The Raspberry Pi Foundation has updated its flagship model, the Raspberry Pi 4. It’s still the same awesome tiny single-board computer with a lot of connectors. But the entry level now comes with 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB of RAM for the same price of $35.
The foundation says that RAM prices have been dropping lately, so it has become cheaper to build Raspberry Pi devices with more RAM. If you want more RAM, you can still buy a 4GB model for $55 — the price hasn’t changed.
If you’re using a ton of 1GB models for your industrial projects, you can still buy the old 1GB model for $35. This way, it doesn’t create compatibility issues or you don’t have to split your fleet of Raspberry Pi devices between 1GB models and 2GB models. But makers and hobbyists should definitely buy the 2GB over the 1GB model from now on as it’s the same price.
As the Raspberry Pi Foundation is approaching its eight birthday, it is looking back at the evolution of the Raspberry Pi. The original Raspberry Pi already cost $35, but it is drastically more powerful today.
In eight years, you get a 40x CPU performance increase, 8x memory increase, 10x input/output bandwidth increase and there’s a Wi-Fi chip. This isn’t just a tiny computer to play around with. You can now do a ton of stuff with a Raspberry Pi and even replace your desktop computer if you mainly use it for web browsing and basic tasks. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has sold 30 million devices so far.
When you have an idea for a profitable business or personal project, taking swift action is important. The sooner you make progress, the less likely you are to lose motivation or get distracted. If your idea involves creating an online presence, Blueprints Website Builder for Mac can help you act quickly. With 500 ready-made blocks, this platform helps you build a powerful website in minutes — no coding skills required. You can get a lifetime subscription now for $39 at MakeUseOf Deals.
In contrast with many solutions, Blueprints was built for speed.
Based on the popular Bootstrap framework, this platform provides a true WYSIWYG experience. Just as importantly, you don’t always have to start from scratch. Blueprints has more than 200 templates to choose from, and over 500 blocks to work with.
All the templates and blocks are responsive, so they will work perfectly on desktop and mobile devices. In addition, Blueprints sites are really fast. This makes your website attractive to Google and other search engines, meaning you should rise up the rankings.
The platform exports clean code in a flat HTML file, which you can host anywhere. With a lifetime subscription, you can create as many sites as you like.
Lifetime access to Blueprints is worth $149, but you can pick up your subscription now for just $39.
Read the full article: Blueprints Helps You Build Websites Faster With Over 500 Ready-Made Blocks
GOG has updated its refund policy, and the change is great news for consumers. GOG’s updated refund policy means you can get your money back on a game, even if you have already started playing it. As long as you do so within 30 days of purchase.
GOG previously only offered refunds on games until you downloaded them. At which point GOG considered your purchase to be final. However, in a post on GOG News, GOG has announced a change to its refund policy, along with a FAQ for anyone who needs details.
GOG will now give you a full refund on your game within the first 30 days. And this stands even if you have downloaded it, launched it, and played it. You could technically play a game through in full before claiming a refund, but that would be mildly immoral.
We always believed in a 'gamers-first’ approach and with this voluntary update to our Refund Policy you can get a full refund up to 30 days after purchasing a product, even if you downloaded, launched, and played it.
More details – https://t.co/WfwZkyLkbo
— GOG.COM (@GOGcom) February 26, 2020
GOG is keen to stress that it’s monitoring refunds “to make sure no one is using this policy to hurt the developers that put their time and heart into making great games”. The FAQ also state that GOG “may refuse refunds in such individual cases”.
This is a fantastic move from GOG. It means consumers can buy a game safe in the knowledge that they can return it for a full refund within 30 days. Which essentially means you can try a game out for several hours to see whether it’s for you.
For the sake of comparison, Valve and Epic Games both currently offer refunds up to 14 days after purchase. However, if you have played the game for more than two hours you’re probably not going to get your money back. Thus, GOG has given itself a competitive edge.
On that note, you should check out our article pitting Steam vs. the Epic Games Store.
Read the full article: GOG Now Offers Refunds On Games You’ve Already Played
You’ve got your own site and need to make it secure. But how do you start implementing solid security measures? Plugins are basic add-ons to your WordPress website, giving you extra functionality.
Some customize the look of your posts. Some boast search engine optimization features. And there are some great plugins to make sure your website is safe from hackers, bots, and malware.
Here are some of the best WordPress plugins you should need to protect your site from cyberattacks.
As its name implies, Wordfence Security is designed chiefly for WordPress. It’s also one of the most popular plugins, boasting over 150 million downloads. That’s because even its free version includes all the main things you need to protect your website. It’s also very easy to use, with a pleasing layout that lets you simply assess and block main threats.
Its firewall runs on the endpoint, i.e. your server, which, unlike cloud services, doesn’t break end-to-end encryption. In theory, the downside is that it could slow down your site. However, there’s no noticeable lag and its positives completely outweigh the negatives.
It’s a comprehensive approach to security, allowing you to manually block suspicious IP addresses and countries known for cyberattacks which aren’t your target audience. You get access to live stats, to identify attempted hacks, Google crawlers, and malicious bots.
Wordfence is free to use on multiple WordPress sites, but there is a premium option which offers faster updates. These are rolled out to free users 30 days later.
Especially impressive is the additional service Wordfence offers: if you’ve been hacked, the developers will clean your site, secure it again, and give you a year’s subscription to premium (worth $99) for just $179.
All in One WP Security & Firewall recognizes that not everyone knows what happens behind the scenes online. They just want to run a website for a specific purpose without having to learn programming.
This plugin is designed for different levels of expertise: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. All in One WP Security & Firewall is a great plugin, no matter if you’re inexperienced or a developer.
First, it fairly grades your site’s security and suggests how to make it safer. It will implement the latest security tips from WordPress’ parent companion, Automattic. And you can create a blacklist of certain requirements in order to block a user. That means, if you notice a particular malicious trend affecting your blog, you can counter it.
This is all completely free too!
All in One WP Security & Firewall automatically takes backups of your site, so nothing is lost in the event of a hack. However, be careful: some hosts like Kinsta don’t let you take your own backups and will block this plugin. Research this before adding All in One WP Security & Firewall to your plugin list.
Brute force attacks work by bombarding login pages with information. Hackers can gain access to a site this way—especially if using obvious username and passwords, like “1234” or “password”. We advise against it, but nonetheless, many users still use basic login details. Brute force attacks are not only dangerous for your site: they also slow it down for genuine visitors.
Login LockDown works by recording the IP addresses and timestamps of every login. If there are more than three failed login attempts in five minutes, the plugin locks those IPs out from the login page for an hour.
You might be worried about this if you have numerous contributors to your site; after all, you don’t want them locked out if they forget their password. Fortunately, admins can release locked IP addresses in Login LockDown’s options panel.
Here, you can also customize the number of failed login attempts before restrictions are implemented.
Most WordPress users have Jetpack, but not solely for its security features.
Created by Automattic, Jetpack offers accurate stats, theme customization, and an SEO tool. That’s in addition to security features like spam filters and protection against brute force attacks.
While its free version isn’t the best available, its dual functions—security and site optimization—make it a fantastic option for newcomers and seasoned developers. It does slow websites down, but it’s not a considerable lag.
Jetpack Premium (from $99 per year) further offers VaultPress, which automatically backs up your site. This happens on their own servers, so your site doesn’t experience any lags. The backup is then scanned for malware and suggests patches. Jetpack’s Professional version will fix these security problems for you too.
VaultPress can be bought on its own, but works in conjunction with Jetpack if you’ve installed that already.
Some plugins offer two-factor authentication on login, but many don’t. And yet it’s essential for keeping your site secure. That’s where Google Authenticator comes in.
Two-factor authentication means anyone logging in has to use multiple methods to get into your site.
If someone’s found out your password, for instance, they can’t gain access without a second factor. If you’re accessing it via your smartphone, this might be your fingerprint or Face ID. Alternatively, an authentication code can be sent to a registered device when the relevant password is used on a PC or laptop. Google Authenticator lets you choose the right method for you.
The basic free model is perfect for this. The Standard package is available at a small increment, starting at just $5 a year (catering for up to two users), and includes security questions as an added measure. The Premium upgrade has numerous further features including greater customization.
Each package boasts add-ons for short-codes and personalization. But for most, the free version is ideal.
BulletProof Security offers a free version or a one-off lifetime payment of $69.95—both are great for most websites. Don’t be put off by BulletProof Security’s simplistic aesthetics: it’s a decent plugin that offers a firewall, backups, and typical malware scanning.
Beyond those basic functions, it also has idle session logout. If anyone’s logged into your site then left that tab open, BulletProof Security will sign out after a little time. It means no strangers can gain access through open sessions.
The interface isn’t the easiest here. Fortunately, it comes with a free set-up wizard so you can implement the basics without giving yourself a headache. It’s particularly good for developers, though, with exclusive intruder detection features.
It includes a Maintenance Mode feature, which locks people out of your site until you deactivate it. True, your stats will be affected by the loss of traffic, but this gives you time to apply updates, take backups, and could be used for promotion purposes.
You don’t want clients visiting a half-finished website, so Maintenance Mode generates hype by telling them when to return.
Now you’ve secured your website, there are many other further plugins available to make it exactly how you envision it. Many increase your site’s performance; others add social functionalities like Disqus and social media sharing buttons.
With your WordPress site secure, it’s time to make it more popular.
Read the full article: 6 WordPress Plugins to Secure Your Website From Hackers
While not the only VR headset manufacturer on the market, Oculus leads with a selection of affordable devices to suit every niche. Each of these is served by an integrated software store. Let’s briefly look at the defining characteristics of each, before helping you decide which is right for you.
The Oculus Go is the oldest and cheapest headset Oculus has to offer. It’s an all-in-one device that doesn’t need to be tethered to a computer (and cannot, even if you wanted to, unlike the Quest). The 32GB version costs $150; or the larger 64GB model is $200.
Oculus Standalone VR Headset Oculus Standalone VR Headset Buy Now On Amazon $168.95The Oculus Go runs at a resolution of 1280x1440px per eye, at 60 or 72Hz (analogous to frames per second or FPS). It only tracks the rotational movement of your head; this called 3DOF, or 3 degrees of freedom. You can tilt and rotate your head to look around the virtual environment, but not move around.
Crucially, moving your head forward or backward may cause motion sickness as the movement isn’t replicated visually. It’s designed to be used while sitting in one place.
The package includes a single basic controller, but it’s best considered as a virtual pointing device rather than an equivalent to the immersive fully tracked controllers included with the Rift S and Quest.
In terms of comfort, the Oculus Go ships with a fabric head strap. It’s not comfortable for longer sessions or active gaming, but it should be fine for relaxing and watching a movie.
When originally reviewed, we hailed the Oculus VR as the best mobile VR yet, but that was nearly two years ago. At this point in time, we don’t recommend the Oculus Go to anyone. There’s very little software being actively developed for it, as attention from both users and therefore developers has shifted over to the Oculus Quest.
The Rift S is a tethered headset, which means it requires a wired connection to a PC in order to function. It costs $400, but doesn’t contain its own internal processing or storage; it is purely a display peripheral. As such, the graphical capabilities depend on the computer you connect it to.
The minimum requirements are a GTX960/1050Ti, an i3-6100 CPU, 8GB of RAM and Windows 10; though you will not be able to comfortably play the most graphically advanced games on it. Unlike regular screen gaming, VR games are more demanding and must be rendered twice (once for each eye). So even if your machine seems powerful enough for regular gaming, you may find it’s substandard for VR.
Oculus Rift PC Powered Gaming Headset Oculus Rift PC Powered Gaming Headset Buy Now On Amazon $560.00Like the Oculus Go, the Rift S also runs at 1280x1440px, but with a higher refresh of 80Hz. The perceived resolution can be improved by the use of supersampling if your PC is powerful enough.
Both the Rift S and Quest provide full 6DOF positional tracking through the use of on-headset cameras, meaning that no external sensors or other tracking equipment are required. You can move around your room and two included controllers will be fully tracked. The Rift S is easier to set up than some other PC VR headsets but does require a well-lit room. You can alternatively use an infra-red floodlight for night time use.
The Rift S is equipped with five tracking cameras, while the Quest has four, but this makes little difference to the tracking capabilities.
The Rift S uses a unique “halo” style rigid head strap, similar to the PSVR. It can be easily tightened via a ratcheting dial, and shifts the weight of headset away from your face, making it the most comfortable of Oculus headsets for longer sessions.
The Oculus Quest is a hybrid mobile headset, meaning it can function both as a standalone wireless all-in-one mobile headset, or as a tethered headset with a PC via a USB-C cable. When used as a tethered headset, you gain access to the full Oculus desktop library of games, as well as Steam VR.
The headset itself offers a per-eye resolution of 1440x1600px, the highest of any Oculus headset; and runs at 72Hz. Like the Rift S, when connected to a PC, the perceived resolution can be increased through the use of supersampling. However, running over limited USB-C bandwidth means some compression artifacts can be seen in the periphery.
Even as a standalone headset, it offers what would be described as a full VR experience, unlike any other mobile headset. It’ll track your motion as you move around your room, and includes two fully tracked motion controllers for immersive VR gaming and interactions. This is mobile VR as you’ve never seen it before–our Oculus Quest review declared it “incredible.”
The Quest software library is vast, and some titles are available as “crossbuy”, meaning that a single purchase will entitle you to both the mobile and desktop versions. Beat Saber fans will be pleased to know that custom songs can be downloaded via SideQuest.
Like the Rift S, Quest also uses on-headset cameras to provide positional tracking (four of them), but in addition, it features a dark mode for cinematic movie viewing. When no light is available for the camera-based tracking to operate fully in 6DOF mode, the Quest will fall back to a 3DOF rotational tracking, the same as the Oculus Go.
This is ideal for media consumption, as you won’t need to move around or use controllers.
That’s not all though: Oculus has also recently added native hand tracking, albeit as a beta feature for now. If the headset can’t see your controllers, it’ll attempt to track your hands instead, allowing for basic menu interactions through the use of hand gestures only.
While not suitable for action gaming, in future you can expect media and other casual apps to make use of this feature. This is a free upgrade and requires no additional hardware or software.
The Oculus Quest will also be the first headset to get access to Facebook’s new social VR environment. Horizon is slated to launch early 2020.
The 64GB Oculus Quest costs $400, while a 128GB version is also available for $500, however, both are frequently out of stock due to popularity. If you plan on using it connected to a PC, you’ll also need to purchase a USB-C cable capable of data transmission.
Oculus Quest All Gaming Headset Oculus Quest All Gaming Headset Buy Now On Amazon $535.00We haven’t mentioned audio as it’s similar across all the current Oculus headsets, and is perhaps their greatest failing. Audio is produced in the main body of the headset and piped along the strap; there are no headphones. It’s best compared to audio from a phone, albeit in stereo. There’s very little bass, and worst of all: everyone around can hear you!
Of course, you can plug in your own headphones or earbuds, or even print an adaptor for the Oculus Quest that lets you replace the standard head strap with a Vive Deluxe Strap for the ultimate mobile solution.
The best overall Oculus headset for anyone is the Oculus Quest, offering an incredible mobile VR and good enough tethered experience. Since the Quest tethers using a USB-C to your PC rather than HDMI or DisplayPort, some compression artifacts occur around the periphery of your vision, but it’s still incredible by any definition.
Even if you think you aren’t interested in mobile VR (which is quite understandable given the bad taste Google Cardboard left in everyone’s mouth), it’s still worth getting the Quest purely for the freedom of experiencing “true VR” without cables. There are plenty of Oculus mobile apps that are as good as their PC counterparts, and it would be a shame to tie yourself to a PC.
I’ve been an ardent VR fan since the early days of the first Oculus Development Kit, and despite owning a Valve Index and powerful gaming PC, the truth is that most of my VR time is spent on the Quest. The freedom to play anywhere makes it a much more sociable experience, and it’s simply the quickest to pick up and play for short gaming sessions.
The fact that Facebook Horizon is coming to the Quest first, and new features are being added above and beyond what’s available to the Rift S, strongly indicates that’s where Facebook is pushing resources towards. Facebook sees mobile VR as the future, not desktop.
So if you’re on the fence about a Rift S or Quest, we’d heartily recommend the Oculus Quest. They both cost $400, and we’d argue that the additional features offered outweigh the downside of a slightly worse image.
If you’re sure you want a mobile VR headset, your choice is between Oculus Go and Quest. The Oculus Quest has the option to also tether to a PC, but we’ll assume you’re not interested in that.
As a portable device purely for watching videos, the Oculus Go is a good ultra-low-budget option, but at this point in time should be considered outdated. Don’t expect truly immersive and fully-featured VR experiences, nor new software. At $150 for the 32GB version, the price is the only reason you’d opt for an Oculus Go rather than a Quest.
The Oculus Quest offers a full VR experience, but starts at $400 for the smallest 64GB option. If you can afford it, the Quest is definitely a better option both for breadth and quality of software offered. With a larger install base, more features, and easier accessibility, developers are increasingly creating games as either Quest exclusives or for both Quest and PC; not for the Oculus Go.
There’s one last but significant factor to consider: Oculus is wholly owned by Facebook. Worse still, if you want to make use of any social features of an Oculus headset, you must link a Facebook account. So if you plan on playing VR games with friends, you will need to accept whatever loss of privacy you believe that entails.
We’re sorry to say that there is no worthwhile mobile alternative to the Oculus Quest. The Lenovo Mirage Solo is the closest competitor, but it runs Google Daydream, which is now effectively abandoned.
On the PC side, there’s no doubt that the best overall headset available today is the Valve Index, which we can wholeheartedly recommend as the best Rift S alternative. It offers a wider field of view, up to 144Hz refresh rate, and resolution of 1440x1600px. The only downside is that it costs $1000. Those on a budget of around $500 might look at the Samsung Oddysey+, a Windows Mixed Reality headset that offers a similar resolution but lower refresh rate.
We don’t recommend it, however. The controllers are nasty, only two tracking cameras provide an inferior experience, and the Windows Mixed Reality system is not as widely supported by SteamVR games.
The truth is that Oculus offers the best budget VR devices for everyone. But if you still aren’t sure, we think checking this list of the best free VR games for Oculus will help make up your mind.
Read the full article: Oculus Go vs. Quest vs. Rift: Which VR Headset Do You Need?
$28 million-funded crypto startup Tagomi will be the newest member of the Libra Association that governs the Facebook-backed Libra stablecoin, TechCrunch has learned. A formal announcement of Tagomi joining was slated for Friday or next week.
Tagomi offers a platform that helps large traders and funds easily access cryptocurrency markets. The news comes days after Libra added Shopify, a reversal of dwindling membership after major partners like Visa, PayPal, and Stripe dropped out late last year.
We’ve reached out to the Libra Association and have been promised a response by Facebook’s communications team.
Joinin Libra means Tagomi will be expected to contribute at least $10 million towards developing the cryptocurrency, with that investment eligible to reap dividends from interest earned on money kept in the Libra Reserve. Tagomi will also operate a node that validates transactions coming through the Libra blockchain.
Tagomi was founded by Jennifer Campbell, a former investor at Union Square Ventures which is also a Libra Association Member. The company has 25 employees across 5 offices. Tagomi will be the 22nd member of the Libra Association, according to information from the startup’s press representative who was apparently supposed to hold this news until later. “Tagomi is joining the Libra Foundation and Jennifer will be the newest member” they emailed TechCrunch. We’ll update this story following our interview with Campbell tomorrow.
Campbell and Tagomi will offer technical and policy support to Libra in an effort to make the cryptocurrency more safe and compliant with international law. That will be critical for the Libra Association to get the greenlight from regulators for a launch in 2020 like it originally planned. Lawmakers in the US and EU have slammed Libra in hearings and the press over its potential to facilitate money laundering, harm privacy, and destabilize the global financial system.
The full membership of the Libra Association is now:
Current Members:
Facebook’s Calibra, Tagomi, Shopify, PayU, Farfetch, Lyft, Spotify, Uber, Illiad SA, Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Xapo, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women’s World Banking.
Former Members:
Vodafone, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, Mercado Pago, Bookings Holdings, eBay.
Last November, Twitter rolled out its Hide Replies feature to all users worldwide. The feature, largely designed to lessen the power of online trolls to disrupt conversations, lets users decide which replies to their tweets are placed behind an extra click. Today, Twitter is making Hide Replies available to its developer community, allowing for the creation of tools that help people hide the replies to their tweets faster and more efficiently, says Twitter.
These sorts of tools will be of particular interest to businesses and brands who maintain a Twitter presence, but whose accounts often get too many replies to tweets to properly manage on an individual basis. With Hide Replies now available as a new API endpoint, developers can create tools that automatically hide disruptive tweets based on factors important to their customers — like tweets that include certain prohibited keywords or those that score high for being toxic, for example.
Ahead of today’s launch, Twitter worked with a small number of developers who are now releasing tools that take advantage of the added functionality.
Jigsaw, an Alphabet-owned company tackling the worst of the web, has integrated Twitter’s new endpoint with its Perspective API, which uses A.I. to score tweets based on their toxicity. The integration will automatically hide replies that exceed a certain toxic threshold (.94), freeing up the time it would otherwise take to comb through replies manually.
A scripting platform for business workflows, reshuffle, has used the endpoint to develop scripts that detect and hide replies based on keywords or even by user.
Dara Oladosu, the creator of the popular app QuotedReplies, also used the endpoint to build a new app called Hide Unwanted Replies. The app today automatically hides replies by keywords or Twitter handles. Soon, it will add support for hiding replies from likely troll or bot accounts — including tweets from user accounts created too recently or from accounts with few followers.
Hide Replies has been one of Twitter’s more controversial launches to date, as it could potentially allow users to silence critics or stifle dissent even when warranted — such as in the case of refuting misinformation or propaganda, for example. Others argue it’s not really helping address online abuse; the abuse still occurs, but in the shadows. One organization even recently leveraged Hidden Replies for a clever online campaign about how domestic violence goes unseen which further illustrates this problem.
Nevertheless, adoption of Hide Replies is growing, with organizations like the CIA even leveraging it on some tweets.
The new Twitter API endpoint for Hide Replies is available today to all developers in a production-ready form, Twitter says, initially through Twitter Developer Labs. This program launched last year to serve as a way for developers to try out Twitter’s latest APIs ahead of their wider release and offer feedback. Participation in Twitter Developer Labs is free, but interested developers have to sign up using an approved developer account. Twitter is also inviting developers building with the new endpoint to collaborate with the company by way of the community forums.
Based on early feedback from the first testers, Twitter says it’s already making a few changes to the endpoint including support to unhide replies via the endpoint, a higher rate limit to support high-volume use cases, and a way to retrieve a list of replies that indicate if they’re hidden or not.
Another on-demand transport app is making a move into payments to expand the existing relationship with its customers (and subsequent margins that it makes from serving them). Bird today announced the launch of Bird Pay, a service that will let people use its app to purchase items from local participating businesses alongside renting scooters. The service is being tested first in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, the company said.
Bird Pay will work by way of a QR code, which can be read via your app at the point of sale at participating businesses to make cashless purchases. (After scanning the code, you enter the amount you are charging and swipe up to complete the purchase.)
The company said that Bird Pay was created directly in response to requests from businesses themselves — who will be using the app to promote deals near to where Bird users pick up or drop off scooters. The link between local businesses and scooter rides is a strong one: Bird says it found that 58% of all the rides through its app start or end at a local business, and claims that businesses in all of its areas of operation — it’s now live in some 100 cities — say that the presence of Bird scooters outside their establishments have increased footfall.
“An early insight that emerged shortly after introducing Bird in Santa Monica was that it had the potential to not only allow people to avoid the chore of circling a block to find parking resulting in congestion and frustration, but it could also foster a more direct connection between people and local businesses,” said Travis VanderZanden, CEO and founder, Bird, in a statement. “Store owners in the community often tell me, ‘Birds outside bring business inside.’ This phenomenon paired with our commitment to community resulted in Bird Pay which helps drive even more customers to local businesses.”
Adding in payments to on-demand transport apps has become something of a tested and successful formula. In Asia, companies like Grab have built rather extensive payments operations on top of their transportation apps — businesses big enough to be raising hundreds of millions of dollars in their own right to expand. And several months ago, Uber also started to test the waters in this area with the launch of Uber Money.
Of course, services like Grab’s have a slightly bigger greenfield when it comes to winning business: in many of the regions where Grab operates, cash is often still king; therefore, having a relationship with a user, where a mobile app is already being identified with “virtual money” (with money either being preloaded into an app or linked to a payment card), gives the app publisher an easy opening to expanding that relationship, such as payments for local goods and services.
The challenge in the U.S., where Bird is based and operates primarily, is somewhat different: people are already used to plastic cards, and their phones may already have one or more payments apps active already. Both Apple Pay and Google’s Android-based offering have had strong take-up, as have alternatives from Samsung, PayPal and many others. That means a much more crowded playing field for Bird or any other new entrant.
On the other hand, we are creatures of convenience, and if we already have the Bird app open to open or close off a ride, that could just be the lower friction we need to use it to buy something. Time will tell if this particular bird will, indeed, fly.
Bird last October raised some $275 million at a $2.5 billion valuation.
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| Annotation modalities in Open Images V5: image-level labels, bounding boxes, instance segmentations, and visual relationships. Image sources: 1969 Camaro RS/SS by D. Miller, the house by anita kluska, Cat Cafe Shinjuku calico by Ari Helminen, and Radiofiera - Villa Cordellina Lombardi, Montecchio Maggiore (VI) - agosto 2010 by Andrea Sartorati. All images used under CC BY 2.0 license. |
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| Sample of localized narratives. Image source: Spring is here:-) by Kasia. |
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| Different levels of grounding between image content and captioning. Left to Right: Caption to whole image (COCO); nouns to boxes (Flickr30k Entities); each word to a mouse trace segment (localized narratives). Image sources: COCO, Flickr30k Entities, and Sapa, Vietnam by Rama. |
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| Alignment of manual and automatic transcriptions. Icons based on an original design from Freepik. |
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| Mouse trace segments corresponding to the words below the images. Image sources: Via Guglielmo Marconi, Positano - Hotel Le Agavi - boat by Elliott Brown, air frame by vivek jena, and CL P1050512 by Virginia State Parks. |
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| Image sources: IMG_5678.jpg by James Buck, DSC_0494 by Quentin Meulepas, and DSC06464 by sally9258. |
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| Image sources: _DSCs1341 (2) by Boo Ph, and Richard Wagner Spiele 2015 by Johannes Gärtner. |
Wattpad, the online storytelling community that’s home to some 80 million monthly users, has successfully tapped into the power of crowdsourcing to help uncover the next potential hits for media companies including Netflix, Hulu, NBCU, Sony Pictures Television, and others worldwide. It even launched its own YA book line to bring its online stories to a wider audience of young adults. Now, Wattpad is making a change to its app to better embrace its adult readers. The company is adding an option to toggle on “mature” stories — meaning those meant only for a 17-and-up crowd, according to Wattpad’s policy.
As you may imagine, a story is given a “mature” rating for explicit sex scenes. But stories can also be labeled mature if they include self-harm themes or scenes, like those focused on suicide or eating disorders, for example. Depictions of violence — including sexual, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse — will give a story a mature rating as well.
Up until the end of 2018, Wattpad had siphoned off its “sexier” stories into a dedicated app called After Dark. But that app has since been shut down, meaning mobile users couldn’t read their erotica in app format. Given the huge demand for mature stories — a search for Wattpad stories by the keyword “mature” led to 155,000 results, for example– the company was failing a significant portion of its readership.
The Wattpad update will allow readers (ages 17+) to gain access to these adult stories from the main app. Underneath the Home Feed carousel, readers will be able to soon find a new “Settings” section that will allow them to personalize their Home Feed.
Here, they can also take advantage of a new feature to block specific story tags so they won’t encounter any genres or themes they don’t want to see. (This is particularly helpful in the case of erotica, as readers have specific preferences and often don’t want to even see stories from other categories.)
Readers can also turn on the “Include Mature” option, that will deliver adult content to their Home Feed.
These features will come to the Wattpad website, too, the company says.
The “mature” toggle isn’t yet live today. Instead, Wattpad says the new setting is just now rolling out to all users across the web, iOS, and Android. The rollout should complete in the next couple of weeks. Blocked tags, meanwhile, will roll out starting next week.
According to Wattpad, the addition of the new options is just another step towards personalizing its service for its users. Already, the company leverages machine learning technology to offer better recommendations for readers and to increase reading time and engagement. But it had heard from readers that the Wattpad Home Feed was often filled with stories and genres that didn’t match up with their interests. The new toggles and filters are meant to give those readers more control over what stories are shown and what are hidden.
However, like most online services, Wattpad doesn’t make it difficult for minors to bypass age restrictions. The company collects users’ birthdates at signup in order to deliver appropriate content — and those under 17 won’t have the option to turn on “mature” content, Wattpad explains. But Wattpad’s age-gate only asks users for their birthday. Today, most kids know that all you have to do is fill in a different year to get access to restricted content. (This is why there are still so many tweens posting to TikTok, for example).
The update means Wattpad erotica could find its way into the hands of more underage readers, if parents aren’t taking stock of what apps their kids have installed.
But for parents who use the parental control settings on iOS and Android, it’s easy enough to block the Wattpad app, as it’s appropriately rated 17+.
Tempo wants to be the Peloton of barbells. It’s a 42-inch tall screen with 3D machine vision that tracks and teaches you as you workout. The giant upright HD display makes it feel like your personal trainer is right there with you while you compete with others in live and on-demand classes.
Tempo’s Microsoft Kinect-esque motion sensors scan you 30 times per second and notify you if your form is wrong. It’s all housed in a sleekly designed free-standing cabinet that neatly stores the included barbells, dumbbells, attachable weights, workout mat, recovery foam roller, and heartrate monitor.
Tempo opens for pre-orders today for $1995, requiring a $250 deposit and $39 monthly content subscription before shipping this summer.
“Every single product in the market took a piece of equipment out of a gym and slapped a screen on it” says Tempo CEO and co-founder Moawia Eldeeb. “You need to be able to see a user to actually be able to give them guidance so they can work out safely. We wanted to build a fitness experience from the ground up with training and form feedback at the core of it.”
I demo’d Tempo this week and found the in-home convenience, motivational on-screen personal trainers, and the real-time posture corrections gave me the confidence to lift weights without the fear of injury. It might not feel quite as fun and addictive as Peloton, but it offers a facsimile of personal training that’s more affordable than in-person classes that cost $100 or more.
The idea of democratizing access to trainers is what convinced Eldeeb and the Tempo team to stretch its initial $1.8 million in seed funding for four years. While collecting data from its SmartSpot in-gym weight lifting assessment device, Tempo survived long enough to build this prototype.
“Most investors had given up on us. We built this product and had just $700,000 left” Eldeeb recalls. But once people could try Tempo, “we pitched 10 investors and got 9 term sheets. It got very competitive.” The startup recently walked away with a $17.5 million Series A round from Founders Fund, DCM, and Khosla Ventures. Now Tempo will pour that cash into marketing, retail distribution, R&D, and content production.
Tempo’s mission is to change people’s lives for the better like personal training did for Eldeeb. “Training is what took me out of a homeless shelter and got me to where I am I today” he reflects.
Tempo co-founder, CEO, and CPO Moawia Eldeeb
Eldeeb’s family immigrated to the US from Egypt when he was nine. But after an explosion leveled their building, they wound up in a homeless shelter. Eldeeb eventually dropped out of middle school to work in a pizza parlor and help pay the bills. But personal trainers at a local YMCA took him under their wing. He eventually paid his way through a computer science degree at Columbia University by working as a personal trainer to his eventual co-founder and CTO Josh Augustin. “Having trainers say you’re getting stronger taught me I could do something for myself.”
While at school, Eldeeb was developing an idea for a physical therapy wearable while Augustin was building 3D sensors for guiding robot perception. They soon realized that a combination of these ideas “offered us the possibility to deliver on the promise of guiding your form and tracking your progress accurately.”
In 2015, they started a company called Pivot to build SmartSpot — a similar looking upright screen that was designed for gyms. It could track users, but only output raw data about their form, like how bent a user’s knees were during a squat. It then worked with trainers to annotate the data to determine what movement patterns were safe and which were dangerous.
Gym owners bought in because it let them track which trainers were actually helping customers improve. “It held trainers accountable. If you weren’t delivering results, it’d be obvious” Eldeeb tells me. The company built up a dataset of over from over 1 million 3D tagged workouts, from hundreds of gyms, overseen by thousands of trainers. That formed the basis of the artificial intelligence that would let Pivot pivot into Tempo.
At first, Tempo’s giant screen and black or white armoire can feel a bit daunting. The thing is about six feet tall, though it only takes up as much room as a large chair. It makes efficient use of space, with the barbell and dumbbells racked on the back, an internal shelf for the foam roller and mat, and a soft-closing cabinet on the front with the rubber-coated weight set. Keeping everything together means you won’t have to go digging in your closet to start a work out.
Tempo walks users through an initial computer-vision fitness assessment to understand your strength and flexibility so it can set base levels for its exercises. If you have an injury it needs to nurse, Tempo connects you to a human personal trainer that helps customize your workout plan. Otherwise, it uses your goals and data to set out a progressive regimen that gets a little tougher each day. It even blocks you from jumping into later classes so you don’t strain yourself.
Your workout plan begins with tutorial sessions that teach you to do the exercises with safe and proper form. When I was hunching forward during my squats, Tempo’s computer vision would ding me with instant feedback to keep my knees back and chest up. Then once I’d corrected the issue, it congratulated me with little green checkmarks. “Any product that doesn’t offer that is no better than a DVD or YouTube videos” Eldeeb remarks.
From there I could choose between a variety of class styles and lengths, ranging from high intensity interval training circuits to isolated sessions focused on particular muscle groups. In each, you watch a near life-size personal trainer doing the routines right in front of you while they demonstrate form and drop inspirational quotes.
Tempo is producing seven live classes per day from its San Francisco studio which you can also watch on-demand. You can compete against friends or strangers, and Tempo compares you rep for rep so it’s more about perfect form than reckless speed or weight. The live trainers can actually see all your data and your mistakes on a dashboard as they lead classes, and can call you out for screwing up (though you can deactivate this shame mode). Eldeeb says “knowing the trainer can possibly see your numbers will motivate you to actually do this right.”
The class selection interface is suspiciously similar to Peloton’s, though that at least will make it familiar for some. Over time, you build up an immense collection of data on your performance in each work out, excercise, and muscle. Unlike hitting the gym by yourself, you’ll never struggle to remember how much weight to use or whether you’re improving. Classes are soundtracked with dancey remixes sourced from a partnership with Feed.fm to avoid the royalty issues with original songs that slapped Peloton.
Tempo gives feedback when you’re doing exercises wrong, and when you correct yourself
For a 14-person startup, Tempo is trying to do a ton and that can leave some rough edges. The bluetooth armband heartrate monitor can have connectivity issues and the computer vision doesn’t always register every rep, especially if your posture is off. Classes also fail to include enough stretching to prevent strains, instead devoting the start of classes to warmups that ease you in but might not protect your muscles well enough. My quads were destroyed after my demo.
Tempo still achieves its primary objective: it makes weight lifting accessible. No need to drag yourself to the gym or be beholden to a trainer’s schedule, where I’d always end up arriving late and wasting 25% of my session. The form feedback fixes my core complaint about remote personal training app Future I’ve been using for nine months, which can’t see you. That’s led to minor injuries from bad sit-up posture and other incorrect movements. Tempo can’t catch everything, but it can nip some of the most common mistakes in the bud.
Eldeeb was blunt when asked why Tempo is better than well-funded competitors like $3000 Tonal’s wall-mounted resistance cable-based training system or the $1500 Mirror’s massive screen.
“The biggest problem with Tonal is two-fold. Cables and motors do not last. I want this product to be in your house for 10-plus years. [Tempo] is in gyms running 24/7 in for 3 years and it’s still working. The second biggest thing is just feedback.” While Tonal does include a camera and microphone it might employ in the future, it’s not scanning you to detect when you’re lifting weights crooked like Tempo.
As for Mirror, “What is the difference between ClassPass Live and Mirror? It doesn’t come with any equipment, and there’s no training. It’s just a two-way mirror and a Samsung LED panel behind it with an arduino board” Eldeeb rails. He claims it can’t actually monitor your workouts and that his team’s tests found Mirror would say they’d burned 500 calories when they were literally just sitting on their couch in front of it.
Eldeeb demos Tempo
If the software proves to have high retention so people actually recommend Tempo to friends, the biggest hurdle will be its price. You can buy a couple dumbbells for $50 or get a barbell weight bench for a few hundred. Even if Tempo’s $55 per month financing option plus $39 subscription makes it cheaper than a single personal training session or on-par with a gym membership, it could still seem like a serious commitment.
That feeling is magnified by how all of its equipment and classes and data can feel a bit overwhelming. The startup might have to spend a fortune on retail establishments that can guide users through their first Tempo experience. There’s also no mobile version yet, so you can’t bring the work outs on the road with you.
Eldeeb seems guinely motivated to keep improving the product so it’s better than commuting to work out. “Getting to the gym or class is often half the battle. By bringing the gym to you and structuring the classes to be as efficient as possible, Tempo not only makes improving your health more convenient, but it gives you back your most precious resource: time.”
For those comfortable lifting the cheap weights they have at home or hitting up a budget gym, Tempo might seem needlessly overwrought and expensive. But for anyone who needs more instruction or wants to get a Barry’s Bootcamp-worthy workout at home, Tempo might be just their speed.
Tempo wants to be the Peloton of barbells. It’s a 42-inch tall screen with 3D machine vision that tracks and teaches you as you workout. The giant upright HD display makes it feel like your personal trainer is right there with you while you compete with others in live and on-demand classes.
Tempo’s Microsoft Kinect-esque motion sensors scan you 30 times per second and notify you if your form is wrong. It’s all housed in a sleekly designed free-standing cabinet that neatly houses all the included barbell, dumbbells, attachable weights, workout mat, recovery foam roller, and heartrate monitor.
Tempo opens for pre-orders today for $1995, requiring a $250 deposit and $39 monthly content subscription before shipping this summer.
“Every single product in the market took a piece of equipment out of a gym and slapped a screen on it” says Tempo CEO and co-founder Moawia Eldeeb. “You need to be able to see a user to actually be able to give them guidance so they can work out safely. We wanted to build a fitness experience from the ground up with training and form feedback at the core of it.”
I demo’d Tempo this week and found the in-home convenience, motivational on-screen personal trainers, and the real-time posture corrections gave me the confidence to lift weights without the fear of injury. It might not feel quite as fun and addictive as Peloton, but makes a facsimile of personal training more affordable than in-person classes that cost $100 or more.
The idea of democratizing access to trainers is what convinced Eldeeb and the Tempo team to stretch its initial $1.8 million in seed funding for four years. While collecting data from its SmartSpot in-gym weight lifting assessment device, Tempo survived long enough to build this prototype.
“Most investors had given up on us. We built this product and had just $700,000 left” Eldeeb recalls. But once people could try Tempo, “we pitched 10 investors and got 9 term sheets. It got very competitive.” The startup recently walked away with a $17.5 million round from Founders Fund, DCM, and Khosla Ventures. Now Tempo will pour that cash into marketing, retail distribution, R&D, and content production.
Tempo co-founder, CEO, and CPO Moawia Eldeeb
Tempo’s mission is to change people’s lives for the better like personal training did for Eldeeb. “Training is what took me out of a homeless shelter and got me to where I am I today” he reflects. ”
At one point, he was living in a shelter without even a middle school education. But personal trainers at a local YMCA took him under their wing. He eventually paid his way through Columbia University by working as a personal trainer to his eventual co-founder and CTO Josh Augustin. “Having trainers say you’re getting stronger taught me I could do something for myself.”
While at school, Eldeeb was developing an idea for a physical therapy wearable while Augustin was building 3D sensors for guiding robot perception. They soon realized that a combination of these ideas “offered us the possibility to deliver on the promise of guiding your form and tracking your progress accurately.”
In 2015, they started a company called Pivot to build SmartSpot — a similar looking upright screen but that was designed for gyms. It could track users, but only output raw data about their form, like how bent a user’s knees were during a squat. It then worked with trainers to annotate the data to determine what movement patterns were safe and which were dangerous.
Gym owners bought in because it let them track which trainers were actually helping customers improve. “It held trainers accountable. If you weren’t delivering results, it’d be obvious” Eldeeb tells me. The company built up a dataset of over from over 1 million 3D tagged workouts, from hundreds of gyms, overseen by thousands of trainers. That formed the basis of the artificial intelligence that would let Pivot pivot into Tempo.
At first, Tempo’s giant screen and black or white armoire can feel a bit daunting. The thing is about six-feet tall, though it only takes up as much floor space as a large chair. It makes efficient use of space, with the barbell and dumbbells racked on the back, an internal shelf for the foam roller and mat, and a soft-closing cabinet on the front with the rubber-coated weight set. Keeping everything together means you won’t have to go digging in your closet to start a work out.
Tempo walks users through an initial computer-vision fitness assessment to understand your strength and flexibility so it can set base levels for its exercises. If you have an injury it needs to nurse, Tempo connects you to a human personal trainer that helps customize your workout plan. Otherwise, it uses your goals and data to set out a progressive regimen that gets a little tougher each day. It even blocks you from jumping into later classes so you don’t strain yourself.
Your workout plan begins with tutorial sessions that teach you to do the exercises with safe and proper form. When I was hunching forward during my squats, Tempo’s computer vision would ding me with instant feedback to keep my knees back and chest up. Then once I’d corrected the issue, it congratulate me with little green checkmarks. “Any product that doesn’t offer that is no better than a DVD or YouTube videos” Eldeeb remarks.
From there I could choose between a variety of class styles and lengths, ranging from high intensity interval training circuits to isolated sessions focused on particular muscle groups. In each, you watch a near life-size personal trainer doing the routines right in front of you while they demonstrate form and drop inspirational quotes.
Tempo is producing seven live classes per day which you can then watch on-demand. Through those you can compete against friends or strangers, and Tempo actually compares you rep for rep so it’s more about perfect form than reckless speed or weight. The live trainers can actually see all your data and your mistakes on a dashboard as they leave classes, and can call you out for screwing up (though you can deactivate this shame mode). Eldeeb says “knowing the trainer can possibly see your numbers will motivate you to actually do this right.”
The class selection interface is suspiciously similar to Peloton’s, though that at least will make it familiar for some. Over time, you build up an immense collection of data on your performance in each work out, excercise, and muscle. Unlike hitting the gym by yourself, you’ll never struggle to remember how much weight to use or whether you’re improving. Classes are soundtracked with dancey remixes, perhaps to avoid the royalty issues with original songs that hit Peloton.
Tempo gives feedback when you’re doing exercises wrong, and when you correct yourself
For a 14-person startup, Tempo is trying to do a ton and that can leave some rough edges. The bluetooth armband heartrate monitor can have connectivity issues and the computer vision doesn’t always register every rep, especially if your posture is off. Classes also fail to include enough stretching to prevent strains, instead devoting the start of classes to warmups that ease you in but might not protect your muscles well enough.
Tempo still achieves its primary objective: it makes weight lifting accessible. No need to drag yourself to the gym or be beholden to a trainer’s schedule, where I’d always end up arriving late and wasting 25% of my session. The form feedback fixes my core complaint about remote personal training app Future I’ve been using for nine months, which can’t see you. That’s led to minor injuries from bad sit-up posture and other incorrect movements. Tempo can’t catch everything, but it can nip some of the most common mistakes in the bud.
Eldeeb was blunt when asked why Tempo is better than well-funded competitors like Tonal’s wall-mounted resistance cable-based training system or the Mirror’s massive screen.
“The biggest problem with Tonal is two-fold. Cables and motors do not last. I want this product to be in your house for 10-plus years. [Tempo] is in gyms running 24/7 in for 3 yeaers and it’s still working. The second biggest thing is just feedback.” While Tonal does include a camera and microphone it might employ in the future, it’s not scanning you to detect when you’re lifting the barbell crooked.
As for Mirror, “What is the difference between ClassPass live and Mirror? It doesn’t come with any equipment, and there’s no training. It’s just a 2-way mirror and a Samsung LED panel behind it with an arduino board” Eldeeb rails. He claims it can’t actually monitor your workouts and that his team’s tests found Mirror would say they’d burned 500 calories when they were literally just sitting on their couch in front of it.
If the software proves to have high retention so people actually recommend Tempo to friends, the biggest hurdle will be its price. You can buy a couple dumbbells for $50 or get a barbell weight bench for a few hundred. Even if Tempo’s $55 per month financing option plus $39 subscription makes it cheaper than a single personal training session or on-par with a gym membership, it could still seem like a serious commitment.
That feeling is magnified by how all of its equipment and classes and data can feel a bit overwhelming. The startup might have to spend a fortune on retail establishments that can guide users through their first Tempo experience. There’s also no mobile version yet, so you can’t bring the work outs on the road with you.
For those comfortable lifting the cheap weights they have at home or hitting up a budget gym, Tempo might seem needlessly overwraught and expensive. But for anyone who needs more instruction or wants to get a Barry’s Bootcamp-worthy workout at home, Tempo might be just their speed.
