Google’s AlphaGo beats world’s best ‘Go’ player in the first of three matches
Why it matters to you
Although AI continues to best the world’s greatest game players, they are keeping the fight alive by using the AI’s own moves against them.
Although it is widely accepted that artificial intelligence will one day be able to beat humans at just about any game, that does not mean we have stopped trying. In the first of three planned games, the best Go player in the world tried to use Google’s AlphaGo AI’s own moves against it, but to no avail. In this latest series of games, the AI is winning 1-0.
It’s been two decades since supercomputers were used to beat the world’s best chess players, which is why over the past few years Go, the far more complex game, has been the subject of much research by AI developers and game players alike. But despite humanity’s greatest efforts, they have been toppled time and again, leading some to resort to some interesting tactics.
The latest attempt saw arguably the world’s greatest Go player, 19-year-old Ke Jie, adopt strategies shown by the AlphaGo system during earlier games. He was previously been defeated by the AI in January but like any great player, he learned from it and brought some of the ideas AlphaGo developed to the table this time around. While it did not help him win, according to DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, it did lead to some exciting gameplay.
However, the match was hard-fought. Jie eventually lost by just half a point, the closest margin possible in a game of Go. While ArsTechnica does point out that AlphaGo is programmed to aim for victory alone rather than trying to dominate the opposition, the feat is still impressive and suggests that while AI may have the advantage in Go play, the best human minds can still give it a run for its money.
Indeed, Jie is not done yet. He still has two more games to play, the first on Thursday, followed by a final game on Saturday. AlphaGo is also set to try its luck against a team of five pro players as part of an exhibition game on Friday. Perhaps the combined might of high-tier players will be enough to topple what is arguably the greatest Go mind ever created, even if it is an artificial one.
New Surface Pen overhauls and expands inking for Office 365
Why it matters to you
Office 365 is looking to facilitate hand-drawn collaboration on documents with its new inking features, encouraging users to pick up a brand-new Surface Pen.
Microsoft’s new Surface Pro might be as unfixed as it was unbroken in its previous incarnations, but there are quite a few exciting changes coming with it. Updates to inking in Office 365 go hand in hand with a brand-new and far more sensitive Surface Pen, and the Microsoft Whiteboard app should now be more collaborative than ever.
Along with the option for a fanless design, one of the features highlighted in our look at the new Surface Pro was its upgraded Surface Pen. With more than 4,000 pressure points for added sensitivity, the new pen can take advantage of a variety of new functions when inking Office documents. Tilt functions and low-latency support are now available in all Office 365 applications.
This means that you can adjust the thickness and texture of your ink depending on the angle of the pen. With almost no latency, drawing more complex shapes and an improved fluidity to the experience should be possible for all users.
Other new features include additional ink effects and textures, letting you draw more complicated images in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Although not as fully featured as bespoke artistic applications, it should be possible to create some quite pretty images by hand even within those typically more office-orientated apps.
Some of those features are available already, though they are limited to Fast Ring Windows Insiders. Microsoft claims that the new ink effects will become more widely available for Office 365 users in June.
Once they do arrive, you’ll be able to take them across various apps as you go, with a personalized “pencil case,” of artistic tools. Microsoft’s update will see the apps offer a gallery between apps that showcases your favorite pens, pencils, and highlighters, giving you quick and easy access no matter which app you’re using.
But Microsoft doesn’t want you to keep your Surface Pen skills to yourself. In an update for the Whiteboard app for Windows 10, Microsoft has introduced collaborative inking so that friends and colleagues can annotate together with all of their favorite digital pens and pencils.
Although the app isn’t a widespread one at the moment, Microsoft is looking to change that in the future and that includes bringing it to the new Surface Pro. Office 365 subscribers will have exclusive abilities within the app, though all users will have access to additional new features like geometry recognition, table conversion, and automatic table shading.
Scrolling mobile web pages in Safari is about to get a whole lot smoother
Why it matters to you
Scrolling across iOS and Safari should be much more uniform in the future, but not everyone is happy with Google’s hand in it.
Apple is making changes to the way the Safari mobile browser operates in order to make scrolling smoother, regardless of the website being viewed. As it stands, certain sites can scroll a little differently depending on whether they use Google’s accelerated mobile pages (AMP) system.
Although Google’s AMP system is supposed to speed up page navigation and scrolling, it’s not something everyone is happy with. Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber bashed the system on a Hacker News post. This lead to a member of the AMP team commenting about the scrolling disparity in Safari. They claimed to be aware of the issue and that they had actually spoken to Apple about it. Better yet, the Cupertino, California-based company listened.
Instead of taking the AMP team’s suggestion that it make scrolling on AMP sites the same as those on regular sites, it’s pledged to do the opposite. As Engadget explains, the reason is that Google’s AMP scrolling in Safari is actually far closer to how scrolling works in other aspects of iOS, due to a deliberate design decision in Safari made some time ago.
That decision is no longer relevant, so Apple is now looking to make scrolling faster and smoother across all websites, regardless of their AMP implementation.
This is likely to be a mixed bag of an announcement for iOS users. While a unified scrolling experience is much less confusing for the average user and AMP has its fans, there are others who don’t like the way it operates. AMP currently breaks a few features on Safari, such as auto-scrolling at certain taps and automatically hiding top and bottom bars.
Certain developers don’t like the way that Google has control of such an important part of the iOS ecosystem either, but with Apple planning to make AMP-like changes to Safari, they may have to accept that moving forward.
Apple is expected to implement the new, AMP-like scrolling officially in the next Safari mobile release.
Scrolling mobile web pages in Safari is about to get a whole lot smoother
Why it matters to you
Scrolling across iOS and Safari should be much more uniform in the future, but not everyone is happy with Google’s hand in it.
Apple is making changes to the way the Safari mobile browser operates in order to make scrolling smoother, regardless of the website being viewed. As it stands, certain sites can scroll a little differently depending on whether they use Google’s accelerated mobile pages (AMP) system.
Although Google’s AMP system is supposed to speed up page navigation and scrolling, it’s not something everyone is happy with. Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber bashed the system on a Hacker News post. This lead to a member of the AMP team commenting about the scrolling disparity in Safari. They claimed to be aware of the issue and that they had actually spoken to Apple about it. Better yet, the Cupertino, California-based company listened.
Instead of taking the AMP team’s suggestion that it make scrolling on AMP sites the same as those on regular sites, it’s pledged to do the opposite. As Engadget explains, the reason is that Google’s AMP scrolling in Safari is actually far closer to how scrolling works in other aspects of iOS, due to a deliberate design decision in Safari made some time ago.
That decision is no longer relevant, so Apple is now looking to make scrolling faster and smoother across all websites, regardless of their AMP implementation.
This is likely to be a mixed bag of an announcement for iOS users. While a unified scrolling experience is much less confusing for the average user and AMP has its fans, there are others who don’t like the way it operates. AMP currently breaks a few features on Safari, such as auto-scrolling at certain taps and automatically hiding top and bottom bars.
Certain developers don’t like the way that Google has control of such an important part of the iOS ecosystem either, but with Apple planning to make AMP-like changes to Safari, they may have to accept that moving forward.
Apple is expected to implement the new, AMP-like scrolling officially in the next Safari mobile release.
How (and when) to clear app cache or data on Android
Apps sometimes can misbehave. If it happens to you, here’s something to try.
Update May 2017: This post has been updated to be in line with newer versions of Android.
Every Android smartphone has an application manager that you can get to through the settings menu. It’s usually in the top level somewhere, though it can vary a little by phone. But once you get to it, you’re at the heart of the matter. This is where you can see every application that’s installed on your phone or tablet. And it’s a handy place to clean things up a bit should they go wonky. Here’s what’s up:
Clearing the app cache
As you use applications, they start storing files for reference later. These files are stored in an app “cache.” For instance: When you’re using the Android Central app, it’ll save images and other pieces of the stories you’ve read so that they don’t have to be downloaded each and every single time the app needs them. This saves you time and data.
But maybe you want to clear an app’s cached data, either to regain some used space or to try to fix a misbehaving app. This is where you can do it. Just tap into the app, and then tap the “Clear cache” button.
The next time you use the app it will download everything it needs from the internet like it did the first time you used it. Clearing cached data does not clear other data like logins or saved games.
This often fixes things, especially when an app pulls its content from a website that always changing and adding more content. If this doesn’t work, move to the next step.
Clear app data — or resetting an app
Clearing app data is a little more drastic. You’re wiping the cache, but also clearing any and all settings that go along with that app. You’re basically starting that app over, from scratch, and it’ll behave as it did the first time you installed it. This is generally a last resort type of thing. If you clear app data on, say, the Facebook app, you’ll need to log back in. If you clear data on a game you’ve been playing, you’ll be back at the beginning, as if you’d never played it. (And let’s hope that game is properly saving your place to the cloud.)
Next, open the app and sign in or do anything else you need to get started using it. With no “old” data in place — either stored settings or cached — you’re essentially running the app for the first time again. See if your problem is resolved and if so you’re golden.
One nice thing to do if this fixes any weirdness with an app is let the developer know. It’s mighty hard to keep track of versions and data conversion and everything else about making and publishing a great app and they’ll appreciate the heads up if you found a bug that affects everyone.
When to clear cache or data …
So when should you clear an app’s cache manually? Chances are you’ll never need to. But should an app start to “feel” sluggish or otherwise start misbehaving, this is where I’d start. Clear the cache.
And should an app really go haywire — or if you just want to start it from scratch — you can go all out and clear its data and start over from the beginning. Just tap the “clear data” button. You’ll get a warning asking if that’s really what you want to do. Confirm that, and you’ve reset the app to scratch.
HTC U11 hands-on: MrMobile’s new squeeze
By now you’ve seen the HTC U11 hands-on treatment: the smudge-prone but beautiful backplate; the conventional face; the interface that reacts to a squeeze as well as a swipe. But thanks to some canceled flights and some overzealous NYC security guards (long story) I got to spend a little longer with the HTC U11 than I might have, and as a result I was able to produce a slightly more in-depth hands-on than would otherwise be possible. That’s thanks to Android Central, whose HTC U11 review unit I took for a spin around Mountain View during Google I/O, so be sure to give Android Central’s HTC U11 Preview a look once you’re through watching MrMobile’s hands-on … and stay tuned for much more coverage on the smartphone you can squeeze in the weeks ahead!
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Netatmo Weather Station is long on looks, longer on data
It was time to update my home weather station from something functional but ugly to something decidedly more modern. Netatmo has fit the bill nicely.
I was going to show you my old weather station — a venerable beast from Oregon Scientific, which is quite good at this sort of thing. But alas, as soon as I took it off the wall it disappeared to wherever Phil’s Old Stuff disappears. (Basically an older, less sexy version of this.)
So. Time for something new. Something connected, and something definitely more modern.
A quick search of ye olde internet consistently returned offerings from Netatmo. They haven’t changed a lot over the years, which actually is a good thing in this case. So that’s the direction my credit card was pointed.
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The basics: the standard Netatmo Weather Station comes a relatively small indoor sensor, and an outdoor sensor. They look, well, like silver cans. The indoor one measures temperature and humidity and sound level and carbon dioxide levels. The outdoor sensor does temperature and pressure and humidity. They connect to your smartphone, and connect to each other. Note that there’s no external display here — you have to use a phone or tablet or computer or something to actually get data.
There are two additional modules that can be connected — a rain gauge, which I grabbed because Florida, and a wind gauge, which I didn’t get because I don’t care quite that much about just how breezy it is.
Setup was as simple as you’d expect for this sort of thing — you just follow the instructions in the app. I’ve used it with Android and on iOS — but there’s also an honest-to-goodness Windows Phone app as well. The web interface may be my favorite of the bunch, actually, full of features and nicely designed. And finally I’ve settled on the third-party app Baratmo for my Mac menu bar.
So now I have access to all my weather information — inside and out. And I can get to it from anywhere, and in more detail than what even my $250 Nest thermostat provides. (By the way: Netatmo is a Works with Nest device, but you can tie it in via third-party services like IFTTT.)
What’s missing? Not a whole lot. I do miss having a single place at home where I can see all this info at one time. For as much as I loathed that aging LCD display, it did its job without complaint. So I’m hoping someone builds a skill for it to work with the upcoming Amazon Echo Show. And I’d like a little more historical data — how much rain did I get in the last week versus just the last day.
But strictly from a data standpoint? This has been a good purchase.
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Galaxy S8 iris scanner unsurprisingly bypassed with picture of an eye and a little time
Our expectations of what it takes to get into our phones have been set too high.
The Galaxy S8’s iris scanning is quicker and more accurate than when it debuted (for a short period) on the Galaxy Note 7, saving us from using the fingerprint sensor every time we want to unlock the phone. But it doesn’t guarantee your phone can’t be accessed by an unwanted person, as the Chaos Computer Club has easily demonstrated.
The CCC shows how it could simply take a photo of a person’s eye — with up to a 200 mm lens from 15 feet away, it says — and then print it out on typical paper, cover the paper with a wet contact lens to mimic an eye and instantly gain access to the phone. With a sufficient amount of time and complete access to the phone, you could theoretically unlock any Galaxy S8 with iris scanning enabled.
Despite Samsung’s claims that iris scanning is nearly on-par with a fingerprint sensor’s security and far stronger than face recognition, this shouldn’t come as any surprise. But in the CCC’s own article on the iris scanner bypass, it links to its defeating of Apple’s TouchID fingerprint sensor years ago. It has been demonstrated numerous times that other fingerprint sensors can be bypassed with a certain level of trickery and time — so how worried should you be?
Each option you have for unlocking your phone comes with trade-offs and potential risks. For most of us out there who simply want to keep our private information locked up should our phone be lost or stolen, a fingerprint sensor or iris scanner is sufficient. It’s easy enough to use that we’ll actually keep it enabled 100% of the time, while being difficult enough to deter the most-common threats to the physical security of the device.
The average criminal looking to steal a phone isn’t printing a high-resolution image of your eye.
The average criminal or sleuth looking to steal a phone and unlock it for a quick factory reset and sale isn’t taking a high-resolution photo of our eyes and printing it out. Not only would they be far better off looking over your shoulder in public to see what your backup PIN or pattern is instead, they’d just as easily throw your stolen phone in the trash when they realize it couldn’t be unlocked and quickly resold. But the most important thing at that point is that all of your data is safe, because they weren’t going to be willing to go through the process to get a scan of your irises or fingers to unlock it.
Yes, your Galaxy S8’s iris scanner can be defeated in the right circumstances — those circumstances include a targeted attack that requires time and complete physical access to the phone. But that doesn’t mean you need to move away from iris scanning or be unnecessarily worried about the security of your data when using it.
Only roughly two-thirds of modern Android phones are using lock screen security at all — we need to get that number a lot closer to 100 percent before we start nitpicking about which security form we’re using and how easy it is to defeat.
Google Allo is the best way to send love notes without even trying
This one quick trick made possible by Assistant is a great reminder of the inherent power that exists in Google’s little messaging app.
Admittedly, it was a bummer that Google failed to make any mention in the I/O keynote of what else Allo might have in store for it. There wasn’t even a tease for the much anticipated desktop app coming to fruition, nor was there much hope that SMS integration would come and take the chat app out of its rut.
Overall, the lack of a unified messaging strategy remains one of the bigger frustrations of being a faithful user of the Google ecosystem. And it’s particularly excruciating when you consider how much of Assistant’s abilities are going to waste as Allo struggles to proliferate.
Google Assistant’s abilities are going to waste as Allo struggles to proliferate.
Google I/O offered a tiny glimpse at what’s coming to Allo’s future, though, at least with regards to its announcements for Assistant. With the news that the Machine Learning platform will be certifiable in French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese this summer, and that it’s officially coming to the iPhone, there is a bit of hope that this translates to more people discovering the usefulness of a chat app with Assistant’s abilities baked in. Who wouldn’t want a future where you could remotely turn off the Nest thermostat inside a group chat with the other members of your household, for example? Or where you could simultaneously make last minute dinner arrangements?
I’ve recently learned a new trick that became a helpful remind of why Assistant is worth bundling into a messaging app. You can program Assistant to actually assist in scheduling daily interactions with another person. It’s fun to set up if you’re using Allo to communicate with your spouse, your roommates, or a few of your closest friends, for instance. And though it’s such a simple gimmick, the fact that it was so easy to do makes me yearn for Allo’s ubiquity even more.
How to set up Allo to send daily love notes
Whether you want to send your loved ones a daily affirmation, or you’re simply into Nicolas Cage’s most famous movie lines, you can effectively subscribe so that these things show up at the same time every day in a preferred Allo chat window.
In the Allo conversation of your choice — in this case, I chose the thread between me and my husband — activate the Assistant and type in Send me daily love quotes. Assistant will offer up a few different time slots for your choosing. You can even edit the subscription time later if you like.
You can set up daily love quotes with your loved one (left) or jump straight into the daily Oprah affirmations with Allo.
What you program doesn’t have to be a love quote — it can be utterings form anyone or anything, as long as Google can pinpoint it. In a separate chat with just the Assistant in Allo, I looked up Oprah quotes and then typed in Send me daily. Every day at 11 a.m., I get a message from Allo with inspiring messages from Oprah, like, “My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.” This is the future, people. Embrace it.
In all seriousness, this silly little trick to keep love quotes going between my husband and I is enough of a reminder of the kind of untapped power that lives inside Google’s wannabe messaging app. It has quite a bit of work ahead of it before it’s as robust as Facebook Messenger or Apple’s iMessages, but let what it does now be a reminder of what will make it worth using once SMS integration or a desktop client finally come to.
Allo: Everything you need to know
Google announces the fourth class of its Launchpad Accelerator program
Startups from a variety of regions will convene later this summer at Google’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Google’s Launchpad Accelerator program is a boon for those smaller startups and development teams in parts of the world where Silicon Valley doesn’t have as much reach. The company has announced that it’s officially solidified its fourth-round roster to learn and work alongside a bevy of Google mentors in its San Francisco offices later this summer. Beginning July 17, Google will assist the Launchpad Accelerator participants from various parts of the world — including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America — in learning about its products and how to best integrate them into their respective applications.
If you’re curious about who will be in the trenches, there’s a full list of participating startups on display in the official blogpost and you can download some of their apps from the Play Store right now. Some of the Launchpad Accelerator apps include Piggipo, an app that helps people in Thailand manage and monitor their credit spending; GAMEE, a social gaming app from the Czech Republic; and Paystack, which helps set up businesses in Africa to accept digital payments.
After the two-week period, participants will receive equity-free support and credits for Google’s various products. They’ll also continue to work closely with the company once they return back to their home country for six months.
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