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Asus ROG Academy Programme

Asus to recruit six gaming candidates in India for ROG Academy Program.

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Who would have thought a decade earlier that gaming would become a profession in our country? There are many gaming enthusiasts out there who are working hard to make their passion turn into professions. And, gamers are certainly one of them. To help the potential professional gamers of India, Asus has publicly announced the recruitment of six gamers in India to join the ROG Academy Programme.

Asus through their ROG Academy Programme will train these gamers at a professional level so that they can represent the brand both locally and globally. This program will help the best gamers in India to showcase their talent and pursue gaming as e-sports players professionally. Asus will arrange this program with the support from AFK Gaming to provide adequate and proper tutelage to these budding gamers of India.

Asus ROG Academy Program

ROG Academy Programme is a one-year long program divided into four quarterly sessions. This program focuses on the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, one of the most popular games in esports. Registration for this program will go on from 1st February to 10th February 2021. After rigorous selection procedures, six final candidates will be selected. These final candidates will get Rs 1,00,000 after completing three-month training and a monthly stipend of Rs 15,000 with a bonus during these three months.

Asus ROG Academy Program
Image Source: asus.in/ROG-academy

Gadgets 360 spoke to Arnold Su, Asus India’s Business Head, and Siddharth Nayyar, Co-founder, and Director of AFK Gaming to get detailed insight about this initiative in India and about the selection process. Based on the questions Gadgets 360 asked them, here is more information about the ROG Academy Programme and the future of esports in India.

Growth potential in terms of the overall gaming market in India

According to Arnold Su (AS), computer gaming can be divided into two sections, hardware, and software. In India, PC gaming has been booming since 2016 increasing the sale of PC gaming units to almost 9 folds in 2020. And, when it comes to e-sports, there are around 17 million active spectators in our country. ROG is mainly focussing on investing in the youths of India. The gaming culture has improved as the data plans have become affordable but still, infrastructure for e-sports has huge rooms for improvements.

Siddharth Nayyar (SN) says that the gaming market, in general, is growing a lot and that people are switching from mobiles to PC gaming for a better experience. More engagement can be expected in the competitive gaming space as companies like Riot and Valve are investing in the e-sports space.

What does the program plan on achieving?

Asus has been conducting ROG tournaments in India since 2017 so there is a scope to find more talents. During the pandemic, the ROG Showdown tournaments attracted a lot of gamers. Due to limitations to choices of entertainment during the pandemic, many people switched to mobile gaming and the mobile gamers witched to PC. The gaming industry boomed during the lockdown which is expected to continue even after the end of the pandemic. This is the reason Asus decided to launch this academy program to train more games and make them skillful. This is a unique program in the e-sports space first started by Asus.

Asus ROG Academy Program
Image Source: asus.in/ROG-academy

The selection process for the program

Applicants from 16-years old and above can enroll through participants between 16-18 years need parent’s consent to participate. 50 candidates will be selected in the first phase after an online assessment based on the knowledge of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In the second phase, the selected candidates will play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in teams which will be hosted by a server called SoStronk. 20 candidates will be shortlisted for the third phase from where six top candidates will be selected for the program. The applicants will need a basic gaming setup for participation. Currently, the program is only focusing on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and other games will be added later. The gaming perspective is slowly changing for parents as well. E-sports will be added in the Olympics of 2024 which will motivate more and more gamers to pursue it as a professional training sport.

E-sports challenges in India

Though the overall e-gaming scenario is improving in India, infrastructure and broadband are the two major challenges. The company is trying to reach out to tier-3 and tier-2 markets in India for broadening the gaming base. Siddharth Nayyar also mentioned that gaming culture will skyrocket in India if these markets are exposed to ASUS gaming laptops and good internet.

Airtel 5G

Airtel 5G service demonstration goes live in Hyderabad

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On Thursday, Airtel gave a live demonstration of its 5G network in Hyderabad. The company claims that it is the first telecom service provider in India to successfully give a live demonstration of its 5G service. According to Airtel, the newly launched 5G network has the capability to operate over the existing network technology of both mid-bands and sub-GHz bands.

Yesterday, the company successfully operated both 5G and 4G concurrently over the existing liberalized spectrum in the 1800MHz band through the Non-Standalone (NSA) network technology. (Gadgets 360) Airtel 5G service will increase the speed of existing technology by 10 times with 10 times latency and 100 times concurrency. This will help in improving the overall user experience from attending online calls to downloading movies and TV shows.

More about Airtel 5G network

Airtel worked jointly with Ericsson, its equipment partner to bring this new experience to its users. The company has claimed that the 5G network has the capability to work over existing network technology hence can operate in mid-bands of range 1800MHz, 2100MHz, and 2300MHz. The 5G service will also operate in the sub-GHz band of frequency 800MHz and 900MHz.The existing Airtel users can use 5G services by software upgrades as said by the operator.

Airtel is now waiting for the permission from Department of Telecom (DoT) to deploy 5G services dynamically. As both the 4G and the 5G services can be operated through the same spectrum block, it will only take months for the company to make it available. Though the live service in Hyderabad was successful yesterday, Airtel didn’t mention any timeline about the commercial rollout of the 5G services. But, the CEO of Bharti Airtel mentioned that the company is waiting for government approvals. As soon as they have the permission and enough quantity of the right spectrum band, they will make the rollout of the Airtel 5G service.

Gopal Vittal, MD, and CEO of Bharti Airtel said that made a comment that India has the potential to become the global center for innovations in 5G technology. He further said that to build a strong 5G ecosystem all the devices, applications, and network innovation should come together.

Demonstration of Airtel 5G service

Airtel carried out the 5G demonstration in Oppo Reno 5 Pro and Oppo Find X2 Pro. The company claims that there are more than 20 different smartphones, 5 models, in India that are ready to use the Airtel 5G services. The existing users of Airtel don’t need to upgrade their sim cards for 5G usage unlike what we used to do earlier for changing sim cards to 3G or 4G network. Since both the 4G and 5G service can be provided from the same spectrum block, things have become a lot simpler and easier in the switching part. The live demonstration of the 5G network is only available in some selected stores in Hyderabad.

Airtel 5G
Image Source: gadgets.ndtv.com

Jio’s attempt to launch 5G in India

Apart from Bharti Airtel, its leading competitor in the Indian telecom market, Reliance Jio has also started testing its 5G services. Recently, the company has announced the advanced 5G testing it is carrying out this year. The company has also mentioned that very soon it will be bringing the 5G service of Reliance Jio in India probably this year itself. Though the operator has promised to test its 5G network at a scale, the company hasn’t announced a date yet for any live demonstrations like Airtel. It is very likely that Jio might roll out the 5G services in the second half of this year. In a recent statement made by Mukesh Ambani, Chairperson of Reliance Industries, he said that the company will make the 5G services available at an affordable rate everywhere in the country.

6 months notice period for 5G rollout

Previously, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has announced that any telecom service provider should give a one-year notice before launching any new technology using the seven frequency bands that will be up for auction. But, yesterday DoT reduced the one-year notice period to 6-months. For the auction of the seven frequency bands, the government has planned to put a rate of Rs 3.92 lakh crore.

Apple Powerbeats Pro

Apple Releases Special Edition Powerbeats Pro With ‘Black-on-Black’ Aesthetics

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Earlier this week, Apple’s audio brand Beats in collaboration with Fragment Design has launched a new and special edition of Powerbeats Pro. The company call this design “black-on-black” as these new wireless earbuds have a pure black finish featuring Fragment Design’s FRGMT branding and the lightning logo on the earbuds. Even the charging case of this Apple’s special edition Powerbeats Pro comes in a pure black monochromatic design. This new gadget is giving an enticing look but specifications are almost the same as the regular Powerbeats Pro. 

Special Edition Powerbeats Pro Specifications

Apart from the pure black aesthetic look of the new special edition totally wireless earbuds, it comes with an Apple H1 chip. This chip allows the independent function of the two wireless earbuds like changing the volume, sharing wireless audio, etc. The new Powerbeats Pro claims to have better battery life. These earbuds come with a built-in battery which will provide 9 hours playback time after a single charge. An additional 24 hours of playback time is provided by the bundled case. It will be better for the customers to understand the performance one they use it themselves.

The most catchy feature of this special edition Powerbeats Pro is the “black-on-black” design giving an extremely exquisite outlook to this gadget. Both the wireless earbuds and the bundled case have the branding of Fragment Design to make the look very exclusive and set it apart from the Powerbeats Pro already available in the market. There are four different sizes of earplugs so that the users don’t face any difficulty fitting them inside the ear. It also comes with an adjustable ear hook so that the earbuds don’t fall off. Each of the earbuds also has a built-in sensor that will stop the music if you put it out of your ear.

Image Source: apple.com

You can also use the phrase “Hey Siri” for an audio-based control of the earbuds. Since the device has the option of audio-based control it comes with dual beamforming microphones, motion and speech accelerometers. This helps in recognizing speech and background noise cancelation. The earbuds have USB A type charging port. Though Apple’s special edition Powerbeats Pro will be available from 29th January 2021, the number of units up for sale has not been mentioned by the company.

Price and availability

The special edition Powerbeats Pro is priced at $249.99 which is approximately Rs 18,200. You can order these earbuds directly from the Apple website starting tomorrow. Since the number of units to be sold is unknown, you can have a look at the regular Powerbeats Pro, in case you are planning to buy either of them.

The regular Powerbeats Pro

If you check out the Apple website, the company is currently selling the Powerbeats Pro at $199.95, $50 less from the original price. These are totally wireless high-performance earphones that also provides 9 hours of playback time with a single charge. Along with the charging case, you can listen to the audio for more than 24 hours. You can use the earbuds during workouts as these are purely sweat and water-resistant. It also comes with adjustable ear hooks which are lightweight and provides stability so they won’t fall off. The regular Powerbeats Pro also has a hands-free working system and has the Apple H1 chip for better independent performance. Apart from the exclusive design in partnership with Fragment Design, the performance of both the earbuds are almost the same.

More about Fragment Design

Fragment Design is a brand from the multidisciplinary Japanese artist and designer, Hiroshi Fujiwara. Fujiwara’s designs are famous in the fashion and lifestyle domain of the modern fashion world. He collaborates with some of the leading famous brands and magazines around the world like Vogue, Converse, Supreme, Levi’s, etc. His main designs and contributions are spotted in sneakers and menswear. Fragment Design has also collaborated with Starbucks before. It is very different and unique to bring such a brilliant designer onboard to the realms of tech thus blending it with fashion.

Google

Google to block search engine for Australian users if the government enforces new code

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Due to the new law from the Australian government, Google has said that it will shut down the search engine for Australian users if it has to pay for news. According to this new code the Australian government is trying to enforce, big tech companies like Google and Facebook have to pay local media companies for the right to use their content (Reuters). Google has mentioned clearly that if the Australian government enforces this new code, 19 million Australian users will have to face degraded search quality and YouTube experience.

Enforcement of the new code

The Australian government is preparing to pass a law that will make the big tech companies like Facebook and Google negotiate with the local publishers. This means that Google will now have to bargain a payment for these local channels and broadcasters whose contents are displayed in the Google search results. The government has further decided that if the companies among themselves cannot strike a deal then an arbitrator from the Australian government itself will fix a price.

Google is not even considering playing by the rules this time and hence completely declined to negotiate any price with the local publishers. The company has made a public announcement clearly sending the message that if the law is enforced Google search in Australia will degrade. Today, Mel Silva, Managing Director of Google Australia and New Zealand said at a public hearing that if this new code is enforced as law, Google will have no choice but to make Google search engine unavailable in Australia.

Further, Silva spoke about the impact of the new proposed law, that is, the News Media Bargaining code on Australian small businesses, publishers, and users as well. She said that the most concerning part of this new code is to pay for links and snippets in the search which will have a negative impact on the business as well as the digital economy. Silva also mentioned that the company has already reached News Showcase agreements with 7 publishers in Australia. So, with a few slights amendments in this new code, none has to sacrifice or adjust here a great deal to use Google.

How did Australia respond to Google’s reaction?

Since Google mentioned clearly that if the new law is enforced, Google will have no choice but to block the search engine for Australian users, Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia has made few sharp comments. In response to Google’s comment, Morrison said that in Australia they have rules for “things you can do in Australia.” He further mentioned that those who will abide by these laws are most welcome to work in Australia but the country will not respond to any form of threats.

Google

Apart from Morrison’s comment in response to what Google has said, many critical views have surfaced against these tech giants. Rod Sims, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair has said that these companies tend to strike a deal when they are in full power or have full control. And according to him “that’s not a commercial deal.”

Effect on Google

Google says that the search ads contribute to Google’s annual revenue and profit largely at a global level. So, if the company even offers a limited search tool for Australian users without any revision of this new code, it will be risky for the company. Google has called this new law very overly broad and hence it wants revision before the company is in a position to negotiate. The United States government has also asked the Australian government to scrap this new law and bring a more voluntary code instead. Australia proposed this new legislation last month after an investigation on the media market.

The government realized that companies like Google and Facebook have too much power in the media industry which might turn into a big threat in a democratic country. It is also noted that the statement from Google to limit its search engine for the Australian users came only hours after it struck a deal with some French news publisher. This content-payment deal is a three-year, $1.3 billion agreement to support publishers. (Reuters)

MSI

MSI is All Set to Introduce its Business Summit, Prestige, and Modern Laptops in India

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MSI the Taiwanese multinational tech giant is all set to target the Indian laptop market with its newly announced high-end laptops. Reportedly the company has upgraded its business laptop series, i.e., the Summit, Prestige, and Modern laptop series. MSI will be introducing these high-tech laptops to its Indian customers very by the end of January 2021. The three category laptops have got a total of nine laptops, i.e., Summit E15 and Summit B15 (Summit series), Prestige 14, Prestige 15 and Prestige 14 EVO (Prestige series), and Modern 15 and Modern 14 (the Modern series, a total of four variants).

According to a statement from the company, all the laptops will be equipped with the latest 11th generation Intel Core processors. MSI is a company known for its gaming laptops, but with this new launch, it has come up with non-gaming business laptops.

MSI Summit

All the new MSI laptops are thin and lightweight. Both the Summit laptops, E15, and B15 boast a thin bezel 15.6-inch 4K display and have got support for 100% Adobe RGB color gamut. The laptops are around 16.9 millimeters thick and weigh about 1.79 kilograms.

MSI Summit Series
Image Source: digit.in

These new business laptops from MSI support enterprise-grade security and include a 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650Ti graphic card. Along with the SSD storage, the memory is extendable up to 64GB. The Summit laptops come with two DDR4 slots. These high-end laptops have got high-end technologies like a TPM 2.0 module, a fingerprint reader, and an IR scanner camera. 

MSI Prestige

For the Prestige laptops, the display is different for all. The MSI Prestige 15 has got up to a 15.6-inch display, whereas the MSI Prestige 14 and 14 EVO laptops feature up to 14-inch display. The MSI Prestige 15 and 14 laptops have the 4K UHD display, while the 14 EVO has a full HD display. The Prestige 15 is around 16.9 millimeters thick and weighs 1.65 kilograms. On the other hand, both Prestige 14 and 14 EVO are 15.9 millimeters in thickness and weighs almost 1.29 kilograms.

Equipped with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q GPU graphics, the Prestige laptops include two DDR4 slots along with the two SSD storage slots. The RAM size for the Prestige laptops i.e., 15, 14, and 14 EVO are up to 64GB, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 16GB of RAM, respectively. All three laptops support M.2 SSD storage. Instant wake, quicker login, and faster Wi-Fi connection are the main highlights of these laptops.

MSI Modern

Lastly, the Modern laptops feature full HD displays, the Modern 15 having a 15.6-inch and the Modern 14 having a 14-inch display. These laptops are integrated with Nvidia GeForce MX450 GPU and come with up to 32GB DDR4 of RAM. Modern 15 has got two SSD slots, whereas the Modern 14 consists of a single NVMe SSD slot.

Price Range

Since the laptops are high-end business laptops, the price range for these laptops goes really high. The company has announced the price for its laptop for the Indian market. The price of MSI Summit E15 A11SCST starts at Rs. 1,79,990, whereas the MSI Summit B15 A11M will be available for a price range of Rs. 1,23,990. The MSI Prestige 15 A11SCX costs around Rs. 1,34,990, MSI Prestige 14 A11SCX at Rs. 1,28,990, and MSI Prestige 14 Evo will be available for Rs. 95,990. Lastly, the price of Modern 15 A11SB is set to be Rs. 95,990, MSI Modern 15 A11M will cost Rs. 70,990, and MSI Modern 14 B11SB costs Rs. 89,990. The MSI Modern 14 B11M starts at Rs. 55,990, making it the cheapest laptop among them all.

The company has partnered with Flipkart for the marketing and sale of the laptop in India, and the Summit E15 and Prestige 15 laptop models are the ones that will arrive in the Indian market first. These laptops will be available in India from January 24. The company hasn’t mentioned any dates for the launch of the rest of its laptops in India. But according to the reports, all of them will be available by the first quarter of the year. 

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.