Natural Questions: a New Corpus and Challenge for Question Answering Research

Posted by Tom Kwiatkowski and Michael Collins, Research Scientists, Google AI Language

Open-domain question answering (QA) is a benchmark task in natural language understanding (NLU) that aims to emulate how people look for information, finding answers to questions by reading and understanding entire documents. Given a question expressed in natural language ("Why is the sky blue?"), a QA system should be able to read the web (such as this Wikipedia page) and return the correct answer, even if the answer is somewhat complicated and long. However, there are currently no large, publicly available sources of naturally occurring questions (i.e. questions asked by a person seeking information) and answers that can be used to train and evaluate QA models. This is because assembling a high-quality dataset for question answering requires a large source of real questions and significant human effort in finding correct answers.

To help spur research advances in QA, we are excited to announce Natural Questions (NQ), a new, large-scale corpus for training and evaluating open domain question answering systems, and the first to replicate the end-to-end process in which people find answers to questions. NQ is large, consisting of 300,000 naturally occurring questions, along with human annotated answers from Wikipedia pages, to be used in training QA systems. We have additionally included 16,000 examples where answers (to the same questions) are provided by 5 different annotators, useful for evaluating the performance of the learned QA systems. Since answering the questions in NQ requires much deeper understanding than is needed to answer trivia questions — which are already quite easy for computers to solve — we are also announcing a challenge based on this data to help advance natural language understanding in computers.

The Data
NQ is the first dataset to use naturally occurring queries and focus on finding answers by reading an entire page, rather than extracting answers from a short paragraph. To create NQ, we started with real, anonymized, aggregated queries that users have posed to Google's search engine. We then ask annotators to find answers by reading through an entire Wikipedia page as they would if the question had been theirs. Annotators look for both long answers that cover all of the information required to infer the answer, and short answers that answer the question succinctly with the names of one or more entities. The quality of the annotations in the NQ corpus has been measured at 90% accuracy.

Our paper "Natural Questions: a Benchmark for Question Answering Research", which has been accepted for publication in Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, has a full description of the data collection process. To see some more examples from the dataset, please check out the NQ website.

The Challenge
NQ is aimed at enabling QA systems to read and comprehend an entire Wikipedia article that may or may not contain the answer to the question. Systems will need to first decide whether the question is sufficiently well defined to be answerable — many questions make false assumptions or are just too ambiguous to be answered concisely. Then they will need to decide whether there is any part of the Wikipedia page that contains all of the information needed to infer the answer. We believe that the long answer identification task — finding all of the information required to infer an answer — requires a deeper level of language understanding than finding short answers once the long answers are known.

It is our hope that the release of NQ, and the associated challenge, will help spur the development of more effective and robust QA systems. We encourage the NLU community to participate and to help close the large gap between the performance of current state-of-the-art approaches and a human upper bound. Please visit the challenge website to view the leaderboard and learn more.

LG hints at gesture interface for smartphone flagship next month

LG has put out a gesture-heavy hint ahead of the annual unveiling of new smartphone hardware at the world’s biggest mobile confab, Mobile World Congress, which kicks off in a month’s time.

The brief video teaser for its forthcoming MWC press event in Barcelona, which was shared today via LG’s social media channels, shows a man’s hand swiping to change on-screen content, including the message “goodbye touch.”

The title of LG’s teaser video includes the name “LG Premiere,” which could be the name of the forthcoming flagship — albeit that would be confusingly similar to the mid-tier LG Premier of yore. So, hopefully the company is going to make that last ‘e’ really count.

Beyond some very unsubtle magic wand sound effects to draw extra attention to the contactless gestures, the video offers very little to go on. But we’re pretty sure LG is not about to pivot away from touchscreens entirely.

Rather, we’re betting on some sort of Leap Motion-style gesture control interface being added to the front of the handset, using sensors to detect a hovering hand, for example — probably accompanied by heavy marketing about how filthy-with-germs phone screens are so it’s totally better you don’t actually touch them.

Safe to say, the idea looks terribly gimmicky. Or, well, just terrible. This kind of stuff has been tried (and failed to stick) plenty of times before — as long ago as a decade, in the now no longer mobile-maker Sony Ericcson’s case.

Samsung also added a gesture feature, called Air Gesture, to some of its handsets more than five years old — which lets smartphone users do things like wave to answer a call or swipe through air to scroll up. Some of its smartphones also offer hands-free scrolling via facial tracking.

Yet smartphone users everywhere still seem as hooked as ever on actually fingering their touchscreens. And gesture-based interfaces have, fittingly enough, largely failed to stick.

Although you could view Apple’s Face ID technology as a form of non-touch gesture control, as my TC colleague Ingrid Lunden suggests. Albeit the primary point in that case is security/authentication, so it’s more than just a frictionless way to interact with a device without touching it.

Smartphone makers — and Android OEMs especially — are under acute pressure to stand out in a fiercely competitive and growth-stalled market. So despite a flighty history for gesture interfaces on mobile, a bunch of hardware experiments look to be in play, such as whatever LG’s cooking.

And that includes — as we noted earlier today — what’s now open flirtation with foldable tablet smartphones (see: Xiaomi teased a double folder phone.)

We’ll be on the ground in Barcelona to bring you news of all the major hardware releases next month — including keeping an eye on whatever LG is preparing to unbox (but not actually touch) on February 24. So stay tuned.

We just hope that another detail in LG’s description for the teaser video, in which it asks its followers whether they’re “prepared to get stunned by the LG Premiere,” does not augur a highly potent new form of contactless haptic feedback.

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Amazon has paused sales of its Echo Wall Clock due to connectivity issues

Amazon launched an Echo Wall Clock before the end of last year but, less than a month later, things aren’t running to schedule. The e-commerce giant has paused the sale of the $30 Alexa-powered smart clock after a number of customers reported connectivity issues, according to The Verge.

The clock is still listed on Amazon but, as of Tuesday, it is “currently unavailable.”

“We’re aware that a small number of customers have had issues with connectivity. We’re working hard to address this and plan to make Echo Wall Clock available again in the coming weeks,” Amazon told The Verge in a statement.

The clock is pitched at existing Alexa users who could use it to set timers, countdowns or alarms, while it automatically adjusts to seasonal time changes. It is unashamedly basic, both in design as well as functionality, but it is an interesting addition to Amazon’s expanding home appliance push. That also includes an Alexa microwave (less impressive), a singing fish (ok…) along the more established cast of home speakers, the “Show” video screen, a subwoofer and more.

Echo Wall Clock review

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pi-top’s latest edtech tool doubles down on maker culture

London-based edtech startup, pi-top, has unboxed a new flagship learn-to-code product, demoing the “go anywhere” Pi-powered computer at the Bett Show education fare in London today.

Discussing the product with TechCrunch ahead of launch, co-founder and CEO Jesse Lozano talked up the skills the company hopes students in the target 12-to-17 age range will develop and learn to apply by using sensor-based connected tech, powered by its new pi-top 4, to solve real world problems.

“When you get a pi-top 4 out of the box you’re going to start to learn how to code with it, you’re going to start to learn and understand electronic circuits, you’re going to understand sensors from our sensor library. Or components from our components library,” he told us. “So it’s not: ‘I’m going to learn how to create a robot that rolls around on wheels and doesn’t knock into things’.

“It’s more: ‘I’m going to learn how a motor works. I’m going to learn how a distance sensor works. I’m going to learn how to properly hook up power to these different sensors. I’m going to learn how to apply that knowledge… take those skills and [keep making stuff].”

The pi-top 4 is a modular computer that’s designed to be applicable, well, anywhere; up in the air, with the help of a drone attachment; powering a sensing weather balloon; acting as the brains for a rover style wheeled robot; or attached to sensors planted firmly in the ground to monitor local environmental conditions.

The startup was already dabbling in this area, via earlier products — such as a Pi-powered laptop that featured a built in rail for breadboarding electronics. But the pi-top 4 is a full step outside the usual computing box.

The device has a built-in mini OLED screen for displaying project info, along with an array of ports. It can be connected to and programmed via one of pi-top’s other Pi-powered computers, or any PC, Mac and Chromebook, with the company also saying it easily connects to existing screens, keyboards and mice. Versatility looks to be the name of the game for pi-top 4.

pi-top’s approach to computing and electronics is flexible and interoperable, meaning the pi-top 4 can be extended with standard electronics components — or even with Littlebits‘ style kits’ more manageable bits and bobs.

pi-top is also intending to sell a few accessories of its own (such as the drone add-on, pictured above) to help get kids’ creative project juices flowing — and has launched a range of accessories, cameras, motors and sensors to “allow creators of all ages to start learning by making straight out of the box”.

But Lozano emphasizes its platform play is about reaching out to a wider world, not seeking to lock teachers and kids to buying proprietary hardware. (Which would be all but impossible, in any case, given the Raspberry Pi core.)

“It’s really about giving people that breadth of ability,” says Lozano, discussing the sensor-based skills he wants the product to foster. “As you go through these different projects you’re learning these specific skills but you also start to understand how they would apply to other projects.”

He mentions various maker projects the pi-top can be used to make, like a music synth or wheeled robot, but says the point isn’t making any specific connected thing; it’s encouraging kids to come up with project ideas of their own.

“Once that sort of veil has been pierced in students and in teachers we see some of the best stuff starts to be made. People make things that we had no idea they would integrate it into,” he tells us, pointing by way of example to a solar car project from a group of U.S. schoolkids. “These fifteen year olds are building solar cars and they’re racing them from Texas to California — and they’re using pi-tops to understand how their cars are performing to make better race decisions.”

pi-top’s new device is a modular programmable computer designed for maker projects

“What you’re really learning is the base skills,” he adds, with a gentle sideswipe at the flood of STEM toys now targeting parents’ wallets. “We want to teach you real skills. And we want you to be able to create projects that are real. That it’s not block-based coding. It’s not magnetized, clipped in this into that and all of a sudden you have something. It’s about teaching you how to really make things. And how the world actually works around you.”

The pi-top 4 starts at $199 for a foundation bundle which includes a Raspberry Pi 3B+,16GB SD card, power pack, along with a selection of sensors and add-on components for starter projects.

Additional educational bundles will also launch down the line, at a higher price, including more add ons, access to premium software and a full curriculum for educators to support budding makers, according to Lozano.

The startup has certainly come a long way from its founders’ first luridly green 3D printed laptop which caught our eye back in 2015. Today it employs more than 80 people globally, with offices in the UK, US and China, while its creative learning devices are in the hands of “hundreds of thousands” of schoolkids across more than 70 countries at this stage. And Lozano says they’re gunning to pass the million mark this year.

So while the ‘learn to code’ space has erupted into a riot of noise and color over the past half decade, with all sorts of connected playthings now competing for kids’ attention, and pestering parents with quasi-educational claims, pi-top has kept its head down and focused firmly on building a serious edtech business with STEM learning as its core focus, saving it from chasing fickle consumer fads, as Lozano tells it.

“Our relentless focus on real education is something that has differentiated us,” he responds, when asked how pi-top stands out in what’s now a very crowded marketplace. “The consumer market, as we’ve seen with other startups, it can be fickle. And trying to create a hit toy all the time — I’d rather leave that to Mattel… When you’re working with schools it’s not a fickle process.”

Part of that focus includes supporting educators to acquire the necessary skills themselves to be able to teach what’s always a fast-evolving area of study. So schools signing up to pi-top’s subscription product get support materials and guides, to help them create a maker space and understand all the ins and outs of the pi-top platform. It also provides a classroom management backend system that lets teachers track students’ progress.

“If you’re a teacher that has absolutely no experience in computer science or engineering or STEM based learning or making then you’re able to bring on the pi-top platform, learn with it and with your student, and when they’re ready they can create a computer science course — or something of that ilk — in their classroom,” says Lozano.

pi-top wants kids to use tech to tackle real-world problems

“As with all good things it takes time, and you need to build up a bank of experience. One of the things we’ve really focused on is giving teachers that ability to build up that bank of experience, through an after school club, or through a special lesson plan that they might do.

“For us it’s about augmenting that teacher and helping them become a great educator with tools and with resources. There’s some edtech stuff they want to replace the teacher — they want to make the teacher obsolete. I couldn’t disagree with that viewpoint more.”

“Why aren’t teachers just buying textbooks?” he adds. “It takes 24 months to publish a textbook. So how are you supposed to teach computer science with those technology-based skills with something that’s by design two years out of date?”

Last summer pi-top took in $16M in Series B funding, led by existing founders Hambro Perks and Committed Capital. It’s been using the financing to bring pi-top 4 to market while also investing heavily in its team over the past 18 months — expanding in-house expertise in designing learning products and selling in to the education sector via a number of hires. Including the former director of learning at Apple, Dr William Rankin.

The founders’ philosophy is to combine academic expertise in education with “excellence in engineering”. “We want the learning experience to be something we’re 100% confident in,” says Lozano. “You can go into pi-top and immediately start learning with our lesson plans and the kind of framework that we provide.”

“[W]e’ve unabashedly focused on… education. It is the pedagogy,” he adds. “It is the learning outcome that you’re going to get when you use the pi-top. So one of the big changes over the last 18 months is we’ve hired a world class education team. We have over 100 years of pedagogical experience on the team now producing an enormous amount of — we call them learning experience designers.”

He reckons that focus will stand pi-top in good stead as more educators turn their attention to how to arm their pupils with the techie skills of the future.

“There’s loads of competition but now the schools are looking they’re [asking] who’s the team behind the education outcome that you’re selling me?” he suggests. “And you know what if you don’t have a really strong education team then you’re seeing schools and districts become a lot more picky — because there is so much choice. And again that’s something I’m really excited about. Everybody’s always trying to do a commercial brand partnership deal. That’s just not something that we’ve focused on and I do really think that was a smart choice on our end.”

Lozano is also excited about a video the team has produced to promote the new product — which strikes a hip, urban note as pi-top seeks to inspire the next generation of makers.

“We really enjoy working in the education sector and I really, really enjoy helping teachers and schools deliver inspirational content and learning outcomes to their students,” he adds. “It’s genuinely a great reason to wake up in the morning.”

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Behold, a smartphone devoid of buttons and ports

Some call it madness. Others call it the next logical step in smartphone evolution. Meizu calls it, fitting, the “Zero.” It’s equal parts fascinating and maddening. And while being “totally seamless” with “a truly uninterrupted design” is probably not going to enough in and of itself to get people to purchase the thing, it’s hard to shake the idea that all handset manufactures are all heading in that direction anyway. So good on Meizu for getting there first, I suppose.

So, no Sim card slot, and no charging port — thank goodness for eSIM tech and wireless charging. There’s a fingerprint sensor under the front glass and the physical buttons have been replaced with virtual ones. As for the speaker grilles, those have been replaced by something the company calls “mSound 2.0,” which appears to utilize the screen for sound.

How well that will function versus a more traditional method remains to be seen. Honestly,  it sound like a phone created on a dare, but an impressive feat nonetheless. Other specs include a 5.99 inch AMOLED screen and a Snapdragon 845 processor. The rest of the relevant info, like price and if/when it’s coming to the States are still very much up in the air.

Mobile World Congress next month seems as good a time as any to announce all of that. 

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10 YouTube URL Tricks You Should Know About

Though YouTube remains the premier video site on the web, you probably don’t think much about customizing it. But whether you’re a casual user or watch online videos every day, there are all sorts of ways to tweak YouTube.

A major category of these are special YouTube URLs. Let’s look at some YouTube URL tricks to help you get more out of the service.

1. Link to Any Part of a Video

Typically, when you copy a link to a YouTube video, it starts from the beginning. If you want to show someone just a bit of a video or skip a lengthy intro, you can append a time stamp to the URL to start it at that time.

You can do this in a couple of ways. By manually adding &t=YmXXs to the end of a video URL, you’ll set it to start Y minutes and XX seconds into the video. You can omit minutes, or use only seconds, such as 90s for a minute and a half. So this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=7RWI3-8N_-Y

Can be shared 90 seconds in using this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=7RWI3-8N_-Y&t=1m30s

If you don’t want to use the manual method, pause the video at the time you’d like to share it at, then right-click and choose Copy video URL at current time.

2. Loop a Video Infinitely

YouTube is a great place for listening to music, especially video game soundtracks for studying. If you’re into a song and want to listen to it over and over, you can add repeater after youtube in the URL. This will open the video at YouTubeRepeater.com, which loops the video for you.

So change this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=oeb5LdAyLC8

To this to loop it:

youtuberepeater.com/watch?v=oeb5LdAyLC8

You can tweak the playback using the options below the video if you want to start or end at different points. To do this without changing the URL, just right-click any YouTube video and toggle Loop on.

3. Bypass Age Restrictions

YouTube has age restrictions on certain videos that are flagged as containing mature content. Whether you don’t have a YouTube account or don’t feel like signing in to watch one, you can perform a little trick to bypass the sign-in.

Take a YouTube URL for a restricted video like this:

youtube.com/watch?v=wvZ6nB3cl1w

Simply append gen in front of youtube as shown here:

genyoutube.com/watch?v=wvZ6nB3cl1w

The video will open on a new page that features no age restriction.

4. Skip a Certain Amount of the Intro

Similar to the trick that lets you pick the start time, you can also choose to skip a certain number of seconds at the start of the video. You can’t specify minutes with this one, so use 90 (seconds) for a minute and a half.

So, to skip the first 30 seconds of this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=uA0nSkSxA3E

Add &start=30 to the end of the URL and get this:

youtube.com/watch?v=uA0nSkSxA3E&start=30

This is similar to the timing one but is a bit faster to type and doesn’t require you to remember a certain time stamp.

5. Download YouTube Videos

If you’d like to download a YouTube video for your own records, there’s a URL shortcut that easily lets you do so.

Before the youtube.com in the URL, type pwn to jump to a service that will let you download the video in a variety of formats.

So this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

Can be downloaded by changing the URL to this:

pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

Remember to play fair; don’t download copyrighted YouTube videos like music. If this trick doesn’t work or ends up breaking, note that there are several other websites for downloading videos.

6. Check Out YouTube TV

YouTube TV is an interface designed for smart TVs and apps on consoles. It’s still YouTube, but with less clutter and a few shortcuts that are easier for remotes. You probably won’t want to make this your main YouTube interface, but it’s worth checking out for a cleaner look.

Just visit this URL to try it:

youtube.com/tv

7. Jump Straight to Your Subscriptions

As hard as it tries, many times the suggestions offered by YouTube aren’t useful. Whether your recommendations are filled with strange content or the home page contains videos you don’t care about, you can set a better YouTube landing page.

When you’re signed in, try changing your YouTube bookmark from the main site to your subscriptions page using this URL:

youtube.com/feed/subscriptions  

This lets you see the newest videos from channels you subscribe to, so you don’t miss any of their new content. Thus, you’re in control of what you see instead of YouTube deciding for you.

8. Grab the Thumbnail of Any Video

It’s common when searching Google for images to see pictures from YouTube videos, usually titled maxresdefault.

You can actually view a high-quality thumbnail for any YouTube video (if it has one) by visiting the following URL:

img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/maxresdefault.jpg  

Replace the [VideoID] with the text after the v= at the end of a YouTube video. So to view the thumbnail for this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=YMbm_SFJugQ

Visit this link:

img.youtube.com/vi/YMbm_SFJugQ/maxresdefault.jpg

9. Make a GIF from a Video

Found a YouTube video that has a GIF-worthy moment? You can easily create an animated GIF from any part of a video by adding gif before the YouTube link.

So to edit this video into a GIF:

youtube.com/watch?v=gy1B3agGNxw

Change the URL to this:

gifyoutube.com/watch?v=gy1B3agGNxw

You’ll be brought to gifs.com, where you can add a variety of effects and crop the GIF to your liking. Once done, share the GIF to social networks with an easy link or download it for safekeeping.

Note that exceptionally long videos won’t work with this service.

10. Mash Up YouTube Videos

This one isn’t a true URL hack, as you can’t visit it right from YouTube. However, it still uses YouTube URLs, so we’re including it. Visit YouTubeDoubler and you can add two YouTube URLs to mix together. You can choose to start either video at a certain time to help them sync up.

Whether you see how two songs sound when played at the same time or want to add some funny background music to a clip, have a look and see what you can create!

Start Having Fun with YouTube

These tricks will let you get even more out of YouTube. Some are built into YouTube itself, while others rely on outside services. It’s possible that any of these could stop working in the future, so your mileage may vary as time passes.

For more like this, check out the best tools to make YouTube even better.

Image Credit: Bloomicon/Shutterstock

Read the full article: 10 YouTube URL Tricks You Should Know About

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How to Download Music From Google Play to Your Phone

9 Lesser Known Websites Every Student Should Bookmark

Being a student means you’ve to juggle between numerous responsibilities, all the while on a limited budget and time. Therefore, it’s important that you become familiar with all the study hacks you can employ to preserve the precious duo of time and money. Here are eleven lesser-known websites for students that should find a place in your bookmarks.

1. FreeForStudents: The Best Free Stuff for Students

FreeForStudents is a handy website which lists services that offer student discounts and packages. It also links the specific signup page so you don’t have to go looking for it on the company’s website. Also, FreeForStudent tells you what the application is bundling in the student package and for how long it stays valid before you will have to pay.

There’s an option for submitting freebies as well if you discovered a deal on your own or you work for the company that is offering it.

2. Student.com: Find the Best Accommodation

Student.com is a student housing marketplace that lets you locate affordable apartments or rooms in about four hundred cities. One of the highlights of the portal is that you can also search based on your college and get results that are best suited for it. Listings on Student.com have clear indicators for several student-specific attributes like a study room or a gym.

Student.com is free to use and you can even talk to experts without paying anything extra.

3. Iris AI: Find Research Papers with AI

If you’re still a student or a researcher, you know how painful it can be to locate similar papers online. Well, not anymore as AI comes to the rescue again.

Iris AI is a free service you can log into for surfacing related research papers based on their topics. You can begin by feeding in a title, existing link, or even a TED Talk YouTube URL. Iris AI will then comb through all the available resources and present you with a nifty interface you can quickly go through to find a specific document.

4. Sleepy Time: Get a Good Night’s Sleep

Most students hardly ever come close to achieving the recommended 8-hours of sleep. But a few studies show even without that, it’s possible for you to be well rested. The trick is to wake up from the lighter sleep cycle instead of the deeper one. And to calculate the precise timings, you need a little web app called Sleepy Time.

Sleepy Time shows the hours at which you should go to sleep for waking up without feeling groggy. You can choose from one of the suggested timelines or you could also check when you should wake up if you go to sleep right away. Of course, Sleepy Time is not a perfect solution but if you’re struggling while trying to balance late nighters and health, it’s worth a shot.

If Sleepy Time’s recommended schedules are way off the mark, you can always track your sleep yourself and set alarms accordingly.

5. Student Recipes: Find Quick Recipes You Can Make

The lack of resources in a student’s life extends to their kitchen as well. However, as it turns out, there are hundreds of dishes you can cook even with a paltry set of ingredients. And that’s where Studentrecipes.com enters.

Student Recipes is home to a multitude of recipes designed for the student lifestyle which essentially means they’re easy to make and don’t require a whole of investment. You can browse a wide range of categories and even submit your own if you have one to share.

6. Cheatography: Cheat Sheets and Quick References

Cheat sheets are an essential part of every student’s study session whether it’s for a quick revision session before the exam or the night before. But creating cheat sheets are, as you probably know, a time-consuming hassle. To counter that hurdle, we present you Cheatography.

Cheatography is a free website that houses tons of already prepared cheat sheets ready for you to consume. It covers a vast variety of topics from science to music and you can even download these documents as PDFs. In addition, Cheatography allows you to search by a bunch of filters and there’s also a community feature where you can clear your doubts.

7. StudentRate: Grab the Best Deals & Discounts

StudentRate is a service for finding money-saving deals for all your shopping needs. The website compiles these discounts in categories which would be relevant to a student like items for your dorm room, textbooks, student loans, and what have you.

What’s more, StudentRate has a “follow” option for staying on top of your favorite deals and be notified when they’re about to expire.

8. Brainly: Seek Answers from the Community

Brainly is a student-focused question and answer platform where you can pick strangers’ brain to solve your homework and projects. The process for submitting a new post is quite straightforward, although chances are someone has already asked the same question thanks to Brainly’s active audience.

Also, there’s an extensive search option if you’d like to look up particular queries. You can even chat with individual users to discuss a topic further or befriend them for later.

9. StudentLoanHero: Repay Your Student Loan with a Plan

StudentLoanHero, as the name suggests, assists you in paying off your student loans by preparing elaborate financial plans. The app does so by analyzing your current situation and stitching a solution so that you can comfortably escape the debt.

The website has a host of tools for you to understand loan repayments such as dedicated calculators, quizzes, mortgage options, and more.

Maximize Your Learning Time

Living the student life is a demanding job but with the help of these tools, you should be able to minimize the blow. But as a citizen of the millennial generation, perhaps websites may not always be your thing. In that case, just keep these useful apps for students close as you navigate your way through school.

Read the full article: 9 Lesser Known Websites Every Student Should Bookmark

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9 Lesser Known Websites Every Student Should Bookmark

Being a student means you’ve to juggle between numerous responsibilities, all the while on a limited budget and time. Therefore, it’s important that you become familiar with all the study hacks you can employ to preserve the precious duo of time and money. Here are eleven lesser-known websites for students that should find a place in your bookmarks.

1. FreeForStudents: The Best Free Stuff for Students

FreeForStudents is a handy website which lists services that offer student discounts and packages. It also links the specific signup page so you don’t have to go looking for it on the company’s website. Also, FreeForStudent tells you what the application is bundling in the student package and for how long it stays valid before you will have to pay.

There’s an option for submitting freebies as well if you discovered a deal on your own or you work for the company that is offering it.

2. Student.com: Find the Best Accommodation

Student.com is a student housing marketplace that lets you locate affordable apartments or rooms in about four hundred cities. One of the highlights of the portal is that you can also search based on your college and get results that are best suited for it. Listings on Student.com have clear indicators for several student-specific attributes like a study room or a gym.

Student.com is free to use and you can even talk to experts without paying anything extra.

3. Iris AI: Find Research Papers with AI

If you’re still a student or a researcher, you know how painful it can be to locate similar papers online. Well, not anymore as AI comes to the rescue again.

Iris AI is a free service you can log into for surfacing related research papers based on their topics. You can begin by feeding in a title, existing link, or even a TED Talk YouTube URL. Iris AI will then comb through all the available resources and present you with a nifty interface you can quickly go through to find a specific document.

4. Sleepy Time: Get a Good Night’s Sleep

Most students hardly ever come close to achieving the recommended 8-hours of sleep. But a few studies show even without that, it’s possible for you to be well rested. The trick is to wake up from the lighter sleep cycle instead of the deeper one. And to calculate the precise timings, you need a little web app called Sleepy Time.

Sleepy Time shows the hours at which you should go to sleep for waking up without feeling groggy. You can choose from one of the suggested timelines or you could also check when you should wake up if you go to sleep right away. Of course, Sleepy Time is not a perfect solution but if you’re struggling while trying to balance late nighters and health, it’s worth a shot.

If Sleepy Time’s recommended schedules are way off the mark, you can always track your sleep yourself and set alarms accordingly.

5. Student Recipes: Find Quick Recipes You Can Make

The lack of resources in a student’s life extends to their kitchen as well. However, as it turns out, there are hundreds of dishes you can cook even with a paltry set of ingredients. And that’s where Studentrecipes.com enters.

Student Recipes is home to a multitude of recipes designed for the student lifestyle which essentially means they’re easy to make and don’t require a whole of investment. You can browse a wide range of categories and even submit your own if you have one to share.

6. Cheatography: Cheat Sheets and Quick References

Cheat sheets are an essential part of every student’s study session whether it’s for a quick revision session before the exam or the night before. But creating cheat sheets are, as you probably know, a time-consuming hassle. To counter that hurdle, we present you Cheatography.

Cheatography is a free website that houses tons of already prepared cheat sheets ready for you to consume. It covers a vast variety of topics from science to music and you can even download these documents as PDFs. In addition, Cheatography allows you to search by a bunch of filters and there’s also a community feature where you can clear your doubts.

7. StudentRate: Grab the Best Deals & Discounts

StudentRate is a service for finding money-saving deals for all your shopping needs. The website compiles these discounts in categories which would be relevant to a student like items for your dorm room, textbooks, student loans, and what have you.

What’s more, StudentRate has a “follow” option for staying on top of your favorite deals and be notified when they’re about to expire.

8. Brainly: Seek Answers from the Community

Brainly is a student-focused question and answer platform where you can pick strangers’ brain to solve your homework and projects. The process for submitting a new post is quite straightforward, although chances are someone has already asked the same question thanks to Brainly’s active audience.

Also, there’s an extensive search option if you’d like to look up particular queries. You can even chat with individual users to discuss a topic further or befriend them for later.

9. StudentLoanHero: Repay Your Student Loan with a Plan

StudentLoanHero, as the name suggests, assists you in paying off your student loans by preparing elaborate financial plans. The app does so by analyzing your current situation and stitching a solution so that you can comfortably escape the debt.

The website has a host of tools for you to understand loan repayments such as dedicated calculators, quizzes, mortgage options, and more.

Maximize Your Learning Time

Living the student life is a demanding job but with the help of these tools, you should be able to minimize the blow. But as a citizen of the millennial generation, perhaps websites may not always be your thing. In that case, just keep these useful apps for students close as you navigate your way through school.

Read the full article: 9 Lesser Known Websites Every Student Should Bookmark

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6 macOS Folders You Can Safely Delete to Save Space

When your Mac’s disk space runs low, you probably first look into your own user folder to delete files you no longer need. This includes files in Documents, Downloads, Desktop, and more. But despite your best efforts, you might not be able to free up enough disk space by checking these places.

macOS contains many folders that can take up a significant amount of disk space. We’ll look at some folders you can delete on your Mac without causing any damage.

1. Attachments in Apple Mail Folders

The Apple Mail app stores all cached messages and attached files. This makes them accessible offline and lets you search messages with Spotlight. To see how much space the Mail app is consuming, open Finder and press Shift + Cmd + G to open Go to Folder window.

Type in ~/Library/Mail to directly open the Mail folder. Then right-click this folder and choose Get Info. If the resulting size is in gigabytes, you should delete old emails and attachments.

Delete Mail Attachments

Select a message and click Message > Remove Attachments. If you use this option, any attached files you delete from the Mail app will also get deleted from the mail server.

To remove the attachments in bulk, create a Smart Folder to filter emails containing only attachments. Sort the messages by Size to remove the biggest attachments.

If you prefer, you can instead delete attachments directly from their folders. The files will remain on the email server, but this removes them from your Mac to save disk space. To do this, open the following folder:

~/Library/Mail/V6

(In macOS High Sierra, the folder is V5.)

Click this folder to see all your email accounts. Choose an email account, then open the folder named with various random characters. Buried within those directories lies the Attachment folder. See the below screenshot for more details.

Browsing and deleting these files manually can take a lot of time. For a faster way, type Attachments on the Finder search bar and sort the results by Kind to display only the Attachments folders. Copy these directories to an external drive if you want to back them up, then delete the files.

Prevent Downloading of Attachments

You can further save space by telling Mail not to automatically download attachments. To do this, select Mail > Preferences > Accounts. Select any one of your email accounts from the left pane and click Account Information in the right pane.

Under the Download Attachments dropdown menu, choose None. If you select this option, Mail will not download any media attachments, including images, PDFs, and video or audio files. With the Recent option, Mail will download attachments received within the past 15 months.

2. Past iTunes Backups

iOS backups made with iTunes can take up a lot of disk space on your Mac. They include all the files on your phone, plus less visible details like mail and network settings, call history, text messages, favorite contacts, and other personal preferences that are tough to recreate.

To delete old backups, click iTunes > Preferences and then Devices tab. Select the oldest backup file you don’t want and click Delete Backup.

If you don’t see the older backup listed here, you can manually delete the backup folder. Press Shift + Cmd + G to open Go to Folder. Then type:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Quit iTunes and delete the old backups. If you’re unsure of which to delete, press Space and check the Last modified date in the QuickLook window.

Meanwhile, if Mac hard drive space is valuable to you, consider switching your iOS backups to iCloud. Our iOS backup guide will help.

3. Your Old iPhoto Library

Although Apple officially declared iPhoto a dead app and replaced it with Photos, the migration from iPhoto to Photos has been a slow one. After you’ve decided to switch, the migration process is a painless procedure. The first time you launch Photos, it searches your ~/Pictures folder for an iPhoto library.

Once the migration process completes, you’ll notice two separate libraries on your Mac: one old iPhoto Library and a new Photos Library. Open Photos and check for any missing information or pictures. Then copy the iPhoto Library to an external hard drive if you want to back it up, and delete it from your main drive.

If you have a large photo library, doing this might allow you to gain significant disk space.

4. Leftovers of Uninstalled Apps

When you put Mac apps in the Trash, some files remain on your Mac. This includes cached content, preference files, plugins, and more. If you stop using a particular app, you can safely delete these files. But you should know the actual location of these apps. These are often located in the Library folder.

Most preference files live in one of the following spots:

• ~/Library/Preferences OR /Library/Preferences
  

• ~/Library/Application Support/[App or Developer name] OR /Library/Application Support/[App or Developer name]
  

• ~/Library/Containers/[App name]/Data/Library/Preferences
  

Cache related files live in:

• ~/Library/Caches OR /Library/Caches
  

• ~/Library/Containers/[App Name]/Data/Library/Caches/[App Name]
  

• ~/Library/Saved Application State
  

The files in these locations follow a standard naming convention. It includes the company name, application identifier, and at the end, the property list file extension (.plist). Sometimes a developer might use a proprietary naming convention, but if you concentrate on the app name, you’ll find them.

If you don’t want to browse for these files manually, try an uninstaller utility that specializes in identifying and removing these files.

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is a free utility to uninstall any Mac app without leaving data behind. It can remove cached content, preference files, and any support related files that comes installed with the app.

Type an app name and press Enter to load the results, then click Remove. However, note that the app won’t clean up leftovers from apps you’ve already removed.

App Cleaner and Uninstaller

App Cleaner is an uninstaller app to delete apps entirely from your system. The free version lets you remove unwanted apps, erase leftovers from previously removed apps, view an app’s total size, and reset an app to its default state.

If you opt for the premium version, you can also remove system extensions, disable LaunchAgents, and delete leftovers of system files.

5. Unneeded Printer and Scanner Drivers

Modern Mac-compatible printers and scanners don’t need drivers for basic functionality. If you have an older printer that doesn’t support this technology, your Mac will automatically install the driver needed to use that device.

To remove a printer, go to System Preferences > Printers and Scanners. Select the printer in the list and click Remove. Commonly, printer manufacturers provide you with an uninstaller utility to remove the associated app. Go to the following folder:

Macintosh HD/Library/Printers

Here, delete any remaining printer or scanner files. You can also use apps like those mentioned above to help.

6. Cache and Log Files

It’s normal for macOS to use disk space for day-to-day operations. Your browser downloads new data, apps create cached content for optimal performance, and log files capture information to help you troubleshoot issues when they arise. When you’re in dire need of disk space, you can delete app and system-related caches without causing any problems.

But clearing cache and log files every week should not be part of a regular maintenance routine. It makes your Mac run slower than normal, and you won’t be able to track and analyze issues that occur.

Log Files

Log files live in these folders:

• /private/var/log
  

• ~/Libarary/Logs AND /Library/Logs
  

Your Mac runs periodic maintenance scripts to compress or swap older log files with newer ones. To check when maintenance scripts last ran, open Terminal and type:

ls -al /var/log/*out

Use a third-party disk analyzer app to check the sizes of log files. If they grow out of control, examine and delete them.

Caches

Cache-related corruption is a common problem in macOS, and is responsible for many app-related issues. Due to the hidden nature of cache files, problems resulting from corrupted caches are difficult to find.

You can completely delete cache files to solve this problem. Use Onyx or CleanMyMac to delete cache and log files.

Other macOS Folders You Shouldn’t Touch

When disk space gets low, you can check these macOS folders one-by-one and see how much space they take up. When you need space, you can safely delete them. Just make sure to have a current backup on hand in case something goes wrong.

Sometimes, you’ll find unfamiliar-sounding directories consuming significant disk space. But you shouldn’t modify anything on our list of macOS folders you should never touch.

Read the full article: 6 macOS Folders You Can Safely Delete to Save Space

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