Instagram is testing multi-photo albums for everyone

It likely won’t be too long until we can all share more than one photo in an Instagram album. The company is reportedly testing out the feature in its latest Android beta release, Droid Life reports. Multi-photo albums was something Instagram previously reserved for its “carousel” ads for the past year. The closest thing regular users got to that was creating a collage with the company’s Layout app, or making do with an ephemeral Instagram Story.

While Instagram’s Android beta users can start building albums, at this point they can’t actually post them to their timelines. That’s not too surprising, though it’s curious so many people can actually access the album builder already. We’ve dropped a word into Instagram to see what’s up, but for now it looks like the feature could be coming soon.

Via: Droid Life

Source: Philip Chang (Twitter)

‘Serial’ team returns with a new true crime podcast

When it debuted in 2014, Serial was a breakout hit for podcasting and an interesting case of the media effecting social justice. The show’s team of This American Life alumni even won a Peabody award for their reporting on the murder of Maryland teen Hae Min Lee in 1999, and a second season tackled the national scandal over alleged US Army deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. While we’re still anxiously awaiting news about a possible Season 3, Serial co-creator Julie Snyder and This American Life host Brian Reed will return with a binge-friendly new true crime spinoff called S-Town.

According to an announcement from the newly formed Serial Productions company, S-Town will follow Reed as he investigates a murder in rural Alabama. And for the biggest, most binge-friendly impact, all of the episodes will be available at the same time when the show is released in March. From the announcement:

Production of “S-Town” began when a man reached out to “This American Life” bitterly complaining about his small Alabama town. He wanted a reporter to investigate the son of a wealthy family who had allegedly been bragging that he got away with murder. Brian agreed to look into it. But then someone else ended up dead, and another story began to unfold—about a nasty feud, a hunt for hidden treasure and the mysteries of one man’s life.

Snyder is listed as the new show’s executive producer, but the usual suspects like her co-creator Sarah Koenig, Ira Glass and Mystery Show host Starlee Kine are also on board as part of the editorial team.

“This story takes so many unexpected turns,” Glass said in a statement. “Every episode is a new surprise. And the story has this feeling and mood that’s different from anything else we’ve done. I don’t think people have heard a show like this.”

Via: Huffington Post

IBM’s Watson will help you file your taxes

Tax experts can find deductions that you might otherwise miss, but they’re only human — they can only find so many potential savings, let alone paint a larger picture of your finances. They’re about to get a helping hand, though. IBM is partnering with H&R Block to make Watson a part of the tax filing process at locations across the US starting on February 6th. After you participate in an initial interview, the artificial intelligence will offer suggestions to Tax Pros (read: experts) looking for deductions, and illustrate the bigger picture for you on a dedicated client screen. Ideally, Watson’s ability to understand context and intent will turn your statements into tangible data that leads to bigger tax breaks.

This doesn’t guarantee that Watson will find dramatic savings. It’s dependent on your input, so it won’t know to go looking for deductions if you haven’t at least suggested something. This is more about eliminating omissions (say, due to changes in tax law) and streamlining the experience than it is exploiting obscure parts of the tax code.

Having said this, the team-up is still in its “first phase.” H&R Block hopes to use Watson in other areas of its business, and the cognitive computing system should improve as it masters the nuances of the tax system. You’re still a long way off from having AI do all the heavy lifting when tax time comes, but this might make a big difference if you’d like help filing and want assurances that you’ll get as large a return as possible.

Source: IBM

AT&T will launch 5G wireless in two cities this year

AT&T’s 5G wireless network just got much more tangible. The carrier has announced that its ultra-fast wireless will launch in two cities, Austin and Indianapolis, sometime later in 2017. And while it’s still early days, the company is confident enough to set some performance expectations. Initially, these 5G areas will deliver peak speeds of 400Mbps or better. And there’s definite room for it to grow — carrier aggregation and other techniques should push that to 1Gbps in “some areas” this year.

The rollout is part of a larger network platform upgrade, nicknamed Indigo, that promises to be more adaptable and responsive. It’ll put more of an emphasis on software-shaped networking (covering 75 percent of the network by 2020) and lean on technologies like machine learning. AT&T is even open-sourcing the code for its network’s orchestration platform, ECOMP.

Don’t expect to walk into a store and buy the 5G phone of your choosing once the service is ready. There’s still no 5G standard, for one thing. Also, new cellular wireless technology tends to launch with very limited hardware choices. Remember how Verizon launched LTE with a handful of bulky, compromised phones, and you were more likely to use it in modems and mobile routers? Expect a repeat. Until the technology has had time to mature, it’ll be more of a showcase for the network than a meaningful upgrade.

Source: AT&T Newsroom

Reddit bans ‘alt-right’ community over harassment

Reddit isn’t done cracking down on harmful communities. The social site has banned its r/altright subreddit for violating policies against “the proliferation of personal and confidential information.” Members were doxxing people to harass or threaten them, in other words. Reddit didn’t tell us exactly what prompted the move, but it clarifies that there were “repeated violations” of its doxxing policy. Moderators either couldn’t or wouldn’t police users’ behavior, then. You can read the full statement below.

It’s doubtful that r/altright will have much of a chance at coming back given both the serious nature of the offenses and the historical behavior of the “alt-right” movement itself. As it is, Reddit may be happy to clamp down in this case. It’s still trying to strike a delicate balance between its free speech ethos and cleaning up hostile elements that scare away users and advertisers. While it ideally wouldn’t have to wait until after multiple incidents before it takes action, this represents a prime opportunity to improve its image.

“Reddit is the proud home to some of the most authentic conversations online. We strive to be a welcoming, open platform for all by trusting our users to maintain an environment that cultivates genuine conversation and adheres to our content policy.

“We are very clear in our site terms of service that posting of personal information can get users banned from Reddit and we ask our communities not to post content that harasses or invites harassment. We have banned r/altright due to repeated violations of the terms of our content policy. There is no single solution to these issues and we are actively engaging with the Reddit community to improve everyone’s experience.”

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Reddit

Apple Watch Dominated Holiday Season With Estimated 5.2 Million Shipments

Apple shipped a record-breaking 5.2 million Apple Watch units last quarter, making it by far the most popular smartwatch of the holiday shopping season, according to the latest data from research firm Strategy Analytics. Apple captured an estimated 63.4% of the worldwide smartwatch market during the quarter.

Apple’s closest competitor Samsung shipped only 800,000 smartwatches in the quarter, for an estimated 9.8% market share, according to Strategy Analytics. All other smartwatch vendors, such as Garmin, Fitbit, and Huawei, combined for an estimated 2.2 million shipments and 26.8% market share.

“Demand for Apple’s new Watch Series 2 as a holiday-season gift in Western markets was surprisingly strong and it enabled Apple to clear a large backlog of smartwatch inventory during the quarter,” said Strategy Analytics director Cliff Raskind.

It is important to acknowledge that these are estimated figures, and that shipments do not necessarily reflect sales.

Apple does not break out Apple Watch sales like it does with iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and instead groups the device under its “Other Products” category. Given the category also includes the Apple TV, Beats products, iPods, AirPods, and other accessories, figuring out Apple Watch revenue is deliberately challenging.

Apple only elected to share that the Apple Watch set all time sales records during the first quarter of its 2017 fiscal year, with CEO Tim Cook noting holiday demand was “so strong” that Apple “couldn’t make enough.”

Strategy Analytics will not disclose its exact methodology for competitive reasons, but executive director Neil Mawston told us the company uses “a blend of channel checks, financial analysis, and other sources” to estimate Apple Watch shipments. “It is the same methodology we have used for phones since the 1990s and for wearables since the modern market first emerged circa 2013.”

Apple saw its “Other Products” revenue drop 8% to $4.02 billion in the quarter compared to $4.35 billion in the year-ago quarter, a sizeable decline that Apple financial chief Luca Maestri attributed to declining Apple TV sales.

Strategy Analytics said the smartwatch industry is showing “tentative signs of recovery” this year, but Raskind noted there remain “several barriers to growth” that must be addressed.

Smartwatch vendors like Samsung need to launch more exciting or cheaper models, Apple must engage closer with mobile operators to stock or subsidize its popular Watch portfolio, while component makers need to develop more accurate sensors for health and fitness tracking that consumers will trust and use more.

Apple Watch shipments totaled 11.6 million units in 2016, or slightly more than half of the estimated 21.1 million smartwatches shipped by all vendors in the year, according to Strategy Analytics. The firm’s data shows a slightly lower 20.8 million smartwatches were shipped globally in 2015 for comparison.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Tags: Strategy Analytics, Samsung Gear
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Renovated Fifth Avenue Apple Store to Feature Twice as Much Space

Apple is currently working on renovating its iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan, and when finished, the new store will be more than double the size of the original location, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The store will be expanded from 32,000 square feet to 77,000 square feet, giving Apple more space to work with. The company’s plans were shared by Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties Inc., which owns the General Motors Building where the store is located.

Apple spokesman Nick Leahy said the company anticipates an “incredible” new Fifth Avenue store, “where our customers will enjoy new services and experiences in a much larger space.”

While construction is underway, Apple has relocated the store to a nearby empty storefront that formerly housed the FAO Schwarz toy store. Plans to renovate the Fifth Avenue store were first announced in 2015 and are part of a wider set of Apple Store renovations Apple has undertaken.

It is not clear how long it will take Apple to revamp the store, but while work is underway, the temporary FAO Schwarz location will remain open.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
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‘Super Mario Run’ now has an easy mode

Super Mario Run isn’t exactly a difficult game, though it may take some real work to master it and get every special coin scattered through every level. Which makes the new feature Nintendo added to it a little odd: The game now features an “easy mode.” With easy mode turned on, you’ll get unlimited lives. When you die in Super Mario Run, you reappear in a bubble and float back in the level a bit before you regain control. In normal mode, you can only die a few times, but easy mode means you’ll never have to worry about running out of bubbles.

Nintendo also removed the time limit, something that usually isn’t a big problem — but you can run up against it in longer, more complex levels like castles or ghost houses. Killing the clock seems like a move born of necessity, as unlimited lives wouldn’t really help if you die more than a couple times — you’d be right up against the time limit before long.

The option for easy mode only presents itself after you run out of lives in a course, so you can’t turn it on across your entire game experience. And it’s worth noting that in easy mode, you won’t be able to collect special coins, but you’ll at least be able to get past tricky levels if you just want to play through to the end.

Nintendo also tweaked the balance of the competitive “Toad rally” mode. Now, you’ll lose less Toads from your collection if you lose a match. The game also now works in Korean, but there’s no new levels or really any additional content to be found here. For kids (or adults) who might have struggled with some levels, though, easy mode might provided a needed assist.

Via: The Verge

Microsoft’s Project Neon visual design has Windows 10 developers revved up

Why it matters to you

Microsoft is working to make a more visually pleasing experience in Windows 10 with a new design language and this is just a small sample.

A Windows 10 developer has created and released a preview build of an app called Interop Unlock Tools for editing the registry, making tweaks to Windows 10, and more. However, the big news here is that it’s based on Microsoft’s unannounced Project Neon design language for providing better visuals in Windows 10. Project Neon isn’t expected to become a major part of Windows 10 until Microsoft’s Redstone 3 update, which arrives in the fall and after Creators Update (Redstone 2) arrives this spring.

However, bits of Project Neon are already showing up in preview builds of Windows 10 served up in the Windows Insider program. The Interop Unlock Tools app takes advantage of these bits by enabling a semi-transparent background so users get a hint of the desktop wallpaper and other apps floating underneath. There are a few animations regarding the text too, giving the app more visual appeal.

Project Neon made its first appearance in November. It follows the current design language called Microsoft Design Language 2 (MDL2) used throughout Windows 10, which also provides transparency, animations, and other visual effects. However, Project Neon will supposedly lean more toward Microsoft’s previous Metro design that was used on Windows Phone and Windows 8.

That said, Project Neon will build upon the current Windows 10 design of using simplistic, clutter-free interfaces and spruce up the visual aspect to make the user interface less boring to the eyes. That includes adding transitions, even more animation, and so on. Project Neon will supposedly be more lively and more fluid than what we see in Windows 10 today.

From a developer standpoint, Project Neon won’t completely replace MDL2; developers won’t be required to jump from one design language to another as seen with the transition from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Project Neon will be the next step in the evolution of Microsoft’s design language that is improved and more streamlined.

In a previous report, sources said that Project Neon will serve as a visual bridge between holographic/augmented reality and the desktop environment. The user interface will “transport across devices” with an experience that “maps to the physical world” using 3D models, textures, lighting effects, and more.

Participants of the Windows Insider program are expected to see the first builds of Redstone 3 sometime around April or May. Again, Redstone 3 will contain the bulk of Project Neon even though some of the bits are showing up in builds now. Microsoft is expected to continue working on Project Neon throughout Redstone 3 and into Redstone 4, which will reportedly land in the first half of 2018.

If you’re confused about all the Windows 10 codenames and release dates, here is a roadmap to clear the air:

Code Name
Official Name
Version
Release Date
Threshold 1
Windows 10
1507
July 2015
Threshold 2
November Update
1511
November 2015
Redstone 1
Anniversary Update
1607
August 2016
Redstone 2
Creators Update
1704
Spring 2017
Redstone 3
N/A
 N/A
Fall 2017
Redstone 4
N/A
N/A
First half of 2018

After watching thousands of hours of porn, this neural network can identify nearly any adult film star

Why it matters to you

Neural networks have brought us self-driving cars, machine translation tools and now an AI that can recognize performers in the adult entertainment industry.

Brain-inspired artificial neural networks are at the cutting edge of AI, being used to make driverless cars speed down our roads, offer instant translations between dozens of languages, and even help with medical diagnosis.

Oh, and they can be used to help identify porn stars from a single snapshot, too.

Guessing which of these purposes the so-called Pornstar.ID (NSFW) startup falls into probably won’t come as much of a surprise. The facial recognition startup (stop snickering at the back of the class!) is one of the less likely applications of neural networks we’ve heard about, but nonetheless demonstrates that there really is no limit to where AI is popping up in our… err, some other people’s daily lives.

“Pornstar.ID is a face recognition implementation based on a deep neural network,” creator Mike Conrad told Digital Trends. “The broad workflow is as follows: first, we first detect faces with real-time pose estimation and transform the detected faces in order to make the eyes and bottom lip appear in the same location on each image. In the next step we use our deep neural network to represent the face on a 128-dimensional unit hyper sphere.”

More: Ohroma’s ‘smell-o-vision’ VR wants to put your nose in a porn star’s room

The network, Conrad continued, was trained on upwards of 650,000 faces of more than 7,000 female adult performers. “We have an accuracy of 70 percent on 1:N and over 99 percent on 1:1 classification,” he said. At present, users can upload photos to Pornstar.ID’s website or send a tweet and then be told within seconds who that person is. If the individual isn’t known, a number of “similar” performers are listed.

“The people behind Pornstar.ID are adult webmasters from the internet’s first days, and therefore we have always been connected and interested in the adult online business,” he explained. “Together with the huge steps forward with facial recognition technology in the past few years, and the increasing demand for identification of people in adult movies, the launch of this project was a no-brainer.”

While the system currently only deals with stills, Conrad was keen to stress that the service is being expanded this year.

“We are still in beta mode and in February will launch a version with much improved version of the classifier and improved front-end,” he said. “In addition, our current private API will be opened to third parties such as tube websites, with video support, for automatic tagging of the adult performers.”

Automatic identification of individuals simply by watching videos of them? Regardless of how the technology is used, that would be a pretty exciting development!