Twitter bans multiple ‘alt-right’ accounts
In the wake of releasing more tools to combat abuse on its service, Twitter has banned the accounts of a number of “alt-right” users. That includes the head of the National Policy Institute (NPI), Richard Spencer. The think tank describes itself as “dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States and around the world.” USA Today reports that the purge started with Spencer’s verified status being revoked before removing his account (@RichardBSPencer), the NPI’s (@npiamerica) and his publication The Radix Journal’s (@radixjournal).
Speaking to The Daily Caller News Foundation, a conservative news publication, Spencer said that this amounts to “corporate Stalinism.”
“Twitter is trying to airbrush the alt-right out of existence,” he said. “They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!” Other affected accounts include those of prominent alt-right members Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers.
In a YouTube video entitled “Knight of Long Knives,” (a reference to a purging of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler), Spencer says that he’s “alive physically, but digitally speaking, there has been execution squads across the alt-right.”
As USA Today points out, the alt-right has been using Twitter to spread white supremacist messages, imagery and abuse, all of which violates the service’s usage terms. This summer, Twitter banned alt-right member and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos from the service following what Spencer described as “something that could be called harassment.”
Part of Twitter’s new counter-abuse tools include the ability to report tweets that “target people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease.” Twitter typically does not comment on the banning of individual accounts, but we’ve reached out for more information and will update this post should it arrive.
Source: USA Today
Google expands mission to make automated translations suck less
What started with Mandarin Chinese is expanding to English; French; German; Japanese; Korean; Portuguese and Turkish, as Google has increased the languages its Neural Machine Translation (NMT) handle. “These represent the native languages of around one-third of the world’s population, covering more than 35 percent of all Google Translate queries,” according to The Keyword blog. The promise here is that because NMT uses the context of the entire sentence, rather than translating individual words on their own, the results will be more accurate, especially as time goes on, thanks to machine learning. For a comparison of the two methods, check out the GIF embedded below.
Google says that the ultimate goal is to have all 103 languages in Translate using machine learning. In the immediate future, though, it’s opening up the NMT tech to businesses so they can use it how they see fit. If that increase in users means better translations, then, hey, everyone wins.
Source: The Keyword blog
Twitch chases YouTube with improved upload options
Content creators who have been testing the waters of Twitch’s new Uploads Open Beta can now wade in just a little deeper — the gameplay streaming site has announced a slew of improvements to the manual upload feature, including increased tag character limits, new language settings and, most importantly, much wider support for common video file formats.
In addition to the existing .MP4 support, Twitch users can now upload H.264-encoded videos in MOV, AVI and FLV formats. That’s still half as many as YouTube supports, but it’s a big step forward that should accommodate the needs of most users. Twitch’s upload tools have also been updated to include a default language setting and longer tags — up to 100 characters per individual tags and 500 for all tags total. Finally, Twitch has fixed a ton of small glitches, including a issues that kept users from uploading custom thumbnails and an experience-ruining bug that caused videos to restart near the end of their runtime.
While this update is relatively small, it shows how serious Twitch is about competing with YouTube’s vast library of non-live gaming videos. Twitch also says the improvements are the result of community feedback, and says more user requested features (like bold and italic text formatting in video descriptions) are on the way.
Source: Twitch
This is how the world looks on Facebook’s population maps
Facebook’s Connectivity Lab today released its high-resolution population maps for Malawi, South Africa, Ghana, Haiti and Sri Lanka, with the promise to make more datasets available over the coming months. The population maps are a joint effort between the Facebook Connectivity Lab, Columbia University and the World Bank, though Facebook is interested in the project as part of its effort to launch wireless communication services in rural regions around the globe.
Facebook and friends used software to identify buildings in commercially available satellite images, and then estimated population using census data and a few other surveys and programs. Convolutional neural networks powered a model capable of identifying individual buildings in images from across the world.
“There has been a lot of work recently on neural networks that can recognize individual buildings with very high accuracy, but these models are finely tuned on the local characteristics of the region where they are trained,” the Connectivity Lab’s Tobias Tiecke writes. “We found that these models do not perform well at a global scale with realistic amounts of training data. Therefore, we developed a model that is trained only on binary labeled data — if an image does or does not contain a building — which allows for fast acquisition of the training data.”
Facebook’s preliminary findings suggest that of the 23 countries it studied, 99 percent of the population lives within 63 km of the nearest city, with 44 percent of people living in cities.
“Hence, if we are able to develop communication technologies that can bridge 63 km with sufficiently high data rates, we should be able to connect 99 percent of the population in these 23 countries,” Tiecke says.
Facebook has been toying with a handful of options for rural communication technologies, including the shoebox-size OpenCellular platform and a satellite initiative. The population maps will help Facebook streamline its designs.
“We would love to hear ideas (preferably also in an open manner) on how to bridge this distance in an economically viable fashion for line of sight and non-line of sight use cases, and we hope that by sharing these datasets we will stimulate further research,” Tiecke says.
Source: CIESIN, Facebook Connectivity Lab
Sony suspends player who found a sex organ in ‘Watch Dogs 2’
Ubisoft might pride itself on Watch Dogs 2’s plausible game world, but it looks like the open world title might be a little too realistic… and one player is paying the price for it. Sony suspended NeoGAF forum member Goron2000 from the Sony Entertainment Network (including PSN) after he discovered that at least one of the female character models in the game has a fully rendered vagina. It’s not exactly necessary in a hacking-themed action title where intentional nudity is very rare, is it?
Unlike the “Hot Coffee” scandal that surrounded Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas years ago, this gaffe isn’t inaccessible bits of code buried deep within the title’s back-end, it’s art assets within the final game that seemingly any player could happen upon. According to Sony, the player’s decision to share his discovery online (using the PS4’s built-in sharing and streaming features, no less) violated SEN guidelines forbidding players from sharing “adult or sexual” content.
Ubisoft has promised to patch the sex organ out of the game, and it’s important to note that the temporary ban will last until December 15th. However, the very fact that either happened has left Goron2000 and others scratching their heads. How did this make it past Ubisoft’s certification team? And is Sony right to boot a player who was sharing material the publisher/developer inadvertently approved, leaving a black mark on his account?
Sony hasn’t responded to our request for comment, but the player at the center of the ordeal tweeted that his PSN privileges have been reinstated as of 7:33pm Eastern.
Sony have undone the suspension. We won! I think? They never admitted fault of course. I want to thank everyone for their support today.
— Swizzasaur (@Swizzasaur) November 16, 2016
However, the incident highlights the problems with bending over backwards to include sharing features on consoles. If you’re going to make it easy to livestream or share photos on Twitter, you shouldn’t be surprised if users draw attention to the naughtier material.
Via: The Next Web, Polygon
Source: NeoGAF, Swizzasaur (Twitter)
Google Fiber TV app recommends live shows
Google just illustrated one of the advantages of having an app-centric television service like Fiber TV: you can refine the entire experience through a simple software update. It’s trotting out a new version of the Fiber TV app that will help you find something to watch, even if you’re not sure where to start. It now offers personalized recommendations for live TV, and will show you live sports events. You shouldn’t miss out on that new drama you were meaning to see, and you’ll know if that football game has already started.
The software is also much better at helping you catch up on your backlog. The home screen now emphasizes the next episodes of shows you’re watching, and will recommend DVR recordings to make sure that you don’t miss a beat. Both Android and iOS users should receive the new Fiber TV app in the weeks ahead — the biggest challenge is getting Fiber in the first place.
Source: Google Fiber Official Blog, App Store, Google Play
Results are in: Verizon is still the number one carrier in the U.S.
Third-quarter earning results are in for U.S. wireless carriers.
Fierce Wireless has helped deconstruct the third-quarter 2016 results from research firm Strategy Analytics.
Verizon and AT&T are not only the top two mobile service providers in America, but they’re also neck-and-neck for subscribers on their respective networks. Verizon covers about 143 million people, while AT&T is close behind with a count of 133 million. It’s also worth nothing that AT&T was number one for average revenue per customer, though it’s unclear if that revenue includes the cost of average monthly device payments.
T-Mobile has also jumped into third place with 69 million subscribers, while Sprint is trailing behind with a tally of 59 million. The Magenta carrier has seen a huge number of net additions over the past few years since beginning its Uncarrier campaign.
U.S. Cellular is still holding strong in fifth place with five million subscribers.
Google makes Translate more accurate and sophisticated
Here’s a bit of news that will make your translation prowess a little more sophisticated.
If you’re like me and you check yourself before you make a fool of yourself by butchering someone else’s native tongue, you’ll appreciate the latest update to Google Translate.
Google has announced that it’s launched the next step in making its translation services even better: Neural Machine Translation. This technique translates whole sentences at a time rather than tackling them word-by-word. The results are less robotic, more contextual translations that won’t make a fool of you when you’re overseas.
The Neural Machine Translation engine is now in action for English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish.
You can use it with Google Search, the Google Translate app for Android, and on the web. Google said its goal it to eventually roll out Neural Machine Translation to all 103 languages, but until that’s fulfilled, consider contributing to the Translate Community, where you can help review translations. I just helped with Romanian!
Google PhotoScan: Here’s how it turns print photos into digital photos
Google has launched a scanner app for turning your old prints into digital photos that can be saved to the cloud.
The app, called PhotoScan, is now available. The idea is that you can ditch your traditional flatbed scanner, which takes like a year to scan a box of photos, and instead you can open up PhotoScan to speedily get the job done – with no glare or any of the downsides that come with essentially taking a picture of a picture. Here’s everything you need to know about the app.
What is Google PhotoScan?
Google has described PhotoScan as a “new, standalone app from Google Photos that easily scans just about any photo”.
How does Google PhotoScan work?
PhotoScan uses computational photography to detect edges, straighten the image, rotate it to the correct orientation, and remove glare. The app opens to the camera and gives you instructions to position a print photo within the frame. Four dots will appear over the photo. To scan it, move your phone over each of the dots and hold it until the circle is filled in. Once you’ve covered all four dots, the photo is scanned.
The app will scan in seconds – and all the high-quality scanned photos can be saved in one tap to Google Photos (search for “scans” inside Google Photos to find them). Or you can immediately slide the next photo under your phone and repeat the process. Photos are automatically cropped, rotated, and color corrected. Google worked with the Nat & Lo YouTube channel to show how the technology works (above).
Do you need to use Google Photos?
No. You can also save your digital photos to your camera roll or share them to other apps
When will Google PhotoScan be available?
It’s available now for iOS and Android devices.
Is Google PhotoScan free?
Yes. It’s free to download and use.
Google Wi-Fi now available to buy: How does the mesh router work?
Google has launched its new Wi-Fi router. It’s called Google Wi-Fi.
Last year, Google introduced the OnHub router with TP-Link and Asus, but this year, Google has made its own device called Google Wi-Fi. Each base station looks like a Scandinavian-style, double-stacked hockey puck that Google described as a “visually subtle” disk. But one of the coolest aspects about this router is that you can buy multiple ones to form a mesh network.
Here’s everything you need to know about Google Wi-Fi, including when and where you can buy them.
What is Google Wi-Fi?
Google has described Google Wi-Fi as a “new kind of Wi-Fi system that beams a powerful signal throughout your home”.
Google Wi-Fi is designed to be expandable, so you can use several of them in your home. It can also handle multiple devices, meaning you can stream in the living room and kitchen while someone games in the basement – and there should be no Wi-Fi congestion or a contest for bandwidth.
How does the Google Wi-Fi mesh network work?
You basically put several of these routers (aka points) around your home to boost your network. You will get Wi-Fi signal everywhere, from your bathroom to your basement. Think of Google Wi-Fi as an expandable system for better coverage. Instead of one router, multiple routers work together to deliver fast input to throughout your home, Google said.
It essentially offers mesh network-like coverage.
How many Google Wi-Fi routers do you need?
If you have a smaller home (up to 1500 sq ft), Google recommended that you start with a single Google Wi-Fi router. You can add more points if you need more coverage. Google is offering a three-pack set covers up to 4500 sq ft.
What else can Google Wi-Fi do?
Google Wi-Fi has a feature called Network Assist that allows it to actively manage and optimise your network behind the scenes so you don’t have to adjust settings. Google Wi-Fi handles networking automatically, picking channels, etc, and it keeps the signal strong in every corner of your house by transitioning your device to the best router for less congestion and better speed.
Does Google Wi-Fi come with an app?
Yes. Although Google Wi-Fi can optimise service without your input, you can still control it through a companion app. You can even manage several features, including the Wi-Fi access of your kids. As Google said, “You don’t have to shut down the router, just go to the app and hit pause.”
When will Google Wi-Fi be available?
Google Wi-Fi bundles are now available through Google Store, Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. According to Droid Life, they should begin shipping on 6 December. Google has said that Google Wi-Fi won’t be coming to the UK for now but “hopes to make it available in the future”.
How much is Google Wi-Fi?
Google Wi-Fi costs $129 for one base station or $299 for three.
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