Released in October 2016, Mafia 3 is probably the best game in the Mafia series so far. Developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K Games, the third installment in the Mafia franchise typically focuses on a huge open world environment . Unlike the previous games in the series, it focuses on the aspects of revenge and vengeance, building our own gang and going against the mafia  and burning them to the ground with military-grade weaponry. It is available on PS4, XBOX ONE and PC. Winner of the NAVGTR award for the best video and dramatic score, this game is surely a good pick for action loving gamers.

PLOT

Mafia 3 is set in 1968, New Bordeaux, Louisiana which is also the hometown of our hero, the protagonist Lincoln Clay; with military training and combat experience in Vietnam, Lincoln is the tough guy you can rely on for anything.

After serving in the Vietnam War in the 5th Special Forces and 223rd infantry regiment , Lincoln Clay comes back to his surrogate family i.e. the black mob led by Sammy Robimson and his adopted brother Ellis. They team up with the italian mafia led by Don Marcano to loot the  Louisiana Federal Reserve, but after the heist they are betrayed and Lincoln is the only one who manages to survive. The story revolves around Lincoln building a new family on the ashes of the old and blazing a path of revenge on the brutal criminal underworld responsible.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay mostly involves driving around New Bordeaux, getting missions from various characters, reaping the  rewards, and occasionally get sidetracked along the way. The story missions are big and are set in unique, well-designed locations. This includes fighting your way through a creepy abandoned amusement park, escaping the bank vault after a heist, and sneaking aboard a sinking riverboat by swimming through water filled with gators all provide some memorable action-packed moments.

For the transportation the player gets a lot of options to choose from, ranging from Exotic 60 coupes like the super cool “Griffin Marauder” to trucks like “Bulworth Buckliners” as well as boats and other military vehicles. The fastest way is to drive around the vast map.

My favourite mode to get around is through the sportscar  ‘Berkely Stallion’ . It is easy to maneuver, decent speed but highly durable.

BUT, there are certain other issues as well. The version of the game released for the consoles has lag and a few bugs. When the intense action and battles starts, the frame rate drops below 30fps. This causes a glitch to appear and the protagonist may end up dying while engaged in combat in the middle of the mission.

For instance the initial mission in which  I was supposed to go and kill the leader of the Haitian mob, Baka. I was trying throw molotov cocktails but thy ended up burning me as  I couldn’t throw them cause of the glitch.

Also the story missions are very repetitive as we do the same things like  which leads to the person playing getting bored.

COMBAT

The game does justice to the action and mayhem part associated with the Mafia series.

Using the huge arsenal of Vintage weaponry and diving around in stunning antique vehicles you set  New Bordeaux on fire wherever you go. The approach is yours to choose from: stealth or full-front attack.

The game, a third-person shooter, has more of  mid to long range gunplay. We have missions which involve more of melee combat as well. Lincoln has his signature knife and carries a light and a heavy weapon along with grenades.

The game features a cover feature, allowing players to take cover behind objects to avoid enemy gunfire or detection. Players can interrogate non-playable characters  after defeating them in order to gain more information on their objectives, like scaring them while driving a car. Players can attack and overrun locations owned by the Italian mob, and assign one of their lieutenants to operate around the local area. The game allows players to drive cars from the era with realistic driving mechanics and sounds.

The light weapons usually include Shotguns like Remington 870 and Ithaca 37; Submachine guns like Heckler and Koch MP54 or the M1A1 Thomson and a wide rage of  pistols and revolvers.  Rocket and grenade launchers Hartmann HLP Grenade Launcher, Hartmann AT-40 Rocket Launcher and Explosives like Molotov Cocktail, Screaming Zemi (used as a distraction), Frag Grenade, C4 Charge.

The most useful ways to kill enemies are whistling to get their attention while  in stealth and silently stabbing them or just using the basic Colt M19 pistol. Enemies don’t really get any stronger or learn any new tricks as we progress, so we can use the same tactics.

If you ever run out of ammo or want a specific weapon or vehicle…. you can use the awesome in-game feature of  calling up allies and weapons dealers who arrive in vans and supply you with whatever you need.

PROS

• Large Map with  freedom and no invisible in-game walls.
• Classy and vintage arsenal of weapons and vehicles to choose from.
• Old School Action! Melee combat and high speed chases.

CONS

• Lag, slight glitches and performance bugs.
• Repetitive Missions …. makes the game boring.
• Loading time is long.

RATING: 7/10

Kartik Gupta

“His biggest strength is that he will run through a wall to accomplish his goals, His biggest weakness is that he will run through a wall to accomplish his goals.”

That’s how a New York Times article described Travis Kalanick, the ex-CEO of Uber. Travis founded Uber in 2009, and his last employee address was a tearful farewell. He has built an empire on a competitive and unforgiving workspace. This empire is worth more than the most automakers. It is arguably the most influential transport company. But, has Uber become a bubble too big that it is about to burst?

Uber grew exponentially in the last five years. Its net worth has doubled in a few months, but Uber has never reported a profit. Its policies have made it the public enemy #1 many times, most recently in London where it was banned by the TfL. Uber has bet on AI has its future. For years. Travis has argued that Uber will slowly become profitable once it replaces the human drivers with self-driving cars. But, this has led to the most damaging lawsuit against Uber. Waymo, an Alphabet company, sued Uber for stealing Google’s LIDAR technology. Anthony Levandowski, the CEO of Otto, was sued downloaded Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets before resigning to found Otto which was then bought by Uber. Waymo alleged that Uber knew that Otto had Waymo’s secret files. This was the final nail in Travis’ coffin which had been dug up a few months ago.

The first nail was the mistreatment of employees by managers at Uber. Uber, in response, fired over 20 employees. Then was the video of Travis Kalanick abusing an Uber driver. But these did not end Travis’ time at Uber, the impossible dream he was selling did.

Uber is available in over 60 countries and has a loyal customer base yet it failed in China. Didi Chuxing bought Uber China. In India, Ola is the dominant player in the taxi market. In the USA, Lyft has finally started to come out of Uber’s shadow and is slowly expanding to more cities. Travis had argued that if Uber employees only self-driving taxis, the operating cost will drop drastically. But, was this even possible in less than half a decade? Uber gave up on developing its own tech when it agreed to buy Volvo’s self-driving cars. This dream seems too distant to be true. The Waymo lawsuit will kill this idea.

Travis built his company on the idea of making the impossible dream of self-driving cars a reality, quickly. Uber’s net worth is built on this idea. Uber, it seems is being killed by its own fire. The fire it lit and changed the automobile market forever.

Sudhanshu Agarwal

What is it, really, that differentiates us from animals? Some would argue it’s our self-awareness, others would say it’s our capacity to think at a higher level, while others still would be adamant in their belief it’s the endless adaptiveness that humanity has that is our key advantage.
But I believe the answer is a lot simpler. What makes us special and successful as a species is our extraordinary ability to communicate with one another and share our experiences. Being able to pass on knowledge and learn from the experience of others ensures a steady progress; a continuous, ceaseless march towards advancement- fueled by a steady stream of gradually accumulating information, handed down from one generation to the next.
The impact on history cannot be overstated; all sciences, cultures, arts, history, music and even religions are made possible by the very existence of language. The fabric of society itself relies on our ability to communicate.
With the advent of the spoken word, hunter-gatherers no longer needed to taste a berry to test for its edibility, they could simply ask more experienced persons about its nature.
And, with this simple, often disregarded step, humanity was on it’s way to becoming the dominant species on this planet.
So how did it all begin? How did the spoken and written word decisively shape the course of history?
As for the first question, unfortunately enough, nobody is quite sure as to what the answer is. There are no known animals in a transitory stage from not speaking to speaking.
There is, however, a single, common theme that visibly stands out among all these theories: ‘The world’s languages evolved spontaneously. They were not designed’.
Either way, we don’t know for sure how it finally came to be.
What we do know is how language has impacted human history. A basic application could be a hunter in primeval times seeing a deer ripe for the killing, and subsequently letting out a grunt that informs his partner it’s time to start moving.
But, as human interactions grew more complex, the possibilities that language gave us increased exponentially.
The power of speech allowed great orators to bring together large groups of previously small, solitary tribes into consolidated units. People started to settle down and live with each other, and as this happened language once again propagated a culture of sharing, trading and collectiveness.
In such a manner, society was born.
However, the spoken word has limits. Information can only be disseminated to a fixed number of people at a time and there can never be a permanent record. Word-of-mouth accounts invariably end up getting distorted through the generations. Lastly, the rapid growth of cities demanded administrative measures that could simply not be carried out verbally.
And thereby came the written language. The oldest civilization in the world, the Mesopotamian, exhibits the earliest examples of written language coming to the fore.Through the Uruk period a script was developed and allowed city authorities to administer large groups of people. Intensive trade and contact between regions and maintenance of records were all enabled by language.

Sumerian Language Through Time

The above image shows the evolution of the sign for “head” in cuneiform script-the oldest known- over several millennia. It is apparent that written script developed organically, starting off clunky and gradually becoming streamlined and stylized due to scribes through the ages simplifying the symbols for their own purposes.
Language evolved just like a living being, growing and changing in accordance with the convenience of the times, driven forward not by a single individual but by a collective effort towards codification and the writing down of knowledge that seems to compel man.
Languages evolved from and through each other: English started off as a West Germanic language strongly influenced by Latin, which also heavily influenced modern Italian and in turn was born of the Etruscan alphabet.
With the invention of printing techniques in China and later with the invention of the mechanical printing press by Gutenberg suddenly meant that an individual could now spread all kinds of propaganda and ideas to people they\had never even met in person.
The Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the propaganda that fueled the French revolution; all events that changed the lives of billions and shaped the world as we know it; all the dissemination of knowledge between mankind that has even taken place, were all made possible by the distinctly human characteristic of voluntary communication.
And now, we stand at the doorstep of a new epoch.
Facebook’s AI recently came up with a completely new language, and two Facebook chat bots had the following conversation:
Bob: I can i i everything else
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you i everything else
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me.
Deep.
This raises questions about the direction in which language is headed. Insofar they have been governed by human need and initiative, now, it would seem, that it is set to be drawn forward by non-human interventions.
All of this, made possible by a single word millennia ago.
Indeed, the ability to type this article and yours to read it hinges entirely on an invisible library that you, me, and all humans, carry in their heads, one that lets them express their thoughts and feelings to each other and continue humanity’s’ ceaseless march towards tomorrow.

Inter-School IT Symposium Silico Battles v13.1 was held at Ahlcon Public School, Mayur Vihar, New Delhi on 2-3 November, 2017.Exun Clan bagged the Overall Trophy.

Individual Results are as follows :

Web Design (Second Runners Up)
Yash Wardhan
Anirudh Chauhan

Inter-School IT Symposium Code Wars 2017

Inter School IT Symposium Syntax v1.0 was held on 5th October 2017 at Delhi Public School International.

ExunClan of DPS RK Puram emerged as the Overall Winners!

The individual results are as follows;

Group Discussion- Winners
Sameer Chadha
Ritin Pachnanda

DENNIS RITCHIE

BJARNE STROUSTRUP

JAMES GOSLING

James Arthur Gosling is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language. James has also made major contributions to several other software systems, such as NeWS and Gosling Emacs. Due to his extra-ordinary achievements Gosling was elected to Foreign Associate member of the United States Natioal Academy of Engineering.

LINUS TORVALDS

ANDERS HEJLSBERG

Anders Hejlsberg is a prominent Danish software engineer who co-designed several popular and commercially successful programming languages and development tools. He is the creator of popular programming language C#. He was the original author of Turbo Pascal and the chief architect of Delphi. He currently works for Microsoft as the lead architect of C# and core developers on TypeScript.

TIM BERNERS-LEE

BRIAN KERNIGHAN

KEN THOMPSON

GUIDO VAN ROSSUM

DONALD KNUTH

Alphanode 2017 was held at DPS Gurgaon Sector-45 on 4 August 2017. Exun Clan bagged the overall trophy. The individual results are as follows:

Decodenode – Winners
Shashwat Goel