Waymo’s next phase in self-driving cars has begun.
The former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet has received its first three all-electric I-Pace crossover sport utility produced by Jaguar Land Rover. These I-Pace EVS — the first on U.S. roads outside of JLR’s own fleet — can be seen driving around the San Francisco Bay Area.
These aren’t operating autonomously just yet. For now, Waymo is testing the vehicle’s performance on roads to generate self-driving system design requirements and develop durability tests, the company told TechCrunch.
Waymo announced in March a strategic partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to develop a self-driving electric I-Pace for a driverless transportation service. The plan is for the electric SUV to become part of Waymo’s driverless fleet beginning in 2020.
Ultimately, up to 20,000 modified I-Pace vehicles will join Waymo’s soon-to-be-launched driverless ride-hailing service in the first two years of operation.
The Jaguar I-Pace SUVs are a piece of Waymo’s larger plan to build a self-driving system to be used in ride-hailing, delivery and logistics such as trucking, connecting rides with public transit and licensing the technology with automakers for personally owned vehicles.
Most parents know that kids shouldn’t spend too much time in front of a smartphone or tablet. Indeed, several studies have linked excessive screen time with expressive speech problems.
That’s why you need to limit your child’s screen time, and when they do have screen time, make sure they spend it in the best possible way.
So rather than playing purely entertaining games for hours on end, why not help your kid’s development by engaging them with some of these educational apps for kids instead?
1. Best Reading App for Kids: Hooked on Phonics
There’s no shortage of high-quality reading apps and websites for kids. With a bit of digging, you can find something that perfectly matches your child’s interests and abilities.
An excellent all-around app for young learners is Hooked on Phonics. It’s aimed at kids between the ages of three and seven. It uses interactive learn-to-read tools developed in conjunction with the US Children’s Reading Foundation.
The 200 songs, games, ebooks, and lessons correspond with federal reading proficiency standards, so you’ll be able to make sure your child is on track.
Download: Hooked on Phonics for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
2. Best Math App for Kids: DragonBox Algebra 5+
The ultimate goal of these apps is to teach a child new concepts without them realizing it. If an app is too educational, kids are likely to lose interest sooner.
DragonBox Algebra meets those requirements. It teaches kids aged five and older the basics of addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication.
The app makes players manipulate on-screen cards to complete puzzles. As the game progresses, the app slowly reveals the operators needed to isolate the board’s “Dragon Box.”
Download: DragonBox Algebra 5+ for Android | iOS ($5)
3. Best Science App for Kids: My Incredible Body
An educational app should be both informative and visually stunning. My Incredible Body meets these requirements.
You can take a rocket ride around the body to see how everything works. All videos and images are medically accurate. At any time, you can stop the ride and watch the body in action. For example, you can see a video of what happens to the lungs while breathing or how the heart functions while you’re exercising.
Questions on specific topics are available through in-app purchases, thus letting your kid test themselves on what they’ve learned. There are nine topics to choose from, including Brain and Nerves, Lungs and Air, Kidneys and Urine, and Puberty and Human Reproduction.
Download: My Incredible Body for Android | iOS ($25)
4. Best Music App for Kids: Easy Music
Designed by an Ear Training Professor, Easy Music aims to introduce children to music theory from a young age. It’s suitable for kids aged three and older.
Your child will learn about notes, pitch, rhythm, and melody through the use of virtual instruments, genres of music, and everyday objects.
The app offers two modes: Practice and Compose. Once the player has the basics of the theory nailed down, they can move into the compose mode and try to create their own musical masterpiece.
Lots of history apps focus on specific eras such as the Roman Empire, Medieval Europe, or the two World Wars.
However, if you want an all-around app that deals with the entirety of history, grab Timeline Eons. It’s impossible to convey how much information is included—it deals with all natural and human history since the very beginning.
You can zoom in and out of the timeline for more detailed breakdowns of particular times. At its most zoomed in, the scrollable timeline is longer than the circumference of the Earth.
You can even use the data to create your own timelines; it’s useful if you’re trying to engage your kids with a specific topic or age.
GeoBee Challenge is developed by the National Geographic Society and is based on its National Geographic Bee competition. The competition is open to kids in grades four to eight, but the questions are challenging for older kids too.
There are two rounds of gameplay: multiple-choice and map challenge. The app offers more than 1,300 multiple choice questions, all featured at some point in the National Geographic Bee. In the map round, kids need to identify locations.
Download: GeoBee Challenge for Android | iOS (Free)
7. Best Spanish App for Kids: Spanish School Bus
Spanish is arguably the most practical language for English-speaking westerners to learn. It’s the second most widely-spoken language in the world after Mandarin, and more than a sixth of the people in the United States are now fluent in it.
If you want to give your kid a head start, download Spanish School Bus. It uses the Montessori-based learning approach to introduce children to 300 common Spanish words across topics such as colors, animals, food, and travel.
There’s also a healthy dose of Spanish and Latin culture, with introductory information about historical figures, landmarks, music, and art.
Download: Spanish School Bus for Android | iOS (Free, premium version available)
For a drawing app that’s specifically geared towards kids, check out Art of Glow. It lets kids create brightly-colored neon artwork using finger swipes. You can also make art into a short video. Your kid’s creations will instantly come to life.
The moving, vivid colors on the black background are guaranteed to keep a child entertained for hours.
codeSpark Academy is for children between the ages of four and nine. The app introduces kids to the fundamental principles of coding, then lets them practice what they’ve learned. The practice takes place across drag-and-drop games, puzzles, game design, creative projects, and even offline printables.
The entire app was developed in conjunction with experts from MIT, Princeton, and Carnegie Mellon, so you know you’re using a quality piece of software.
Download: codeSpark Academy for Android | iOS (Free trial, $8/month subscription required)
10. Best Finance App for Kids: FamZoo
Another glaring omission from the core curriculum is finance and money management. It’s never too early to establish the basics of saving with your kids, and you can introduce more complex financial principles as they get older.
FamZoo is the solution. It acts as a centralized, parent-run bank for kids. You can assign monetary values to chores, add pocket money to kids’ accounts, instigate financial penalties, and pay interest.
As your kid becomes older, you can add a pre-paid card to the account. You can load the money onto the card, then keep track of which stores your child is spending it in. You can even block certain stores and merchants.
Mobile apps are just one part of a parent’s educational armory; you should not exclusively rely on them. Make sure you take your kids outdoors, into museums, and on trips—they’ll all help to give your child a balanced education.
Vincent Vanhoucke, Principal Scientist, Google Brain Team
“Every time you miss a protein crystal, because they are so rare, you risk missing on an important biomedical discovery.”
- Patrick Charbonneau, Duke University Dept. of Chemistry and Lead Researcher, MARCO initiative.
Protein crystallization is a key step to biomedical research concerned with discovering the structure of complex biomolecules. Because that structure determines the molecule’s function, it helps scientists design new drugs that are specifically targeted to that function. However, protein crystals are rare and difficult to find. Hundreds of experiments are typically run for each protein, and while the setup and imaging are mostly automated, finding individual protein crystals remains largely performed through visual inspection and thus prone to human error. Critically, missing these structures can result in lost opportunity for important biomedical discoveries for advancing the state of medicine.
Image of protein crystal, courtesy of the MARCO repository (CC-BY-4.0 license)
The MARCO initiative is a joint project between several pharmaceutical companies and academic research centers to pool and host a large repository of curated crystallography images, and make them available to the community to help develop better image analysis tools. When a member of the initiative reached out to Google with a well-defined problem, and half a million labelled images, we embraced the challenge of trying to apply the recent advances in deep learning to the problem.
Due to the large variability between imaging technologies and data acquisition approaches, coming up with a single approach to the visual recognition problem may appear daunting. Crystals can be very small, which makes them rare structures in a large image containing otherwise undifferentiated visual clutter.
Samples from the MARCO repository, illustrating the degree of variability between data sources.
Fortunately, given sufficient training data, modern deep convolutional networks are well suited to handle extreme variability in visual appearance. We modified the basic Inception V3 model to handle larger images while still being able to be trained quickly. The model achieves a level of precision and recall that makes its use practical in automated assessment pipelines.
This work is a great example of the effectiveness of multi-institutional collaborations aimed at solving problems that require data in amounts and level of diversity that no single collaborator has access to. We invite researchers to take advantage of these resources that are the result of this work and share what they learn. This research was conducted as a personal 20% project by the author. To learn more about this work, please see our paper here and read the recent Duke Research Blog post.
YouTube now has its own in-built Incognito Mode, just like Google Chrome. YouTube’s Incognito Mode lets you watch YouTube videos without your activity being logged. Essentially it’s like pulling a cloak over you and your smartphone while watching YouTube.
YouTube Gets Its Own Incognito Mode
As anyone who has ever used Chrome’s Incognito Mode will know, using the feature gives you a certain level of privacy. YouTube’s Incognito Mode does the same thing, meaning the videos you watch won’t show up in your history or inform future recommendations.
This means you can finally click on those controversial videos you’ve always wanted to watch without the risk of them informing your recommendations from now on. Because YouTube cannot fathom what you watch for fun and what you watch out of intrigue.
Ahh youtube incognito mode, now we can watch all those ASMR videos without our history looking creepy as hell.
YouTube’s Incognito Mode will also prove handy when passing your phone to someone else. Once it has been enabled, only the Home and Trending sections can be accessed. Your Subscriptions, Inbox, and Library are all hidden while in Incognito Mode.
As good as YouTube’s Incognito Mode is, Google does warn that “your activity might still be visible to your employer, school, or internet service provider.” In other words, don’t assume everything you do in Incognito Mode is free from prying eyes.
How to Turn On YouTube’s Incognito Mode
To turn on YouTube’s Incognito Mode, open the YouTube app, click on your profile picture in the top right-hand corner, and tap “Turn on Incognito”. Your profile picture will disappear, and the bar at the bottom will inform you “You’re incognito”. Simples.
YouTube’s Incognito Mode is currently only available on Android, and while YouTube hasn’t yet indicated if and when it will be rolled out to iOS it’s surely only a matter of time. Until then, if you’re an iOS user you’ll have to be careful about what you watch.
Windows has a long and beautiful (read: painful) history of blue-screen error messages. Affectionately known as the Blue Screen of Death, these error screens also contain important information regarding the sudden demise of your system.
Some Windows crash errors are more cryptic than others and therefore more difficult to troubleshoot. The WHEA Uncorrectable Error is one of those.
In this article, we explain how to fix the WHEA Uncorrectable Error and how to stop it from happening again.
What is the WHEA Uncorrectable Error?
WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR (Windows stopcode 0x0000124) is a hardware error. There are several common causes for a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR (we’ll abbreviate it as WUE), most of which directly relate to your system hardware:
Heat and voltage issues (Overclocking and voltage changes)
Corrupt Windows system files or registry files
Although it isn’t always the source, voltage issues are a very common cause of this particular Windows error. The WUE message and 0x0000124 stopcode give us an indication as to the nature of the error, but a look at the error dump file will provide further information. Your error dump file (.DMP) is found at C:/Windows/Minidump and will have a timestamp.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer solutions for every issue, but the following fixes should alleviate your WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR.
How to Fix the WHEA Uncorrectable Error
Remember the list of common system hardware issue that triggers WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR? The following section expands on some of those hardware aspects and illustrates a few potential fixes.
Step 1: Run CHKDSK
First, before making any specific hardware alterations, try running Windows Check Disk from the Command Prompt. CHKDSK is a Windows system tool that verifies the file system and with certain settings, fixes issues as it runs.
Type command prompt in your Start menu search bar, then right-click the best match and select Run as administrator. (Alternatively, press Windows Key + X, then select Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu.) Next, type chkdsk /r and press Enter. The command will scan your system for errors and fix any issues along the way.
Step 2: Check Your System Hardware
The WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR closely relates to your system hardware. Before progressing with system resets and memory tests, physically double-check your system hardware.
Check if the cooling systems are fully functioning, your RAM is secure in its slots, and the CPU has mystifyingly not come loose, and so on.
Step 3: Reset System Overclocking
If you have overclocked your system in search of higher speeds, there is a chance you’ll run into the WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR. The easiest way to cross this off the list is to reset your system BIOS and remove the effects of any overclocking.
You need to enter your system BIOS or UEFI menu. To do this, turn off your system. Next, turn your system back on, pressing your BIOS/UEFI menu access key (common keys include F1, F2, F10, DEL, and ESC).
BIOS and UEFI settings vary by manufacturer, but menu titles are usually similar. You are looking for an Overclocking option. For the most part, overclocking options are found under the Advanced, Performance, Frequency, or Voltage menu.
Find the menu and reset your overclocking options. Resetting will return your system to its out-of-box state—but could also remove WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR in the process.
Step 4: Reset Your BIOS/UEFI Settings
If clearing your BIOS/UEFI overlock settings, try resetting your entire BIOS. Somewhere amongst the BIOS menu, there is an option to complete a full BIOS settings reset or load the default BIOS setup. Find the option and select it.
Step 5: Update Your BIOS/UEFI Settings
Again, this process varies heavily depending on your system’s motherboard manufacturer. Some BIOS/UEFI settings can automatically download and update using desktop utility. Other manufacturers require you to download the BIOS update and flash the firmware yourself.
Unsure what motherboard you have? Download and run CPU-Z. Open the Mainboard tab and find your motherboard manufacturer and model. You can find your BIOS brand and version on this tab, too.
Armed with this knowledge, complete an internet search for “[your motherboard manufacturer + model] bios update.” For instance, I would search for “gigabyte b75md3p bios update” for my system. You should find instructions, tutorials, and if you’re lucky, even a video or two.
Step 6: Check Your Drivers
Sometimes new drivers have an adverse effect on your system. In this day and age, it is becoming rarer as Windows 10 handles most driver updates. However, that doesn’t mean a dodgy driver cannot upset your system. Thankfully, Windows 10 lists any driver updates in the Windows Update section, so you can rapidly figure out where the issue stems from.
Press Windows Key + I to open the Settings panel, then select Update & Security > View update history. You can find any driver updates here. Now, type device manager in the Start menu search bar and select the best match. Head down the list and check for an error symbol. If there is nothing, your driver status is likely not the source of the issue.
That said, you can use a third-party tool to update all of your system drivers simultaneously. Check out this list of free tools you can use to fix the majority of Windows problems. The first two options—IOBit’s Driver Booster and Snappy Driver Installer—do exactly this.
Step 7: Check Your RAM Using MemTest86
Windows has an integrated memory checker, called Windows Memory Diagnostic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a great reputation and regularly misses issues found using another excellent tool: MemTest86.
MemTest86 is a free, standalone memory testing tool for x86 machines. You boot MemTest86 from a USB flash drive (or bootable disc) and leave it to check your system RAM. Now, a MemTest86 RAM check takes a long time to complete; a single pass takes hours depending on the amount of RAM you have installed.
To get the full MemTest86 experience you should run at least two passes (that’s two complete cycles). However, by most reports, MemTest86 should expose a serious RAM issue after a short amount of time.
Burn MemTest86 using the tool of your choice, then shut-down your system. Reboot the system while pressing the button for your Boot Selection menu (usually F10, F11, DEL, or ESC), then select the bootable MemTest86 USB flash drive. The memory test will start automatically.
If it does return RAM errors, complete an internet search for the error code and type to discover your next course of action.
Windows 10 Reset replaces your system files with a completely fresh set of files and will theoretically clear any lingering issues relating to WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR while keeping the majority of your important files intact.
Head to Settings > Update and Security > Recovery, then under Reset this PC select Get started.
Your system restarts as soon as you hit the button, so make sure you to backup any important files beforehand. Your system will restart, then you may select Keep my files or Remove everything.
Google X projects Loon and Wing have left the nest and graduated to independent companies under Google’s parent company Alphabet, Google X Captain of Moonshots, X Astro Teller wrote in a Medium post yesterday.
“Today, unlike when they started as X projects, Loon and Wing seem a long way from crazy — and thanks to their years of hard work and relentless testing in the real world, they’re now graduating from X to become two new independent businesses within Alphabet: Loon and wing,” Teller wrote in the post.
Loon and Wing, which respectively launched in 2013 and 2014, have both seen substantial progress from the moonshot ideas they were proposed as.
In his statement, Teller announced that Alastair Westgarth will be stepping in as Loon’s new CEO and Wing will welcome James Ryan Burgess as its new CEO along with Adam Woodworth as CTO.
Having trouble with Keychain Access, the stock password management app on your Mac? You’re not alone. A few login keychain problems are actually quite common.
In this article, we explore five of the most persistent Mac Keychain issues and their most viable solutions.
The reason for this is that the login keychain still works with your old password. As a result, macOS prompts you to enter that when any function requires access to the keychain.
A Note About macOS High Sierra
When you change the user account password on High Sierra, macOS creates a new keychain for you. Your old one sticks around; you’ll find it under ~/Library/Keychains, with the word renamed in its name.
This automatic keychain creation is only partially helpful. Even if the keychain password now matches your account password, your password entries are gone. You’ll have to import them from the old keychain.
Now let’s get back to the original problem. The solution here is to update the keychain password to match the new password of your user account. Of course, you’ll need to know the old password as well to make this tweak.
To get started, open the Keychain Access app from Applications/Utilities or bring it up with Spotlight. Now, under Keychains in the sidebar, select login.
Next it’s time to bring up the dialog box for changing the password. For this you’ll need to click on Edit > Change Password for Keychain “login”.
In the prompt that appears, enter the requisite password fields and hit the OK button. If you want the app to generate a password for you, click on the key icon next to the New Password field.
2. You Forgot the Password to Your Mac Keychain
There’s no straightforward solution for this problem. The best you can do is create a new keychain, which means losing all the data from the old one.
The app will repopulate the new keychain as you go about your work. So expect fresh authentication prompts when you log into applications and services.
To create a new keychain, click on File > New Keychain and follow the on-screen prompts. When it’s time to enter a new password, type in your current user account password. If you pick a different password, you might run into the problem we discussed above.
3. You Forgot a Wi-Fi, Service, or Application Password
These passwords are easy to retrieve. All you need to remember is your user account password.
Let’s say you have forgotten the password of your Wi-Fi network at home and want to retrieve it to connect another device to the network.
In that case, open the Keychain Access app and find the item whose password you have forgotten. When you double-click on that item, a dialog box shows up, with the Attributes tab selected.
Under this tab, select the checkbox to the left of Show password. This prompts you to enter your keychain password. Once you do, you should see the password you’re looking for in the Show password field.
4. The Mac Keychain App Is Full of Clutter
Your login keychain can seem messy at a glance. It probably contains passwords for accounts and services that you gave up on a long time ago.
For the most part, this clutter is harmless and you can leave it alone. But when Keychain insists on saving both old passwords and their updated counterparts in some cases, you might run into authentication problems.
You’ll have to declutter the keychain yourself using the Delete context menu item for entries. If you need some help finding all the really old passwords, click on the Date Modified column header to line up the oldest entries first.
Be extremely careful while deleting passwords! Check that you aren’t throwing away a current password entry or any other important ones. Use the method shown above to take a peek at passwords so you can confirm if they’re current.
Would you rather delete everything and start from scratch instead of decluttering? Try the Reset My Default Keychains option then. It’s hidden under Keychain Access > Preferences.
As an alternative, you can create a new keychain as discussed in the section 2 above, and port a select few entries to it from the old keychain. Feel free to drag and drop the items you want to move. But keep in mind that you’ll have to enter the old keychain password for each entry.
If you click on the Always Allow button, you get to permit the change for all entries at once. But despite that, sometimes you have to get through more than one authentication prompt.
5. You Forgot Your iCloud Keychain’s Security Code
If you use iCloud keychain to back up your credentials to your iCloud account, you get a security code to go with it while setting up the sync.
Now, you might have forgotten this code and would like to retrieve it. While there’s no direct way to do that, you can generate a new code from your Mac or iPhone if the device has iCloud keychain enabled on it.
To get started, visit System Preferences > iCloud and click on the Options button next to Keychain.
In the prompt that appears next, click on the Change Security Code button and type in a new code. Once the change is in place, you can use the new code to set up iCloud Keychain on other devices.
This solution comes in handy if you have gotten locked out of your iCloud Keychain because you entered the wrong security code too many times.
If you don’t have a device capable of generating a new security code, you have no option but to reset your iCloud keychain. You can do this from your Mac via System Preferences > iCloud.
First select the checkbox for Keychain and log in with your Apple ID password. Once you click on the Use Code button in the dialog that appears, you get access to a Forgot Code? option. After clicking on this, you’ll find the button that allows you to reset the keychain.
The Keychain Access app stays out of your way for the most part. But occasionally it might trouble you with an issue or malfunction.
Now you know how to fix the most common keychain problems if you encounter any. Our solutions for other common macOS problems will help you keep your Mac free of troubles too.
Goodwall, a US-focused student and graduate professional network which aims to connect young people with college and employment opportunities, has closed a $10.8 million Series A funding raise.
The round was led by Randstad Innovation Fund, a strategic corporate VC fund that focuses on recruitment, and Swiss private equity firm Manixer. Additional investors include Francis Clivaz, Zurich Cantonal Bank and Verve Capital Partners.
The 2014 founded startup says it will be using the new funding to grow the professional network, which has a core demographic of 14-24 year-olds, and more than one million members at this stage.
“Our main initiative with this round of funding is hiring new talent in New York to support our expansion,” says Taha Bawa, co-founder and CEO. “The funding will be used to grow our product team to provide better features for our two demographics: Highschool and college students.We are growing our sales team as well, to handle the demand that enterprises have shown in our talent.”
“The United States is our current focus and will continue to be the focus throughout 2018. We will be growing with our students and serving them in college,” he adds.
“We intend to widen the appeal to the college/post-grad segment by focusing on driving value in terms of being found easily (via a mobile-first experience) by the companies that are interesting to them, whether they be startups or larger companies, for internships or first jobs.Beyond this, as with high school students, we will provide current college students the ability to connect and support each other.”
Goodwall’s business model is based on generating revenue from colleges and enterprises looking to recruit students on the platform. For its target young people, the pull is an online platform where they can connect with fellow students and try to get ahead by showcasing their skills and experience, networking, and learning about education and employment opportunities.
Goodwall says it matches its college student and graduate users to employers for job and internship opportunities, while its high school students get connected to colleges and scholarships.
The startup is competing with traditional college and larger job boards but Bawa argues that its matching process offers an advantage to employers because it’s screening candidates so they get more relevant applications, rather than scores of irrelevant ones which they then have to sift themselves.
The platform generally offers employers a way to source, connect and engage with a pool of motivated students and graduates — with employers able to pay Goodwall to get their brand in front of the types of students or recruits they’re looking for.
“The typical Goodwall user is an English speaking, aspirational go-getter that is either college-bound or in college,” says Bawa. “Goodwall does not aim to only serve the 1% in terms of grades and achievements, though we have many students in this category, from Robotics Fairs winners to Olympic Champions. Rather we strive to serveallambitious, hardworking students and bring their uniqueness to light via our comprehensive profiles.
“In high school these go-getters may not always be the best students academically, or at the college level, they may not necessarily be enrolled at top ranking institutions. Ultimately, these are the type of students we are looking to work with and the type of talent our partner universities and companies are looking to recruit.”
At the highschool level, Goodwall is also competing with scholarship and college matching websites but Bawa argues it also offers kids additional value — given the platform’s focus on building a community around achievements, connections and mutual support.
The network is also of course competing with LinkedIn — certainly at the older end of its age range. But because Goodwall offers tools for high school students it’s hoping to get in early and build a relationship that lasts right through college and users’ early career path, by acting as “the first resume they build”.
“We grow with them,” is how Bawa puts it.
While the startup is taking VC funding now to focus on further building its network in the US, he confirms it would be open to an exit to a larger professional or student focused network in the future, saying: “We’d like to continue growing with our members.”
Commenting on the Series A in a statement, Paul Jacquin, managing partner at Randstad Innovation Fund, added: “We’re excited to support the Goodwall team in building a new segment with college and graduate demographics after their success in creating a unique and positive community to gain support, receive guidance and opportunities. The level of engagement on Goodwall has been impressive and unique in its community aspect. We are thrilled to bring the platform to its next chapter of growth.”
Books make wonderful gifts. So, why shouldn’t ebooks be enjoyed with the same shared pleasure? It was always possible to gift a Kindle ebook, but now you can also buy a single Kindle book as a gift for more than one person.
Let’s look at just how you can spot the book that qualifies as a gift for a group or a team.
How to Buy Kindle Books for More Than One Person
The Buy for others feature is part of the Amazon US Kindle Store. Keep this in mind because Amazon says that if you do not live in the same country as your recipient, the book may not be available for your recipient due to any country or copyright restrictions.
When a book qualifies for the Buy for others feature, you will spot a yellow widget close to the buy button. So, search for the book you want to gift first.
Go to the Kindle book’s product detail page on Amazon.
Check if the Buy for others button is visible. Select the quantity and click the Buy for others button.
Complete your order details, and click Place your order.
Amazon will send you Redemption links which can also be accessed from your Digital Orders page.
Locate your order and click View Redemption Links.
Now you can send emails with redemption links one by one to your group. Alternatively, you can use a spreadsheet template that Amazon provides on the Digital Orders page.
This feature can make for thoughtful last minute gifts. It also does not require any shipping. So, this just might give you another reason to use the Kindle to its full potential.
GarageBand’s latest updates not only bring a little something for experienced musicians, but also a little something for those of you who are just getting started. In addition to over 1,000 new loops and sound effects, Apple has completely dropped the $4.99 price on Artist Lessons.
If you aren’t familiar: GarageBand’s Artist Lessons come from actual musicians, from John Legend and Norah Jones to Fallout Boy and Rush. Artist Lessons are divided into two main categories—piano and guitar—and come in three levels of difficulty: easy, medium, and advanced.
The lessons are often conversational, and the artists walk you through and explain each part of their songs. They also give you insight into the stories behind songs.
To take advantage of the piano lessons on your laptop, GarageBand recommends using a USB or MIDI-compatible keyboard that you can plug into your computer. But you could always follow along and use any piano, or even follow along using the keyboard available in the iOS version of GarageBand on an iPad.
How to Download Apple’s GarageBand Lessons
If you’re ready to start learning from your favorite singers, here’s how to download the lessons:
When you first open up GarageBand, you should see a menu in the left sidebar. Click Lesson Store.
Click Artist Lessons.
You’ll see a series of 15 guitar lessons and eight piano lessons. Click the icon for the lesson you want to download.
Click the Download button next to the artist name.
You can access all your downloaded lessons (from artists or otherwise) by clicking the Learn to Play button in the menu in the sidebar and clicking on the Artist Lessons tab.
If you find the Artist Lessons overwhelming, it might be better to start with the basic Guitar and Piano lessons available before moving on to your favorite songs.
And if you’re brand new to GarageBand, be sure to check out our step-by-step guide to GarageBand which breaks down everything you need to know about using the music app to its full potential.
Amazon Alexa is slowly rolling out on Windows 10. It brings serious competition to the solid, if slightly underwhelming, Cortana. However, Alexa comes with a caveat: it’s only offered natively on new computers built by HP, Lenovo, and Acer.
But if you don’t have a computer that meets the requirements, don’t fret. There’s still a way to run Amazon Alexa on your current machine. Let’s take a closer look at how to do this.
How to Install Amazon Alexa on Windows 10
You can add Amazon to any Windows 10 computer if you follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Run the EXE file and follow the on-screen instructions.
Once the installation process has finished, fire up the app from the Start menu.
Enter your Amazon credentials.
Warning: The Dropbox link is not an official Amazon download. It was safe when we ran it, but it may or may not change in the future and that’s beyond our control. Run it at your own risk.
Only One Missing Feature: No Wake Words
Sideloading the Alexa app for Windows will give you all the functionality the app offers. That includes requesting music, listening to the weather forecast, managing shopping lists, setting an alarm, and the ability to use the best third-party skills.
But there is a caveat: Alexa will not respond to wake words.
Therefore, whenever you want to interact with the smart assistant, you will need to press the dedicated in-app button to force Alexa to start listening to your commands.
The best way to make the button easily accessible is to pin the Alexa app to your taskbar. You can do so by going to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which icons appear on the taskbar and flicking the toggle next to Alexa into the On position.
While Wi-Fi networks have gotten much more powerful lately, they still have physical limitations. One of the biggest issues many people face with wireless networks is poor connection quality.
On Windows, you probably know that you can look at the network icon in the System Tray to get an idea of how strong your connection is. It shows up to three white bars, plus a dot, to illustrate the rough signal strength. But this isn’t very specific.
Here’s a way to see the strength of your wireless connection more concretely in Windows.
How to See Wi-Fi Signal’s Exact Strength in Windows
Make sure you’re connected to the Wi-Fi network you want to test and have your computer in the desired spot.
Type cmd into the Start Menu to open a Command Prompt window.
Enter the following command:
netsh wlan show interface
This will provide a large amount of information about your current wireless network. You’ll see its SSID, radio type, and connection mode.
Look for the Signal field. Next to this, you’ll see a percentage between 1 and 100 that represents how strong your signal is.
That’s all it takes to check how strong your signal is. If you’re not happy with it, you can take some steps to improve your Wi-Fi connection.
First, try moving physically closer to the router. Concrete walls and other thick surfaces can impede a wireless signal, so the closer you are, the better. Running the above command again will give you an updated signal strength each time, so you can keep trying it as you move around. Press Up to quickly recall the last command.
If you can’t move your computer closer, you might consider investing in a Wi-Fi extender. These allow you to boost your Wi-Fi signal around the house in areas where it’s weak. If neither of these issues fix your problem, it’s likely time to replace your router. Older units can’t reach as far as new ones.
Machine learning is the technology that keeps self-driving cars on the road and allows Siri to answer your questions. An Introduction to Machine Learning and NLP in Python is a course that helps you to understand the technology and write your own intelligent software. You can get lifetime access now for $14.99 at MakeUseOf Deals.
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Microsoft is arguably the most influential technology company in history. Nearly 30 years after its first release, Windows is still the world’s most popular operating system. As of 2018, it’s installed on 88.4 percent of computers worldwide.
But with great power comes great responsibility, and many have found Microsoft’s approach to security lacking. Maybe you’re in that group.
From Windows 10 privacy concerns to critical zero-day exploits, there has been a lot of cause for concern. But despite these woeful examples, there may still be reasons to be cheerful!
1. Windows Defender
For almost two decades, Windows security has been something a joke. Around the turn of the millennium, the internet exploded into our lives, connecting computers worldwide for the first time. The phenomenal growth of the internet gave rise to a torrent of pop-ups and malware ridden downloads—issues we still struggle with today.
But with no built-in antivirus protection, Windows devices were prime targets for hackers and criminals around the world. Microsoft began righting the ship in 2009, with the release of their free antivirus software Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).
Although it ran on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, MSE was derided for its poor virus detection and prevention. Windows 8 and 10 shipped with a re-engineered version of MSE known as Windows Defender which was turned on by default.
In December 2017, it was awarded 6/6 for protection by AV-TEST. As it requires no setup or user intervention, it is one of the most significant improvements in digital security. Microsoft estimates that Defender now protects more than 300 million devices worldwide.
2. Windows Hello
According to the website Have I Been Pwned, in the first six months of 2018 more than 100 million accounts were breached. With such high numbers, there’s a pretty good chance that one of your accounts found itself entangled in these breaches too.
These aren’t isolated events either. Data breaches are happening so frequently that it can be hard to keep up. The necessary time spent changing passwords, setting up password managers, and monitoring your accounts for suspicious activity makes them a nightmare to deal with.
Windows Hello is a biometric authentication system that comes bundled with Windows 10. Hello signals the first step in Microsoft’s four-step strategy to a password-less future. With Hello enabled, you can log in to your Windows devices with just your face or fingerprint.
Hello has integrations with some of your most popular apps like Dropbox and OneDrive. Microsoft also has plans to work with more service providers to integrate Hello. They estimate that 43 million Windows users are already using Hello, predominantly in the workplace, to improve their security.
You’ve probably seen emails purportedly from your bank, but sent from a non-official email address. It may try to trick you into trusting the email by using your bank’s logos, headers, font, and even your personal information. The emails use emotive language, often preying on fear, urgency, and empathy.
The aim of these emails is for you to download a malicious attachment, or to enter login credentials the attacker can steal.
With over 50 percent of Windows 10 devices using Defender as their default anti-virus, Microsoft has a unique position to influence how attacks spread. Their solution was to capitalize on the rise of machine learning and integrate it into Windows Defender. You may be wondering how that would prevent social engineering attacks.
Microsoft trained their models using historical examples of malicious files used in malware and phishing campaigns. Antivirus software traditionally relies upon regularly updated definitions to compare files against. Defender can now analyze and identify potential malware before its first infection.
4. Digital Crimes Unit
Cybercrime is a problem globally, not just for Microsoft. But that doesn’t mean that the Redmond giant is willing to sit on its considerable experience and resources while criminals profit at our expense.
Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) is “an international team of attorneys, investigators, data scientists, engineers, analysts and business professionals based in 30 countries.”
The team regularly works with law enforcement around the world to combat cybercrime, with a focus on three main areas: malware, phishing, and images of child abuse. One of the most common phishing attacks is tech support scams. Microsoft estimates these scams cost victims more than $1.1 billion annually in the US alone.
Since 2014, the DCU has received more than 180,000 reports of support scams, which has allowed them to leverage Artificial Intelligence to locate the source of the attack. Operating in conjunction with Europol and the FBI, in 2013 the DCU disrupted the ZeroAccess botnet which was responsible for hijacking results across all major search engines.
To combat the approximately 720,000 images of child abuse uploaded each day, Microsoft developed PhotoDNA. The system creates a hash of known images to enable companies using PhotoDNA to compare images against. More than 100 organizations now use PhotoDNA including Facebook, Twitter, and law enforcement.
5. Microsoft Edge Security
At this point, it’s safe to say that Internet Explorer lost the browser wars. Microsoft’s infamous default browser has just 3.12 percent market share against Chrome’s 58.94 percent. In part, this is because Internet Explorer (IE) became synonymous with malware, popups, and spam-riddled toolbars.
Microsoft didn’t help themselves either as they took longer to patch critical flaws than their competitors. Although they did eventually start taking these issues seriously around the release of Windows 7, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari had all eaten away at IE’s market share.
Windows 10 marked a new era for Microsoft, so it seemed fitting that their latest operating system would ship with a brand new default browser. Microsoft Edge shares a similar logo to IE, but that’s where the similarities end.
All legacy code was scrapped, and the browser was developed with EdgeHTML for modern web standards and interoperability. IE’s toolbars are gone too, replaced by Extensions which can be installed through the Windows Store.
Windows 10 hasn’t done Microsoft’s reputation any favors. The default privacy settings and invasive digital assistant Cortana have only cemented the belief that Microsoft can’t be trusted. Some might even argue that the flaws in Microsoft’s software caused the proliferation of malware and viruses.
Whether the blame rests on their engineering or the high availability of Windows machines, Microsoft hasn’t been idle in addressing the problem.
Windows Defender may be the only antivirus software you’ll ever need. Their efforts in tackling criminal enterprises, and use of machine learning against social engineering are making us safer online. With their focus on password-less authentication systems, Microsoft clearly wants to make our future more secure too.
Amazon Prime Day 2018 is almost here. It feels like Christmas, doesn’t it? We just need Jeff Bezos to turn up in a red suit.
2017’s Prime Day saw sales in excess of $1 billion. This year’s event is expected to be even bigger as Amazon is primed to offer more discounts than ever before. Keeping reading to learn about Amazon Prime Day 2018 and how to get the best Amazon Prime Day deals.
When Is Amazon Prime Day 2018?
Amazon has officially confirmed that Amazon Prime Day 2018 will start on Monday, July 16 at 3pm ET.
In practice, Amazon Prime Day runs for more than 24 hours. It will begin at 3pm EST on July 16 and run until midnight PST on Tuesday, July 17, giving it a total duration of 39 hours.
Now that you know when Amazon Prime Day starts, here are 10 more details that’ll help you get acquainted with and prepare for Amazon Prime Day so you can get the best deals and avoid the worst ones.
1. What Is Amazon Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day launched in 2015 as part of the company’s 20th birthday celebration. From a shopper’s standpoint, the first edition was beset with issues. Demand outstripped supply, the website slowed to a crawl, and the discounts were often on non-alluring items.
However, from a company standpoint, Prime Day 2015 was a resounding success. It sold 398 products per second and saw the company make higher revenues than on Black Friday.
By last year’s 2017 event, Amazon has smoothed out the customer issues and the day went off without a hitch. The company saw a 60 percent rise in sales compared to 2016. Amazingly, revenues eclipsed its 2016 Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
2. Who Can Take Advantage of Amazon Prime Day?
Only Amazon Prime members can take advantage of the massive discounts.
However, if you’ve never been a Prime member before, you can cheat the system and sign up for a free 30-day Amazon Prime trial. Of course, you’d need to remember to cancel your trial before Amazon sends you a bill.
A new membership to Amazon Prime costs $12.99/mo or $119/year. In addition to Prime Day deals, you receive access to Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Music, free 2-day shipping, and many more Amazon Prime benefits.
3. What Deals Can You Expect on Amazon Prime Day?
In 2017, Amazon’s own products often enjoyed the most significant discounts. The Echo speaker dropped by 50 percent as Amazon let them go for $89.99, while the smaller Echo Dot was given a $15 discount to bring the price down to $34.99. As a result, the Dot became the most-bought item of the day.
You’ll also find considerable discounts on Amazon Fire sticks, Kindle e-readers, and items in the Amazon Basics range.
But it’s not just Amazon products that see bargain prices. In 2017, the TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug, the Sony PlayStation 4, the Nintendo Switch, and the OnePlus 5 phone were all big sellers. Estimates also suggest Amazon sold 3.5 million toys, 200,000 dresses, 52,000 kitchen items, and 37,000 power tools.
How to Stay on Top of Prime Day’s Best Deals
Head to Amazon’s How to Shop Prime Day guide for tips like how to access deals up to one week in advance, how to get notified when deals strike, and save money on Prime Day orders with special promos and codes.
4. Watch for Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals are a standard part of the Amazon shopping experience for Prime members. Every day, Amazon offers a limited number of products at a massive discount. The quantity of any item is limited, and deals are only available for a short amount of time.
On Amazon Prime Day, Lightning Deals are more common, with often hundreds of deals running at any moment. If you keep your eyes open, you might find a saving above and beyond standard Prime Day discount.
And if the Lightning Deal you want sells out before you get a chance to buy it, you can join a waiting list. If the people with the item in their cart fail to complete the purchase, it will automatically be offered to you.
In 2017, Amazon gave voice shoppers a two-hour head start on new deals. During the last Black Friday, that increased to seven hours.
We’d expect Amazon to offer the same benefits during this year’s Prime Day. You just need to say “Alexa, what are your deals?” to enjoy the advanced notice. If you hear something you want, say “Alexa, add [item] to my cart.”
6. Use Amazon Assistant for Deal Notifications
Unbeknown to many, Amazon offers a browser extension. It’s available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.
The extension—called Amazon Assistant— offers lots of benefits, including order tracking, product comparisons, and access to your various lists.
However, from an Amazon Prime Day perspective, its best feature is the watch lists. You can receive desktop notifications when any deals you’re watching go live, meaning you’ll never miss out on a purchase you want.
How do you know the price you see on Amazon represents a good deal? We all know high street shops artificially bump up prices ahead of a big sale, and some Amazon vendors are no different.
To make sure you’re not being conned, check the item’s price history on CamelCamelCamel. You can enter the Amazon item’s URL or search for keywords and see how the price has changed over time.
If you see a steady rise in the weeks building up to Prime Day, you should probably give it a wide berth.
8. Check Forums for Even More Prime Day Deals
Lastly, it’s worth hanging out in some dedicated Amazon Prime Day forums. The best subreddit will probably be /r/PrimeDay, but don’t expect to see much activity until the day itself. There’s also the dedicated /r/Amazon subreddit, which is worth keeping an eye on.
You should also check threads on the SlickDeals forums. It’s consistently one of the best sites for finding bargains on the web, and on Prime Day it goes into overdrive.
9. Singles’ Day Is Bigger Than Amazon Prime Day
Despite its impressive performances when compared to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon Prime Day is not the web’s biggest day of online shopping.
That award goes to Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales. In 2017, it saw sales of $17.8 billion. That’s more than 17 times the amount of money spent on Prime Day.
Alibaba is yet to become a giant in Europe and the United States. But if you’re looking for cheap, unbranded electronics, it might be better to wait until Singles’ Day 2018 on November 11.
10. You Could Shop Elsewhere
Other stores have been looking enviously at Amazon piling up sales records and have started running their own concurrent sales to cash in on the buzz. Last year, we saw Macy’s, Kohl’s, Best Buy, Nordstrom, and Dell provide discounts—many of which also offered free shipping.
On Amazon Prime Day 2018, you can expect to see Google, Newegg, Office Depot, and 1-800 Flowers join the list, along with several others. Before committing to a purchase on Amazon, make sure you can’t find it cheaper on a competitor’s site.
Start Planning Your Amazon Prime Day Budget
Shopping responsibly is important. Events likes this can be full of temptation with all the awesome Prime Day deals. Many people overspend and wake up full of buyer’s remorse. To make sure you don’t overindulge, you should make a budget before the big day arrives.
WhatsApp is taking the first step in trying to combat misinformation being spread via its platform. With over 1 billion people now using WhatsApp it has become the default option for spreading rumors to lots of people both quickly and efficiently.
This Message Has Been Forwarded to You
WhatsApp will now add a small “Forwarded” label to any message sent via its platform that is being forwarded on from another source. The label, which will appear at the top-left of forwarded messages, is small enough to not be intrusive but important nonetheless.
The idea is that labelling forwarded messages in this way will clue the recipients into the fact that the information contained therein may not be entirely factual. Because, sadly, people will just send messages on without actually checking the veracity of their contents.
Please stop sending forwarded messages, memes and spurious links on Whatsapp. The day you send something important, people won't read it, assuming it's one of your forwarded specials.
WhatsApp has introduced this feature after being blamed for spreading misinformation. A number of people in India have been lynched and physically harmed after messages wrongly accusing them of committing crimes have been spread via WhatsApp.
This led India’s Information Technology Ministry to issue a warning saying, “WhatsApp have been advised that necessary remedial measures should be taken to prevent proliferation of these fake and at times motivated/sensational messages.”
Please Stop Spreading Misinformation!
This is a good first step which may be enough to make people think before forwarding on a message accusing someone of wrongdoing. However, unfortunately, WhatsApp may need to do more to prevent its platform being used to spread harmful misinformation.
The problem is not WhatsApp itself, but the people using it. We all need to do what we can to stop rumors and misinformation spreading, because people are getting hurt as a result. The key may be educating people how to spot fake news in the first place.
Twitter is ready to squeeze a lot more money out of its trending topics. After minimizing its mediocre Moments feature and burying it inside the renamed Explore tab, Twitter is now starting to test Promoted Trend Spotlight ads. These put a big visual banner equipped with a GIF or image background atop Explore for the first two times you visit that day before settling back into the Trends list, with the first batch coming from Disney in the US.
These powerful new ad units demote organic content in Explore, which could make it less useful for getting a grip on what’s up in the world at a glance. But they could earn Twitter strong revenue by being much more eye-catching than the traditional Timeline ads that people often skip past. That could further fuel Twitter’s turnaround after it soundly beat revenue estimates in Q1 with $665 million. Its share price of about $44 is near its 52-week high, and almost 3X its low for the year.
“We are continuing to explore new ways to enhance our takeover offerings and give brands more high-impact opportunities to drive conversation and brand awareness on our platform” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The Promoted Trend Spotlight ads are bought as an add-on to the existing Promoted Trends ads that are inserted amongst the list of Twitter’s most popular topics. When tapped, they open a feed of tweets with that headline with one of the advertiser’s related tweets at the top. Back in February AdAge reported whispers of a new visual redesign for Promoted Trends. You can view a demo of the experience below.
Anthy Price, Disney’s Executive Vice President for Media provided TechCrunch with a statement, saying “The Promoted Trend Spotlight on Twitter allowed us to prominently highlight Winnie the Pooh & celebrate the launch of ticket sales for Christopher Robin while four of the characters took over major Disney handles on the platform to engage with fans.”
Historically, Twitter’s biggest problem was that people skimmed past ads. The old unfiltered Timeline trained users to pick and choose what they read, looking past anything that didn’t seem relevant including paid marketing. But with the shift to an algorithmic Timeline and bigger focus on video, Twitter has slowly retrained users to expect relevant content in every slot. Explore’s design with imagery at the top followed by a text list of Trends pulls attention to where these new Spotlight ads sit. With better monetization, Twitter will now have to concentrate on building better ways to get users to open Explore instead of just their feed, notifications, and DMs.
These powerful new ad units demote organic content in Explore, which could make it less useful for getting a grip on what’s up in the world at a glance. But they could earn Twitter strong revenue by being much more eye-catching than the traditional Timeline ads that people often skip past. That could further fuel Twitter’s turnaround after it soundly beat revenue estimates in Q1 with $665 million. Its share price of about $44 is near its 52-week high, and almost 3X its low for the year.