Airbnb plans five more complexes after its first Florida apartments

A new report from Financial Times confirms last month’s rumors that Airbnb will launch a new apartment complex in Florida in partnership with a real estate firm. The rental company plans to pitch the location as prime opportunity for seasonal tenants who will be able to rent their units out for up to 180 days a year.

Real estate developer Newgard Development Group will construct the 300-unit building located in Kissimmee, Florida and open it next year. Located just south of Orlando, the complex will be poised to lure tourists and workers away from hotels, which is the ultimate goal of the venture. Newgard plans to build five more such Airbnb-partnered apartment complexes amounting to 2,000 total units in the next two years, its chief executive told Financial Times.

The Kissimmee location will have keyless doors and long-term storage for tenants to more easily rent out their units while away. Hosts will use a proprietary app to organize renters and coordinate cleaning services, which are mandatory. There will also be a “master host” on-site to, presumably, supervise the location.

As for revenue, Newburg will take a 25 percent cut from each rental, Airbnb will take its usual 3 percent and the tenant will get the rest. It’ll be interesting to see if Airbnb exports this model to other real estate partners in the future as it continues to try prying more business away from hotels.

Source: Financial Times

LG will build Europe’s biggest EV battery factory next year

As the auto industry fatefully moves into electric vehicles, Europe’s major car-makers need high capacity batteries. Until now, companies like VW, Volvo and BMW have had to import batteries from Asia. LG’s forthcoming car battery factory in Poland, the first in Europe, hopes to fulfil that growing demand. “The company has chosen Poland as the most competitive location for production to satisfy the needs of European and global car producers,” said Chang-Beom Kang, vice president at LG Chem. The facility will cost $1.63 million, based in the city of Wroclaw which is close to the country’s border with Germany. (In case you didn’t know, Germany is a major car manufacturing country.)

The company’s chemical arm is planning to manufacture up to 100,000 EV batteries starting next year, recruiting 2,500 people in the process. According to Reuters, the factory will also include an R&D center.

While the factory may sound big enough, LG Chem’s production estimates place it at around 10 percent of the capacity of Tesla’s Gigafactory estimates for 2018. Demand is ramping up in Europe, and this is likely just the start. Paris stated today that it aimed to ban the sales of new fossil fuel car by the year 2030, while both France as a country, and the UK, aim to ban the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2040.

Source: Reuters

Fear of the US government led me to censor myself on Twitter

The day I’ve been dreading for months is drawing near. On October 18th, the Department of Homeland Security’s modified system of records is scheduled to go into effect. The updated policy would affect all US immigrants, whether they are new, existing or permanent residents or even naturalized citizens, and how they are identified by the government. More accurately, it would allow the DHS, Border Patrol and other immigration authorities to collect social media handles as part of an individual’s official record. As someone who’s working in the US on a visa, I was immediately worried about how it would affect my standing.

The reason the DHS gave for the update is that it is beginning to conduct “more immigration actions in an electronic environment” and that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is adjudicating “more immigration benefits and requests for action in its USCIS Electronic Immigration System.” Basically, people are increasingly applying online, and the changes would reduce the existing reliance on paper records. What the DHS wants to do is be able to officially identify you by your online persona in addition to existing attributes like your name, birthday and address. The update would also add an individual’s “country of nationality; country of residence; the USCIS Online Account Number; social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results” to one’s records.

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement, “This amendment does not represent a new policy.” The notice published on September 18th was “an effort to be transparent (and) comply with existing regulations” and “due to updates in the electronic immigration system.” Multiple requests for clarity on what would change for immigrants — whether they would have to fill out new forms asking for their social media handles or what would happen for those with private profiles, were not answered.

I was raised in Singapore, where political criticism can get you sued (if interpreted as libel), arrested (if seen as inciting violence) or even jailed. At my first full-time job, as a marketing executive for a local oil and gas company, my boss told me not to speak in meetings — playing dumb was always better than potentially making a mistake, he said. For most of my life, I learned to swallow my feelings. My mother’s mantra was “Keep your opinions to yourself,” and she sternly repeated it as we made our way to family gatherings and social functions.

When I first came to live in the US, in 2008, I was surprised by how liberally people expressed themselves. I learned that individuals’ thoughts have value but also, more important, that we are entitled to them. The notion of freedom of speech was new to me, but as I observed the thriving arts and culture in American society, I understood what liberty was worth. Just as people grow and improve by accepting and learning from different opinions, so a country flourishes by embracing and encouraging open discourse.

I got used to the freedom to air my thoughts on any topic in public forums like Twitter and Instagram. I still refrain from saying anything that would make me look insensitive or give away too much personal information, though. Part of me also continues to fear the wrath of the Singapore government; I worry about what could happen to me when I return to visit family should I unwittingly say something too critical. But for the most part I feel carefree. My posts tend to be a mix of my own articles, random musings, funny videos or frustrating stories about poor customer service and bad PR.

Something changed a few months ago, after I first heard of the DHS’ plans to incorporate social media into its visa application process. I started to second-guess myself. I avoided weighing in on topics that would show my political leanings. I dutifully wished my followers a happy Fourth of July, shared the results of the Super Bowl and retweeted posts honoring the fallen victims of 9/11. I sent these tweets mostly out of goodwill, but a small part of me felt it was better to look like I participate in American activities.

I started posting what I imagined a immigration officer would like to see, rather than show an unfiltered version of my thoughts. Truth is, Chinese New Year matters more to me than Fourth of July does, and I didn’t really care if the Patriots won. I love America, and I love many of its festivities and people, but I can’t change the fact that I grew up elsewhere. And honestly, I shouldn’t have to.

I continued to tweet, trying mostly to stay on neutral topics. Occasionally, I let myself express anger at institutions or people, but I only feel safe ranting about issues that people agree on regardless of political views.

I don’t want to let my fear get in the way of me expressing myself, but it already has.

But it’s what people don’t see that I found the most telling. I agonized over whether to soften a jokingly violent tweet about New York’s subway system. I didn’t want someone to come across those thoughts, assume I was serious, and decide I’m a dangerous individual. Who knows what an immigration officer might think? Eventually, I toned down the language and added qualifiers like “I guess” to make it clear I was merely musing.

There are times I’ve avoided posting altogether. I kept quiet during the white nationalist rally in Virginia and generally don’t comment on things Donald Trump does. But things came to a head when I found myself holding back from sharing negative tweets about American gun laws and political gridlock after the Las Vegas shootings. As my feed filled up with statistics showing how the US and its (lack of) gun control policies have led to massive loss of lives, I longed to retweet and share. But I didn’t. Instead, I vented in private messages to trusted friends. I felt like I was back in Singapore.

I’m torn. I don’t want to let my fear get in the way of me expressing myself, but it already has.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. A DHS spokesperson said the agency already does “and continues to monitor publicly-available social media to protect the homeland.” They might already know everything they need to about me from years of unfiltered tweeting. But when your job, life and future depend on how strangers in some government agency perceive you, wouldn’t you be careful too? Yes, my profile is public and anyone can already access it and judge me. But it’s one thing to allow random people online to decide if they like you — it’s almost debilitating when your beliefs or personality are used to officially determine if you can visit a country.

The good news is, based on the thousands of comments on the proposal’s forum, an overwhelming majority of people are against the upcoming update. Many of them argue that the move would be a violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. Some even claim this is a slippery slope toward a Big Brother–like future with the government monitoring the social media of citizens and immigrants alike. It’s still unclear exactly how the changes would affect us, or how they are new, given the vague responses from the USCIS and the DHS. At this point though, my social media is no longer an accurate representation of the person I actually am. It’s some facade I’ve created for the powers that be. Which really makes monitoring it useless anyway.

Jaybird Run review: The perfect truly wireless earbuds for workouts

Completely wireless earbuds are everywhere this year. Call it the Apple AirPods effect, or perhaps it’s just a matter of the right components being available at the right time. But now that completely cordless designs are less novel than they used to be, companies have to work harder to stand out. Jaybird, which has had years of experience in wireless audio, is taking a stab at the increasingly crowded field with its $180 Run earbuds. They’re comfortable, sound great for their size and offer solid reception (for the most part).

Hardware

The Jaybird Run don’t look particularly distinctive, aside from a small logo on the outside. At this point, most companies seem to be settling on a similar style for fully wireless earbuds. They generally try to make them as small as possible — a departure from the clunky Bluetooth headsets you might be used to. One unique element here is that the metal ring around the outer edges of the Run serves as the antenna, which should technically give it a leg up on reception over competitors with internal antennas. They’re about as subtle as the earbuds from Her — noticeable, but they don’t call attention to themselves either.

The differences between wireless buds come down to the earpiece design. They need to stay in your ears reliably — there’s no cord to save them from falling on the ground, after all — and ideally, they should be comfortable enough to wear for hours at a time. This is one area where the Jaybird Run excels: It features the “fin” typically found on the brand’s headphones, which fits into the upper groove of your ear to hold them in place. Once you get them in, it’s hard to notice you’re wearing them.

Jaybird gives you four sets of silicone tips: small and large round options as well as two different oval-shaped tips. There are also three different types of fin accessories, along with a finless one if you have very small ears. And as you’d imagine, the Run earbuds are both sweatproof and water resistant. Jaybird says they feature a “double hydrophobic nano coating” to deal with sweat, which is much tougher on gadgets than plain water.

The Jaybird Run also comes with a chunky carrying case, which adds another eight hours to its advertised four-hour battery life. The case is too large to fit comfortably in your pocket, but it’s easy to chuck into a messenger bag or backpack. It can also give the Run earbuds one hour of juice with just a five-minute charge. The case could use a more secure latch though. It popped open in my bag on several occasions, which made my iPhone automatically connect to them. That was particularly annoying when it was causing my phone to deprioritize my other devices.

In use

Setting up the Run earbuds was a cinch. Within 30 seconds of tearing open the packaging, I had them securely in my ears and paired with my iPhone 6S. I was lucky enough to have a perfect fit with the default buds. It was definitely the fastest setup period I’ve seen with any pair of wireless headphones, even my BeatsX.

The right Run earbud handles all the connectivity with your phone. You can choose to wear it by itself if you’d rather keep one ear open (which is how I typically walk around New York City). The left earbud automatically connects to the right one over Bluetooth when you turn it on, and the sound carries over without any interruption. Everything sounds a bit compressed when you’re just using the right earbud, but the audio field expands seamlessly once you turn on the left bud.

You don’t have many options for controlling the Run. Each earbud has just one button. Powering them on and off takes one long press, but you can also skip forward to the next track by double-clicking them. The buttons are easy enough to find, but they’re difficult to press. Pushing them simply felt painful, since doing so also jams the Run deeper into your ear. Because of that, I avoided the buttons entirely while wearing the earbuds.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

When it comes to sound quality, the Run delivers far more than you’d expect, given its tiny frame. My usual round of test music tracks, including “Like A Dog Chasing Cars” from The Dark Knight soundtrack, and Little Dragon’s “Klapp Klapp,” all sounded great, with a healthy amount of detail and a surprising bass. The JayBird Run unfortunately had trouble with complex high notes; cymbals sometimes sounded like a distorted mess. They certainly didn’t sound as good as the BeatsX or the Jaybird Freedom, both of which deliver quality that’s almost on par with wired headphones.

The Jaybird Run was especially great for podcasts. Dialog sounded rich and natural, with none of the tinniness you get from some wireless headphones. And since podcasts are usually recorded at a much lower fidelity than music, they ended up being ideal for the Run’s more limited audio range. I caught up on a big chunk of my podcast backlog while testing them, simply because they were so convenient to wear.

If you like to customize your audio experience, you can also use Jaybird’s mobile app to tweak the Run’s sound profile. It’s flat by default, but the company provides a variety of options like “Bring the bass,” which boosts the low end, or “Extended listening,” which cuts down harsh high notes. There are also custom profiles from athletes like Nick Rimando and Kerri Walsh Jennings, and you can find profiles from other Jaybird users as well. If you want, you can also adjust your levels manually. (I opted for the “Signature” settings, which boosts bass and high notes a bit.) The app changes the Run’s sound at the firmware level, so any tweaks will apply no matter what you’re listening to. If you need help finding exercise tunes, there’s also a curated selection of Spotify playlists within the app.

With no wires in the way, the Jaybird Run made listening to just about anything feel completely seamless. It takes just a few seconds to pop them out of the case, and they paired with my phone quickly too. Since they’re so comfortable, I occasionally forgot I was even wearing them. At times it felt like they were simply an extension of my hearing. They didn’t fall out of my ears once after hours of testing, and after a while my low-level anxiety about dropping them on a New York City sidewalk evaporated.

However, my honeymoon with the Jaybird Run almost ended abruptly during my first jogging session. They simply couldn’t stay synchronized in stereo mode while I was moving, a problem multiple reviewers have brought up over the past few weeks. When I asked Jaybird for comment, a spokesperson said that the unit I was testing was preproduction and not the final hardware consumers would get. Typically I’d find that answer suspicious, but since the Run earbuds aren’t actually shipping to customers until later this month, all I can do for now is take the company at its word.

So that’s the story of how I received a second Jaybird Run pair to review. I immediately took them out for a two-mile run around Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and thankfully didn’t experience any further synchronization issues. My podcasts and exercise playlist all played without incident. Compared to the Jaybird Freedom, which is wirelessly connected to your phone but still has a thin cable attaching the earbuds, the Run offered a completely different experience.

It’s one thing not to have to worry about managing a headphone cable, but running through the park unencumbered by any cables felt truly liberating. I still experienced minor synchronization issues when walking around Manhattan, but that’s something I’ve also noticed with other wireless buds. Extreme radio interference is part of the cost of living in a dense urban environment.

Jaybird’s four-hour battery-life claim for the Run was close to what I actually saw. The buds would typically last for around three hours and 45 minutes during my testing. As you’d expect, that timing changed a bit if I was listening to quiet podcasts or loud music. Together with the battery case, the Run typically lasted around two to three days, depending on if I could fit in a jogging session. As our resident marathoner, Engadget’s executive editor Dana Wollman notes that the Run’s battery life should be fine for most runners. But you’d probably want a wired pair if you’re hitting the pavement beyond four hours.

Pricing and the competition

At $180, the Jaybird Run is slightly more expensive than competing wireless earbuds. Apple’s AirPods go for $159 while Bragi’s The Headphone comes in at $149. If you want to cut the cord mainly for exercise, though, the added cost will likely be worth it for the Run’s sweat-and-water resistance. Jabra’s Elite Sport are another solid workout alternative, but they’re a lot pricier at $250.

If you’re considering wireless headphones, it’s worth taking a step back and considering how you plan to use them. If you’re a fitness fanatic, it makes more sense to forgo wires entirely with the Jaybird Run. But if you care more about having higher audio quality and only need headphones for occasional exercise, you might be better off with something like Jaybird Freedom or BeatsX, which still have short cables.

Wrap-up

Jaybird didn’t disappoint with the Run. The earbuds are everything I’d want in a pair of truly cord-free headphones. While they still require sacrificing a bit of audio quality, that’s true of everything else in this category. Losing a bit of fidelity is worth it, though, if you’ve ever dreamt of going for a run while losing yourself to music and not worrying about any annoying cords.

Facebook locks down key data as researchers analyze Russian influence

The truth behind Facebook’s involvement in Russian voter hacks continues to get more complicated. The social media company apparently knew about Russian meddling even before last year’s US election. Mark Zuckerberg’s company reported that 10 million people saw Russian political ads, and has handed over Russia-linked ads to Congress. According to a report in The Washington Post, however, Facebook recently scrubbed the internet of thousands of posts related to social media analyst Jonathan Albright’s research that apparently concluded that at least twice as many people had seen the ads than Facebook reported.

Needless to say, the researcher is upset. “This is public interest data,” Albright told the Post. “This data allowed us to at least reconstruct some of the pieces of the puzzle. Not everything, but it allowed us to make sense of some of this thing.”

Facebook confirmed to The Washington Post that while the posts had been removed, it was due to a bug in its analytics tool CrowdTangle. According to the company, Albright should never have been able to see this information. When the “bug” was quashed, Facebook told the Post, advertisers (and analysits like Albright) could no longer see information from “cached” posts that had already been taken down on Facebook (and Instagram). “We identified and fixed a bug in CrowdTangle that allowed users to see cached information from inactive Facebook Pages,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told the Post. “Across all our platforms we have privacy commitments to make inactive content that is no longer available, inaccessible.”

It’s hard not to see this as a convenient excuse to hide tens of millions of potentially damning data, of course, especially as COO Sheryl Sandberg has committed the company to transparency around the fake Russian ads. Social media analysis has become a large part of figuring out what happens in our society, and not allowing access to even “taken down” posts can seem alarming. We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on this matter and will update the post when we hear back.

Source: The Washington Post

Sony’s Xperia Touch projector arrives in the US at an absurd $1,700

We’ve been keeping an eye on Sony’s Xperia Touch projector for over a year now (closer to two, in fact). It’s a smart speaker, a projector and an Android tablet all combined into one device, and the US price (which was revealed today) reflects that. The Xperia Touch’s suggested retail price is a whopping $1,700 and is available at Amazon, the Sony Square display room in New York and select T-Mobile stores in Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami.

Do its features justify that hefty price tag? Its projector features turn any flat surface (wall, table, floor, etc.) into an interactive screen. It uses a combination of infrared light and a built-in camera to detect and interpret motion at a 60 fps rate. The device is portable, but the battery only lasts about an hour with continuous use. The resolution is 1366 x 768 and it can project to a maximum of 80 inches. It also has a 13-megapixel camera, a stereo speaker and responds to voice commands using Google Assistant. You can see more about the Xperia Touch in our hands-on review and in the video below.

Shutterstock’s composition photo search is powered by AI

Fresh off its AI-powered tool for countering watermark removal from photos, Shutterstock is using machine learning for something else. In this case, it’s launching a composition-aware search tool.

“This tool allows users to specify one or more keywords, or to search for copy space, and arrange them spatially on a canvas to reflect the specific layout of the image they are seeking,” a press release reads. “The patent pending tool uses a combination of machine vision, natural language processing and state of the art information retrieval techniques to find strong matches against complex spatially aware search criteria.”

So, dragging “pen” to the lower left corner of the search box, and “desk” to the upper right corner will come back with photos where the pen is in the lower left of the frame, and a desk is in the upper right. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work in theory. Plenty of the results had the pen all over the photo, and a desk was always in the background. Adding “mug” to the search and moving it around the space performed as it should’ve though.

Proper nouns don’t work so hot. Searching for “Beyonce” resulted in pictures of (mostly) Caucasian women, and even one of a lady wearing a whipped cream bikini. So, yeah, it still has a ways to go. But, with normal stuff it works pretty well. Google Photos, which also uses AI and computer vision to sort and search photos, runs into similar hiccups, so this isn’t unheard of.

As is the case with any type of machine learning, Shutterstock’s tool will only get better with time and use. The company can’t do anything about the former, but since the feature is free for anyone to mess around with, the latter shouldn’t be an obstacle.

Via: The Verge

Source: PR Newswire, Shutterstock Labs

Google’s Duo voice chat app is about to become Android’s FaceTime

When Google’s standalone video calling app Duo came out last year, we wondered if it would become another niche app, a flash in the pan. Why do we need another communication app in a crowded market? Today’s news shows us that we can’t always be right, as Google takes the first steps to integrating Duo into its Android operating system, much like Apple’s FaceTime is an integral part of iOS.

According to a Google blog post, the company is rolling out integrated video calling to first-generation Pixel, Android One and Nexus devices. It will also show up on the Pixel 2. “We’re working with our carrier and device partners to bring this experience to more Android devices over time,” wrote product manager Jan Jedrzejowicz. If you (and the call recipient) have a carrier that supports ViLTE, your video calls will go through that service. If not, Duo will connect you to anyone with the app installed.

Source: Google

No one uses Facebook Stories, so now they’re available for #brands

Imagine working at Facebook and being the person/people who added Stories to the social network after seeing the way they took off on Snapchat and Instagram. Then think about the fact that hardly anyone is using the feature. That probably explains the reasoning behind opening the section up to Pages. Yep, #brands are getting access to the evaporating, 24-hour shelf-life videos now, too. Maybe Facebook found a group that will actually use them?

The social network says that this is rolling out to all Pages over the next few months, both on Android and iOS. The last attempt to make Facebook Stories relevant was allowing people to cross-post Stories directly from Instagram. And, well, that hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, so might as well open them up to corporate shills at this point.

Games Are Most Popular ARKit-Only Apps, Accounting for 62% of ARKit App Revenue

Apps that use the ARKit framework Apple introduced in iOS 11 have been installed 3 million times around the world since September 19, according to new data shared today by analytics firm Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch).

Many of the ARKit-only apps that are available are games, accounting for 35 percent of ARKit apps worldwide. ARKit-only apps include those that are built entirely around the new ARKit technology, rather than apps that have added some ARKit features.

Utilities are the second most popular ARKit category, accounting for 19 percent of apps, while 11 percent of ARKit apps are in the Entertainment category and 7 percent are in the Education category.

Many of the top ARKit-only apps are games, with four games among the top five highest-grossing ARKit apps. Titles like AR Dragon, Zombie Gunship Revenant, The Machines, and Monster Park — Dino World have proven to be the most popular AR games with consumers.

Games have accounted for a total of 53 percent of all ARKit-only app downloads and 62 percent of ARKit app revenue since the launch of ARKit.

With games taken out of the top app listings, apps that allow users to measure 3D spaces or demo furniture are some of the top performers. Among free apps, IKEA Place, the furniture app from IKEA that lets consumers see products in their homes before purchasing, is one of the more popular apps.

Sensor Tower’s data covers only apps that are primarily focused on the augmented reality experience and it did not take into account apps that offer limited ARKit content like photo modes or mini games.

When iOS 11 launched on September 19, ARKit became the largest augmented reality platform in the world thanks to the huge number of iPhones and iPads out in the wild.

Apple CEO Tim Cook just this week said augmented reality may not be huge right now, but that it will experience a “dramatic” climb to take over the world much like the App Store did when it was first launched.

Tags: Sensor Tower, ARKit
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