Daily Crunch: Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note 10

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1. This is Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 and 10+

The landscape has changed dramatically since the Galaxy Note was first unveiled in 2011, with Samsung pulling the rest of the industry into a world of bigger screens.

Now, the question is how to make the latest updates compelling. With the Note 10 and 10+ (available August 23 at a starting price of $950), Samsung is splitting the line into two distinct devices, and it’s getting rid of the headphone jack.

2. Google launches ‘Live View’ AR walking directions for Google Maps

The Live View feature isn’t designed with the idea that you’ll hold up your phone continually as you walk. Instead, in provides quick, easy and super-useful orientation by showing you arrows and big, readable street markers overlaid on the real scene in front of you.

3. Lyft’s stock is a roller coaster after its Q2 earnings release

Despite big losses, what made Wall Street happy was Lyft’s optimism for Q3, as well as the full-year 2019.

Photo: TechCrunch

4. Netflix signs multi-year deal with ‘Game of Thrones’ showrunners

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal is worth $200 million. This follows expensive Netflix pacts with other high-profile showrunners, including Ryan Murphy ($300 million) and Shonda Rhimes ($100 million).

5. Instagram ad partner secretly sucked up and tracked millions of users’ locations and stories

Hyp3r, an apparently trusted marketing partner of Facebook and Instagram, has been secretly collecting and storing location and other data on millions of users, violating the policies of the social networks, according to Business Insider.

6. Sperm storage startups are raising millions

Both Dadi and Legacy recently raised funding, hoping to leverage venture capital dollars to become the dominant men’s fertility brand.

7. How to fundraise in August

Danny Crichton argues that although August is generally considered a black hole for VC, using it effectively for fundraising is perhaps the single most important factor for success in the coming season. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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‘The Operators’: Experts from Airbnb and Carta on building and managing your company’s customer support

Apple Music for Artists comes out of beta with an iOS app and Shazam data

Apple Music launched its data dashboard for musicians more than a year ago. Today, the company is taking that product — Apple Music for Artists — out of beta, and adding some new features in the process.

For one thing, it’s no longer a web-only product, because Apple is releasing an iPhone app. On both web and iOS, Apple Music for Artists allows musicians and their teams to see how often a song has been played, how many listeners it’s reaching and how many times it’s been purchased.

There’s also an “insights” section designed to highlight noteworthy data at any given moment, like how the first week of a new song compares to the first weeks of previous songs, or when the popularity of a song is spiking, or if they’ve hit a big milestone like 1 million plays.

Apple is also introducing data from Shazam, the music-recognition app it acquired last year. The idea is to capture listener behavior that’s very different from seeking out an artist or a specific song — it’s more about a moment of spontaneous connection, when you hear a song and think, “Whoa, what’s this?” (This also provides a window to behavior beyond Apple Music listeners.)

One of the goals is to give musicians the data they need to actually guide their decisions. For example, they might see that a song that’s not many plays compared to their big singles, but it’s doing surprisingly well on Shazam — so maybe it’s time to shift promotion.

And the data is also browsable by city, on a map. So if someone’s planning a tour, they can use this to data to choose which cities or visit, or to find the correct venue size in a given market.

Apple says all the data (including Shazam data) goes back to the launch of Apple Music in 2015. Any artist can claim their account for free.

Apple Music surpasses 60 million subscribers

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Video Understanding Using Temporal Cycle-Consistency Learning

Posted by Debidatta Dwibedi, Research Associate, Google Research

In the last few years there has been great progress in the field of video understanding. For example, supervised learning and powerful deep learning models can be used to classify a number of possible actions in videos, summarizing the entire clip with a single label. However, there exist many scenarios in which we need more than just one label for the entire clip. For example, if a robot is pouring water into a cup, simply recognizing the action of “pouring a liquid” is insufficient to predict when the water will overflow. For that, it is necessary to track frame-by-frame the amount of water in the cup as it is being filled. Similarly, a baseball coach who is comparing stances of pitchers may want to retrieve video frames from the precise moment that the ball leaves the pitchers’ hands. Such applications require models to understand each frame of a video.

However, applying supervised learning to understand each individual frame in a video is expensive, since per-frame labels in videos of the action of interest are needed. This requires that annotators apply fine-grained labels to videos by manually adding unambiguous labels to every frame in each video. Only then can the model be trained, and only on a single action. Training on new actions requires the process to be repeated. With the increasing demand for fine-grained labeling, necessary for applications ranging from robotics to sports analytics, this makes the need for scalable learning algorithms that can understand videos without the tedious labeling process increasingly pertinent.

We propose a potential solution using a self-supervised learning method called Temporal Cycle-Consistency Learning (TCC). This novel approach uses correspondences between examples of similar sequential processes to learn representations particularly well-suited for fine-grained temporal understanding of videos. We are also releasing our TCC codebase to enable end-users to apply our self-supervised learning algorithm to new and novel applications.

Representation Learning Using TCC
A plant growing from a seedling to a tree; the daily routine of getting up, going to work and coming back home; or a person pouring themselves a glass of water are all examples of events that happen in a particular order. Videos capturing such processes provide temporal correspondences across multiple instances of the same process. For example, when pouring a drink one could be reaching for a teapot, a bottle of wine, or a glass of water to pour from. Key moments are common to all pouring videos (e.g., the first touch to the container or the container being lifted from the ground) and exist independent of many varying factors, such as visual changes in viewpoint, scale, container style, or the speed of the event. TCC attempts to find such correspondences across videos of the same action by leveraging the principle of cycle-consistency, which has been applied successfully in many problems in computer vision, to learn useful visual representations by aligning videos.

The objective of this training algorithm is to learn a frame encoder, using any network architecture that processes images, such as ResNet. To do so, we pass all frames of the videos to be aligned through the encoder to produce their corresponding embeddings. We then select two videos for TCC learning, say video 1 (the reference video) and video 2. A reference frame is chosen from video 1 and its nearest neighbor frame (NN₂) from video 2 is found in the embedding space (not pixel space). We then cycle back by finding the nearest neighbor of NN₂ in video 1, which we call NN₁. If the representations are cycle-consistent, then the nearest neighbor frame in video 1 (NN₁) should refer back to the starting reference frame.

We train the embedder using the distance between the starting reference frame and NN₁ as the training signal. As training proceeds, the embeddings improve and reduce the cycle-consistency loss by developing a semantic understanding of each video frame in the context of the action being performed.

Using TCC, we learn embeddings with temporally fine-grained understanding of an action by aligning related videos.

What Does TCC Learn?
In the following figure, we show a model trained using TCC on videos from the Penn Action Dataset of people performing squat exercises. Each point on the left corresponds to frame embeddings, with the highlighted points tracking the embedding of the current video frame. Notice how the embeddings move collectively in spite of many differences in pose, lighting, body and object type. TCC embeddings encode the different phases of squatting without being provided explicit labels.

Right: Input videos of people performing a squat exercise. The video on the top left is the reference. The other videos show nearest neighbor frames (in the TCC embedding space) from other videos of people doing squats. Left: The corresponding frame embeddings move as the action is performed.

Applications of TCC
The learned per-frame embeddings enable an array of interesting applications:

• Few-shot action phase classification
  When few labeled videos are available for training, the few-shot scenario, TCC performs very well. In fact, TCC can classify the phases of different actions with as few as a single labeled video. In the next figure we compare to other supervised and self-supervised learning approaches in the few-shot setting. We find that supervised learning requires about 50 videos with each frame labeled to achieve the same accuracy that self-supervised methods achieve with just one fully labeled video.
  

  

  Comparison of self-supervised and supervised learning for few-shot action phase classification.

• Unsupervised video alignment
  Aligning or synchronizing videos manually becomes prohibitively difficult as the number of videos increases. Using TCC, many videos can be aligned by selecting the nearest neighbor to each frame in a reference video, without the need for additional labels, as demonstrated in the figure below.
  

  

  Results of unsupervised video alignment on videos of people pitching baseball using the distance between frames in the TCC space. The reference video used for alignment is shown in the upper left panel.

• Label/modality transfer between videos
  Just as TCC finds similar frames by using a nearest neighbor search in the embedding space, it can transfer metadata associated with any frame in one video to its matching frame in another video. This metadata can be in the form of temporal semantic labels or other modalities, such as sound or text. In the video below we show two examples where we can transfer the sound of liquid being poured into a cup from one video to another.
  
• Per-frame Retrieval
  With TCC, each frame in a video can be used as a query for retrieval of similar frames by looking up the nearest neighbors in the learned embedding space. The embeddings are powerful enough to differentiate between frames that look quite similar, such as frames just before or after the release of a bowling ball.
  

  

  We can perform retrieval from videos on a per-frame basis, i.e., any frame can be used to look up similar frames in a large collection of videos. The retrieved nearest neighbors show that the model captures fine-grained differences in the scene.

Release
We are releasing our codebase, which includes implementations of a number of state-of-the-art self-supervised learning methods, including TCC. This codebase will be useful for researchers working on video understanding, as well as artists looking to use machine learning to align videos to create mosaics of people, animals, and objects moving synchronously.

Acknowledgements
This is joint work with Yusuf Aytar, Jonathan Tompson, Pierre Sermanet, and Andrew Zisserman. The authors would like to thank Alexandre Passos, Allen Lavoie, Anelia Angelova, Bryan Seybold, Priya Gupta, Relja Arandjelović, Sergio Guadarrama, Sourish Chaudhuri, and Vincent Vanhoucke for their help with this project. The videos used in this project come from the PennAction dataset. We thank the creators of PennAction for curating such an interesting dataset.

Artificial Intelligence: Bridging the rift between Aspiration & Activity

I was reading an article on Artificial Intelligence at MIT Sloan Review regarding a study that they and The Boston Consulting Group conducted. Some of the interesting results of that study are (you can read it here):

• Almost 85% believe AI will allow their companies to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage
• Only about one in five companies has incorporated AI in some offerings or processes
• Only one in 20 companies has extensively incorporated AI in offerings or processes
• Less than 39% of all companies have an AI strategy in place
• The largest companies — those with at least 100,000 employees — are the most likely to have an AI strategy, but only half have one

These numbers show that though there is a lot of hype about AI & automation, the adoption is still very low. Though it is in-line with any new disruption- expectations exceeding reality & then finally realigning as initial requirements are exceeded, just met, or even unmet, it is logical to assume that innovators & early adopters are less in this area.

The biggest challenge is the lack of proper sanitized data to train the Bots. At an enterprise, for any AI solution to make returns requires rich & diverse sets of data to train the algorithms. In addition, with AI algorithms, the fundamental logic of Garbage-In-Garbage-Out holds, so the quality of data is also very important. Moreover, talent & resource shortages along with regulatory compliance adds to the complexity in adoption of AI.

Though these challenges and governance mechanisms will get sorted out, there are other challenges which needs to be overcome to realize the full benefits of AI. Thinking of AI use case as point solution, rather than an end-to-end solution is one of them. Automating just single task may not help enterprises improve the overall effectiveness & efficiency of their processes. Until the time, business processes operate in silos, as a use-case of AI, the overall potential will not be achieved.

The solution here is to re-engineer the enterprise operations, looking at them from new angles and trying to leverage the organizational cognition. The way to start this journey is to find a common ground between humans and machines, leveraging the advantages of both. I wrote in my previous article (read here) regarding this - humans can take decisions when factors are abstract and have a sense of empathy, rather than through modelling and systematic training; designing the right interfaces between the two entities is very important.

AI can transform the business operations, but first, we must understand what do we want from it, how do we align it with our current structure, and how to best leverage the organizational cognition with it. With this focus, it is easier to start thinking in terms of getting AI adopted in your enterprises.

The Navy taps YouTube creators for its latest recruiting campaign

The US Navy is turning to YouTube creators for help in finding technical recruits.

Captain Matt Boren, the chief marketing officer at US Navy Recruiting Command, told me that in that while past recruiting efforts have focused on TV and other traditional media, that’s no longer the best route to reach the post-millennial generation.

“For our audience now, if they want to find something, they’re using the search engine on YouTube,” Boren said. “We had to be where our audience was.”

So the Navy worked with its agencies MLY&R and Wavemake, along with Google, to identify YouTube creators with a focus on science, technology and math, then invited those creators to highlight different technical roles and environments. Specifically, Kevin Leiber (a.k.a. Vsauce2) filmed aboard a nuclear submarine, Jake Koehler (a.k.a. Dallmyd) worked with an explosives specialist and William Osman talked to a cybersecurity team.

“We gave the creators a great deal of free rein,” Boren added. “We didn’t want to come off as the Navy trying to buy their loyalty … We wanted to give them the opportunity to spend time in a work environment so they can understand and relate to them and really [convey] that to their audience.”

While the “Sailor Vs.” series (launching today) only involves three YouTube creators, Boren said he’s open to experimenting with more influencer marketing campaigns in the future, especially since those broader media-consumption trends aren’t going away.

And that’s all happening as the Navy is facing significant recruiting challenges — Boren estimated that it needs to fill 50,000 roles this year (though highly technical roles only make up a small percentage of that total).

What VidCon means for the future of social media platforms

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Google adds playable podcast episodes to search results

Google is making it easier to find and listen to audio content specific to your search interests, with playable episodes surfaced in results that start rolling out today.

Playable podcasts will show up in results when you use “podcasts” as a keyword in your search, in combination with other terms. It’s intended to deliver you relevant results freed from the confines of a dedicated podcast player, and Google also intends to extend this search feature to queries that don’t even specify “podcast” in future as it refines its algorithms.

Google is also going to be rolling out this inline playable results feature for the search function in Google Podcasts on the web, and for Google Assistant. If you’re logged in, it’ll also sync your results so that you can pick up from wherever you left off in the dedicated Google Podcasts app.

This should be good for discoverability, since it means that a much broader potential audience can stumble across your podcasts then would be possible with existing tools, and sample them on the spot. But Google still plans to roll out finer controls for publishers, that mean you can specify where people can listen to them, and presumably where they can’t.

It’s yet another sign that podcasts are slowly and surely becoming more prevalent and mainstream than ever, and that Google is very interested in making sure that it doesn’t fall behind on ensuring this content is part of its overall search index and not the exclusive domain of other, more closed ecosystems that exist outside its sphere of influence.

Google is going to be rolling this out gradually beginning today, with initial availability open to U.S. users searching in English.

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Google Travel adds flight price notifications and a limited time flight price guarantee

Google is building out its travel product with more features to convince you to use it to book flights and plan trips directly, instead of having to go anywhere else. The company is adding more sophisticated pricing features, including historical price comparison for specific itineraries – and notifications about when a price is likely to spike or when it’s at the absolute lowest. It’s also offering a pricing guarantee for bookings made in the next couple of weeks, so you’ll get be refunded the difference if Google says a flight price won’t drop and it subsequently does.

For any flights booked through Google that originate in the U.S. (regardless of destination) between August 13 and September 2, for which Google sends you an alert notifying you that the price is predicted to be at its lowest, the company will alert you if it does drop and then send you a refund on the price difference between what it predicted (ie., what you paid) and the lowest actual fare.

It’s an attractive deal, and the limited time offer is probably only even available because this is new and Google wants to make sure people feel absolutely comfortable trusting their predictions. The company likely has the most readily available, cross-airline information about flight availability, route popularity and price in the world, however, backed by some of the most sophisticated machine learning on the planet, so it sounds like it’s probably a pretty safe bet for them to make.

Google Travel is also adding a number of features once you actually book you trip – it’ll suggest next steps for planning your trip, and then help you find the best neighbourhoods, hotels, restaurants and stuff to do. Plus, reservations and other trip details will automatically carry over to the Google Maps app on your iOS or Android.

Overall, it’s clear that Google is making an aggressive play to own your overall travel and trip planning – and it has the advantage of having more data, better engineering, and a whole lot more in the way of design skills when compared to just about every dedicated travel booking company out there.

Google launches ‘Live View’ AR walking directions for Google Maps

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There Are 2 Times of Year You Should Never Job Hunt

Job searching can be nerve-wracking. A lot of it comes down to luck and timing, even if you have a stellar resume and skills. However, there are ways you can increase your chances and shorten your job search.

Those ways are through “timing“—literally. If you’ve got the option to do so, you should avoid putting out your resumes during specific times of the year where there is little to no hiring activity.

To avoid those downturns, here are the worst times of the year to job search, and why. We’ll also cover what to do if you find yourself looking for employment during a slump.

The Worst Time of Year: November-December

November and December can be very slow hiring months.

Job posts do go up, and according to the BBC the best time to search for a job is “Tuesday mornings in December”. But by the time the holidays swing around, many companies are operating at half-capacity. Hiring managers are either buried under year-end tasks or already on their break. If you work in a seasonal industry, most temp workers have already been hired.

Additionally, some companies simply don’t have the money to hire any more people. They’re waiting for January when they’ll get access to their new yearly budget. This is why you may see job postings go up, but you don’t hear back about your applications until January rolls around.

What to do instead of job searching:

• If you’re job hunting during this period, use December to tweak your resume and cover letter. That way you can hit the ground running in January.
• You can also use this time to spruce up your online social media accounts, such as LinkedIn. It’s a good, short task that can be done in a couple of weeks.

If you’re looking for more tips, here’s how to create an amazing LinkedIn profile.

The Second Worst Time of Year: June-July-August

June, July, and August are the second-worst times of the year that you can job search.

This is because hiring managers are on vacation, and decisions can’t be made without their approval. If you’re working in a seasonal industry such as tourism, temp positions will already be filled.

Those jobs that do get posted during the summer months usually target students. A lot of them are entry level or minimum wage. Because of the influx of recently graduated students, the positions that are being posted might not be long-term.

With students competing for these scarce jobs, the competition for employment will also be fierce. It might not be tenable if you’re looking for a gig that’s full-time or long-term.

What to do instead of job searching:

• The summer months can feel like a drag, so one of the best things you can do—beyond general resume edits—is take on extra training to increase your chances.
• Start personal summer projects to keep yourself busy. This helps to improve your portfolio and skills.
• Overall, look for ways to make yourself more competitive in the workforce.

Is your job search currently stalled? Here are some steps to get your job hunt back on track, especially if you end up looking during the summer.

The Best Times of Year for Job Searching

While the focus of this article is how to avoid the worst times of the year, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the best times of the year to job hunt, too.

January and February

One of the best times of the year is January heading into February. You might think that these months are slow, and in the first two weeks of January, this is definitely the case. People are still coming back from their holidays, and they have to clear out their inboxes.

During this time of the year, however, upper management is back in the office with a full budget to hire people. They’ll also be looking to fill those last-minute positions that were posted in December.

The good news about this time of the year is that the positions that show up are often long-term and full-time, as that’s what the budget allows for. So if you’re looking for top-tier jobs this is definitely the time to strike.

The best thing you can do for yourself during this time period? Apply, apply, apply. Send out your resumes like your life depends on it because those good jobs can dry up fast.

The Spring Rush

The spring rush—between March to May—is the second-best time to go job searching. During this time period, it’s a mix of entry-to-mid-level positions, as companies are hoping to fill up any spots that did not get snapped up during the winter splurge.

Unfortunately—because this hiring period coincides with the same time that a lot of students get out of university—there will be a lot of competition. These positions will go quickly due to the high demand, so make sure to take advantage of this rush and send out your resumes before you head into the summer slump.

Back to School

The final time to get hired during the year is the “back to school” fall rush before the winter holidays, roughly from September to October. There’s a lot of new products being launched during this time period, and a lot of demand for temporary workers if you work in a seasonal field.

Because of the nature of these jobs being offered (often temp), many of the positions will not be the full-time, long-term jobs that many people crave. Companies are holding off on those positions until the new year.

That said, you can definitely find employment during this time period. Our recommendation is to take a look and see what’s out there.

Time Your Chances

It’s important to note that these times are not a hard and fast rule. Some companies do buck the trend and post during the off season. However it’s much rarer, and that’s why your chances of finding something decrease.

With that in mind, it’s best to view this article as a general guide to help you budget your time even as you keep knocking on doors. If you do apply strategically, you’ll be able to shorten that job search by playing to a long-term strategy.

Looking for more tips? Here’s how to use Indeed to its full job-searching potential.

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How to Play Local Files on Your Streaming Devices

Streaming devices allow you to stream content on Netflix, Hulu, DirecTV, et al. However, you can also play local files on your streaming devices. Because HDMI cables are so passe.

In this article we explain how to play local files on your streaming devices. So, read on if you own an Android TV, Google Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV.

How to Play Local Files on Android TV and Google Chromecast

Android TV devices come with built-in Chromecast technology. As such, the process for playing local files on both devices is identical. The reliance on Chromecast means you don’t need to do anything special on the Android TV device itself—the entire process is instigated from the device you want to cast from.

If you own a Windows, macOS, or Android device, the process is easy. Unfortunately, iOS users will find it to be slightly more cumbersome, but it’s still possible.

To play local files from a Windows or macOS computer on your Android TV or Chromecast device, follow the steps below:

1. Make sure your computer and your streaming device are both on the same Wi-Fi network.
2. Install Google Chrome on your computer.
3. Open Chrome and go to More > Cast.
4. Select your Android TV device from the list of options.
5. In the Sources dropdown menu, select Cast Desktop.
6. Start playing the local media you want to watch.

If you don’t want to use Google Chrome, some third-party apps (such as VLC Player and MX Player) can accomplish the same goal. The setup processes, however, are much more convoluted.

To play a file that’s locally saved on your Android phone or tablet, you just need to swipe down on the notification bar, choose Cast, and tap on the name of your Android TV or Chromecast device. Your Android screen will begin mirroring, and you can start playing your media in the usual way.

The only reliable solution for iOS users is to first cast your iOS device to a computer using an app like AirServer, then mirror your computer screen to the Chromecast or Android TV device using the method described above. In all honesty, it might make more sense to buy an Apple TV instead.

How to Play Local Files on Roku

Roku devices use Miracast technology to allow you to mirror other devices’ screens on your TV screen.

This time, macOS users find themselves at a disadvantage. Windows and Android both natively support Miracast, while iOS can play locally saved videos on Roku via the official Roku app. Poor macOS users will need a third-party solution.

To play local media from Windows on a Roku, follow these steps:

1. Check whether your device is running Roku OS 7.7 or later. If it is, you do not need to perform any actions on the Roku itself. If it isn’t, go to Settings > System > About and install the necessary updates.
2. On your Windows machine, open the Action Center.
3. Click on Connect.
4. Choose your Roku device from the list.
5. Agree to the connection using the on-screen prompts.
6. Start playing the media you want to watch.

On Android, the process is the same as the one described for Chromecast connections. Swipe down on the notification bar, choose Cast, and tap on the name of your Roku device. Alternatively, go to Settings > Connected Devices > Connection Preferences > Cast.

If you have an iOS device, you need to install the official Roku app. You can then play photos, videos, and songs on your Roku from your iPhone/iPad using the Play on Roku feature. To get started, open the Roku app and tap on Photos+ on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. The app will prompt you to choose either Music, Photos, or Videos.

Unfortunately, macOS devices will need a third-party app. AirBeam is one of the most popular solutions, but it will set you back $10.

How to Play Local Files on Amazon Fire TV

Following what is now becoming a recurring theme, it’s easy to play local media on a Windows or Android device via an Amazon Fire TV device, but macOS and iOS users will struggle a bit more.

Before you try and play your local media on an Amazon Fire TV, you first need to enable the feature on your Fire TV device. To do so, go to Settings > Display & Sounds > Enable Screen Mirroring. Depending on your Fire TV model, you may also be able to hold down the Home button on your remote to access a screen mirroring shortcut.

Next, head to the device where you’ve saved the local media you want to play. On Windows, go to Action Center > Connect and click on your device’s name; on Android go to Settings > Connected Devices > Connection Preferences > Cast and locate your Amazon Fire TV in the list of options.

Apple users should turn to Airscreen. It’s an app in the Amazon App Store, and you can install it directly on your Fire TV device. Unlike many of its competitors, Airscreen is entirely free to download and use.

How to Play Local Files on Apple TV

Finally, Apple users can turn the tables. It’s easy to play any local media from your iPhone, iPad, or macOS device on an Apple TV box using AirPlay. Android and Windows users need third-party solutions.

To use AirPlay on iOS, use the following steps:

1. Make sure both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network.
2. Open the Control Center.
3. Tap on Screen Mirroring.
4. Select your Apple TV from the list of devices.
5. Enter a code if prompted.
6. Start playing the local media you want to watch.

If you want to play local media from a Mac, follow these steps instead:

1. Make sure both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network.
2. Click on the AirPlay icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen. If you don’t see it, go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Displays > Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available.
3. Select your Apple TV from the list of devices.

Android users should check out the AllCast app to play local media via AirPlay. If you’re running Windows, check out AirParrot 2.

Other Ways to Play Local Media on Streaming Devices

If none of the above helps you play local media on your streaming devices, you can also use third-party apps like Plex, Kodi, and Emby.

Once again, though, there are some caveats. Plex and Emby require you to be running their companion server apps on a Windows, Mac, Linux, or NAS setup. Kodi, meanwhile, is not available on iOS and is challenging to use as a central server for inexperienced users.

If you’d like to learn more about streaming devices, make sure you check out our article comparing Roku Ultra vs. Chromecast Ultra vs. Apple TV 4K vs. Fire TV 4K. Or, if you’re a little more tech savvy, here are the best NAS solutions for a Plex server.

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Google launches ‘Live View’ AR walking directions for Google Maps

Google is launching a beta of its augmented reality walking directions feature for Google Maps, with a broader launch that will be available to all iOS and Android devices that have system-level support for AR. On iOS, that means ARKit-compatible devices, and on Android, that means any smartphones that support Google’s ARcore, so long as ‘Street View’ is also available where you are.

Originally revealed earlier this year, Google Maps’ augmented reality feature has been available in an early alpha mode to both Google Pixel users and to Google Maps Local Guides, but starting today it’ll be rolling out to everyone (this might take a couple weeks depending on when you actually get pushed the update). We took a look at some of the features available with the early version in March, and it sounds like the version today should be pretty similar, including the ability to just tap on any location nearby in Maps, tap the ‘Directions’ button and then navigating to ‘Walking,’ then tapping ‘Live View’ which should appear newer the bottom of the screen.

The Live View feature isn’t designed with the idea that you’ll hold up your phone continually as you walk – instead, in provides quick, easy and super useful orientation, by showing you arrows and big, readable street markers overlaid on the real scene in front of you. That makes it much, much easier to orient yourself in unfamiliar settings, which is hugely beneficial when traveling in unfamiliar territory.

Google Maps is also getting a number of other upgrades, including a one-stop ‘Reservations’ tab in Maps for all your stored flights, hotel stays and more – plus it’s backed up offline. This, and a new redesigned Timeline which is airing on Android devices only for now, should also be rolling out to everyone over the next few weeks.

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Google launches ‘Live View’ AR walking directions for Google Maps

Google is launching a beta of its augmented reality walking directions feature for Google Maps, with a broader launch that will be available to all iOS and Android devices that have system-level support for AR. On iOS, that means ARKit-compatible devices, and on Android, that means any smartphones that support Google’s ARcore, so long as ‘Street View’ is also available where you are.

Originally revealed earlier this year, Google Maps’ augmented reality feature has been available in an early alpha mode to both Google Pixel users and to Google Maps Local Guides, but starting today it’ll be rolling out to everyone (this might take a couple weeks depending on when you actually get pushed the update). We took a look at some of the features available with the early version in March, and it sounds like the version today should be pretty similar, including the ability to just tap on any location nearby in Maps, tap the ‘Directions’ button and then navigating to ‘Walking,’ then tapping ‘Live View’ which should appear newer the bottom of the screen.

The Live View feature isn’t designed with the idea that you’ll hold up your phone continually as you walk – instead, in provides quick, easy and super useful orientation, by showing you arrows and big, readable street markers overlaid on the real scene in front of you. That makes it much, much easier to orient yourself in unfamiliar settings, which is hugely beneficial when traveling in unfamiliar territory.

Google Maps is also getting a number of other upgrades, including a one-stop ‘Reservations’ tab in Maps for all your stored flights, hotel stays and more – plus it’s backed up offline. This, and a new redesigned Timeline which is airing on Android devices only for now, should also be rolling out to everyone over the next few weeks.

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Japan’s mobile payments app PayPay reaches 10 million users

Paytm, India’s biggest mobile payments firm, now has 10 million customers in Japan, the company said as it pushes to expand its reach in international markets.
Paytm entered Japan last October after forming a joint venture with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan called PayPay.

In addition to 10 million users, PayPay is now supported by 1 million local stores in Japan, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm said Thursday. The mobile payment services has clocked 100 million transactions to date, he claimed. In June, PayPay had 8 million users.

“Thank you India for your inspiration and giving us chance to build world class tech…,” he posted in a tweet.

More to follow…

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Google and Twitter are using AMD’s new EPYC Rome processors in their datacenters

AMD announced that Google and Twitter are among the companies now using EPYC Rome processors during a launch event for the 7nm chips today. The release of EPYC Rome marks a major step in AMD’s processor war with Intel, which said last month that its own 7nm chips, Ice Lake, won’t be available until 2021 (though it is expected to release its 10nm node this year).

Intel is still the biggest datacenter processor maker by far, however, and also counts Google and Twitter among its customers. But AMD’s latest releases and its strategy of undercutting competitors with lower pricing have quickly transformed it into a formidable rival.

Google has used other AMD chips before, including in its “Millionth Server,” built in 2008, and says it is now the first company to use second-generation EPYC chips in its datacenters. Later this year, Google will also make virtual machines that run on the chips available to Google Cloud customers.

In a press statement, Bart Sano, Google vice president of engineering, said “AMD 2nd Gen Epyc processors will help us continue to do what we do best in our datacenters: innovate. Its scalable compute, memory and I/O performance will expand out ability to drive innovation forward in our infrastructure and will give Google Cloud customers the flexibility to choose the best VM for their workloads.”

Twitter plans to begin using EPYC Rome in its datacenter infrastructure later this year. Its senior director of engineering, Jennifer Fraser, said the chips will reduce the energy consumption of its datacenters. “Using the AMD EPYC 7702 processor, we can scale out our compute clusters with more cores in less space using less power, which translates to 25% lower [total cost of ownership] for Twitter.”

In a comparison test between 2-socket Intel Xeon 6242 and AMD EPYC 7702P processors, AMD claimed that its chips were able to reduce total cost of ownership by up to 50% across “numerous workloads.” AMD EPYC Rome’s flagship is the 64-core, 128-thread 7742 chip, with a 2.25 base frequency, 225 default TDP and 256MB of total cache, starts at $6,950.

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Africa’s top mobile phone seller Transsion to list in Chinese IPO

Chinese mobile-phone and device maker Transsion will list in an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, Transsion confirmed to TechCrunch. 

The company—which has a robust Africa sales network—could raise up to 3 billion yuan (or $426 million).

“The company’s listing-related work is running smoothly. The registration application and issuance process is still underway, with the specific timetable yet to be confirmed by the CSRC and Shanghai Stock Exchange,” a spokesperson for Transsion’s Office of the Secretary to the Chairman told TechCrunch via email.

Transsion’s IPO prospectus was downloadable (in Chinese) and its STAR Market listing application available on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s website.

STAR is the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s new Nasdaq-style board for tech stocks that also went live in July with some 25 companies going public. 

Headquartered in Shenzhen—where African e-commerce unicorn Jumia also has a logistics supply-chain facility—Transsion is a top-seller of smartphones in Africa under its Tecno brand.

The company has a manufacturing facility in Ethiopia and recently expanded its presence in India.

Transsion plans to spend the bulk of its STAR Market raise (1.6 billion yuan or $227 million) on building more phone assembly hubs and around 430 million yuan ($62 million) on research and development,  including a mobile phone R&D center in Shanghai—a company spokesperson said. 

Transsion recently announced a larger commitment to capturing market share in India, including building an industrial park in the country for manufacture of phones to Africa.

The IPO comes after Transsion announced its intent to go public and filed its first docs with the Shanghai Stock Exchange in April. 

Listing on the STAR Market will put Transsion on the freshly minted exchange seen as an extension of Beijing’s ambition to become a hub for high-potential tech startups to raise public capital. Chinese regulators lowered profitability requirements, for the exchange, which means pre-profit ventures can list.

Transsion’s IPO process comes when the company is actually in the black. The firm generated 22.6 billion yuan ($3.29 billion) in revenue in 2018, up from 20 billion yuan from a year earlier. Net profit for the year slid to 654 million yuan, down from 677 million yuan in 2017, according to the firm’s prospectus.

Transsion sold 124 million phones globally in 2018, per company data. In Africa, Transsion holds 54% of the feature phone market—through its brands Tecno, Infinix, and Itel—and in smartphone sales is second to Samsung and before Huawei, according to International Data Corporation stats.

Transsion has R&D centers in Nigeria and Kenya and its sales network in Africa includes retail shops in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Egypt. The company also attracted attention for being one of the first known device makers to optimize its camera phones for African complexions.

On a recent research trip to Addis Ababa, TechCrunch learned the top entry-level Tecno smartphone was the W3, which lists for 3600 Ethiopian Birr, or roughly $125.

In Africa, Transsion’s ability to build market share and find a sweet spot with consumers on price and features gives it prominence in the continent’s booming tech scene.

Diving deep into Africa’s blossoming tech scene

Africa already has strong mobile-phone penetration, but continues to undergo a conversion from basic USSD phones, to feature phones, to smartphones.

Smartphone adoption on the continent is low, at 34 percent, but expected to grow to 67 percent by 2025, according to GSMA.

This, added to an improving internet profile, is key to Africa’s tech scene. In top markets for VC and startup origination—such as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa—thousands of ventures are building business models around mobile-based products and digital applications.

If Transsion’s IPO enables higher smartphone conversion on the continent that could enable more startups and startup opportunities—from fintech to VOD apps.

Another interesting facet to Transsion’s IPO is its potential to create greater influence from China in African tech, in particular if the Shenzhen company moves strongly toward venture investing.

Comparatively, China’s engagement with African startups has been light compared to China’s deal-making on infrastructure and commodities—further boosted in recent years as Beijing pushes its Belt and Road plan.

Transsion’s IPO move is the second recent event—after Chinese owned Opera’s big venture spending in Nigeria—to reflect greater Chinese influence and investment in the continent’s digital scene.

So in coming years, China could be less known for building roads, bridges, and buildings in Africa and more for selling smartphones and providing VC for African startups.

Opera founded startup OPay raises $50M for mobile finance in Nigeria

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You Can Now Play Journey on Your iPhone

Journey is now available to play on iOS, with the PlayStation classic getting a surprise release on Apple’s mobile platform. Journey is an amazing game that feels like more than the sum of its parts, making it well worth playing on your iPhone or iPad.

What Is Journey?

Journey is an indie adventure game that first landed on the PS3 in 2012. It has since been released on the PS4 and Windows. It was made by Thatgamecompany, which has also made Flow, Flower, and (in July 2019) Sky: Children of the Night.

Journey sees the player controlling a mysterious hooded figure traveling towards a distant mountain. Your goal is to reach the peak of that mountain despite what you may encounter along the way. And telling you anything else about Journey could ruin the game for you.

How to Play Journey on iOS

Journey is now available to buy on iOS, with developer Annapurna Interactive having ported the game to Apple’s mobile platform. It isn’t free, sadly, but for a small asking price you can play a game on your mobile that you’ll probably remember for ever.

Journey by @thatgamecompany is now available on the App Store // https://t.co/3X3xR5avMG pic.twitter.com/UZkMMwNOgN

— Annapurna Interactive (@A_i) August 6, 2019

Having not played the game on iOS ourselves it’s impossible to know how it actually plays on mobile. However, it’s the type of game that should transfer well to a touchscreen device, as it isn’t particularly fast-paced or full of tricky maneuvers.

Download: Journey on iOS ($4.99)

Journey Is a Game Worth Experiencing

Journey is worth experiencing at least once. It was one of the first titles in the wave of video games which could genuinely claim to be art. While Journey isn’t the longest game in the world, the experience is likely to stay with you long after the credits roll.

If you balk at the idea of paying to play a mobile game, even one as good as Journey, we have other recommendations for you. Here are some free mobile games that offer tons of content, and here are some free retro games worth playing on your smartphone.

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HBO Offers Free Episodes of Shows Recommended by Humans

HBO has launched a site called Recommended by Humans. And as the name suggests, this recommends HBO shows, plus movies and documentaries, based on reviews by actual human beings. Which HBO thinks beat algorithms hands-down. But is HBO right?

Humans vs. Algorithms: Which Is Best?

There are so many good TV shows around these days it’s difficult to know where to begin. Your choices are likely to be limited by which services you subscribe to, but beyond that, you’re reliant on recommendations made by family, friends, and the services themselves.

Most streaming services use algorithms to recommend specific content to users. So, if you have finished Stranger Things, for example, you’ll get recommendations for other quirky, nostalgic shows with a fantastical element. But HBO is trying something different.

Watch HBO Shows Recommended by Humans

Recommended by Humans is an attempt to return to the days when we would watch shows based on other people’s recommendations. It’s filled with hundreds of tweets that mention HBO shows, and video testimonials of people explaining why they love them.

Even better, there are 50 free episodes of shows, movies, and documentaries available to watch on the site. Which means you can scour the recommendations until you find one that convinces you, and then check out the show to see if it lives up to the hype.

Recommended by Humans is a useful site. Not only could it introduce you to a show you may not have considered watching before, the free previews give you a chance to try before you buy. However, Recommended by Humans is really more of a marketing tool.

Those free movies, documentaries, and episodes of the best shows are designed to draw you in. And once you have been drawn in, HBO is hoping you’ll want to subscribe. It’s also a dig at Netflix, which uses algorithms to recommend shows based on past viewing habits.

The Best HBO Shows to Watch on HBO Now

In reality, recommendations from both humans and algorithms can be useful. So we recommend using a mixture of the two to find what to watch next. And speaking specifically about HBO, here are the best HBO shows worth watching on HBO Now.

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What Is “Do Not Track” and Does It Protect Your Privacy?

The 5 Best Online Password Generators for Strong Random Passwords

These days, a strong password is essential on the web. Whether it’s your email accounts, service user accounts, Amazon accounts, or otherwise, using your birthday or your cat’s name as a password is a bad idea.

But creating the perfect password is tricky. Thankfully, you can use online password generators to help create a strong and unique passwords for your accounts. Here are the best online strong random password generators.

What Is a Strong Random Password?

A strong password has two core characteristics: length and entropy.

The length of the password affects how long it will take to crack. A long password takes longer to break, as there are more individual bits to find. A short password is easier because there are less. A long password on its own is strong. That is why some services use a passphrase instead of a password. All the extra characters add additional difficulty.

The second consideration is the randomness of the password, also known as entropy. The entropy describes the randomness of the password generation process and the resulting password. For instance, an eight-character password like 01234567 is significantly weaker than an eight-character password like 58z@L#?T due to the difficulty in cracking the individual characters in the correct order.

The higher the entropy, the more random the password, and the harder it is to break.

There is another factor to consider with online password generators: trust.

Can you trust the password generator service with your password? That means making sure the password generator does not keep logs and that the website uses the proper security certifications to create a secure connection between it and your browser.

It is difficult figuring out if an online password provider does all these things correctly. In all honesty, you should use an offline password generation tool because it is the most secure method. Sending such a sensitive piece of information across the information opens you up to all kinds of issues.

However, you should check out the following list of the five best online password generation tools for a strong random password if you are going to use an online tool.

1. LastPass Password Generator Tool

The LastPass Password Generator Tool is a password generation tool from a well-trusted source. LastPass is a password management application. You can use it to store passwords for the hundreds of online sites that require a login. (How do password managers work, anyway?) The desktop and online LastPass applications are great. But if you need a new password in a bind, their online tool is a handy alternative.

You can change the password generation options to create a long, complex password that uses a mixture of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. It also has interesting options that tweak your password to become “Easy to Say” or “Easy to Write.”

2. Dashlane Password Generator Tool

From the password generator of one password manger, straight to another. Dashlane is another excellent password management tool. For the good of the internet and its users, Dashlane offers their password generation tool for free.

Like LastPass, you can tweak the letters, digits, symbols, and length before creating a complex password. The password generation animation is a nice touch, too.

3. Browser-Integrated Password Generator

Mozilla Firefox introduced an integrated password generator in Firefox 69. When you attempt to create a new account, you can right-click the password field and select Use Generated Password.

Google Chrome has a similar feature that you can access using the same method.

4. Perfect Passwords

 

Steve Gibson is a world-renown programmer and security expert, and his online password creator has now been running for over ten years.

Perfect Passwords uses a powerful password generation algorithm to deliver a high level of entropy. The site generates a new set of passwords each time you refresh the site. You have three options: a 64-character hexadecimal password (that’s 0-9 and A-F), a 63-character ASCII password (that’s almost every character, including symbols), and 63-character alpha-numeric password (that’s a-z, A-Z, and 0-9).

Of these, the ASCII character string password is most secure. The randomness of the character mix makes it difficult for anyone to crack this type of combination, especially at 63 characters in length.

5. Secure Password Generator

The Secure Password Generator is another extremely easy to use online password generator. Secure Password Generator gives you extensive control over the character combination in your password. For instance, you can include symbols, numbers, and upper and lowercase letters. But you can also exclude similar letters, such as o, O, and 0, or similar characters such as [, {, and (.

Secure Password Generator has the option to Generate On Your Device, meaning the password will not send across the internet. For obvious reasons, I strongly advise turning this feature on. Secure Password Generator also attempts to provide a helpful method for remembering your newly minted complex password.

Some of the results are comical, but it does at least illustrate one method for remembering increasingly complex passwords. Here is one example, for the password generated in the above image:

` ) 5 golf ( LAPTOP jack { PARK WALMART - ` drip ROPE ; 5 VISA BESTBUY - + golf { tokyo +

Use a Password Manager for Complex Passwords

Generating a password online is far from ideal for reasons covered previously. One of the most secure methods for generating a password is using a password manager.

A password manager works on your computer. Once installed, you use a single master password on each website, rather than having to remember numerous difficult individual passwords. Having to remember a single complex password rather than 70 gives your brain a break, for one. But a password manager allows you to increase your overall online security as you only have to remember one string.

I would strongly suggest reading our guide to the best password managers for every occasion. Password management tools like KeePass, Bitwarden, and Dashlane all have integrated password generators. They’re extremely secure and almost eliminate the security and privacy issues of generating a password using a website.

Are Online Password Generators Safe?

In truth, not really, unless you can completely vet the entire site or the password generator you use is open-source—and in that, the LastPass and Dashlane password generators are the best options. Both are trusted websites with strong security credentials. If you are going to generate a password online, at the very least use a website with a strong reputation for security.

Using a password generator ensures you create an extremely strong password. But if you prefer to create a personal password of your own, check out how to create a strong password that you won’t forget!

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