Google wants to know if you’re having trouble installing Android 8.1 on your Pixel

There’s a reason why Google does these Developer Previews before a wider release.

Among all of the excitement of a new Developer Preview release for Android 8.1 this week, we saw many reports of installation problems on both the new Pixel 2 and original Pixels. Whether you had snagged the factory image to install manually or waited for the OTA via the Android Beta Program, there was a decent chance you’d hit a snag during installation. Google has now acknowledged that there are some potential installation issues with this Dev Preview, taking to the Google Pixel product forums to ask for help from the community.

From the Pixel product forums:

We are collecting feedback about user reports of OTA installation issues on the 8.1 beta. If this is happening to you, can you post your experiences here? That will allow us to possibly reach out for bug reports or additional information.

The core issue for most people seems to be that the OTA for the Dev Preview will download and prompt you for installation, and then upon rebooting after the first phase of installation it simply goes through the boot animation a few times before returning you to your lock screen still on Android 8.0. Subsequent installation attempts don’t seem to work, and most aren’t finding joy in clearing the download and getting a new file.

How to get the latest version of Android Oreo on your phone right now

At the time of writing the post already has dozens of replies, but no clear answers as of yet. The only fix for most people has been to perform a factory reset of their phone on Android 8.0 and then get the OTA to the 8.1 Dev Preview at that point. That’s definitely a hassle, but of course one that isn’t out of the norm for someone dabbling in “Developer” software. For now, take this as a bit of caution if you’re considering enrolling in the Beta Program to grab 8.1 — but let’s hope by providing Google with more information on the issue it can fix the problem going forward.

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Arcade shooter ‘Nex Machina’ gets a physical release November 10th

Resogun creator Housemarque has earned a reputation as a specialist in digital-only game releases (its last hard copy release was 2012’s Angry Birds Trilogy), but it’s about to buck that trend. The studio has announced that its well-received, Smash TV-style PS4 arcade shooter Nex Machina will be available in a disc-based version through Limited Run Games on November 10th. There’s a $30 standard edition if you just want something tangible, but the centerpiece is a $65 Collector’s Edition that includes the soundtrack on CD, a poster and four art prints in a special edition box. Arguably, that’s the version to get — if you want more than a download, you might as well get something truly memorable.

There’s also a third edition with alternate cover art that will be exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation Experience event in December.

Whichever version catches your eye, you’ll need to move quickly. While the disc release isn’t region-locked, there will only be a relatively small number of copies to go around (as suggested by the choice of Limited Run). This isn’t so much a return to physical distribution as a nod to fans who want better memorabilia than a PSN purchase receipt.

Source: Housemarque

The Academy awards its first Oscar for virtual reality

Virtual reality experiences aren’t just games and cheap thrills — some creators use the medium to start a dialogue and tell worthwhile stories. Take the VR exhibition Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who’s known for directing Birdman and The Revenant. He created the exhibit now on display in various museums worldwide to explore “the human condition of immigrants and refugees,” and now he’s getting the first Oscar award ever granted to a VR experience “in recognition of a visionary and powerful experience in storytelling.”

The installation’s purpose is to give people a way to live through even a small part of an immigrant’s journey. It was based on true immigrants’ accounts and uses vast spaces, sand-covered floors and cold waiting rooms to make the six-and-a-half-minute VR sequence as immersive as possible. AMPAS president John Bailey said in a statement:

“Iñárritu’s multimedia art and cinema experience is a deeply emotional and physically immersive venture into the world of migrants crossing the desert of the American southwest in early dawn light. More than even a creative breakthrough in the still emerging form of virtual reality, it viscerally connects us to the hot-button political and social realities of the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Since the Academy doesn’t have the proper category for Carne y Arena yet, Iñárritu is getting a special statuette. That doesn’t make the win any less important, though: as Polygon notes, the last time the Academy gave out a special Oscar was back in the ’90s for Toy Story 1. That special award paved way for the Academy to establish the Best Animated Feature category a few years later, something Iñárritu’s work could also do for virtual reality.

Via: Polygon

Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

First iPhone X Orders Begin Shipping Out to Customers

The first iPhone X orders began shipping out to customers today ahead of a promised delivery date on Friday, November 3, the official launch date for the device.

Apple hasn’t updated order statuses from “Preparing for Shipment” and won’t do so until later this week when packages begin hitting their destination countries, but iPhone X models shipping via UPS in the United States are in transit and can be tracked using a UPS My Choice account or, in some cases, by reference number on the UPS website.

Tracking by reference often requires a phone number and a zip code, but sometimes the order number minus the last two digits also works. Many of our forum members are seeing their orders on the UPS website at this point, but not every order has been transitioned to UPS as of yet, so it may take another day or two for all orders to show up.

Pre-orders for the iPhone X kicked off on Friday, October 27 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, and orders slated for November 3 delivery shifted to preparing for shipment later that same day and customers began seeing charges on their credit cards.

At this point, pre-order supplies of the iPhone X are sold out and have been since minutes after pre-orders went live. Current delivery estimates for iPhone X orders placed today are at 5 to 6 weeks, so many devices won’t be arriving until late November and December. Apple is working to ship out iPhone X models as fast as possible, though, and some customers have already seen their delivery dates improve.

While it’s no longer possible to pre-order an iPhone X for launch day delivery, Apple will have iPhone X models in stock at retail stores on November 3, so there’s still a chance to get a device without a long wait. Customers hoping to get an iPhone X at a retail store should plan to line up early.

Related Roundup: iPhone XBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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CAPTCHAs may be a thing of the past, thanks to new machine learning research

Why it matters to you

New AI research is giving us feedback on how our own minds work.

CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The term was coined in 2003, when the use of automated bots was becoming commonplace, and it refers to those annoying squiggly distorted letters that you have to type in when creating an online account. Although some companies have found ways around them, CAPTCHAs are still ubiquitous online.

Researchers at the AI company Vicarious may have just made CAPTCHAs obsolete, however, by creating a machine-learning algorithm that mimics the human brain. To simulate the human capacity for what is often described as “common sense,” the scientists built a computer vision model dubbed the Recursive Cortical Network.

“For common sense to be effective it needs to be amenable to answer a variety of hypotheticals — a faculty that we call imagination,” they noted in a post at their blog.

The ability to decipher CAPTCHAs has become something of a benchmark for artificial intelligence research. The new Vicarious model, published in the journal Science, cracks the fundamentals of the CATCHPA code by parsing the text using techniques that are derived from human reasoning. We can easily recognize the letter A for example, even if it’s partly obscured or turned upside down.

As Dileep George, the co-founder of the company explained to NPR, the RCN takes far less training and repetition to learn to recognize characters by building its own version of a neural network. “So if you expose it to As and Bs and different characters, it will build its own internal model of what those characters are supposed to look like,” he said. “So it would say, these are the contours of the letter, this is the interior of the letter, this is the background, etc.”

These various features get put into groups, creating a hierarchal “tree” of related features. After several passes, the data is given a score for evaluation. CAPTCHAs can be identified with a high degree of accuracy. The RCN was able to crack the BotDetect system with 57 percent accuracy with far less training than conventional “deep learning” algorithms, which rely more on brute force and require tens of thousands of images before they can understand CAPTCHAs with any degree of accuracy.

Solving CATCHPAs is not the goal of the research, but it provides insight into how our brains work and how computers can replicate it, NYU’s Brenden Lake told Axios. “It’s an application that not everybody needs,” he said. “Whereas object recognition is something that our minds do every second of every day.”

“Biology has put a scaffolding in our brain that is suitable for working with this world. It makes the brain learn quickly,” George said. “So we copy those insights from nature and put it in our model. Similar things can be done in neural networks.”

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Get an Ultimate DIY Arduino Robotics bundle for just $29!

Anyone interested in robotics has no doubt heard about the Arduino platform, which is a leading way to break into the field. There is a ton of stuff to learn here, and the required training to get it right can be hard to find and organize.

Right now, however, Android Central Digital Offers has a deal on an Ultimate DIY Arduino Robotics bundle that contains three courses and over 22 hours of content. Instead of paying the regular price of $300, you’ll instead pay just $29. That’s 90 percent off!

The three courses, including Make an Arduino Robot, Arduino Robotics with the mBot, and Advanced Arduino Boards and Tools, are aimed at teaching you how to use Arduino the proper way, whether you’re creating a wheeled robot or working with the advanced Arduino boards.

If you’re interested in robotics and want to learn Arduino the right way, this is the course for you. Don’t wait too long; this price won’t last forever.

See at Android Central Digital Offers

No tricks — your weekend comments are all treat

Nothing spooky about these comments!

Happy Halloween!

This weekend will bring a lot of fun to a lot of people because almost everyone loves Halloween. The kids get to dress up like pirates or princesses or whatever, the older kids get together and do lord knows what, and adults will find plenty of parties and events filled with good times. Putting on a costume and being silly is something we should do more than once each year.

Of course, we have to be responsible. Don’t let kids trick or treat without a flashlight or a Glo-stick, check their bags for unwrapped candy (and steal all the mini peanut butter cups for yourself), watch the roads while you’re driving and don’t drink too much or slam a couple hits of X and get behind the wheel. You’ve heard the drill a thousand times, but for real, be careful just in case someone else isn’t.

And while you’re having fun and staying safe, be sure to snap a ton of pics! If you have a Note 8 or a Pixel 2 or another phone that can do it, take some great portrait-mode selfies, or use your G6 or V30 to take some great ultrawide shots or any of the other great Android phones with bumping cameras will make for some quality photos. Then upload them to Google Photos and drop the link in the comments so we all can check them out! It’s always cool to see what costumes people can come up with.

This year I’m going as the ghostly image of a navigation bar because that’s scary af … 🥁 ba dum tssss

Y’all have fun and be sure to let everyone know what you’ve got going on this weekend and don’t forget those pics!

Recommended Reading: Is ‘Stranger Things’ really that popular?

In Netflix’s Upside Down Reality, ‘Stranger Things’ Is a Hit Before It Even Premieres
Victor Luckerson,
The Ringer

The excitement around Stranger Things season 2 has been building for months. We’ve seen soundtracks, merchandise and all kinds of promo tie-ins with other companies along the way. As the show returns this week, the buzz is already so high that reviews probably won’t even matter — people will binge it anyway. It also helps that the first season was both really good and seemed to be really popular, despite the company not releasing any numbers. The Ringer takes a look at how Netflix creates the feeling of must-see TV even though we might not ever find out how popular its shows really are.