Overwatch has finally made its way to the Nintendo Switch, fulfilling the endless requests from me that Blizzard port its popular team shooter to Nintendo’s portable console. It’s not the first mainstream shooter to make the jump to the Switch: Bethesda has ported Doom and a few Wolfenstein games, and of course there’s Nintendo’s own Splatoon series and the ubiquitous Fortnite. But as an exclusively online, multiplayer-based competitive team shooter, Overwatch might be the least likely fit for the Switch, at least on paper. I’ve spent the last day or two playing the Switch port, and at first glance, that impression is correct. As a way to play Overwatch seriously, the Switch…
Author: Loknath Das
“Digital Interrupts” – Just like in an operating system, the biggest cost to outcomes, the flow of work and creativity of software professional is the context switch time at every task switch. Software professionals spend most of the day either looking at a screen or in close proximity of one, be it mobile phones in our pockets or at our bedside. While tools and technology aid to speed up, outsource and enable our minds – they also distract and constantly break our flow. Additionally, each of these interruptions is sometimes sought by us unconsciously. This is because the desire to…
Google has removed a pro-Hong Kong protestor game called The Revolution of Our Times from the Play Store, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. It marks the latest Hong Kong-related app to be pulled after Apple removed a crowdsourced mapping app used by protestors and Quartz’s news app. While the game has been removed, a cached version of the Play Store page is still available on Google search (at least for now). As an actual game, there doesn’t seem to be too much here beyond a basic text-based Choose Your Own Adventure-style narrative that tells the story of a protestor. In a statement released to The Wall Street…
Microsoft-owned GitHub will renew a $200,000 contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite concerns about the Trump administration’s policies, according to a leaked email. GitHub CEO Nat Friedman said in an internal email leaked to tech activist organization Fight for the Future that ICE purchased a license for a GitHub enterprise server in 2016, and that the purchase recently came up for renewal. In the email, Friedman said the company doesn’t have an agreement to provide professional services to ICE, and it “has no visibility into how this software is being used, other than presumably for software development and version control.” “NO…
Nobody comes to work jazzed about chasing after data. They simply want answers to their questions. That’s why Oracle is taking a new approach to analytics for finance pros, giving them tools that make it easier to stay informed about key financial measures. They can now set alerts on the most-relevant KPIs, review data through visualizations and narratives, and share their findings with colleagues via an app like Slack or WhatsApp—all from an app on their phone or laptop. T.K. Anand, Oracle senior vice president of analytics, told an Oracle OpenWorld crowd that the company’s new approach to analytics lets…
Aerial view to Dakar and shore of Atlantic ocean from observation deck of African Renaissance Monument through glass GETTY In a recent trip to Dakar, Senegal, I worked with a startup organization that was focused on bringing digital education to youth in sub Saharan Africa. As part of this assignment my team and I interviewed various schools, educators, administrators and parents in Senegal to understand the school systems in western Africa. What we found was that 65% of school children will eventually be employed in jobs that have yet to be created. What was seen as a key struggle is that…
Tim Swindle, 39, isn’t the kind of guy who loves climbing the corporate ladder. The Chicago-based entrepreneur would rather test his wits developing board games and startups. “I’m trying to avoid a desk job,” says Swindle. “Deep down, everyone wants to be their own boss.” In July 2011, the serial entrepreneur left a corporate job in commercial real estate to help launch the software startup PointDrive. By January 2014, he and a friend cooked up a board game, Utter Nonsense, a card game where players read phrases in funny accents, and launched it as a side project on the crowdfunding site…
Sangrur: A girl befriends a local resident on phone, calls him to Mohali and serves him sedative mixed in tea. She then accuses him of raping her and extorts Rs 25 lakh. A woman befriends a resident of Cheema, takes him to a village and compels him to get intimate with her. Later, four persons bundle him in a car and demand money. During the past six months, the Sangrur police have busted various gangs involved in extorting more than Rs 45 lakh from area residents. In a majority of these cases, girls befriended their targets through phone calls, Facebook…
This morning the FDA released two guidance documents relating to the regulation of various digital health software devices. The first is a draft guidance outlining categories of clinical decision support (CDS) products that would or would not require direct regulatory oversight from the agency. This is an update to a CDS draft guidance released in 2017, with the noteworthy addition of a risk-based categorization approach for determining enforcement over these tools. “The agency received feedback from many stakeholders advising us on improvements that could be made to better clarify the agency’s oversight of CDS products,” Principal Deputy Commissioner Dr. Amy Abernethy wrote in…
Chennai|New Delhi:Electronics manufacturers are seeking clarity from the finance ministry on the incentives and exemptions available to them in the new concessional tax regime according to top industry executives. Some of these companies are also seeking an extension of the 15% tax rate–announced for new manufacturing units –to existing manufacturing units as well. “We are in consultations with the Ministry to find out the applicability of various incentives enjoyed by the manufacturers in the 15% concessional tax regime,” an official of the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association, an electronics industry body, told ET. He did not want to be named.…