US Judge rejects Uber’s $100 million class-action settlement
A US district court judge in San Francisco has rejected Uber’s attempt to settle a class action lawsuit between the company and roughly 385,000 drivers in California and Massachusetts. Uber announced in April that it would settle with the drivers for $100 million, but the drivers would have to keep their status as independent contracts, rather than becoming official Uber employees. However, US District Judge Edward Chen ruled Thursday that the settlement was not fair for the drivers.
At the heart of the lawsuit, the drivers allege they were entitled to expenses like gas, vehicle maintenance and insurance to cover them between passengers. As Reuters reports, some of the drivers filed objections with the court after the offer from Travis Kalanick and company, claiming the settlement was far less than the estimated $850 million in damages. The settlement would have paid out $84 million to drivers immediately, but another $16 million at some unspecified date in the future after Uber goes public.
According to MarketWatch, most drivers would get less than $24 out of Uber’s offer, which is less than the cost of filling up a Prius in San Francisco. And Judge Chen took their side, saying it was a “substantial discount” on their claims. Uber, for their part, expressed their displeasure in a statement: “The settlement, mutually agreed by both sides, was fair and reasonable. We’re disappointed in this decision and are taking a look at our options.” Although it’s a ways off, those options might one day include doing away with drivers entirely.
Google Duo, the insanely simple video calling app, now out in the UK
Google has released its new Duo app in the UK, giving FaceTime, WhatsApp, and other video-calling apps a run for their money.
Duo, which was unveiled at Google’s I/O developer conference in May 2016, is free to use and enables 1-to-1 video calls. It relies on your number, lets you reach people in your phone’s contacts list, offers end-to-end encryption, and has nifty features like Knock Knock, which allows you to see live video of your caller before you answer. And it’s super easy to use, because the app’s interface is ridiculously simple.
The new app is already available in the UK version of the Google Play Store for Android devices and should also be available in Apple’s App Store for iOS devices. Another part of the attraction of Duo is that Google built in the capability to stay online and connected even when you’re on a slower network; the video quality is reduced “gracefully” to ensure that calls aren’t disconnected.
Duo is rolling out for Android and iOS now and will soon be live across the globe. If you want to know more about how it works, check out Pocket-lint’s hands-on with the app, where we tell you how to get started with it, place video calls, and manage preferences, and more.
AIs fight to the death in ‘Doom’ contest next month
Google DeepMind took a leap forward last year when its artificial intelligence agent mastered 49 Atari 2600 games. The learning system, or “deep Q-network” (DQN), that DeepMind designed achieved this mastery through general experience, rather than specific programming for each game. This milestone is just one step along a grander path toward the general-purpose “smart machine”: an AI that can master any task with minimal input. DeepMind’s work in this field is groundbreaking, and it’s helping advance the field in ways you might not expect.
Wojciech Jaśkowski is an assistant professor for the Institute of Computing Science (ICS) at Poznan University of Technology, Poland. After reading about DeepMind’s feat in the scientific journal Nature, he began to think about the possibilities. If an agent could learn Atari 2600 with our current levels of knowledge, why not push the envelope further? Why not try a 3D game? Jaskowski settled on the 1993 first-person shooter Doom. It has low power requirements and, more important, it’s open source. He assembled a team of university students from ICS with the aim of building a platform that would facilitate testing AI agents.
The framework they created, called ViZDoom, allows for the development of bots that can play Doom. It’s intended primarily for research in machine visual learning, which means that bots only have access to the screen buffer. They play by “seeing” the images on-screen, and have no access to any information within the game’s code. That’s the key difference between ViZDoom bots and the regular “AI” characters that exist inside most first-person shooters.
Jaśkowski’s team was successful in its endeavor. They submitted a paper back in May proving not only that their creation was an effective research platform, but that neural networks were capable of learning visually in a 3D, first-person-perspective environment. Now, anyone can download the ViZDoom platform and test out their AI systems using it. The reaction from the AI community has been very positive. It’s been downloaded by several high-profile educational institutions, and Jaśkowski said that even DICE, the video game company best known for the Battlefield series, has been using VizDoom internally to research AI.
To drive usage of the platform forward, Jaśkowski is running a competition in collaboration with the IEEE Computational Intelligence in Games conference (CIG). Anyone can submit their creation to compete in an AI-only deathmatch, with the results being announced at CIG in late September. So far, three warm-up matches have taken place, and a number of entrants have pitted their creations against one another, while others have held their cards close to their chest, preferring to save their bots for the final contest. The purpose of it all, Jaśkowski told me, is really about seeing what is possible with the current crop of AI technology.
How exactly teams will solve the questions ViZDoom poses is up to them. So long as the only data being fed to the bots is the screen buffer, anything goes. They’ll have to understand what’s wall and what’s floor, what’s a character and what’s a power-up. And that’s without working out the shooting — bots can only use rocket launchers, which makes things harder, since if you fire a rocket next to a wall, you kill yourself. In footage of the first warm-up round, lots of bots struggled with the basics. It’s likely that many are building on DQN, the deep learning network built by DeepMind to conquer the Atari 2600.
Although the final lineup won’t be confirmed for a few weeks, individuals from educational institutions like MIT and Stanford University have been active in the competition’s official discussion group, as have employees from Intel, Google and other large corporations.
ViZDoom is emblematic of the AI and machine-learning community’s spirit of collaboration
That Google might be taking part in a competition that its research helped spawn is emblematic of the AI and machine-learning community’s spirit of collaboration. It’s a field in which Facebook, Google and Twitter, which in many ways compete with one another, work together. Take Torch, for example: It’s an open source library that’s hugely important for machine-learning projects. It also happens to be maintained by scientists and engineers from those three companies, and contributed to by many, many others. There’s an understanding that, although the products that come from AI research may compete with one another eventually, getting to the point where machine learning can power those products will be a lot easier working together than alone.
Jaśkowski’s team and ViZDoom might seem like a tiny part of what is an enormous field. But without the contributions of the many like-minded students and academics working on AI, we’d be years behind where we are today.
Best Reddit app for Android
BaconReader is the best Reddit app for Android. Its long-established history of support, easy of use, and cutting-edge features make it a great app for all kinds of Redditors.
This post was last updated on August 18, 2016 with a new top pick.
Best overall
BaconReader
$1.99
See on Google Play
BaconReader has been around for a long, long time and users have enjoyed using it for just as long. It is one of the most-downloaded and most-reviewed Reddit apps on Google Play, and it got there by wooing users with slick features and maintaining them with stellar service and support.
BaconReader is carefully and pristinely laid out, making it easy to quickly browse and find something new and interesting to read, without stumbling around or leaving anything out. If BaconReader’s beautiful design and feel seem familiar, their developer OneLouder is also the design of 1Weather, one of our favorite weather apps.
Bottom-line: BaconReader has robust features, support, and loyalty among its users. And while you can use it for free, it’s more than worth upgrading to premium.
One more thing: If you ever need any help, BaconReader’s subreddit is quite active and the developers are quick to answer most questions.
Why BaconReader is the best
BaconReader is one of the most well-established and most-used Reddit apps on Google Play, and it got there by being feature-rich, responsive to its users, and giving said users a lot to upvote about. It’s a beautiful app with easy-to-understand settings, a highly intuitive interface, and the best damn subreddit manager I’ve seen.
BaconReader shows your subscribed subreddit list and lets you star important subreddits to keep them at the top of your list, handy for ones you use more often, especially those towards the end of the alphabet like r/todayilearned. You can also unsubscribe from subreddits with a simple tap of a checkbox — no going to each individual subreddit to unsubscribe, no double-taps or pop-ups to click through.
BaconReader’s card view is more functional than most, showing only a part of the photo but allowing you to see more cards on a page. I wish that GIFs had the option to autoplay, as they do in the official Reddit app, but this card view is easy to browse and easier to act on than others.
In the BaconReader settings are both a charcoal-grey dark theme and an AMOLED-friendly black theme, perfect for browsing /gifs when your insomnia kicks in. You can also resize the font to best fit your device and your eyesight.
Best for long-time users
Reddit: The Official App
Free
See on Google Play
Reddit didn’t have an official app for a long time. It finally debuted its official app as a beta in January and then dropped the beta tag in April. It’s a clean app, it’s a refreshingly simple app, great for users that don’t want to hassle with pages and pages of settings.
That simplicity can also be a vice. You can’t resize the text which is a shame because it’s a bit on the small side. The app’s dark theme and card views are just okay, but it can auto-play GIFs and videos in card view, which is amazing for GIF-centric subreddits.
Bottom-line: It’s the official app, and it’s off to a great start, but it’s a little late and a little lacking. If you’ve already got your subreddit subscriptions where you want and browse a lot of GIFs, this is the app for you.
One more thing: Because of the concise feature set right now, the settings for Reddit: The Official App are wonderfully simple and easy to navigate.
Best for Beginners
Relay
$2.99
See on Google Play
This is the most beautiful of the Reddit apps and also one of the best explained. If you’re new to Reddit or looking for an easy-to-navigate app, Relay has got your back with a simple layout and explainer tips the first time you use the app (or whenever you forget thanks to an option in the settings to turn it back on).
While many Reddit apps have implemented Material Design, no one has done it quite as boldly or as well as Relay. It is also one of the few apps to offer themes beyond the simple light and dark, offering pink and blue as well. GIFs may not autoplay, but the image pop-ups that appear when you tap a thumbnail beat the heck out of the image loading in a new window or in a browser, and the material transitions out of these previews are gorgeous.
Bottom-line: Colorful, highly customizable, and material to a T, Relay is a Reddit app that’s it’s hard to go wrong with, especially for newer Redditors and lovers of long threads.
One more thing: Relay’s great for longer posts with lots of threads, like popular AMAs, because you can use navigation controls in the floating action button to skip between one thread and the next.
Best for Purists
reddit is fun
$1.99
See on Google Play
I said it two years ago and it still holds true: reddit is fun looks most like the Reddit site, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on your tastes. reddit is fun has a card view, and it also has three experimental beta themes if you’re bored of the traditional views. Switching views isn’t a simple toggle the way other apps do it, but at least you have more options when picking a theme and layout.
reddit is fun is great for users who need to watch their data usage or are using a slower device, allowing you to skip downloading thumbnails when off Wi-Fi. While most apps can’t load user flair, reddit is fun can display what the flair would be if you were on desktop, for instance: usernamehere pikachu on r/Pokemongo.
Bottom-line: It’s a traditional take on a Reddit app, but reddit is fun is more than willing to experiment in order to keep users happy and give them a classic Reddit feel on Android.
One more thing: You can unsubscribe from a subreddit from the navigation page rather than having to go a separate page or menu, nice for cleaning up your subreddit list while you browse.
Best overall
BaconReader
$1.99
See on Google Play
BaconReader has been around for a long, long time and users have enjoyed using it for just as long. It is one of the most-downloaded and most-reviewed Reddit apps on Google Play, and it got there by wooing users with slick features and maintaining them with stellar service and support.
BaconReader is carefully and pristinely laid out, making it easy to quickly browse and find something new and interesting to read, without stumbling around or leaving anything out. If BaconReader’s beautiful design and feel seem familiar, their developer OneLouder is also the design of 1Weather, one of our favorite weather apps.
Bottom-line: BaconReader has robust features, support, and loyalty among its users. And while you can use it for free, it’s more than worth upgrading to premium.
One more thing: If you ever need any help, BaconReader’s subreddit is quite active and the developers are quick to answer most questions.
Now any Twitter user can filter out tweets from trolls – and here’s how
Twitter has come under fire recently for not giving all its users enough adequate tools to filter out tweets from other users who are harassing them, but it appears the social network is now beginning to address those concerns.
Twitter published a blog post on 18 August to announce two features/settings designed to give users more control over their experience on the site. Here’s everything you need to know about the features, including how they work.
What is Twitter doing to stop harassment?
Twitter now offers all its users a couple different ways to ensure they won’t be harassed on the social network.
Notification settings
The first feature/setting is the ability to limit notifications they see to only the people they follow, which essentially hides any tweets from strangers (aka trolls) who may be using Twitter to abuse or threaten.
Quality filter
The second feature/setting is a quality filter. It’s meant to “improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior”. In other words, suspicious accounts, new accounts, or spam accounts with irregular or dubious activity will now be automatically filtered from your timeline and notification tab.
Has Twitter offered anything like this before?
None of these features are technically new.
Twitter has long tested the ability to hide tweets from strangers as well as a quality filter to high-profile users with blue checkmarks. The difference now is that its entire user base will finally have access to the same set of tools. With these settings now widely available and easily accessible, the idea is that Twitter’s harassment problem might soon be made a thing of the past (or at least drastically diminished).
How do these features work?
Twitter published the following video to help you figure out how to enable these new features:
Two simple settings to give you better control over your Twitter experience. https://t.co/pEJuMUhCYs pic.twitter.com/jmFd0rDoV6
— Twitter Support (@Support) August 18, 2016
Android Nougat might release on 22 August for Nexus 6P and 5X
Android Nougat will probably arrive by the end of the month.
The next major version of Android was expected to release in August, but two new clues are now hinting at a specific release date: August 22. Android Central has reported that a Canadian operator Telus is listing an ‘Android N Update’ for the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X on that day, while LG, which will launch the first new phone running Nougat on 6 September, will begin letting Korean testers try it on a G5 starting August 22.
This all suggests that a launch is imminent, though the initial update will likely just be for Nexus phones. Keep in mind, if you follow the pattern of previous updates, the final build of Android Nougat should debut in early October 2016. But even well-known leakster Evan Blass claimed at the end of July that Android 7.0 will release “next month”, suggesting sometime in August, although that seems earlier than usual.
For more information on when Android 7.0 will arrive for your phone, check out this piece on Pocket-lint.
Watch Segway’s personal robot in action
What if you could have a personal robot helper that transforms into a self-balancing scooter? That’s the appeal of the Segway robot, an adorable device which first debuted during CES. We were able to take a close look at it this week during Intel’s Developer Forum in San Francisco, and while it’s clearly a prototype (it doesn’t even have an official name yet), it still has plenty of potential. Above, check out our interview with Sarah Zhang, senior director of robotics business operations at Ninebot and Segway, who dives into what makes this little bot so special.
Using an Intel RealSense camera embedded above its “face,” the Segway Robot is able to detect depth and traverse environments without bumping into things. At the moment, its capabilities are limited to just following people around on command, but it’s not hard to see how it could be used for teleconferencing or home security. Imagine a connected helper like Amazon’s Echo that can actually follow you around your house, for example.
At IDF this week, Segway announced that it’s opening up SDKs for the robot, so that developers will actually be able to make it useful. That includes a robot SDK, giving devs access to things like vision, speech, movement and interaction, and a mobility SDK, which lets them control the bot remotely.
The Segway robot is built on the frame of the Ninebot Mini, so it’s already a capable self-balancing scooter. The company’s engineers were able to hop on and zoom about the show floor with ease. Riding the bot didn’t go so well for me, unfortunately, but that was mostly due to my inexperience with self-balancing devices.
While there’s plenty of work to be done on the Segway robot, it’s still one of the most appealing personal bot concepts we’ve seen. In comparison, the ASUS Zenbo seems like a silly toy, and Anki’s Cozmo, while cute, won’t help much when you’re away from home. Segway plans to ship developer editions of the robot later this year, and a consumer version will hit sometime in 2017.
Sprint’s new Unlimited Freedom plan is unlimited with a catch
Hot on the heels of T-Mobile’s new unlimited data plan, Sprint is launching a new Unlimited Freedom plan for $100.
The plan is meant to compare to T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon’s offerings, giving customers unlimited data, talk and text for $60 a month for one line and $100 for two, including access charges. The option is available to both new and existing customers, though there are some caveats with the new plan that you’ll definitely want to take note of before taking the plunge to alter your plan.
The unlimited data isn’t really so unlimited, as so often seems to be the case, especially with T-Mobile’s One plan. Video streams are “optimized” at 480p resolution and music quality tops out at extreme quality, up to 500kbps. Gaming is also limited up to 2mbps. Unlike T-Mobile One, where you can simply pay extra to stream HD video, there doesn’t appear to be an option to do so with Sprint’s Unlimited Freedom plan.
While the plan is slightly cheaper than T-Mobile’s plan and certainly cheaper than others offered by the competition, the fine print once again puts a damper on what initially seems like a great deal. If you’re okay with lower-quality video streaming and even capped streaming quality for your music, it might be worth it to switch to Sprint’s new offering, but for everyone else you may want to do some shopping around in the interim.
Source: Sprint
US government cedes control of the internet in October
On October 1st, the US Government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration will hand over control of the internet’s domain name system to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a “multi-stakeholder” nonprofit organization. While the change will be invisible to the billions of internet users out there, starting in October, the US government will no longer control what some call the internet’s “phone book.”
The domain name system works by associating a web address or URL with a site’s IP address, and it is crucial to the way the modern web works. Since 1998, the NTIA and ICANN have had a zero-cost contract in place that gives the US government the authority over the system, although the government’s role was largely symbolic. Technically, the Obama administration has agreed not to renew the contract, which expires on September 30th. ICANN, a California-based group made up of representatives from tech giants, foreign governments and other “interested parties,” actually began the process of finally taking over the reigns when it detailed its transition plan last year.
Again, regular users won’t notice a difference in their internet come October, but the switch isn’t without controversy. In the past, some have argued the US should maintain control in order to prevent foreign governments from censoring their citizens. More recently, however, the Obama administration and the tech community believe it is a necessary move to maintain international support for the internet and a decentralized governing body.
Via: Quartz
Source: Wall Street Journal
Twitter suspends 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism
For years, Twitter was the free speech bastion it aspired to be, maintaining a hands-off approach enabling a liberated forum yet allowing hate speech to flow across its channels. Amid criticism and pressure to stop extremist groups from using its services for coordination and recruitment, the social media company began cracking down in mid-2015. Today they announced that over the past six months, the company has suspended 235,000 accounts suspected of promoting terrorism, bringing the total to 360,000 since last year.
Over its lifespan, Twitter has avoided directly monitoring and filtering content, preferring instead to let users flag offensive tweets for it to screen at its leisure. The result has been policing that’s irregular at best, which critics claim fostered a safe haven for bullies and racists: to wit, it took years for the service to finally block one of its most reported pitchfork-rallying trolls last month. This hesitance to step in is haunting the company as evidence surfaced that it refused to take down key content posted by ISIS proponent and cleric Anjem Choudary after he was arrested in 2014. Only after news broke about it earlier this week did his account disappear.
Thus Twitter’s increasing vigilance of suspected terrorist activity: Daily suspensions for violating its prohibition on supporting extremism are up 80 percent from last year. In addition, it’s expanded its teams reviewing reported violations, is moving faster to suspend accounts and improving its ability to sniff out banned users returning with new usernames. How effectively these actions will curb terrorist support and communication on the platform has yet to be seen.
Source: The New York Times
