Monday, August 29, 2016

Trending now on Twitter: MakeABandSmaller

        Just another day at Twitter, where people around the world come together and participate in discussions, 140 characters at a time.

#MakeABandSmaller


         This hashtag started trending yesterday, with the objective of altering band names to make them...well, smaller.

Bringing down the numbers was popular:
When the summer gets too short...

 Sans Adam Levine?


One less blink.

 Who needs the extra pilots anyways?



The creativity was boundless:
When your imagination is can't handle dragons

 When Fleetwood jumps brands

 Breaking down the chemistry..

 If he was any smaller

 And this is the top tweet for the hashtag:



Some left the 'smaller' part altogether and went totally punny:
When you want romance but get the friendzone instead

 Because, of course.

 When you can't afford a Nickel...

If the park is crowded, you go for...

 Too bad, mom

 When you don't wanna be Chainsmokers but still dig their EDM:



Tweets on Zayn leaving One Direction was common sight:



I chimed in with a few tweets of my own:









       Those are my highlights from the hashtag! If you want to view the all tweets on twitter go here.
You can follow me on: https://twitter.com/AswinG1999

 Good day, folks!

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Best of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and more

       The internet never fails to amuse.



        Whether it be meme wars between fandoms , celebrities trolling each other on Twitter, or comments of poor taste getting burned down by netizens, the web is never devoid of interesting content. Ever.

         Gone are the days when webcomics was the best source of our daily LOLs from the internet. With Facebook crossing a garangutan 1.7 Billion users and other social sites like Twitter and Reddit growing bigger than ever before, online interactions between users is at an all time high. Combine that with the freedom of expression we receive online, and the stage is set for users to slingshot their opinions around across web and lock horns with netizens in intense debates on topics ranging from US politics to Console v PC gaming platforms. With the meme revolution converting every offhand picture or gif into the butt of jokes, we needn't search very far to find content that arouses curiosity, amuses, and sets us ROFLing with laughter any more.

        So I'm starting a new section in this blog, titled "Best of Social Media" where I bring in the best tweets, posts and reactions on trending topics scooped up from the cyber-social world.


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Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Life Reflections



        So I switched around some themes and widgets to make the blog cleaner, I believe it looks better than the 'we tried so hard to make it cool that things will break the moment you tinker with the source' feeling the previous dynamic template gave me. I've also renamed the 'Reads' section to 'Off-Topic', because that's precisely what it is.

         This is post, titled 'Life Reflections' is something different from what I usually post, and is a condensation of a constellation of thoughts that floats around in my head, and in the head of every typical teen, I imagine. If you're reading on, brace yourself for unnecessary philosophy, mindless twin-persona monologues and and hazy strings of thoughts that phases between deep comprehension and thoughtless blabber.

         We may be human beings, the most advanced organism on planet Earth. But at the core, we are animals created as the product of evolution, and at the most fundamental level our very purpose is to be born, perform actions that extend the survival of ourselves and our species, before eventually succumbing to biological decay. From such a perspective which, human lives don't matter at all, no more than lives of lower animals matter to us. But for the lives of the animals matter to themselves, and our on lives and what we do with it matter to us. After all, we're a mixture of carbon and hydrogen trying to find ways to incite happiness-inducing hormones in a time frame equal to a single axial rotation of a celestial sphere, not an omnipotent force that has complete comprehension of the full scale of the universe.


        And so we evolved. At a rate several times faster than any creature to walk the earth. We evolved from advanced primates to intelligent species capable of forming a stable society. Within a millennia, which is an insignificantly small period for evolution as a whole, we went from hunting deer with sharpened rocks to sailing across seas in warships to conquer new land. We were thinkers, adventurers and conquerors. Fast forward another one thousand years and we reach the present world of democracy, social structure and unfortunately, a sped-up lifestyle.

         Make no mistake, I'm not blaming the present society. I'm glad that my problems extend only to choosing between career options and not factions in a civil war. I'm glad I live in a time of peace without the threat of my world being torn apart by bombs falling from the sky. People have suffered, and some even continue to suffer from much worse things than an accelerated life around the world. But with this post I'm focusing on what is now considered the average life of an typical citizen of this planet.


         Too many of us wish if life had a pause button. I couldn't wait to be an adult when I hit my early teens, but now I just want it to stop. I don't want to know how people about to go past their youth feel about the same. Of course, the world might be full of opportunities and experiences waiting to be gained, once lost these don't come back, much like everything else in our day-to-day tasks. Once I decided not to attend a hands-on workshop on basic programming logic (Not as boring as it sounds) on the account of missing several days worth of classes at school. Most of my closest friends attended the workshop, and from everything I learned later, they had an absolute blast. I never stopped regretting the decision I made. That was neither the first nor is going to be the last decision I would regret. I'm sure that every one of us have similar experiences in life, of decisions that we would rue forever. It is, of course, impossible to take every opportunity that come by in life. But I now believe that that forgoing something that is done routinely for something else that breaks the monotonacity and promises memories that will last is worth doing.


        The present generation lives in a world of expectations and limited paths to walk through. Even if a soul is brave enough to walk the lonely, untrodden road, he is usually dragged down by the pressure to do what is expected; the pressure to be normal. Only a few take steps as a professional to breath life into his childhood goals. Fewer achieve them. The cornerstone of social imbalance is perhaps this bottling of youth into a limited spectrum. Those who can't fit in are simply rejected.

         Another aspect of our lives is the day-to-day duties that we carry out without question, that makes us slaves to a routine and turns our story into a dull stream that flows from day to day, week to week, month to month and renders the experiences that should stand out into warbled static in the background. Even if it does not involve anything special, slowing down our day is something imperative to do every now and then. I'm no specialist in living, so I can't give any advice as to how this can be done. Moreover, what 'slows down the moment' is largely dependent on personal characteristics and preferences. Blogging is a great past time that gets the parts of my brain rendered blunt by the routine of school cranking back to life. Watching sunrises and sunsets serves as a great reminder of the beauty of the world we live in. On cloudless nights, observing the beauty of the milky way and gazing at infinity is pure bliss. This is also mentioned in this Calvin & Hobbs cartoon that initially inspired me to put pen to paper (Okay, more like fingertips to keyboard) for this post.


        If we just get caught up in the flow, we kind of defeat the purpose of our existence. The material we learn in school, as often criticized, give us very little practical knowledge and just gets us a certificate at the end. Most of our toils in University are oriented to gain a good job. And why do we need a job? To earn money. While there are millions who work in jobs that mean so much more to them than a medium of earning their monthly paycheck, for a typical person the cash, privileges and social status that comes with a job serves as their only allure. Too many people work hard to create the right situation so they may enjoy their lives later, while missing out on everything happening in the present. A person may forgo all his enjoyments in his school and collage life to get placed into a A-level company. Then he may spend several years building up his bank balance, working 9-to-5 and overtime to achieve his targets. By the time he looks back, he has a good education, a good job, a safe financial blanket, but not an iota of youth left with him. To make things worse, the social hierarchy of economic classes has made a cruel competitive mentality that can lead to such a situation a necessity to achieve a minimum position in the society.


        So, I believe sometimes everyone needs to slow down, take a moment and reflect on their lives, and those of ones around them. Happiness is not meant to be something you get in little bursts , it is meant to be an emotion that should always accompany you. And if you feel lost or depressed like I have so many times, take a moment and pause your life. Spend some time alone. Go for a bike ride, meditate for a while, visit the beach during twilight or do anything that unplugs you from your daily worries. There is perhaps no better way to achieve a mindset that can solve our problems in a calm and controlled manner.

         I'm wrapping up by saying once again I'm no philosopher or expert in anything, just a teen who likes to think a lot, and I'm not even sure if I'm putting many of the things I wrote about in this post into practice myself. This post is a mix of personal experiences and things I believe are true in the real world, and I just felt it would be nice to put down my thoughts in my blog. If you did read the whole thing, well, thanks =)

        Do you think it's important to reflect on our lives now and then? Share your views and opinions in the comments below.
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Thursday, August 4, 2016

Steganography: Hiding text in image files

        So I have found enough time to record another video!

         This video shows you how to efficiently hide text in image files in simple steps, using a popular tool called StegHide. Steganography, as defined by Google is "The practice of concealing messages or information within other non-secret text or data." Playing around with steganographic tools is one of the favorite past times of computer forensic analyzers, and tools like StegHide has been a staple in stegging files for over a decade.

         The primary advantage that steganography offers over standard encryption is that a potential attacker has to detect that something is hidden/encrypted first. When a person stumbles upon a cipher or encrypted text, it is fairly obvious something is hidden within, and even the method of encryption is usually easily deducible. However, if the encrypted text is embedded in an image file, no one would recognize the hidden content unless they specifically analyse the image using various tools, something that usually doesn't happen.

         Many Linux distros ship with the StegHide utility installed in them, and if many more allows you to get it with a simple command. In this video, however, I shall use StegHide in a Windows system to hide text within an image file and apply a password lock. Only users who can use StegHide and know the password you set for the image can extract the hidden text from the image.

        Note that the procedure to use StegHide as described in this video is literally the same for Linux and Windows, with the only difference being the usage of Linux terminal over Windows command prompt in Linux systems.

        Although you won't exactly hide your information from expert forensic analyzers using StegHide, it is neat way to pass of hidden information while fooling most everyone trying to intercept it.

         Link to download page of StegHide: http://steghide.sourceforge.net/download.php

         If you found the video useful, don't forget to like and subscribe!
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Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Niantic's ignorance is destroying Pokemon Go




     3 weeks ago I made a post on Pokémon Go, calling it a revolution and proudly claiming that "Pokémon Go is definitely here to stay", regardless of the various glitches and server issues. The game has continued to remain one of the most hotly discussed topics in the world since then, but the reasons for the same has turned around 180 degrees. And here I am, putting up a post stating all the reasons why Pokémon Go has gone from the social gamer's dream to a party of hate and regrets. Needless to say, the post that follows can be summed up in one sentence: If NianticLabs, the developer of Pokémon Go, continues on their current path, in a few years we will be reading articles on how the ignorance of the developer crashed and burned the greatest revolution in smartphone gaming history.

Niantic underestimated the size of the Pokémon fanbase

      This was the first mistake Niatnic made. Almost every issue the game initially faced was attributed to the servers being overloaded with players. In a recent interview with Forbes, Niantic CEO John Hanke admitted that within two weeks the Pokémon Go userbase was as large as it was expected to get halfway through next year. While the game becoming a viral sensation and millions of players hearing of 'Pokémon' for the first time jumping on the rollercoaster was certainly unexpected, Niantic's lack of preparation created the first wave of problems for the game. It didn't help that Niantic didn't communicate at all. Many were frustrated by this, but most of us only expected Niantic to add resources and get the problem fixed ASAP. This seemed to be the case as server issues seemed to appear lesser and lesser, until...

 The GeoBlock
     

         Although the game had not been officially released in most areas of the world, millions upon millions of players downloaded the apk or changed their app store location to play Pokemon Go immediately after the initial release. This was going just fine, until one fine day half the world woke up and found that they could not play the game anymore. Niantic had imposed a GeoBlock on unreleased regions to stop the players from accessing the game, probably to reduce the server load. This move in itself is just fine and seemed sensible, except after the block, Niantic is simply refusing to release the game in the blocked regions. While players in the U.S, Europe and Oceania clamor and rant about the game being broken, some eagerly awaiting players in Asia and South America haven't even clocked a minute in the app. The number of countries the app got released in after John Hanke promised to "add new countries every day" at the San Diego Comic-con last week? Zero. This makes even less sense when you consider that Asia has been the largest market for mobile apps for quite some time now. Some users on /r/PokemonGo are going so far as to suggest Niantic is racist, with the game being released only in all white dominated areas so far, along with Japan and Hong Kong.

      To make matters worse, Niantic being Niantic has maintained a perfect silence on it's release schedule, as it has on everything else, adding fuel to the already mounting frustration. For all we know, John Hanke might be throwing darts at world map to decide where to release the game next. (But even then his aim would have to be really, really awful.). But the tragedy doesn't end there. Some countries are partially geoblocked, meaning the game can be played in some regions of one country while being blocked in others. So a massive amount of players are seeing their own friends and family play the game, hold down gyms, and collect enough Magikarp candies to evolve it into a Gyarados and shoot up their levels and combat points into the stratosphere while not being able to play themselves. If you've experienced anything close to this, you will know how dreadfully bad this feels. This in turn has lead to...

 GPS spoofers

      On a game that literally rewards you for moving around long distances, faking your GPS and playing the game while chilling in your house might be the ultimate sin. As is the case with all games, the presence of people who would rather rely on hacks than play the game the way it's meant to be played was inevitable in Pokemon Go. But thanks to Niantic, Pokemon Go has seen a massive wave of spoofers and bots in the past few weeks. Due to the geoblock, several players who simply cannot wait any longer are forced to spoof their location to play the game. In fact, the swing of the general opinion on the morality of spoofing going from "absolutely unacceptable cheating" to "pretty much okay since Niantic does not care about us anyways" over the past week in /r/PokemonGo's Asian community, is incredible.

      GPS spoofing is becoming common among trainers living in rural and suburban areas as well, since the game has a very poor distribution of PokeStops, Gyms and Pokemon nests as opposed to Urban regions where the density of PokeStops is so high that many can access them from within their homes or offices. Niantic has already started handing out temporary bans (and reportedly some permanent ones also) to spoofers, but in the end they have no one to blame but themselves, with the massive delay in release schedules giving players no choice but to either lose their interest and move on, or to GPS spoof their location. Niantic, of course, being Niantic, has not communicated and their stance on this is very much unclear. But seems like the global release will continue to be delayed, as their developers are busy giving us...

 Useless updates
     The very first update the game received added support for devices with x86 Intel processors (another major early issue) and Android N preview version. That was the last time Niantic did something right with an update. The next one, release amidst the chaos of server issues, contained "minor text fixes", addressed none of the major existant issues and rewarded the players with a mysterious 6-hour server crash that immediately followed. 

          However, the latest update released on 31st July has been the primary source of havoc among Pokemon players, and the one that made us all suspect that Niantic truly had no idea what they were doing. Apart from adding fancy post-creation character customization, the update removed the Pokemon tracker (more on that later), drastically dropped the catch rate for Pokemon (Upto 50%, according to some reddit users), increased the chance for Pokemon to break out of Pokeballs, and increased their flee rate, and made Pokeball mechanics much harder to use. (The amount of Pokeballs you get from PokeStops had been reduced in the earlier update.) That CP 74 Zubat that you would've caught in a single throw now takes 4-5 Pokeballs before you can get it. That is, if it didn't flee already. 

         In a single move that can only be seen as something to force players to buy Pokeballs with real money, Niantic has added a much hated "pay to win" aspect to the game. Not to mention the various other bugs that plague the game, like the game freezing when Pokemon are caught, has not been resolved yet, and several players also had their progress wiped for no reason at all. Niantic, yet again, being Niantic, has not communicated anything, has not said anything about the Pokeball mechanics, and doesn't even act like they're aware that an update that felt more like a feature-removing downgrade has been released. (They did put up this post to address the progress wiping issue for some users, though.)

      But if the Pokeball related changes got millions of trainers infuriated, here's what truly pushed the Niantic-hate over the edge:

 The ingenious 'fix' of the 3-step glitch

     Since the game's release, the objective of Pokemon Go has been to "Catch 'em all" and to hold down gyms, with many anticipated features like player v player battling and trading still yet to be added. One of the core aspects of the game and the primary reason that made the game enjoyable was the nearby Pokemon tracker, which showed how far a Pokemon was from you by displaying one step (very close), two steps (close) and three steps (not so close) next to the Pokemon's sprite. But just after a week following the game's release, the feature broke. Or it was removed to reduce server load as calculations that track the relative positioning of Pokemon to a player is likely resource-intensive. But all Pokemon now showed up as being 3-steps away, regardless of how far it actually was. The game quickly went from Pokemon hunting to walk around and pray you run into the Pokemon you want. Despite a core feature being broken, the community retained it's patience (At least, the majority did.), hoping for a fix soon. Niantic, however, in classic Niantic style refused to even acknowledge the existance of the bug. (John Hanke eventually admitted the bug when questioned about it at the SDCC last week.) 

         But the internet is full of amazing people, and several developers together created tools like PokeVision, which showed the location of Pokemon near your area and the time for which each pokemon would spawn, using data pulled from the app. Trainers flocked to it and used it to compensate for the broken tracker.


        But in the latest update, Niantic and it's devs came up with an ingenious fix of the tracker glich: They removed the tracker altogether. Instead of trying to fix the bug (Or add more resources and turn the feature back on), It was made a feature. Niantic, being Niantic, did not share any info about this 'fix' and everyone is still kept in the dark on whether this feature would be added back or not. But in a move that seemed farfetch'd even for Niantic, all tracking tools like PokeVision was simultaneously forced to shut down, leaving players around the world with no reliable method whatsoever to catch Pokemon. This pitifully stupid move was summed up in this tweet by former Pokemon developer Yang C Liu:

        Niantic also removed the game's battery saving feature, offering no explanation for it at all, and not even mentioning it in the release notes. It was only inevitable that there would be a...

 Community reaction


     The series of unfriendly and thoughtless changes from Niantic was not taken lightly by the Pokemon community. Hundreds of thousands of players left the game, stating that the game had degraded to a money-farming stunt without purpose or direction. Several more players from geoblocked regions decided not to hold out their hype till the game's release, which seemed nowhere nearby. Niantic's social media accounts and email contacts became flooded with people expressing their frustration. (Niantic's reaction was to disable comments on it's various social accounts instead of replying to the complaints.) The app's rating on various app stores plummeted, with over 300,000 one-star reviews logged in Google Play Store. The app's fate in Apple's app store was worse (The ratings of an app is wiped clean every time an update is released in the app store), with the rating falling below two stars. Niantic's response to this was re-releasing the update in the app store without any significant changes in order to wipe all the negative reviews. 

        Thousands of users also requested refunds on their purchases, and when players found out that emails to Niantic's support mail returned an automated reply that said they weren't monitoring their inbox, a violation of policies of both app store and play store, several reports were given against the company. The game fell from 1st to 4th place in the Japanese app store, where it was expected to remain at the top longer than anywhere else, with Japan being the birthplace of Pokemon.

 Conclusion
     The world witnessed the greatest reaction to a smartphone app release ever when Pokemon Go hit the stores last month. In such a short period of time, the world is also watching the greatest collapse that the stores have ever witnessed. Niantic's refusal to communicate at all is amazing and bizarre. Casual players of the game are angry at the removal of key features and updates that fail to address known issues, while more than half the world complains about the game not being released at all. With the huge amount of negative reputation the app has since gained and the massive player-bleed, more hardcore fans as well as marketing professionals are left open mouthed at Niantic squandering the potential of the app. When an app based on a unique concept gets taken up by tens of millions of players, you'd expect the developers to capitalise on it and make sure it retains it's playerbase and popularity right from the start. But with Niantic, all that's left now is a series of burning questions:
  • Is the removal of the tracker temporary or a permanent feature?
  • Are the new modifications to Pokemon catching here to stay?
  • Does employees at Niantic think Asia and South America are not part of planet Earth?
  • How can a team that can develop a revolutionary augmented reality app not know how to tweet?
  • Why isn't Nintendo or The Pokemon Company nonchalant about the whole issue, concerning themselves only about the upcoming release of Pokemon Sun and Moon?
  • Will we have to wait till next year's comic con before we get something useful out of John Hanke?
  • Will the phrase "pulling a Niantic" be used to refer to companies that squander concepts with huge potential in the future?
We won't know the answers of course, because Niantic being Niantic, won't tell us.


Niantic's statement
     Since the writing of this article, Niantic, much to the surprise of everyone, has released a statement on it's official Facebook page:

     While the statement itself doesn't solve anything, Niantic finally making an attempt to communicate with it's player base is refreshing. Although the various other bugs and the Pokemon catching mechanic modification is not mentioned in the post, we now know that the tracking feature is likely to be added back in the future. And Niantic are apparently aware of the existence of the continents of Asia and South America. While a time frame of release would have been nice, this gives us hope that the game would eventually be released globally.

         In a single Facebook post, Niantic has alleviated large amounts of frustration of the Pokemon Go playerbase. Hopefully, they have learnt their lesson and will continue to keep the trainers updated, instead of leaving us in the dark again.
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