Lyft is making it easier for folks with visual impairments to grab a ride

Lyft is making it easier for anyone and everyone to grab a ride, and that includes folks with visual impairments. This week, the ridesharing giant announced a new partnership with Aira, an assistive community focused on those who are blind or have impaired vision. Together, the two teams are looking to make transportation more accessible to all.

By using wearable smart glasses and an augmented reality dashboard powered by Aira, visually impaired customers will be able to access Lyft’s services. Aira agents will be able to initiate Lyft rides on behalf of a passenger, and communicate important details about the ride, like the location of pick-up spots, estimated pick-up time, and estimated fare. Agents can also provide the name of the driver, as well as vehicle identification information for a more seamless experience. And to ensure that passengers safely make their way from Point A to Point B, Aira can help track the ride, ensure the dropoff point, and provide navigational assistance as users walk the last few feet to their ultimate destination.

“Lyft is committed to be a model for the type of community we want our world to be: diverse, inclusive, and safe,” says Suman Kanuganti, Aira Founder and CEO. “Aira’s mission is to give people who are blind or low vision the power of information. I am psyched about this partnership as it’s designed to provide an end-to-end enhanced experience that makes transportation more accessible to all blind and low vision people, anytime and anywhere.”

This isn’t the first time Lyft has sought to help disabled riders. Earlier this year, the company debuted a partnership with the National Association of the Deaf in an effort to better connect drivers and passengers. Indeed, Lyft noted in a blog post, the company will continue to work alongside different communities and organizations in order to bring transportation to a larger proportion of the population.

“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Aira, an organization that enables hundreds of millions of low vision people to lead better futures,” stated Gyre Renwick, vice president of Lyft business. “Together, we’re working towards our mission of improving people’s lives with the world’s best transportation by introducing better transportation solutions to those with vision loss  —  ultimately enhancing mobility opportunities and helping create more accessible cities.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• Uber vs. Lyft: This is the ultimate ridesharing app showdown
• Go ahead, have another! The best ridesharing apps help get you home safely
• Lyft-Circulation partnership takes the hassle out of your doctor visit
• Lyft riders can now take a driverless-car trip in Boston
• Augmented reality glasses could soon help return sight to legally blind people

5 reasons why you should consider the Huawei MediaPad M3 Lite 10 as your next tablet

There are plenty of reasons to still love an Android tablet.

It’s easy to make the clichéd claim that Android tablets are dead, but the reality is that not every would-be tablet owner wants an iPad. The MediaPad M3 Lite 10 is a powerful yet affordable tablet from Huawei with a lot of compelling features for the price. Here are a few reasons why you might want to pick one up for yourself — or as a great holiday gift!

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Large display

As the name suggests, the MediaPad M3 Lite 10 boasts a 10.1-inch IPS LCD display with a respectably sharp 1920×1200 resolution. It gets impressively bright and has great viewing angles, meaning you’ll be able to use it in dim rooms and the bright outdoors alike.

The MediaPad M3 Lite 10 is made for use primarily in landscape orientation, making it great for split-screen multitasking, and its 3 to 4GB of RAM help keep things running smoothly. In addition, the MediaPad’s natural orientation makes it ideal for keyboard accessories, keeping features like the fingerprint sensor and navigation controls at the bottom of the device.

The MediaPad M3 Lite 10 also supports Eye Comfort, Huawei’s blue light filter, displaying warmer colors and easing eye strain to prevent visual fatigue, irregular sleep cycles, and other negative effects of blue light.

Quad speakers

The MediaPad M3 Lite 10 has four speakers (two on top, two on bottom) for an immersive surround sound experience. Backed by Harman Kardon, the speakers deliver balanced and incredibly loud audio, and whether you’re holding the tablet in portrait or landscape orientation, it’s a fantastic listening experience.

Huawei also utilizes its own SWS 3.0 sound management software to custom-tailor the experience to best fit various situations, including watching movies, listening to music, or talking on live chat.

Expandable storage

Though microSD expandability is still fairly commonplace with Android phones, tablets are a bit of a different story. The MediaPad M3 Lite 10 is one of the few modern tablets that still features a removable microSD tray, making the default 16GB of storage much more usable. It accepts any microSD card with up to 256GB of space, exceeding the maximum capacity of many non-expandable tablets.

EMUI

Depending on who you are, this will either be a benefit or a disadvantage, but EMUI 5.1 on the MediaPad M3 Lite 10 brings some great additions to the standard features of Android 7.0 Nougat. You’re able to customize the look and feel of your device with various EMUI themes, and Huawei has a myriad of in-house apps for weather, voice memos, contacts, backups, and more.

Tablet Manager is also a useful service that allows users to run virus scans, turn on power saving mode, and optimize their MediaPad for the best possible performance.

Kids Corner

Any parent or babysitter knows that one of the best reasons to own a tablet is to keep children entertained and occupied. With Kids Corner preinstalled on the MediaPad M3 Lite 10, you’re able to set up parental controls and determine what apps your children can use, and how long they can be on the tablet.

By default, Kids Corner gives the options to record audio, take pictures, draw, or view saved content from within the app. Exiting the app requires a PIN, meaning kids won’t be able to jump out of the app and into something they shouldn’t be in.

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Liam Neeson can now give you driving directions in Waze

In a car near you through January 14.

There are a lot of reasons to use Waze, but one of the app’s most entertaining and unique features is the ability to have navigation directions read aloud by a number of different celebrities or even your own voice.

Now through January 14, you’ll be able to have your directions read to you by none other than Liam Neeson.

Neeson’s voice is being added to Waze as part of a promotion for the upcoming film The Commuter, and you can enable it by going to Settings -> Voice Directions -> Liam Neeson.

It’s a shame good old Liam won’t be around forever, but if you’ve got some last minute holiday shopping to go out and do, you might as well have former Jedi Knight and world’s best dad guide you to your destinations.

You can now use your own voice for turn-by-turn directions with Waze

Magic Leap unveils first AR headset that’ll launch in 2018

After three years, it’s finally here.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been three years since Google first started funding Magic Leap, but time sure does fly when you’re continuously teased with nothing to really show for. The AR startup has been showcasing its tech in little snippets here and there over the years, but today we finally have our first look at the initial hardware from the company.

Referred to as Magic Leap One Creator Edition, Magic Leap seems to be on to something special. The entire package consists of three main components, including the Lightwear, Lightpack, and Control. The Lightwear is the headset itself, and it features an array of cameras and Digital Lightfield technology that enables environment mapping for all of your augmented reality experiences.

Lightpack is what powers Magic Leap One, and it’s essentially a small computer with the same power as a MacBook Pro that’s been condensed into a circular package that can easily be attached to your belt or pocket. Lastly, the Control is the handheld controller you’ll use for navigation. It looks pretty simple at first glance, but Magic Leap says it allows for “six degrees of freedom”, haptic feedback, and fast responsiveness.

According to Magic Leap’s website, you’ll be able to use Magic Leap One for shopping for objects in 3D, open videos and attach them to walls, play AR games, communicate with friends in a digital manner, and more. A lot of what Magic Leap is showing off sounds like things we’ve seen from Microsoft’s HoloLens, but then again, that’s not really a bad thing.

The Magic Leap One is scheduled to ship out in 2018, and if you’re a designer, creator, or developer, you can head to the company’s website now and register to learn more about how and when you can purchase one.

It’s still unclear when Magic Leap will be ready to launch a consumer-focused product, but this is still a big step in the right direction for the company.

The Moto G5 Plus is the most important phone of 2017

A much bigger deal than which is “best” if you ask me.

We spend a lot of time thinking about which phone deserves that coveted Best title here at Android Central. It’s a moving target throughout the year, and something we disagree about more often than not when discussing things internally. We look at camera quality, battery life, performance over time, software updates, and a ton more. It’s a valuable conversation to have, and a great conversation to have with all of you, but this year I found myself asking the same question over and over again as we evaluated these phones.

Is this phone really $4-600 better than the Moto G5 Plus?

More often than not, the answer to that question was no. Obviously, the Law of Diminishing Returns exists for a reason, but there’s no doubt in my mind what Motorola did with this $180 phone is important. In many ways, this little budget phone is the most important phone to have been released this year.

Check out the full Moto G5 Plus review!

More than a budget phone

Motorola’s low-end phones have been exceptional for a few years now. They have a history of performing above expectations, packing batteries which frequently pass the more expensive competition, and usually have cameras that are better than anticipated. The Moto G5 Plus is the latest in that line, and brings to the table a build quality much greater than you’d expect for the price as well as the remarkably good software Motorola has been building upon since the Google days.

And that’s what makes this phone such a big deal. The G5 Plus doesn’t look or feel like a budget phone. It’s for a great fingerprint sensor, ridiculously good battery life, decent speakers, and a middle-of-the-road camera at a price you’d usually see a carrier offer as one of those old “buy this expensive phone and get this cheap thing for your kid” deals.

This phone also does a great job highlighting just how small the difference is between the best of the lower end and these “flagship” phones is right now. You can buy three of these phones for the same price as the Pixel 2, and if you handed these two phones to someone who didn’t know anything about phones there’s a good chance it wouldn’t be immediately clear to that person which phone was superior.

Great news for the future

I enjoy knowing that the Moto G5 Plus is something I can recommend to just about anyone, and see the genuine surprise at how good the phone is for that price after using it for a few days. I like knowing the low end can be this good because it forces me to be more critical of what makes the “best” phones so good. Over the last couple of years, that decision has been made over fairly subtle differences in hardware or software quality.

I continue to be amazed at just how much phone you can get for a fraction of the cost right now.

Realistically, that decision has been less and less about hardware, and more about services. These high-end phones have to demonstrate how my life is improved with its services, which is another thing we largely have Motorola to thank for. The Moto X, flawed as it was, focused deeply on making life simpler for the user. Things like quickly accessing the camera, enabling specific features when you were driving, and delivering information to a display that woke up when you looked at the phone. Degrees of this are everywhere now, including the Moto G5 Plus, and contextual computing through Machine Learning is a huge part of how Google plans to improve Android over the next year.

As Google’s AI continues to make the Pixel better than the hardware technically is capable of, phones like the Moto G5 Plus will continue to improve the “basic” experience at price points that seem impossibly low for what you are getting. It’s great news for anyone using their phone as their only phone, and especially as their only computer.

The most important phone of the year

As much as I appreciate the capable, sophisticated devices so many people are willing to spend almost $1,000 on, I continue to be amazed at just how much phone you can get for a fraction of the cost right now. Motorola is one of few manufacturers building phones specifically for this group of users, instead of re-branding older hardware so there’s something to sell.

And with the release of the Android Go platform, it’s clear Google wants to drive prices even lower and make sure even more people are connected. As long as this new initiative doesn’t suffer the same fate as Android One, this type of phones is going to be a lot more interesting in the coming year. You can bet Motorola will be a big part of that conversation, with a sequel to the Moto G5 Plus leading the charge.

Moto G5

• Moto G5 Plus review
• Moto G5 Specs
• Top 10 things to know about the Moto G5 + G5 Plus
• Moto G5 Plus vs Moto G4 Plus
• Join our Moto G5 forums!

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How to root the Google Pixel 2

Rooting your Pixel 2 doesn’t have to be complicated, just follow these steps.

There are numerous reasons to root an Android phone. You may want to change the theme of the device, enable certain functions that require deeper system access, or perhaps you just like to poke stuff until it breaks. If you’re purchasing a phone with the intent on rooting it, Google’s Pixel line is a solid place to start.

First and foremost, Google provides factory images for all of its devices. It’s not difficult to brick your device when trying to root it, so having a solid way to get your phone working again is important. Second, unlocking your bootloader and rooting your device will not void the warranty on your Pixel phone. Finally, there is a vibrant modding community on XDA, providing tweaks and custom operating systems for Google’s phones.

Tools you’ll need

To root your Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL, you’ll need a few tools. There are some one-click solutions, but anyone rooting for the first time should go the manual route, if only to make them more experienced. Here is what you’ll need to root your phone:

• A Windows, Linux or Mac computer
• The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) or
• Minimal ADB and Fastboot. This tool is only available for Windows, and rather than installing the entire SDK, only installs the Android Debugging Bridge (ADB) and Fastboot components that are needed to unlock your bootloader and root the device.
• The latest factory image downloaded for your device. The Pixel 2 is codenamed “walleye”, while the Pixel 2 XL is codenamed “taimen.” When downloading a factory image, the image will be labeled as image-taimen-opd.X for the Pixel 2 XL and image-walleye-opd.X for the Pixel 2.
• The latest version of Magisk Manager downloaded to your computer.
  *The appropriate USB cable to connect your phone to your computer.

You’ll also need to complete the initial setup for your phone, including setting a PIN or password to unlock your lock screen. Once that’s complete, open your settings application.

Scroll down to the bottom, then tap System.
Tap About Phone.
At the very bottom of the next screen, tap Build number seven times. Enter your lock screen PIN or password. You’ve now unlocked developer options.
Go back to the System menu.
Tap Developer options.
Near the top of the page, you’ll see an option titled OEM unlocking. Tap the slider to enable this, then enter your lock screen password or PIN.
Tap Enable.
Scroll down a bit, and you’ll see the Debugging section.
Tap the slider next to USB debugging.
Click OK.

Before doing anything else, back up everything on your phone you’d like to restore. This could be photos, SMS text messages or any other local files. Unlocking your bootloader will completely wipe your phone’s hard drive, so anything not backed up will be gone forever. Files can either be backed up to a cloud service like Google Drive or Google Photos, or transferred to your computer with a USB cable. Once everything is backed up, we’re ready to get into the real fun of this project.

For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be using Minimal ADB and Fastboot. However, the commands are the same when using the Android SDK as well if that is your preferred tool. Plug your phone into your computer, then open your command program.

Type adb devices to ensure the ADB connection is working properly.
A prompt will be shown on your phone screen asking if you’d like to allow USB debugging. Tap OK.
Type adb reboot bootloader. Your phone will reboot into the bootloader menu.
Type fastboot devices to ensure the Fastboot connection is working properly.
Type fastboot flashing unlock. You will see a prompt on the phone to confirm you want to unlock the bootloader.
Use to volume up button to select UNLOCK THE BOOTLOADER, then the power button to continue.
Type fastboot reboot to reboot your phone.
Your phone will reboot, and you’ll need to set it up as brand new. Go through the normal setup process, again making sure to set a lock screen PIN or password.
Copy the Magisk Manager APK downloaded earlier from your computer to your phone. Sideload the application file to install it onto the phone.

Magisk is a tool that modifies the boot image for your phone, but you’ll need to have the boot image downloaded first. The modified boot image provides root access to the user, as well as a root manager to manage root permissions for applications.

What it looks like to use the Magisk app.

Extract the factory image downloaded earlier, then open the extracted folder. Extract and open the image-taimen-opd.X or image-walleye-opd.X folder, then copy the file labeled boot.img to the Downloads folder on your phone.
Open Magisk. You will be prompted to install the latest version of Magisk’s tools, but it is not necessary. Click Install.
Click Patch Boot Image File.
Inside the file picker, navigate to the Downloads folder.
Select boot.img.
Magisk will use the boot image you supplied to generate a modified boot image for your phone, and give you the location of where that image is stored. Copy the modified image from the phone to your computer.
Place the file into the Minimal ADB and Fastboot or Android SDK folder on your computer.
Enable Developer Options just like before, and allow USB debugging. In the command window, type adb devices to make sure the phone is connected correctly.
Type adb reboot bootloader to reboot to the bootloader menu.
Once the phone is rebooted to the bootloader, type fastboot devices to make sure it’s connected correctly.
Type fastboot flash boot patched_boot.img. The modified boot image will be written to your phone.
Type fastboot reboot to reboot the phone.
Download an application like Root Check to make sure the phone is actually rooted. If not, the best course of action is to follow the unroot steps below and try again.

Unrooting

You may want to unroot the device later on. For instance, a certain app you use may not be working or you need to return the phone for warranty support. No worries, unrooting the phone is simple as pie.

Backup any local content on your phone, such as text messages or photos.
Copy the contents of the extracted factory image folder into the Minimal ADB and Fastboot folder.
Connect your phone to the computer, open Minimal ADB and Fastboot and type adb reboot bootloader to reboot into the bootloader.
Once your phone has rebooted, double click the flash-all batch file on your computer. This will flash the factory image to your phone, overwriting the modified boot image and erasing any local data.
Once the factory image is done flashing, your phone will be rebooted. But, the bootloader is still unlocked. Hold down the power button to power the phone off, then hold the power button and volume down for a few seconds to boot into bootloader mode.
Type oem flashing lock to re-lock your bootloader.
Use the volume button to select LOCK THE BOOTLOADER.
Type fastboot reboot to reboot your phone. Once it reboots, your phone will be like brand new, ready to set up or sell.

Do you root your phone? Let us know down below!

Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

• Pixel 2 FAQ: Everything you need to know!
• Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL review: The new standard
• Google Pixel 2 specs
• Google Pixel 2 vs. Pixel 2 XL: What’s the difference?
• Join our Pixel 2 forums

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Verizon
Google Store
Project Fi

Google Assistant SDK picks up new languages and features

Google Assistant on third-party speakers is about to get a lot smarter.

Although the Google Assistant first launched as an exclusive feature for the Pixel/Pixel XL and Google Home in 2016, it’s rapidly expanded to other Android phones, tablets, and third-party smart speakers. The Google Assistant SDK is what allows manufacturers to add the virtual assistant to any device with a microphone and speaker, and it’s gaining a few new features to expand its usefulness.

The TicHome Mini, a third-party Google Assistant speaker.

The first new addition to the SDK is more language support. With this update, the SDK now supports English in Australia, Canada, UK, and the U.S., French in Canada and France, as well as German, and Japanese.

Also new are more customizable device settings. With this, developers can use the SDK to change a device’s language, location, and even nickname to allow for more personalized results.

The addition of Device Actions enables developers to create Actions right within devices running the Assistant SDK, and there’s now also support for text-based questions and responses.

These upgrades to the Assistant SDK should be rolling out now, and it’ll be interesting to see how developers tap into everything being added here with future applications and updates to existing ones.

Google Assistant coming to Android tablets and older phones

Deal: Great holiday savings from Republic Wireless, US Mobile, and Tello

The holidays are here and that means Republic Wireless, US Mobile, and Tello are spreading some cheer with extra-special savings.

Republic Wireless – My Choice Plan

Get unlimited talk and text for $15/month, plus you can add 1GB of cellular data to the plan for an extra $5. You can bring your own compatible Android phone too! Republic Wireless is an MVNO service provider that uses WiFi first for calls, texts, and data. When WiFi is not available, the service runs off of the nation’s fastest 4G LTE cellular network.

US Mobile – $30 bill discount

Sign up for any US Mobile plan and receive a $30 discount to be applied over the first two months of service as two $15 bill credits. Just use the promotion code: WOUTUSM when signing up online. 

US Mobile’s unlimited data plans (starting from $35/mo) allow you to customize your plans depending on what data speeds (1 Mbps, 5 Mbps or up to 150 Mbps) you need. You can choose the amount of talk & text and the data speed that best suits your needs, as well as what network (T-Mobile or Verizon) you want to us. Plus, both GSM and CDMA devices will work at US Mobile.

Tello – 5GB + 5GB FREE 4G LTE data

Right now, when you sign up for 5GB of data with Tello, you’ll get another 5GB for free. That’s a total of 10GB of 4G LTE data on Sprint’s nationwide network. Bring your own Sprint-compatible phone. Tethering, as well as calls to Mexico & Canada, are included.

Europe unveils roadmap for the next decade of quantum computing

Back in 2016, the EU invested 1 billion euros (almost $1.2 billion at today’s exchange rates) in quantum computing. Now, a year and a half later, it’s time for an update on what’s happening thanks to a 150-page roadmap on European quantum technologies. It also outlines where the project will go over the next decade.

There are four different areas of quantum computing that are being researched: communications, simulation, computation and sensing and metrology. Quantum communication will allow people to send secure data across distances without the risk of it being hacked or intercepted. The issue is that these systems are expensive and difficult. Additionally, they only work over distances of about 100 km (about 60 miles). The development of a quantum router will solve the latter problem in about six years, while the next evolution of quantum communication systems will address the former in the next three years.

Quantum computation involves harnessing processes in order to vastly improve issues of data performance. Right now, it’s limited to just a few bits. The issue is scaling it upward so more data can be processed, and the commission believes that can happen in the next decade, perhaps even within five years.

The third area, quantum simulation, can be tied back to Richard Feynman, “who suggested that interacting quantum systems could be efficiently simulated employing other precisely controllable quantum systems, even in many instances in which such a simulation task is expected to be inefficient for standard classical computers,” according to the report. The issue here is figuring out precisely how to do this, and it’s not clear how much forward progress will be made in the next decade.

Finally there’s quantum metrology and imaging, which is the ability to measure the quantum. After all, we can’t use it if we don’t have an ability to interact with and monitor it. We do have the tools for this, at various stages of development. But many of these need to be refined and further advanced before they are truly viable.

All in all, it’s a fascinating look at what Europe plans to do with quantum computing over the next ten years. What’s really exciting about the report is that, while its authors are very clear that we have a long way to go yet, it makes this tech seem more concrete and feasible. It will certainly be interesting to keep an eye on quantum computing for the next few years to see if these predictions come to light.

Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: arXiv.org

New York will tackle unfair biases in automated city services

Whether we’re aware of them or not, algorithms affect a huge part of our lives. Now, in a US-first, New York is taking steps to address potential algorithmic biases in services provided by municipal agencies. City council has passed a bill that would — if signed by Mayor de Blasio — create a task force to examine if and how service algorithms are biased, how citizens can appeal decisions made by algorithms if they feel they’re unfair, and if agency source code could be made publicly available.

“Automated decision systems” are responsible for determining outcomes on a wide range of city/citizen matters. Take eligibility for bail, for example. Training data used to produce algorithms for this system may involve biases that unjustly favour one group of individuals over another. The task force would look at ways certain groups, such as the elderly, immigrants, the disabled and minorities, are affected by these automated processes.

The bill, named Intro 1696-A, is not as wide-reaching as advocates had initially hoped for. An earlier version would have mandated that all agencies making decisions with algorithms make their codes publicly available. The passed version simply requires the taskforce look into the feasibility of this.

If signed, the taskforce will need to be formed within three months, but the report itself wouldn’t be due for 18 months, which is fair given the size of such a data intensive task, and, of course, its importance. Weeding out algorithmic biases and challenging the systems that allow them to exist in the first place will have a massive civic impact and set vital precedents for the rest of the country.

Via: ProPublica

Source: New York CIty Council