What’s the Buzz About One Ace 6T? Why Should You Care?

Once again, OnePlus is ready to make waves with its Ace 6T on December 3 in China. And many believe, it’s not just another “yeah-we-have-a-new-phone” move. This phone is packing some serious firepower. For starters, this will be the first smartphone in the world equipped with the brand-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset.

Another, Ace 6T comes with a huge 8,300 mAh “Glacier” battery, which by any standard is freaking huge! Add to that a 165 Hz OLED display, shoutout to gamers and OTT users. 

In short, as per analysts, “OnePlus seems to be saying ‘let’s do it’ and do it well.”

If lag irritates you or you hate battery anxiety or just want a phone that doesn’t give up, Ace 6T might be your go-to guy.

All the Wild Extras that Make Ace 6T a Big ‘HU-HA’

Specifications are one thing, but what makes Ace 6T feel like a next-gen smartphone are these things –

• Display & smoothness: Ace 6T gets a 6.7-inch, 1.5K OLED panel. Couple that resolution with 165 Hz refresh rate and you get an ultimate fluid screen. It’s perfect for fast gaming, smooth scrolling, or bingeing content without stutter. 
• Performance & gaming power: With Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 under the hood, with OnePlus’s “Wind Chaser Gaming Kernel” optimizations. The phone reportedly hits a crazy ~ 3.56 million points on the AnTuTu benchmark. The company even claims continuous 165 fps gaming for hours.
• Battery & endurance: That 8,300 mAh battery isn’t just a number, it promises real durability. Whether you’re gaming, video-calling, or live streaming, this phone seems built to last. 
• Durability & extras: Ace 6T won’t be a delicate toy. It’s dust/water resistance ratings (IP66 + IP68 + IP69 + IP69K), a 3D ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensor, and a design that feels premium with metal frame and refined back-panel finishes, give it a push! 
• Looks & vibe: The phone comes in three colours — Flash Black, Phantom Green, and Electric Purple. Enough variety to let you pick a vibe that matches your style.

Conclusion: Is it Worth Your Swipe?

Ace 6T doesn’t feel like “just another phone”. It feels like a pack of promises: big battery, buttery-smooth screen, fascinating performance, and robust build quality. For people who use their phones hard like gaming, bingeing, and heavy multitasking, this phone could very well shine.

However, as of now, Ace 6T is launching in China. If you live elsewhere, you’ll have to wait for the time being and watch whether OnePlus launches a global variant. And whether that variant retains all those amazing specifications, or else you might end up with compromises.

But if you value raw power, longevity, and a flagship-level feel without going overboard with price (hopefully), it’s worth keeping an eye on. OnePlus seems serious this time around.

Bengaluru: Why India’s ‘Silicon City’ Feels… Broken?

Bengaluru is the land of startups, late-night coding, and butter-soft idlis. One part dazzles with global tech campuses and nofty cafes, while the other battles daily with potholes, drainage zones, water tankers, and traffic that tests patience every moment it gets. 

Let’s untangle why a city that accelerates India’s tech economy is also this infuriatingly broken.

Where the Roads Shine… Until It Rains 

On paper, Bengaluru has world-class plans. On the ground, people are dodging craters like they’re in a video game. And NDTV didn’t hold back describing the reality. He unhesitantly says, “The streets of this city, home to millions, are often riddled with potholes, the roads damaged by constant digging.”

Walk or drive a few kilometres and you’ll see why. Roads get dug up for cables, BWSSB repair works, drainage fixes, and then left like an unfinished DIY project. Add rain, and suddenly you’re playing “Find the Road Under the Water”.

The sad part? This isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a loop.

When Even CEOs Can’t Plan Their Mornings

The worst-kept secret in Bengaluru? The roads. The commute. That silent cry inside your car or bike helmet. And the people who run million-dollar companies feel it just as much as everyone else.

Entrepreneur RK Misra captured this frustration in the most Bengaluru way possible — politely, but painfully honestly.

He said, “The situation is pretty bad. And it hurts by not being able to plan your day”, after revealing he avoids morning meetings until noon. Why? Because his “gruelling 16-kilometre (9 miles) commute, which can take up to two hours at peak times” doesn’t let him.

“This also discourages people from doing anything other than work, because there’s no work-life balance anymore,” he added.

If one of the city’s most successful founders feels this helpless, imagine the rest of us.

Another voice chiming in, and this one feels like every tired Bengalurean at the end of a long day. Yabaji, who didn’t sugarcoat anything. He shared his experience, saying, “…he snapped after the average commute for my colleagues shot up to 1.5+ hours (one way)”, adding the roads were “full of potholes and dust, coupled with lowest intent to get them rectified”.

This sounds like a WhatsApp rant every Bengalurean has texted at least once.

And then came pharma legend Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder of Biocon, echoing what outsiders often ask when they visit the city. She wrote, “I had an overseas business visitor to Biocon Park who said, ‘Why are the roads so bad and why is there so much garbage around? Doesn’t the government want to support investment?’”

That question stings! Because it’s true, and because it’s coming from investors, the city wants to impress.

Conclusion:
So where does this leave Bengaluru?

If there’s one thing the city isn’t lacking, it’s talent, ambition, or potential. Businesses here are building AI tools, FinTech solutions, biotech breakthroughs – everything that screams future. But the people behind these innovations are losing hours every day to potholes, traffic, broken drains, and water tankers.

Bengaluru’s problem isn’t that it’s broken — it’s that it’s growing faster than the systems meant to support it. It’s a mismatch of speed: the economy is sprinting while the infrastructure is still tying its shoelaces.

Indonesia’s Jakarta Takes the Crown as the World’s Biggest City

Hold onto your maps, because the global city rankings just got a major SHAKE-UP. For what feels like forever, when you asked anyone to name the world’s largest city, the answer was a reflex: “Bleh! Tokyo.” It was a title the Japanese megacity wore like a comfortable old crown.

As per the new UN report, the crown has been passed to Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia.

The vibrant capital of the Indonesian archipelago has officially taken the first spot, pushing Tokyo down to 3rd place. It’s a powerful signal to Asia’s quickly growing urban landscape. But how did this happen, and what does it mean? 

How Do You Consider a City a Megacity?

Let’s talk about scale first, as the numbers may blow your mind. We’re not just talking about a city center with a few skyscrapers. The UN measures the urban area, which includes the entire continuous built-up environment. It includes the city’s center and its bustling suburbs that have merged into one gigantic economic hub.

Jabodetabek, Jakarta’s metropolitan area, is now home to a staggering 35.4 million people. Let’s digest this! That’s more than the entire population of Canada.

Also, Tokyo-Yokohama has seen its population dip to 33.8 million, placing it just behind another rising star, Guangzhou-Foshan, China. It looks like the East Asian urban hierarchy is in full revamp mode.

The Double-Edged Sword of Explosive Growth

Now, becoming the “largest” isn’t all a victory parade. Anyone who’s spent time in Jakarta knows it’s a city of exhilarating contrasts and immense challenges. This new title is a double-edged sword, and the people living there know all about it.

According to the UN, the growth puts immense pressure on infrastructure and housing. One local of Jakarta, Ayu Lestari, mentioned, “There are too many people, too many motorbikes, too many cars. It’s so crowded everywhere.” 

Another local, Rizky Darmawan, supported it by saying, “The green, open spaces in Jakarta are getting less and less.” This rapid urbanization comes at a real cost to the quality of life and the natural landscape.

The city is famously sinking in some northern areas, and traffic congestion is a growing nightmare. This growth is organic, driven by people seeking opportunity, but it’s bursting at the seams. 

Final Thoughts

Jakarta is number one. Cool, right! But what does this mean for the rest?

This shift is a clear signal that the future of urbanization is decisively leaning towards Southeast Asia and Africa. The 21st century’s story will be written in the growth of cities like Jakarta, Dhaka, and Lagos. Tokyo’s slight decline represents one model of development, while Jakarta’s explosive growth represents another.

The title of “world’s largest city” isn’t just about bragging rights. It’s an urgent reminder. It’s a spotlight on the critical need for sustainable planning, climate-resilient infrastructure, and smart policies to manage this incredible human momentum. Jakarta’s ascent is a monumental achievement and a cautionary tale, all rolled into one.

Function Health Unleashes a $298M Revolution, Putting an AI Lab in Your Pocket

While the annual check-up offers a mere snapshot of your health, Function Health, a startup that’s been making an impact in the digital health field, has just turned that snapshot into a continuous, HD film. 

In a significant move that signals substantial investor confidence, Function Health has secured a whopping $298 million in funding and, at the same time, released its unprecedented AI-powered Medical Intelligence platform. This IS NOT just another funding round but the transformational start for a fundamental shift in how we understand and manage our own well-being.

How Function Health Plans to Spend its $$$

So, what’s the big idea? Function Health operates on a powerful, yet simple premise — the more you know, the healthier you will be. The service provides members with comprehensive lab tests — checking over 100 biomarkers. This includes everything from metabolic health and hormones to nutrients and cancer risk. 

Members get their detailed results and data. However, with this new war chest and AI platform, the game has been flipped a little. The freshly secured $298 million Series A round, led by the renowned A16z (Andreessen Horowitz) with significant backing from Founders Fund and others, will be used to accelerate research and expand lab capabilities.  The overall plan is to scale this new AI engine that promises to be the brain behind the data.

The AI Co-Pilot Everyone’s Waiting For

This is where the magic happens. The newly launched AI Medical Intelligence platform is the secret sauce that transforms raw data into actionable, personalized wisdom. Imagine getting your lab results back and instead of being confronted with a sea of numbers and confusing acronyms, you have an AI companion that not only deciphers it all in plain English but also connects the dots between different markers. 

Furthermore, the technology flags potential risks. The company explained, “The Function Health will tell patients how their low Vitamin D might be linked to their lagging energy levels, and offer science-backed, personalized recommendations for diet, exercise, and supplements.”

It’s synonymous with having your personal medical researcher and a reliable doctor sitting down with you to create a unique health plan, all from the comfort of your couch.

Final Thoughts

The implications of this fusion of deep testing and deep learning are profound. We’re moving from a reactive “sick-care” system to a truly proactive and personalized health model. Function Health’s platform empowers individuals to become the CEOs of their own health, making informed decisions long before a small issue becomes a major crisis. 

With the financial fuel to ignite its ambitions, Function Health isn’t just selling a service; it’s championing a movement. This launch proves that the future of healthcare isn’t just about collecting more data—it’s about building the intelligent, empathetic tools to make that data truly meaningful for everyone. The stethoscope had its era; the age of the intelligent health algorithm is now firmly upon us.

Cloudflare Outage Brought the Internet’s Inherent Fragility into the Limelight

Are you facing issues with your favourite websites lately? You aren’t the only one! Web infrastructure provider Cloudflare experienced a massive service disruption on Tuesday after its collapse, affecting a myriad of online services, including ChatGPT, X, Canva, and even outage tracking sites like DownDetector. It’s the third major internet outage in the span of a month. 

Mehdi Doudi, CEO of internet performance monitoring platform Catchpoint, addressed this issue as a “wake-up call” for companies. He added, “Everybody’s putting all their eggs in one basket, and then they’re surprised when there is a problem. It’s on the company’s side to make sure that they have redundancy and resiliency.”

For context, Cloudflare outage came shortly after similar issues hit AWS and Microsoft Azure, leading to significant parts of the internet to go down. Just like them, Cloudflare aids a substantial portion of the web. The platform’s ‘content delivery network’ helps keep sites running, along with providing DDoS attack protection and Domain Name System (DNS). In December 2024, the connectivity-cloud company reported that its network supports about 20% of all websites. This includes 35% of Fortune 500 companies in addition to ‘millions’ of other customers.  

Cloudflare has a reputation for its robust performance and security features which have made it renowned globally. However, the platform’s latest outage shows how over dependent the web infrastructure has become. After the Amazon Web Services outage took place impacting the secure messaging app, Meredith Whittaker, the President of Signal, wrote “they didn’t have any other choice but to use a major cloud service provider to run on. The entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by three four players,” she added.  

These latest outages highlight that organizations need better, more foolproof backup plans, especially when 90% of the internet and web rely on a few providers. Doudi told The Verge “Outages will be here, and they’re just going to keep happening more frequently. The blast radius will keep growing.” “The question is, what are you doing about it?” he added.

Unlike Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, who connected their outage problems with DNS, Cloudflare linked it to a single file. Cloudflare spokesperson, Jackie Dutton said — “The root cause of the outage was a configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic. The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare’s services.”

It might sound unreasonable that such file issues can interrupt the internet or cause an outage, however, for big companies like Cloudflare, it is possible. Rob Lee, the chief of AI and Research at SANS, tells The Verge “When you operate infrastructure at Cloudflare’s scale, even small deviations can have outsized consequences.” He continued “These platforms are built for speed, so anything that delays or halts decision making can cascade quickly. In high performance environments, a millisecond delay can become a complete traffic stoppage.”

According to Rob, a configuration file mentioned by Cloudflare “drives routing security policies, load balancing decisions, and how traffic is distributed globally.” In case the configuration file increases in size, “it may result in slower parsing, memory issues, CPU contention, or logic failures within the systems that depend on it.”

Similarly, Amazon Web Services held ‘faulty automation’ responsible for causing the chain of issues that led to its recent outage. The company also said that these kinds of disruptions are likely to happen again. “Are you going to complain about it every time Cloudflare sneezes?” Daoudi adds. “… or are you going to build around it?”