Logitech G Pro X and G Pro gaming headsets launched in India. Image: Logitech

The Logitech G Pro headsets are physically the same. You won’t be able to distinguish between the two in terms of physical attributes. However, the distinction is in the microphone. Logitech worked with Blue Microphones for the G Pro X to develop Blue Voice software. It’s a software suite that enables customisations and microphone effects in real-time.

Available within the Logitech G Hub software, the G Pro X’s microphone can be tuned across several presets. If you want more control, it also offers advanced controls across various parameters.

Logitech G Pro X gaming headset. Image: tech2/Abhijit Dey

I got to try out the G Pro X and the Blue Voice software suite. There's a separate tab inside G Hub where all the controls can be customised. This tab appears when the G Pro X is connected. It won't show up when you connect the G Pro. There were several presets available. Few of them were from the esports professionals with whom Logitech collaborated. Apart from them, there were several mic presets including AM Radio, Broadcaster, FM Audio, etc.

While the G Pro X comes with a special software suite, the G Pro comes with a “pro-grade” microphone and regular equaliser presets in G Hub. Both headsets use memory foam in the earpads with a leatherette covering that should make it comfortable for long gaming sessions. The G Pro X comes with extra earpads that have a cloth covering. There’s cushioning on the top headrest as well.

Logitech G Pro X gaming headset. Image: tech2/Abhijit Dey

The frame of the headsets has been built with aluminium and steel. While being extremely flexible, it's lightweight and sturdy as well. There is passive noise cancellation to an extent which was useful in a gaming cafe where Logitech demo-ed the headsets. In terms of audio quality, I played two rounds of Deathmatch on CS:GO and it sounded good enough but more testing is required. The noise cancellation of the microphone was impressive considering the loud and noisy environment. While there was ambient noise in the background, my voice was clear enough for communication over voice chat. We've got the G Pro X with us, so expect a full review soon.

Audio is delivered via the “Pro-G” 50-mm drivers that claim to have improved bass response. An external USB sound card is packed with both the headsets. You get a 2 m cable with inline volume and mute control along with a Y-splitter for separate ports for mic and headphone. The G Pro X comes with an additional 1.5 m mobile cable and a carrying pouch.

Logitech G Pro X gaming headset. Image: tech2/Abhijit Dey

The Logitech G Pro X is priced at Rs 13,995 and the G Pro has a price of Rs 9,995. Both headphones are already available for purchase online.

Disclaimer: Tech2 was invited by Logitech for the launch event in Bengaluru. All expenses related to travel were borne by Logitech.

The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake - RTS1AT69

Reported by 9to5Google, a support page appeared with the title ‘Migrate from Cloud Print to native printing’. It stated that from 1 January 2021, users won’t be able to print using Google Cloud Print and suggested to look for an alternative solution.

In the same document, Google said that Chrome OS’ native printing experience has improved over time. However, those are limited to the OS and won’t be available in other operating systems. It went on to list down the features that are “currently or will be supported by Chrome OS by the end of 2019.”

• Admin console interface to manage thousands of CUPS-based printers for users, devices, and managed guests (the legacy 20-printer cap has been removed) by organizational unit
• Admin console policy to manage user printing defaults for 2-sided (duplex) and color
• Support for advanced printing attributes (stapling, paper trays, pin printing)
• Admin console policy to include user account and filename in IPP header of print job over a secure IPPS connection, which enables third-party printing features such as secure printing and print-usage tracking
• Admin console policy to manage PIN code printing, allowing users to enter pin code when sending the print job, and release the print job for printing when they enter the pin code into the printer keypad

OnePlus 7T Pro. Image: tech2/Abhijit Dey.

In a forum post, the company declared the data breach and assured that all the payment information, passwords and accounts are safe. The only data that was exposed was the user’s name, contact number, email and shipping address. OnePlus said that it contacted users by email who had been affected by this breach.

If you’re one of them who received an email from OnePlus, the company says that nothing additional has to be done. However, they warned users to expect spam and phishing emails due to the exposed information. If you haven’t received any email, your information hasn’t been affected.

To tighten its security, OnePlus will be partnering with a “world-renowned security platform” next month to launch its own official bug bounty program by the end of this year.

Minecraft Earth on Android and iOS.

For those unaware, Minecraft Earth is an augmented reality mobile game that attempts to base the game in the real-world. The iconic franchise is already popular on other gaming platforms, and introducing it as an AR game makes it highly interesting.

It’s similar to Niantic’s Pokémon Go, however, Minecraft Earth will encourage more engagement in the community. Players have to explore the world to collect different kinds of materials that will enable them to build and place structures in the real world, viewable in-game. These structures could be their own while a group of players can collaborate to create a common one. Since this is online, anyone visiting these areas will be able to view the structures in their full glory.

As reported by IGN, the current early access version allows players to try their hands at ‘Adventures’. These are small worlds within the Minecraft Earth universe that have been procedurally generated and they will be time-limited. A smelting and crafting system has been introduced that will let players create and use tools with all the collected materials.

The proposed law which is expected to be passed by July 2020 states that gadgets such as smartphones, computers, smart TVs and so on, which do not come pre-installed with Russian software, will be banned from the Russian market. This legislation was passed by the lower house of the Russian parliament on Thursday. The exact list of products is still to be decided by the government.

The justification being given by Russian authorities, according to BBC, is that this would help local Russian technology. According to one of the co-authors of the bill, Oled Nikolayev, most of the complex electronic devices people buy in Russia, come with Western pre-installed software.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

"Naturally, when a person sees them... they might think that there are no domestic alternatives available. And if, alongside pre-installed applications, we will also offer the Russian ones to users, then they will have a right to choose," said Nikolayev.

The law does not ban non-Russian gadgets from being sold in Russia by default. But alongside the existing software, there has to be a provision for Russian made software to feature on these devices.

According to Xinhua News Agency, the bill still has to be endorsed by the Federation Council or the upper house of the parliament and eventually signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Given Russia's record on user data privacy, this legislation has garnered criticism from manufacturers and distributors in Russia. They fear that companies selling their gadgets in Russia may just exit the market instead of bowing down to this law. The fear of surveillance, with a Russian made software installed on the devices, is very real — something that may not go down well with tech companies.

Earlier this year, Russia had signed into law a 'Russian sovereign internet' which could cut off internet traffic from outside Russia at will. The law requires internet providers to install equipment to route Russian internet traffic through servers in the country. Proponents said it is a defence measure in case the United States or other hostile powers cut off the internet for Russia. Critics say that would increase the power of state agencies to control information. Users, they add, would find it harder to circumvent government restrictions, and the quality of the connection may suffer.

The ban would cover all flavoured e-cigarettes and e-liquid vaping products, including ones that are menthol flavoured. At least 30 members of the 51-member City Council have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation.

Similar bans have been introduced or are being considered around the country: Voters in San Francisco approved a referendum to ban flavoured vaping products in June 2018, and the Massachusetts Legislature passed a ban on flavoured tobacco Wednesday.

Other states, including New York and Michigan, have attempted to impose temporary bans on flavoured vaping products through executive orders, but those efforts have been stalled by lawsuits challenging the moves.

“The vaping industry launched a full-force effort to stop this because they knew if it was done here they couldn’t stop it across the country,” said Councilman Mark Levine, D-Manhattan, the chair of the health committee and the bill’s primary sponsor. “If we can do it here, it will go nationwide.”

A Juul vaping device and a refill pod containing vape liquid.

There is already a national momentum building against e-cigarette use. The attorneys general of New York and California each filed lawsuits against Juul this week, charging that the company practised deceptive marketing by failing to mention that their products contained nicotine and also targeted young people with enticing flavours like mango.

On Tuesday, the AMA called for a “total ban on all e-cigarette and vaping products” that do not meet Food and Drug Administration standards as smoking cessation tools.

New York City already has a law banning the sale of flavoured tobacco products, but menthol-flavoured products and e-cigarettes were not included.

The new legislation, which is expected to be passed by the City Council on Tuesday, includes menthol-flavoured products; the only vaping liquid that would be allowed for sale are tobacco-flavoured products. The bill would then go to Mayor Bill de Blasio to sign.

“The mayor supports it. We will either sign it or let it lapse into law,” said Freddi Goldstein, de Blasio’s press secretary.

The Council, however, set aside a companion measure that would have banned the sale of menthol cigarettes amid concerted lobbying efforts and opposition from the Rev Al Sharpton, whose nonprofit National Action Network has regularly taken five-figure contributions from the tobacco giant Reynolds American.

That legislation has come under attack from some civil rights activists who say that since menthol cigarettes are largely smoked by African Americans, banning them would create an underground market that could lead to tragedies like the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died after a confrontation with police officers who accused him of selling loose cigarettes. Others have argued for a ban, citing health concerns.

Levine said there is still a “strong commitment” to the menthol ban.

Kirsten John Foy, a civil rights activist who was formerly a part of Sharpton’s organisation, said that delaying a menthol cigarette ban was a capitulation to the tobacco industry.

The vaping industry’s lobbying efforts have also been strenuous, if less successful. In 2019 alone, Juul paid more than $250,000 to lobbyists from five firms to lobby on its behalf in New York City, mostly related to the flavoured e-cigarette bill, state filings show. (The company also paid to lobby against restrictions in Albany.)

The City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, who has shared on social media about his use of e-cigarettes to quit smoking cigarettes, “proudly supports” the vaping legislation, said his spokeswoman Jennifer Fermino, and is meeting with stakeholders to find a compromise on the menthol ban.

Vaping industry officials have said generally that removing their products from the market would eliminate one tool that adults have used to help stop smoking cigarettes.

The Vapor Technology Association said in a statement Thursday night that it was willing “to continue working with the City of New York on effective regulations and real solutions that will achieve the twin goals of restricting youth vaping, which is already illegal, and preserving flavored vapor as an alternative for adult consumers desperately trying to quit smoking, without ruining the livelihoods of the workers that the City’s regulated nicotine-vapour products industry employs.”

But in a sign of the mounting pressure, Juul stopped selling its non-menthol flavoured products in the United States in October.

Jeffery C. Mays and J. David Goodman c.2019 The New York Times Company

While, at present, Samsung hasn't officially revealed anything about the smartphone — which will most likely be called the Samsung Galaxy S11 — there have been plenty of leaks already, and the device has already started to take shape in our heads.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. Image: tech2

Adding to the slowly-forming outline of the purported Samsung Galaxy S11 is a leak by reputed leakster Ice Universe on Twitter, who revealed that the One UI 2.0 beta version shows that the Galaxy S11 will feature a 120 Hz high refresh rate display.

Someone found 120Hz in Note9's One UI 2 Beta! (hidden settings) pic.twitter.com/ii1fNic1YE

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 20, 2019

He also reveals that the One UI 2 beta version offers three different options for display refresh rate. Two of them lets you choose to keep the display on 60 Hz or 120 Hz, while the third option automatically switches between 60 Hz and 120 Hz as per the device usage.

It offers three options:
1. Turn off the high refresh rate mode and keep 60Hz
2. Turn on the high refresh rate mode and keep 120Hz
3. Turn on the high refresh rate mode and switch automatically between 60Hz and 120Hz.

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 20, 2019

Another recent report claimed to have found a code in the One UI 2.0 beta version, revealing that the Samsung Galaxy S11 will sport a 108 MP primary camera at the rear. Reportedly, Samsung will use the Quad Bayer 4-in-1 108MP sensor in the Galaxy S11 series. The sensor combines four pixels into one for a final 27 MP result, but it could also produce 12 MP stills.

The code also revealed a 20:9 aspect mode, which means that the Samsung Galaxy S11 smartphone(s) will have a taller 20:9 aspect ratio display.

Previous leaks have also suggested that the smartphone will be powered by Qualcomm's 2020 flagship chipset Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 9830. This isn't surprising given that this is a pattern Samsung has been following for years now. Qualcomm's 865 is expected to be announced in December during its annual Tech Summit. Samsung's 9830 might be revealed a month or two later.

It has also been rumoured that at least one of the Samsung Galaxy S11 variants will come with support for 5G. The smartphone is also believed to be equipped with LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.0 storage support.

See, I was expecting something like this...

Why couldn’t it have looked like this? #Cybertruckpic.twitter.com/fr0x9aUH4K

— Elite Computer Solutions LLC (@DarrellChildr12) November 22, 2019

Instead, we got this...

When a DeLorean and an El Camino love each other very much... #Cybertruckpic.twitter.com/ZWO3N6gpBA

— Nicholas Edmonds (@Topl_NickE) November 22, 2019

I wonder what inspired him...

At this exact moment Elon Musk visualized the #Cybertruckpic.twitter.com/NFHSO7f225

— Kathiana (@iconkathiana) November 22, 2019

But hey, it's not all bad. As the wise Lorraine here points out, the truck does indeed look futuristic.

Why does the #Cybertruck from #tesla remind me a great deal of Back to the Future?

For real, it looks as though the 80's tried to conceptualise a car from the far far faaaaaaaaar distant future with 80's tech. https://t.co/wLCZrYT839pic.twitter.com/bAGhXjpdbo

— Lorraine (@lorrainehwise) November 22, 2019

... and it would look perfectly at home in a video game...

I think the #Cybertruck looks pretty cool pic.twitter.com/uYcrUmzVOO

— Dr. Mac Arthur Ge.D. (@DoctorMacArthur) November 22, 2019

... as long as it's not this one.

Same Energy #CyberTruck pic.twitter.com/jlEjxRBzSZ

— King's Letter (@TheKingsletter) November 22, 2019

If nothing else, Ford must be heaving a small sigh of relief. Their flagship pickup was ignominiously hauled up a hill, after all.

The @Ford EV truck team...#Cybertruck #cyberfloppic.twitter.com/ZWKSXbz6sr

— MIKE HUNT (@snubbersup) November 22, 2019

Cybertruck. Slayer of pickups. Birther of memes.

Thank you, Elon! Never change. Please.

Tesla Cybertruck: Full steam mememachine!

As per a report by LetsGoDigital, a trademark filed by Oppo in EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) reveals that its working on its own brand of chipsets. The company is reportedly naming its first-ever processor — Oppo M1.

The report also suggests that Oppo has hired engineers from firms like Speadtrum and MediaTek to work on this chipset. It is not yet clear if this will only be for the Oppo handsets or will these be sourced to other smartphone manufacturers as well.

Oppo reportedly revealed earlier that it might launch its own smartwatch and headphones.

Oppo's purported in-house chipset — Oppo M1 — is expected to launch at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) next year, which is scheduled to be held in February in Barcelona, Spain.

But this is not the only segment where Oppo is expanding and experimenting. A report by MySmartPrice in February this year revealed that Oppo CEO Chen Mingyong has confirmed that they will soon launch their own smartwatch and headphones.

Oppo has also announced its ColorOS 7 in China recently and it will be launched in India on 26 November.

As Boeing moved its Starliner crew capsule to its pad Thursday for a launch next month, the company revealed the name of the test dummy on board.

Rosie the Astronaut is named after World War II’s Rosie the Riveter. The dummy has hundreds of sensors for the first Starliner test flight to the International Space Station. And it’s wearing Rosie the Riveter’s trademark red polka-dot headscarf, along with a Boeing blue spacesuit.

Boeing shows Rosie the astronaut test dummy positioned in the space capsule. Image credit: AP

Boeing said it chose the name given its long history of hiring women, especially during World War II to keep up bomber production.

“She’s flying for everyone on our team who took on the challenge of human spaceflight and said, ‘We can do it,’ ” Leanne Caret, president of Boeing’s defence, space and security unit, said in a statement.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket will provide the ride. Liftoff is targeted for 17 December.

Good morning from @NASAKennedy where we are at the #Starliner factory getting ready to roll the spacecraft over to Space Launch Complex 41 to be stacked on the @ulalaunch made #AtlasV! pic.twitter.com/9z13XE5z23

— Boeing Space (@BoeingSpace) November 21, 2019

SpaceX turned to the “Alien” movies in naming its test dummy, Ripley, launched aboard a crew Dragon capsule in March.

Flights with NASA astronauts should follow next year for both private companies. The first Starliner crew will include a woman, NASA’s Nicole Mann. She and her two crewmates were present for Thursday’s capsule move.

The findings established as a functional insulin-binding protein with therapeutic potential against diabetes, the CCMB said. They show that secretagogin binds to insulin and protects it from various stresses, increases its stability and adds to its action, a CCMB release said on Thursday. It said various kinds of cellular stresses can result in loss of structure and function of insulin, ultimately leading to diabetes.

At present, the processes regulating insulin synthesis, maturation, secretion and signaling in diabetes were not completely understood, it said.

An image of an immunofluorescence-stained analysis of a rat brain cerebellum section with secretagogin stained in green, calbindin in red, and DNA in blue. Image courtesy: EnCorBio

Yogendra Sharma from CCMB and his colleagues Anand Sharma, Radhika Khandelwal, and Amrutha Chidananda have demonstrated the role of a protein secretagogin in increasing insulin action in obesity-induced diabetes. The scientists have shown an injection of secretagogin (found at lower levels in diabetic patients) in obese diabetic mice clears excess insulin from circulation and reduces fat mass.

Secretagogin treated animals also had lower levels of harmful LDL-cholesterol and lower lipid accumulation in liver cells, it said. These findings were published in the journal iScience.

Diabetes and neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease are often linked with each other. Secretagogin is found in lower quantities in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, it said.

In a parallel study, also recently published in Biochemistry, Sharma's group has also shown secretagogin role in preventing the formation of alpha-synuclein protein fibrils a precursor for many neurodegenerative diseases, it said.

Secretagogin would soon become a diagnostic marker, and one should check its potential in diabetes management, Sharma said.

While studying the calcium-binding properties of secretagogin, CCMB scientists have discovered a novel function of this protein in diabetes biology, yet another example of how quality basic science can lead to valuable applications, Rakesh Mishra, Director, CCMB, said.

Go Green! Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! None of those is an option or choice for us anymore — they need to be our way of life today. Living an eco-friendly existence has been advocated time and again by countless activists. But the issue has been taken up on war footing after it was made popular by 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Today, people are growing more responsible and more aware of their personal carbon footprint. Many are also looking at alternatives to traditional, polluting or energy-intensive products and technologies. But the practice of sustainability is not widely known. There is also a dearth of "eco-friendly" options readily available to us at the store down the road.

Living a sustainable life can be made a lot easier and lighter on your wallet if there were, in fact, accessible alternatives to our common, everyday items. One of the reasons alternatives aren't very easily available is because there aren't many companies producing them. It's been 112 years since the first plastic, bakelite, was invented. And in that time, plastic has taken over our lives dramatically, with single-use products from our homes and hangout spots landing up in oceans.

Sustainable living is the need of the hour.

To understand sustainability from the perspective of a business, and what Indian companies are doing to offer more sustainable options to consumers, I spoke to Anirban Ghosh, chief sustainability officer at the Mahindra Group. 

Mahindra conducted a survey of around 2,000 people between the ages of 25 and 30 to find out how the public perceives climate change, sustainable alternatives, and the role businesses play in climate action. They found out Indians would like to do the right thing and make choices that are good for the environment but the alternatives are not readily available. 

Edited excerpts from the interview follow.

What is sustainability? How does Mahindra define it?

Anirban Ghosh (AG): The Brundtland Commission, in their 1987 report 'Our Common Future', defined the term 'sustainable development' as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

The 17 sustainable development goals as set out by the UN.

This is a wonderful way of articulating sustainability. But while it is a great definition for the United Nations, doesn't tell the business what to do. The Mahindra Group has adopted the definition: "Sustainability is about building an enduring business while rejuvenating the environment and enabling stakeholders to rise."

What do Indian citizens think about living sustainably? 

AG: We surveyed roughly 2,000 people between 25-50 years of age in five major Indian cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore. We expected to hear responses like ‘What is climate change?’ or ‘Why do we have to change the way we live our lives?’, but instead realised that people were well-aware of the problem and were willing to take action. We also learned that there were very few sustainable options available to people and what was available wasn't always an economical or accessible choice. If I wanted to buy an electric car today, there isn't a "good" option out there that's both affordable and does a good job.

Living an eco-friendly lifestyle is not easy when there are no viable alternatives. Image credit: Getty

Can developing nations like India adopt sustainability without ample alternatives?

AG: Can India afford to be water-scarce? That's a rhetorical question. India needs water, and with that logic, the answer to your question would be "No, India cannot afford to be a non-sustainable country and we need to adopt sustainable practices." We all tend to look at the issue with a varying degree of inherent bias. In this case, the bias is that sustainability is expensive, and leads to a trade-off between development and the environment. I think over the last few years, we have found these biases are misplaced.

One of the biggest LED projects is taking place in India.

In fact, if you were to adopt sustainable practices, you would save money, and in almost no case will you put the development of India at risk. For example, if having lights in the house is a sign of development, then 300 million Indians wouldn't have lights in their house if LED technology (sustainable technology) did not exist and wasn't adopted on a broad scale.

It's also easier for us (Indians), in my view, to adopt this lifestyle because the ethos of sustainability is rooted in our country. We have only started messing up in a big way in recent times, with a growing population, greater prosperity and the search for convenience. We wanted to ape the Western world because we've perceived they had a better life. I think if we clean up our cities, our rivers and our air, life will become that much better.

Are there any challenges unique to India on its journey to becoming sustainable?

AG: One of India's biggest challenges is our demand for energy. Not only is it on a consistent rise, but it will also continue to increase in the short and medium-term as the earning potential of people increases. So far, we have met these demands using energy from coal. Governments and think tanks have looked at this problem (sustainable sources of energy) in great detail and crunching the numbers has led them to the conclusion that it simply isn't possible to be energy-secure in the short and medium-term without the use of coal. Till that changes, our continuous use of coal will only cause our carbon emissions to increase further. 

India depends on coal for its current energy needs but it should also develop renewable energy projects.

But, I think India could potentially use this as an opportunity to leapfrog and set up renewable energy plants on a wide scale. With a country like the US, which uses five times more the amount of coal per capita than India does, there is little chance of such wide-scale adoption to power growth as infrastructure is already in place and they need to decrease their usage from today.

Another thing that people think of as a challenge is poverty. As I see it, a nation with 22 percent of its population below the poverty line is also a huge opportunity: to develop in a way that is sustainably low on emissions. We can come out of poverty using low-carbon methods such that our per capita emissions are nowhere near the numbers the Western world is seeing today, with our eyes still set firmly on development and prosperity.

(Also read: The key to India's solar energy dreams lies in public co-operation, not just in an investor-led approach)

Is balancing low-emission goals with sustainability too ambitious? Any success stories India can aspire to replicate?

AG: India is going to be the first, emerging country to develop using a low carbon path. In the case of developing countries, with your main focus on China, they developed by adopting a carbon-intensive path. As a matter of fact (and statistics), China has become the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, even outranking the EU and the USA in recent years.

Animation: The countries with the largest cumulative CO2 emissions since 1750

Ranking as of the start of 2019:

1) US – 397GtCO2
2) CN – 214Gt
3) fmr USSR – 180
4) DE – 90
5) UK – 77
6) JP – 58
7) IN – 51
8) FR – 37
9) CA – 32
10) PL – 27 pic.twitter.com/cKRNKO4O0b

— Carbon Brief (@CarbonBrief) April 23, 2019

India won't be able to follow the path that China has, where development is concerned — with the use of thermal power, steel, and cement on a scale that is frankly unimaginable. For the longest time, more than 60-70 percent of the steel manufactured worldwide came to China. India is already making strides towards following a less carbon-intensive path.

It will be a fascinating journey, and I don’t think we can copy-paste a solution from anywhere else to fit our sustainable development plans.

Is any infrastructure needed to make sustainability accessible to the masses?

AG: I believe that the least we can do for the people is give them access to clean water, clean air, good food, climate-friendly accommodation and transportation. That's a solid start. What we need is:

Sustainable public transport: Lots of metros, electric cars and shared mobility that will enable everyone to commute and move around in an eco-friendly manner.

Building a green building is not more expensive than building a conventional building.

Housing for the future: 70 percent of the buildings that we will need in 2050 haven't been built yet. That's because today, 30 percent of India lives in urban areas, which are expected to double to 60 percent in the next 30 years. Buildings are notorious for being emission-intensive. Some 30-40 percent of the world emissions come from building because of lighting, heating, cooling, etc.

But we have the technology that can help us build green buildings and cut our emissions by 30-40 percent. The good thing is that it is no longer more expensive to build a green building than it is to build a conventional building. Now the question is to enable builders to only build green buildings. One of the things that the Mahindra Group hopes to do is make an impact on building codes such that even people that don't understand "green buildings" end up building green if they follow the norms.

Providing people with clean water is a basic need.

Clean air and water: People in Mumbai don't have to fume over clean air like they do in Delhi. If we look at examples from the recent past, we will see that Beijing was horribly polluted, as was London and the Thames River, which was an "open sewer" as late as the early 20th century. Singapore, too, was a dirty island till the 1960s. We all know that those countries have seen vast improvements since. So it isn't that we can't do the same and clean up our air and water bodies.

Even the highly-urbanised, densely populated capital of Philippines, Manila, has a water body that resembled the sewage canal-esque state of the Mithi river in Maharashtra and the Adhiganga in Kolkata. There are towns in India where people have long-forgotten names of rivers because they haven't seen anything resembling a river in decades. They're well-known sewage canals to locals.

These are things that have relatively easy fixes that don't require us to reinvent the wheel — just bite the bullet and make the effort. The question is no longer about whether there is infrastructure, the question is which of the many attainable transformations towards sustainability we can doggedly pick up first, and after that, to implement them across the country with the technology and resources at our disposal today.

How do you plan to use the survey's findings?

AG: We want to try and find solutions to the problems and challenges that we are facing. We are already investing in electric cars and scooters, micro-irrigation, green buildings, waste-to-energy technologies, renewable energy and alternatives that you and I will need if we want to live a low-carbon lifestyle.

The survey also confirmed our hypothesis — that we need to look at creative, new business opportunities that are now popping up, with lifestyle changes and climate action in the limelight.

A sign that shows a parking spot for an electric car.

We also want to share the survey's findings with anyone who cares to listen, because it's in the best interest of industries to find alternatives to what they are doing now. We've coined a new term — 'Alternativism'. It can be broken down and perceived in two different ways — as 'Alternativism', which suggests a move towards alternatives, or as 'alter-nativism', which suggests a shift in perception of "native" actions or products in favour of better ones.

We believe that solutions to the greatest challenge humans have ever faced aren't going to be found with approaches that are conventional and orthodox. It needs constant experimentation and the use of new methods, whether it's a new business model, a new hiring practice, or a unique way of leveraging technology.

We need an alternative approach, or in short, Alternativism.

Indians need viable alternatives if they have to make the change to living sustainably. We've all heard about the climate crisis the world is currently facing. The only way to deal with is by finding and following a low carbon way of life.

Hundreds of bison grazing in an area stimulates the growth of nutritious grasses, in part because their waste acts as a fertilizer, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“They add fertilizer through urinating and defecating, they drop nutrients back on the landscape, which are then available to plants,” Yellowstone scientist Chris Geremia said Wednesday.

“It’s almost like the bison become this giant fleet of lawnmowers moving back and forth across the landscape,” he said.

A herd of bison grazes in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park. Image credit: AP

When more bison grazed an area more intensely, the area greened up earlier and faster and the grass stayed greener and had a higher nutritional quality for a much longer time, Geremia said.

Many other migratory animals in Yellowstone — pronghorn, bighorn sheep, mule deer and elk — do not form these large groups while they migrate and graze, Geremia said.

“Bison don’t just move to find food, kind of the classic way that we think of animal migration,” Geremia said, “but they create good food by how they move and how they graze.”

From 2012 to 2017, researchers fenced-off plots of grass along bison migration corridors and compared them to the grazed areas.

“The data showed that grasses heavily grazed by bison were more productive compared to exclosures where bison were not allowed to graze,” said Matthew Kauffman, unit leader of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming. “The mowed-down forage had higher ratios of nitrogen to carbon, a standard measure of nutritional quality.”

Trampling and nibbling by the bison kept the plants shorter and denser and forced the plants to keep growing, giving the bison a steady supply of fresh, nutritious grass.

New research shows when bison heavily graze an area, the grass greens up earlier and faster and stays green for a much longer period of time. Image credit: AP

“During most of May and June and part of July ... they are grouped together repeatedly grazing the same area,” Geremia said.

Bison “are not just moving to find the best food; they are creating the best food,” said Jerod Merkle, a professor in migration ecology and conservation at the University of Wyoming. “This happens because bison are aggregate grazers that graze in groups of hundreds or more than a thousand animals.”

While the effect of aggregate grazers was known on a small scale, sensors on NASA satellites can detect how grassland dynamics differ between areas that are lightly or heavily-grazed by bison, the research showed.

“Our work shows that bison are capable ecosystem engineers, able to modify grasslands in a way that enhances their own grazing,” said Mark Hebblewhite, professor of ungulate habitat ecology at the University of Montana.

The research could bolster efforts to rebuild herds of bison around the West, including in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, and on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana, Hebblewhite said.

The Twitter Safety team has just announced that users will be able to do this from later today.

Representational Image. Credits: Reuters

Until now, a phone number was necessary for enabling 2FA on Twitter. There were options to use third-party authenticators like Google Authenticator, or a hardware authentication device, however, in order to enable them, you had to give your phone number and verify it via SMS.

We're also making it easier to secure your account with Two-Factor Authentication. Starting today, you can enroll in 2FA without a phone number. https://t.co/AxVB4QWFA1

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) November 21, 2019

However, as pointed out by 9To5Mac, this is currently not available if you are using a hardware authentication device. A Twitter engineer tweeted, "Currently, we require you to have a second method along with security keys since the latter isn’t currently supported outside web. If you’d like to disable SMS, you need to also have a mobile security app. We know this might not be ideal but we’re going to keep working on it!"

Hi! Currently we require you to have a second method along with security keys since the latter isn’t currently supported outside web. If you’d like to disable sms, you need to also have a mobile security app. We know this might not be ideal but we’re going to keep working on it!

— Jared Miller (@jcmi) November 21, 2019

Notably, while this feature is rolling out to all users, it is being enabled in phases and may not be available for all immediately.

In October, Twitter also admitted that it used phone numbers and emails provided two-factor authentication for serving targeted ads.

The image was clicked by Peruvian photographer Jheison Huerta on the Salar de Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia. The picture is composed of 15 vertical frames taken consecutively over ten minutes, and was captured in April after a shower.

What can be seen in the picture?

NASA points out a few celestial bodies that are visible in the picture. They are the Milky Way and its satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and a few bright stars like Antares and Sirius. Jupiter, the fifth and largest planet in our solar system is also visible in the image.

The NASA image of the milky way, LMC and Jupiter. Image credit: Jheison Huerta

The LMC is 1,58,200 light-years away from the Earth and is bound in its orbit to the Milky Way. It is much smaller, with about 3,000 crores of star as compared to the Milky Way’s 25,000 crores of stars.

The Antares is a star that is part of the Scorpius constellation, which has a distinct reddish hue.

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky and it derives its name from the Greek word Seirios which means ‘glowing’ or 'scorching’. It is also called the Dog star which inspired the eponymous character in J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It is part of the Canis Major constellation.

The salt pans

The Salar de Uyuni is a natural forming, flat salt pan that goes on for 10,582 square kilometres and is located in the Daniel Campos Province in Potosí, Bolivia. Around 30,000-40,000 years ago, the salt pan was part of a huge prehistoric lake that dried out. Over a period of time, it transformed into this salt flat that was harvested by the locals.

The top crust of this land is a solid salt crust that is saturated with a brine solution that is made up of sodium chloride, lithium chloride, and magnesium chloride, along with water. It is also the largest lithium deposit in the world. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that this salt pan contains 5400 million kgs of lithium.

In the centre of the pans are islands that are actually the tops of ancient volcanoes. The islands have fragile coral-like structures and deposits that often consist of fossils and algae.

You put the vehicle into gear and whimper as you feel 290 HP of brute horsepower channeled to the four wheels.

The tires squeal as they paint the tarmac with molten rubber.

But something's wrong, terribly wrong. There's no joy on your face, only consternation, and despair.

The truck is going backwards, the wheels have no traction. The two and a half tonne F-150 is being hauled up a slope by an otherworldly beast that doesn't appear to notice its existence.

That beast is the Tesla Cybertruck. This actually happened. And this is the future.

The otherworldly design of the cybertruck is sure to turn heads. Image: Tesla

The Cybertruck is unlike anything we've seen before. A traditional pickup truck is brawny. The Cybertruck is angular, purposeful, alien. It would seem more at home on Mars.

Its monochrome exoskeleton is made from cold-rolled stainless steel and can shrug off a blow from a sledgehammer. Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims it's bulletproof, impervious to 9 mm pistol rounds.

The glass is armoured and can absorb tremendous impact, says Musk. The glass did shatter during the on-stage demo, but Musk says that wasn't supposed to happen. "We'll fix it in post," he quipped.

I'm sorry 😂 https://t.co/fDRkqlCUCN

— Ben Geskin (@BenGeskin) November 22, 2019

And there will be no guttural roar when this beast powers on. All you'll hear are the screams of your passengers and the muted electric hum of powerful motors as the vehicle surges forward on a wave of torque that only an EV can generate.

Three electric motors drive the four wheels. Together, they propel the vehicle to 60 mph (about 97 kph) in under 2.9 seconds. That makes it quicker than a Porsche 911.

This truck can also do a quarter-mile drag in 10.8 seconds, the Porsche can only manage it in 12. And this is from a truck with storage capacity of 100 cubic ft and a towing capacity of a little over six tonnes.

@Tesla Oh. My. God. The Tesla Cyber Truck 🔥
Credit @MyTeslaAdventur pic.twitter.com/v424gdB2XP

— World of Engineering (@engineers_feed) November 22, 2019

Ground clearance is 16 inches, but the suspension is pneumatic and it can be independently raised or lowered by four inches. The vehicle even has a self-levelling feature that will keep the load secure on uneven or tilted terrain.

Creature comforts haven't been denied to us either. The interior is as futuristic as the exterior and seats six in comfort. As with the Model 3, the dash is replaced by a touchscreen.

Additional storage can be found under the rear seats, and the bed can hold 1.5 tonnes of stuff. There's even a cover to keep your load safe from the elements, human or otherwise.

Tesla's Cybertruck can be pre-ordered right now and it's available in three variants. Sadly, vehicle production is only expected to start in 2021, and the most exciting variant won't be available till at least 2022.

Single motor AWD: $39,900

• Acceleration (0-100 kph): ~6.5 s
• Range: ~402 km
• Towing capacity: ~3.4 tonnes

Dual motor AWD: $49,900

• Acceleration (0-100 kph): ~4.5 s
• Range: ~482 km
• Towing capacity: ~4.5 tonnes

Tri motor AWD: $69,900

• Acceleration (0-100 kph): ~2.9 s
• Range: ~804 km
• Towing capacity: ~6.3 tonnes

And that's not all: complementing the truck is an all-electric ATV that can be loaded onto the bed and even be charged from it.

The 'one more thing' at the Cybertruck event was an all-electric ATV, and it charges from the truck's bed. Image: Tesla

Vivo U20

Vivo U20 price and availability

Vivo U20 has been announced in two RAM variants. The 4 GB RAM variant is priced at Rs 10,990 and the 6 GB RAM variant will cost you Rs 11,990. The smartphone will go on its first sale on 28 November at 12 pm on Amazon India and Vivo's own website. Vivo U20 will be available in a black and blue colour variant.

Vivo has also announced a few launch offers, wherein users can get up to Rs 1,000 off on prepaid payment at the time of purchase of the smartphone from Amazon India. Customers can also avail no cost EMI on up to 6 months of installments.

Vivo U20 has been announced in two RAM variants.

Vivo U20 specifications and features

Vivo U20 features a 6.58-inch Full HD+ display. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 AIE chipset. The smartphone comes in two RAM variants — 4 GB RAM and 6 GB RAM. Both variants feature 64 GB UFS 2.1 storage.

For photography, the Vivo U20 sports a triple camera setup at the back with a 16 MP main shooter, 8 MP f/2.2 wide-angle lens and a 2 MP macro camera. For selfies, the smartphone has a 16 MP camera.

Fuelling the Vivo U20 is a 5,000 mAh battery, which comes with an 18 W fast charger in the box, but no Type-C charging port.

The announcement was made at this year's Google Cloud Next event in the UK. Smart Compose is a feature that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help in drafting emails faster by predicting what you will type. The Smart Compose will be available in a new beta mode for the web on Google Docs.

Google Docs logo

According to Google, "Smart Compose helps you compose high-quality content in Google Docs faster and more easily. It saves you time by cutting back on repetitive writing, helps reduce the chance of spelling and grammatical errors, and can suggest relevant contextual phrases." Google claims that Smart Compose helped people save more than 2 billion characters each week.

The feature will be available for G Suite users first and not those having a regular Google account. It will only be available for English language as of now.

Admins can sign up for Smart Compose in Docs: Beta here.

via GIPHY

This feature works quite well when composing mails. For someone whose job involves a lot of writing (yes, we are referring to the journalism community) this could certainly save up on time. But too much reliance on Smart Compose while writing a story could lead to stale and repetitive use of phrase or sentences.

It is also a bit unnerving, to be honest. How long before Google's smart compose AI gets smart enough to help you write an entire story like this?

Scientists spotted the vapour after spending 17 (non-consecutive) nights during 2016-2017 peering through a telescope at the W M Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Europa, like Earth’s moon, is gravitationally-locked to its host planet, so the leading hemisphere always faces the direction of the orbit, while the trailing hemisphere always faces in the opposite direction. Water molecules in Europa's leading hemisphere — the side locked forever facing the direction in which Europa goes around Jupiter in its orbit.

In this image captured during the Galileo mission in the 1990s, Europa's icy surface and the long fissures cutting through them are evident. Image courtesy: NASA

The observatory also had a spectrograph, which can make measurements of the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere using infrared light, which molecules either emit or absorb. Compounds like water absorb the infrared energy that finds them and emits a different, unique frequency that can be traced by researchers from light-years (even thousands of light-years, in the case of exoplanet-hunting satellites like TESS) away.

Is water vapour on Europa a big deal?

Finding water vapour on Europa has helped researchers understand it better, and other moons by association. Moreover, water anywhere in space is a promising discovery since it could point to possible extraterrestrial life. Water is essential for any living systems as it has nutrients for them to eat, it can transport chemicals to living cells and allow those cells to get rid of waste.

Hidden beneath Europa's icy surface is what scientists think is an expansive, salty ocean containing twice as much water as that on Earth. The water vapour, scientists believe, could be coming out from either the ocean itself or a shallow reservoir of liquid water ice.

Could a liquid water ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa have the ingredients to support life? Image: NASA/JPL

"Essential chemical elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur) and sources of energy, two of three requirements for life, are found all over the solar system," Lucas Paganini, a NASA planetary scientist who led the water detection investigation, said in a statement. "But the third — liquid water — is somewhat hard to find beyond Earth. While scientists have not yet detected liquid water directly, we’ve found the next best thing: water in vapour form.”

Water, chemistry and energy make up the three requirements for life on another planet.

Water vapour rising from a geyser on Europa isn't all that frequent. But when it does, it does so with enormous force — shooting out of the surface at 2,360 kilograms per second. That's enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool (50 m x 25 m) in minutes.

"For me, the interesting thing about this work is not only the first direct detection of water above Europa but also the lack thereof within the limits of our detection method," Paganini said in a statement.

What next?

To follow in the footsteps of the Voyager spacecraft, which paid a flyby visit to Europa in 1979, NASA has plans to send the first dedicated mission to Europa in the Clipper mission i. To explore if the moon has conditions favourable for life, the mission won't take a direct approach and look for signatures of life like the Mars 2020 rover or Curiosity. Instead, the Clipper orbiter-only mission will tackle answers around Europa’s ocean and peculiar ice shell, the composition of the atmosphere and surface, and geology.

Artist illustration of the Clipper mission to Europa. Image credit: NASA

The findings from this study have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Facebook’s policy is to accept paid political ads from candidates without fact-checking them or censoring them, even if they contain lies. And Zuckerberg doubled down on that stand last month following Twitter’s announcement, reiterating that “political speech is important” and that Facebook doesn't want to interfere with it.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Image: Getty.

However, after Google announced yesterday that it will restrict how narrowly political advertisers can target voters on its services, pressure mounted on Facebook even further, and the company is now reportedly considering changing its political ad policy, according to a report by Wall Street Journal.

(Also read: Debating political ads on social media is Facebook, Twitter's way to derail issue; what's needed is legislation and not ban)

According to the report, Facebook is apparently in conversation with political parties in the US to discuss the possibility of "increasing the minimum number of people who can be targeted by specific ads from 100 to a few thousand."

Meanwhile, earlier this week, President Donald Trump’s campaign staff took issue with reports that Facebook might consider limiting its targeting practices.

“Facebook wants to take important tools away from us for 2020,” the campaign tweeted from its official account. “Tools that help us reach more great Americans & lift voices the media & big tech choose to ignore!”

🚨IMPORTANT🚨@facebook wants to take important tools away from us for 2020.

Tools that help us reach more great Americans & lift voices the media & big tech choose to ignore!

They want to raise prices to put more of your hard earned small dollar donations into their pockets. https://t.co/gJbFfTLnzW

— Team Trump (@TeamTrump) November 20, 2019

Last week, Twitter also laid out its plan for banning political ads, which comes into effect from today (22 November). Last month, Twitter announced that it would ban political advertising.

Twitter said it will define political content under its policy as anything that references "a candidate, political party, elected or appointed government official, election, referendum, ballot measure, legislation, regulation, directive, or judicial outcome."

10:12 (IST)

Fin

And just as abruptly as it started, it's over. It was a rather short event.

I guess that's Musk for you.

Tesla's electric 'cybertruck' pickup truck is all set to be unveiled at an event in Los Angeles today.

The pickup, apparently inspired by Blade Runner, looks like an armoured personnel carrier, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Apart from this, the CEO has hinted that the truck will have a will have an all-wheel drive with “crazy torque,” a suspension that dynamically adjusts for load and a driving range of up to 500 miles as an option.

Tesla Cybertruck. Image: Elon Musk/Twitter

When it comes to pricing, Musk in an interview claimed that this electric truck will cost "less than $50,000". In a tweet, Musk also teased an image of this upcoming truck. The truck, he says, will be about the size of a Ford F-150.

Elon Musk. Image: Reuters

Cybertruck launch: How to watch it live

You can watch the live stream of the launch event by registering yourself. You just need to head to the Tesla website and fill in some details and that's it. The event will begin at 9.30 am today. The official Tesla Twitter page will also stream the event live.

Cybertruck Unveil starts at 8

Stay tuned for livestream pic.twitter.com/zrbsoKKLd7

— Tesla (@Tesla) November 21, 2019

You can also catch the live updates here on our website.

Tonight https://t.co/pVAv4v1h8b

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2019

Tesla Cybertruck: What to expect

Musk in October described the Tesla pickup as “closer to an armored personnel carrier from the future.” Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner said such a design carries the risk of not appealing to traditional truck buyers and consigning Tesla’s vehicle to niche status.

About a minute in, we flashed a teaser pic of Tesla cyberpunk truck pic.twitter.com/hLsGsdyuGA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2019

Tesla has shown teaser images and Musk promised certain features on Twitter last year, saying it would be similar in size to Ford’s F-150. The Tesla truck will have an all-wheel drive with “crazy torque,” a suspension that dynamically adjusts for load and a driving range of up to 500 miles as an option, he said. In March, in an interview with Decode, Musk called it "a futuristic cyberpunk truck.”

As per a report by Electrek, Elon Musk said that this Blade Runner inspired truck is expected to price under $50,000.

With inputs from Reuters

Vivo U10

Vivo will be live streaming the event on its official YouTube page. You can also head to Amazon India's dedicated landing page for Vivo U20 to catch the action live. We have also embedded the live stream for the launch event below:

In case you have a busy day ahead, the live stream video above has a 'Set Reminder' option on the bottom left. You can tap on that to receive a notification minutes before the webcast is live.

Vivo U20: What to expect

As teased by Vivo itself, the highlight features of the Vivo U20 are its Qualcomm Snapdragon 674 AIE chipset, 5,000 mAh battery, and a triple-camera setup at the rear. Vivo U20 has also been revealed to feature up to 6 GB RAM and UFS 2.1 storage.

Besides that, previous leaks also suggest that the Vivo U20 will likely be the rebranded Vivo U3 that was launched in China last month. To recall, Vivo U3 features a triple camera setup at the back with a 16 MP main shooter, 8 MP f/2.2 wide-angle lens and a 2 MP macro camera. For selfies, the smartphone has a 16 MP camera. Besides that, the smartphone features 6.53-inch Full HD+ display.

Fuelling the Vivo U3 is a 5,000 mAh battery, which comes with an 18 W fast charger in the box, but no Type-C charging port. The Vivo U3 was launched in China for CNY 999, which is approximately Rs 10,200.

Chandrayaan 2 was an indigenously-developed spacecraft that was made by an Orbiter, a Lander (Vikram) and a Rover (Pragyan). A fitted "composite" of these three components was launched on-board the indigenous GSLV-Mk-III-M1 launch vehicle on 22 July 2019.

The GSLV MkIII lifts off from a Sriharikota launchpad. Image: ISRO

The long-awaited launch, originally scheduled for 14 July, but stopped less than an hour before liftoff to "a technical snag observed in launch vehicle system". The successful second attempt on 22 July was followed by a modified flight plan from the Earth to the moon, so the lander and rover would still be in time to start their missions in time with the beginning of a lunar day (equivalent to 14 Earth days).

The duo eventually made it time, just as planned, and 2.1 kilometres from the surface, things went (mysteriously) south. The Vikram lander, in the final leg of its descent, had a malfunction of some kind that caused it to accelerate instead of slow down, and the only direct communication link with the lander went silent.

An illustration of Chandrayaan 2's lander Vikram. Image: ISRO

Tears were shed and nervous looks exchanges in the control room at ISRO mere minutes after the radio silence with the lander. And while investigations were undoubtedly ongoing as to what went wrong in these final moments, the space agency has divulged next to no important details about what actually went wrong. It seems that wait for closure – 48 days later – is still to continue.

"As of now, the report is unlikely to be made public, but the findings will come out in Parliament. I cannot say anything else apart from what is given in writing," Vivek Singh, spokesperson for ISRO, told PTI.

That said, Singh did share details in the Lok Sabha on Thursday casting light on the Vikram lander's final minutes before touching moon dust (one way or the other). He also elaborated on other projects currently on ISRO's plate, like ongoing remote sensing satellite projects and satellite projects aimed at civil and environmental applications.

K Sivan takes a model of the Chandrayaan 2 composite for a virtual spin. Image: ISRO

Below are summations of the key topics Singh covered.

On cost of Chandrayaan 2

The cost of ISRO's Chandrayaan 2 mission, excluding the cost of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket it was launched on and related launch costs, was Rs 603 crore. The GSLV-Mk-M1 cost an additional Rs 367 crore.

On reasons behind Vikram's hard-landing

On its 48-day-journey – from a launchpad in Sriharikota to the moon, a series of successful Earth- and moon-bound maneuvers, and a skillful injection into a low orbit around the moon – it was time for the lander to separate. This separation of lander and rover took place, as planned, from the orbiter on 2 September, 2019. After two maneuvers to bring the landing module closer to the surface, the aptly-named "15 minutes of terror" – the powered descent – was begun on 7 September, towards a carefully-chosen landing site on the moon's relatively unexplored South Pole.

The first phase ("rough-braking") of descent was performed "nominally", bringing the lander from an altitude of 30 kilometres to 7.4 kilometres from the surface. At the same time, the velocity of the module was also brought down from 1,683 m/s to 146 m/s.

During the second phase ("fine-braking") of descent, the velocity was reduced further. And while the reduction was intended as a more drastic one than in the first phase, Singh said that the actual velocity of the lander dropped further than planned. This deviation led to a change in the "initial conditions at the start of the second phase... beyond the designed parameters".

A glimpse of the Chandrayaan 2 command centre at ISRO's ISTRAC satellite tracking facility in Bengaluru. Image: DD National/ISRO

The landing module, as a result, hard-landed within 500 m of the chosen landing site, Singh said. And while the soft-landing itself was unsuccessful, much of the technology demonstration components in the mission – the launch of a modified GSLV-Mk III variant, critical in-orbit maneuvers, separation of the lander from the orbiter, de-boosting to reduce speed for landing, and the first leg of the descent phase – were all accomplished successfully, he added.

Singh, like the ISRO chairman K Sivan shortly after the loss of communication with the lander, was quick to point out the Orbiter's promise in carrying the mission's potential forward.

"..all the eight state-of-the-art scientific instruments of the Orbiter are performing as per the design and providing valuable scientific data," Singh said. "The data received from the Orbiter is being provided continuously to the scientific community. The same was recently reviewed in an all India user meet organized at New Delhi," he added.

Owing to "the precision" with which the launch and in-orbit maneuvers were carried out, the Orbiter's mission life is now placed at seven years, versus the one year that it was intended for.

Singh didn't elaborate on what the investigation revealed about the broken communication link or the reasons for the abrupt acceleration that was seen in the control room seconds before the communication link with the lander went offline.

ISRO Chairman Dr K Sivan (L) and Minister of State in the Department of Atomic Energy and Minister of State in the Department of Space Dr Jitendra Singh brief media on Chandrayaan 2 on 13 June 2019 in New Delhi. Image: Getty

On BRICS nations' remote sensing satellite constellation

Another Indian space project Singh touched upon was a planned "virtual constellation of remote sensing satellites" built and designed by space agencies of BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

"The BRICS nations have been negotiating a Framework Agreement to formalize the cooperation on building a virtual constellation of remote sensing satellites, made up of satellites contributed by BRICS space agencies," Singh said. "Technical aspects with respect to identifying the satellites and the ground stations for the initial virtual constellation were discussed (by the space agencies involved.

The proposed virtual constellation is planned as a co-operative initiative to gain access to a wide variety of satellite remote sensing data that can be used by individual BRICS nations for many applications including the management of natural resources and natural disasters.

"The BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Virtual Constellation is a practical step towards high-tech cooperation between these countries that will assist in attaining the sustainable development goals and challenges pertaining to our respective economies and societies," Vaneshree Maharaj, spokesperson for  said, when the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) joined the initiative in July 2017.

"There are two phases proposed for the BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation: phase one, comprising a virtual constellation of existing satellites; and phase two, a new satellite constellation," she added.

IRNSS-1 spacecraft (centre) integrated with PSLV-C31 fourth stage (base) with two halves of the heat shield in view, on either side. Image courtesy: ISRO

On the NavIC and IRNSS projects

As of April 2018, the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) is an already an established and functional provider of accurate position information across India. NavIC is an autonomous regional satellite navigation system that can provide users with accurate real-time positioning and timing information. For now, NavIC's range covers all of India and a region that stretches some 1,500 kilometres outwards. There are plans to further extend the range in the future.

All commercial vehicles are now required to have a NavIC-based vehicle tracker system fitted to them. Over 75 companies are now manufacturing NavIC-based vehicle trackers across the country, with several thousand vehicles now plying on India's roads equipped with NavIC-powered technology, Singh said. NavIC's services are also available to the general public, via a recently-updated version of a mobile app for GPS-tracking services within the satellite's (nationwide) range.

Interestingly, Qualcomm has collaborated with ISRO to develop and test chipset platforms across its portfolio to support NavIC's technology usage. This NavIC technology will (per an ISRO press release from Oct 2019) be available on Qualcomm's OEM platforms starting November 2019, and in commercial devices with NavIC support are expected to be available during the first half of 2020.

Apart from civilian and transportation, NavIC's technology has also been useful in applications like drones, surveillance, balloon weather-research instruments, forestry, agriculture, among others.

Satellite data for pollution monitoring

The INSAT-3D and -3DR satellites are oddballs. They are useful in meteorology, data relaying and search and rescue operations. They were developed by ISRO and launched in July 2013 and August 2016. The Imager payloads on both these satellites are useful in monitoring Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) – an indicator of particles and smoke from biomass-burning, which can affect particulate matter (both PM2.5 and PM10) concentrations in the atmosphere.

INSAT-3D and 3DR can generate 3-D maps of atmosphere. land and ocean for various observations. Image: ISRO

These measures come in extremely useful to monitor air pollution in the North of India, which is plagued with poor air quality – enough to make it a major public health emergency every winter in recent years. Singh also drew attention to spatial maps made available on web portals (IIRS Air Quality, MOSDAC) to visualise aerosol levels, courtesy data from the INSAT 3D & 3DR.

A big contributor to winter air quality during winters in several states of Northern India is stubble burning, which isn't very well understood. Data from the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite can help generate maps to track down areas with a lot of stubble burning activity during the Kharif season (winter, harvest), during which stubble burning becomes a grave concern. ISRO has been monitoring stubble burning since 2015, Singh said, and the resulting product is "comparable to NASA's products".

Netflix appears to be down in many regions across the world. Users across social media are complaining about the outage. It’s being reported by subscribers across all platforms including web, Android and iOS.

Image: Reuters

The outage is being reported by several users on Downdetector where a spike of reports is visible currently. We tried to stream films and TV shows from our devices that included both Android and iOS. On Android, it popped up a message that said, “There is a problem playing the video. Please try again.”

The content didn’t play and popped an error. It was the same when we tried to stream from Chrome and Safari. Web browsers displayed “Oops, something went wrong…” with error code ‘M7111-1935-107016’ at the bottom.

Downdetector reports spiking for Netflix outage. Image: Downdetector

While you can still view your library, list, and homepage, none of the content is streamable.

Netflix has acknowledged the issue on its own help page. The ‘Is Netflix down?’ page shows a message that says, “We are currently experiencing issues streaming on all devices. We are working to resolve the problem. We apologize for any inconvenience.”