
in-ears. They have only a few
models in their collection
but each headphone seems
well thought out and pur-
pose built. 1more even posts
some impressive durability
and testing standards on its
website. The 1more 1M301
(a.k.a 1more Single Driver) has
been tuned with by a Grammy
Award Winning Sound Engi-
neer, Luca Bignardi to deliver
a precise representation of
your favorite music, says the
company. Does it live up to the
hype? Lets find out.
Build & Design: Before get-
ting into what lies beneath,
lets first start with what
meets the eye. The 1more
Single Driver is an exception-
ally nice looking earphone.
Yes I know aesthetics is a
subjective area but I cant help
marvelling at the design. The
metal housing, the bright red
fibre-sheathed cable, even the
translucent silicon tips with
their bright red core all
of it gives the 1more a pre-
mium look. The headphones
feature an aluminum alloy
body while the cable consists
of interior enameled copper
wrapped around Kevlar fibre.
The fibre is then coated with
a TPE layer on which theres
an braided nylon sheathing.
Performance & Features: The
aural reproduction on the
1more can be best described
as clean. The 1more single
driver is surprisingly detailed.
On Stereo Love the subtle vocal
echoes that are mixed to sweep
from left to right are delight-
fully noticeable (timestamp
02:11). The way it rendered
Shine On (Live) it was closer
to the kind of upfront sound
we saw on the RHA S500i
detailed but lacking a robust
fullness to the sound. The
1more Single Driver does very
well with vocals. Chris Reas
vocals on Call On Me sounded
velvety smooth and rich. It
started faltering with instru-
ment heavy metal tracks like
Pull Me Under by Dream Theater.
A bit of the upper mid range
started getting subdued. But
we are just nitpicking, overall
the 1more sounds quite nice.
Verdict: The 1more Single
Driver is quite attractively
priced squarely in middle of
the price range weve selected
for this test. At `2,700, they
offer great clarity across the
spectrum. If you listen to a
lot of rock or metal youd do
better upping your budget
slightly and picking up
something like the M6 Pro.
But if you are into genres
which need an emphasis on
vocals you wont go wrong
with the 1more.
PROS
Clean, balanced sound
Looks great
High quality materials
CONS
A little more detail in the
highs wouldve been nice
TEKFUSION
TWINWOOFERS M2
Most of you will remember
Tekfusion the Bangalore-
based Indian audio manu-
facturer for its 2013 release
original Twinwoofers. It was
quite a successful in-ear,
almost always being fea-
tured on any affordable IEM
roundup (much like the one-
time budget king EP630). The
original Twinwoofers were
known for their bass-focus
and affordable pricing. With
the release of the updated ver-
sion, Tekfusion has upped the
price a bit and is now com-
peting in the slightly above
entry-level segment.
Build & Design: The Twin-
woofer M2s chassis is crafted
out of aluminum. The head-
phone housing looks fairly
APRIL 2017
Tekfusion Twinwoofers M2
nice with their matte black
finish and silver accents. The
cable has a braided core with
an outer protective polymer
sheathing. There is an in-
line single button remote
with mic. The cable remains
remarkably tangle free and
at the same time manages to
coil up easily for easy stowing.
The hardcase that it comes
with is fairly roomy and
serves its function well.
Features & Performance: The
Twinwoofers M2 go head to
head with the other similarly
priced in-ear headphone in
this test - the SoundMagic
E10C. The two similarly
priced in-ears were also sim-
ilar in their aural prowess.
Whats a test without the chal-
lenge of unearthing nuance
right? Straight off the bat you
can tell that the Twinwoofers
M2 has good bass. Well, good
in the sense of quantity at
least, if not accuracy. EDM
sounds distinctly better on
these than the E10C. Unlike
the tuning of the first Twin-
woofers which quite frankly
overdid the bass, these seem
more balanced in their tuning
(far from neutral though).
Where it falls ever so slightly
behind the E10C in delivering
finer detail, it makes up for by
giving a more well rounded
mid-range. The tiebreaker of
sorts was delivered by our
new entrant to the test tracks
Ed Sheerans Shape Of You (man
that songs catchy!). The point
where the pipe drum kicks
in (timestamp 1:50) is when
Twinwoofers M2 inches ever
so slightly ahead.
Verdict: For the `2000
price point the Tekfusion
Twinwoofers M2 offer great
value. You get a solid per-
forming in-ear headphone
that looks nice, sounds decent
and feels durable.
PROS
Great value
Decent sound
CONS
Detail couldve been better
(cuz we always want more)

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 79

 Venoms upcoming movie
Spider-Mans villain Venom is getting his own
standalone movie and will be coming to theatres
IEMs on October next year. http://dgit.in/VenomM
SOUNDMAGIC E10C
Weve been fans of SoundMag-
ics E10 series for a long time
now (much more than the
overrated PL30s). The E10M
was for a long time our go
to recommendation for the
`2000 to `2500 price bracket.
Build & Design: In terms of
design, the driver housing
looks exactly like the E10M
while the cable is the one
used on the E10S. The internal
wiring is different though. The
E10C has a 3-button remote
that can automatically switch
between Apple and Android
smartphones pretty neat.
Its like they took the E10S
and changed its cable to have
a better remote and an angled
input jack.
Performance: Between the
E10C and its predecessor the
E10S there is no difference
in sound signature. Its the
same vibrant signature that
weve come to love over the
ages (especially given that it
comes at such a price point).
The question therefore isnt
which E10 sounds better (its
the E10M in case you were
wondering), the question is,
how does the E10C compare
to the other similarly priced
IEM in this test? With a fair
amount of listening we find
that the locally designed
Tekfusion Twinwoofers M2
inches ever so slightly ahead
of the Japanese competition.
If you look at the scores in
the table alongside this can be
clearly seen. Is the E10C bad?
Of course not! In fact, with
the compatibility enhanced
wiring and now three button
remote its an improvement
over the older version.
Verdict: Objectively, the Tek-
fusion Twinwoofers M2 is a
slightly better buy in terms of
pure audio performance. But
the two are so close that you
80 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
QUICK START GUIDE
I like big bass and
I cannot lie
Precision audio is
all that I care about
A feature rich all
round package
The best value
for money
can almost substitute one for
the other depending on which
one is more easily available.
Your decision can sway in
favour of the E10C on ancillary
factors too such as the avail-
ability of a computer adapter
included in the bundle if
thats an important considera-
tion for you. Or even the three
button remote as opposed to
the single button one found on
the Twinwoofers.
PROS
Great value
Decent sound
CONS
Detail couldve been better
BRAINWAVZ M2
The M2 has for long been a
staple on any online roundup
/ listing featuring the best in-
ears within this price range,
but the company officially
launched it only in Oct 2016.
Its been a favourite for good
reason. The entire M series
from Brainwavz
delivers great sound CONTACTS
with each variant SoundMAGIC
being uniquely FiiO
tuned to suit every 1More
preference.
a-JAYS
Build & Design:
Audio-Technica
Unlike the Brainwavz
M1 which looks a little Tekfusion
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe is launching its Advertising Cloud to improve
measurement and management of ads that appear
on the internet. http://dgit.in/AdobeAds
Brainwavz M2 is
the way to go
Brainwavz B100
FiiO EX1
Brainwavz S3
Tekfusion Twinwoofers M2
SoundMAGIC E10C
too plain jane the Brainwavz
M2 has a few niceties thrown
in like the silver accents.
Features & Performance: The
Brainwavz M2 is decidedly
bass heavy. In fact the bass is
so accentuated, weve given
it the title of Bass King in
this test. But the bass did tend
to get overpowering. The M2
is also very sensitive, so will
sound very loud even at low
input volume.
Incidentally, we also had
the Brainwavz M1 lying
around and although its not
included in this test its prob-
ably worthwhile discussing
what the differences are
between the two. In terms of
cable quality they are both the
same, but that `500 extra you
pay for the M2 gets you two
things: firstly a pair of better
looking headphones and
second, a significant bump in
the bass department.
Verdict: If thumping bass
is very important to you, and
a microphone is not you cant
www.soundmagic.in
www.fiio.co.in
https://india.1more.com/
www.headphonezone.in
www.audio-technica.com
www.tekfusiontechnologies.com
go wrong with the M2. If you
want similar overall perfor-
mance but with a mic, youd
do well with the 1More Single
Drive. Its cheaper too.
PROS
Bass king at this price
point
Cons
No mic
WINNERS
Best Buy: The best buy anal-
ysis was very close in this test.
In fact, the result surprised us
quite a bit. Considering the
kind of legendary audio quality
the E10 has been known for,
we expected bagging this
award would be a cinch for
the E10C. But the Tekfusion
Twinwoofers M2 provided just
a little more performance per
rupee. The Twinwoofers M2
therefore wins our Best Buy
Award for this test. However,
the E10C was so close youd do
well going with either simply
on whichever one is available.
Best Performer: The undis-
puted winner in terms of pure
sound quality was the Brain-
wavz B100. It has a few prob-
lems with it though such as
nothing to write home about in
terms of looks, or the fact that it
doesnt have a microphone. But
if you are looking for an in-ear
headphone that will reproduce
most genres as true to source
as possible in this price range,
then this is the device for you.
Editors Pick: The surpris-
ingly fun, spacious and overall
high scoring unit in this test
was the Brainwavz S3. It has
great passive isolation, a
tangle free cable with micro-
phone and the unit feels like it
should be able to take regular
wear and tear of being a daily
driver. For this, it is our Edi-
tors Pick for this test.
 OUR PICK OF THE BEST TECH ARTICLES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

(MUST READS)
[Motherboard Corner]
BEGINNERS GUIDE TO EXTRATERRESTRIAL POST-DETECTION
ETIQUETTE.

COMPUTING ON THE EDGE

Major tech companies like
Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm all
see connected cars as essen-
tially 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 anthropolo-
gist Michael Frachetti and his
colleagues, previous studies
SETI researchers think there is a good chance well be hearing
used the wrong algorithm and from ET within two decades. This possibility of contact seems
missed an obvious hypothesis. closer today than ever before thanks to recent forward leaps in
http://dgit.in/SilkRoad4 alien-hunting technology. But it also raises the question: Youve just
been contacted by aliens, now what? http://dgit.in/talkET

ORIGINS OF
CONVERSATIONAL
INTERFACE
Its 2017, and conversational
interfaces/machines are eve-
rywhere. 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 NASAs
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-
http://dgit.in/AstroWear
Whats 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/fuelMath

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 97

 (worldview)

WEB OF WAR ABUSING BANANA FARMING THE MISSING LINK WITH AI MODERN ASTRONOMY
The internet A single banana Machine learning WITH COMPUTERS
would likely seems whim- has produced It makes sense,
SHORTS

not have been
born without the
militarys need to wage war,
or at least it would not have
been born at ARPA. How the
hair-trigger nuclear age and
fears of Armageddon inspired
visionary warriors during the
Cold War to invent the internet.
http://dgit.in/ARPANET1
sicalyellow and
sweet, contained
in its own easy-to-open peel.
It is a charming breakfast
luxury as silly as it is delicious
and ever-present. However,
having the food we want when
we want it threatens our food
supply and our future.
http://dgit.in/bananaH
many tremendous
practical applica-
tions in recent years but we are
still nowhere near achieving
human-like AI. The current
layered model of cognition is
wrong, and most AI researchers
are missing a central piece of
the puzzle: embodiment.
http://dgit.in/AIbody
then, that com-
puters would be
such useful tools
in modern astronomy. Machine
Learning is bringing the cosmos
into focus. Training neural
networks to identify galaxies
could forever change humanitys
perspective of the universe.
http://dgit.in/spaceAstro

Can Tesla deliver 300MWh

power in 100 days?
Musks confidence behind promising large amounts of power to
Australia lies in Teslas new Gigafactory in Nevada. By Souvik Das

youre on, who also went ahead and

asked for a quote. The conversation went
as follows:
Musks quote puts battery pack-level
price at approximately $75 million for
300MWh of power, which is about the
total power shortage that is leading to
frequent power cuts and a potential
blackout in the near future. Australian
senator Sarah Hanson-Young also joined
in on the conversation, expressing
interest in hosting a conversation with
Musk and Tesla regarding the same.
While most of these things are for
the business heads to figure out, we
focus on Tesla, its new Gigafactory and
the latest home battery pack, the Pow-

M
ost of Elon Musks ven-
tures are working for the
future of technology, but
his brainchild Tesla is also
doing stable work to promote cleaner
energy sources in present times. Now, it
claims that the same can be done in com-
mendable pace. Recently, Teslas Vice
President for Energy Products, Lyndon
Rive, introduced the Powerwall 2, Teslas
new home battery setup. In process of
the announcement, Rive claimed that the
companys battery technology, aided by
erwall 2. Tesla is one of the biggest bat-
its snazzy new facility, can deliver up to tery companies, providing for its own
300 Megawatt hour of power in a mere lineup of all-electric cars alongside the
100 days to halt increasing power cuts less glamorous, more professional com-
in Southern Australia. mercial power supply division. The com-
Among many who took to the claims
was Atlassian co-founder, Mike Cannon-
Brookes, who posted a direct query on
Twitter, on exactly how serious is Tesla.
Musk then followed up by reinstating
Teslas power delivery claims, and also
stated that the company will do it 100
days from contract signature or it is free.
This conversation led to Brookes stating

98 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 (worldview)

BOTS VS MEN FOR JOB
Automation can
offer many advan-
tages- increased
efficiency, conveni-
ence, ecology, etc, but it also has
the potential to eliminate human
jobs. Techs and economists
have already been sounding the
alarm about the threat of mass
layoffs due to automation for
several years now.
http://dgit.in/BotVSmen
BIO-ENHANCING YOUR
BRAIN
Bioenhancement
is likely to become
a basic feature of
human society very
soon. New brain-machine inter-
faces will improve our memory
and cognition, senses, and confer
direct control over an array of
semi-intelligent gadgets but it
will also make us less human.
http://dgit.in/BrainUG
SELF-DRIVING CARS WHAT YOUR THERAPIST
WILL KILL DOESNT KNOW
Youre driving down Imagine a surgeon
Main Street and or a dancer
your brakes give learning without
out. As the terror someone observing
hits, a gaggle of children spills their work. Thats the predica-
out into the road. What do you ment therapists are in. Big Data
do? Its clear what any decent has transformed everything from
human being would choose to sports to politics to educa-
do. But would a robotic-car make tion and it will soon transform
the right choice? mental-health treatment, too.
http://dgit.in/robocarskill http://dgit.in/therapistAI

pany has previously stepped up to create
what is the biggest supplying battery
power plant in the entire world in just
90 days, generating 80MWh of power
for Southern California.
Crucial to its latest achievements is
the new Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada,
which cost $5 billion to be completed.
Despite the staggering expense of this
state-of-the-art facility, Rive has stated
that not only has Tesla managed to ramp
up battery production from the factory,
it has also led to a reduction in expenses
per kilowatt hour of battery capacity
for every battery produced. This also
makes Teslas ambitious power supply
plans more viable. The company plans
to use numerous battery packs of small
capacities in combination to generate
large amounts of power. While many
were skeptical regarding the viability
and longevity of such a setup, particu-
larly in commercial layout, it seems to
be working as of now.
As against previous Tesla battery
packs, the Powerwall 2 packs twice the
power capacity of 14kWh, all the while
using a body that is 30 percent smaller
than its predecessor. For massive instal-
lations, Rive stated, the cost of battery
storage now stands at anywhere between
$400 and $600 per kWh of capacity.
Going upward of 100MWh of power
demand, Musk stated, would bring
expenses down to around $250 per kWh.
While this is commercial implementation,
the Powerwall 2 that Tesla has showed
yesterday can also be arranged in stack
configurations for larger buildings, and
can deliver maximum power of 126kWh
in a nine-pack combination. For reference,
an average family of four in India use up
to 75kWh of power every month.
Tesla lists a Powerwall 2 battery
for $5,500, and recommends that for a
3BHK household, two Powerwall 2 bat-
teries will be required to run all appli-
ances for one full day. The cost for set-
ting up two batteries measure up to
$13,600 including refundable deposits,
amounting to almost Rs. 10,00,000 by
direct conversion in India. With alter-
nating estimated usage, this can reduce
stress on traditional power resources
by up to 70 percent. The investment,
though, for the time being, is quite steep.
India, however, is not ready for such
an infrastructure shift. The Powerwall 2
batteries translate maximum efficiency
with solar-powered panels charging
them, which completely negates residual
cost of powering households, as is hap-
pening in Australia. Such a city power
model is not existent in India, and even
in developed nations as Australia, it is
only just growing in number. Govern-
ment-end deployment, too, may require
substantial tweaking of norms and pro-
cedures in any nation where Tesla is to
deploy its battery power plant.
If Australia does accept Teslas
open invitation and goes through with
the monetary proceedings (that can
reach close to $100 million), the new
Tesla power plant can replace its own
Southern California plant as the largest
in the world. The companys focus on
clean energy and lesser cost of energy
establishment, even with rocket fuels,
is an ongoing procedure, one which
will hopefully provide dividends in our
future. Overall, even if its not entirely
clear whether Tesla, and Elon Musk, will
be able to pull this off or not, but if they
do - that would definitely put renewable
energy on the map as a good, viable and
quick source of energy
http://dgit.in/Tesla300MWh

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 99

(worldview)

EXTRA CREDITS (PRODUCT LAUNCHES)

Whether youre
looking for a game MOTO G5 PLUS FASTRACK REFLEX AMD RYZEN 7 1800X
industry career or
simply curious about
the way game devel-
opers think, Extra

The new Moto G5 Plus is available
in 32 & 64GB storage variants with
3GB and 4GB of RAM respectively.
Launched in Lunar Grey and Fine
Gold variants, the phone features a
5.2 inch Full HD display, 3000mAh
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game design approach- Snapdragon 625 processor.
able by exploring Price: `14,999/- `16,999
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Fastracks new activity
tracker, Reflex has step
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The Ryzen 7 1800X is an 8
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ABSOLUTE
TIMEPASS

Top 3 Picks Make sure your bosses dont catch you goofing off
watching one of these videos playing on your screen

To get all these links in one
easy to read page, make
sure you blip this page from
your smartphone.
Super MIDI Mario!!
Duration: 02:51
MIDI drawing is the new viral
thing in the music world.
Experience this awesome
Super Mario MIDI track.
http://dgit.in/MIDImario
DIY soda fountain machine
Duration: 03:52
Make your very own soda
fountain machine at home.
All you need to do is follow
the instructions in this video.
http://dgit.in/DIYsoda
What are Arcologies?
Duration: 06:14
Arcologies are self-sufficient
structures that may help
solve overpopulation and
resource scarcity.
http://dgit.in/Arcology

100 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in


Tech@Work 102
Build it,
bring it
You cant travel the world on a
PowerPoint Deck, says Nick Earle,
SVP, Hyperloop One, while announcing
his companys plans for India
Prasid Banerjee
prasid@digit.in
We just talked about connecting a
billion people, but the Hyperloop can
take only about 28 people at a time,
right? Whats the possibility of scaling
the number of passengers?
Nick: To be clear, the pod doesnt take
just 28 people at a time. The pods have a
variable length and its an autonomous
vehicle. They move, lets say about 20
seconds apart. So, the pod could take
maybe 60 people at a time. But to your
point, its 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 wouldnt change Delhi. However,
when the Internet let you reach out to
London or anywhere else, it changed
peoples lives.
In terms of ridership, were 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.
How do you plan on taking up
specific challenges imposed by coun-
Work@tech
AI is taking over our jobs, but
simultaneously creating more
jobs as well. Find out more.
tries? Or how are you going to localise
Hyperloop in various countries?
Nick: Were actually open to local-
ising 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 regula-
tors weve worked with are in Dubai.
Theyve set specific requirements in
order for us to get safety certifications.
So, we agree and accordingly start
working on the redesign.
Now, what we dont want to do is
design different Hyperloops for every
country, based on their specific and
intricate certifications. Although, the
first iterations being built will defi-
nitely influence the design over the rest
of the world.
Were creating a configurable
system that can be adapted universally.
Were also building interoperability
standards so that different transporta-
tion 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 travel-
ling in a Hyperloop was a tenth of the
airfare of the same distance. The ticket
Pockets iMessage App
The new iMessage app from Pockets makes
browsing and and sharing stories in chat so
much easier. http://dgit.in/iMsgPocket
prices were about 28 which converts
to around `2,000.
Interoperability with other public
transport systems is important. The
existing transport systems are primi-
tive, so how do you plan on establish-
ing a seamless system?
Nick: I wouldnt say primitive but
earlier technology, yes. Weve actually
talked to Deutsche Bahn about this at
length. It was concluded that interoper-
ability wasnt a key requirement.
Were building interoperability from
day one. Being from CISCO, we know
how this is important. It wasnt the
only networking company, but it cre-
ated 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.
Well never be able to interoperate
within the software in a Siemens train.
The app that allows you to get the time-
table, 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

Work @ Tech
CAREERS IN
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
Its the hottest tech in town and
everyone wants a bite. With ingredients
like data, data and more data, are you
ready to serve AI on a platter?
Arnab Mukherjee
arnab@digit.in
E
ven if you havent read any other
article in this issue, you could not
have missed the cover. Artificial
Intelligence is not something that
needs to be explained all over again,
even to a layman. If you have been
observing the buzzwords of the last
few years, youll have no problem in
recognising words such as big data,
machine learning etc. You would
know by now where we were headed.
Where AI is not just a reality, but
an attractive career choice as well.
Every industry has a need for AI.
In such a new but hot job area, it is no
shocker that the demand is high but
supply is low. On the other hand, there
are ample ways to gain the right skills
and make a career in this right now.
But before you do that, you have to
understand what a career in artificial
intelligence really involves.
The disciplines
You cannot ask someone to go and
learn artificial intelligence or do you
know artificial intelligence?. The
102 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Toilet paper thieves
Chinese authorities are fighting them using
facial recognition softwares on dispensors.
http://dgit.in/FaceToilet
phrase, by itself, mostly invokes the
outcome of its applications, rather than
the intricacies of its development. So,
youre more likely to think of the Ter-
minator rather than machine learning
when asking yourself what is artificial
intelligence?. This umbrella term also
encompasses the field of data science.
Machine learning, as the name
implies, enables the learning part in
artificial intelligence. This is different
from just getting insights from data
(which is in the domain of data science).
Machine learning enables a program to
change based on the data it encounters,
without the requirement of explicitly
programming every possibility. For
example, the News Feed on Facebook
uses machine learning to personalise
your feed. If you frequently stop
scrolling in order to read or like a
particular friends posts, the News Feed
will start to show more of that friends
activity in your feed. Behind the scenes,
the software is simply using statistical
analysis and predictive analytics to
identify patterns in your data and use
the patterns to populate the News Feed.
Should you have a fight and no longer
want to read, like or comment on the
ARMs DynamIQ chip
The next generation mobile chip
design puts focus on AI.
http://dgit.in/DynamIQ
friends posts, that new data will be
included in the data set and the News
Feed will adjust accordingly to incorpo-
rate your enemity.
The other technical component is
data science this is where you actu-
ally deal with the data to get results
that enable machine learning. To
achieve the level of intelligence, you
need a practical AI implementation,
vast dataset processing to cover every
possible event and establish a predict-
able behavior in your AI.
A-I.Q
While machine learning and data
science are broad fields that constitute
AI, they also consist of the actual skills
that you will need to master in order to
work in AI. One of the first things that
youll need is a background in engi-
neering, to be more precise software
engineering. While the exact lan-
guage may not matter, a fundamental
understanding of programming and
how to work with code will go a long
way in getting a job in AI. Pro tip try
to go for open source projects and
keep your code available for potential
interviewers to see. Look out for the
 Electronics ban
US TSA wont allow 13 countries from
carrying laptops and tablets onboard.
http://dgit.in/13usTSA
following machine learning course
at http://dgit.in/MLStanfordCourse.
While there are more technical
skills that you will need (ones that
we are coming to) at this point, it is
more important to talk about the non-
technical skills that will be expected.
Working in AI requires a constant urge
to solve problems. Think of it like a
riddle solving addiction hobbies like
game development or solving cross-
word puzzles are generally a bonus.
Mathematics forms another impor-
tant part of the required skillset. If
youre not aware how machine learning
works, it is understandable if you dont
really understand the significance of
mathematics in AI. However, in either
case, a strong grasp in certain areas of
mathematics is a must to solve actual
problems with AI. A solid grasp of
probability, statistics, linear algebra,
mathematical optimisation, data sets
and algorithms will be crucial in your
understanding, and as a consequence,
your construction of an AI system. In
many other situations, treating an algo-
rithm as a black box might not be a big
deterrent but that isnt the case with AI.
If youre not working in research,
working with AI will almost always
involve the need for an industry
expertise based on where it is being
applied. For example, if you want to
While this might be an oversimplifica-
tion, dealing with logic in the form of
flowcharts is something you will be
doing a lot in AI work
MakerBots MinFill
Their latest 3D printer will reduce print
process times & cost by around 30 percent.
http://dgit.in/MinFill
work at Waymo, expertise
in automobiles is a bonus.
In fact, a lot of AI based
companies look at hiring
experts in another field
and then training them
on the job in areas like
machine learning and
data mining. This is due
to the lack of clear aca-
demic direction when it
comes to treating artificial
intelligence as a subject. Udacity also offers a lot of free courses in this area,
As a result, the most along with the Nanodegree
reliable source from
where you can learn more about AI
related topics and develop skills is
the internet. Platforms like Udacity
and Coursera offer some really useful
courses in this area. Udacitys Artificial
Intelligence Nanodegree is developed
in collaboration with IBM Watson,
Amazon Alexa and Didi. It is a two-
term program that first introduces
the fundamentals of AI, then further
allows you to focus on your area of
interest. The areas include Natural
Language Processing, computer vision,
or speech recognition.
Working it out
Quite similar to the cloudiness sur-
rounding the skills required for AI,
there is a confusing mist that covers
the kind of roles that you will get if you
are looking for a job in artificial intel-
ligence. To clear that up, let us start off
by saying that the most common roles
that you will see will be closely related
to the skills that youve seen so far
machine learning and data science.
When it comes to the kind of
responsibilities and the work that youll
have, this is where you will find quite a
few familiar terms. Broadly, these are
the areas youll most likely be working
in (along with some of the most
prominent companies, both Indian and
global, working in that area):
Natural Language Processing and
generation
Generation: Attivio, Automated
Insights, Cambridge Semantics,
Digital Reasoning, Lucidworks,
Narrative Science, SAS, Yseop
Work @ Tech
Speech Recognition: NICE,
Nuance Communications, Open-
Text, Verint Systems.
Computer vision - Affectiva,
Blippar, Blue River Technology,
Captricity, uSens Solutions
Virtual agents/assistants: Amazon,
Apple, Artificial Solutions, Assist
AI, Creative Virtual, Google, IBM,
IPsoft, Microsoft, Satisfi
Machine learning: Amazon, Fractal
Analytics, Google, H2O.ai, Micro-
soft, SAS, Skytree
Deep learning: Deep Instinct, Ersatz
Labs, Fluid AI, MathWorks, Saffron
Technology, Sentient Technologies.
Decision management: Advanced
Systems Concepts, Informatica,
Maana, Pegasystems, UiPath
Robotic process automation:
Advanced Systems Concepts,
Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism,
UiPath, WorkFusion
While the global artificial intel-
ligence industry has gone ahead by
leaps and bounds, India is not too far
behind. This pace is being achieved
by startups who are doing some really
innovative work in this area. India is
in the middle of an artificial intelligence
revolution, explains Ishan Gupta, MD,
Udacity India, Along with the biggies,
which are heavily investing into AI,
more and more startups have come up
that use or deal with artificial intelli-
gence. Some of the companies in India
that one should look out for are Google,
Microsoft, LinkedIn, Adobe, Amazon,
Ola, Flipkart and Myntra to name a
few. Even though the major focus right
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 103

Work @ Tech
now is to address customer issues (like
implementing customer care systems)
using AI, more advanced use-cases are
beginning to surface. It is evident that
India is a considerably complex market
to implement AI due to the diversity of
languages involved.
There will be huge growth in job
demand in machine learning and data
science, says Dr. Debashis Guha,
Program Director, Machine Learning,
SP Jain School of High Technology,
The global machine learning market
is expected to reach $12.5 billion in
2019, up from $2.5 billion in 2014, at a
CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth
Rate) of 38%. The job market should
see at least a 30% CAGR. Job open-
ings range from positions requiring
only about a year of experience in R
or Python, to seasoned professionals
with more than 10 years of experience.
Serving as Product Managers, they
should be capable enough to define the
project requirements and the solu-
tion architecture. This also suggests
a career arc, starting from positions
involved with the nitty gritty of coding
and implementation. This evolves to
people entering senior positions who
are the ones defining requirements,
One of the more popular experiments run by Google on
neural networks and machine learning. Find more at
http://dgit.in/GoogleAIExp
104 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
New wireless tech Save live streams
Sony is reportedly working to allow Instagram now allows you to save
phone-to-phone wireless charging. your live video streams.
http://dgit.in/p2pSony http://dgit.in/InstaLSave
AI SKILLS MASTER LIST
A list of skills and areas to focus on to build an expertise in AI
Mathematics: Probability, Statistics, Algebra, Calculus
Core machine learning: supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning
Advanced machine learning: Neural and especially deep networks, SVM and
kernel tricks, ensemble methods, Markov decision processes
Algorithms: Mathematical optimisation, dynamic programming, data structures
and data processing algorithms
Software: Python, Java, R, also SAS, SPSS
Distributed computing: cloud computing, parallel computing, Hadoop, Spark
OS: Unix, especially Ubuntu
Other: Signal, image and speech processing techniques
Credits: Dr.Debashis Guha Program Director Machine Learning SP Jain School of High Technology
plannig the architecture, and carrying worried which jobs will be stolen by
out the projects. robots next. Now that youve under-
When it comes to compensation, the stood what AI signifies as a profes-
low demand-supply ratio in this area sion, it must be clear that the demand
ensures that they are quite competitive. for eligible people in the field of AI is
For example, according to Glassdoor, a only increasing the number of jobs
machine learning scientist at Amazon in the market. Down the line, the
in India could make about 33 to 36 people replaced by AI implementa-
lakhs per annum. Looking at more tions will be absorbed again in new
popular estimates, it would be safe expertise areas which are being created
to say that one could easily expect a everyday due to the advent of AI.
starting compensation of more than six On the other hand, the industry is
lakhs for an entry level Data Scientist benefitting greatly from AI technolo-
role which could effectively go up to gies. Downtimes are reducing, scope
15-17 lpa depending on the employer. of human error is decreasing with
Although, if you were corresponding increase in efficiency.
to look for a job abroad, Companies are increasingly taking
you would be looking on the data-driven approach and there
at more matured and is a vast demand for professionals
demanding markets. who can use artificial intelligence and
For instance, according convert it into meaningful business
to Ishan Gupta, the outcomes, says Ishan Gupta. There
average salary of has been a rising adoption of machine
an Artificial Intel- learning and artificial intelligence
ligence Engineer in technologies in multiple industries
Silicon Valley is around such as healthcare, finance, education,
$158,123 per year. retail, media, advertising and educa-
tion. Global developments in the field of
Bye-bye artificial intelligence are going to define
humans? the future. Graduates of AI programs
Not necessarily, as will be uniquely poised to contribute to
this article must have these developments in innovative and
told you by now. Just awe-inspiring ways. With interest in
like any other tech- this field rising everyday, now would
nological revolution, be the time to get started on the skills
the advent of AI in the mentioned earlier, so that someday you
workplace has created can be remembered in history as the
a panic-driven situa- person who brought about the rise of
tion where people are the robots and the end of humanity.
 Unwind Community
AI are taking our jobs! Heres This section showcases the

Esc 108 some jobs we wish AI would take

over faster. 110 achievements and writing contributions
from our reader community.

Tech thats just too similar to tell apart

T
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 char-
acteristic 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 ten-
dency to replicate what is successful is
destroying innovation, not only in the
device manufacturing industry, but the
tech industry in general.
And even where its 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, lets have a look at some
of the most obvious and bothersome
me-toos in tech.

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. Honestly, can you tell them apart with one look?
One such feature was Stories, which
let you present your disappearing Although it took them a couple of to Techcrunch in an interview, when
snaps in chronological order to your years and an acquisition by Facebook, asked about the implied copying.
friends and followers on the platform. Instagram also launched their own ver- One look at Instagram stories now,
Within a year of its introduction, i.e by sion of stories called Instagram Stories. and you can tell where they are headed
summer 2014, the number of pictures Sounds like they werent even trying to - geotagging, drawing tools, stickers
and videos being shared via Stories had be original, right? Thats because they and more are already there, and you
surpassed the earlier person-to-person werent. They deserve all the credit, can check out an infographic at http://
private snaps. said Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom dgit.in/IvsSInfoG to understand that

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 105

 No region-locking on Switch Hangouts Meet and Chat
One of the best aspects of the Nintendo Switchs With the new Meet and Chat, Google is basically
software design is the lack of region-locking. Read transforming their Hangouts chat application to
Feature more to find out: http://dgit.in/SwitchFree take on Slack. http://dgit.in/GoogleSlack

Instagram has actually taken it one with the marketing might

step further and introduced additional
features like tagging friends, swipe up
links, live video and more.
Whats more, Facebook has taken
this feature and spread it across its
portfolio of apps like WhatsApp, with
Status, and Messenger, with its latest
Facebook Messenger Day. While they
claim to be different, it is hard to spot
anything significant that sets them
apart, other than a couple of stickers
or the platform itself which might
precisely be the reason for user interest
to dwindle in the concept of stories alto-
gether! Although, to be fair, we might
just be looking at the rise of another
super-popular format, like when the
newsfeed first came out.
The smarts
One look at the smartphone industry
and its products right now will tell
you a very blatant tale of inspiration
generously being borrowed in every
production cycle. In fact, it is quite
difficult to pinpoint where it all started
and who did it first, but many say that
it all began when Apple came out with
the iPhone.
Perhaps a better testament to the
copying would be the number of
lawsuits filed by smartphone manufac-
turers against each other. Usually, it is
something people associate Apple with,
but if it were only the Cupertino based
tech giant involved, there wouldnt
be something called the Smartphone
Patent wars (it even has its own
Wikipedia page: http://dgit.in/SPatent-
Wars). Over the years, Sony, Google,
Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia,
Motorola, Huawei, LG, ZTE, HTC and
other phone manufacturers have been
engaged in litigations and counter-
litigations based on smartphone patent
violations, hence the moniker.
This has affected the customer. An
average smartphone buyer, who used
While these models might be dated, not much has
changed in smartphone design
ference in the way we use them. Is it
because we have reached an optimal
design? Or is it just a make what sells
phenomenon?
Gaming it
If we were to make a list of things that
video games copied from each other,
it would be one really long list. Some
would say that copying and borrowing
inspiration is how genres are formed.
While that is true, when one game
looks and plays almost exactly like the
other, one cant help but wonder if it is a Quite Fitting
case of outright copying.
In recent examples, the case of
Overwatch vs Paladins comes to mind.
Note that Overwatch was a hugely
successful game and knock-offs and
rip-offs arent uncommon for games
that see that level of success. But when
the accused is a reputable studio like
Hi-Rez Studios, you are bound to get
up and take notice. The accusations
have actually been flying to and fro, but
of Blizzard you can take
a guess at whose version
more people have heard
about. To get a comprehen-
sive list of the information
and quotes available as a
comparison, take a look
at this reddit post http://
dgit.in/OvwVSPldns.
If these debate reminds
you of another similar one
from a couple of years ago,
youre not wrong. Going
back just a few years, the DotA vs LoL
debate was rife with accusations from
both sides. While fans of the original
DotA were busy accusing LoL of
copying, LoL fans couldnt get enough
of blaming DotA 2 for the copying. Of
course, one can say that nobody really
lost, since both games are insanely
popular and are doing quite well. The
debates attention is now focused on
the former example in this section. We
wonder what will be next?
The wearables market has been a cause
of debate for quite a while now. People
have given judgements on both side of
the fence, calling it the future as well
as a failure. But whats neglected is the
similarity between most wearables,
especially fitness trackers.
Dont get us wrong, theres not
much fitness trackers are supposed to
do to begin with. But it does get tiring
watching every manufacturer tout their
IMAGE CREDIT: FORBES

to look for a unique smartphone back

in the day, will now look for the same
features in all phones, as a guarantee
towards a safe purchase. Nowadays,
almost all smartphones sport a slate/
phablet design with little or no dif- Overwatchs edgelord as compared to Paladins edgelord

106 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%
Nike claims their new Zoom Vaporfly 4%
running shoes will actually make professional
athletes run faster. http://dgit.in/NikeVFly
Do we really need scores of products in
the same category?
product as the next big revolution in
the fitness tracking market. What they
bring out however, is a product with the
exact same feature set and sometimes
almost the same design as the rest, with
the hopes that people will go after it
based on brand value.
If there was innovation, at least
in design, when it comes to fitness
trackers, we would be looking at
major brands diversifying their
design from the standard bracelet
type structure popularised by Fitbit
to more diverse designs meant for
different user groups. While all of us
might be trying to do the same thing
with fitness trackers, not all of us are
the same to begin with. For instance,
answer one question. If you think that
this section was unwarranted - why
isnt there a manual option to stop
tracking on most fitness trackers
when, say, youre on a vehicle?
Startups
Okay, before you start ranting about
successful business models and all
that, we DO know that the startup
industry often works on taking an
idea and bettering it. But more often
than not, what actually happens is the
taking of an idea and the slathering
of more VC funds on it to attract more
customers via offers.
Take a look at the food ordering seg-
ment in India - Foodpanda, TinyOwl,
Zomato and Swiggy. While not all of
them are failing, it is clear that Swiggy
is leading the roost. The funding into
Rime is finally here
The adventure game Rime that was first
announced back in September 2013 is finally
set to launch this May. http://dgit.in/RimeMay
food startups had risen to a cool $74
million in the first half of 2015 only to
drop to a disappointing $19 million
in the second half. Offering discounts
and cashbacks proved to be suicidal for
most of the startups in this area, with
TinyOwl shutting shop just last year.
Among all of this, Swiggy has managed
to raise another investment of $5 mil-
lion recently. Why? Because it became
the differentiator.
Instead of focussing on cashbacks
and discounts like every other food
delivery startup, Swiggys focus was
on delivering within shorter times
(Average delivery time on the app is
37 minutes) and to ensure traceability.
This focus on service quality, instead
of copying the discount business
model is what made sure Swiggy
survived the crunch. Similar stories
are littered across the Indian startup
scenario, where investors are backing
out of companies that are losing
money consistently due to too many
discounts and too little customer
loyalty once thats gone.
Internet of (another)things
Or IoT as we have abbreviated it to
a buzzword that we have
been hearing long enough to
know that its not a buzzword
anymore. One of the primary
areas where it is being used is
home automation there are
market leaders like Amazon
Alexa and now, Google Home
which connect to numerous
services and devices. One
level below that lie the
devices themselves. These are
the gadgets and appliances
that can replace your current
unsmart arsenal with capa- The paradox of choice is a recognised and proven
bilities like auto on-off, data phenomenon
insights, preset configura-
tions and a lot more functionality. Its
just that, they dont really do that.
Home automation companies,
most of them to be fair, have been
going after the standard hub-smart
plug design in which all they offer
is switch on-off capabilities from a
smartphone. Theres nothing wrong
Feature
with having basic features but when
almost an entire industry is doing the
same thing, its bound to kill innova-
tion. Companies like Oakter, Inoho etc
are busy building their own hubs and
switchboards, which offer identical
functionality with a few tweaks here
and there. Cubical Labs with its Aura
device, is the closest to becoming a
differentiator. Home Brain is also
offering complete solutions that seem
more polished. But overall, there
needs to be an urge towards innova-
tion rather than replicating these
models if we are to see something like
Alexa or Google Home being built,
sold, and used at all in India.
Theyre killing themselves?
Yes, they are. This trend of developing
me too products and features by
tech companies and startups every-
where is a loss for the companies, as
well as consumers in the long run.
Companies end up offering customers
products that were never really devel-
oped in the way that they promised in
their marketing. Whilst in principle
it is good having competition for the
same product types from different
companies, in practice, there is often
not a big enough market to accom-
modate the same types of products
with the same features and the same
price points. It is perhaps one very
good reason why following each other
blindly is never going to be a particu-
larly good idea.
www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 107

Unwind
Jobs that AI should take away
With all the fear that AI will eventually take our jobs away, here are some jobs we
WANT them to take over. Good riddance!
Fast food server
For starters (see what we did
there?), therell be no more of those
would you like some fries with that
jokes. You know, because AI dont
get jokes. Also, wouldnt it be nice to
have your fast food server tell you,
right down to the calories, exactly
how unhealthy your food is?
Psychologist
Can you really trust another human
to be totally unbiased while taking
your brain apart? An AI on the other
hand, will treat your thoughts as
pure, cold data and tell you what
you need to know - without bias.
Keep an eye out for any Westworld
vibes though.
108 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in
Hugging Face chatbot
Hugging Face is a new app that can
learn to chit-chat and trade selfies.
http://dgit.in/HfaceAI
Butler
Wed be lying through our teeth if we
said we didnt want an AI butler just
like Jarvis. I mean, just think about
programming it to call you Mr. Stark?
British accent has to be a must of
course. Not that its a fantasy of ours
or anything. As long as it doesnt pull
an Ultron, we *should* be fine.
Your tinder match
We know this isnt a real job, but it
sure would be nice. Its not like its
happening with any real intelligence
anyway, is it guys? With the level
chat bots are at, you wouldnt really
know the difference. And look at
the bright side, itll never ask you
if it looks fat!
Louis Vuitton case
LVs new iPhone case with hard
corners and a latch costs just $5,500.
http://dgit.in/iPhoneLV
Cab drivers
Who likes to be refused by cab and
auto drivers because, well, they just
dont want to go? With AI, these
whimsical desires will be a problem
of the past. But, be prepared for it to
refuse to take you to the pizza place
because itll know if youve crossed
your calorie count for the day.
Digit labs
Well, were lazy. Please dont kick
us out.
 Walnut-shaped moon? Baxter the robot
Saturns recently discovered moon, Baxter can correct its mistakes by
Pan, has a diameter of about 35km. reading electrical brain activity.
http://dgit.in/PanIMG http://dgit.in/brainBaxter Unwind

How we unwind

Vive-ing through RagnBone Man - Human Riverdale

We got to play with a Vive this month,
thanks to which we almost forgot about
the closing altogether. One moment
we were stranded on a broken space-
station, the next moment we were knee
deep in VR accounting (apparently,
thats a thing). But soon, virtual reality
gave way to actual reality and we had
to bid a sad farewell to the Vive.
Immediately after watching Mass
Effect: Andromedas launch trailer,
Siddharth got hooked to the song. In
his defence, it IS a very catchy song.
Didnt take long before everyone in
the labs was humming the song.
FUN FACT: Its been more than
20 years since Backstreets Back
released. Feel old yet?
This month, Arnab got his hands on
the new show Riverdale. Quite to his
surprise, he found out that its not
just a live-action version of the comic
book Archie. Its a complete re-
imagining of the comic into a murder
mystery. Never thought wed ever
see that happening in Riverdale. Too
much has already been said!

DIARY
March was quite the active month, as compared to the last still use those?) ever since he joined, finally got himself a new
one. First things first, Yanger has joined the test labs full time. phone. He still hasnt thrown us a party though. Arnab, who
The young Padawan has finally become a full-fledged Jedi. recently broke his phone, is currently stuck with a Windows
Welcome to the labs and good luck with Mithun! phone, so hes now in a similar predicament.
After managing to close somewhat on time last month An interesting discovery made this month has to do with
(yea, that actually happened), we thought wed breeze by this Abhijit and how he used toilet paper while he was abroad.
month. Nothing could stop us If that has piqued your
now! This month will be eas- curiosity, you can ask Abhijit
oh look at that, we missed the The Digit SKOAR! board himself, @babumoshaaye.
deadline yet again. On the gaming front,
Of all of us, you could say Difficulty level : Xaero - Nightmare mode both Siddharth and Abhijit
Mithun has been the most busy. Skills learned : Untangling earphones deranked in CS, but Siddharth
He secluded himself in a corner has been more concerned
Quote of the month : Bieber is NOT shit!
of the labs and declared himself about playing another game:
dead to the rest of the world. He Mithun Mass Effect: Andromeda. He
did pop by every now and then couldnt wait to play the trial
to make a few snarky com- when it hit Origin and even
ments, but eventually headed dropped whatever work he
back to his corner to run tests and benchmarks. was doing to get in an hour of the game. Also, in case you guys
We got quite a few toys to play with this month. Not includ- didnt know, Yanger is a DotA guy, so were expecting some
ing the Vive (which weve mentioned above), we even got to future conflicts between him and Manish, who is a LoL guy.
play with a drone. Though, we were quite terrible at flying it. After listening to Weeknds Starboy at least a 100 times,
Actually, Mithun was the one who flew it the most... we finally looked up the lyrics (lets be honest, nobody under-
Manish, who had been using a BlackBerry (what? People stands what hes saying). Instant clarity.

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 109

 New Twitter feature? Pixel microphones
Twitter is trying to tackle its troll problems Google says that a small number of Pixel
in 2017 by marking profiles for potentially phones have broken microphones, to be
Digit Squad sensitive content http://dgit.in/Tweetest replaced. http://dgit.in/Pixelmic

Every month we recognise the best article written

by our community members and publish it here.
Keep up the good work, Digitians!

Google Local Guides Summit

Googles annual summit for the top contributors to Google Maps will have its second
edition this year. Heres all you need to know about it.

Local Guides is a global community of After you apply

explorers sharing their discoveries on
Google Maps. Help others find the best spots
in town, make new friends, and unlock
exclusive benefits along the way. Google
started this programme in November 2015
Dr. Shaunak
and since its beginning more than 5 mil-
Das
lion people in 235 countries have answered
questions and made edits on Google maps so far. Last year,
Google hosted the inaugural Local Guides Summit in San
Francisco as a part of which they invited the top Level 5
Local Guides from around the world for two days of talks,
workshops, and local explorations. Interestingly, the 75
people who attended their inaugural summit at San Fran-
cisco, last year have made over 330,000 contributions
including 5,000 entirely new places added on maps. Before
we go into the details of the summit, let us find out more
about the programme first.
Local Guides Programme
Aim:
Basically the aim is to make Google maps up to dated as well
as corrected everywhere in the world so that people can use
Google maps daily like their own compass.
How to contribute:
Anyone having Google profile can join this programme. You
just need an Android or iOS phone with Google Maps. On
the app, someone can make contributions in many ways, like
adding a place, making corrections or answer some random
questions (like is the wifi really free? does it actually open at
7 am? asked by Google. Every separate contribution counts
and Google will give you 1 point for each one made
Around April, you get an email from Google stating that every
level 5 local guide can apply for their inaugural Local Guides
summit, to be held sometime in September at Googleplex in
San Francisco, USA. The requirements for a complete applica-
tion are as follows:
Each Local Guide must submit a 1-minute video message,
appearing on camera to share reasons for applying.
Each Local Guide must submit a post on Local Guides Con-
nect with an introductory message and more insights into
his or her experience with the program
Additionally, while participating in the Local Guides
program requires a minimum age of 18 years, all Summit
attendees must be at least 21 years old prior to the Summit.
That is because 21 is the legal drinking age in the United States
and alcohol will be present at some events.
As per their requirement I applied for the summit and
uploaded a 1 min application video on YouTube where I
explained why I wanted to attend the summit. Here is my
video link http://dgit.in/GSummitAppl
Result declaration
Google received almost 1000 such applications, among which
only 75 Local Guides were invited for the summit. Partici-
pants came to know that I got a place in the list when Google
announced the results on 20th May 2016 on their forum.
They selected four people from India. Only two of them went
to summit and I was one of them.

Programme benefits
The programme offers different benefits in a level based
reward system. How do you progress? With the points, of
course! There are essentially five levels, where you start off
with insider scoop and go all the way up to Level 5 where
youll get access to new products before public release and,
more importantly, the eligibility to apply for the Local A world map at the event where participants stuck their signed
Guides summit. photos on their original locations

110 | Digit | April 2017 | www.digit.in

 Volkswagen unveils Sedric More Smartwatches!
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vehicle with a Level 5 autonomy No steering to launch Android Wear 2.0 watches this
wheel, no pedals. http://dgit.in/SedricCar fall. http://dgit.in/MTHsmart Digit Squad

Lunch time fun at Googleplex

In the afternoon we had a series of breakout sessions led by
product managers and engineers on topics such as Google My
Business and saving places to lists. We ended a very busy day
with a BBQ on campus with food, games and mingling.

Google San Francisco office

Jen Fitzpatrick, Head of Google Maps, addressing the Local
Guides. View the talk here http://dgit.in/JFLGS2016
Journey to San Francisco
On 12th September, all of the 75 local guides including 25
Googlers stayed at Hyatt, San Francisco. At the same day in
evening we had a welcome reception at our hotel and it was
really awesome to meet other 74 local guides. We shared some
souvenirs among us.
Inside Googleplex
Next day (13th morning) we had some private meetings with
top officials from Google. There, the 75 guides were divided
into 7 teams, and I got place in Team Yellow. The Vice presi-
dent of Google maps, Jen Fitzpatrick (she was the first female
engineer in Google) gave a welcome speech to us, and she
mentioned the top 5 Local Guides who helped improvement
of Google Maps to a large extent. In that top 5, apart from me,
there was a Malaysian girl who uploaded 640 GB of photos to
the map, and another boy who showcased the physically disa-
On 14th we visited the Google San Francisco office and met
other Google employees there. These meetings involved
learning from Local Guides community managers and getting
some tips from star meet-up hosts. Then we walked some of
streets in Mission District, San Francisco. We visited some
local stores and made necessary corrections in Google Maps.
The closing party was held at Mission Bowling club.
Conclusion
I would suggest others to join Local Guides programme and
do it as something fun. Mapping the world is very useful. If
you are already involved in the program, then their couldnt be
a better time to up your game since Google has announced the
Local Guides Summit for 2017. The criteria is pretty much the
same and applications are open between 3rd to 24th April. The
good news is that this year, 150 applicants will be shortlisted
for the summit from around the world. The chances couldnt
be any better, so what are you waiting for?

PC, Laptop
bled people on his videos. A man from Nigeria also featured in
that list who helped in the Google Local Business. Jen had an
engaging talk about the Local Guides group and the great stuff
Tablet, Mobile
Saur(aa
the community is doing. Our ultimate aspiration is to build
the richest, deepest, most detailed understanding of the real
world thats ever existed and to share that back to our users,
Jen told us. You are the community thats helping us build
that understanding.

Google Street View

After the panel, we got to hear from one of the creators of

92.72.70.70.50
Street View, who made it what it is today. Daniel Filip started
at Google in 2007 and was originally tasked with creating 360

98.22.88.25.62
photospheres for the Street View project. He described how
one can easily capture a 360 degree photo without the help
of 360 cam using Street View app from Play Store/App Store.
And they can interconnect pictures taken at the same location.
Similarly a person can upload spherical photos via Google
desktop pano editor and connected photos for proper naviga-
tion. So that people can see a 360 degree photo of a business.
To view a part of the talk in 360, go to http://dgit.in/DFLGS2016.

www.digit.in | April 2017 | Digit | 111

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