On-screen fingerprint sensor

First on-screen fingerprint sensor –

The world’s first phone with a fingerprint scanner built into the display was as awesome as I hoped it would be.

There’s no home button breaking up your screen space, and no fumbling for a reader on the phone’s back. I simply pressed my index finger on the phone screen in the place where the home button would be. The screen registered my digit, then spun up a spiderweb of blue light in a pattern that instantly brings computer circuits to mind. I was in.

Such a simple, elegant harbinger of things to come: a home button that appears only when you need it and then gets out of the way.

How in-display fingerprint readers work

In fact, the fingerprint sensor — made by sensor company Synaptics — lives beneath the 6-inch OLED display. That’s the “screen” you’re actually looking at beneath the cover glass.

When your fingertip hits the target, the sensor array turns on the display to light your finger, and only your finger. The image of your print makes its way to an optical image sensor beneath the display.

It’s then run through an AI processor that’s trained to recognize 300 different characteristics of your digit, like how close the ridges of your fingers are. It’s a different kind of technology than what most readers use in today’s phones.

Because the new technology costs more to make, it’ll hit premium phones first before eventually making its way down the spectrum as the parts become more plentiful and cheaper to make.

Vivo’s phone is the first one we’ve gotten to see with the tech in real life.

Vivo’s been working on putting a fingerprint sensor underneath the screen for the last couple of years, and now it’s finally made one that’s ready for production.

The company had already announced last year it had developed the “in-display fingerprint scanning” technology for a prototype phone. That version used an ultra-sonic sensor and was created with support from Qualcomm.

The new version of the finger-scanning tech is optical-based and was developed with Synaptics. In a nutshell, how the technology works is the phone’s OLED display panel emits light to illuminate your fingerprint. Your lit-up fingerprint is then reflected into an in-display fingerprint sensor and authenticated.

It’s really nerdy stuff? all you really need to know is that phones with fingerprint sensors on the front are back again. And this time, without thick bezels above and below the screen.

Should e-sports come to Olympics ?

Should e-sports come to Olympics ?

For those who have been spending hours or rather wasting hours sitting in front of a screen all day and explaining the world how e-sports will make them famous one day are definitely in for a disappointment. That being said, let us also acknowledge that people are earning in the world of e-sports and if reports are to be believed e-sports earnings are at an all time high. Twelve of the e-sports are paying as much as $1 million as prize amount. This makes us wonder if e-sports should already be welcomed into Olympics. It was being speculated for quite some time that the growth of e-sports would make it go all the way to Olympics sooner than later. However, recently International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach suggested otherwise and received huge rebuke from video game fanatics all over the world.

A career already

E-sports are already becoming a prime time profession, with lead players of the most popular games earning tons of money. These sports are also gaining massive support as well as sponsorship by top companies like BMW. It is evident that youth is and will be attracted to it. Why not make it official already by introducing it in Olympics?

Physical fitness

Apart from the fact that the spirit of Olympics have always been about physical strength, mortar reflexes and fitness, it is worth noting that e-sports makes a person extremely lazy, in most cases obese and sometimes causes injury to hands and fingers of those who play them for prolonged period of time. This is absolutely against the spirit of Olympics.

More viewers

More viewers and more sponsorship would be attracted to Olympics if e-sports could be given a place. It would eventually lead to better prize money to athletes.

Violence

Even if e-sports would make it to Olympics, fans would be disappointed as the most popularly played video games would not be played. They are always violent, including explosions and killing.
It would be better if e-sports would rather have a separate event of their own like e-Olympics instead of mixing it up with the existing culture of sports at Olympics.

PRATYUSH

India Unveils Its Fastest Supercomputer – “Pratyush”

On Monday, January 8, 2018, India proudly unveiled its fastest supercomputer, ‘Pratyush’, an advanced high-performance computing system capable of delivering a peak power of 6.8 petaflops.

To put it in perspective, one petaflop equals one million billion (10¹⁵) floating-point operations per second, representing an enormous leap in computational capacity.

According to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pratyush ranks among the top four fastest supercomputers in the world specifically designed for weather and climate research. Its installation has propelled India’s position on the global Top500 list of supercomputers from the 300s to within the top 30, marking a major technological milestone.

Purpose and Functionality

The government had sanctioned ₹400 crore to develop a 10-petaflop machine aimed at advancing India’s weather forecasting capabilities. The core functionality of Pratyush lies in monsoon forecasting using dynamic simulation models.

These models simulate the weather patterns for months like June to September and predict real-time climatic behavior. With its immense computational power, Pratyush can now map Indian regions at a resolution of 3 km and global regions at 12 km, enhancing the accuracy of forecasts significantly.

The system is expected to be a game-changer in predicting natural calamities such as floods and tsunamis, and in monitoring monsoon behavior — crucial information for India’s agricultural sector. This advancement offers tremendous benefits for farmers, helping mitigate crop losses caused by unpredictable weather conditions.

Installation and Technical Setup

Pratyush has been deployed across two major institutions in India:

• 4.0 petaflops HPC facility at IITM, Pune

• 2.8 petaflops HPC facility at National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF), Noida

This distributed setup ensures continuous, high-speed data processing and efficient sharing of climate models between research centers.

Impact and Benefits

The installation of Pratyush marks a significant milestone in India’s commitment to scientific research and innovation. By accelerating computational modeling, the supercomputer will:

• Strengthen weather and monsoon forecasting

• Support disaster preparedness and management

• Boost research activities across multiple Earth Science disciplines

• Enhance the accuracy of early warnings for natural disasters

According to IITM, this increase in supercomputing power will have a profound impact on societal applications and academic research, giving a strong push to projects under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).

India’s Other Supercomputers

With Pratyush’s launch, India has entered the top 30 supercomputing nations globally. As of June 2017, the following Indian systems were also listed among the Top 500 supercomputers worldwide:

Conclusion

The unveiling of Pratyush marks a transformative step for India in the field of supercomputing and climate research. By combining massive computational power with advanced meteorological models, India is now better equipped to predict, prepare for, and respond to natural phenomena with enhanced precision — a major leap forward in both science and sustainability.

3D Touch

Force touch technology was not efficient in this upgrading world to resolve this problem 3D touch was introduced. Taking the Force Touch technology to an altogether new level, Apple launched 3D Touch on iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Being more sensitive than Force Touch, 3D Touch has been developed to work using capacitive sensors integrated into the display.
Working-

In functionality, 3D Touch is really smart. It allows you to carry out certain tasks instantly through quick actions. It is generally essential for performing the tasks we intend to use most often. You don’t need to launch an app to carry out actions. As for instance, if you want to take a selfie, you don’t need to launch the Camera app. Simply light press on the Camera app, you get the option to Take Selfie right on your Homescreen.
Functionality for Peek and Pop-
In order to master 3D Touch, you need to understand Peek and Pop. While the former refers to a light press, the later is a hard press.
If you want to peek at a message, you just need to press it lightly. And, if you wish to pop into the message for a full view, you need to press it a little more deeply. That’s how it works!
Differentiating between Force Touch and 3D Touch-
Force Touch is smart enough to detect the pressure applied on the screen. It can detect not just multiple touches on the screen but can also calculate the difference in pressure on various points of the screen.
However, while reacting to your touch, Force Touch is not as fast as 3D Touch. The lightning fast response of the 3D Touch is because of the fusion of capacitive sensors and strain gauges. This fusion is perfected by the Taptic Engine.
The Future for Touch Technology-

Knowing the significance of how much 3D Touch has been appreciated by iPhone 6s users; touch technology is going to get a lot better in future. With the amazing ability to let iPhone owners use their device with more convenience and faster, it is here to stay.
Android smartphone makers are also working to provide 3D touch on their phones, currently, the Nougat version based smartphones are providing 3D Touch.

The Increasing Reach of Virtual Reality (VR)

Whats is Virtual Reality?

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that makes users feel in a Virtual Environment with the help of computing systems and specifically designed software.

The term “Virtual Reality “ itself is comprised of two words i.e. Virtual and Reality .Virtual means “not real” but “like real” and reality. Thus Virtual Reality means anything that is near to reality. Technically Virtual Reality is described as “a computer generated three dimensional environment” in which a person can interact or manipulate objects of such environment.
As Wikipedia states

Virtual reality or virtual realities (VR), also known as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated reality, is a computer technology that replicates an environment, real or imagined, and simulates a user’s physical presence and environment in a way that allows the user to interact with it. Virtual realities artificially create sensory experience, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and smell.

How Virtual Reality is achieved?

In Virtual Reality (VR) with the help of computer technology a simulated environmen
t is created in which the computer is transformed into a gatekeeper to an artificial world. Unlike usual graphic experienc
e instead of viewing a screen in front of users and keyboard or mouse for input, VR places the user inside that sim
ulated environment. Users can also interact within that given environment and manipulate objects in the virtual world with their sense such as hearing, touching and watching. There are a range of systems that are used for this purpose, such as headsets, Omni-directional treadmills and special gloves. These are used to actually stimulate our senses together in order to create the illusion of reality.

Following are the main components of a virtual environment:

1. The visual displays that immerse the user in the virtual world.
2. The graphics rendering system that generates the ever changing images at 20 to 30 frames per second.
3. A tracking system that continuously informs the position and orientation of the user’s movements.
4. The database construction and maintenance system to build and maintain a detailed and realistic model of the virtual world.
5. A sound system that can produce high quality directional sounds and simulated sound fields.
6. Devices like tracked gloves with pushbuttons to enable users to specify their interactions with the virtual objects.

Span of Virtual Reality:

Virtual Reality can lead to a new exciting world of innovations and entertainment. Entertainment industry is Billion Dollar market where new technologies play major role to create a huge user base. Virtual Reality is getting popular nowadays for such an immersed experience in Gaming, Entertainment and training areas. Whether it’s an expensive, dangerous or impractical to do something in reality, VR makes it real for you.

VR is increasingly playing major significance in following areas:

• Architecture
• Construction
• Sports
• Medical
• Gaming
• Entertainment
• Cinema

Military training to Medical surgery training can be experienced more deeply than real. It will not be surprising if we say

Virtual Reality or Immersed System can change digital interface systems we see today.

IP Spoofing

I

What is IP Spoofing?

IP Spoofing is a cyberattack technique in which the attacker disguises their computer’s IP address to make it appear as if the data packets are coming from a trusted source. In simple terms, it means faking an IP address to deceive systems and gain unauthorized access.

This method allows hackers to hide their real identity and trick systems into believing that the data they’re receiving is from a legitimate or familiar device.

How IP Spoofing Works

An IP address uniquely identifies a device on a network. During IP spoofing, attackers modify the sender’s address field in the IP packet header to make it look like it’s coming from another machine.
When the victim system receives this packet, it believes it’s from a trusted source and may grant access or exchange data — which the hacker can exploit.

Basic Concepts

• IP (Internet Protocol): A set of rules that govern how data is sent and received over the internet.

• Spoofing: The act of impersonating another entity by falsifying information.

IP spoofing exploits trust relationships between connected systems. For example, if one server trusts another’s IP address, an attacker can spoof that trusted IP to gain access.

Types of IP Communication

• IP: Connectionless and unreliable (packets are sent independently).

• TCP: Connection-oriented (establishes a reliable connection before data exchange).

Blind Attack

In a blind spoofing attack, the attacker cannot see the responses from the target system. Despite this limitation, the attacker can still guess sequence numbers and establish a fake connection.

Steps in an IP Spoofing Attack

1. Select a target: The attacker identifies a victim system.

2. Find a trusted host: They locate a device that the victim system already trusts.

3. Disable the trusted host: The attacker makes the trusted system unavailable.

4. Forge sequence numbers: They create fake TCP sequence numbers to impersonate the trusted host.

5. Initiate a connection: A connection is made using the spoofed IP address.

6. Execute commands: Once connected, attackers can plant backdoors or run unauthorized operations.

Common IP Spoofing Attacks

1. Man-in-the-Middle Attack

The attacker intercepts communication between two systems, secretly relaying or altering data while appearing invisible to both parties.

2. Routing Attack

The attacker redirects routing information so that data travels through their own system instead of the intended route.

3. Flooding / Smurfing Attack

In a flooding attack, the attacker overwhelms the victim with fake connection requests.
In a smurfing attack, spoofed ICMP packets are sent to a broadcast address, causing all devices on the network to respond simultaneously — overwhelming the victim’s system.

Important Facts about IP Spoofing

• The IP protocol is inherently weak and does not verify the sender’s identity.

• Routers and nodes on the network path generally do not validate source IP addresses.

• It’s impossible to completely eliminate IP spoofing, but proper security measures can reduce the risk.

Disabling the Ping Command

The ping command, while useful for testing network connections, can also be exploited in Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks.
Attackers can flood a system with ICMP packets using ping, which consumes bandwidth and system resources, eventually making the victim’s system unresponsive.

Using Firewalls for Protection

Firewalls are an essential defense against spoofing attacks. They help by:

• Limiting traffic only to authorized services.

• Controlling access from both inside and outside the network.

• Filtering packets to block suspicious or spoofed data.

Common firewall tools include iptables, ipchains, and various commercial firewall solutions. For enhanced protection, organizations often use multiple layers of firewalls to monitor and secure network traffic effectively.

Conclusion

IP spoofing is a serious cybersecurity threat that exploits the fundamental weaknesses of internet communication. While it cannot be fully eradicated, awareness and preventive measures — such as using firewalls, disabling unnecessary network commands, and enforcing authentication — can significantly reduce the chances of a successful attack.

Written by:
Awadhesh Kumar
Jain Software Developers

Google Glass

What is Google Glass?

• Google Glass is a wearable, voice-controlled Android device that resembles a pair of eyeglasses and displays information directly in the user’s field of vision.
• Google’s project program for developing a line of hands-free,intelligent devices that can be worn by users as “wearable computing” eyewear. The first product release from Project Glass, Google Glass, was available for beta testers (U.S. residents only) to purchase in 2013, for $1,500 plus tax.
• Google Glass is a headset, or optical head-mounted display, that is worn like a pair of eyeglasses. It was developed with the mission of producing a ubiquitous computer.

Google Glass Features:

1. Record Videos, Take Pictures:

Just say the word and Google Glass will take a picture or record a video ` you will never have to touch the hardware.

2. Show Messages:

Google Glass will show you text messages as well as emails you receive and allow you to reply to them via voice commands.

3. Find Information:

If you are in the habit of Googling things a lot, you will find that your task has been made easier by the new Glass. You simply need to ask a question and the device will pull the answer from the internet.

4. Show Maps:

The widely used Google Maps are integrated into Glass, so that users will be able to chart the course of their journey or look up locations or establishments via voice commands.

5. Live Video Sharing:

Google Glass can show the world what you are seeing ` live! If you are attending a family function, your child’s school play or a concert, you can share the feed with your friends and family in real-time and make them a part of the experience.

6. Integrates Google Now:

Google Now, the digital voice assistant from the search giant, has been integrated in this device. It will keep track of your daily habits, such as when you leave for office or the route you take.

7. Translate:

This is a neat feature that may come in handy when you travel abroad. You simply need to ask Google Glass to translate a phrase or sentence from one language to another and it will speak that out.

 

Applications of Google Glass:

Google Glass applications are free applications built by third-party developers. Glass also uses many existing Google applications, such as Google Now, Google Maps, Google+, and Gmail.

Third-party applications announced at South by Southwest (SXSW) include Evernote, Skitch, The New York Times, and Path.

Awadhesh Kumar

Jain Software Developers