Instagram gives businesses tools to keep comments in check

Instagram has updated its API and is giving businesses access to content metrics as well as new tools for managing comments. Now, through the API, businesses can turn comments on and off as well as hide them. Business accounts already had access to these sorts of features already, but this is the first time Instagram has given them the ability use those features through their marketing dashboards. These changes are additional steps in Instagram’s commitment to foster a safer community and follow last month’s announcement that the site would begin using AI to root out and block offensive comments.

Last year, Instagram released a feature that allowed users to filter their comments based on certain words and let them disable comments from individual posts altogether. Figuring out how to remove abusive content is a problem that Twitter and Facebook have been working on as well and there’s some evidence that these efforts might finally be working.

To use the new Instagram API features, users will need to have a business profile and will be required to use a Facebook Login when granting access to third party tools. As of now, the new features are available to all Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partners and all other developers will be given access in the coming weeks, according to Instagram.

Source: Instagram

A memory bug made the OnePlus 5 reboot during 911 calls

OnePlus fixed that nasty bug that rebooted your OnePlus 5 when you called an emergency number, but just what caused it, exactly? The company has offered an explanation… and it’s a thorny issue. Apparently, there was a cellular modem memory usage problem that kicked in when you made an emergency call while on a voice over LTE network, invoking the OTDOA (Observed Time Difference of Arrival) protocol used for positioning in an emergency. It only occurred on some OnePlus 5 units, but it was tricky enough that the company worked with Qualcomm to eliminate the glitch on devices around the world.

It’s safe to say the bug should never have existed in the first place, but the transparency is important. Most companies offer little to no explanation for software bugs, and the conversation usually stops once the patch arrives. While posts like this won’t offer much consolation if you’re affected, they’ll at least help you understand what went wrong and give you a better understanding of the bug-fixing process.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: OnePlus Forums

DeepMind researchers create AI with an ‘imagination’

Being able to reason through potential future events is something humans are pretty good at doing, but that kind of ability is a real challenge when it comes to training AI. Taking those reasoning skills and using them to create a plan is even more difficult, but the Google DeepMind team has begun to tackle this problem. In a recent blog post, researchers describe new approaches they’ve developed for introducing “imagination-based planning” to AI.

Other programs have been able to work in planning abilities, but only within limited environments. AlphaGo, for example, can do this well, as the researchers note in the blog post, however, they add that “environments like Go are ‘perfect’ – they have clearly defined rules which allow outcomes to be predicted very accurately in almost every circumstance.” Facebook also created a bot that could reason through dialogue before engaging in conversation, but again, that was in a fairly restricted environment. “But the real world is complex, rules are not so clearly defined and unpredictable problems often arise. Even for the most intelligent agents, imagining in these complex environments is a long and costly process,” said the blog post.

DeepMind researchers created what they’re calling “imagination-augmented agents,” or I2As, that have a neural network trained to extract any information from its environment that could be useful in making decisions later on. These agents can create, evaluate and follow through on plans. To construct and evaluate future plans, the I2As “imagine” actions and outcomes in sequence before deciding which plan to execute. They can also choose how they want to imagine, options for which include trying out different possible actions separately or chaining actions together in a sequence. A third option allows the I2As to create an “imagination tree,” which lets the agent choose to continue imagining from any imaginary situation created since the last action it took. And an imagined action can be proposed from any of those previously imagined states, thus creating a tree.

The researchers tested the I2As on the puzzle game Sokoban and a spaceship navigation game, both of which require planning and reasoning. You can watch the agent playing Sokoban in the video below. For both tasks, the I2As performed better than agents without future reasoning abilities, were able to learn with less experience and were able to handle imperfect environments.

DeepMind AI has been taught how to navigate a parkour course and recall past knowledge and researchers have used it to explore how AI agents might cooperate or conflict with each other. When it comes to planning ability and future reasoning, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but this first look is a promising step towards imaginative AI.

Source: DeepMind, ArXiv (1), (2)

The Moto Z2 Force is a powerhouse that plays it safe

Motorola’s press conference is over, and we’re now gearing up to put the Moto Z2 Force through the review wringer. (For those wondering, yes, I’m going to run this thing over with a car again.) I’ve been playing with Motorola’s new flagship for a few hours now and it seems like the company tried to combine the best things about last year’s Z and Z Force into a single phone. It’s a great idea in theory, but we’ll have to see how well the plan works in practice. We’re not ready to render a verdict yet, but for now, you can read on for our first impressions.

First off, while it’s not as crazy-slim as the first Z, the Moto Z Force comes awfully close. That’s pretty damned impressive when you consider all the extra physical layers that form Motorola’s ShatterShield display technology. It’s also so light it’s barely there — I’ve been carrying it in my jacket pocket all day and I’ve already forgotten where it was three or four times. It’ll look awfully familiar if you’ve spent any time with the Moto Z2 Play as well, but you probably could’ve guessed that based on their names.

Motorola deserves credit for piecing together such a sleek little device — with 7000-series aluminum, no less — but I still long for full-on water resistance. The Z2 Force is treated with a nano-coating to keep things from getting fouled up in a light rain, but really — who among us hasn’t gotten our phones right to the edge of “dangerously wet”?

I haven’t loaded up our usual slew of benchmark tests and games, but the Z2 Force felt incredibly snappy as I zipped through running apps and long web pages. The Snapdragon 835 strikes again, and Motorola’s still-restrained take on Android certainly helps. (It doesn’t hurt the Motorola launcher looks and feels a lot like Google’s own Pixel Launcher.) Then again, I really never worried about pure speed.

No, the real concern here is still battery life: the Z2 Force has one of the smallest batteries of any device running a Snapdragon 835. This doubly hurts when you consider that earlier Z models — including the first Z Play and the original Z Force — had tremendous longevity. I get wanting to balance style and performance in a flagship phone, but last year’s Force felt like a no-compromise machine — this one doesn’t, at least at first. Here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise when it comes to our full battery test.

The only truly new addition to the Moto Z formula is the dual camera, and it’s doing well so far. It’s a dreary day here, so colors across the city feel more muted than usual, and the Z2 Force has been doing a fine job accurately rendering these scenes. It has a little trouble locking down the correct exposure sometimes, though — we’ll have to see how it handles brighter conditions. On the flip side, today has been pretty good for using just the monochrome sensor, and a lot of the quick test shots I’ve snapped are loaded with noir-y drama. Here’s one of our videographer Brian pausing mid-sandwich.

And now, some miscellaneous observations:

• I’m almost completely over it at this point, but the Z2 Force doesn’t have a headphone jack.
• Speaking of things the Z2 Force doesn’t come with, there’s no StyleShell in the box — the other Z phones usually had a woodgrain one. It’s not a huge loss, but it does mean you’re stuck with the camera hump rubbing up against flat surfaces.
• The pill-shaped home button/fingerprint sensor combo is inset into the glass a bit, and the edge that encircles it is a little sharper than it probably should be.
• This T-Mobile model comes with five carrier-loaded apps, and people who hate bloat can disable all but one.
• Of the 64GB of storage the phone ships with, close to 20GB are taken up by Android and pre-loaded apps.
• I’m still not in love with the compromise Motorola made with the battery, but a marketing exec offered a little insight into how the decision was made. Apparently, Motorola asked people in focus groups to divvy up stacks of poker chips to figure out how highly they valued certain features. In other words, we have our fellow consumers to thank for the (arguably misguided) balance of battery life and thickness on display here.

All told, I get the impression that this is the flagship phone Motorola wanted to make all along. No wonder, then, that the Z2 Force feels so much like the two flagships made immediately before it. None of the changes here feel particularly groundbreaking, but stay tuned for our full review to see if the Z2 Force forces me to rethink that notion.

Google’s Trusted Contacts app arrives on iOS

Google released Trusted Contacts for Android at the end of last year as an app version of Facebook’s Safety Check that automatically shares your phone’s status to close friends and family. So long as your phone is on and moving, contacts can check the app to make sure you’re okay. After half a year, the safety service is now live on iOS, while Android users get a few extra features.

Trusted Contacts can reactively share your location, even if your phone is out of battery, when linked friends ping your account using the service. Alternatively, you can use it to proactively ping certain people and give a short status — say, if you’re walking home late at night — and then turn it off when you get home safe.

Google’s also added a few things to the Android version. The app now lets you toggle how long it’ll wait before sending your location to contacts should you lose signal. If you go hiking in the mountains, you can toggle how long the app waits before automatically sharing your location — assuming, say, you got lost and can’t get signal. Android users can also add contacts by phone number or email, which is sent as a message that users can click through to connect to the app’s service. Finally, nine new languages have been added to Trusted Contacts, including Greek, Persian and Urdu, bringing the total up to 25.

Source: Google

Lyft is growing faster than Uber, but there’s a long way to go

Despite the plethora of external scandals and internal struggles, Uber is still a popular service, and recently reached a milestone of five billion rides taken with its service. Despite hitting the less auspicious mark of giving a million rides a day, Lyft is still growing — and it’s growing faster than its competitor.

Lyft’s driver-generated revenue went up 25 percent to hit $1 billion in the second quarter of 2017, up from $800 million in Q1. In aggregate, the company has a ways to go before it rivals Uber’s $8.25 billion gross bookings it earned in the same period — but that figure only improved 10 percent quarter-on-quarter. Ergo, Lyft is growing faster.

Lyft has been trying to win the PR war too, like when it donated $1 million to the ACLU in the immediate wake of Trump’s first travel ban (Uber set up a $3 million legal defense fund for affected drivers). Whether that’s enough to seize market share while Uber struggles is another question. But sources told Bloomberg that Lyft registered almost as many rides in the first half of 2017 as in all of last year, so it’s clearly expanding services alongside increasing its gross revenue.

Source: Bloomberg

Adobe accidentally released its cloud-based photo editor

It’s ever more important to be able to edit your photos on the go. Adobe has stripped-down versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom apps available in both mobile and web-based formats. You manage your photos through Adobe’s Creative Cloud system, though, which can be a bit cumbersome, especially when you forget to sync your files. Adobe announced “Project Nimbus” last year, an app that helps simplify the complex interface of Lightroom. According to French site, MacGeneration, the app was just mistakenly made available to Creative Cloud users. The error was caught and remedied soon after by Adobe, but not before some users took screenshots.

Nimbus isn’t exactly Lightroom, though it apparently uses some of the same tools, including those for basic light and color adjustments, refraction, brush and gradient correction. Nimbus also standard options, like copy and paste, a way to see the original photo easily and a histogram display. What sets the cloud app apart, though, is that the photos and the modifications are both stored in the cloud, which obviates any need to sync photos and rely on your Lightroom installs having the same setups. The cloud-based editing app reportedly has an automatic image tagging system, too. Both of these features are similar to those in Apple’s iCloud Photo Library.

According to the screenshots, Adobe’s upcoming app, with a beta due this year, also seems to have a non-destructive workflow, letting you edit your images without worrying about losing the initial image. The interface is closer to the iPad version of Lightroom, reports MacGeneration, and seems to includs 1TB of cloud storage — quite a bit more than the standard 20GB that current Creative Cloud users have access to.

An Adobe spokesperson sent us the following statement. “We mistakenly shared Project Nimbus with a small group of Adobe Creative Cloud customers. As you will recall from MAX in October 2016, Project Nimbus is next-generation photo editing technology that we have been exploring as part of our Lightroom and Photoshop ecosystems. We cannot share any further details at this time but will keep you posted on future developments.”

Via: PetaPixel

Source: MacGenerations

PlayStation Vue’s $10 sports add-on includes NFL RedZone

You already get a healthy dose of sports with a PlayStation Vue subscription, but what if you need more? Sony is happy to help. It just launched a $10 per month Sports Pack that adds 13 channels, including season-specific and regional networks. It’s particularly big for football fans: you’ll get the game day-focused NFL RedZone and (for college games) ESPN Goal Line. ESPN Bases Loaded provides a college baseball fix during the NCAA championship, ESPN Classic offers on-demand sports and Outside TV caters to the adventurous crowd.

As for the regionals? The Longhorn Network is part of the bundle for University of Texas fans, while NBCUniversal’s share of the bundle includes seven regional stations. NESN National is included, too. You won’t get live, front-to-back coverage of individual games with most of the 13 channels, but this could be what you’re looking for if the channels in your main bundle don’t provide as comprehensive a view of sports as you’d like.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Upcoming USB 3.2 Specification Will Double Data Rates Using Existing Cables

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group, comprising Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and other companies, today introduced an upcoming USB 3.2 specification, which will eventually replace the existing USB 3.1 specification upon release.

An incremental update, USB 3.2 is designed to define multi-lane operation for USB 3.2 hosts and devices. USB Type-C cables already support multi-lane operation, and with USB 3.2, hosts and devices can be created as multi-lane solutions, allowing for either two lanes of 5Gb/s or two lanes of 10Gb/s operation.

With support for two lanes of 10Gb/s transfer speeds, performance is essentially doubled over existing USB-C cables.

As an example, the USB Promoter Group says a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of 2GB/sec data transfer performance over a USB-C cable certified for USB SuperSpeed 10Gb/s USB 3.1, while also remaining backwards compatible with earlier USB devices.

“When we introduced USB Type-C to the market, we intended to assure that USB Type-C cables and connectors certified for SuperSpeed USB or SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps would, as produced, support higher performance USB as newer generations of USB 3.0 were developed,” said Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman. “The USB 3.2 update delivers the next level of performance.”

Along with two-lane operation, USB 3.2 continues to use SuperSpeed USB layer data rates and encoding techniques and will introduce a minor update to hub specifications for seamless transitions between single and two-lane operation.

More information about USB 3.2 will be unveiled at USB Developer Days 2017 later this year.

Tags: USB-C, USB 3.2
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Kanex’s GoPlay Sidekick Pocket-Sized Game Controller for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV Now Available

Kanex today announced availability of its GoPlay Sidekick wireless game controller for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. The pocket-sized controller, introduced at CES 2017, can be purchased from Kanex’s website starting today for $59.95. A company spokesperson told MacRumors it will also be available on Amazon next week.

The console-inspired game controller features pressure-sensitive buttons, dual analog joysticks, trigger buttons, a directional pad, and a Lightning connector, while one of its more interesting features is its patent pending protective clamshell case with an integrated stand that props up an iPhone during gameplay.

The controller, certified under Apple’s MFi Program, connects to Apple devices over Bluetooth 4.0 and offers up to 20 hours of gameplay on a single charge. It works with almost any controller-supported game on the App Store.

Competing products sold by Apple include the SteelSeries Nimbus Wireless Gaming Controller and HORIPAD ULTIMATE Wireless Game Controller, each $49.95 in the United States. Prices vary in other countries.

Tag: Kanex
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