How to mute Google Home’s microphones (and why you need to)

OK Google, stop listening to me.

I love being able to yell across the room to tell my Google Home to fast forward a song or play the news. But whenever I try to use Google Assistant on my Pixel within earshot of the always-on speaker, the Home almost always intercepts, even if I need something only the Pixel can do, like search my contacts or set a reminder — which Google Home still can’t do. Sometimes we need to stop Google Home from butting in, and thankfully, it’s really easy to do.

And you don’t even have to get off the couch to do it.

“OK Google, Turn off the microphone.” This will turn off the mic without touching your Google Home, but this is a one-way control, as once the mic’s off, it can’t be heard to turn itself back on. That’s why we have buttons.

On the back of your Google Home, there is a single button featuring a mic icon with a slash through it. This is the mute microphone button. Press it once and your Google Home will announce “Microphone off,” muting its microphones and allowing you to use Assistant on your Pixel — or anything else you need without a sentient being harmless assistant listening.

If it starts telling you it’s about to reset itself, release the button before it reaches the end of the glowing countdown.

While your mic is muted, you’ll be able to easily Home isn’t listening. Google lights up the four cardinal points of the Google Home’s top-mounted display in a warm warning orange.

When you’re ready to let Google hear you again, press the mute button once more. The orange lights will disappear, and your Google Home will cheerfully tell you “Microphone on.”

We shouldn’t have to do this…

That the mute button is so necessary is a travesty. Sure, the ability to turn the mic off when you don’t want Google and goodness-knows-who listening is fine, but to have to mute the Google Home mic because you want to text a reply using your voice while Mountain View’s air freshener is in the room is ridiculous. ‘OK Google’ is recognizable on six devices at different points in the room and can even distinguish which device hears you best, but even if you’re talking directly into your phone ten feet from a Google Home, it’ll try to respond instead. That’s some great listening abilities, but it’s not always useful.

We hope that this behavior changes, but right now, we can only hope. In the meantime, we’ll be ready to mute our Homes so that we can get what we need to done without Google Home butting its nose in every time we Google a Chinese takeout place to call.

Google Home

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Here’s how you can become a certified cyber security hacker

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ll have seen hackers making the news more and more frequently. There’s a cyberwar raging as anonymous groups of malicious hackers seek to steal sensitive information and compromise online. This means that now more than ever, there’s a huge demand for ethical hackers with penetration testing skills for finding web security vulnerabilities. Learning these valuable skills could open up a whole new career path for yourself. The good news is that all the resources are available to learn right from your home, and that’s where this Android Central Digital Offer comes in!

Learn how to become an ethical hacker! Learn More

With the Cyber Security Hacker & Pen Tester Certification Training
bundle, you get 24/7 access to over 21 hours of course content, which includes 117 classes that teach you everything you need to know via video, quiz, exercise files, assessments & online discussion.

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• Threat modelling
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• Cross-site request forgery
• Penetration testing methodologies

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Over 1,000 people have already bought into this offer. Join the good fight and become an ethical hacker!

Grab a battery case for your Google Pixel XL for just $52 right now!

Right now you can pick up this protective battery case for the Google Pixel XL for just $52 at Amazon with coupon code 3CP3U2P6. Not only will the case keep your phone safe, but also charged up all the time thanks to its built-in 5000mAh battery. While it may not be a case that you want to use every day with its size, it is a perfect travel companion for those long days when you know you won’t be around a charger much. The case still offers quick and easy access to all the ports and fingerprint sensor, so you won’t need to remove it to use the phone normally.

This offer is only available for a limited time, so if you are interested you’ll want to order one quickly. Don’t forget to use coupon code 3CP3U2P6 to get the savings on the case.

See at Amazon

How to manually enable Daydream on phones Google has not approved

How do I install Daydream on my phone?

Google’s philosophy with their newest VR platform is simple. In order to offer the best possible experience in Daydream, there needs to be a minimum list of requirements met. The phone must be capable of delivering two video streams at 60fps with no stutter, and when you turn your head inside a Daydream headset there should be as little motion blur as possible. Unfortunately that means no matter how capable your phone is, if it’s got an LCD display Google won’t be enabling Daydream by default. The “motion to photon latency” in LCD panels being used in phones right now is just too high, and the end result is a VR experience that doesn’t meet Google’s quality threshold.

That having been said, if you’re willing to mess around with your phone a little there may be a way to enable Daydream on your phone without Google’s blessing.

Read more at VR Heads!

OnePlus and Meizu have been cheating benchmarks for some reason

Why are manufacturers still cheating on benchmarks?

An XDA Developers investigation in cooperation with our friends at Primate Labs, the company behind the excellent Geekbench test suite for Android, has uncovered a vast conspiracy of benchmarking infractions across thousands of Android devices.

OK, that’s not entirely true, but it sounds good, right? In reality, it was discovered that, as Samsung, HTC and others were found to be doing a number of years ago, OnePlus and Meizu have been activating “performance” modes on their flagships, the OnePlus 3T and Meizu Pro 6 Plus, when entering some CPU and GPU benchmarks. From XDA:

We came to the conclusion that OnePlus must be targeting specific applications. Our hypothesis was that OnePlus was targeting these benchmarks by name, and was entering an alternate CPU scaling mode to pump up their benchmark scores.

The OnePlus 3T was looking for Geekbench, AnTuTu, Androbench, Quadrant, Vellamo, and GFXBench. As by this point we had fairly clear evidence that OnePlus was engaging in benchmark cheating.

XDA Developers worked with Primate Labs to obtain a special build of Geekbench that wouldn’t trigger the cheating, and found significant performance differences and, of course, higher overall temperatures as a result. Similar results were found with the Meizu Pro 6 Plus, which isn’t popular outside of China.

For its part, OnePlus says that there was no malice intended in the optimizations, and that they were meant to improve overall game performance, not benchmarks, at the expense of a bit more heat output and battery usage. A future build will remove the benchmark optimizations.

Of course, a level playing field is necessary in an industry where benchmarks, for a small number of users, inform buying decisions, but we always recommend looking at the entire device — not just the speed of its cores — as a measure for purchase.

Benchmark Cheating Strikes Back: How OnePlus and Others Got Caught Red-Handed, and What They’ve Done About it

OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3

• OnePlus 3T review: Rekindling a love story
• OnePlus 3T vs. OnePlus 3: What’s the difference?
• OnePlus 3T specs
• Latest OnePlus 3 news
• Discuss OnePlus 3T and 3 in the forums

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Amazon

Amazon Fire HD 10 vs. iPad Air 2: Which is the better big tablet?

Is Amazon’s big tablet a worthy alternative to the might of the Apple iPad Air 2?

Both Amazon’s and Apple’s tablets have their own content ecosystems to go along with their hardware, so in some ways are very similar. The biggest difference, of course, is Amazon’s Fire HD 10 uses Android, while Apple remains the default choice for the casual consumer considering a tablet, since iOS has the App Store.

The question is, if you’re looking for a big tablet, is the Amazon Fire HD 10 a good buy, or does it fall short compared to the stalwart iPad Air 2?

Hardware

The Fire HD 10 starts at $229 in 16GB configuration with special offers and is available in white or black plastic or a silver aluminum finish. Other options include 32GB or 64GB of storage, and for an extra $15 you can take away the money-saving lock screen ads.

The iPad Air 2 starts at $399 in its base 32GB WiFi configuration, with all metal finishes and available in silver, gold or Space Gray. Not only does Apple offer a higher base storage but there’s a 128GB model available for $499. Both sizes of the iPad also offer an optional cellular version for an additional $120.

Storage is a more important consideration when buying an iPad versus buying a Fire tablet. While Apple’s tablet is sealed off and you get what you get, Amazon throws a microSD card slot on the Fire for expandable storage. So you can get away with buying a cheaper model and purchasing a low-cost memory card for your apps, games and media content if you wish.

Amazon has the price edge, but when it comes to all-round specs, there’s no denying Apple’s more expensive iPad Air 2has the Fire HD 10 on the ropes.

Amazon has the edge there, but when it comes to all-round specs, there’s no denying Apple’s more expensive iPad Air 2has the Fire HD 10 on the proverbial ropes.

The iPad Air 2 has a gorgeous 2048 x 1536 9.7-inch Retina Display, which is also great to use in portrait thanks to its 4:3 aspect ratio. By comparison, the Fire HD 10 has a rather lowly sounding 1280 x 800 resolution 10.1-inch display in a more common (for Android at least) 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. This makes it perhaps better for watching videos, but more awkward to use in portrait mode. It’s disappointing, too, that it’s not even a Full HD display in a tablet that costs over $200.

It doesn’t stop at the display, either. Down to the processor, RAM, even the cameras, the iPad Air 2 is a higher-end, more sophisticated tablet. But while Apple wins on the hardware, there’s always more to it than that — otherwise, everyone would always buy an iPad.

Software

At this point in time it’s not worth debating Android vs iOS. If you have a strong preference towards either you’ve probably already made up your mind. The key thing to point out here is that while the Fire HD 10 runs Android, it’s not the same build you’d find on your phone or Samsung tablet. There’s no Google here, only Amazon and its customized Fire OS.

Fire OS is better now than it has ever been, but it’s still a big storefront for Amazon’s products and services. If you use Amazon stuff, that’s probably why you’d even consider a Fire tablet and you’ll probably be OK with it. Fire OS is easy to navigate and isn’t a huge departure from the principles of ‘regular’ Android. But because there’s no Google, there’s no Play Store, which means using the Amazon Appstore for your apps and games.

Amazon lets you add more storage. Apple does not.

That’s not as bad a thing as it used to be, but there are shortcomings in the availability of some apps and how often they’re updated over their Play Store compatriots. By contrast, the iOS App Store has pretty much everything you could want, including Google and Amazon services.

The Amazon Prime Video and Kindle experience on the Fire HD 10 is still best, though, even if you can get it on the iPad. With being able to save offline video from Prime to a microSD card on the Fire HD 10, you’ve got a big advantage over the limited storage on the iPad, unless you stump for the 128GB option.

What’s also better on the Fire HD 10 is the specialized mode for your kids. With Freetime (or Kids Unlimited depending where you are) for a small fee you can create a locked, curated area of the Fire HD 10 for your little ones. It gives them targeted content to enjoy without you worrying about your credit card being used to buy a laptop on Amazon.

Voice Assistants

Finally, we have the voice assistants: Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. The latter has been around much longer but the former is arguably more refined and more useful. Alexa isn’t just confined to the Fire tablets. You’ll also find it on the Amazon Echo, the Fire TV and even third-party products now such as the Huawei Mate 9 and the Android-based CoWatch. It’s an AI assistant that can play you music, tell you the weather, control your smartphone, hail you an Uber and so much more.

Siri has long felt underwhelming and been the butt of many a joke over the years. Apple hasn’t done nearly as much with Siri as Amazon has with Alexa in a much shorter time, and there’s no surprises which one would get our vote.

The conclusion here is something of an odd one. The iPad Air 2 is a better tablet if you treat it on face value. It’s nicer, more powerful hardware with all the apps you’ll ever want, a gorgeous screen and access to all the Amazon content, too. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should buy one.

For once, the better tablet isn’t necessarily the one to buy

For starters, it’s $170 more expensive than the cheapest Fire HD 10, and that’s a lot of money. It’s almost a second Fire HD 10. It’s a significant saving, with compromises which aren’t enough to recommend folks stay away from it. The display is disappointing, but not horrible, you’ve got the space for tons of storage and if you’re a heavy media consumer or Amazon user, it’s a no-brainer.

The iPad Air 2 excels in areas that you might not even be bothered about using a tablet for. It’ll be better for playing high-end graphically intense games and many folks use them for light work. But is that enough to make you spend that $170 more? For once, the technically better tablet isn’t really the one to buy.

See Fire HD 10 at Amazon See iPad Air 2 at Apple

Magnetic fields could explain an ‘erratic’ neutron star

Scientists think they’ve discovered why an unusual star system is emitting “sudden, erratic and extremely intense” bursts of X-rays. Using three different space telescopes, the team set out to investigate “Rapid Burster,” a binary system first discovered in the 1970s, in 2015. It contains a small star and a “neutron star,” the term given to collapsed cores of formerly giant stars. Normally, this setup would produce “type-I” bursts, as the dense neutron star strips the gas of its younger neighbor. The Rapid Burster does this too, but curiously it also exhibits rarer, high energy “type-II” blasts.

Following some close examination, scientists believe the neutron star’s magnetic field is to blame. It spins so fast that it creates an inner edge to the gaseous disc collected from its companion star. The best way to think of it is like a merry-go-round — the field spins at such a velocity that hardly anyone can get on. As the gas accumulates at the edge, however, it gradually spins faster and is able to make the jump. That build up, the team says, is what causes the seemingly erratic and powerful type-II bursts.

“The Rapid Burster is the archetypal system to investigate type-II bursts — it’s where they were first observed and the only source that shows both type-I and type-II bursts,” Jakob van den Eijnden, a PhD student at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy in Amsterdam explains. Indeed, type-II bursts have only been discovered in one other place: Bursting Pulsar, another binary system uncovered in the 1990s. The far-flung location, as far as scientists can tell, exhibits type-II bursts exclusively, however. That makes the Rapid Burster unique, and a constant curiosity, one that will no doubt attract further examination in the future.

Source: ESA

GoPro’s troubled Karma drone is back on sale today

Surprise! GoPro’s Karma drone is back on sale. GoPro recalled Karma in the run-up to the holidays last year due to instances where drones were losing power mid-flight (not cool, obviously). In early January, the company cryptically “announced” that it would give details on Karma’s return in early February.

Many speculated that probably meant we’d see its return later that month, or early spring. Instead, the news, delivered this morning, is simply that it’s returning to “select” retailers (no word on which), and GoPro’s online store today. International buyers will have to wait just a little longer, with the company only committing to “spring” for non-US customers. The timing isn’t that surprising, as GoPro is also announcing its holiday period financial results to shareholders tomorrow.

If you were hoping Karma might get a little upgrade, or a price-cut upon its return to curry favor with potential and previous customers alike, sadly you were wrong. Introducing new functionality at the same time as trying to isolate and fix a problem is probably not wise, any way. Instead, GoPro hunkered down and clocked in thousands of hours of test flights to make sure its fix (a change in the battery clasp mechanism) had done the job.

We also imagine GoPro came under pressure to get the Karma show back on the road/up in the air, so new software features would likely have introduced unacceptable delay. Though, there is the promise of updates later down the line. As for discounts, GoPro already gave early buyers a free Hero 5 camera for the inconvenience of returning their drone.

A few days ago, GoPro added a ($399) “Karma core” item to its online store, which only includes the body, arms, and landing gear (no gimbal or controller or backpack). Today, GoPro’s also adding a “Flight Kit” which comes with everything but the Karma Grip and the gimbal (for those that bought them separately) for $599.

It’s fair to say that it’s been a bumpy ride for GoPro with Karma. When it was first released, it was generally positively received by mainstream technology sites (Engadget included). The hardcore drone-enthusiasts were, well, less enthusiastic. Especially once DJI released its smaller, more featured Mavic Pro causing many industry pundits and forum users to vocally denounce GoPro’s debut product in this space. IN particular this one scathing review, from a vlogger later spotted working for DJI at CES.

When I spoke with GoPro CEO Nick Woodman last month, he was eager to point out that the hardcore drone crowd have plenty of options they may prefer. The message being that Karma is, essentially, a set of tools for people that want to get the most out of their GoPros. Let’s hope that that’s enough people to persuade the company to make another one, as right now DJI’s pretty much the only big player in the consumer camera-drone game, and that’s not good for anyone but DJI.

MIT demos smartwatch app that detects emotions

A conversation is never just about the words we speak, it’s about our tone, volume, body language, gaze and everything in between. But the signals that we send out can sometimes be misinterpreted, or ignored, by people who struggle to understand non-verbal communication. That’s what prompted researchers at MIT to develop software that could take the ambiguity out of what people say, and what they do.

Researchers Tuka AlHanai andMohammad Mahdi Ghassemi built an algorithm that can analyze speech and tone. This data is crunched to work out what emotion a person is roughly feeling for every five second block of conversation. In one example, a person is recalling a memory of their first day in school, and the algorithm can identify the moment the tone shifts from positive, through neutral, down to negative.

The researchers used an iPhone 5S to record the audio part of the conversations, but made each test subject wear Samsung’s Simband. That’s the company’s developer-only wearable platform that runs Tizen and has space for various additional sensors. It’s not the most elegant of implementations, but the pair have built the system with an eye on incorporating it inside a wearable device with no outside help.

Right now, the implementation is very rough around the edges, and basic to the point where it couldn’t be used more widely. But, the pair believe that it could be the first step on the road to building a social coach for people with an anxiety disorder or conditions like autism. It’s early days, but if there was a device that meant an end to awkward conversations, it would probably be quite popular.

Source: MIT

Spaceflight changes the shape of the human brain

The human brain reshapes itself during spaceflight, according to a study by a team of scientists from the University of Michigan. They came to that conclusion after comparing the structural MRIs of 12 astronauts who only spent a couple of weeks as ISS crew members against 14 who spent six months aboard the space station. Apparently, they saw both an increase and a decrease in gray matter in different parts of the brain, and those changes are more pronounced in the subjects who spent the most time in orbit. In short the more time you spend in space, the more gray matter gets displaced.

According to lead investigator Rachael Seidler:

“We found large regions of gray matter volume decreases, which could be related to redistribution of cerebrospinal fluid in space. Gravity is not available to pull fluids down in the body, resulting in so-called puffy face in space. This may result in a shift of brain position or compression.”

The team also observed an increase in gray matter volume in the parts of the brain that control leg movement and the parts that process sensory information in the lower extremity. This could be the result of the human brain learning how to move in microgravity. The researchers think that the change became very noticeable despite the relatively short amount of time the astronauts spent in orbit because their brains learned 24/7 aboard the ISS.

They still haven’t figured out the exact nature of the changes, though. When they do, their findings could be useful for the study of hydrocephalus and other conditions. The team believes this is the first study of the structural changes of the human brain during spaceflight. However, this is far from the only one that looked into the effects of long-duration missions on the human body. We have to make sure spacefarers can endure months or years outside Earth before we send them off to explore new worlds.

Source: University of Michigan