Explaining how wildfires begin:

According to climate experts, harsh weather patterns and heat waves throughout the state was the cause behind California’s wildfires. The highest temperature in Death Valley (a desert valley in Eastern California) was 54°c. And, for the first time in two decades, the state experienced blackouts as people sought to cool down their houses, which stressed the power grids in the state.

At that point came a typhoon and lighting that prompted little flames over the Bay Area and California. Shortly the temperature decreased, and it became windy, carrying fires to other areas in the state and causing a lot of devastation and damage.

Officials have said that the California wildfire was sparked by a pyrotechnic firework used at gender-reveal party.

The party was reportedly planned by a couple expecting a child, to announce the gender of their child to their friends and relatives gathered at the El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa. Local officials said they would wait until the fire was out before determining whether to press charges against the organizers of the party. They could be forced to offset the costs incurred in attempting to suppress the fires.

Devastation:

There were 28 major wildfires burning across the state as of September, 14. This includes the August Complex Fire, which started on Aug. 17 and has since burned over 471,000 acres, making it the largest fire on record in California.

Smoke particles are just the right size to scatter out blue light before it reaches your eyes, leaving behind yellows, oranges and reds.

The suffocating heat wave, along with powerful seasonal winds, has left the West Coast extremely vulnerable to lightning strikes, sparking thousands of fires. Spread into Oregon, the fires have forced mass evacuations.

According to the National Interagency Fire Centre, these fires have destroyed a total of 4.5 m acres i.e an area greater than Connecticut and marginally less than Wales.

As of 14 September, California has recorded at least 24 fatalities from these fires and thousands of residents are under evacuation orders, with more than 14,500 firefighters currently fighting the 28 major fires in the state.

According to IQAir.com, the smoke emissions from wildfires left Oregon’s largest city, Portland, with the worst air quality in the world.

Investigation:

This month, a NASA aircraft armed with a powerful radar took to the sky, launching a research program to learn more about the wildfires that have scorched vast California regions. The flights are used to locate damaged buildings in the fires while also monitoring burn areas which could be at risk of landslides and debris flows in the future.

Equipped with the Uninhabited Air Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) instrument, the C-20A jet began flights from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center near Palmdale, California, on Sept. 3.

The UAVSAR radar pod is attached to the aircraft’s bottom and is frequently flown over an area to measure tiny surface height adjustments (a few millimetres, or quarter inches) with incredible precision. Also, the smoke-penetrating instrument is particularly useful in tracking burn wounds, since radar signals bounce off vegetation in a somewhat different way than they do off freshly burned soil.

There has been a widespread debate of whether there were poor fire control measures or inadequate efforts to counter climate change that has been forecasted by our scientists from long.

According to BBC, nine of the ten warmest years have been recorded since 2005, and this week the UN warned that the five years from 2016 to this year are expected to be the hottest period ever recorded. Since 1900, both Oregon and California have warmed up by more than 1°c.

But have you ever wondered how exactly these “fast” charging methods actually work. Let’s get started to understand….

The primary purpose of a fast charger is to deliver deliver a higher power input to the mobile phone. To do this function, both the current and the voltage need to enhanced. Previously, USB chargers would deliver, 0.5 Ampere of current using 5 Volts making for only a 2.5 Watts supply. The total power is a simple multiplication of the current and voltage. When compared to current fast chargers that supply as high as 65 Watts (W), the massive increase in charging speeds is quite evident.

The charging process is usually a comprehensive 3 step process:

• Stage 1 involves Constant Current delivery by peaking both voltage and current,
• Stage 2 involves Saturation, where current is lowered when the voltage has peaked.
• Stage 3 involves Trickle charging, where the battery is slowly charged to just compensate the rate of discharge. This step is mandatory for increasing the battery life and continues even after the battery is 100% charged.

Current phone performance comparison

The OnePlus 8 supports a 30W charger, and gives a 50% charge to the 4510 mAh battery in 23 minutes.

Apple uses 18W charging for the iPhone 11 Pro series and is able to charge the 3969 mAh battery from 0-50% in 30 minutes.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra supports 45W charging, and gives a 70% charge to the 5000 mAh battery in just 30 minutes.

The current fastest charging phone is the Oppo Reno Ace, which has a 65 W charger that fully charges the 4000mAh battery in 31 minutes.

The technology used

The task of delivering high speed charging involves a combination of hardware and software optimizations:

• Software monitoring to adjust the amount of charge delivered at every stage of charging.
• Thermal management to avoid charging slowdowns due to heat, maintaining a steady and fast charging rate while ensuring no battery damage takes place.

Safety Measures

With the increase in usage of mobile phones, it is very important for all of us to have our mobiles charge at speeds as fast as possible. Though fast charging is supported by relevant software optimizations, certifications, charger and cable customization, its is important to take note that phones often get warm while charging at high speeds and it is essential for us to use only chargers/cables provided and originally intended for those specific handsets to make sure safety remains uncompromised along with high performance charging.

The future is approaching

Vivo last year announced 120 W Super FlashCharge technology to be soon supported by its devices, which would translate to charging a 4000 mAh battery in just 13 minutes.

We are definitely headed to some insane charging speeds in very near future.

Though this feature sounds interesting, users must be warned that sharing of the code messaged to initiate a new sign-in, with unknown individuals may lead to unwanted access and control to the users WhatsApp account.

Recently, there has been a spread in hacking of WhatsApp accounts, especially in India. Users reported to have received a message from an unknown account/contact, asking to share a six digit code.

If a known phone contact messages you to share such a message, most of us would do this without thinking but the problem arises here because the message has not been initiated by your contact.

The message has instead been initiated from a hacker who has gained unlawful access to your friends account. You many not even know that your friends account has already been compromised.

The hackers ask to share a six digit code SMS, by quoting that this code was mistaken sent to your number by them.

On sharing this code, the hacker gains complete access to the users WhatsApp account, blocking the user out and then further initiates a chain of messages to all the users contacts to share the six digit code SMS in a similar way.

To stay safe from this rather social way of hacking, Please do not share any code received as an SMS, even with someone you know personally. This can save you from banking or numerous widespread user account related hacks/fraud. Users can enable the two step authentication feature offered by WhatsApp. This will give them an added layer of security.

What the feature is actually intended to do:

Currently WhatsApp requires its users to sign out of their mobile phone to be able to access their account on another mobile phone. This new feature will eliminate the lengthy process of signing-out and signing-in again and simplify WhatsApp accessibility across multiple devices especially mobile phones.

One WhatsApp account can be logged-in on upto 4 devices simultaneously with this features rollout. The login will involve the users mobile number and an OTP, received for authentication during the users new sign-in.

Users can add, delete, manage devices that are logged in, including devices like web browsers and mobiles seamlessly. This extends the functionality of the currently available WhatsApp Web feature which allows only a single mobile along with a PC, Mac or web browser to access a particular WhatsApp account.

WhatsApp testing expert WABetaInfo reported that this new feature will be added in the menu under the name of “Linked devices”. This will also mean that it would replace the current whatsapp web option while integrating it.

Users will now be able to access their WhatsApp account and messages across their mobile phone, laptop, desktop and tablet simultaneously and will be able to freely switch between these devices.

A bunch of other new features may also soon be available, this includes the “Search by date” and improved storage managing features that allows messages and images in chats to be searched by specifying the dates.

However WhatsApp is lagging quite behind its competitor Telegram in terms of new feature rollouts.

Telegram has recently announced new features like:

Increased file sharing size restriction to 2GB which is 20 times larger than WhatsApp’s 100MB size restriction.

Support for videos to be now set as profile. Group stats giving detailed information about group activity and growth.

Skin softening support in the in-app camera for image beautification.

Increased user sign-in device limit to up-to 3 devices. File Sharing, Group Stats, improved People Nearby have also been added.

The base variant starts at ₹24,999 for the 6GB RAM/64GB storage variant (Only available for sales starting in September).
The 8GB RAM/128GB storage variant costs ₹27,999 and the 12GB RAM/256GB storage variant costs ₹29,999. All models are available in 2 colours, Blue Marble and Gray Onyx.

Let’s get inside the details of OnePlus Nord:

• The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 765G, the first budget 5G supporting processor by Qualcomm.
• With a dual punch hole, the 6.44 inch FHD+ Amoled display is expected to be fluidic fast, with the screen refreshing at 90Hz.
• The battery capacity at 4115mAh is supported by the proprietary fast charging technology called the Warp Charge 30T, it can be charged from 0 to 70% in just 30 minutes.
• Running out of the box on Android 10 and skinned by the Oxygen OS 10.5, it has almost no bloatware.
• The quad camera setup with both Optical Image Stabilization and Electrical Image Stabilization makes the camera unit immensely powerful.
• The primary camera is the Sony IMX586 – 48MP sensor, followed by a 8MP ultra wide, a 5MP depth and a 2MP macro sensor.
• The front camera setup is a 32MP Sony IMX616 and a 8MP wide angle sensor.
• Both the front and rear camera support 4K recording.
• A fast and secure in display fingerprint sensor is available along with face unlock too.
• The phone supports Bluetooth 5.1 and NFC.
• The LPDDR4X Ram makes it blazing fast coupled by UFS 2.1 storage.

The phone lacks wireless charging, stereo audio and official IP rating. OnePlus has communicated that the OnePlus Nord will not be available for the USA market.

The phone has immense potential to return OnePlus the true title of being the Flagship Killer brand and is definitely going to be envied by the OnePlus 7, 7T and 8 users for offering such great value for money.

After success of OTT giants Netflix and Amazon, entertainment giant Disney has also entered in this market. Below I have mentioned prices of different OTT so that you can compare it for yourself.

Netflix

Disney+ Hotstar

Hotstar has recently merged into Disney and been re-branded as Disney+ Hotstar. It is the highest subscribed OTT platform in India.

Two types of memberships are available. The Premium and VIP membership.

Disney+ Hotstar VIP membership is available for ₹399/year and offers all content except American movies and shows. It also provides Disney+ content strictly in dubbed languages and not English. All Hindi movies are available, making this plan very affordable for Hindi movie and Hotstar special web series viewers.

Disney+ Hotstar Premium membership is available at ₹299/month or ₹1499/year. The membership makes available all content in both English and Hindi. It provides add free American shows in quick succession of their American telecast. It has a larger bouquet of content as compared to the VIP membership and hence this OTT pricing is much costlier.

Amazon Prime Video

Prime video is a fairly reasonable service as the Amazon Prime subscription not only provides video streaming but an entire package of services like faster and cheaper amazon order delivery, ad-free music streaming and access to exclusive deals.

The Amazon Prime membership has been kept extremely simple. A monthly plan of ₹129/month or a yearly plan of ₹999/year can be subscribed. The services and benefits remain unchanged for either plan and allow simultaneous streaming on up to any 3 devices.