It took a couple of re-reads to fully let the impact of the news sink in. At first, it was just words that registered: China, KFC, Phone. Then the concept fully began to connect.

The Chinese are now making a KFC smartphone.

Why are the Chinese now making a KFC smartphone?

Don’t get me wrong, I love China. I mean, like 90% of the tech that you get is “Made In China”, even the ubiquitous iPhone: “Designed in California, Made In Taiwan”. Not just tech, but even food! Did you know that although KFC originated in the U.S., it’s now the largest restaurant chain in China? Now, on KFC’s 30 year anniversary, it’s partnered with Huawei, one of China’s biggest smartphone producers, to release a KFC phone.

You read that right.

Granted, a KFC special phone manufactured by the same guys who make the perfectly reasonable Mate and Honor line of devices wasn’t exactly the product the world was pining for, but doesn’t it warm your heart to be living in an era of gratuitous marvels of technology such as this?

First Ever Fried Chicken Phone! [I think]

It’s a special edition version of the Huawei Enjoy 7 Plus. It has a 5.5-inch 720p display, a Snapdragon 435 SoC, a 12MP camera, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage that can be expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card. There’s a fingerprint scanner on the back and, with a 3,020MAh battery, it should last a while on a charge.

It’s admittedly not a bad phone for the price (162 USD, or about Rs.10,000), although the contending Redmi Note 4 does pop into mind as a rival device by a fellow Chinese manufacturer.

But come on, let’s get real. We all know you’re not buying this thing for the specs. Doing so would be like buying Air Jordans to go for a run. No, you’re buying this baby for the prestige afforded by being the owner of a limited edition phone (Huawei says they’re only make 5,000) with Col. Sanders on the back.

“Kentucky China 30 years from 1987 to 2017, 30 years accompanied by the taste of the times, suck refers to the aftertaste! Kentucky together with Huawei joint cooperation, the introduction of Huawei Chang enjoy 7 Kentucky commemorative version of gorgeous struck! Commemorative Edition laser back carving, pre-installed Kentucky Super APP, with WOW member 10 thousand K gold, but also the first to experience k-music song function. Limited to 5000 will soon be on sale, waiting for you to grab!”

A cursory examination of the the quoted text (which is a victim of some unfortunate translation) reveals the phone is the whole package, coming with ten thousand K-Dollars (the restaurant’s digital currency) and the ability to share songs from a playlist when on the premises of a KFC, which basically means they’re simultaneously re-inventing the jukebox. Such innovation is rarely seen outside keynote events, so take note.

If you’re dead set on getting mileage out of the phone, though, you’d ideally be Chinese, as the bands the phone uses may not work worldwide and the version of Android 7.0 comes without Google built into it, as it’s meant for the Chinese market.

Better reach into the bucket of cash and pull out some dollars, cause this phone be finger-licking good.

Ishir Bhardwaj

Brain-Computer Interfaces: An Overview

Picture this, it’s late at night and you have a big test tomorrow which you haven’t studied for. As you steadily move through the course material you wonder if there was a way by which you could just download information straight to your brain. That might be closer than you think.
Technology (like DARPA’s Neural Engineering System Design) now exists by which your brain can directly interact with a computer- this is called a Brain Computer Interface(BCIs).  Even though this might seem magical there’s actually something very simple behind this. Our brains have millions of neurons connected by Axons and Dendrites. When we think, move, or memorize something, our neurons work to transfer data through small electrical signals. These electrical signals move around our brain at speeds more than 250 mph! Although, the paths these signals take are insulated by a fatty white substance called myelin, some of them escape. These electrical signals are what allow us to interpret our thoughts and translate them into mouse-clicks and keypresses. Following animal-testing, the first prosthetics that could be directly controlled by their users’ brains came up in the 1990s.

A Brief History

Hans Berger discovered the electrical activity of the brain in 1924 and recorded it by the means of EEG or electroencephalogy.
In order to record these electrical signals, he inserted silver wires into the scalps of his patients, which were later replaced by silver foils attached to the patient’s head by rubber bandages.

Jacques Vidal, a UCLA professor, is widely recognized as the creator of BCIs. He coined the term and produced the first peer-reviewed publication on this topic.
Now, BCIs are most often used for researching, mapping, assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions.

Devices like these can be very helpful for disabled people. DARPA is funding the research and development of BCIs, which allow blind people to see . This might sound complicated, but the concept behind this is fairly simple: researchers can figure out what electrical signals are sent to the brain when our eyes see the color red and then rig up a camera to do the same.

BCIs can also allow people to control prosthetic limbs with their brains. Due to the incredible cortical plasticity of the brain, signals from prosthetics can after some alteration, be interpreted by the brain in the same way as it would interpret signals sent by natural limbs.

There’s options for people who’d like to experiment with BCIs outside the lab. wyrm, a Python library, allows you to play around with EEGs and make your own brain-computer interfaces.

Angad Singh

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 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

Inter-School IT Symposium Code Wars 2017

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

We’re pleased to announce that ln(exun) has moved to Medium, and its new home can be found here. If you’d like to know why we migrated, read this.

This marks a new beginning for ln(exun), and we foresee our move to Medium increasing our outreach, bolstering our readership, and allowing us to enhance our posts with new content that is unsupported by WordPress.

Reach out to us over Facebook or Twitter if you have any questions about the move.

[Posts here have been migrated to Medium and are now attributed to Exun Clan]

TAPS Fest was held on 24th-25th August 2017, at Army Public School, Dhaula Kuan. Exun Clan and Domain Square bagged the overall winners trophy.

The individual results are as follows:

Pragrammadox – Winners
Aman Verma
Bharat Goyal