Facebook’s new mobile AI can process video in real time
Facebook has started rolling out its “Caffe2Go” AI platform that does advanced style transfer video effects in real time using only your iOS or Android smartphone’s horsepower. While the painterly effects are cool (see the video, below), the tech behind it is much more interesting. Deep learning normally requires content “be sent off to data centers for processing on big-compute servers,” Facebook wrote, but with Caffe2Go, the processing can be done “in the palm of your hand.”
The new platform is part of a larger AI effort that includes the machine-vision Lumos app used to suss out images that violate its community standards. It has also open-sourced similar tech on Github to non-Facebook developers. It’s not the only company doing AI projects, of course. Google released its Tensorflow framework to the open source community and Microsoft recently made its Cognitive Toolkit available to developers.
Facebook first flaunted Caffe2Go last month, then brought some of the effects to a new camera in a limited European release. Much like the Prisma app, it transfers styles from Van Gogh or Monet onto any still or moving image. Processing live video normally requires at least a well-equipped PC, but Facebook says “we were able to provide AI [processing] on some mobile phones at less than 1/20th of a second,” six times faster than an eye blink.
Company engineers had to design software that worked with your smartphone’s limitations on memory and computing power. At the same time, they wanted the app to scale up for use on servers or workstation class machines. To that end, the team created a lightweight UNIX-based system 100 times smaller than similar deep-learning programs that works on CPU, GPU, Android and iOS. They then created add-in modules, including a CPU feature called NEON that improves mobile processing speeds.
Facebook is giving developers access to Caffe2Go via its stack, and plans to open-source parts of it “over the coming months.” While the video style transfer is a good test of the technology, it’s capable of doing other AI processing tasks related to image, speech and more. It won’t result in WestWorld any time soon, but it should open up the possibilities of what you can do on your smartphone in the near future.
Source: Facebook
Injection-molded vinyl could offer better sound and lower costs
The vinyl resurgence trudges on and a Dutch company is working on a new production method that could bring big changes to how the format is made. Symcon built an injection molding system for pressing vinyl records that not only reduces production costs and provides better audio quality, but it also uses 65 percent less energy during the manufacturing process. Energy is saved by not using steam to heat and press records and the company hopes it can eventually cut turnaround times from 12-16 weeks down to two.
Symcon is still working on perfecting the sound and durability of the records by searching for the optimal mixture of ingredients. According to Discogs, sound engineers who have been privy to the testing process have confirmed this method does exhibit a bump in audio quality over traditional vinyl records. How? Well, during the injection-molding process plastic is injected directly on the grooves of a record stamper which copies the information more accurately. With current methods, plastic is pushed into the grooves at an angle. What’s more, there’s no pressure on the stampers with injection molding so they can be used longer before sound quality is affected.
In addition to fine-tuning audio and durability, Symcon is also working to reduce the cost of the plastic material used to make these new records. Right now, it takes €0.35 (around $0.39) worth of material to press a vinyl record compared to €0.45 (around $0.49) for the injection molded method. The company will also need to develop a new way to test audio quality as the system for existing vinyl records won’t work with the new material. In order to meet the demands of today’s artists and collectors, the ability to produce colored records is another challenge to address in the future.
In addition to working with a range of partners to meet all of those goals, Symcon received a grant from the EU to help make the process (officially called Green Vinyl Records) available for commercial use.
Via: FACT, The Vinyl Factory
Source: Discogs
Gnome is a smart garden system for urban horticulturalists
There are quite a few connected gardening products out there to help you grow and nourish plants. But most of them involve smart pots or indoor hydroponic solutions: Perfect for beginners or casual hobbyists, but not so great for more serious gardeners like Hugreen founder Clement Lee. New to the world of organic farming, Lee found himself frustrated by the limitations of existing products like the system from Edyn, which monitors small outdoor areas but is fairly limited in distance and overall capability. Hugreen’s Gnome, launching on Indiegogo today, is aimed at large backyards or rooftop gardens and tackles those weaknesses directly with more accurate monitoring and the ability to communicate as far as a kilometer away.
Lee is a former solar researcher, an expertise that’s immediately apparent in the Gnome’s usage of solar energy to power itself. He became interested in farming when he found out 70 percent of humanity’s water supply goes toward growing food and decided to shift his attention toward making food production more efficient. Even with his science background, he found himself stymied by the breadth of knowledge required of farmers, as well the the limitations of existing smart gardening systems.
Many products will water your plants automatically, but they can’t make changes on the fly based on the humidity or temperature, and they definitely don’t come with a built-in database of botanical information. Gnome is designed to be way smarter: The pods can read the temperature, soil pH and humidity then feed this information back to you via the web or the Gnome app. It can make some decisions on its own based on this info: If the pods sense the soil is a little drier than usual, the system will water it earlier, and if it’s very wet, it will choose to delay the cycle.
This isn’t all that distinct from what competing Edyn or Parrot products can do; Gnome just does these things a little differently. The first thing I noticed was that instead of a single metal stake at the bottom for insertion into the soil, each Gnome pod has four prongs. This helps Gnome get a more accurate reading than products like Edyn because it can sample more of the soil in a small area. Two of the poles focus on fertilizer levels while the other two are for measuring moisture content. They use an alternative method of measuring the moisture in the soil than competing products: The Edyn measures the soil’s resistance to electricity while the Gnome focuses on the soil’s capacitance — how well it can store a charge.
The other big difference is how the Gnome transmits information. Where most solutions rely on WiFi or Bluetooth, which are ubiquitous, the Gnome relies on 2.4GHz RF. This has an upside of adding a lot more scale to your home garden: The Gnome can transmit as far as one kilometer and support as many as 30 units, whether they’re sensor pods for reading the soil or valves for controlling the flow of water from your hose. Edyn is rated for 300 feet from your router though it’s been successfully tested from as far as 2,500 feet — at 0.7km, that’s a significant difference.
Of course, those numbers tend to apply to direct line-of-sight scenarios, and not every garden is going to be a clear shot from the hub. One of the intended markets for Gnome is rooftop gardening, which means that an urban farmer will be contending with a lot of walls and ceilings between them and their plants.
Here at the Engadget office, the Gnome wasn’t hampered by thick conference room walls or twisty office passageways, sending back the stats of a soil sample in a jar. The Hugreen team also demonstrated the Gnome’s abilities using some fruit like apples and oranges. Obviously, acidic citrus isn’t going to have the ideal pH for your crops, but it still has moisture and pH levels to read and report. Although the Gnome pods can communicate back to a valve connected to your hose with regard to the amount of water present in the soil and have the valve respond in kind by adding or withholding water, the system will also alert you to potential other problems, like whether or not your plants need more fertilizer or if there’s too much.
These alerts will come to you via the apps — you can go mobile with iOS or Android, or just access your Gnome system via any web browser. Though the sensors and valve correspond with each other via RF, all of that info is sent back to the Gnome hub, which connects to WiFi to communicate with you. The app also includes a plant database to help you decide what to grow and how to grow it, which should add a lot of context to the numbers that the sensor pods are sending you.
Gnome lands on Indiegogo today at a base price of $99 for a starter set, which includes one sensor and one hub. That’s just for getting to know your plants better: If you want a valve to water them, you’ll need to shell out $149 for a garden set, or $199 for the top-tier set that comes with two sensors. The Gnome system isn’t set to ship until June of next year — right on time to grow some good summer crops like peas and tomatoes.
Source: Indiegogo
Prisma can turn Facebook Live broadcasts into artistic affairs
Prisma’s latest update gives you the power to air artistic videos on Facebook Live. When you switch from Photos to Videos, you’ll now see a “Live Stream” button that broadcasts whatever it is you’re capturing on cam. You’ll be able to apply any of the eight available art filters onto your broadcasts, which means you can transform any ordinary event into a moving painting on the fly. Unfortunately, this feature has a pretty limited reach: you’ll only get Facebook Live integration if you have an iPhone 7 or a 6s. Prisma says it’s because videos are processed locally on the device — the update also improves overall video quality — and requires the phones’ power.
In its announcement, the company said it knows both Facebook and Google are working on their own Prisma-like offerings. The social network launched artistic filters along with Snapchat-like features for Live a few days ago, while Google revealed that it’s working on its own style-transfer technology at the same time. Prisma CEO Aleksey Moiseenkov says it’s “really cool that Google and Facebook are trying to copy” the company’s app, but he thinks “that’s the evidence that style transfer and all this on-device deep learning stuff matters a lot for every big company in the world.”
Besides announcing the new feature, the company also assures Android fans that it still plans to bring offline processing to the platform, even though it’s taking some time to do so. Prisma promises to launch GIF support, to add social sharing options and to improve photo quality and offline processing time, as well.
Source: Prisma
4chan might have knocked out Hillary Clinton call centers yesterday
It shouldn’t come as a shock that many denizens of internet cesspool 4chan are fans of Donald Trump. So it’s also not a huge surprise that one 4chan user apparently took it upon himself to disrupt a segment of Hillary Clinton’s get out the vote call centers. As reported by The Verge, workers with NextGen Climate (a group dedicated to raising awareness to climate change issues) noticed problems with their automated calling program yesterday — it got slower and eventually would cut out for hours at a time.
It appears that disruption was because of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) using the same Mirai botnet vulnerability that took down huge swaths of the internet a few weeks ago. “I am a tech specialist who currently has access to a slightly weakened version of the Mirai botnet,” a 4chan user who goes by “Sparky” wrote on the site’s /pol board. He also said he took out all of Clinton’s phone lines in Nevada and asked other 4chan users for more targets.
NextGen’s Suzanne Henkels confirmed the issues, telling The Verge that “[our tool] was slower in the morning, and then went down for hours at a time.” The attack was focused not on NextGen specifically but the Utah-based call center provider TCN — which is also used by groups like MoveOn and Our Revolution for automated calling, though it’s not clear if those groups experienced the same disruption as NextGen.
The call center wasn’t the only victim of a Mirai botnet DDoS attack — both Clinton and Trump’s sites were hit with attacks and experienced outages this morning.
Source: The Verge, 4chan
Do you really need a pair of smart headphones?
Muzik CEO Jason Hardi started his headphone company back in 2013 to, as he puts it, “connect the world.” But even though he’s been showing off versions of the hardware throughout the years — and even received a small investment from Twitter earlier this year — it’s never actually made it to market. Until a couple of months ago. That’s when Hardi and co. finally unveiled the Muzik One, which launched alongside a partnership with Spotify. What’s the big deal? Well, the One is a pair of “connected” headphones that lets you share whatever you’re listening to on the social media platform of your choice with just a tap of a button. Sharing music has never been so easy. Whether or not that’s worth $300, however, is less clear.
Regardless of its song-sharing features, these headphones look and feel like a really nice set of cans. It’s constructed out of aircraft aluminum and a soft supple leather covers both the handle as well as the ear cup cushions. Plus, the headphones fold inward for better portability. I’ve carried them around in my backpack and even my smaller shoulder bag without any problems.
What’s more, those ear cushions are interchangeable; they attach and detach magnetically, so you can swap the default over-ear options with smaller on-ear versions. Both feel comfortable when nestled next to my ears though I tend to prefer the over-ear cushions as they result in less outside noise. Speaking of that, the Muzik One headphones boasts “passive noise-isolation,” which really just means there’s enough padding to block out environmental sound. It doesn’t have the active noise cancelation like a Bose would have, for example. That said, I still thought it did a great job muffling the din of the outside world.
Speaking of which, I thought the audio quality was really quite good. Muzik boasts custom-tuned 40mm drivers and an enhanced digital sound processing that results in rich and smooth sound. Drums punched through convincingly and bass had a nice strong presence without being too aggressive. Middle and high notes sounded crisp and sharp, and both really show off the vocal range of the artist. In general, the Muzik One sounds just as good as most other premium headphones I’ve tried.
All of the One’s controls are housed in the right ear cup, along with a micro-USB charging port and a 3.5mm headset jack if you want to use it with a wired connection. The power button is on the side, but the entire surface acts as a large touch sensor. You can turn on swipe gestures, which let you swipe up and down to adjust volume, or left and right to change tracks. Tapping the overall surface of the cup will either play and pause a song or answer a phone call.
There are also four touch-sensitive buttons on the surface. Each of these buttons can be mapped via a companion app to a variety of different functions. They include the usual music controls, but you can also set it so that it’ll tell you the weather forecast, battery levels, what time it is or what song is currently playing. There are even Spotify-specific actions like the ability to follow the artist that’s currently playing, play a specific playlist, save the song to “Your Music” library or to add a song to a playlist. You can also enable voice commands, have it tell you a five-minute NPR hourly news summary and connect to an IFTTT recipe or, say, turn on your Nest thermostat.
A particularly noteworthy feature — and one that makes the Muzik One unique — is that you can also map those buttons to share what you’re listening to on either Facebook or Twitter. Sharing it on Facebook will result in a post that attaches a short 30-second preview of the song, a link to add it to your Spotify list, along with the hashtags #NowPlaying and #ConnectSmarter and the song’s name. There will also be a link to Muzik’s Facebook page. If you don’t want those extra hashtags and links, you can edit the post and remove them, but there’s no way to prevent them from posting.
Similarly, sending it out over Twitter will append a Spotify link to the song plus the song’s name and album cover, along with the #NowPlaying and #ConnectSmarter hashtags and a mention of @MuzikConnect. If you want to remove those hashtags, you can’t; there’s no template for tweets in the Muzik app. And since you can’t edit tweets, the only way to remove them is to delete the entire post.
Another way to share what you’re listening to on Twitter is via a “Moment,” which essentially attaches a Google Maps StreetView shot of your location along with the current weather and date / time. Muzik says this is a good way to remember where you were when you were listening to that special song, but I found it a touch creepy to be sharing that with the world.
#NowPlaying A/B Machines by Sleigh Bells https://t.co/uN5fQfugpZ @MuzikConnect #ConnectSmarter pic.twitter.com/kzC7Wil8CS
— Nicole Lee (@nicole) November 4, 2016
And that’s really my only issue with the Muzik One. I just had no real desire to share what I was listening to, and even when I did, I couldn’t control the format enough for my liking (I wouldn’t have included all those hashtags, for example and would have prefered to add in my own commentary). I do enjoy the other features, like voice commands and the weather forecast, and those Spotify-specific functions are great, especially because I’m a big Spotify fan. But I could do without the sharing.
Another aspect that I like about the One is that it has a relatively long rated battery life of around 30 hours. I’ve managed to use it for hours on end without it dying, so that rings true to me. I should note here that you can still use the headphones as an ordinary pair of cans with a wired 3.5mm connection — the only features you miss out on are the touch-sensitive controls. And since it’s connected to your phone anyway, I didn’t miss them much.
On the whole, I found the Muzik One to be a very good pair of headphones. It’s comfortable and well-constructed, and I love the audio quality. It works well in both wireless and wired modes, and the fact that you can map those touch-sensitive buttons to extra functions like the weather forecast and Spotify playlists are great.
I wasn’t too enthused by its song-sharing features, however, which are what set the One apart from the rest of the $300 headphone pack in the first place. And because of that, I can’t say that I recommend the Muzik One. Similarly priced headphones like the Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 and the B&O Play H8 have characteristics like active noise-canceling and luxe finishes, both of which I would prefer over social media sharing. What’s more, there are also more affordable Bluetooth headphones like the Jabra Move or the JBL E40BT that might not be so premium, but are still highly rated for audio quality. They won’t have the same social and Spotify-friendly features, but at those prices, I can live without them.
Verizon’s new prepaid plans give customers even more options
More prepaid offerings are coming to Verizon soon. Today, the carrier revealed that two new plans will be available starting next week, on November 13th. The cheapest option includes 5GB of rollover data, unlimited talk and text in the US, mobile hotspot and international texting for $50 per month. If that’s not enough for you, $70 gets you everything mentioned above plus unlimited calling to Mexico and Canada, as well as double the data (10GB).
Of course, these are a complement to the prepaid plan Verizon announced in May, which comes with 6GB of data for $60 monthly for customers enrolled in auto-pay. Now you just need to figure out which one meets your needs.
Snapchat Update Introduces Augmented Reality ‘World Lenses’
Snapchat is joining in on the augmented reality craze today with an update to its iOS app that lets Snapchatters use both their outward-facing and self-facing cameras to discover objects hidden in the world around them through their iPhone screens. Called “World Lenses,” the options include an Election Day filter, rainbow-vomiting clouds, floating glitter, snow, hearts, and a horror-themed lens that turns your environment dark or light with the use of a flashlight (via The Verge).
Also discovered hidden within the update is a menu option to sync with Snapchat’s upcoming Spectacles, sunglasses that will let users record 10 seconds of video at a time. As found by Mashable, the menu reads, “Spectacles are sunglasses that Snap! Learn more about Spectacles here,” before directing users to Spectacles.com. There’s still no confirmation of when the $130 device will launch.
The update also includes two new UI interactions for users, letting them press and hold on any snap to forward it to a friend so they can check it out. To cancel the process, simply press on the left side of the screen to return to the snap’s normal playback loop.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been championing AR in recent months, calling the technology “profound” in its potential to encourage and better stimulate human contact, not replace it. Apple is said to be investing a lot in AR as it moves forward, and the most recent rumors peg the company’s potential efforts in the field as a focus on an assisted driving system that would have some kind of augmented reality user interface.
For now, more entertainment-based apps like Pokémon Go and Snapchat are the best examples of the technology. Users who don’t have it yet can download Snapchat for free on the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]
Tag: Snapchat
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Ireland to Formally Appeal $14 Billion Apple Tax Ruling This Week
Ireland’s government will this week formally submit an appeal against the European Commission’s ruling that it must collect 13 billion euros in unpaid back taxes from Apple, according to Ireland’s finance minister Michael Noonan.
“The government fundamentally disagrees with the European Commission’s analysis and the decision left no choice but to take an appeal to the European Courts and this will be submitted tomorrow,” Noonan told a European Parliament committee in Brussels on Tuesday.
Ireland agreed in September to join Apple in its fight against the European Commission, which in August said the iPhone maker received illegal state aid from the country. The ruling followed a three-year inquiry that found Apple paid between only 0.005% and 1% in taxes in Ireland between 2003 and 2014, compared to the country’s headline 12.5% corporate tax rate.
Ireland is looking to protect its tax regime that has benefited several multinational corporations, according to Reuters.
Apple previously said it is “confident” the ruling “will be overturned” by European courts, but noted the process is “likely to take several years.” Apple said it has “provisioned several billion dollars for the U.S. for payment,” but it does not expect any near-term impact on its financial results.
Apple insists it is “the largest taxpayer in the world” and “follows the law and pays all of the taxes” it owes in each country it operates. Apple CEO Tim Cook has described the tax accusations as “total political crap,” and said the lower-end 0.005% tax rate calculated by the European Commission is a “false number.”
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Tags: corporate tax, European Commission, Europe, Ireland
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Apple Promotes Apple Pay on Web With Exclusive Holiday Offers
Following the launch of Apple Pay on the web on iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, Apple is now offering a selection of exclusive holiday discounts and benefits in order to entice customers to use the mobile payments service online.
Some of the offers, for example, include 50% off a one-year subscription to The New York Times, a free $50 iTunes gift card with the purchase of a Casper mattress, and a free $25 gift card if you spend over $150 at athletic apparel retailer Lululemon.
Free shipping, discounts, and other offers are currently available from Adidas, Casper, Grubhub, Instacart, JackThreads, Jet, Lululemon, The New York Times, 1-800-Flowers, Overstock, Seamless, Shopify, Spring, and Vacatia.
• Adidas — Enjoy one- or two-day free shipping.
• Casper — Buy a mattress and receive a $50 iTunes gift card.
• Grubhub — Win a $50 gift card for you and a friend! New diners will also receive $10 off their next order.
• Instacart — First-time customers get one month of free Instacart delivery.
• JackThreads — Get 20% off great holiday looks.
• Jet — Get 10% off your first three orders and $5 JetCash to use on future purchases.
• Lululemon — Get a $25 gift card if you spend over $150.
• The New York Times — Get 50% off a one-year subscription.
• 1-800-FLOWERS — Enjoy free shipping.
• Overstock — Enjoy a free year of Club O Rewards Membership, a $19.99 value.
• Seamless — Win a $50 gift card for you and a friend! New diners will also receive $10 off their next order.
• Shopify — Explore unique gifts and deals from Shopify stores.
• Spring — Get 20% off perfect looks for holiday.
• Vacatia — Get 7% off resort bookings and a chance to win a one-week stay in Hawaii.
Apple said more offers are coming soon from retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, Bank of America, Caviar, Chase, Poshmark, Tumi, Under Armour, Warby Parker, and The Washington Post. The offers are valid in the U.S. only.
Related Roundup: Apple Pay
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