Techno Bhogi

Gone are the days when people approach the court for solving real-world legal disputes. In this modern age, a Chinese gamer has reportedly sued his friend and NetEase for selling his video game character worth Rs 10 crores for a throwaway price of less than Rs 40,000. According to the report , Lu Mou, the gamer who filed the complaint spent almost 10 million Yuan (~Rs. 10 crores) for customizing his character in the game “Justice Online”. He shared his ID with his friend Li Mouscheng so that he could also enjoy the game in Mou’s cool outfit. Mouscheng, however, betrayed Mou and sold the character on the in-game marketplace NetEase for 3,888 Yuan (~Rs. 40,000). Mouscheng was in fact trying to sell the character for 388,000 Yuan but he committed a typographical error as he was feeling “dizzy from excessive gaming”. A Chinese court at Sichuan Province heard the case and released the judgment in favor of Mou. The court ordered to return the game character to the original owner and aske...

A recent study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics reveals that the daily screen time of children increased from 53 minutes when they’re 1 year old to more than 150 minutes when they reach 3 years of age . As per their findings, almost 87% of children exceed the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended screen time for their age. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends completely avoiding digital media for children under 18 months of age and slowly introducing children to screens when they’re 18 to 24 months old. “Our results indicate that screen habits begin early, this finding suggests that interventions to reduce screen time could have a better chance of success if introduced early,” says Edwina Yeung, senior author of the study. However, the researchers noted a decline in screen time to under 1.5 hours per day when these kids reach the age of 7 and 8, which they believe is because of spending time on academic assignments and homework assigned by the school. Th...

If you are a cybersecurity expert or a “hacker”, you must have come across situations where people will just stare at your computer screen when you’re working in a public place. Well, not anymore. Kali Linux has added a new feature along with its 2019.4 release that lets you mimic the user interface of Windows. The feature is called Kali Undercover. Kali Undercover is essentially a theme that changes your Kali theme to look similar to a Windows theme. This way, people will be less curious to know what you’re doing as they will be presented with the familiar Windows user interface. All you have to do is turn on Kali Undercover mode which can be done by simply typing “kali-undercover” in the Terminal . Running the script again switches your theme back to the Kali theme. Cool, right? Take a look at the demonstration below to know what to expect from Kali Undercover mode. In addition to this, Kali Linux 2019.4 release brings some new features and improvements including the Xfce deskto...

With the reveal of the Tesla Cybertruck and the attention it received from customers, it appears like a lot of other automakers in the U.S have got interested to join the electric pickups market. As Reuters reports , eight U.S. automakers including Tesla are planning to launch their electric pickup trucks by 2021. Apart from Tesla, the companies interested in electric pickups are General Motors, Lordstown Motors, Bollinger Motors, Hercules Electric Vehicles, Atlis Motor Vehicles, Rivian, and Ford. General Motors recently went public with its timeline for electric pickups during its investor’s day. According to analysts, these companies are planning to build up to 250,000 pickups a year by 2024. However, the sales of these trucks are not predicted to exceed 70,000 a year, as per Sam Fiorani, AutoForecast Solutions analyst. With that said, it will be interesting to see how the market for electric pickup trucks booms up in the coming years. At the time of writing this article, Tes...

With dating apps like Tinder and Bumble being filled with a variety of choices, it can get quite difficult to match with a person that you might actually sync with. Well, not anymore. Enter Singularity , a new dating app for women that does not shower you with multiple choices. Instead, you end up with the creator of the app. Yes, you read that right. The only person featured in Singularity is Aaron Smith, the guy behind the app. No matter how far or long you swipe through the app, you will be seeing pictures of just him. Aaron’s profile on Singularity Dating reveals that he is 32 years old, and “gainfully employed”. The website does have a few other people namely 29-year-old Corey, Jeremy who is a 33-year-old Entrepreneur at Vector Marketing, and Artyom, a 37-year-old Engineer at Internet Research Agency. Spoiler alert: They’re all just Aaron himself. Aaron Smith also happens to be a YouTuber. His YouTube channel is called Aaron Loves Gear , where you can mainly find guitar video...

Amazon is adding more liveliness to Alexa’s voice. Starting earlier this week, the tech giant announced that developers can enable a feature that makes Alexa sound in a  “happy/excited” or “disappointed/empathetic” tone in the US. The company recommends using this new happy/excited tone in a scenario where the user correctly answers a trivia question or wins a game. On the other hand, disappointed/empathetic tone is suggested for letting users know sad or disheartening news. In addition, Alexa can now respond in a speaking style specific to the content. Notably, Amazon added an Australian news accent specific to users in Australia. “Speaking styles are curated text-to-speech voices designed to create a more delightful customer experience for specific content. For example, the news speaking style makes Alexa’s voice sound similar to what you hear from TV news anchors and radio hosts.”, states Amazon’s blog post . The company mentions that its news style was perceived to be 31% ...

One of the unique selling points of the Google Pixel 4 apart from Motion Sense has got to be the cameras. With the Pixel 4 series, Google has stepped up its camera with new features, one being the Astrophotography mode. Google’s AI team has now explained how the feature works behind the scenes. Soon after launching the Night Sight feature with Pixel 3 , the software giant learned that viewers will tolerate motion-blurred clouds and tree branches in an image if it looks sharp otherwise but they do not tolerate “motion-blurred stars that look like short line segments”. As a workaround, the company “split the exposure into frames with exposure times short enough to make the stars look like points of light”. They noted that the per-frame exposure time should not go over 16 seconds while taking shots of the night sky. Google also noticed that a majority of people do not prefer to wait more than four minutes for capturing a photo, which made them limit the number of frames to 15. Othe...

Huawei unveiled the Sound X, a smart speaker built in partnership with French audiophile-grade equipment maker Devialet earlier this week in China. Judging by the looks, it certainly looks somewhat similar to Apple’s HomePod . However, we are not here for the looks. Let’s get to the specifications of the Sound X. Firstly, Sound X is a 360-degree speaker with a 60-watt double subwoofer . Thanks to the collaboration with Devialet, Sound X comes with the company’s Speaker Active Matching technology (SAM) that reduces distortion in audio and push-push woofer vibration-canceling technology, as Engadget reports . The speaker has a convenient one-touch control and Huawei’s HiLink smart home control. For voice commands, it comes with Huawei’s “Xiaoyi” voice assistant that supports Huawei Music. In case you’re wondering, Huawei Sound X is a Hi-Res certified speaker capable of producing lossless audio output. It has a diameter of 165mm, a height of 203mm, and weighs 3.5kg. It also support...

There is no doubt that Apple’s AirPods have evolved to be a tech-lifestyle accessory rather than being just a pair of wireless earbuds. A recent report from Bloomberg suggests that the shipments of AirPods are expected to double up to 60 million in 2019 . As Bloomberg reports , this is happening because of a “much higher” than expected demand for the AirPods Pro that retails at a whopping $249 or Rs. 24,900 in India. Clearly, people gave a warm welcome to the Cupertino giant’s first noise-canceling earbuds. However, achieving that target depends on the assemblers and production units of Apple. It remains to be seen how the company manages to pull-off this increasing demand. Right now, AirPods are manufactured by Taiwan-based Inventec Corp, China’s Luxshare Precision Industry,  and Goertek Inc. for Apple. The demand for AirPods is not declining anytime soon. In fact, as per the survey conducted by Piper Jaffray, AirPods are the most desired tech product by teenagers this ...

TikTok and UN Women have joined hands for a campaign called #KaunsiBadiBaatHai to raise awareness for violence against women in India. This collaboration is part of the global 16 days of activism against gender violence “ Orange the World ” that started earlier this week on November 25 which is observed as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. TikTok users willing to take part in the campaign are asked to submit a video by syncing lips to a rap soundtrack by Delhi-based 16-year old rapper Abbas Ali from Slam Out Loud. Join the #KaunsiBadiBaatHai rap for change! Sync your lips to 16 y/o Abbas Ali’s rap to raise awareness about violence against women. Special shout-out to @SlamOutLoud for being catalysts for change! #16Days #OrangeTheWorld #TikTok https://t.co/Wi9AOdesob — UN Women India (@unwomenindia) November 26, 2019 “UN Women is committed to making spaces safe for women and young girls, for violence against women and young girls has real ...

Netflix announced its plans to reopen New York City’s Paris Theatre to make it a “home for special Netflix events, screenings, and theatrical releases” earlier this week. The company said that it had signed a lease agreement to keep the theater open until an undisclosed timeline. “After 71 years, the Paris Theatre has an enduring legacy, and remains the destination for a one-of-a kind movie-going experience. We are incredibly proud to preserve this historic New York institution so it can continue to be a cinematic home for film lovers.”, said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer in a press release . After closing earlier this year, The Paris — New York’s last single-screen theater — reopened for a limited run of MARRIAGE STORY. Now, the iconic theater will be kept open and become a home for special Netflix events, screenings, and theatrical releases. pic.twitter.com/fr82Oq2j8I — Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) November 25, 2019 Notably, the theater was closed earlier...

Amazon has added support for 22 new languages in Amazon Translate , the tech giant’s real-time translation service earlier this week. With this addition, Amazon Translate now supports a total of 54 languages & dialects , and 2804 language pairs. The languages that newly gained support in Amazon Translate are as follows: Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Dari, Estonian, Canadian French, Georgian, Hausa, Latvian, Pashto, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, and Tamil. In addition, Amazon also announced that Amazon Translate is expanding to six new AWS regions , making the number of Amazon Translate supported AWS regions to 17. The newly added regions where customers can use Translate are US West (N. California), Europe (London), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) and Asia Pacific (Sydney). “This expansion is great news for many customers who will now be able to translate data in the region ...

According to a new study, it has been found that gamers in the US consume about 34 terawatt-hours of energy every year, which is equivalent to the carbon emissions from more than 5 million cars. The study “Toward Greener Gaming: Estimating National Energy Use and Energy Efficient Potential” got published in The Computer Gamers Journal. The researchers note that the electricity consumed by gamers account for 2.4% of residential electricity. Take a look at the below image for a comparative analysis of annual electricity consumption in the US. As per the findings, consoles were responsible for 66% of power consumption when it comes to gaming. PC desktops accounted for a much lower 31% while laptops consumed a mere 3%. Even though PCs were responsible for comparatively lower power consumption, the researchers say that PCs tend to be less efficient than consoles on high-end gaming setups including overclocked CPUs and multiple 4K gaming monitors . The study doles out various recommen...

Have you ever wanted a way to keep track of how you’re spending time on your PC? ActivityWatch might just be the tool you’re looking for. ActivityWatch is a time-tracking software that helps you keep an eye on all your activities on your machine. The developer claims it to be an attempt to replace existing apps like RescueTime, ManicTime, and WakaTime. The app shows you a detailed summary of the time you spend on various applications on your PC. It has various categories like “Top Applications”, “Top Window Titles”, and even “Top Browser domains” so that you can get a better idea. Credits: ActivityWatch “Top Browser domains” lets you know the website on which you spend the most time on while “Top Window Titles” shows the tab name you use extensively. You also get an option to filter out the time you were away from the keyboard to get the exact time statistics by checking the “ Filter away AFK time ” checkbox. In case you’re wondering, ActivityWatch is open-source and you ...

Tired of entering passwords every time you log in to eBay on a mobile web browser? Worry not, the e-commerce giant has implemented a password-less login experience that will allow Android users to make use of biometric sensors to seamlessly login to eBay. eBay has implemented this new authentication technique based on WebAuthn , a new standard of biometric-based authentication for web browsers. You will be prompted to enable fingerprint/face recognition the next time you visit the web version of eBay on Chrome as you can see below. Credits: eBay Once you have enabled the feature, you can easily use your phone’s biometric authentication to log in to your eBay account, just like you unlock your smartphone. Alternatively, you can use the screen lock to login to the website. Credits: eBay The feature is compatible with version 75 and higher of the Chrome browser. In case this feature is not working on your device, make sure your Chrome browser is updated to the latest version a...

Just in case the new iPhone 11 Pro series sounds affordable to you, Russian luxury iPhone maker Caviar might have exactly what you’re looking for. Caviar now offers a special limited edition of the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max that could help you make a really expensive show-off. Named the “iPhone 11 Pro Superior Jobs”, the device flaunts a design similar to the original iPhone as a move to pay tribute to the “immortal genius”. The Apple logo in the rear comes embedded with a tiny piece of the black roll-neck sweater worn by Steve Jobs. At the bottom, there is an autograph of Steve Jobs. “As a tribute to the immortal genius, Caviar creates a model of the new iPhone 11 Pro in the style of that first iPhone model that has become a breakthrough in the world of technologies. The strict Apple design is embodied in the body of firm titanium: only clear lines and moderate color solution.”, describes Caviar’s product page. The price of the iPhone 11 Pro Superior Jobs edition s...

A recent report from Sensor Tower reveals that the top 1% of publishers across the App Store and Google Play Store accounted for 80 percent of new app downloads . The data is calculated from Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence platform during Q3 of 2019. According to the report , there were 29.6 billion app downloads in the third quarter of this year out of which 23.6 billion apps were from the top 7,920 app publishers leaving the rest – 784,080 publishers with a comparatively low 6 billion app downloads. Image credits: Sensor Tower The report covered the download statistics for games as well. Here, the influence of top game publishers is a bit higher and stands at 82% . According to Sensor Tower, the top 1% (1,080 game publishers) were responsible for 9.1 billion downloads while the rest of the 106,920 game publishers accounted for just 2 billion downloads. In terms of revenue, the top 1 percent of app publishers generated $20.5 billion while the rest generated $1.5 billion. As ...

With Android Lollipop, Google brought heads-up notifications to Android and bid goodbye to notification tickers. Heads-up notifications are useful for quickly drawing attention to the notifications but it can be annoying when a notification suddenly covers up a portion of your screen while you’re watching a video or a movie. To solve this problem, a developer has come up with a new app named TinyNotif that brings back the good-old notification tickers on newer Android devices. To get started, you will have to allow the necessary permissions. You can set the permissions by tapping on the “Request Permissions” button. On tapping the button, TinyNotif will request overlay and notification access permissions for the app to trigger the notification ticker every time a new notification comes in your phone. Once you’re done setting permissions, you will have to disable heads-up notifications to avoid duplicate notifications. You can achieve this by three methods – using ADB command , us...

We recently learned that Huawei is looking to bring its smart wearables, powered by the company’s own Kirin A1 chipset, to India soon. This was followed by rumors that Huawei Watch GT 2 is launching in the country in the first week of December. And it now seems like the rumors were indeed true. Huawei has today sent out media invites for the Huawei Watch GT 2 launch event, which has been scheduled for December 5 next week . The teaser shows off its circular dial and boasts about the two-week battery of the smartwatch. There’s currently no word on whether Huawei will launch its Kirin A1-powered Freebuds 3 at the launch event in India. Watch GT2 launched alongside the Huawei Mate 30 Pro a couple of months ago. It will be available in two variants — a 42mm variant with a 1.2-inch AMOLED display and a 46mm variant with a 1.39-inch AMOLED display. It is powered by the Kirin A1 chipset , which was unveiled earlier this year as the first-ever wearable chipset to support Bluetooth 5.1 an...

Vivo may be planning to ditch its custom Android-based skin in favor of a new UX in the not-too-distant future. According to a new teaser posted on Chinese social media, the company is working on a ‘JoviOS’, which might potentially replace the awkwardly-named FunTouch OS in future Vivo smartphones. The teaser was posted earlier this week by a Funtouch OS Project Manager on Weibo without any further details on the subject. As can be seen in the image above, the JoviOS logo seems like more of a rough sketch than the final design, but the presence of Chinese characters seem to suggest that the change will be made both in the Chinese and the global versions of the software. Other than that, there’s no official info for now, so we might have to wait a while to get more info on the subject. In case you don’t know it already, Jovi is the name of Vivo’s voice-based personal assistant, which means AI-based software might be the central theme of the new ROM. Other than that, we can’t speculat...

With leaks about the Galaxy S11 becoming more of a torrent in the run-up to the device’s launch next year, a new report now suggests that Samsung might ditch a popular feature from its next-gen flagship smartphone following a recent security scare. According to Mashable , Samsung Securities analyst, Lee Jong-wook, has claimed that the South Korean company may ditch the in-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner in favor of other biometric authentication protocols in the Galaxy S11 lineup. Samsung is said to be mulling the extreme step following reports that the ultrasonic fingerprint scanners in the Galaxy S10 were authenticating any fingerprint when the display had a simple screen-protector installed. While Samsung was quick to fix this issue, the problem created a major headache for both the company and end-consumers after many financial and security applications proactively blocked the use of the fingerprint scanners on the affected phones, forcing people to use pins or patterns ...

Smartphone apps claim to be able to do a lot of things this days, and an all-new iOS app called Blink now claims to be “Your first and only eye-traсking wellness assistant” . It’s a daily eyesight trainer with a number of exercises that the developers claim will strengthen your eyes and help reduce eye-strain and fatigue. Blink comes with an unique design that activates peripheral vision, enabling users to navigate without directly looking at the screen. It is based on eye-tracking technology through the TrueDepth camera system available in iPhones X, XR, XS, XS Max, 11 or iPad Pro models, which means it won’t work as intended on other iPhone or iPad models. Curiously though, the official App Store page lists it as ‘compatible’ with a bunch of other devices, including the iPhone SE and even the age-old iPod Touch! Blink uses the iPhones’ TrueDepth camera technology to track movement, position, blinking and winking of users’ eyes. In an official Medium post describing the workin...

Microsoft has announced plans to launch exclusive Xbox-only games every few months. In an interview to GamesRadar , the head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, said that the company believes it would be able to churn out new, first-party Xbox games every 3-4 months without compromising on quality. “We feel really good heading into 2020. We’ve got a goal of being able to deliver a game, roughly, every three to four months” , he said. He, however, rejected any notion that there’s been a shift in the company’s policy in looking beyond third-party Xbox games to focus on in-house titles. “I don’t think there’s been a shift … Sarah Bond, who leads our third-party team, is out there day in and day out working with our third-party partners … I think you would hear an equal amount of talk about first-party, third-party, and ID@Xbox. It’s just that, lately, we felt a little more proud about talking about what we’ve got going on with first-party” , he said. Sadly, though, Booty didn’t reveal ...

Computer Aided Design — commonly referred to as CAD — has become an integral factor that moves world forward. As an industrial art, CAD let us create designs for a wide range of purposes. From designing tiny electronic equipment to large machines to designing entire buildings and dams, CAD is the first step where the process of building starts. Due to their highly professional nature, CAD software are quite expensive and not accessible to everyone. The real problem is when you’re a student or a freelancer and do not have enough money to spend on an expensive CAD app. That’s where free CAD Software can help you. While they may not be as good as the paid professional CAD tools, they are great to just get you started. So, here are the top 10 best free CAD software that you can use. Best Free CAD Software in 2019 Here, we have a list of top 10 free CAD software. The list includes two kinds of software — totally free and students’ edition of premium software. The latter kind will be ...

The smart TV segment in India is rife with opportunity at the moment. Xiaomi has greatly disrupted the market with its Mi TVs and more players are now stepping foot into the ring. Nokia is the latest to board the hype and has scheduled the launch of its first Smart TV in India on December 5. As we near the launch, more details for Nokia Smart TVs has now started finding its way online. The pricing and manufacturer details for the TV are now available, all thanks to a report from The Mobile Indian . The report reveals that Nokia Smart TV will initially be introduced in a single 55-inch variant with 4K UHD resolution . “Skyworth India Electronics, a subsidiary of China-based Skyworth Overseas Development Company,  along with Skyquad will assemble the Nokia TVs in Hyderabad,” told the source aware of the development. Flipkart, who is the brand licensee for Nokia’s Smart TVs , isn’t going berserk with this launch as it did with Motorola TVs. The e-commerce giant unveiled 6 M...