Posted by Yinfei Yang and Amin Ahmad, Software Engineers, Google Research
Since it was introduced last year, “Universal Sentence Encoder (USE) for English’’ has become one of the most downloaded pre-trained text modules in Tensorflow Hub, providing versatile sentence embedding models that convert sentences into vector representations. These vectors capture rich semantic information that can be used to train classifiers for a broad range of downstream tasks. For example, a strong sentiment classifier can be trained from as few as one hundred labeled examples, and still be used to measure semantic similarity and for meaning-based clustering.
Today, we are pleased to announce the release of three new USE multilingual modules with additional features and potential applications. The first two modules provide multilingual models for retrieving semantically similar text, one optimized for retrieval performance and the other for speed and less memory usage. The third model is specialized for question-answer retrieval in sixteen languages (USE-QA), and represents an entirely new application of USE. All three multilingual modules are trained using a multi-task dual-encoder framework, similar to the original USE model for English, while using techniques we developed for improving the dual-encoder with additive margin softmax approach. They are designed not only to maintain good transfer learning performance, but to perform well on semantic retrieval tasks.
Multi-task training structure of the Universal Sentence Encoder. A variety of tasks and task structures are joined by shared encoder layers/parameters (pink boxes).
Semantic Retrieval Applications
The three new modules are all built on semantic retrieval architectures, which typically split the encoding of questions and answers into separate neural networks, which makes it possible to search among billions of potential answers within milliseconds. The key to using dual encoders for efficient semantic retrieval is to pre-encode all candidate answers to expected input queries and store them in a vector database that is optimized for solving the nearest neighbor problem, which allows a large number of candidates to be searched quickly with good precision and recall. For all three modules, the input query is then encoded into a vector on which we can perform an approximate nearest neighbor search. Together, this enables good results to be found quickly without needing to do a direct query/candidate comparison for every candidate. The prototypical pipeline is illustrated below:
A prototypical semantic retrieval pipeline, used for textual similarity.
Semantic Similarity Modules
For semantic similarity tasks, the query and candidates are encoded using the same neural network. Two common semantic retrieval tasks made possible by the new modules include Multilingual Semantic Textual Similarity Retrieval and Multilingual Translation Pair Retrieval.
Multilingual Semantic Textual Similarity Retrieval
Most existing approaches for finding semantically similar text require being given a pair of texts to compare. However, using the Universal Sentence Encoder, semantically similar text can be extracted directly from a very large database. For example, in an application like FAQ search, a system can first index all possible questions with associated answers. Then, given a user’s question, the system can search for known questions that are semantically similar enough to provide an answer. A similar approach was used to find comparable sentences from 50 million sentences in wikipedia. With the new multilingual USE models, this can be done in any of supported non-English languages.
Multilingual Translation Pair Retrieval
The newly released modules can also be used to mine translation pairs to train neural machine translation systems. Given a source sentence in one language (“How do I get to the restroom?”), they can find the potential translation target in any other supported language (“¿Cómo llego al baño?”).
Both new semantic similarity modules are cross-lingual. Given an input in Chinese, for example, the modules can find the best candidates, regardless of which language it is expressed in. This versatility can be particularly useful for languages that are underrepresented on the internet. For example, an early version of these modules has been used by Chidambaram et al. (2018) to provide classifications in circumstances where the training data is only available in a single language, e.g. English, but the end system must function in a range of other languages.
USE for Question-Answer Retrieval
The USE-QA module extends the USE architecture to question-answer retrieval applications, which generally take an input query and find relevant answers from a large set of documents that may be indexed at the document, paragraph, or even sentence level. The input query is encoded with the question encoding network, while the candidates are encoded with the answer encoding network.
Visualizing the action of a neural answer retrieval system. The blue point at the north pole represents the question vector. The other points represent the embeddings of various answers. The correct answer, highlighted here in red, is “closest” to the question, in that it minimizes the angular distance. The points in this diagram are produced by an actual USE-QA model, however, they have been projected downwards from ℝ500 to ℝ3 to assist the reader’s visualization.
Question-answer retrieval systems also rely on the ability to understand semantics. For example, consider a possible query to one such system, Google Talk to Books, which was launched in early 2018 and backed by a sentence-level index of over 100,000 books. A query, “What fragrance brings back memories?”, yields the result, “And for me, the smell of jasmine along with the pan bagnat, it brings back my entire carefree childhood.” Without specifying any explicit rules or substitutions, the vector encoding captures the semantic similarity between the terms fragrance and smell. The advantage provided by the USE-QA module is that it can extend question-answer retrieval tasks such as this to multilingual applications.
For Researchers and Developers
We're pleased to share the latest additions to the Universal Sentence Encoder family with the research community, and are excited to see what other applications will be found. These modules can be used as-is, or fine tuned using domain-specific data. Lastly, we will also host the semantic similarity for natural language page on Cloud AI Workshop to further encourage research in this area.
Acknowledgements Mandy Guo, Daniel Cer, Noah Constant, Jax Law, Muthuraman Chidambaram for core modeling, Gustavo Hernandez Abrego, Chen Chen, Mario Guajardo-Cespedes for infrastructure and colabs, Steve Yuan, Chris Tar, Yunhsuan Sung, Brian Strope, Ray Kurzweil for discussion of the model architecture.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Before you start complaining about censorship, keep in mind that hidden replies won’t actually get pulled from Twitter — they’ll disappear from the default view, but you can still tap a gray icon to see them.
The goal is to give the person who starts a conversation more control over which comments are visible, making it harder for trolls to jump in and derail things.
In a long-awaited decision, the Federal Elections Commission will now allow political campaigns to appoint cybersecurity helpers to protect themselves from cyberthreats and malicious attackers.
Kantar provides stats and insights on how consumers buy and think of products in areas like technology, media and health — we’ve written many stories citing their numbers.
Time for a new EC-1, which provides an in-depth profile of a successful startup! This time, we’re focusing on Roblox, a company that took at least a decade to hit its stride. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
Ritik Dholakia worked as a startup product manager before he co-founded Studio Rodrigo, a branding and product design agency based in NYC. Unlike traditional branding firms, Studio Rodrigo is proud of its product design chops, especially when it comes to helping early-stage startups build version one of their product. It’s not an easy balancing act since most companies eventually want to bring their product design talent in-house, but it turns out, Studio Rodrigo can help with that too. Learn more about the studio in our Q&A with founder Ritik Dholakia.
Studio Rodrigo’s unique approach:
“Studio Rodrigo listened to all of our goals and dreams, concerns and uncertainties, and created a brand identity, website, and marketing materials that were true to our vision but better than anything we could have imagined.” Tze Chun, NYC, Founder, Uprise Art
“Basically, we’re a full-stack product design team. We have people who can do brand identity from a pure graphic design and visual communications standpoint, and who can also connect the dots between design and technology, business, and customer needs. We don’t have a traditional agency model with a project and account management overhead. You work directly with our designers.”
On Studio Rodrigo’s ideal client:
“We like working with clients that are solving big, meaty, challenging problems. We’ve got a smart team that likes to wrap their heads around the kinds of technologies that are pushing industries forward. For us, that’s currently technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence.”
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series coveringstartup brand designers and agencieswith whom founders love to work, based onthis surveyand our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
Interview with Studio Rodrigo Co-founder Ritik Dholakia
Yvonne Leow: First things first, how did you get into brand design and product development?
Ritik Dholakia: I’ve been in digital design and product development for about 20 years now. I actually started my career as a product manager at a startup. I worked for two venture-backed startups as the first product manager. I was part of the Series A team, managing product development, acquiring initial customers, and building market traction.
The first startup was an enterprise software platform for customers doing triple bottom line reporting. The second one was one of the earliest social networking platforms, pre-Facebook, and around the same time as Friendster, LinkedIn, and Spoke.
The Google News tab is getting a makeover. Google announced this week, by way of a tweet, a significant redesign of the Google.com News tab on the desktop, which will organize articles in a card-style layout, while also better emphasizing publisher names. The end result makes Google News more aesthetically pleasing, but it comes at the expense of information density.
To be clear, the changes here are focused on the News tab of Google.com — not the dedicated Google News product at news.google.com. You land on the News tab when you search for a term on Google.com, and then click over to “News” to see the latest coverage instead of Google’s list of search results.
As the preview of the redesign shows, news articles are currently organized in a compact list of links, allowing you to see several headlines around a single topic with just a glance. This design, admittedly, is a bit old-school — but it works.
Within the stack of links, the headline is blue, the publisher is green, and the articles are labeled as “In-depth” or “Opinion,” when relevant. There are small photo thumbnails by the lead story, with other publishers’ links underneath appearing as only text.
The updated design is more readable as articles are spaced out and placed in cards, similar to the main Google News product. There’s more white space and longer previews of each story, as well.
But the change means you’re seeing far fewer results on the screen before you have to scroll down.
Over the next couple weeks we’re rolling out a redesigned News tab in Search on desktop. The refreshed design makes publisher names more prominent and organizes articles more clearly to help you find the news you need. Check it out pic.twitter.com/xa2aZfO4Qd
— Google News Initiative (@GoogleNewsInit) July 11, 2019
The updated News tab makes it more obvious where the news is coming from, because publishers’ names are given more prominence. They also get their logo next to the headline, so it’s easier to identify your favorite news outlets with a glance. This is reminiscent of the recent mobile redesign for Google Search, which also put increased attention on the publishers by featuring them at the top of a link alongside their logo.
In addition to providing you with a set of News search results, the redesigned tab includes a new carousel labeled “People also searched for” that points you to other relevant news based on your search query.
Not everyone is thrilled about the update, given it makes it more difficult to quickly scan a number of headlines at once. And because there are fewer publishers’ articles on the first screen, traffic to those “below the fold” will likely drop.
Google says the changes will roll out over the next couple of weeks.
Facebook provided TechCrunch with new information on how its cryptocurrency will stay legal amidst allegations from President Trump that Libra could facilitate “unlawful behavior”. Facebook and Libra Association executives tell me they expect Libra will incur sales tax and capital gains taxes. They confirmed that Facebook is also in talks with local convenience stores and money exchanges to ensure anti-laundering checks are applied when people cash-in or cash-out Libra for traditional currency, and to let you use a QR code to buy or sell Libra in person.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company wouldn’t respond directly to Trump’s tweets, but noted that the Libra association won’t interact with consumers or operate as a bank, and that Libra is meant to be a complement to the existing financial system.”
Trump had tweeted that “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.Similarly, Facebook Libra’s “virtual currency” will have little standing or dependability. If Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations, just like other Banks, both National and International”
In a wide-reaching series of interviews this week, the Libra Association’s head of policy Dante Disparte, Facebook’s head economist for blockchain Christian Catalini, Facebook’s blockchain project subsidiary Calibra’s VP of product Kevin Weil answered top questions about regulation of Libra. Here’s what we’ve learned (their answers were trimmed for clarity but not edited):
Would Facebook’s Calibra Wallet launch elsewhere even if it’s banned in the USA by regulators?
Calibra’s Kevin Weil: “We believe that creating a financial ecosystem that has significantly broader access where all it takes is a phone and lower transaction fees across the board is good for people. And we want to bring it to as many people around the world as we can. But as a custodial wallet we are regulated and will be compliant and we will only operate in markets where we’re allowed.
We want that to be as many markets as possible. That’s why we announced well in advance of actually launching a product — because we’ve been engaging with regulators. We’re continuing to engage with regulators and we can help them understand the effort that we’re taking to make sure that people are safe and also the value that accrues to the people in their countries when there’s broader access to financial services with lower transaction fees across the board.
TechCrunch: But what if you’re banned in the US?
Weil: “I’m hesitant to give a blanket answer. But in general, we believe that Libra is positive for people and we want to launch as broadly as possible. The world where the US does that I think would probably cause other regulatory regimes to also be concerned about it. I think that’s very much a bridge that we’ll cross when we get there. But so far we’re having frank, open and honest discussions with regulators. Obviously, that continues next week with David testimony. And I hope it doesn’t come to that, because I think that Libra can do a lot of good for a lot of people.”
TechCrunch’s Analysis: The US House subcommittee has already submitted a letter to Facebook requesting that it cease development of Libra and Calibra until regulators can better examine it and take action. It sounds like Facebook believes a US ban on Libra/Calibra would cause a domino effect in other top markets, and therefore make it tough to rationalize still launching. That puts even more pressure on the outcome of July 16th and 17th’s congressional hearings on Libra with the head of Facebook’s head of Calibra David Marcus.
How will users cash-in and cash-out of Libra in person?
We already know that Facebook’s own Libra wallet called Calibra will be baked into Messenger and WhatsApp plus have its own standalone app. There, those with connected bank accounts and government ID that go through a Know Your Customer (KYC) anti-fraud/laundering check will be able to buy and sell Libra. But a big goal of Libra is bring the unbanked into the modern financial system. How does that work?
Calibra’s Kevin Weil: “Because Libra is an open ecosystem, any money exchange business or entrepreneur can begin supporting cash-in/cash-out without needing any permission from anyone associated with the Libra Association or member of the Libra Association. They can just do it. Today in a lot of emerging markets [there’s a service for matching you with someone to exchange cryptocurrency for cash or vice-versa called] LocalBitcoins.com and I think you’ll see that with Libra too.
Second, we can augment that by by working with local exchanges, convenience stores and other cash-in/cash-out providers to make it easy from within Calibra. You could imagine an experience in the Calibra app or within Messenger or WhatsApp, where if you want to cash in or cash out, you’ll pop up a map that highlights physical locations around that allow you to do it. You select one that’s nearby, you select an amount, and you get a QR code that you can take to them and complete the transaction.
I’d imagine that most of these businesses that we work with will support Libra more broadly, so even if we get these deals started it will benefit the whole ecosystem and every Libra wallet, not just Calibra.”
TechCrunch: Have you struck relationships with any convenience store operators or money exchangers like Western Union or MoneyGram, or Walgreens, CVS or 7/11? Are you in talks with them yet?
Weil: “I probably shouldn’t comment on any specific deals but we’re in conversation with a lot of the folks you might think, because ultimately being able to move between Libra and your local currency is critical to driving adoption and utility in the early days . . . If you’re banked there are easier ways to do that. If you’re not banked and you’re in cash — those are the people we really want to serve with Libra — we’re working very hard to make that process easy for people.”
TechCrunch’s analysis: This approach will let Calibra largely avoid the complicated and potentially error-prone process of KYCing people in person or handing out cash by offloading the responsibility and liability to other parties.
How will Libra stop fraud or laundering while offering access to unbanked users without ID?
Weil: “There are very important populations that don’t have an ID. People in a refugee camp may not, as an example, and we want Libra to be serve them. So this is one example of many of why it’s important that Calibra isn’t the only option for people who want to participate in the Libra ecosystem . . . Others of these will be run by local providers and they have programs to meet customers face-to-face and other ways to serve people and even KYC them that we may not . . . We’re not going be the only wallet, we don’t want to be the only wallet.
This is one of the reasons NGOs have bene members of the Libra association from the start, because we want to encourage the monetization of identity processes both through working with governments issuing credentials for more people and also making use of new types of information for identity and authentication. We hope this process will hep the last mile problem.
In the case of a non-custodial wallet, the user isn’t trusting anyone. The way the regulations have worked and this is evolving as we speak. The on-ramps and off-ramps to the crypto world are regulated and they have direct customer relationships and it’s their responsibility to KYC people. In our case we’ll be a custodial wallet and we’ll KYC people. There are a number of wallets in the Bitcoin or Ethereum ecosystem — non-custodial wallets that don’t have a direct relationships with the users. . . They have to get that Bitcoin somehow. Usually they’re going through an exchange where usually as part of the process they’re KYC’d.
In a lot of emerging markets you have LocalBitcoins.com where you can find a representative or agent who will meet you in person and exchange cash for bitcoin in whatever market you have to be in. And I believe that they just started making sure that they KYC everyone,but they’re doing it in person. And they have more flexibility in how they do it then you might otherwise. I think there are lots of ways that this will happen and the fact that Libra is an open ecosystem will enable people to be entrepreneurial about it.
There are lots an lots of people who are underserved by today’s financial ecosystem who have government ID. So even with requiring everyone go through a KYC process, we’ll be able to serve many, many people who are not well-served by today’s financial ecosystem. We want to find ways to support people who can’t KYC and the important part is that Calibra will fully interoperate with any other wallet, including ones that people in local markets are using because it’s a better fit for their needs.”
TechCrunch: Through that interoperability, if someone with an non-custodial wallet receives Libra and then sends it a Calibra wallet user, does that mean you Libra coming into Calibra from users who weren’t KYC’d and could be laundering money?
Weil: So it’s part of the regulatory situation that’s evolving as we speak. There’s something called the Travel Rule . . . If there’s a transfer above a certain value you have to make sure that you understand both who the sender is, which you do if they’re using a custodial wallet, and who the receiver is. These are evolving regulations, but it’s something that obviously we’re going to make sure that we implement as regulations solidify.”
TechCrunch’s Analysis: Calibra appears to be inviting regulation that it can strictly abide by rather than trying to guess at what the best approach is. But given it’s unclear when concrete rules will be established for transfers between non-custodial wallets and custodial wallets, or for in-person cashing, Facebook and Calibra may need to establish their own strong protocols. Otherwise they could be guilty of permitting the “unlawful behavior” Trump describes.
How will Libra be Taxed?
Dante Disparte of Libra: “Taxing of digital assets is something that’s being designed at the local level and at the jurisdiction level. Our view of the world is that like with any form of money or any form of payment or banking, the onus in terms of compliance with tax is with the individual user and consumer, and the same would hold true broadly here.
We expect that the many, many wallets and financial services providers building solutions on the Libra blockchain would begin to provide tools that make it much easier than it is today [to calculate and file taxes] for digital assets and cryptocurrencies more generally . . . There’s plenty of time between now and Libra hitting the market to begin defining this more strictly at the jurisdictional level among providers.
TechCrunch’s Analysis: Again, here Facebook, Calibra, and Libra association are hoping to avoid shouldering all the responsibility for taxes. Their position is that just as you have to take the initiative of paying your taxes whether or not you use a Visa card or your bank’s checks to transact, it’s on you to pay your Libra taxes.
TechCrunch: Do you think in the United States that it’s reasonable for the government to ask that Libra transactions be taxed?
Disparte: “Tax treatments of digital assets broadly hasn’t been entirely clarified in most places around the world. And we hope that this is something that this project and the ecosystem around it helps to clarify.
Tax authorities will see a benefit from Libra at the consumption level and at the household level, while some cryptocurrencies have avoided taxes until the point they tried to cash out. But the nature of it and the lack of speculation and its design we think should give it a light tax treatment the way you would find with traditional currencies.”
Christian Catalini of Facebook: “Cryptocurrencies are taxed right now every time you have a sale on the differences in gains and losses. Because Libra is designed to be a medium of exchange, those gains and losses are likely to be very tiny relative to your local currency . . . Sales tax would likely be implemented the exact same way on Libra as it is today when you pay with a credit card.
At launch giving current regulations, the Calibra wallet will have to track every purchase and sale of Libra for a US user and those differences will have to be reported on tax day. You can think of the losses, albeit they may be very small gains and losses relative to USD, as similar to the what people do today when they have a Coinbase account with Bitcoin.
The sales tax I think could be implemented in the exact same way as it today with any other sort of digital payment, it would be no different. If you’re buying goods or services with Libra you’ll be paying sales tax the same way as if you used a different form of payment. Like today when you see a percentage, that is the sales tax on your total.”
Disparte: “Maybe the best way to frame how taxes work all over the world is that it’s not up to Libra, Calibra, Facebook or any company to make that determination. It’s up to regulators and authorities.”
TechCrunch: Does Calibra already have plans in place for how to handle sales tax?
Weil: “That’s also a pretty rapidly evolving part of the regulatory ecosystem right now. It’s really an ongoing discussion. We will do whatever the regulation says we need to do.”
TechCrunch’s Analysis: Here we have the firmest answers of our interviews. Facebook, Calibra, and the Libra Association believe the proper approach to taxes is that Libra transactions carry a country’s traditional sales tax, and that Libra you hold in your wallet will have to pay taxes based on the Libra stablecoin’s value (that’s pegged to a basket of international currencies) relative to the US dollar.
If the Libra Association recommends all wallets and transactions follow these rules and Calibra builds in protocols to handle these taxes simply, at least the government can’t argue Libra is a method of dodging taxes and everyone paying their fair share.
Sage is giving reviewers, chefs and other experts and publishers a central place to share all their content.
To do this, the startup has created a new product called Sage Plus for Experts, which isn’t open to the public yet, but is accepting signups from those aforementioned travel experts — the kinds of experts who can share content around things to do, food, drinks, experiences and shopping.
Founder and CEO Samir Arora (who previously led Mode Media/Glam Media) suggested that a Sage profile can serve as the center of a creator or publisher’s online presence. And eventually, it could become the foundation for them to build their own personal direct-to-consumer brand.
In the announcement, Arora said the product was designed to answer “a simple question”: “Why does the internet not offer a simple way to show recommendations by real experts or the authentic experiences and products by the brands we trust and love?”
Back in 2017, when he first told me about his vision for Sage in 2017, Arora said his goal was to create a reliable source for location data. In an interview earlier this month, he said the plan to focus on verified sources eventually led him to this new product.
“We started to say that the only way to have verified information is to go backwards, to verify the sources of information — the journalists,” he said.
To do that, Sage starting curating a list of trusted experts, and it started working with those experts, who Arora said were asking for something like this. He showed me how someone could come onto the Sage service and quickly connect their social media accounts and author pages —after that, the profile updates automatically.
So there’s no technical expertise required, and after the initial setup, no additional work — though if they want to, experts can also post reviews and lists made specifically for Sage. They can even publish their Sage profile as a separate mobile app, and start monetizing through things like bookings and merchandise sales.
In some cases, the profile will already exist, and the expert simply needs to claim it.
“We’ve been manually curating sources while training an AI to reliably to go out into the world to find people who are professionally in this business,” Arora said.
He added that Sage’s list has already grown to 5 million experts, with 200,000 active profiles. The active experts include food critic Masuhiro Yamamoto (who you may know from “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”).
Ultimately, all expert content goes back into the broader Sage platform, and it will allow the startup to recommend trustworthy publishers and provide travel recommendations on what to do and where to go.
Bloomberg reported last April that Amazon was working on a home robot codenamed ‘Vesta’ (after the Roman goddess of the hearth and home) last year, and now the publication says that development on the project continues. Plus, the report includes new details about the specifics of the robot, including that it will indeed support Alexa and have wheels to help it move around. My terrible artist’s rendering of what that could look like is above.
The plan for Vesta was apparently to release it this year, but it’s not yet quite ready for mass production, according to Bloomberg’s sources. And while it could end up mothballed and never see the light of day, as with any project being developed ahead of launch, the company is said to be putting more engineering and development resources into the team working on its release.
Current prototypes of the robot are said to be about waist-high, per the report, and make their way through the world aided by sensor-fed computer-vision. It’ll come when you call thanks to the Alexa integration, per an internal demo described by Bloomberg, and should ostensibly offer all the same kind of functionality you’d get with an Echo device, including calling, timers and music playback.
For other clues as to what Vesta could look like, if and when it ever launches, a good model might be Kuri, the robot developed by Bosch internal startup Mayfield Robotics which was shuttered a year ago and never made it to market. Kuri could also record video and take photos, play games and generally interact with the household.
Amazon is reportedly looking to offer an Echo that more directly competes with high-end speakers like the Sonos line of device of Apple’s HomePod, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The speaker should be released sometime next year, according to the sources cited in the report, and will be somewhat wider than the existing Echo models (perhaps more akin to the Echo Sub, pictured above), packing in four separate tweeters to help boost the song quality.
It will, of course, also offer access to the company’s Alexa voice assistant, which is what has propelled Echo to its current level of success. Bloomberg notes that it’s also likely to work better for the high-fidelity audio version of Amazon’s music streaming service that has previously been reported to be in the works.
This could make for an interesting working relationship with some of Amazon’s existing partners, including Sonos, since it sounds like this will be a direct competitor. Newer Sonos speakers, including the Sonos One and Sonos Beam, support Alexa voice commands out of the box. While both Echo devices and Sonos support multi-room streaming and speaker grouping, Sonos has always had far superior audio quality when compared to the Echo hardware – albeit at a premium price.
Sonos, meanwhile, is gearing up to launch speakers powered by its technology with Ikea, with the Symfonisk line that is set for release in August. Smart speakers are a busy space with a lot of money and interest from many companies big and small, but Amazon has a lot working in its favor if it can also produce something that wins on high-quality audio at a reasonable price.
Encrypting your hard drive is one of the easiest and fastest ways to increase your security. Windows 10 has a drive encryption program built in. BitLocker is a full drive encryption tool available to Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education users.
Drive encryption sounds intimidating. If you lose your password, your drive remains locked—forever. Nonetheless, the security it grants you is almost unrivaled.
Here’s how you can encrypt your hard drive using BitLocker in Windows 10.
What Is BitLocker?
BitLocker is a full volume encryption tool included in Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education. You can use BitLocker to encrypt a drive volume. (A drive volume can mean part of a drive, rather than the entire drive.)
BitLocker offers strong encryption to regular Windows 10 users. By default, BitLocker uses 128-bit AES encryption (also written as AES-128). As far as encryption goes, that’s strong. At the current time, there is no known method of brute forcing a 128-bit AES encryption key. A research team did come up with one potential attack on the AES encryption algorithm, but it would take millions of years to crack the key. That’s why people refer to AES as “military grade encryption.”
So, BitLocker using AES-128 is secure. Still, you can also use BitLocker with a larger 256-bit key, making the drive key essentially impossible to unlock. I’ll show you how to switch BitLocker to AES-256 in a moment.
BitLocker has three different encryption methods:
User authentication mode. The “standard” user authentication mode encrypts your drive, requiring authentication before unlocking. Authentication takes the form of a PIN or password.
Transparent operation mode. This is a slightly more advanced mode that uses a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip. The TPM chip checks that your system files have not been modified since you encrypted the drive using BitLocker. If your system files have been tampered with, the TPM chip will not release the key. In turn, you will not be able to input your password to decrypt the drive. The transparent operation mode creates a secondary security layer over your drive encryption.
USB Key mode. USB Key mode uses a physical USB device that boots into the encrypted drive.
How to Check If Your System Has a TPM Module
Unsure if your system has a TPM module? Press Windows Key + R, then input tpm.msc. If you see information about the TPM on your system, you have a TPM module installed. If you meet the “Compatible TPM cannot be found” message (like me!), your system does not have a TPM module.
It isn’t a problem if you do not have one. You can still use BitLocker without a TPM module. See the following section to understand how.
How to Check If BitLocker Is Enabled
Before progressing to the BitLocker drive encryption tutorial, check whether BitLocker is enabled on your system.
Head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > BitLocker Drive Encryption > Operating System Drives.
Select Require additional authentication at startup, followed by Enabled.
If your system doesn’t have a compatible TPM module, check the box to Allow BitLocker without a compatible TPM.
How to Use BitLocker Drive Encryption on Windows 10
First up, type bitlocker in your Start Menu search bar, then select the Best Match.
Select the drive you want BitLocker to encrypt, then select Turn BitLocker On.
Now you must Choose how you want to unlock this drive. Here you have two options.
Use a password.
Use a smart card.
Select the first option to Use a password to unlock the drive.
Choose a BitLocker Password
Here’s the fun part: choosing a suitably strong password that you can also remember. As the BitLocker wizard helpfully suggests, your password should contain upper and lower case letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols. Need help? Check out exactly how you can make a strong password that you will never forget.
Once you create a suitable password, enter it, then retype it to confirm.
The next page contains options for creating a BitLocker recovery key. A BitLocker recovery key is unique to your drive and is the only way you can safely and securely create a backup of sorts. There are four options to choose from. For now, select Save to File, then select a memorable save location. Once saved, hit Next.
How Much Drive to Encrypt With BitLocker and Which Encryption Mode to Use
At this point, you choose how much of your drive to encrypt.
The BitLocker wizard strongly suggests encrypting the entire drive if you are already using it to make sure you encrypt all available data, including deleted but not removed from the drive. Whereas if you are encrypting a new drive or new PC, “you only need to encrypt the part of the drive that’s currently being used” because BitLocker will encrypt new data automatically as you add it.
Finally, choose your encryption mode. Windows 10 version 1511 introduced a new disk encryption mode, known as XTS-AES. XTS-AES provides additional integrity support. However, it is not compatible with older Windows versions. If the drive you are encrypting with BitLocker will remain in your system, you can safely choose the new XTS-AES encryption mode.
If not (if you are going to plug your drive into a separate machine), select Compatible mode.
Encrypt Your Drive with BitLocker
You have reached the final page: it is time to encrypt your drive using BitLocker. Select Start encrypting and wait for the process to complete. The encryption process can take some time, depending on the amount of data.
When you reboot your system or attempt to access the encrypted drive, BitLocker will prompt you for the drive password.
Using AES-256 with BitLocker
You can make BitLocker use much stronger 256-bit AES encryption, instead of 128-bit AES. Even though 128-bit AES encryption will take forever to brute force, you can always make it take forever and a day using the additional strength.
The main reason to use AES-256 instead of AES-128 is to protect against the rise of quantum computing in the future. Quantum computing will be able to break our current encryption standards more ease than our current hardware.
Open the Group Policy Editor, then Head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Select Choose drive encryption method and cipher strength. Select Enabled, then use the dropdown boxes to select XTS-AES 256-bit. Hit Apply, and you’re good to go.
Backup Your Windows BitLocker Password
You now know how to encrypt your Windows 10 drive using BitLocker. BitLocker is a fantastic encryption tool integrated into Windows 10. You don’t have to bother with a third-party encryption tool.
Wallpapers on your Mac don’t have to look the same all day. If you’ve updated to macOS Mojave, you can set dynamic wallpapers that adapt to the time or your theme and update on their own.
However, Apple only includes two dynamic wallpapers to start. You’ll probably soon find yourself wishing for more options. Here are the best places to find new dynamic wallpapers for macOS, plus how to create one from your own pictures.
How to Set a Dynamic Wallpaper on macOS
There are two ways you can configure a third-party dynamic wallpaper on macOS. The first method is to right-click an HEIC file and click the Set Desktop Wallpaper option as you would normally for any other static background.
Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Desktop & Screensaver, click the plus button at the bottom, and select the dynamic wallpaper.
How to Create Your Own Dynamic Wallpaper
Developing a personal dynamic wallpaper is straightforward—all you need is a couple of pictures. These images don’t necessarily need to show the same scene shot at different periods of the day. You can employ the dynamic wallpapers feature to set a simple slideshow of photos too.
Method 1: Dynamic Wallpaper Club
Once you’ve collected some pictures, head over to the Dynamic Wallpaper Club web app. Click the Create button at the top and register for a new account. On the next page, you will see the dynamic wallpaper creator tool. Here, drag and drop your images on the right section. Enter the name and tags for the wallpaper.
Dynamic wallpapers can update based on either the time of day or the sun’s position at your location. For the latter, your shots must have valid EXIF data. In case they don’t, you can manually link them to the Light and Dark themes by making use of the available radio buttons. When you choose to change your wallpaper based on the time, you have to specify the exact time when a particular picture should come to life.
After you finalize, Dynamic Wallpaper Club uploads your dynamic wallpapers to its public library. If you want to opt out of this, uncheck the Public Wallpaper box.
Under the Preview section, you should be able to see what the outcome looks like. Hit Create when you’re done with the settings. Dynamic Wallpaper Club will append the new file to your account’s My Wallpapers section. There, select the wallpaper you want to save and click the Download button.
There’s also a Mac app you can install for transforming your personal pictures to support the dynamic feature. It’s called Dynaper, and comes with a drag-and-drop interface that lets you quickly produce dynamic wallpapers. You simply have to import a set of photos and in no time, the dynamic wallpaper will be ready.
Like Dynamic Wallpaper Club, Dynpaper also lets you specifically adjust the timings. The app even suggests times for you by reading the files’ metadata. However, if you prefer, you can also view the metadata manually.
On top of this, Dynaper has a function titled Solar Wizard which can detect the sun’s coordinates in your area and set the periods accordingly. Dynaper is free to download, but to get rid of the watermark, you must upgrade to the premium plan.
Download:Dynaper (Free, premium version available)
Where to Find New Dynamic Wallpapers for macOS
Don’t feel like creating your own wallpapers? Try these resources to find great ready-made dynamic wallpapers for your Mac.
1. Dynamic Wallpaper Club’s Gallery
In addition to the custom dynamic wallpaper utility, Dynamic Wallpaper Club features a vast library of dynamic wallpapers you can download for free. The site’s collection relies primarily on its community for wallpapers. Because of this, you will discover a new one almost every day.
When you land on the website’s homepage, head into the Gallery tab to browse its existing set of backdrops. Dynamic Wallpaper Club even hosts 5K dynamic wallpapers that don’t cost anything.
24 Hour Wallpaper is a Mac app that brings you 58 exclusive dynamic wallpapers. Each sequence consists of over 30 images covering the entire 24-hour length of a day.
The app’s catalog includes locations such as New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Mojave Preserve, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, High Sierra, and more. Instead of stock images or gradients, 24 Hour Wallpaper houses professionally captured shots.
In addition, the developers boast that half of the wallpapers are from a single vantage point, which lets you truly experience the place’s ambiance. Similar to Dynamic Wallpaper Club, 24 Hour Wallpaper can synchronize to both the local time and the sun’s positions. The app supports multiple monitors, too. You can even customize some wallpapers’ durations and switch to a different location.
Since 24 Hour Wallpaper hires professionals for wallpapers, it’s not a free service. However, you can check a few of them out for free, as the developers have made four of the wallpapers available on the web. Head over to the 24 Hour Wallpaper website to give them a look before purchasing the app.
Dynwalls offers a handful of dynamic wallpapers. Most of them are space-themed, designed using NASA resources.
For instance, there’s one that follows the trajectory of the International Space Station. Another is composed of real and mesmerizing Earth photos by the Himawari-8 satellite that show the planet’s rotation throughout a day.
Apart from the planetary backdrops, Dynwalls houses two cityscape wallpapers at the time of writing. Dynamic wallpapers on Dynwalls are free to download. But for a few dollars, you can become a patron and earn early access to the latest wallpapers.
You’ll never be bored with your Mac’s wallpaper thanks to these services and apps. And you can easily create one yourself when you’ve tried all the pre-existing dynamic wallpapers.
You may love epic games that you can sink your teeth into, but life can get in the way. When things are hectic, what you need are digestible games that you can dip in and out of with ease.
That’s why we’ve rounded up a collection of PC games that either don’t take long to complete or are perfect to play for five minutes at a time. Game on!
If something beautiful is what you want, Abzu is the perfect choice. This is a meditative underwater adventure that puts you in control of a diver, swimming amongst the hidden wonders of the ocean, and it’s one of the most aesthetically pleasing games you can play.
There are objectives, but they’re relatively loose, and you can soak up the atmosphere as you explore coral reefs and ancient ruins. Discover a vast array of aquatic life and let the enchanting soundtrack pull you in. Abzu totals a couple of hours; you might find that you complete it in a single sitting, emerging from its moving and awe-inspiring grasp.
Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO are turn-based strategy games based around the two respective franchises. You’ll need to engage your brain as you take out enemies and overcome obstacles to make it to the end of each level. They increase in difficulty as you progress, but make for perfect bite-sized plays.
In Lara Croft GO, become Lara Croft as you explore lush forests and ancient tombs, wielding spears and guns to off deadly animals. In Hitman GO, become Agent 47 in an amazing diorama-style world, sneaking through passages and silently killing enemies. Each game offers a number of challenges and bonuses, helping them offer around six hours of gameplay apiece.
Take control of Henry, a man who has escaped his normal life to become a fire lookout in Wyoming. In this first-person adventure, you need to keep your eyes out for smoke in order to keep everyone safe. Your only human contact is a lady called Delilah, accessible via walkie-talkie. But something draws you out of your watchtower, sending you deep into unknown and mysterious territory.
If you like interesting stories, driven by well-acted dialogue, you can’t go wrong with Firewatch. As you play you’ll need to make choices. The decisions you make and how you respond to Delilah will shape the narrative. To make things even better, it’s all set against a stunning, colorful environment that is a joy to explore.
Rocket League is best described as soccer with cars. Although, it’s so much more than that. This is a fast-paced, exciting game that you can play online or with friends locally. Send your car whizzing across the track and flying through the air as everyone scrambles to smack the giant ball into the goal.
Although each match only lasts five minutes or so, be careful not to find yourself drawn in. The fun is addicting. Plus, there’s bonus modes inspired by hockey and basketball, along with a slew of cosmetic goodies to unlock. Rocket League is always being updated too, with new modes, arenas, and cars, ensuring it’ll stay fresh for a long time. You can even get mods to enhance Rocket League.
The Darkside Detective is a classic-style adventure game with delightful pixel artwork. Francis McQueen is an investigator in a police department that look into demons, cults, and all things creepy. But this isn’t a scary game. Actually, it boasts a hilarious wit, and you’ll enjoy solving nine cases of mayhem as you point and click your way to solutions.
It’s designed to be light and breezy and you can easily whizz through one of the cases in a single sitting. Though the cases do have elements connecting them, they can be enjoyed individually, meaning it doesn’t matter if it’s months before you get a chance to play again.
Despite its unwieldy title, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an utterly fantastic game. You simultaneously move two young boys within a fairy tale world, guiding them through land, air, and water as they desperately seek to cure their dying father.
The scale is epic and the puzzles inventive, but this one is more about the journey and the emotions it’s sure to stir in you. It’s not a difficult game, nor a long one, but that makes it perfect to pop on and get immersed into this brilliant fantasy adventure.
A Way Out is a unique experience. It can only be played with someone else, either locally or online, though only one of you needs to have bought the game. A Way Out follows Leo and Vincent, two prisoners who escape and go on the run from the authorities. You choose who you want to be and you and your partner must work together to progress through situations—like climbing up an elevator shaft, dodging police cars, or smuggling something past security guards.
Sometimes the game will separate you, other times you’ll both be on the screen at the same time, but it works really fluidly. While the story is a bit cliched at times, it’s undeniably tense, and you’ll find it an entertaining bonding experience. Clocking in at six hours total, separated into chapters, this is a great game to play when you and a friend are both free.
If you ever played Theme Hospital back in the day, Two Point Hospital is the spiritual successor to it. In fact, a lot of the same people worked on both games. This simulation puts you in charge of building and running your own hospital. That means creating clinics, researching cures, decorating, keeping staff morale high, and much more.
There’s a lot to dive into, but it’s surprisingly easy to pick up and play. It helps that the campaign mode is split into levels, each with their own objectives. Also, don’t worry if the idea of a hospital game sounds clinical and depressing. Two Point Hospital is all about the humor, as demonstrated by illnesses like being turned into a mime or having a light bulb for a head.
Admit it: you’ve always wanted to play as a bird lawyer in 1840s France. Okay, maybe you haven’t, but thanks to Aviary Attorney you really should. You play as lawyer Monsieur Jayjay Falcon, a literal bird, as he picks up cases, investigates Parisian crime scenes, and interviews witnesses. Alongside your trusty apprentice Sparrowson, you then take everything you’ve learned and battle it out in court.
The artwork is taken from 19th century caricaturist, J. J. Grandville, and it complements the comedic brilliance of the witty and biting script. The game is split into four chapters, spanning a number of in-game days. As such, you can drop in and out at leisure before readying yourself to take the stand.
When Valve released Portal in 2007, it took the world by storm thanks to its unique gameplay and witty writing. Set inside the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratory, you wield a gun that creates portals. You need to use this to solve puzzles within the environment, moving objects and yourself to get to the end. All the time you’re overseen by an omnipresent robot with questionable morals…
Valve followed this up four years later with a sequel, which expanded the scope and gameplay mechanics. It also included a co-op story mode for online and local fun. Both Portal and Portal 2 are pure genius, as highlighted by the endless awards they won.
More Games to Play for 5 Minutes at a Time
Not only can you pick all of these games up on a whim and play them in small chunks of time, they’re also some of the best games available on PC, period. So, we thoroughly recommend them to everyone.
The long-awaited PCI Express 4.0 update is coming to a computer near you. At least, if you buy a new computer or update your system hardware, you can opt for the much faster PCIe 4.0 over the current 3.0 standard.
But what is PCIe 4.0? Will it help your system boot faster? Here’s what’s new with PCIe 4.0.
What Is PCIe?
The Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) standard is a common motherboard connection. It allows various bits of system hardware to communicate with the motherboard and other parts of your system. Specifically, PCIe relates to system expansion cards, such as a graphics card (GPU), sound card, Wi-Fi card, or M.2 NVMe SSD.
As with most things, the higher the number, the faster the connection. PCIe 4.0 is the fourth iteration of the standard. Details of the PCIe 4.0 standard were published back in mid-2017. However, it has taken until now for any motherboard or chipset manufacturer to implement the new standard on upcoming hardware.
Your motherboard will have several PCIe slots. The PCIe slots come in several sizes: x1, x4, x8, and x16. The numbers detail how many “lanes” the PCIe slot has. More lanes equal a faster data connection. Most modern expansion cards work best in an x16 slot. That’s because it has the fastest data transfer rate. For instance, a modern GPU will use an x16 slot to transfer data rapidly to ensure you experience smooth and consistent gameplay.
One exception is for the M.2 form factor. M.2-based expansion cards are not compatible with the standard PCIe lane layout. Instead, M.2 expansion cards use PCI Express M.2 connections with either two or four lanes. PCIe M.2 replaces the older mSATA standard.
Is PCIe 4.0 Faster?
Yes, PCIe 4 is faster than the previous generation, PCIe 3. It is almost twice as fast, doubling the data transfer rate to 16 gigatransfers per second (G/Ts). However, G/Ts aren’t a very useful data transfer metric for the vast majority of people, including myself.
In more useful terms, an x16 PCIe 4.0 slot (the largest slot) has a one-way data transfer of up to 32GB/s. That means you can have a maximum of 64GB/s flowing in both directions. However, using the higher amount of 64GB/s is slightly disingenuous, because you don’t achieve that rate in a single direction.
Still, 32GB/s is a significant improvement on PCIe 3.0, which tops out at around 16GB/s.
Which Hardware Does PCIe 4.0 Speed Up?
Certain bits of hardware will receive a greater PCIe 4.0 performance boost than others. PCIe updates affect your system expansion cards, such as Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and graphics card. However, an update doesn’t always deliver an immediate boost. Why? Well, some of your system hardware is already operating at capacity.
Take your graphics cards. The idea of boosting its capabilities is great, right? Well, unless you’re gaming at a resolution of 3840×2160 with a refresh rate of 144Hz, you’re not even topping out the current PCIe 3.0 standard. Research by Intel into the Gaming Impact of PCIe 4.0 shows that current hardware still has a performance gap before maxing out the current standard. Check out the following table, which details the data bandwidth of various resolutions:
The biggest immediate performance gains for PCIe 4.0 come in your system storage. Corsair’s Force Series MP600 M.2 SSD supports PCIe 4.0 and with that, data transfer rates of up to 5GB/s—that’s fast! Something you might note about the Corsair MP600 is the enormous heatsink. You have to assume that a significant increase in temperature accompanies the PCIe 4.0 speed boost, so that is something else to bear in mind.
Can I Buy Hardware That Uses PCIe 4.0?
The introduction of new hardware supporting PCIe 4.0 is what is catching the eyes of businesses and consumers alike.
AMD X570 Chipset
AMD’s Ryzen CPU series continues to use the same processor socket: AM4. Your Ryzen CPU is interchangeable for any motherboard with an AM4 socket, no matter the Ryzen CPU generation. The difference now for AMD CPU owners is that if you want to make use of the faster PCIe 4.0 standard, you need a new motherboard built to the new standard.
The new AMD X570 chipset will support PCIe 4.0 out of box. Before the announcement, dribs and drabs of updates were adding PCIe 4.0 support to some AMD motherboards, primarily higher spec X470 and X370 models). But because of the demands of the PCIe 4.0 standard, retrospective updates aren’t possible for every chipset. Hence, AMD will no longer issue PCIe 4.0 updates for existing chipsets.
AMD’s senior technical marketing manager, Robert Hallock, explained the decision in a Reddit post.
“This is an error we are correcting. Pre-X570 boards will not support PCIe Gen 4. There’s no guarantee that older motherboards can reliably run the more stringent signaling requirements of Gen4, and we simply cannot have a mix of “yes, no, maybe” in the market for all the older motherboards. The potential for confusion is too high. When final BIOSes are released for 3rd Gen Ryzen (AGESA 1000+), Gen4 will not be an option anymore. We wish we could’ve enabled this backwards, but the risk is too great.”
Storage
Elsewhere, you can buy system storage prepped for PCIe 4.0. At Computex 2019, a global computer development conference, Gigabyte announced an obscene 8TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. Technically four 2TB SSDs woven into a single GPU-style expansion card, the drive has a staggering 15,000MB/s read and write rate.
If that sounds a little like overkill, Gigabyte also launched the AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD. The AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD hits around 5,000MB/s read speed, and 4,400MB/s write speed. The AORUS comes in 1TB or 2TB sizes.
Just as PCIe 4.0 begins gathering speed and people are already looking forward to PCIe 5.0. That’s because the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), the developers of the PCIe standard, announced PCIe 5.0 soon after PCIe devices finally hit the market. The finalized PCIe 4.0 specifications are arriving a couple of years behind schedule, causing some overlap between the two.
PCIe 5.0 will double the data transfer bandwidth again. That means an increase to 32G/Ts, or a one-way transfer rate up to 64GB/s.
Should You Upgrade to PCIe 4.0 Hardware?
The difficulty here lies with knowing where computer hardware is heading. The PCIe 4.0 reception is underwhelming, to say the least. That’s likely due to the fact most hardware isn’t making best use of the existing PCIe 3.0 standard, plus the knowledge that within the next two to five years, PCIe 5.0 will begin entering hardware production.
In that, the delay to PCIe 4.0 creates a difficult situation. If you were already going to upgrade and have the money to spend, considering PCIe 4.0 is worthwhile. If you’re mid-cycle, or just looking at a speculative upgrade, perhaps wait until more is known about the timeframe for PCIe 5.0.
