Your Tech Story

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

Cyberpunk 2077

Reasons Behind the ‘Buggy’-ride of the Most-hyped Cyberpunk 2077

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After a wait of years, Cyberpunk 2077, was finally released in December 2020. But despite the long development process, the game did not have a smooth start and was filled with bugs. But then, people still settled knowing how huge the project was, and how long it took for the developers to meet the expectations of people. But now again, the newly launched game is under the limelight because of ransomware related to the game.

What is Cyberpunk 2077?

Cyberpunk 2077 is a role-playing action video game, released in December 2020 by the Polish video game developer CD Projekt S.A. The game is a follow-up to the company’s previous release The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), and a team of more than 500 people has worked on it. This number is more than the number of people involved in the development process of The Witcher 3.

Cyberpunk 2020 is developed using the RED engine 4 and was made available for PlayStation 4, Stadia, Windows, and Xbox One. The company had also announced that it is going to release the game for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in the middle of 2021 or later. Within one week of its release, the game started to show some issues regarding its performance, like the animation of the characters, issues with the objects in the game hanging at one place, etc. Only after a week of the title release, on 17 December 2020 Sony removed the game from PlayStation.

Cyberpunk 2077 is basically a combat and action game, offering many options to customize the background of the environment and the clothing, hairstyle, face as well as the voice of the lead, i.e. ‘V’, a mercenary. V is fighting and battling in an open world, set to be in Night City, California.

The Buggy Game

Cyberpunk 2077
Image Source: earlygame.com

As soon as the game got released, the users started to face many issues with the game and reported many bugs. Though several were settled with the fact that the game was a big project, many asked questions like ‘why the company rushed to release the game, when it wasn’t ready?” After more than a month of the release of the game, here we are with some of the answers.

The Reasons behind the Bugs

The foremost reason for all the bugs and issues in the game is the hype. Cyberpunk 2077 has been an ambitious project for CD Projekt. The company had announced the game in 2012, along with the futuristic features it would be adding to the game. But even after four years of the announcement of the game, there was no sign of starting its design and development. The conceptualization and the development of the game only started in 2016, intending to release the game in 2020. The company had just finished its work on The Witcher 3 and started working on Cyberpunk 2077, and according to reports, the company had made big changes to its basic structure. It also started building a new engine for the game to run on.

Also, with new changes and a lot of burdens, many of the main developers left the project. The goals of the company suddenly changed, and it was looking forward to building a massive game with a lesser number of people in their team. In fact, if we believe the reports, the demo of Cyberpunk presented in the E3 2018 did not include any real information regarding the game.

And then happens the pandemic, the reason for most of the disasters in the world in 2020. In the case of Cyberpunk 2077 too, the developers were not able to pull out the desire results sitting away from each other. If we see some of the latest interviews of the current and the former developers of Cyberpunk 2077, the game was not ready for a release so soon and needed a lot of work done on it. Now since there has been a lot of a complaint against the game, companies like Sony are offering a refund to its customers. Also, the CD Projekt developers are constantly working on the game to make it bug-free.

The Ransomware

After the numerous complaints due to the bugs, there has been another issue with the game. Some suspicious people have created a similar site as the Play Store, where they are offering downloads for the mobile version of Cyberpunk 2077. This download includes nothing but malware. And upon the download, the hackers get access to the information that is stored on the phone. This leads the hackers to ask for money from the owner in return for the release of the information.

But here we must tell you that CD Projekt never released a mobile version of the game. But, even if you have got your information hacked, you should not worry, because this ransomware, dubbed Coder Ware, uses a hardcoded key, such that you can recover your information using a decryptor, without paying any money. So always be careful with your downloads on the internet.

Samsung

Samsung Introduces its Most Powerful Mobile Processor Exynos 2100 in Partnership with Arm

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With the beginning of the new year, many companies are up with new launches. On 12th January, the South Korean tech giant Samsung also came up with its latest flagship processor Exynos 2100. And, according to the news speculating around, the company will be powering its upcoming Galaxy S21 series of smartphones using the newly launched chipset.

Samsung Powerful Mobile Processor Exynos 2100

Samsung just introduced its very first premium 5G-integrated mobile processor SoC composed on a 5nm process node. The new launch is basically in competition with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888, where Samsung has also added new features to their processor such that to stand out with its specifications.

Like Samsung’s previous launch, the Exynos 1080, the new Exynos also does not support the custom CPU microarchitecture. To raise the performance of the processor, Samsung has partnered with the leading technology provider of processor IP, Arm. The new processor will also be including the ARM second-generation Valhall architecture-based ARM Mali-G78 GPU as compensation for its previous mistakes of not having its own custom ARM-based performance cores added to its predecessor processors.

“Our Exynos team has been committed to creating premium mobile computing experiences by bringing innovations to processors that are at the heart of today’s smart devices. Today we are delighted to introduce the Exynos 2100, our most advanced mobile processor yet. Armed with powerful processing technologies and an advanced 5G modem on a power-efficient 5nm process node, Exynos 2100 will set a new standard for tomorrow’s flagship mobile devices,” said Inyup Kang, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics.

What is New in Exynos 2100?

Exynos 2100 is a high-speed octa-core chipset. It has got one Cortex-X1 (core clocked at 2.9GHz), three high-performing Cortex-A78 (with a speed up to 2.8GHz), and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores (clocked at 2.2Ghz) performance CPUs from Arm. Adding to that, Samsung has declared that the new processor will offer a 30% better performance than the Exynos 990, and 10% better overall performance, with 20% lesser battery consumption. The company clearly mentioned that the chipset will provide up to 26-trillion-operations-per-second (TOPS) over twice the power efficiency making the processor faster than its previous versions.

Samsung
Image Source: zdnet.com

The company has also done excellent work to fulfill all the AI needs of today’s time, such that offering support for Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) or Mixed Reality(MR). The chipset also boasts the advanced multi-IP governor (AMIGO), which will be a key technology to optimize the power usage for the CPUs, GPUs as well as other processes, resulting in lesser battery consumption and extended use time.

Other Features

Other than that, the processor will provide support for UFS 3.1 and UFS 2.1 storage. It will also be supporting the LPDDR5 RAM. As mentioned earlier, the chipset has got a built-in 5G (sub-6GHz/mmWave) modem, it will also continue to implement support for 4G LTE (1024 QAM), 3G WCDMA, and 2G GSM/CDMA networks as well. The processor also features support for Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6.

Camera-wise too, the company has done a great job. The new Exynos 2021 is compatible to provide support for up to 200MP sensors and 4K UHD video recording at 120 frames per second (fps). It also comes with the ability to decode the 8K video at 60fps.

The Vice President and General Manager Client Line of Business at Arm, Paul Williamson, said during the launch that the new technologies, such as 5G, advanced graphics and machine learning have played a critical role in enabling new mobile experiences. “ Arm and Samsung have collaborated closely to incorporate Arm’s powerful next-generation compute and graphics platform, at the heart of the Samsung Exynos 2100,” he added.

Noticeably, the launch event for the new Exynos 2100 took place two days ahead of the launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy S21, its next high-end flagship Galaxy S phone. The company confirmed that the processors have already been gone to mass production, and the new Galaxy S21 launching in India will also feature this latest processor in it.

Parler

Apple Removes the Free Speech Social Media App, Parler, from App Store

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The Capitol Hill Siege is one of the most unfortunate incidents. On Wednesday the Donald Trump Supporters came forward to protest against US President Joe Biden’s win. And, the social media company Parler has been accused of having a hand in igniting the riots. The accusation has resulted in the removal of this self-proclaimed ‘Twitter without rules’ app from Apple Store and the Google Play Store.

The Parler App

The Parler app is a community social media app, launched in August 2018 and headquarters in Henderson, Nevada. The app advertises itself as a free-speech app, and most of its users are right-wing extremists. The app has got a huge Donald Trump supporter community who, most of the time, are involved in posting content related to far-right, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories. Since the company calls its app the platform for free speech, there is no filtration or moderation service for the posts on the platform.

Parler
Image Source: bbc.com

The app has become a home for the conservatives and the ones who have been banned from the mainstream social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter for their hate speech or hateful posts. This app has also been the topic of criticism for being the cover for its right-extremist user-base. Noticeably, Donald Trump got banned from Facebook and Twitter recently, but on the other hand, the Parler app did not ban Trump from its platform. This act of Parler has attracted all the attention to itself.

The Removal from App Store

As mentioned before, the company does not include any moderation for the posts on the app, and it has been accused of being far-right itself. After the riots, the app is also being accused of supporting the protestors. According to Apple, it has warned Parler many times to update its policy and make some solid changes to it. And, when the riots took place on Wednesday, the California-based technology company Cupertino came forward and gave Parler 24 hours to represent new moderation and post-filter plan to Apple, so that to remain available on the Apple Store.

In return, Parler had told Apple that it is working on the moderation service for the last many weeks. But according to Apple, the company has shown no signs of improvement. Apple said in an email sent to Parler, “We have continued to find direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action. It was not removing content that encourages illegal activity and poses a serious risk to the health and safety of users.” Apple further wrote, “We want to be clear that Parler is, in fact, responsible for all the user-generated content present on your service and for ensuring that this content meets App Store requirements for the safety and protection of our users.”

The Response from Parler

On the other hand, the CEO of Parler, John Matze, said in an interview that he and his company doesn’t feel responsible for the riots, “considering we’re a neutral town square that just adheres to the law.” Shortly after Apple removed the app from the App Store, Google also decided on taking down the app from the Google Play Store. Now there is news that Amazon is also looking forward to pulling its support from the app, as Parler is using the AWS services, but again, was found to be violating the AWS Acceptable Use Policy.

The reaction of the Users of Parler

The action led to the criticism of Apple by the conservatives and users of the Parler app. One of the Parler app investors, Dan Bongino, who was also banned from Twitter some time ago, wrote on the site, “The tech tyrants at Apple have pulled the app from their App Store. Apple is no different than the Chinese communist party in its preference for totalitarian thought control. I’m proud of the remaining liberty-loving people of this great country. And I’m embarrassed, and horrified by the tech totalitarians who’ve taken control of it.”

It is really strange to see that Parler has been on the top of all the News apps on the Apple Store and among the top 13 apps on the top charts of non-gaming apps on the Apple store, despite all the complaints against the app. For now, though it is no more available on Apple Store and Google Play Store, people who have the app on their phones will still be able to use the app.

Vaio

Vaio to Make a Come-back to the Indian Laptop Market by 15th January

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With the pandemic, we saw a rise in the prices of electric hardware, including computers and laptops. The demand for these devices was increased due to the new normal work from home culture. Now, as the demand has already risen, we see a few new entrants to the field of laptop manufacturing as well as old laptop manufacturing companies making a come-back too. Recently, the mobile and smartphone company Nokia launched its new series of laptops, and on the same rhythm, the famous laptop manufacturing company Vaio is also making a come-back to the Indian market.

The Vaio brand

Vaio Corporation is a Japanese laptop manufacturing company, where Vaio stands for Visual Audio Intelligent Organizer. It was originally the subsidiary of Sony, founded in 1996, but later, was acquired by Japan Industrial Partners (an investment firm based in Japan), in 2014.

Vaio
Image Source: zeebiz.com

The Vaio laptops were known for their spectacular designs and outstanding performance. In fact, Steve Jobs from Apple also had made an offer to Sony president, Kunitake Ando, to manufacture new MacOs based Vaio laptops. But the deal between the two wasn’t successful, and Sony came up with Vaio laptops having the Windows Operating System. The Vaio laptops have been popular in the high-end laptop category. Even, when Steve Jobs launched Apple’s first MacBook Air, he mentioned the Vaio laptop to compare the MacBook Air’s performance.

But the Vaio laptops began to lose their popularity when people started to realize that the Vaio laptops are too expensive for the specifications they were getting. In fact, they could get similar specifications in other brands’ laptops at cheaper prices. Not only the prices were too high, but the laptops were also underperforming. On the top, the laptops showed signs of overheating, causing burns to some of the users. The company had to spend $250 million to replace the Lithium-ion batteries of its around 10 million existing users in 2006.

As a result, after around a decade, Sony started seeing a downfall in sales. At that time, Sony was also focusing on its smartphone manufacturing, and rumors about Sony selling its laptop manufacturing unit started to speculate. Though the company did not confirm the news then, after a year of that, in 2014, it sold its laptop manufacturing unit to Japan Industrial Partners. The company admitted that it was facing a lot of loss in its laptop business.

Sony used to sell its products worldwide before the acquisition, but after that, the laptops were particularly available in Japan only. And, later, the company started to sell the laptops in America and Brazil, too. Despite the company is sold, Sony still has got a 5 percent stake in the company.

Coming Back to Asia

Now, the people who have always loved the Sony products, and the Vaio laptops, it is good news for them, as the Vaio laptops are coming back to Asia. The company has a new partner now, i.e., Nexstgo. The company has signed a licensing agreement with the Hong Kong-based company Nexstgo, so it will be the latter’s responsibility to manufacture, sell, and market the Vaio laptops in Asia.

Nexstgo has already started to market and sell the Vaio laptops in countries like Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Middle East countries. And now with the start of 2021, the company is all set to target the Indian market. Note that, Nexstgo is the same company that introduced the Avita laptops in India. In India, the company has partnered with Flipkart for marketing and selling the products. Flipkart has already started the marketing for the Vaio products on their specifically designed microsite for Vaio.

Announcing the relaunch of the Vaio laptops in India, the Regional Business Director of South Asia, Vaio, Seema Bhatnagar, stated in a press conference, “We are enthused to relaunch VAIO and associate with names that have made it big in the e-commerce industry. Introducing the finest-quality laptops in India, the brand focuses on reclaiming its space in the market while having an unrivaled demand by the customers. We are all set to present a futuristic laptop range to the country’s burgeoning tech-enthusiasts and young business professionals. We are looking forward to becoming the top choice for laptop buyers across the country.”

Though India is already aware of the quality and performance of the Vaio laptops, Nexstgo is looking for new methods to woo Indian customers. The company has said that the new Vaio laptops are “premium, intelligently-crafted” and are designed to deliver “exceptional” quality.

According to Vaio, the new laptops will be introduced in the Indian market by January 15th. Though there is a rise in the demand for laptops, it will be tough for new companies like Vaio and Nokia to make their place in the Indian market, when it is already dominated by the big players like HP, Dell, and Apple.

Slack

Slack Faces an Outage With the Start of 2021, Disrupting Thousands of Users

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Ending 2020, after the holiday week, people in the United States went on to work again on Monday. But the Monday did not go very smoothly for the office messaging company Slack, as it faced an outage on the very day.

What is Slack and Why it is used

Slack is an office messaging and communication platform, developed by an American software company Slack Technologies. The app is used for sharing information, chatting, voice and video calls, transferring documents by thousands of users and companies. It has been providing its services since 2013 and has become the first choice of many companies for establishing a private network of communication for their office staff and clients. The company has also seen a hike in the number of users during the Pandemic.

The Full-Blown Outage

Slack went down at around 10 AM ET on Monday, and the users started reporting about the problem. There were issues with sending messages, loading the channel, making calls, transferring files, and many of the users even reported that they could not log in to their slack accounts. During the outage, the calendar on Slack as well as the notifications was also not working.

Slack
Image Source: slack.com

By 10:14 AM, the company also confirmed that the app was facing some issues, and later, it also acknowledged that an outage had occurred. “Customers may have trouble loading channels or connect to Slack at this time. Our team is investigating and we will follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused”, the company updated, “The problem remained for about more than two hours, and after that, the platform started working fine for some of the users at about 12:20 PM. But many of the users were still facing the interruption. The company also continued to update its official Twitter account with information regarding the problem. “

All hands are on deck on our end to further investigate,” one of its tweets said.”At 3:10 PM, the company tweeted, “We’re truly sorry for the disruption today. We’ll be back with a summary of this issue.”

Cause of the Problem

In the pandemic, the companies were heavily relying on the various messaging and video conferencing apps, including Slack, Zoom, Google, etc. This might also be a reason that those platforms were facing such issues. Last year, in the mid of December, Gmail from Google also faced a similar blackout for some time, where users were continuously getting some error messages. This outage encouraged users to shift from one platform to the other so that they could complete their work on time. But since these apps recovered in a few hours, users could use them again.

The Salesforce Deal

But those issues are not permanent, as these companies are continuously working towards improving their tools for the users. Recently, the American cloud-based software company Salesforce announced to buy Slack for an amount of $27.7 billion (roughly Rs. 2,03,400 crores) and adding more features and tools to the platform. The company also revealed that it will be merging the Slack messaging technology to its platform so that users can manage the marketing and sales teams from a single platform.

Back to Normal

After the big-blown outage, reportedly, Slack is working perfectly smooth now. “Seeing improvements with error rates on our site, and we believe affected customers should be able to access Slack,” said a spokesperson of Slack. Though thousands of people reported the issue with the platform, the company hasn’t given any figures or number of how many users faced the disruption. 

pebble

Pebble : The Biggest Kickstarter success story

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Smartwatches are a new trend in today’s time, and above the trend, it is the most useful tool anyone can get. Apple smartwatch being the leader in the game is not alone, and the competition is tough with its rivals and tech giants like Samsung, Fitbit, etc. working on similar products. But before Apple or Samsung, it was Pebbles, that developed the idea of smartwatch and ruled like a boss. But getting on the top, and maintaining the position, are two different things. Despite, Pebbles is no more the leader of smartwatches, it, still, will be always be known as the pioneer in the field of smartwatch development.

Eric Migicovsky is the founder of Pebbles from the Netherlands. While studying engineering at the Delft University of Technology, he got the chance to migrate to the University of Waterloo as an exchange student. Migicovsky loved cycling but was annoyed how he had to stop for taking calls or to see the messages on his smartphone. Eventually, he came up with the idea of connecting smartphones with smartwatches and created the first model of such a smartwatch named InPulse with his friends.

Later, Migicovsky entered the Y Combinator business incubator program with his idea and was able to raise US$375,000 from angel investors including Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Though the amount was quite big, Migicovsky successfully sold watches to Blackberry with the name Pebble Technology. But after its first successful business deal, the company was not able to attract more investors.

Pebble Founder
Image Source: uwaterloo.ca

To raise more money, Migicovsky put the product on the Kickstarter website with a target to raise $100,000. The idea behind the Kickstarter was to offer a huge discount on the $150 watches on first 200 pre-orders. The target was indeed achieved, and that too, just in 2 hours, and eventually, the Kickstarter was closed at $10,266,845, the project becoming the most funded project at Kickstarter to that point. The fundraiser also got a world record for the company of the most money raised for a Kickstarter project.

In January 2013, the company partnered with Foxlink Grou and produced 85,000 watches to be shipped to the people who had ordered through the Kickstarter. The watches were connected with both Android and iOS devices through Bluetooth and could show the incoming call, a text message, notification from Facebook and Twitter as well as events on the calendar. By the end of the year, the company had shipped around 300,000 watches. In the next three months, it shipped another 100,000 units of watches. And by the end of 2014, the company had sold a total of 1 million watches successfully.

In February 2015, the company released its $199 second-generation Pebble smartwatch named Pebble Time at Kickstarter campaign. Here too, the company made another record of raising $500,000 in 17 minutes and a $1 million in 49 minutes. In 48 hours the company had already raised a $10 million, and by the closing, it raised a $20 million breaking its own previous record of raising the biggest amount of money in a Kickstarter. The same year, an 86-year-old Japanese watchmaker Citizen offered Migicovsky a $740 million for buying the company, but he turned down the offer, as he was certain of the success of Pebbles.

Despite the company was able to raise a huge amount of money, it had started to struggle financially. New rivals came up for the business, Apple being the prime threat to the success of Pebble. Migicovsky played with the design of the smartwatch and brought new technologies like tracking the health through the watch. But the software used in the watches was not that powerful and the smartwatches failed to put the impact.

The Pebble, Pebble 2, Time, Time 2, and Pebble Core are some of the smartwatch models from Pebbles. In December 2016, the Pebble’s rival company, Fitbit, acquired the company’s assets, employees, and Pebble’s intellectual property, in a total amount of $40 million.

Despite the company has been acquired by Fitbit, Pebbles will always be known as the first, and the fastest funded project in Kickstarter history.