Get your pickaxe ready: The next MineCon Earth show streams in September

Minecraft fans will be pleased to learn that the second annual MineCon Earth event will take place on September 29. The 90-minute interactive live-stream will cram all the “best bits” from previous conventions into one show for the entire world to watch for free. The event will feature pre- and post-show segments, along with several community panels. 

“The Minecraft community is still growing, and there’s only a certain number of players we can host while keeping the friendly, intimate community atmosphere that’s made previous MineCons so special,” developer Mojang said last year. “With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce MineCon Earth — an interactive show.” 

With more than five months to go before the second MineCon Earth event, fans have enough time to submit ideas for panels that could be prerecorded and played during the live show. They can even create a Minecraft-themed costume and submit the design. Select designers will be flown out to Mojang and highlighted during the broadcast. Winners will receive a “fantastic prize.” 

MineCon Earth isn’t just an in-studio show — it’s broadcast on stage in front of a live audience. Hosted by actor Will Arnett and Mojang’s Lydia Winters, last year’s show introduced the Update Aquatic slated for spring 2018, which will add coral, kelp, additional fish, explorable shipwrecks, new water physics, and more to Minecraft. The show also saw the addition of free content on the marketplace and the launch of a new Minecraft server: The Hive. 

MineCon Earth also revealed that Minecraft for Nintendo Switch will support cross-platform multiplayer in 2018. That means Switch owners will finally be able to play with gamers on the Xbox One, Windows 10, Gear VR, and mobile devices (nope, still no PlayStation 4). When that will actually happen is unknown for now, but Minecraft boss Helen Chiang recently said the update is coming soon. 

“When I think about what’s next for us — well, my job is really not to change the plan that we’re on, but to focus on a number of different things,” she said at the end of February. “The first one is bringing over more people to Bedrock through Nintendo, and that’s coming out pretty soon.” 

The first gathering to honor Minecraft took place in Bellevue, Washington, in 2010. The first MineCon-branded convention was held in Las Vegas in 2011, followed by Paris Disneyland; Orlando, Florida; London; and Anaheim, California, in successive years. Microsoft and Mojang then went all-digital in 2017 with the first annual MineCon Earth 90-minute show. 

The 2018 edition will showcase live gameplay and discussions featuring Lydia Winters and community co-hosts to be revealed at a later date. You’ll also find out what’s coming to the popular block-building game by streaming on the MineCon Earth website, YouTube, and other streaming sites.

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European Commission may slap Google with a serious fine over Android

Over the past several years, Google has faced three antitrust cases by the European Commission regarding Google Shopping, AdSense, and Android’s dominance in the smartphone market. The Commission’s ruling regarding Android will likely arrive in the next several months, slapping Google with a possible multi-billion dollar fine. But rivals and market watchers believe fines and regulations won’t make a significant difference. 

Outside Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android is the dominant operating system in the smartphone market. It’s typically unaltered packing first-party apps such as Google Maps, Gmail, Google Search and so on, peppered with apps developed internally by smartphone makers. Typically, any “customization” involved relies on visual tweaks to the overall interface and special “launchers” that change the appearance of the home screen and app drawer. 

Device makers have attempted to offer smartphones with altered, “forked” versions on Android. Amazon made such an attempt with its failed Fire Phone in 2014: A 3D-enabled phone powered by a modified version of Android the company calls Fire OS. It’s the same platform Amazon uses for its Kindle Fire-branded tablets, Fire TV, Echo, Echo Dot, and more. Meanwhile, Samsung’s use of Tizen initially seemed the end of Android on its smartphones, but the company still uses Google’s operating system on its Galaxy devices. 

That said, there is no real alternative to Android. Even more, Google commands 90 percent of the European search market and provides revenue sharing payments to smartphone makers who pre-install Google Search. Individuals siding with the European Commission claim the company provides strong incentives, too, leaving smartphone makers unable to promote alternatives to Google’s apps. Anything distributed outside Google Play could be considered as untrustworthy by users. 

That’s because Android’s app-related problem spans years. In the early days, smartphone makers were altering Android to distinguish their products against competitors. Meanwhile, third-party app stores not governed by Google or device manufacturers lured in device owners. The resulting malware epidemic seemingly pushed customers to prefer “pure” Android builds and Google Play apps. The only exception is Amazon’s Android apps store, which still must be side-loaded on Android devices. 

Seemingly to keep the “pure” theme intact, Google pushes smartphone makers to install the Chrome browser and other first-party apps if Google Play is present. But smartphone makers still have an option to install their own stores and apps, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Apps store on Galaxy-class smartphones. Obviously, Google isn’t completely banning third-party apps from Android, but the European Commission still seems to think that some type of regulation is in order. 

But European Commission sources claim that it can’t simply order Google to change its Android business under European law. If anything, the Commission can slap Google with a fine and make suggestions: Stop enforcing first-party app installation and stop paying device makers for installing Google Search. Will that make a difference in the overall Android picture? Probably not. 

“Android is utterly dominant,” CCS Insight’s Geoff Blaber told Reuters. “Whatever the ruling, manufacturers are heavily reliant [on Android] so nothing is going to change dramatically.” 

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What is an ASIC miner?

A BitMain AntMiner S9 ASIC miner BitMain

As much as cryptocurrency mining was originally designed to be something everyone could do with their home computer, those days are long gone. Today, whether you’re mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, DASH, or a host of other cryptocurrencies — the most effective way to do so is with a piece of hardware known as an ASIC miner.

It’s not a desktop PC or a dedicated graphics card mining rig — it’s something else. Application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, are chips that are designed with a singular purpose, ranging from audio processing to managing a cellphone call. In the case of cryptocurrency mining though, these chips are built into specifically-designed motherboards and power supplies, constructed into a single unit. It’s not just a purpose built machine though, it’s purposely designed and developed hardware right down to the chip level.

What an ASIC miner actually does

In a nutshell, mining is the process of running complicated calculations in the search for a specific number. Mining hardware, whether it’s an ASIC miner or a GPU mining rig, has to run through many calculations before finding that number. In proof of work systems like Bitcoin, the first one to find that number gets a reward — at the time of writing, 12.5 Bitcoins. That’s worth around $110,00.

There are so many people and powerful computing systems trying to mine Bitcoin though, that almost everyone bands together with a group of miners to try and find that number. That said, miners tend to earn more if they have faster hardware. That’s why people who can afford it opt for ASIC miners because it gives them the greatest chance of earning cryptocurrency in exchange for their investment.

Each cryptocurrency has its own cryptographic hash algorithm and ASIC miners are designed to mine using that specific algorithm. Bitcoin ASIC miners are actually designed to calculate the SHA-256 hash algorithm. In the case of Litecoin, Scrypt. That means technically they could mine any other coin that’s based on the same algorithm, though typically people who buy ASIC hardware designed with one particular coin in mind, mine that coin.

For a more in-depth look at what mining actually is, here’s our detailed guide.

What makes an ASIC miner better?

ASIC miners differ from a graphics card or CPU mining system in that those more general pieces of hardware are designed to do more than one thing. They also just happen to do it better than anything with a more general purpose focus.

When it comes to mining cryptocurrencies, all that really matters is that the cryptocurrency you mine is worth more than what you spend on hardware and electricity. Those margins can be closer than you might think, because mining cryptocurrency can be expensive. Hardware can be costly to buy up front, and some of it can cost thousands of dollars a year in electricity to run.

So when it comes to the mining hardware you choose, having more efficient systems is incredibly important. That’s where ASIC miners come in. Since they are designed from the ground up to perform the calculations required by a specific cryptographic hash algorithm used by an individual, or handful of, cryptocurrencies, they are incredibly efficient at doing so. They’re powerful — offering a high “hashrate” — and energy efficient, using far less power than a more general piece of hardware might do for the same task.

This combination of performance and low-power usage makes them much more economical to run than more general purpose hardware. That’s why in the case of Bitcoin and Litecoin, ASIC mining is just about the only way anyone mines those cryptocurrencies any more. If the new Ethereum ASIC miner turns out to be just as successful, that could soon be the case for that popular cryptocurrency too.

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Xiaomi Mi 6X set for unveil on April 25, could launch globally as the Mi A2

This could be Xiaomi’s Android One phone for 2018.

Xiaomi caught the smartphone industry by surprise when it announced that it was teaming up with Google over an Android One phone. The Mi A1 turned out to be a fantastic phone in the budget segment, offering a great design, powerful specs, and pure Android. The phone itself was a rebranded variant of the Mi 5X with Android One instead of Xiaomi’s MIUI.

The Chinese manufacturer has now sent out invites to the Chinese media (Via FoneArena) for an event on April 25, where it is set to unveil the Mi 6X. The phone made its way through TENAA last month, giving us a look at the specs on offer.

The Mi 6X will feature a 5.99-inch FHD+ 18:9 panel, Snapdragon 626, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, microSD slot, hybrid SIM card slot, 20MP + 8MP dual cameras at the back, 20MP front shooter, and a 2910mAh battery. The battery may not be as massive as that of the Redmi Note 5 Pro, but as I saw on the Mi A1 last year, Xiaomi still knows a thing or two about optimization to eke out the most out of the battery.

As this particular variant is aimed at a Chinese audience, it will be running an Oreo-based build of MIUI. Right now, there’s no information regarding an Android One model that will go on sale in global markets, but the Mi A1 saw a decent amount of sales in India last year, and Xiaomi will be looking to offer an alternative to MIUI in the budget segment.

India’s ACT Fibernet is giving away a free Google Home Mini — here’s how you can get one

India’s largest ISP is giving away a free Google Home Mini to select subscribers.

With over 1.3 million customers, ACT Fibernet is India’s largest fiber-focused wired broadband ISP (think of it as Comcast, but with much better service). ACT Fibernet serves just 12 cities across India — including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi — and the service provider’s ability to offer high bandwidth at affordable rates allowed it to carve out a niche among enthusiast users. The service is headquartered in Hyderabad, where it rolled out a Gigabit plan last year, being the first ISP in the country to do so.

With the launch of the Google Home and Home Mini in India, ACT Fibernet has announced that it is Google’s “fiber broadband partner” (whatever that means). What is interesting though is the fact that the ISP is offering promos where it is bundling a Google Home Mini with most subscription plans.

Essentially, all customers subscribing to its Gigabit plan in Hyderabad and Bangalore will receive a complimentary Google Home Mini, and users in Chennai and Delhi that pay for yearly plans will also receive a Home Mini for free. For subscribers in Delhi, ACT is introducing a Platinum Promo plan that delivers 150Mbps bandwidth for just ₹999 ($15) a month.

Here’s the breakdown of the offer, as detailed by ACT Fibernet:

I talked to ACT Fibernet’s head of marketing Ravi Karthik regarding the details of the offer, and was able to ascertain that the promotion is valid for both current as well as new subscribers. If you’re a new subscriber, you’ll have to select one of the Google Home Mini plans outlined above, and you’ll receive the speaker at your registered address within a week of activation.

Existing subscribers paying a yearly plan will have to call ACT’s customer care number and request the Google Home Mini. Provided the details check out, the speaker will be sent out after three to four days. Given that the promotion is starting to roll out just now, it is possible that not all service desk agents are aware of the offer, so you’ll have to exercise some amount of patience.

The promotion itself is valid in four cities — Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi — and isn’t likely to be rolled out to new markets. But if you’re using ACT Fibernet’s service in these markets, there’s an added incentive to make the switch to a yearly plan.

Facebook Stories will add AR doodles and Boomerang GIFs

Facebook is giving Stories a much-needed boost by rolling out AR doodles and Instagram’s Boomerang to its Camera feature suite. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be able to draw on the world your camera sees, thanks to what the currently embattled company calls “3D drawing.” It’ll enable you to doodle and scribble on your screen before or while you’re recording and see what your augmented reality graffiti looks like on various surfaces as you move your phone around.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s tech allows your drawings to wrap around objects like mailboxes and tables in the real world. However, its implementation is still far from perfect, and it can only adapt to the contours of an object when it’s in optimal lighting conditions and the tech is absolutely sure what it’s looking at. As for Boomerang, TC says the beloved Instagram feature could replace Camera’s looping GIF-maker that Facebook launched some time ago, since that one’s not quite as polished.

Whether these additions can entice more people to post Stories directly on Facebook instead of simply cross-posting from Instagram remains to be seen. Unlike Instagram’s Snapchat clone, which has more users than Snapchat itself, Facebook’s hasn’t been as successful. That has prompted the social network to make Stories available to brands, to merge it with Messenger Day (yet another Snapchat-like feature) and to mull over the possibility of allowing users to create Stories on PC.

Source: TechCrunch

How to set up and use Cortana

You might know Cortana as the digital voice assistant on the defunct Windows Phone mobile platform, named after the AI character in Microsoft’s Halo game series.

Starting with Windows 10, Cortana has graduated to the desktop operating system’s primary search tool, plus many other customizable and personal functions. Here’s how to set up and use Cortana in Windows 10.

Sign in to get started

Cortana has a few basic functions you can use without being signed in, but you can get the most functionality of it if you’re signed in to your Microsoft account. To do so, within Cortana’s search window, hit the button that says “Cortana can do so much more.” When prompted, click the sign-in button and follow the on-screen instructions.

Set up Cortana

Type “Cortana settings” in the search bar. The first result will be “Cortana & search settings” — click it. (You can also access these through the Notebook view — see below.) There are a variety of options here, but the first controls the search function’s voice activation phrase, “hey Cortana.” But you don’t really need that whole “Hey” business anyhow.

If you’re the only user of your computer, or you simply want this function to be more accurate, click the blue text “Learn how I say ‘Hey Cortana.’” The search program will guide you through a series of tests to make sure your microphone is working correctly, then it will “learn” your voice so that you can instantly activate the Cortana window with the phrase from any screen.

If you want to make sure Cortana is obedient to you alone, tick the box that says “Try to respond only to me.”

Alternately, you can turn off this detection by switching the “Hey Cortana” switch to “Off.” This is useful if you want to save battery life on a laptop, or if you’re using a desktop with no microphone. You can manually activate a voice search by clicking the microphone button in the search bar at any time.

The “Permissions and History” tab is also important to familiarize yourself with. Cortana can access a lot of information about you and your device, so deciding what you’re comfortable sharing with Cortana — and by extension, Microsoft — is worthwhile. You may also want to enable or disable Safe Search, depending on your own personal proclivities.

If you want to customize what Cortana calls you — by a nickname perhaps — then open up the Cortana window again by clicking on the Windows search bar, select the notepad icon and then open the “About Me,” category. Click the “Change my name” button and input what you would like to be called.

You can also use that same menu to change your location and favorite places, so that Cortana can better suggest local attractions of news to you.

Show or hide the Search button

Michael Crider/Digital Trends

Cortana “lives” in the taskbar, either as a full-sized search bar that you can type directly into (which is only available when the taskbar is at the bottom) or as a simple button. You can choose between these modes, or hide the search function completely. Right-click on an empty portion of the taskbar and move your mouse to the “Cortana” field, then select either “Show search icon” or “Show search box.”

You can also select “Hidden,” which will hide Cortana completely. You can still access searches from the keyboard by pressing the Windows button + S, or simply typing quickly when the Start menu is first opened.

Cortana Home

When you click the Search button you’ll see the Cortana home screen, a heads-up display of all the news and personalized items that Cortana thinks you’ll be interested in at the moment.

You can go into greater detail on what to show and what not to show in the Notebook section below, but to quickly remove a sub-section from the Home screen, click the three horizontal dots at the top-right of any individual section (referred to as “cards” in the Cortana interface). Click “Hide [section]” to remove the section completely or “edit in Notebook” to quickly go to the relevant Notebook page.

Cortana Notebook

To change what appears in the Home view and in search results as a whole, click the button beneath the Home button on the left side of the Cortana window to open the Notebook. This is your way to access Cortana’s learned information about you as a user, and to customize which dynamic suggestions it gives you to questions and other search queries. In the menus for the different sub-settings, you can enable or disable a variety of search results and tools.

Each one sources some information from web searches and specific services and “learns” your preferences as you search. If you don’t like the results you’re getting, you can manually tweak them (like selecting an “atmosphere” for your preferred restaurant type or entering your favorite sports team for tracking) or simply set the card to “off” to disable those results in Cortana.

Click each sub-menu to see what you can tweak or adjust. Some are quite robust. News lets you track stories by both broad categories and specific topics.

Connected accounts

The Connected Accounts menu allows you to manage any Microsoft or third-party services that Cortana can access. For maximum utility (and getting the most out of the “personal assistant” aspirations of Cortana), it’s best to leave these enabled. For privacy, you can disable sensitive accounts, or simply un-link them all to use Cortana solely as a web and computer search tool.

Reminders

Reminders are automatically set when you make a relevant search in Cortana. For example, searching for “remind me to rent Avengers” will automatically bring up a screen to link the reminder to a specific time, person (when you connect with someone in your Microsoft Contacts) or place (when your computer or phone determines that it’s in a matching location).

To manage existing reminders or to add one manually, click the Notebook icon and then select “Reminders” from the resulting list. Clicking on an existing reminder will allow you to modify or delete it. Clicking the “+” icon in the lower right-hand corner will let you create a new one.

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Backpage CEO pleads guilty to human trafficking, money laundering

Documents unsealed today by the Justice Department (PDF) reveal Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges in Arizona on April 5th, a day before the site was seized and shut down. Additionally, attorneys general in California and Texas announced today that he has entered guilty pleas to charges of human trafficking in Texas as well as conspiracy and three counts of money laundering in California. Several corporate entities tied to the site, including Backpage.com LLC, also entered guilty pleas to charges of money laundering.

As a part of the deal that will see him serve a maximum of five years in prison, the prosecutors say Ferrer has surrendered the URLs of the site and its data to law enforcement, and that he will cooperate in the prosecution against others involved with the company — namely co-founders and controlling shareholders Michael Lacey and James Larkin, who were indicted April 9th.

The plea deal includes Ferrer’s admission that a majority of the site’s ads were for sex services, and that he conspired with others to launder proceeds from the ads after credit card companies and banks wouldn’t do business with the site.

Source: California AG, Texas AG, DOJ

Amazon appears to be expanding its Prime Wardrobe service

Last June, Amazon announced a clothes-by-mail service so Prime customers could try out new apparel without committing to buying it ahead of time. The service has been in beta ever since, but TechCrunch reports that it has now reached more customers. A number of people have tweeted that they have received an invitation to try Prime Wardrobe and an Amazon employee tweeted that the service had officially launched — though that tweet has since been deleted. Additionally, the Twitter account for the University of California, Irvine’s Prime Student Brand Ambassadors encouraged students to try out Prime Wardrobe in a tweet posted yesterday.

Join Prime Student and try on your clothes before buying them with Prime Wardrobe! #PrimeStudentRep #Ad pic.twitter.com/yv1FyiQkcE

— Amazon at UCI (@AmazonAtUCI) April 11, 2018

Amazon initially denied any change to the ongoing Prime Wardrobe trial, but later told TechCrunch that it had extended the service to more customers. When we reached out to Amazon for more information, we were told that Prime Wardrobe is still in an invitation-only phase.

The service takes on companies like Stitch Fix, Trunk Club and DailyLook Elite that have similar offerings. For Amazon’s version, Prime members can shop through a dedicated Prime Wardrobe selection of apparel and accessories, choosing three to eight items per box. Customers can then try on the items at home, having seven days to make a decision before any unwanted items must be sent back. Currently, Amazon is also offering a deal wherein customers can get $20 off if they spend at least $200 through Prime Wardrobe.

Unlike Stitch Fix, there isn’t any style personalization with Prime Wardrobe. But Amazon does let you shop by occasion or style and provides suggestions through sections like “Our editors’ top picks” and “Brands we love.” The move makes sense for Amazon, which has been expanding its fashion-focused offerings over the last couple of years. And it could appeal to those who like the try-it-before-you-buy-it aspect of companies like Stitch Fix but don’t want to commit to a monthly subscription.

Via: TechCrunch

Google AI can pick out voices in a crowd

Humans are usually good at isolating a single voice in a crowd, but computers? Not so much — just ask anyone trying to talk to a smart speaker at a house party. Google may have a surprisingly straightforward solution, however. Its researchers have developed a deep learning system that can pick out specific voices by looking at people’s faces when they’re speaking. The team trained its neural network model to recognize individual people speaking by themselves, and then created virtual “parties” (complete with background noise) to teach the AI how to isolate multiple voices into distinct audio tracks.

The results, as you can see below, are uncanny. Even when people are clearly trying to compete with each other (such as comedians Jon Dore and Rory Scovel in the Team Coco clip above), the AI can generate a clean audio track for one person just by focusing on their face. That’s true even if the person partially obscures their face with hand gestures or a microphone.

Google is currently “exploring opportunities” to use this feature in its products, but there are more than a few prime candidates. It’s potentially ideal for video chat services like Hangouts or Duo, where it could help you understand someone talking in a crowded room. It could also be helpful for speech enhancement in video recording. And there are big implications for accessibility: it could lead to camera-linked hearing aids that boost the sound of whoever’s in front of you, and more effective closed captioning. There are potential privacy issues (this could be used for public eavesdropping), but it wouldn’t be too difficult to limit the voice separation to people who’ve clearly given their consent.

Via: Android Police

Source: Google Research Blog