Earlier, I used to only focus on the number of commits, but with the experience, I realized that the quality of your contributions matters more.

In March 2020, I applied for GSoC with little knowledge of the open-source and I wasn’t selected. The rejection was a boon for me as I really understood the essence of open source development and there hasn’t been looking back since then. Over the course of the past 3 months, I have made 250+ contributions in various open-source organisations out which 50+ are in Unity Technologies.

A huge shoutout to Shivay Lamba for always being there to guide me through my doubts regarding open source development. He also helped me improve the quality of my open source contributions by reviewing them.

Recently, I also entered the list of top Github contributors in India and was at the 128th position.

I have heard people suggesting to do open source development, not because of its perks (read as GSoC), but to do it because of the satisfaction it gives to you. And I feel that’s definitely correct.

Now, coming to the question, It really impresses the recruiter if you have done contributions in that particular in which gets matched with the JD. It ensures that you have deep knowledge of that particular software.

It all started from late October 2019 when the forms started to roll out. I got to know about this programme from my college’s DSC. We were given these following set of tracks to choose from and we’re asked to build projects on it. We chose the emerging tech track.

So, according to the program, we had to work on our idea for 2 months starting from 1st November to 31 December. And had to submit the MVP of our idea.

11 January 2020:-

We received a mail saying that “Congratulations! Your solution met our evaluation criteria and we are happy to announce that you (and your team) have been selected for the ‘Feedback Phase’ of the ‘Build for Digital India’ program. “

We were required to attend the feedback phase of BFDI of Google Gurgaon office for two days.

(It says, confidential, do not share, but now we can share since the program has now ended)

By now, my team was taking this as just another hackathon. And were not much excited about this one.

21st January 2020:-

Finally, the day arrived. We were supposed to be there at 10 in the morning, but due to a massive traffic jam at aerocity, we reached after 11 am. After reaching the venue, we marked our attendance at the reception and took the printed id cards.

In the opening keynote, we were introduced with the schedule for these two days. All of the qualifiers were assigned their mentors and the rooms.

Meanwhile, we got to know that a total of 19 teams were called from North India region for the feedback phase and we were amongst them. There were only 3 teams selected from Delhi, one being of my old friend himself.

At this moment, we got to realise that this is not “just another hackathon”. We are representing our college at the national level and we need to perform here more responsibly.

After opening keynote, our team was moving towards the second floor at the ‘kites’ room. The name is kites because of the theme of the room. Our first mentor was Nikita Gandhi who also leads the exploreML programs. We pitched our idea to her and had an hour of a brainstorming session.

Our second mentor was from Google Adsense. Again we pitched our idea to him and got some really helpful points from marketing and scalability POV.

Each team was assigned only two mentors but we were trying to get mentorship from most of the mentors.

We then moved to Kathita Goel and received some more mentorship.

After that, we played some TT and snooker followed by lunch at the end.

After lunch, there was another session by Siddhant Agarwal in which he explained how to prepare for day 2.

In the evening, we were free to leave the venue but we bumped into Saurabh Rajpal and Biswajeet Malik as well to get some more mentorship. We got some more technical points which we earlier didn’t think about.

22 January (day 2): —

Again we got late because of massive traffic near the airport (since 26 Jan was near and barricading was taken seriously). By 11 am, we were listening to the decks of our opponents and were also learning from their mistakes.

At the very last, we got our turn for the final pitching.

We loved to see the reaction of judges on our deck. It was much positive.

Later, we had a group photograph. Say cheese. :D

Along with, a mandatory photo Google logo in the reception.

25th February:-

Finally, the results were out, and we were amongst TOP 15 teams pan India. (Also, the only team from Delhi)

Along with this mail, we were invited to attend the grand finale at the Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi. By then, other teams were getting their flight tickets booked through Google’s event agency.

Everything was going fine, we were waiting for those 3 days and then Covid-19 entered India. It was early March, the pandemic was in its early stage, and just a week before the actual event. We got another mail that the finale needs to get postponed since increasing spread of Covid-19.

We all were disappointed and were waiting for this pandemic to get ended but the pandemic had some different plans. In the may end, we got another mail that BFDI has gone totally online now. This was the most heartbreaking moment for us since we wanted to attend the grand finale offline and were ready to wait until the lockdown ends.

It’s now early June, and now we all were preparing for the grand finals.

8th June 2020:- We had a workshop by Tanya Bhattacharya from Storywallahs. The workshop was regarding the importance of story-telling for enhancement of pitch decks. We all had to pitch our ideas to her and she was giving us a customised detailed feedback of where we should improve in our pitching. Those points did help us a lot to present the idea.

12 June 2020:- It was the shoot day. Once again, Google hired an event management agency for this, named Kestone. We had our pitching shoot in a very professional way. Every small thing was taken care of by them.

22 June 2020:- Just one day before the D day, we were introduced with the platform on which the event was meant to host. It was a custom made platform especially for BFDI and was feature enriched

23 June 2020: — D Day arrived. Most stressful day throughout the journey of BFDI. We got to know about the Jury panel. It was one of the best Jury panel I have ever seen for any hackathon/competition. Truly, the juries were much skilled in their respective fields.

Below is my teammate Shivay pitching on the main stage.

At the very end, winners were announced and unfortunately, we couldn’t end up in that top 3 list.

We got many good schwags as well. Some of them were T-shirts, Google Chromecast, bags, plaque/momento.

Signing off,

Pulkit Midha

BTW, this post is actually imported from my Quora account. You can check the original post here .

From the starting of the year to the ending, I was eagerly participating in the college level and national level hackathons.

• H@ckGtbit (18–19 January):- My first hackathon was the one organised within my college. I didn’t have team till the last moment, still, I went to the venue and got to know there’s a team from my class with a single slot left. I happily joined them and started to think about the idea. Since it was the first-ever hackathon for us, we didn’t know much about the implementation of the things and we ended up having just ppt of the idea at the end of the hackathon. xD
• Hack GTBIT by IOSD (16 March):- Second hackathon was also inside the college in a gap of a month. Till now I got the idea of how to implement things, but little did we know pitching was the most vital thing for the hackathon. We ended up losing that too.
• AngelHack (4 May):- It was my first hackathon outside college and damn it was one of the best hackathons which I have attended. We got runner up’s position in this one. And the most daring stunt we did here, is we had our external exam the next day of hackathon (still we managed to pass. :p).

• Hack your reality by Accenture (31 August):- This was my first XR only hackathon. I worked really hard for this hackathon. I made a multi-floor indoor navigation tool in this one. Didn’t win any cash prize/position (pitching cost us everything) but still managed to get into top 12 teams all over India.
• NASA hackathon (15–16 September):- This was the hackathon for which we travelled 50+kms. (Galgotias University). It was a very good experience there since 6 teams from our college were there. We worked on spacesuit modules (IoT) for the astronauts and also made an ARcore portal (for fun). Didn’t win anything but still enjoyed since our another team from our college won the first prize.

The funniest part was that out of these 10 hackathons, 3 of them were Jam-packed within the semester exams still we managed to excel both hackathons and exams. xD

By the end of this answer, I recommend every student developer to participate in hackathons and focus more towards product development. You’ll get to learn so many things in such a short span of time. Plus, networking always helps. :D

Originally published at http://quora.com.

(P.s.:- I know many people here might know its actual meaning, but still, there’s a huge amount of people, (especially mobile players) who have heard about zeroing distance but don’t know the meaning of it.)

Zeroing simply means the zero error of any given scope such that if fired at an object (which is exactly at the zeroing distance), the shooter won’t experience any bullet drop.

(P.s.:- forbid my bad drawings. The angles are exaggerated for obvious reasons.)

The reason behind zeroing/why it happens?

The scope/sight on the top of any gun is never attached perpendicular to the gun’s top surface. It’s always given a downward slope. That’s why zeroing exists. This will get more clear after making a free body diagram (FBD) of the gun. (Again note that angles are highly exaggerated)

As you can see from the FBD above, the distance between the scope/sight and the surface of the gun is way smaller than the distance between the shooter and the opponent. Theoretically speaking, one would have easily neglected this distance, but if we do it here, zeroing would lose its existence.

How useful is zeroing? Does it even matter?

Frankly speaking, one can become a full-stack pro in the game without even knowing the concept of zeroing. But it gives a cherry on the cake, if you know zeroing.

Let me explain where it is useful and where it is not.

1- In extremely close range. (<1m) :- Notice the exact orientation of the opponent. He is standing static right next to me. If I pull the trigger, it should hit the opponent, but NO.

Now if I empty one whole magazine on him, he won’t even lose a single HP. (Yes, you heard that right! Don’t believe it? Go try it yourself in the training mode) ( Drive link to this video)

The reason behind this is that you’re shooting from your gun barrel and not through your scope/sight. xD

2. Close range (<15m) and mid-range(<100m):- This is the range where most of the kills are taken by any average player. And this is where the zeroing is least useful or almost useless.

3. Long-range (>100m):- This is the range where the zeroing is extremely helpful. If you have a bad time adjusting with bullet drop in long-range sniping, zeroing is the key to your success.

CONSTRAINTS:-

By default, every scope is zeroed to 100 meters. Also, zeroing distance adjustment is only limited to 8× and 15× scopes only. It can be changed in multiples of 100m.

How to increase/decrease the zeroing of the scope?

Use the page-up key to increase and the page-down key to decrease the zeroing distance. Since your player is adjusting zeroing while peeking through the scope, you won’t notice how actually your player model is changing it.

See in the below image, the right screw is for Azimuth adjustment of the scope and the top screw is used for correcting zeroing.

If you rotate the upper screw anti-clockwise, it (with the help of internal gears) bends down the scope more declined towards the gun, increasing the zeroing distance of the scope and vice versa.

PRO TIP: Wipe squads at long range with the help of zeroing.

• Consider one whole squad present at a distance of (say) X meters taking fight with your squad. (where X>100m)
• You are trying very hard to overcome the bullet drop but ain’t getting any hits.
• The pro tip here is to estimate the distance between you and them and then using zeroing to get them down.
• For estimation, look at the map and count the number of square tiles between you and the opponent. Each tile counts 100m. Calculate the distance by multiplying tile count with 100.
• If you suck at estimation, you can either use hit and trial to get your first knock. Once you knock the first person, the required distance will be automatically displayed on the screen. (That’s because of the recent update on steam, look below for reference.)

Originally published at http://quora.com.

But still, their software is too much bloated. Bloated means it’s filled with useless apps which we didn’t bother to use but still can’t uninstall them.

Samsung is still continuing to install these bloatwares in their phones. It has two primary reasons why they do so.

• Cheetah applications in some of the Xiaomi phones.
• LG Mobile has Q memo and some anti-virus applications like McAfee.
• Samsung has some VPN applications and some other shitty apps.
• All these applications benefit the company and in the end, we get to see an affordable mid-range smartphone.

2. The second reason is control. Samsung knows that itself is a too big company. And whenever they push its services, they know there will be some people who will definitely use their apps. Even now, if I generalize any Samsung user, he/she still might be using the Samsung browser. And whenever that browser is used, the profit from that will directly go to Samsung. And that is a revenue model from which they generate their profits recurringly.

And even if they don’t earn much money from the above method, they can collect data from your phone. (If you use their apps) and of course in 2018, a company with huge data is a huge company. ; p. Below are some stats.

Image credits:- Pinterest

Okay, coming back to the question, if they remove all the bloatware, they would definitely run low on profits. That’s why they don’t do it.

If you want to remove bloatware from stock ROM of your phone, it is much easier if you’ve rooted your phone. (I’m not saying it’s impossible for non-root users, but it’s definitely lengthier)

Another method can be by flashing custom ROMs. It improves everything on your phone, except if your stock ROM has some exclusive features.

If you want to know, how to flash a custom ROM. I’d recommend you to this video. How to Install A Custom ROM On Any Android Device (2018)

Thanks for reading. Give an upvote if you liked the answer.

Originally published at http://quora.com.

The size of APK (Android application package file) as shown on the play store is just 74MB.

When you download it, it’s size still remains same. But the moment when you install it on your phone, the compressed files in the APK decompresses. And you got to see this.

(Note that I have not opened the app till now, I just installed it)

(Note that the cache size is still too small.)

This is, after logging in and using it for couple of minutes.

The user data size boosts up from 41MB to 105MB.

This is just after a day.

In between all this I was visiting many profiles, pages and groups on Facebook. And just due to that cache size boosted from 3MB to 125MB.

Now, you may think how app size is increasing just by using it. Facebook has designed its app so that whenever you open a webpage posted by a friend on the Facebook app, it will cache the entire page on your device. This is obviously a problem since the more pages you visit, the more space gradually gets eaten up. And this can be generalized to most of the social networking apps.

This is the main reason for which you can even browse your friend’s profile when you’re offline, provided that you’d visited their profile once before that.

Originally published at http://quora.com.

But removing bezels is a big deal because a perfectly bezel-less phone won’t be having a front camera and some necessary sensors.

All of this started with a phone with no bezels from two sides.

Like this.

Then Samsung comes up with bend screen from two sides.

That was Samsung’s edge series. (S6 edge, S7 edge, etc)

But still, it could have made fancier.

Xiaomi, in its Mi Mix 2 tried to remove bezels fully from three sides. And has a tiny bezel at below, which included all the sensors and the camera.

But still, it wasn’t perfectly bezels less.

Then, comes the notch.

Notch got famous due to iPhone X.

It included all the sensors and a front-facing camera.

It was a big revolution, but people find it annoying. Imagine a little black monster sitting on your mobile’s screen. It was surely annoying. Several software was launched to hide the ‘notch’[2]. But, what’s the point of introducing a notch when it’s annoying its users?

Now, let’s see, what’s Samsung has done into this revolution.[3] (Not launched yet)

They put all the sensors and the camera inside the screen. Yes, inside the screen, just like Vivo tried to embed a fingerprint sensor beneath the touch screen in its X21.

(Not the actual picture though)

But again, it has its own cons. If you’re bringing such a revolution, you’re investing a lot of money in its research and development segment. Because it’s not an easy task to embed a camera inside a touchscreen.

Now, at last, I’m coming to my favourite technical alternative.

Oppo launched its Find X.[4] (In China, yet to be launched in India)

Yes, the same company which ruled the offline market of India with its shitty phones.

Here is how it looks.

No bezels. No weird cutouts. No expensive in-screen camera technology. Perfect Beauty. * Fire emoji*

But wait, where’s the camera hidden?

Here it is.

There is a camera bar which pops ups whenever required.

• You need to unlock the phone or either capture a picture, the camera bar pops and does it’s work and goes back into its den. :p
• Otherwise, if you need to show off your phone, the bar won’t pop up.

Truly, a perfectly bezel-less phone.

And at last, I’m pretty sure that Apple will copy this technology in future. XD

#cheers

Footnotes

[1] A.M Ranjan’s answer to What’s a bezel on a smartphone?

[2] Removing The Notch From iPhone X

[3] Samsung is working on embedding selfie cameras into the screen

[4] This Smartphone Changes Everything…

Originally published at http://quora.com.

But does that work? — NEVER EVER.

A social media addiction can never be killed just by uninstalling it. It requires much more than that. Addiction is created when you get desperate to check your notifications.

Here are some points I’ve done to get rid of addictions.

For Facebook,

Back in 2014, I joined it because I felt too excited to know about other people’s lifestyle. I used to judge people on the basis of their profile. But things don’t remain constant for a long time. As there were increased advertisements in my feed, my hate towards Facebook started increasing.

So, one random day in June ’18, I was so frustated with the fact, that I was spending too much time on FB. I learned about a strategy. I started making my feed uninteresting. I started disliking the topics/pages I actually liked. And started liking some shitty meme pages. Within a week, my feed degraded (that was the main part of the above strategy). I lost all that charm in it, which I had when I joined Facebook.

After that, without giving any thought, I went forward to deactivate my account. But this time I want to deactivate permanently so that I couldn’t log in even if I wanted to.

But here comes the hardest part. According to some policies of Facebook, you cannot deactivate your account in an instant. It takes a whopping 14 days. Imagine living 14 days in absence of that thing, without which I couldn’t survive a single day.

YES, I MANAGED TO LIVE THOSE 14 DAYS WITHOUT THAT ADDICTION.

Within those 14 days, I had thoughts in my mind like, “Pulkit, you just have to wait for 14 days, after that you won’t be able to access your addiction.”

And that’s how I killed my addiction to Facebook. I never regret now about this.

FOR INSTAGRAM,

Here, I didn’t want to kill my account as what I did to Facebook. I just wanted to remove the addiction.

Just what I did is, I switched ‘using Instagram on my phone’ to ‘using it on desktop ‘.

And guess what, where I used to spend more than 3–4 hours per day reduced to less than 30 minutes a day.

This worked for me, not sure if it works for everyone else.

FOR YOUTUBE,

Now, I’m sure here that it’s pretty effective and it’ll work for almost everyone.

This works if you want to watch some specific videos only. Like if you’re preparing for an upcoming exam using YouTube videos.

Make multiple G-mail IDs, use these accounts to watch videos on YouTube. like for study purposes use ID no.1, for listening to music purposes use ID no.2, etc.

This is done so that you won’t distract to silly cat videos while studying Schrödinger experiment. (just saying, it happened with me once. xD) (only some geeks will get this) FOR WHATSAPP.

Can’t say much. The only way I’ve found is to disable app notifications by going into phone settings. Some people may argue that they get some important information on WhatsApp, so they can’t disable notifications. It’s all user-specific here.

I haven’t used Snapchat, Pinterest, and other social media apps, so can’t say anything about them.

THANK YOU for reading this! Have a nice day! :)

Originally published at http://quora.com.

I’ve taken screenshots from both devices at the same location. Both are kept at lowest possible graphics.

In pubgm (specially installed it for this screenshot. :D)

In pubg pc

• There are minor differences in interiors of all houses in Erangel. Like there are some additional walls and doors added inside some houses. (Bigger rooms are divided into smaller multiple rooms)
• You’ll meet a lot of friends at pubgm. While you’ll hardly meet 2–3 in-game people who you actually know in real life. (in pc)
• Resolution on mobile ranges from 480p to 720p. (some people may argue here, but it’s actually true). While on pc, it ranges from 720p to 1080p.

• FPS limit on mobile is 60fps. (Even after certain tweaks, it won’t go above 60). While on pc, 60fps is considered unplayable. I usually get 90–100fps and maximum of 136fps. (It even reaches 300+ if you have a beast pc)
• Pubg on mobile hardly even touches 2GB mark, while on pc it’s whooping 19GB. Even major updates on mobile are around 1–1.5GB, while a major update on pc means at least 10GB. (15GB when Vikendi was released.)
• Pubg mobile is much better than pc when it comes to data packet loss. On pubgm, one can easily hit under 30ms ping while its difficult to get under 70ms ping on pc even after using LAN. (It’s for India, for Australia its 25ms)
• Pubg pc has an additional training map named as Camp Jackal. It’s quite bigger than the training map on mobile.
• There are 3 extra modes in pc. (They’re pretty useless though)

• The recoil of any gun on mobile is pretty small and is easily controllable. While on pc, recoil control is one of the hardest things to master. (I bet, even if you’re a pro in pubgm, you won’t be able to perform a simple looking 100-metre spray; the recoil is uncontrollable.)
• While bots are added to pubgm to make gameplay easier, pc version doesn’t have a single bot.
• On mobile, you’ll play with opponents of comparable ranks. Whereas there is no such thing in pc, you might find shroud killing people, if you play in his server. (I’ve played with some popular youtube/twitch streamer also, such as rakazone and sikhwarrior; Your rank doesn’t matter here while matchmaking)
• Since because of the above point, everyone here is pro. Trust me when I say that I hardly notice any noobs here. (hardly 40–50 noobs in previous 150–200 rounds)
• You’ll see footprints, bullet marks and vehicle positions on the map on mobile. There’s nothing such thing on pc. Everything is sound-centric. (you have relied to sound only.)

• Ever wanted to experience how we track positions, using just sound. Cover the ‘map part’ of the mobile with an opaque paper and then tape it properly and then try to play. (It might look silly, but take it as a challenge)
• The replay feature in pc is more than awesome. You can properly analyse how you were killed. and what other persons were doing while you’re looting.
• You can chill in parachute before landing on the ground. Yes, you heard that right, once, I landed on the ground after ALIVE 29! This is a secret method to loot the first airdrop. shhhh! ;D (Read more about this one here. )
• There are many features which are not in pc but are added in mobile to make gameplay easier. Like, auto pickup, auto-open doors, weapons having a by-default auto mode on, follow teammates while diving, in-game chat, etc are not in pc.
• There is a legendary 15x scope also which is air-drop exclusive. A screenshot from 15x:-

CONCLUSION:- PUBG PC is pure physics engine, while PUBG mobile is more playable version of it. PUBGM might be a fun game, but PUBG PC is surely a horror game.

Edit:- Many people in comments are saying that 60fps are playable. I agree. But the problem occurs when you’re in close encounters or when you’re driving any vehicles. The fps drops from 60 to 30–40. And you can’t take kills with this fps.

Note that you can easily run pubg on 60fps but can’t win chickens.

Originally published at http://quora.com.

Have a look at this collage. Do you notice anything wrong with the design of the following phones?

If you haven’t noticed yet, let me tell you.

All of these have a notch, but what’s wrong with a notch? These phones fail to understand why notches are added to any phone.

Let me add why notch is needed in particular smartphone.

To make smartphones more beautiful, to increase the “screen-to-body ratio “, the bezels from sides and bottom are cut. As upper bezel can’t be shaved out because of some important sensors (such as camera, speaker, ambient light sensor, etc). Hence, only the unnecessary part of the upper bezel is shaved of. The remnant part is hence called as a notch.

I’ve noticed a trend in these phones. These phones belong to the mid range category only.

Here is an answer to why so?

If you’ve noticed notch was launched exclusively for a flagship at first. After months of launch, mid-range phones also started introducing notch. The problem was that when you’re designing a mid-range, you’re always out of R and d costs. And that’s the primary reason for these phones having a notch with thick bezels.

Here are some stats I’ve prepared for verification of this answer, using data from gsm arena

Here you can clearly see that all of the phones lies either in mid-segment or in budget-oriented phones.

Hereby, I am requesting mobile phone designers to stop following this trend. Phones look good without notch also. Just focus on the specifications of the phone. A notched display with bezels thicker than the whole notch is not a notched display. It makes a phone looks ugly.

P.S.:- No offence if someone from you people already has any of these devices. Don’t downvote.

#peace

Originally published at http://quora.com.