Vivo V19 launch reportedly delayed due to the Coronavirus outbreak

Vivo will be launching the Vivo V19 in India soon. The launch date was set for March 26. The phone was made official in Indonesia last month. However, that was a rebranded version of the Vivo V17 that was launched in India a few months back. The V19 that will be launching in India is expected to be different than the Indonesia model. Now, the launch has reportedly been delayed by the company. There is no official confirmation on the new launch date. However, the phone could be launched in the first week of April.

The teaser posted on Twitter showed the silhouette of the Vivo V19. Further, the dual hole-punch is clearly visible in the photo. The handset is said to be powered by the Qualcomm 712 SoC. For reference, the Indonesian model packs the Snapdragon 675 chipset. According to previous rumours, Vivo V19 will feature a 6.44-inch full-HD+ Super AMOLED display with a 20:9 aspect ratio. It is tipped to come with 8GB of RAM. Moreover, the handset is said to come in two storage options: 128GB and 256GB. Leaks suggest that the device will be available in Piano Black and Mystic Silver colour variants.

As for the optics, the Vivo V19 could sport a quad rear camera setup: a 48MP primary camera + an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens + a 2MP macro sensor + a 2MP depth sensor. On the front may lie  32MP + 8MP dual selfie shooters. The latter is expected to be a wide-angle sensor. It is rumoured to pack a 4500mAh battery with support for 33W fast charging technology that the company calls Vivo Flash Charge 2.0.

Vivo V19 price in India could be around Rs 25,000.

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PUBG on PC update 63: Adds changes to weapons and Team Deathmatch

For all you gamers staying home during this lockdown, here’s some sweet, sweet news for you guys. PUBG on the PC has just been hit with update 6.3 as it went live last week. You’ve got a few new changes to weapons and Team Deathmatch mode as well as a delicious Panzerfaust, which was previously teased. Weapons have now been rebalanced including one that is only found in Care Packages. You can expect the usual bug fixes as well as changes to invincibility as it relates to Team Deathmatch. 

If you were one of the players being bombarded by a player with invincibility you’ll thank the developers for this update as it only works before the player jumps into the game. Invincibility will not work when the player is in-game. 

The Panzerfaust also makes its debut as the developers have been teasing the weapon for some time now. Like its real-life counterpart, the weapon is rather devastating but lacks the speed to really stick it to the enemy as it can actually be dodged if you’re fast enough. Look, it’s still a powerful weapon that’ll lay waste to whatever you’re firing at but it does have a few drawbacks which you find out once you actually use the weapon. 

Other changes include a red dot sight and increased damage for the Tommy Gun in Team Deathmatch. The UMP-45 also gets a bit of a push, spec-wise with the M249 moving from Care Packages and losing a little bit of steam, because of that switch. 

Check out all the updates, changes and logs, right here. 

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Coronavirus prevention: Indian government asks Facebook, Tiktok and other social media platforms to stop the spread of fake Coronavirus news

We’re moving into the next stage of the Coronavirus outbreak as many states in India have finally gone under lockdown up until March 31. It’s been a tough and strange couple of months and it doesn’t help matters that there is a ton of fake news and misinformation being spread across social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok and more. Doing its part to stop the spread of fake news, the Indian government has written to companies such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, TikTok and ShareChat to clean up their respective platforms of misinformation during this trying time. 

The advisory states, “Coronavirus the outbreak has become a global concern and it has been reported that there is a trend of circulation of misinformation and sharing anonymous data related to the virus, creating panic among the public”. The government has even asked social media platforms to look into starting more awareness campaigns and to spread and promote the correct information and news regarding the outbreak. 

In a country of a billion people, there are bound to be miscreants and trolls looking to spread fake news. Experts have said that this is already huge flow of fake news and misinformation on Facebook and even on WhatsApp. The government is trying its level best to curb this. 

In an interview with IANS, Pavan Duggal, one of the county’s leading cyberlaw experts also said, “Dedicated cybercriminal groups are spreading panic and the Indian government is helpless. Daily supplies are getting over fast as cybercriminals piggybacked on Dr. Trehan's popularity to send fake letter out and created panic.” 

In a bid to curb the spread of fake information, Google has just launched a Coronavirus Search Hub and you can read more about it, here. 

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Indian Government launches WhatsApp Chatbots to create awareness about the Coronavirus

The internet is full of misinformation about the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. The government of India is working at ensuring the right information is sent to people about the disease. For this, the government of India has launched a WhatsApp chatbot called MyGov Corona Helpdesk that gives users information pertaining to the Coronavirus. The chatbot has been built by a Mumbai-based firm called Haptik Technologies. Reliance Jio acquired Haptik Technologies last year. 

“The ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk’ has been engineered to fight rumours, educate the masses and bring a sense of calm to the current chaos-like situation. We are committed to assisting the government with all our possible strengths and resources and hope that this chatbot can help the GoI spread the right information across the nation,” Aakrit Vaish, co-founder and chief executive of Haptik, told TechCrunch.

So how does the app work? Well, you can simply send a “hello” message to +919013151515 or click here to get started with the chatbot. Once you say hello, you are greeted with a message that reads, “This is the Government of India's Coronavirus (COVID-19) Helpdesk to create awareness and help you and your family stay safe.” You also receive an email ID and emergency numbers you can use to contact for any emergencies. Using the assigned alphabets, you can also get answers to some common questions. 

A. What is Coronavirus and what are its symptoms? B. How does Coronavirus spread? C. How to reduce the risk of Coronavirus? D. Professional advice By AIIMS-Director E. Know more on Coronavirus (including District Wise Reported Cases) F. Where to get help?

We spent 5 minutes chatting with the bot, and for the most part, we got all the right answers. Typing the name of a state showed us a PDF that counts the currently registered cases in that state (although the information looks to be a bit outdated). 

Asking the question, “How to reduce the risk of Coronavirus?” We were given a list of Youtube videos talking about how to wash our hands properly, how to sneeze, maintaining distance and a couple of documents about best practices. Safe to say, the information being provided are a set of guidelines, rules, and information people can rely on without worrying about the source as this information is coming straight from the government. 

In addition to the government, service providers are looking to help those working from home. BSNL and MTNL are offering users working from home additional data. You can read more about that here. Google has added a Coronavirus search hub. You can read about that here. In this state of panic, there are those looking to exploit the vulnerable. You can read more about the cyberattacks during the times of Coronavirus here.

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Redmi K30 Pro price, storage, and colour variants appear online ahead of launch

Redmi is all set to launch the Redmi K30 Pro alongside its Zoom Edition tomorrow, March 24. However, a bunch of information has leaked online. The company has been teasing the phone for quite some time now. Hence, we know almost everything about the handset. Xiaomi Product Director Wang Teng Thomas had hinted in the recent past that the pricing of the Redmi K30 Pro will begin at over 3,000 Yuan (~$422). The latest leak says that Redmi K30 Pro will be priced at 3,699 Yuan (~$521) for the 8GB + 128GB model. Moreover, the Zoom Edition will be priced at 3,999 Yuan (~$563) for the same configuration.

Popular tipster Ishan Agarwal has teamed up with 91mobiles to reveal the RAM, storage and colour variants of the Redmi K30 Pro and K30 Pro Zoom Edition smartphones. The Redmi K30 Pro is said to be made available in Moonlight White, Sky Blue, Purple and Space Gray colour options. It could launch in two variants of 6GB RAM and 8GB RAM. Storage configuration remains at 128GB for both the RAM options. Further, the Redmi K30 Pro Zoom Edition could be launched in three configurations: 8GB RAM + 128GB storage, 8GB + 256GB and 12GB + 512GB. The prices of the latter two variants are not known yet.

Redmi has already teased the presence of a faster UFS 3.1 storage and LPDDR5 RAM on the phone. It is claimed to deliver write speeds of up to 750 Mbps on the device. Redmi chief Lu Weibing says UFS 3.1 provides a greatly improved experience over the existing UFS 3.0. Further, it is teased to come with LPRDD5 RAM. Another teaser shows that the Redmi K30 Pro will have custom VC liquid cooling technology. It is tipped to provide a promising heat dissipation performance using a 3,435 square millimetres of a liquid-cooled heat sink. 

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Coronavirus Cure: Users donate more than 7 supercomputers worth of processing power to find cure

A few weeks ago, Folding@Home announced that they were going to prioritise the Corona Virus projects over their distributed computing network. Since then, thousands of users across the world have come together to donate their computing power to the project. According to the latest statistics, there are 474 PetaFLOPS of computing power dedicated to the Corona Virus project.

To put that number into perspective, Summit, the most powerful existing supercomputer, has peak compute power of 148.6 PetaFLOPS. The next most powerful supercomputer, Sierra has a total peak computation power of 125 PetaFLOPs. The total computing power being used by Folding@Home is more than the top 7 supercomputers combined. The team also shared that before they started working on the Corona Virus project, they had roughly 30,000 users working concurrently around the globe, but that number has ballooned to over 400,000. Its not just every-day users donating their computing power towards this good cause. While companies across the world donate their servers towards solving the Corona Virus pandemic, IBM has also pledged Summit’s compute power to do the same.

Tracking the Spread

The Corona Virus originated out of Wuhan, a province in China, but has since spread rapidly throughout the world. According to the data collated by Johns Hopkins University, there are some very interesting data points for the spread of the virus. For example, the spread of the disease in China had slowed down post-February 14, with February 13 being the biggest spike. This is because according to the medical data collected, only 373 cases were reported on February 12, but on February 13, the number of reported cases jumped to approximately 15,100.  

The number of reported cases of COVID-19 has grown in the month of March

While China was the epicentre for the viral outbreak, we see the bell curve shift from January to March in a very interesting manner. While China dominated the number of reported cases for January and much of February, the month of March has mostly been dominated by reported cases in Europe, mainly Italy. As of today, the number of reported deaths due to Corona Virus in Italy has exceeded the number reported out of China. However, the number of confirmed cases of infection is still the highest in the Hubei province of China (67,800) followed by New York (16,916). In fact, the highest number of reported cases continues to be out of China and the United States of America, as per Johns Hopkins’ data. You can see their extremely informative page on the matter here.

The Spread of COVID-19 in Italy

The Urgency for a Vaccine and a Cure

Medical agencies around the world started tracking the COVID-19 outbreak around the middle of January, and since then, the number of reported cases worldwide has only continued to grow. For example, the highest number of reported cases in the Month of January was 2700, while in February, that number rose to 15,100. The 23 of March saw 32,600 new cases of COVID-19 being reported globally, with steady growth in the outbreak being recorded since the 14 of March. Clearly, the viral infection spreads at an incredible rate and while the mortality rate may not be very high, it is still a risk. At the beginning of the outbreak, it was estimated that the virus has a 1 percent mortality rate but going by the numbers presented in Italy so far, the virus’ mortality rate has reached nearly 10 percent. Other countries with a significantly higher number of reported cases do not exhibit such high mortality rates, but the rate of spread of infection is incredibly high. This is the reason for a vaccine and a cure. The Vaccine helps arrest the spread while the cure helps quash the number of infected.

Italy has reported the highest mortality rate out of all nations

Enter Distributed Computing

The challenge with creating a vaccine or a cure for anything viral is to find a particular spot on the molecule of the virus where the medicine or vaccine molecule can attach itself. In the case of a vaccine, this would render the virus inert. However, it all starts with finding an opening. The same team that’s working on COVID-19 had in the past successfully found druggable sites in the Ebola virus, using the same distributed computing method. At the time of the outbreak, Ebola was considered to be non-druggable, but through the use of computer simulations run over a distributed computing network, the team was able to achieve something that was thought impossible. In terms of COVID-19, the team has made some progress in mapping the motion of the spike protein for Coronavirus.

How can you help

If you own a computer, you can help. IT doesn’t have to be super high-end or anything. Currently, COVID-19 work units do run off of the GPU, so if your system does not have one, then chances are you won’t be assigned a COVID-19 related work unit. We have an excellent guide on how you can contribute, which you can read here.

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Lockdown: Popular Multiplayer Games You Can Play With Friends and Family During Coronavirus Outbreak

Coronavirus has caused several areas to be locked down and people are forced to stay home or work from home. Playing online games can be one way of getting rid of the boredom and stay in touch with your near and dear ones during lockdown.

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