Call of Duty: Warzone Crosses 30 Million Players in 10 Days

Call of Duty: Warzone has hit 30 million players milestone within 10 days of the game's release across various platforms.

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Google IO 2020 including livestream cancelled due to coronavirus

After some speculations, Google I/O 2020 has been officially called off because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Google Developers Twitter account issued a statement about the tech conference getting cancelled, adding to a growing list of events that are cancelled or postponed.

“Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees and local communities — and in line with ‘shelter in place’ requirements by the local Bay Area government — we sadly will not be holding an I/O event in any capacity this year,” the tweet reads.

“Right now, the most important thing all of us can do is focus our attention on helping people with the new challenges we all face. We’ll continue to do everything we can to help our communities stay safe, informed and connected,” the tweet added.

Previously, Google had said that it will be cancelling the on-ground sessions of I/O 2020 and a live stream will take place instead. Going by the latest update, the anticipated tech conference now stands completely cancelled including the livestream.

Even going ahead with the livestream would have needed people congregating and considering the speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading, it is prudent of Google to call off the event altogether. With no live stream, it could be possible that Google will make announcements regarding the Pixel 4a series and Android 11 via press releases.

Similarly, Apple has also called off a physical event around WWDC 2020 and will be holding a livestream scheduled for June. However, it won’t be surprising if Apple also calls off this year’s developer conference considering how rapidly the situation is evolving.

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Bethesda bypasses its Denuvo DRM for Doom Eternal

Doom Eternal has been one of the most hotly anticipated games of 2019, till it was delayed to 2020, making it one of the most hotly anticipated games of 2020. When the game finally launched on March 20th, Bethesda apparently goofed up and bypassed its own Denuvo DRM.

Those who bought and downloaded the game via Bethesda’s own launcher found a pleasant surprise waiting for them in plain sight. Bethesda has pushed out a DRM-Free version of the Doom executable in a folder labelled “original” alongside the locked-down version. The discovery was first reported by users on Reddit who noted that the 67MB DRM-free executable could replace the DRM-protected file and the game would play without any issues. What this means is that pirates will have one less thing to crack in their efforts to pirate the game, all thanks to Bethesda themselves. Bethesda did push out a patch shortly after reports surfaced, which seemed to remove the DRM-free executable, but the cracked genie is out of the bottle. The game, as per reports, still requires you to log into a Bethesda account and be online for the first run, another thing that’s reportedly been cracked.

This is not the first time Bethesda has made such a mistake. Last year the company launched Rage 2 and left the unprotected exe file amongst the downloaded files. Bethesda removed Denuvo DRM from the Steam version of the games promptly a few days later.

Denuvo itself is a rather controversial DRM system, with much evidence to show that it actually adversely impacts game performance. We’re not just talking frames per second, but also load times and latency. Extreme Tech had tested out various games with and without Denuvo and concluded that in every single instance, Denuvo was adversely impacting every aspect of the game’s performance. This was attributed to Denuvo’s high CPU usage and excessive write operations onto storage drives. Denuvo has denied the claims, but people’s findings are to the contrary.

Doom Eternal (Review) is another masterpiece by the good people over at ID Software and definitely deserves your money. It is rare for a sequel to even better than the original, and in this case, the original pales in comparison to its sequel.

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AMD and Intel CPUs to face tough compeitition from unexpected player

For the longest time, Intel’s dominance in the CPU space, especially the server CPU space, remain unchallenged. Then AMD came along with its EPYC CPUs and turned Intel’s world upside down. EPYC chips were not only cheaper, but offered more bang for the buck than whatever Intel had on offer. Now, a third player has entered the market, ready to upset the balance once again. The company is Amazon.

Back in 2015, Amazon had acquired Annapurna labs, an Israel-based company in order to pursue its ambitions of a home-grown chip to power its AWS servers. The result of that acquisition is the Graviton2 processor, a surprisingly good chip for Amazon’s server environment. The Graviton2 is a 64-core processor with a clock speed of 2.5GHz and 32MB of cache. The chip supports 8X DDR4 memory at 3200MHz, but perhaps the most interesting thing about the chip happens to be the fact that its an ARM-based processor and not x86. The Graviton2 uses ARM’s Neoverse N1 cores, which are a derivative of the A76 cores that we saw in some of the best performing smartphones last year.

Anandtech tested the chip out in its intended environment and compared it against AMD EPYC 7571 and the Intel Xeon Platinum 8259CL. Since server-side performance is all about the cost, AnandTech tested the three chips in terms of their performance-per-dollar. Turns out, Amazon’s Graviton2 chip offers almost 40 percent better performance per dollar. This was verified by AnandTech by running various SPEC tests on each platform, with the time taken for completion converted to hours. Then the number was multiplied by the cost per hour of running that particular server, yielding the cost per workload number. In each instance, Amazon’s chip is 40 percent more cost-effective than Intel or AMD.

ARM has had ambitions for datacenter chips for a long time now, and with the Graviton2, those ambitions might finally be realized. If AnandTech’s findings can truly be translated into real-world performance, it would mean serious disruption in the data center space, one bigger than the one brought by AMD.

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Xiaomi surpasses Huawei in global smartphone shipment for the first time

Huawei has been struggling from the aftermath of the U.S. ban, and while the company reported a stellar 2019 financially, February 2020 has not been kind. For the first time, Xiaomi has overtaken Huawei in terms of who sold more phones

The numbers are provided by Strategy Analytics, who report that Huawei conceded its third-place to Xiaomi, but by a very small margin. Huawei sold 5.5 million units while Xiaomi managed to sell 6 million, making its margin of victory slim, but significant. The report also shows Samsung in the number 1 spot with 18.2 million units sold while Apple was in its comfortable number 2 spot with 10.2 million units sold.

While the February numbers might peg Huawei on the losing side, the picture is quite bleak for everyone. Last year, February saw 99.2 million units move, whereas this year, OEMs were only able to move 61.8 million units, a near 40 percent drop. The slowing sales are being attributed to the Corona Virus rampage, which has impacted every rung of the ladder, starting from supply chain to the very consumer. Even as the world moves towards recovery and markets start to balance out, Huawei’s fate may still be in the red. The U.S. government’s ban on Huawei sees the company project sales to drop by another 20 percent for the year 2020, and that projection was given before the Corona Virus hit.

In a bid t to remain relevant and competitive, Huawei set out to create its own core services known as Huawei Mobile Services, an alternative to Google Mobile Services, which its phones no longer ship with. The lack of GMS would mean no access to Google’s services, and most importantly, no access to Play Store. With HMS, Huawei hopes to create its own app ecosystem and has been luring developers with the promise of high revenue share and support for development and distribution. It would appear that HMS may not be the perfect solution to Huawei’s problems.

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WHO opens COVID-19 hotline on WhatsApp to counter misinformation and keep everyone updated

A grip of panic is sweeping over the world as the covid-19 disease has brought countries under lockdown with thousands dying due to the contagious virus. Amidst the fear and panic, a lot of misinformation is also doing the rounds and to bust some myths and answer people’s doubts WHO has opened up a WhatsApp hotline.

WhatsApp has gained notoriety for being a hub of misinformation and rumour-mongering and that is exactly where the World Health Organisation (WHO) has set up camp to clear people’s doubts about coronavirus.

To engage with the WHO bot on WhatsApp, add +41 79 8983 18 92 to your contact list and send a WhatsApp message. The bot will automatically register you and give you the option to ask questions which the bot will do its best to answer.

Apart from answering general queries about keeping oneself safe from the virus, the WHO bot on WhatsApp will also keep updating people about the spread of the virus. You can send in your queries using a numbered query system similar to using a USSD code to check mobile balance. Emojis are also allowed for this.

Available info from the bot include the latest data about the virus’ spread, preventive measures and a fact sheet that busts common myths about the virus. You can also donate some money to the cause if you are feeling generious.

 

To receive updates on #COVID19 from WHO add this number— +41 79 893 18 92 to your contacts and send a @WhatsApp message. You’ll automatically be registered to receive updates and also have an option to ask for more information as shown below. pic.twitter.com/WXaGd88AGf

— WHO Uganda (@WHOUganda) March 20, 2020

 

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BSNL is providing free 5GB daily data under WorkHome broadband plan

To mitigate the effect of coronavirus, employees are working from home, which in turn has given rise to the remote work home culture. While usage of the apps for remote work is rising, it will require a lot of extra data for employees to accomplish their work. Hence, to help the remote work culture, BSNL has introduced a new plan for its subscribers who are working from home. The ‘Work@Home’ broadband plan from BSNL will give users 5GB of daily data. It will provide speed up to 10Mbps. Moreover, it will be free of cost. The new plans is applicable across all networks in India, including the Andaman and Nicobar region.

However, the data will only be made available to users with a landline connection. While the speeds during the 5GB free data will be 10Mbps, once the limit is crossed, users will still have access at limited speeds. The limited speed will be 1Mbps. Hence, there is no FUP limit on the plan. The more the number of people working from home, the better. Thus, it will help people in social distancing. BSNL’s well-thought-of plan will help a lot of people to work from home.

The BSNL Work@Home plan comes with a 5GB daily per day at 10 Mbps speeds and unlimited data at 1 Mbps speeds. Further, there is no installing or monthly charges involved with his plan. However, this plan can only be availed by existing landline users. Hence, those who do not have a broadband connection yet, won’t be able to take advantage of the new development. With this plan, BSNL eyes to convert the existing landline users into broadband users and avail the free data benefits. Hopefully, the move from government telecom operator will encourage more people to work from home. 

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