eBay’s mobile app can now fill out your listings for you

Ebay is rolling out an app update designed to make it easier to list items for sale on its online marketplace. Instead of filling out detailed forms on your mobile phone’s small screen, you can now scan the barcode on the item in question or type a description, choose the item’s condition, then click “list your item” to make the listing go live on eBay’s site.

After scanning or entering the description, eBay’s app will do a one-to-one match to its catalog to help to fill in the necessary information for that product. It will also offer sellers a pre-populated stock photo, eBay’s price recommendation and its shipping recommendations,

The change is meant to reduce to a matter of seconds the number of steps it takes to list. And if the process is less cumbersome, eBay hopes more people will choose to sell on eBay as opposed to the growing number of resale apps like OfferUp or LetGo, which are currently ranking higher than eBay on Apple’s App Store.

Facebook’s Marketplace has also likely had some impact on eBay’s sales, especially in terms of local sales.

Despite the increased competition, eBay is still seeing more than 13.4 million listings added to its site every week from the eBay mobile app alone.

The app’s newfound ability to quickly list the item uses technology like structured data and predictive analytics to pre-populate listings with the information required, instead of relying on sellers to type it in themselves.

This use of technology is something the company believes is a competitive advantage over newcomers to the space, in addition to its ability to provide access to millions of shoppers around the world.

“At eBay, we’re dedicated to delivering a seamless and efficient selling experience for both first-time and seasoned sellers alike,” says Kelly Vincent, eBay’s VP of Consumer Selling Product & Engineering, in a statement about the app’s revamp.

“This latest update continues to leverage eBay’s structured data, which helps catalogue the 1.1+ billion items on the platform, to instantaneously populate product details, pricing and shipping information in the listing flow. Not only does the catalogue facilitate a superior listing experience, it enables buyers to easily find the great deals offered by our sellers,” she added.

Vincent also noted that eBay’s use of structured data and other new technology will make its way to other products and features this year, but didn’t say what those may be. However, the focus for now seems to be enabling sellers.

Ebay’s updated app with the barcode scanning feature for listings is rolling out now on both iOS and Android.

Read Full Article

How to Test Your Wi-Fi Speed (And 7 Mistakes You Should Avoid)

DeepVariant Accuracy Improvements for Genetic Datatypes

Posted by Pi-Chuan Chang, Software Engineer and Lizzie Dorfman, Technical Program Manager, Google Brain Team

Last December we released DeepVariant, a deep learning model that has been trained to analyze genetic sequences and accurately identify the differences, known as variants, that make us all unique. Our initial post focused on how DeepVariant approaches “variant calling” as an image classification problem, and is able to achieve greater accuracy than previous methods.

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of DeepVariant v0.6, which includes some major accuracy improvements. In this post we describe how we train DeepVariant, and how we were able to improve DeepVariant's accuracy for two common sequencing scenarios, whole exome sequencing and polymerase chain reaction sequencing, simply by adding representative data into DeepVariant's training process.

Many Types of Sequencing Data
Approaches to genomic sequencing vary depending on the type of DNA sample (e.g., from blood or saliva), how the DNA was processed (e.g., amplification techniques), which technology was used to sequence the data (e.g., instruments can vary even within the same manufacturer) and what section or how much of the genome was sequenced. These differences result in a very large number of sequencing "datatypes".

Typically, variant calling tools have been tuned for one specific datatype and perform relatively poorly on others. Given the extensive time and expertise involved in tuning variant callers for new datatypes, it seemed infeasible to customize each tool for every one. In contrast, with DeepVariant we are able to improve accuracy for new datatypes simply by including representative data in the training process, without negatively impacting overall performance.

Truth Sets for Variant Calling
Deep learning models depend on having high quality data for training and evaluation. In the field of genomics, the Genome in a Bottle (GIAB) consortium, which is hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), produces human genomes for use in technology development, evaluation, and optimization. The benefit of working with GIAB benchmarking genomes is that their true sequence is known (at least to the extent currently possible). To achieve this, GIAB takes a single person's DNA and repeatedly sequences it using a wide variety of laboratory methods and sequencing technologies (i.e. many datatypes) and analyzes the resulting data using many different variant calling tools. A tremendous amount of work then follows to evaluate and adjudicate discrepancies to produce a high-confidence "truth set" for each genome.

The majority of DeepVariant’s training data is from the first benchmarking genome released by GIAB, HG001. The sample, from a woman of northern European ancestry, was made available as part of the International HapMap Project, the first large-scale effort to identify common patterns of human genetic variation. Because DNA from HG001 is commercially available and so well characterized, it is often the first sample used to test new sequencing technologies and variant calling tools. By using many replicates and different datatypes of HG001, we can generate millions of training examples which helps DeepVariant learn to accurately classify many datatypes, and even generalize to datatypes it has never seen before.

Improved Exome Model in v0.5
In the v0.5 release we formalized a benchmarking-compatible training strategy to withhold from training a complete sample, HG002, as well as any data from chromosome 20. HG002, the second benchmarking genome released by GIAB, is from a male of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Testing on this sample, which differs in both sex and ethnicity from HG001, helps to ensure that DeepVariant is performing well for diverse populations. Additionally reserving chromosome 20 for testing guarantees that we can evaluate DeepVariant's accuracy for any datatype that has truth data available.

In v0.5 we also focused on exome data, which is the subset of the genome that directly codes for proteins. The exome is only ~1% of the whole human genome, so whole exome sequencing (WES) costs less than whole genome sequencing (WGS). The exome also harbors many variants of clinical significance which makes it useful for both researchers and clinicians. To increase exome accuracy we added a variety of WES datatypes, provided by DNAnexus, to DeepVariant's training data. The v0.5 WES model shows 43% fewer indel (insertion-deletion) errors and a 22% reduction in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) errors.

The total number of exome errors for HG002 across DeepVariant versions, broken down by indel errors (left) and SNP errors (right). Errors are either false positive (FP), colored yellow, or false negative (FN), colored blue. The largest accuracy jump is between v0.4 and v0.5, largely attributable to a reduction in indel FPs.

Improved Whole Genome Sequencing Model for PCR+ data in v0.6
Our newest release of DeepVariant, v0.6, focuses on improved accuracy for data that has undergone DNA amplification via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) prior to sequencing. PCR is an easy and inexpensive way to amplify very small quantities of DNA, and once sequenced results in what is known as PCR positive (PCR+) sequencing data. It is well known, however, that PCR can be prone to bias and errors, and non-PCR-based (or PCR-free) DNA preparation methods are increasingly common. DeepVariant's training data prior to the v0.6 release was exclusively PCR-free data, and PCR+ was one of the few datatypes for which DeepVariant had underperformed in external evaluations. By adding PCR+ examples to DeepVariant's training data, also provided by DNAnexus, we have seen significant accuracy improvements for this datatype, including a 60% reduction in indel errors.

DeepVariant v0.6 shows major accuracy improvements for PCR+ data, largely attributable to a reduction in indel errors. Here we re-analyze two PCR+ samples that were used in external evaluations, including DNAnexus on the left (see details in figure 10) and bcbio on the right, showing how indel accuracy improves with each DeepVariant version.

Independent evaluations of DeepVariant v0.6 from both DNAnexus and bcbio are also available. Their analyses support our findings of improved indel accuracy, and also include comparisons to other variant calling tools.

Looking Forward
We released DeepVariant as open source software to encourage collaboration and to accelerate the use of this technology to solve real world problems. As the pace of innovation in sequencing technologies continues to grow, including more clinical applications, we are optimistic that DeepVariant can be further extended to produce consistent and highly accurate results. We hope that researchers will use DeepVariant v0.6 to accelerate discoveries, and if there is a sequencing datatype that you would like to see us prioritize, please let us know.

The Best Unlimited Free VPN Services (And Their Hidden Costs)

If you’ve learned the reasons to use a VPN and decided to integrate one into your workflow, you might try starting out with a free solution. Since many free VPNs limit the amount of data you can send through them, it makes sense to look for an unlimited option.

Let’s look at some free VPNs that don’t restrict your bandwidth. And because free VPNs carry some big risks, we’ll look at the hidden costs of using these apps. As a baseline for the speed tests below, my Speedtest.net results without using any VPN were: 16ms ping, 54.56Mbps down, and 5.99Mbps up.

1. Betternet

Website: Betternet
Available For: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox
Truly Free? Yes, though a paid plan is available.
Hidden Cost: Ad-supported. On mobile, you occasionally have to watch a video to connect, and the main screen displays prompts to install other apps too.
Privacy: Betternet doesn’t log your IP address. Creating an account is optional, and the ads are generic.
Speed of VPN: Speedtest result was 72ms ping, 8.55Mbps down, and 5.62Mbps up.
Encryption? Yes, all traffic is encrypted using TLS 1.2 with 128-bit AES encryption.
What It’s Useful For: Good for a quick connection without making an account on your desktop, but doesn’t offer much flexibility.

Due to the regular presence of ads, Betternet’s claim on its homepage that “Betternet works across all devices for free without showing irritating ads” is an outright lie. Thus, there’s no guarantee that its other claims are true.

The app also opens a window about the free trial asking for your credit card immediately after installing. This costs $12/month if you pay monthly, or as low as $3/month if you pay yearly. It offers more locations, a faster connection, no ads, and more.

2. Opera VPN

 

Website: Opera
Available For: Windows, Mac, Linux
Truly Free? Opera doesn’t offer paid plans.
Hidden Cost: Only works in Opera’s browser on the desktop.
Privacy: Opera’s privacy policy states that it may collect “usage data, like web addresses […] and IP address locations” from your usage. The company also “may share specific personal information with third party service providers engaged to assist us in providing the Service requested.”
Speed of VPN: Speedtest result was 110ms ping, 23.76Mbps down, and 5.82Mbps up.
Encryption? Yes, protected with AES-256.
What It’s Useful For: No extra software required. Offers a one-click VPN connection right inside your browser.

In 2015, Opera bought the VPN company SurfEasy and later integrated the service into its browser. Anyone using Opera on the desktop can connect to that VPN free with no limits.

However, since the service only protects your browser and not your entire computer, it’s more of a proxy than a VPN. See our article on the differences between VPNs and proxies.

Opera once offered a mobile VPN for Android and iOS. Howeve, in April 2018, the company announced that it plans to permanently discontinue the app at the end of the month. It seems this only applies to the mobile app; the in-browser VPN will still be available. Opera recommends that mobile users switch to SurfEasy, but its free plan only offers 500MB of data per month.

Overall, Opera’s VPN is nice to have if you use its browser already, but it’s not a true VPN solution for your desktop. And now, you can’t use it on your phone.

3. ProtonVPN

Website: ProtonVPN
Available For: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS
Truly Free? Yes, though the free version limits you to access in the US, Netherlands, and Japan. You can only connect on one device at a time.
Hidden Cost: Free users receive a lower speed than paid users. No native client for Mac, Linux, or iOS, so you must use OpenVPN.
Privacy: The website plainly states: “ProtonVPN is a no logs VPN service. We do not track or record your internet activity, and therefore, we are unable to disclose this information to third parties.” The service does not include any ads.
Speed of VPN: Speedtest result was 110ms ping, 23.76Mbps down, and 5.58Mbps up.
Encryption? Yes, encrypted with AES-256.
What It’s Useful For: If you can’t pay for a VPN but still want one that respects your privacy.

ProtonVPN comes from the same team behind the privacy-centric email service ProtonMail. Its website states that paid VPN users subsidize free users, so there are no ads or selling browser history. While many free VPNs have questionable privacy practices, you can be reasonably certain that ProtonVPN isn’t doing anything shady.

The countries with servers available in the free plan are well spread out, so you should have no problem connecting. Plus, it’s based in Switzerland, which has strong privacy laws. Just don’t expect blazing speeds for free.

Unlimited and Free VPNs? Options Are Sparse

Unfortunately, you don’t have many more options than these if you want a VPN that’s both free and unlimited. Services like TunnelBear offer a free plan, but cap you at 500MB of data each month. Spotflux was another unlimited option, but it closed down near the end of 2017.

It’s also important to remember that these services have to make money somehow. If you’re not paying a company for using its VPN, income usually comes from serving ads or selling your browsing data. Since most people use a VPN to protect their browsing data from prying eyes, this data collection defeats the purpose of using one.

Of these three choices, ProtonVPN is the clear victor if you must use a free VPN. Opera’s offering isn’t a true VPN on the desktop, doesn’t work on mobile, and has questionable statements in its privacy policy. Betternet is the slowest of the three options, and lies on its homepage about showing ads. While ProtonVPN only allows access to a few servers and limits you to one device at a time, it has a commitment to privacy and never shows ads.

But remember that paid VPNs beat free VPNs every time. If you decide to go with a paid VPN, we highly recommend ExpressVPN and CyberGhost for their commitments to privacy, performance, and flexibility.

Image Credit: Olivier26/Depositphotos

Read Full Article

Crypto-collectibles and Kitties marketplace Rare Bits raises $6M

Rare Bits wants to be eBay for the blockchain, where you buy, sell, and trade non-fungible crypto-goods. After CryptoKitties raised $12 million from Andreessen Horowitz last month for its digital collectibles game, there’s been an explosion of interest in the space. But without a popular marketplace, it’s hard to find the goods you want at the right price. Now a team of former Zynga staffers is building out its crypto-collectible auction and commerce site with a $6 million round led by Nabeel Hyatt at Spark Capital, and joined by First Round Capital, David Sacks’ Craft Ventures, and SVAngel.

“Because of the Ethereum ledger, for the first time, users can truly own their digital items” says co-founder Amitt Mahajan. “Previously in mobile or social games, virtual items earned through play or by spending money were actually owned by the company operating the game. If they shut down their servers, the items would go away and users would be out of luck. We believe this new asset class represents a paradigm shift in digital property whereby centralized assets will be moved onto decentralized systems” For now, Rare Bits isn’t slapping any extra fees on its marketplace, compared to paying 1 percent to 4 percent on other marketplaces like Open Sea and Wyvern Exchange. Instead, if a crypto-item developer charges a fee on secondary sales, say 5 percent, they’ll split that with Rare Bits for arranging the transaction.

Users get the benefit of having all their crypto-collectibles in a single wallet. They can see historical pricing before they buy anything thanks to the transparency of the Ethereum ledger, whether they want to “Buy Now” or win an auction. They collectors can also see related items rather than transacting in a vacuum.

Rare Bits founders from left: Danny Lee, Payom Dousti, Dave Pekar, and Amitt Mahajan.

Mahajan, Danny Le, and Dave Pekar all met after selling their gaming startups to Zynga. [Disclosure: I know Pekar from college] Their fourth co-founder Payom Dousti worked at crypto VC fund 1/0 Capital and sold his sports analytics startup numberFire to FanDuel. With experience across the gaming, virtual good, and crypto space, Mahajan tells me “We thought long and hard about potentially building blockchain-based games ourselves but ultimately decided that there was a larger opportunity in focusing on crypto-based property as a whole.” The Rare Bits exchange launched in February and did over $100,000 in transactions in its first month.

With some CryptoKitties selling elsewhere for as much as $200,000, investors liked the idea of taking a cut of everyone’s transactions rather than just launching another digital trading card. That led Rare Bits to raise a $1 million seed from Macro Ventures and angels like Steve Jang and Robin Chan. As scaling issues threaten to prevent the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains from supporting micropayments and mainstream commerce, new use cases like crypto-collectibles are taking the spotlight.

Now with the $6 million Series A, Rare Bits is bringing in some heavyweight angels from the world of gaming. That includes Emmet Shear and Justin Kan, the co-founders of Twitch. Former Dropbox execs and married couple Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agrawal are also in the round, alongside Greenoaks Captial MD Neil Mehta and Channel Factory CEO Tony Chen.

The team hopes the runway will help it secure partnerships with developers and creatives to publish new collectibles for the blockchain that have a home on Rare Bits. “While today most of these items are items from games and collectibles, we envision that we will see licenses, tickets, rights, even tokenized physical goods represented as digital assets” Mahajan tells us.

Rare Bits will have to deal with the inherent scaling troubles of the Ethereum blockchain it operates on. For now, it’s refunding users the “gas” it costs to execute purchases and sales on its marketplace in a timely manner. Thos range from a few cents to a few dollars depending on network congestion. But Rare Bits could be looking at a steep bill or be forced to push those fees onto users if it gets popular enough.

There’s always the danger that CryptoKitties and the like are just the new Beanie Babies — valued today, but worthless when the fad dies. Rare Bits benefits from getting to follow the trend to whatever crypto-collectible is in vogue, and just has to hope the whole concept doesn’t fade.

“Our ultimate goal is to convince millions of new people to begin owning and transacting crypto-based property” says Mahajan. But the founders will probably be okay regardless. “Like anyone crazy enough to start a crypto app company this early, we started buying and HODLing BTC and ETH years ago.”

Read Full Article

How to Mirror an iPhone or iPad Screen to a Windows PC

MoviePass’s parent company is getting crushed after offering new stock

Helios and Matheson Analytics is looking to push additional capital into its prime and wildly popular asset, MoviePass, by raising money in a new stock sale that appears to be giving Wall Street fits.

Looking to raise additional capital, Helios and Matheson said it would sell up to $150 million in a stock sale that essentially seems geared to fund MoviePass’s expansion. Helios and Matheson is the largest shareholder of MoviePass, which is an increasingly popular service for going to watch movies. MoviePass’s parent company saw a sharp decline in its stock price today, with its value dropping around 40% as a result of the announcement.

“Helios and Matheson may use the net proceeds from this offering to increase the Company’s ownership stake in MoviePass or to support the operations of MoviePass and MoviePass Ventures; to satisfy a portion or all of any amounts payable in connection with previously issued convertible notes; and for general corporate purposes and transaction expenses,” the company said in the release. “The Company may also use the proceeds to make other acquisitions.”

Helios and Matheson recorded a net loss of around $150 million in 2017 (attributed to its acquisition of the majority stake in MoviePass). The company acquired a majority stake in MoviePass toward the end of last year. At the end of 2017, the company had around $25 million in cash and cash equivalents, according to their last annual report.

MoviePass allows users to spend around $10 per month to get one ticket to a movie every day, albeit with some strings attached. But it offers a way for theaters to fill seats and still acquire revenue from concessions and other products while allowing viewers to actually get in the door without paying a steep ticket price that might come with that movie.

Read Full Article

Jaquet Droz is shipping its mechanical signing machine

Watchmaker Jaquet Droz announced its Signing Machine – a mechanical device that will sign your name for you using a series of miniature gears and springs – in 2014. Four years later, the company is ready to ship their miraculous contraction just in time for you to ink the deal you’ve made with Cybereus, lord of the digital underworld.

This exquisitely baroque gadget is essentially a little cartridge full of clockwork. You wind it up, stick a pencil in its tiny retractable claw, and let it go. The gears and levers recreate your signature with a series of flowing strokes generated by the movement of the gears.

Droz, a 18th century watchmaker and automaton manufacturer, was famous for his miraculous contraptions including a Draughtsman and Writer, two human-shaped robots that could draw and write, along with his beautiful singing birds that used tiny pipes and bellows to recreate birdsong.

The Signing Machine is activated after you enter your four digit code into the the device and each unit is individually decorated for the owner.

How much does this bit of titanium jimcrackery cost? It starts at $367,500 and goes up depending on your signature. Too much? Just remember: making deals with the cryptodemons of the digital underworld isn’t cheap. You’ll need something like this oddly tactical piece of metal to truly widen their hooded, red-shining eyes.

Read Full Article

Facebook’s New Privacy Settings, Explained

mParticle hires Adobe’s John Sedlak as chief revenue officer

mParticle, which helps companies like Airbnb and Spotify manage their customer data, has hired four new executives — including John Sedlak, most recently a vice president at Adobe, who’s joining the company as chief revenue officer.

In addition, Kiran Hebbar (formerly CFO of Social Tables) is joining as chief financial officer, Will Rogers (previously an engineer at Etsy) has been named chief information security officer and Aurélie Pols (who worked as data governance and privacy advocate at Krux Digital) is the new data protection officer.

Sedlak told me that in his roles at Adobe and Oracle (which he joined through the acquisition of BlueKai), he saw how the big marketing software players are trying to build comprehensive marketing clouds, often created through multiple startup acquisitions.

“They would constantly go to market and tout the benefits of the end-to-end stack, when I began to notice that there were many best-of-breed point solutions out there,” he said. “I got to see the power of standalone companies who are innovating ahead of what the big guys were doing. I’d put mParticle on that list.”

In the years since I first wrote about mParticle in 2014, a handy acronym has emerged to describe what the company does — CDP, short for customer data platform. Basically, CDPs like mParticle allow companies to unify all their first party data, creating a single view of the customer.

Sedlak contrasted mParticle’s approach with older data management platforms, which he said weren’t built to connect customer data across all their interactions on different devices.

“They were originally built to ingest first party cookie data coupled with third party data,” he said. “They never fully contemplated the notion of a true cross-device world and I think [co-founders Michael Katz and Andrew Katz] knew that in 2013 and said, ‘You know we’re going to start solving for that now.'”

As for what hiring Sedlak will do for the company, he said one of his goals is to bring on even bigger customers: “I think mParticle can drive incremental or discrete value … to Fortune 50 marketers who I personally have done business with in the past, where I see an opportunity for us to significantly augment their current investments in the marketing cloud platforms.”

CEO Michael Katz, meanwhile, pointed out that that two of these hires are focused on security. With the recent Facebook scandals discussions and Europe’s adoption of GDPR protections, there’s “a really healthy conversation around the importance of data control and governance,” and he said these hires will help mParticle build the tools that allow businesses to “put customer privacy and data security at the forefront of their business practice.”

Read Full Article

Motorola introduces four new phones

Motorola’s phones aren’t always the flashiest, but there sure are a lot of them. And today, there are even more. The Lenovo-owned brand is launching not one, but four new handsets for your budget-phone-buying pleasure.

The new handsets were launched at an event in São Paulo, Brazil. We, sadly, were not there. Instead, we played around with the things at an event in New York City, where it’s currently 40 degrees in mid-April. No one ever said this job would be easy — or involve getting a tan.

The Moto E5 handsets are the flashiest of the bunch. There’s no set price on the handsets yet, but they’ll probably warrant a higher premium than the other new devices. The difference in build quality is immediately apparent right off the bat, thanks in no small part to the inclusion of a shiny Gorilla Glass 3 backing in blue, black or gray.

The phone comes in two sizes — 5.2-inch for the E5 Play and 6-inch on the more premium E5 Plus. The latter will only be available here in the U.S., bringing with it a beefy 5,000mAh battery and a pair of rear-facing cameras in a circular formation that will look familiar to anyone who’s picked up a Moto Z.

The dual camera configuration allows for some neat tricks, like better faux bokeh in portrait mode and the ability to create combination black and white and color images. Motorola, well, Lenovo, has also invested in a bunch of first-party camera software, including a small selection of built-in AR overlays and some Google Lens-like tricks, including the ability to scan text.

The camera setup isn’t going to win any awards, but Motorola continues to bring impressive features to its budget devices. That said, no price has been announced for either version of the E5.

We do, however, have prices for the Moto G6 and G6 Play. Those will run $249 and $199, respectively. The phones are still pretty chunky — no surprise there, given the price — though Motorola has adopted a few premium features here, including, notably, a move toward the 18:9 aspect ratio for their 5.7-inch displays. The G6, naturally, has the leg up here, at 1080p to the Play’s 780p.

The Play actually sports the larger battery of the two, at 4,000mAh to the G6’s 3,000. Both versions also support Fast Charging, though the G6 does it through USB-C, while the Play is still holding onto microUSB for dear life. All of the above also still have their headphone jacks intact. Motorola was one of the first companies to drop it on its premium Z line, but the company is smartly keeping the port around on its budget devices.

All of the above will be available later this season at “major carriers” in the U.S. and Canada. Surely it won’t be 40 degrees by then.

Read Full Article

5 Inexpensive Hobbies You Can Start Right From Your Couch

The phrase “cheap hobbies” isn’t classy, but your favorite pastime doesn’t need to be prestigious and impressive—it can be something you do while lounging on the couch wearing just a bathrobe.

A hobby, after all, is deeply personal and just as relaxing.

That’s why there’s something to be said about uncomplicated hobbies that you can start right away without spending a cent on Amazon or the like. The five hobbies below will bring hidden benefits that you can enjoy in your everyday life.

1. Improve Your Handwriting, Improve Your Life

Total students enrolled: 2,945
Course length: 2 hours
Key lesson: How to improve your handwriting habits and practice more efficiently.

Let’s forget the psychology behind handwriting analysis (also called graphology) and just focus on the immediate benefits. If first impressions count then it can be the trigger for good grades.

As a hobby, you can start with handwriting practice and move on to calligraphy. And yes, once you get up for the paper and pen, you can do it from the cushions.

The 12 keys in this course will show you how. Each key comes with specially designed practice pages. As you go through the keys, you will spot the flaws in your method and the means to correct them.

This short course isn’t just meant for children with handwriting difficulties but for anyone who wants to express their individuality through writing.

2. Dan Rather on Journalism & Finding the Truth in the News

Total students enrolled: 5,251
Course length: 4 hours
Key lesson: How to become more informed by challenging the facts you read every day.

Let’s just agree that reading is the best hobby ever. Reading the news (or even watching it) is a habit and can also be a hobby that makes you more world aware and smart. But if you haven’t been hibernating then you should be aware that “fake news” is in the dictionary now.

Dan Rather has an antidote. This critical thinking education is a must for our data addled times. The core of the course takes you inside the world of 21st Century journalism. This gives you an insight into how news is generated and marketed.

The short course from a respected journalist will make you a more informed consumer and maybe, a proactive citizen journalist.

3. Genealogy: Learn to Climb the Branches of Your Family Tree

Total students enrolled: 120
Course length: 4 hours
Key lesson: Learn how to chart your own family tree.

In a 2012 article, ABC News said that genealogy was the second most popular hobby in the US. Digitization has helped to make it an armchair activity though you would do better if you hit the road too. Free genealogy websites on one end and cheaper DNA tests on the other are doing their bit too. Maybe, this course will make you trace your own roots.

The short course will teach you the basic tools to start your own research with a methodical plan. The scientific research methods you learn here and practice will also help you in any other investigative project later.

For instance, the skills of conducting interviews and notetaking are valuable in other areas of study too.

4. Mental Math Tricks to Become a Human Calculator

Total students enrolled: 10,788
Course length: 2 hours
Key lesson: Learn how to do speed math without the aid of a calculator.

You carry a calculator in your pocket. It’s called a mobile phone. Even Siri and Google Assistant are at your command. But nothing beats the ability to crunch numbers in your head and spit them out in a few seconds. Yes, mental math can be a hobby if you love working with numbers or even Sudoku.

But the biggest benefit? It will keep your brain sharp and kill the fear of numbers, formulas, spreadsheets, and math games.

High-speed Vedic maths has its own tricks that help it overtake conventional mathematical methods for calculations on the fly. Don’t worry, it’s not advanced mathematics. Just a better way to add, subtract, divide, and multiply numbers without reaching for a paper.

The only requirement is that you should at least know the tables from 1×1 to 9×9. After that, you just have to unlearn some of the old ways of number juggling.

5. School of Origami: Learn How to Fold and Master Origami

Total students enrolled: 934
Course length: 3.5 hours
Key lesson: How to turn paper into beautiful 3D objects.

Your origami hobby can grow into something big. You can be someone like John Collins who is well-known just for his paper planes. Or you can be like Robert Lang, the NASA physicist who quit his job to focus on the art of paper folding. But not before he contributed to spacecraft designs. Origami is easy to pick up, easy to learn, cheap and gives you instant rewards. What’s not to like!

This course will teach you how to fold 24 traditional origami designs. The easy to follow, step by step instructions will take you from the level of a beginner to the proficiency of folding a Chinese vase.

Origami is one of those therapeutic hobbies that you can pick up anytime in your life without any serious demands on your time.

The Importance of Hobbies for Happiness

How different will your resume be with one passionate hobby? How different would be your day if you could come back home and swap the stress for the hobby?

Each one of these hobbies can help you test your passions without investing any money. Except for the price of the Udemy courses if you decide to take them. But as you know, every paid course on Udemy comes with:

• Lifetime access
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Certificate of completion

Thanks to technology, you can pursue multiple passions in your life. Hobbies are great for testing the waters. So, start with one and don’t let your hidden talents die silent deaths.

Image Credit: VadimVasenin/Depositphotos

Read Full Article

Amazon’s new ‘Alexa Blueprints’ let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses

Amazon this morning is introducing “Alexa Blueprints,” a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code. The idea is to allow Alexa owners to create their own voice apps, like a trivia game or bedtime stories, or teach Alexa to respond to questions with answers they design – like “Who’s the best mom in the world?,” for example.

You could also create a skill that includes helpful information for the babysitter, which could be triggered by the command, “Alexa, open My Sitter,” Amazon suggests.

“Alexa Skill Blueprints is an entirely new way for you to teach Alexa personalized skills just for you and your family,” explained Steve Rabuchin, Vice President, Amazon Alexa, in a statement about the launch. “You don’t need experience building skills or coding to get started—my family created our own jokes skill in a matter of minutes, and it’s been a blast to interact with Alexa in a totally new and personal way.”

To build your own skill or custom Alexa response, users will visit the website blueprints.amazon.com and select a template.

At launch, there are over 20 templates across categories like Fun & Games, At Home, Storyteller, and Learning & Knowledge.

The templates are designed so you can just fill in the bits and pieces that make them personalized to your needs. You won’t need to go through a series of complicated steps, and no technical knowledge is required. The templates are even pre-filled and work as is, if you just want to try them out before making your own.

After you’ve filled in your own content, you name it and publish with a click. This makes the skill or response available to all Alexa-enabled devices associated with your own Amazon account. But it’s not available to the public or the Alexa Skills Store.

Families with Echo devices, in particular, seem to be a heavy focus for Alexa Blueprints. Kids have readily taken to Alexa, and today there are nearly 500 public Alexa skills built for kids alone. Families also often have private jokes and bedtime rituals where Alexa could come in – offering to “tell a Dad joke” or “start Anna’s story,” for instance. Plus, Alexa is designed as a home companion – controlling smart devices, playing music, setting timers, and offering information like news and weather, among other things.

But families aren’t the only ones would could take advantage of Alexa Blueprints. College students could use the flash cards custom skill when studying, while a group of friends or roommates could design their own trivia games. And Airbnb owners could set up a skill for their houseguests.

After you’ve created the custom skill, it will be available in the Skills You’ve Made webpage on the Blueprints site. You’ll also be able to enable, disable and delete your skills.

The feature could give Amazon an edge in selling its Echo speakers to consumers, as it’s now the only platform offering this level of customization – Apple’s HomePod is really designed for music lovers, and doesn’t support third-party apps. Google Home also doesn’t offer this type of customization.

All three are competing to be the voice assistant people use in their home, but Alexa so far is leading by a wide margin – it still has roughly 70 percent of the smart speaker market.

Alexa Blueprints are available today in the U.S. only.

The full list of Alexa Blueprints available at launch is below:

At Home

• Custom Q&A: Customize responses to your questions
• Houseguest: Make your guests feel at home with quick access to important info
• Babysitter: Help your sitter find things, remember steps and get important info
• Pet Sitter: Help your pet sitter care for your favorite animal

Fun & Games

• Family Jokes: Create a list of your favorite jokes for when you need a laugh
• Trivia: Create your own multiple choice trivia game on any topic
• Inspirations: Curate a list of your favorite inspirational quotes
• Family Trivia: Play together and brush up on family history
• Bachelorette Party: Play to find out how well the bride’s friends know her
• Birthday Trivia: Play to see who knows the birthday girl or boy best
• Burns: Roast your friends and family with lighthearted burns
• Compliments: Flatter your favorites with a list of custom compliments
• Double Trouble: Find out which couple knows each other best with this customizable game
• First Letter: Play a game of categories starting with a certain letter

Storyteller

• Adventure: Write an adventure story where your child is the hero
• Fairy Tale: Customize an interactive prince and princess-themed tale
• Sci-Fi: Create an interactive story with a far-out theme
• Fable: Create a short narrative with a moral of the story

Learning & Knowledge

• Flash Cards: Study, test yourself, and master any subject by voice
• Facts: Keep a list of facts on your favorite topic, all in one place
• Quiz: Challenge yourself and others with a customizable quiz

Read Full Article

How to Bookmark Individual Emails Using Gmail Message IDs

You should be organizing your Gmail inbox so that you don’t have to comb through it in desperation. Fortunately, if your inbox is a mess, Gmail comes with an excellent search box that makes finding lost emails easier.

But did you know that there is another little-known method for keeping track of important emails? Each email in the Gmail inbox has a unique message ID, and this specific identification number is the fingerprint of each email.

How to Identify an Email’s Message ID in Gmail

The message ID is hidden in the background and you have to dig through the email header to find it. But the message ID is an important tracking tool and can also help you keep a record of your critical emails outside Gmail. Use it as a geeky email bookmark.

Gmail Message ID Finder is a Chrome extension that can help you locate the message ID for a Gmail email:

1. Install the Gmail Message ID Finder extension.
2. Open Gmail and find the message you want the ID for. Expand the dropdown button next to the Reply arrow.
3. Click the Copy message ID option that has been added by the extension. The message ID is copied to the clipboard.
4. To search for the email, paste the number in Gmail’s search box and your email will come up in the results.

You can use this number in any document that needs to refer back to the email. It is a long mind-numbing alpha-numeric string, for example:

rfc822msgid:51c6d69760513a5e5e4f75b29.6941197347.20180417120742.ddde91880a.5fccd3bd@mail8.atl31.mcdlv.net

As the video above shows, you can keep a running record of important emails in a spreadsheet. If you are working on a long project, the Gmail message ID can save you a lot of time if you need to refer to an old email. Do note that the ID is specific to your email account so only you can use it.

Read Full Article

Facebook moves to shrink its legal liabilities under GDPR

Facebook has another change in the works to respond to the European Union’s beefed up data protection framework — and this one looks intended to shrink its legal liabilities under GDPR, and at scale.

Late yesterday Reuters reported on a change incoming to Facebook’s T&Cs that it said will be pushed out next month — meaning all non-EU international are switched from having their data processed by Facebook Ireland to Facebook USA.

With this shift, Facebook will ensure that the privacy protections afforded by the EU’s incoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which applies from May 25 — will not cover the ~1.5BN+ international Facebook users who aren’t EU citizens (but current have their data processed in the EU, by Facebook Ireland).

The U.S. does not have a comparable data protection framework to GDPR. While the incoming EU framework substantially strengthens penalties for data protection violations, making the move a pretty logical one for Facebook’s lawyers thinking about how it can shrink its GDPR liabilities.

Reuters says Facebook confirmed the change to it, though the company played down the significance — repeating its claim that it will be making the same privacy “controls and settings” available everywhere. (Though, as has been previously pointed out, this does not mean the same GDPR principles will be applied by Facebook everywhere.)

At the time of writing Facebook had not responded to a request for comment on the change.

Critics have couched the T&Cs shift as regressive — arguing it’s a reduction in the level of privacy protection that would otherwise have applied for international users, thanks to GDPR. Although whether these EU privacy rights would really have been enforceable for non-Europeans is questionable.

According to Reuters the T&Cs shift will affect more than 70 per cent of Facebook’s 2BN+ users. As of December, Facebook had 239M users in the US and Canada; 370M in Europe; and 1.52BN users elsewhere.

It also reports that Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is one of several other multinational companies planning to make the same data processing shift for international users — with LinkedIn’s new terms set to take effect on May 8, moving non-Europeans to contracts with the U.S.-based LinkedIn Corp.

In a statement to Reuters about the change LinkedIn also played it down, saying: “We’ve simply streamlined the contract location to ensure all members understand the LinkedIn entity responsible for their personal data.”

One interesting question is whether these sorts of data processing shifts could encourage regulators in international regions outside the EU to push for a similarly extraterritorial scope for their data protection laws — or face their citizens’ data falling between the jurisdiction cracks via processing arrangements designed to shrink companies’ legal liabilities.

Interesting example of Delaware effect, however if other jurisdictions are smart they will have their own art 3 GDPR, that would be Brussels effect. Be sure the lobbying has started. Now if ever we need thinkers (who are also doers) like @linnetelwin

— Mireille Hildebrandt (@mireillemoret) April 19, 2018

Another interesting question is how Facebook (or any other multinationals making the same shift) can be entirely sure it’s not risking violating any of its EU users’ fundamental rights if it accidentally misclassifies an individual as an non-EU international users — and processes their data via Facebook USA.

Keeping data processing processes properly segmented can be difficult. As can definitively identifying a user’s legal jurisdiction based on their location (if that’s even available). So while Facebook’s T&C change here looks intended to shrink its legal liabilities under GDPR, it’s possible the change will open up another front for individuals to pursue strategic litigation in the coming months.

Read Full Article

How to View and Delete Your Location History in Google Maps

It can be quite jarring to see just how much location information we’re happily sharing with Google. Google’s Timeline feature makes it easy to see all this information at a glance, as well as turn off location-saving features and download a copy of all your Maps data.

How to See Saved Location Data in Google Maps

To see all your saved Google trips on a map imported from your phone, open up the Google Maps Timeline .

You can also reach the Timeline by going to Google Maps while logged in, click the Menu button > Your Timeline.

Here you’ll see plenty of information on where you’ve been: you can see your trips on a map, a link to your most visited locations and a link to all your saved trips.

You can browse trips by date on the timeline or by location. Clicking on a date will show your saved trips and locations. Clicking on a location will allow you to see when you last visited that place.

When you click on specific trips you’ll see a lot more information including mode of transportation, and the length and duration of the trip.

If you’re saving your photos to Google Photos, you can also see photos associated with those locations, but this feature can be turned off through the Timeline settings.

To download all your data saved to Google maps go to Settings > Download a copy of all your data.

How to Delete Location History in Google Maps

Turning off your location history is a simple one or two-step process:

1. Go to your Google Activity Controls.
2. Under Location History, toggle the feature off. In the window that pops up, click the Pause button.

If you want to wipe the location information saved in Google Maps, do the following:

1. Go to the Google Maps Timeline.
2. Click  Settings > Delete all location history.

If you don’t want to wipe all your location history, you can delete individual trips by clicking on the trip to open it and click the trash icon.

If you’re uncomfortable with how much information you’re sharing with Google, there are plenty of alternatives to Google Maps worth considering.

Read Full Article

How to See Where Your Photos Are Being Used Illegally Online

If you’re a photographer, or even just occasionally upload images to your website, you’re probably concerned about people stealing your pictures. Unfortunately, it’s easy for people to take photos that don’t belong to them online.

Since you could be making money with those photos, having someone steal them isn’t just insult—it’s injury. But how can you know when these infringements happen? Fortunately, you don’t have to track them down on your own.

How to See Who’s Using Your Photos Illegally Online

Pixsy is one service that can help you track down illegal uses of your photos. You’ll need to create a free account, and link your photo hosting platform to it. Pixsy supports Flickr, 500px, Instagram, Dropbox, and more. If you use another service, you can upload images manually.

Once you’ve added some images, Pixsy will keep track of them and watch for unauthorized uses. You can easily review these through your dashboard when they happen.

What’s more, Pixsy will help you take legal action against photo thieves. With a paid plan, you can send automated takedown notices to those who use your pictures without permission. And when you decide to take action, Pixsy handles the whole process.

A team collects evidence, handles documents, and negotiates a settlement while keeping you up to date. This is free, and you’re only charged a fee if they successfully win a case. Pixsy does take 50 percent of the settlement, but you could still end up with thousands of dollars from just a few clicks and some patience.

The free service allows you to monitor up to 500 images, but doesn’t include any takedown notices. You can still submit as many cases as you like on the free plan though. If you need more, plans start at $19/month.

Pixsy is just one step in fighting back against illegal photo use. Check out other ways to track down stolen photos.

Read Full Article

How to See Timelines of Quoted Tweets to Keep Conversations in Order

Do you remember when Twitter first came onto the scene? It had much fewer features than it has today, and it was tough to have a flowing conversation.

As a result, Twitter users developed their own ways to adapt the app to their needs. Thus was born the hashtag, as well as the “RT” that’s used today to signify retweets. Of course, retweets are now very much part of Twitter—the feature has its own dedicated button.

But it still isn’t easy following a timeline of retweets, especially if the retweeter chooses to quote the original tweet and add their own message rather than just rebroadcast the content “as is.” The problem is further exacerbated by publishers who deliberately ask for quoted tweets. The feature is more and more being used as a way to vote on topics, and with increasing regularity.

Quote This With Your Favourite Subject…!!

Mine: Maths ?

— MaNiii ?? (@usman_ali9525) April 18, 2018

Wouldn’t it be great if you could track timelines of quoted tweets to keep conversations in order? Well, you can. Here’s how.

How to See a Timeline of Quoted Tweets

To see a timeline of quoted tweets on Twitter, follow the step-by-step instructions below:

1. Navigate to the original tweet that you want to find quotes for.
2. Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.
3. Paste the URL into Twitter’s search box.
4. Press Enter.

You will see a timeline of all tweets, retweets, and quotes associated with the original content.

If you’re on a mobile device, the process is broadly the same. You can get a tweet’s URL from the share menu. Just make sure you strip away any junk from the end of the URL before performing your search. You can remove anything beyond and including the question mark in the URL.

For more tricks, check out our feature-length guide on how to use Twitter.

Read Full Article

Facebook has a new job posting calling for chip designers

Facebook has posted a job opening looking for an expert in ASIC and FPGA, two custom silicon designs that companies can gear toward specific use cases — particularly in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

There’s been a lot of speculation in the valley as to what Facebook’s interpretation of custom silicon might be, especially as it looks to optimize its machine learning tools — something that CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to as a potential solution for identifying misinformation on Facebook using AI. The whispers of Facebook’s customized hardware range depending on who you talk to, but generally center around operating on the massive graph Facebook possesses around personal data. Most in the industry speculate that it’s being optimized for Caffe2, an AI infrastructure deployed at Facebook, that would help it tackle those kinds of complex problems.

FPGA is designed to be a more flexible and modular design, which is being championed by Intel as a way to offer the ability to adapt to a changing machine learning-driven landscape. The downside that’s commonly cited when referring to FPGA is that it is a niche piece of hardware that is complex to calibrate and modify, as well as expensive, making it less of a cover-all solution for machine learning projects. ASIC is similarly a customized piece of silicon that a company can gear toward something specific, like mining cryptocurrency.

Facebook’s director of AI research tweeted about the job posting this morning, noting that he previously worked in chip design:

Interested in designing ASIC & FPGA for AI?
Design engineer positions are available at Facebook in Menlo Park.

I used to be a chip designer many moons ago: my engineering diploma was in Electrical… https://t.co/D4l9kLpIlV

— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) April 18, 2018

While the whispers grow louder and louder about Facebook’s potential hardware efforts, this does seem to serve as at least another partial data point that the company is looking to dive deep into custom hardware to deal with its AI problems. That would mostly exist on the server side, though Facebook is looking into other devices like a smart speaker. Given the immense amount of data Facebook has, it would make sense that the company would look into customized hardware rather than use off-the-shelf components like those from Nvidia.

(The wildest rumor we’ve heard about Facebook’s approach is that it’s a diurnal system, flipping between machine training and inference depending on the time of day and whether people are, well, asleep in that region.)

Most of the other large players have found themselves looking into their own customized hardware. Google has its TPU for its own operations, while Amazon is also reportedly working on chips for both training and inference. Apple, too, is reportedly working on its own silicon, which could potentially rip Intel out of its line of computers. Microsoft is also diving into FPGA as a potential approach for machine learning problems.

Still, that it’s looking into ASIC and FPGA does seem to be just that — dipping toes into the water for FPGA and ASIC. Nvidia has a lot of control over the AI space with its GPU technology, which it can optimize for popular AI frameworks like TensorFlow. And there are also a large number of very well-funded startups exploring customized AI hardware, including Cerebras Systems, SambaNova Systems, Mythic, and Graphcore (and that isn’t even getting into the large amount of activity coming out of China). So there are, to be sure, a lot of different interpretations as to what this looks like.

One significant problem Facebook may face is that this job opening may just sit up in perpetuity. Another common criticism of FPGA as a solution is that it is hard to find developers that specialize in FPGA. While these kinds of problems are becoming much more interesting, it’s not clear if this is more of an experiment than Facebook’s full all-in on custom hardware for its operations.

But nonetheless, this seems like more confirmation of Facebook’s custom hardware ambitions, and another piece of validation that Facebook’s data set is becoming so increasingly large that if it hopes to tackle complex AI problems like misinformation, it’s going to have to figure out how to create some kind of specialized hardware to actually deal with it.

A representative from Facebook did not yet return a request for comment.

Read Full Article

Facebook has a new job posting calling for chip designers

Facebook has posted a job opening looking for an expert in ASIC and FPGA, two custom silicon designs that companies can gear toward specific use cases — particularly in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

There’s been a lot of speculation in the valley as to what Facebook’s interpretation of custom silicon might be, especially as it looks to optimize its machine learning tools — something that CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to as a potential solution for identifying misinformation on Facebook using AI. The whispers of Facebook’s customized hardware range depending on who you talk to, but generally center around operating on the massive graph Facebook possesses around personal data. Most in the industry speculate that it’s being optimized for Caffe2, an AI infrastructure deployed at Facebook, that would help it tackle those kinds of complex problems.

FPGA is designed to be a more flexible and modular design, which is being championed by Intel as a way to offer the ability to adapt to a changing machine learning-driven landscape. The downside that’s commonly cited when referring to FPGA is that it is a niche piece of hardware that is complex to calibrate and modify, as well as expensive, making it less of a cover-all solution for machine learning projects. ASIC is similarly a customized piece of silicon that a company can gear toward something specific, like mining cryptocurrency.

Facebook’s director of AI research tweeted about the job posting this morning, noting that he previously worked in chip design:

Interested in designing ASIC & FPGA for AI?
Design engineer positions are available at Facebook in Menlo Park.

I used to be a chip designer many moons ago: my engineering diploma was in Electrical… https://t.co/D4l9kLpIlV

— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) April 18, 2018

While the whispers grow louder and louder about Facebook’s potential hardware efforts, this does seem to serve as at least another partial data point that the company is looking to dive deep into custom hardware to deal with its AI problems. That would mostly exist on the server side, though Facebook is looking into other devices like a smart speaker. Given the immense amount of data Facebook has, it would make sense that the company would look into customized hardware rather than use off-the-shelf components like those from Nvidia.

(The wildest rumor we’ve heard about Facebook’s approach is that it’s a diurnal system, flipping between machine training and inference depending on the time of day and whether people are, well, asleep in that region.)

Most of the other large players have found themselves looking into their own customized hardware. Google has its TPU for its own operations, while Amazon is also reportedly working on chips for both training and inference. Apple, too, is reportedly working on its own silicon, which could potentially rip Intel out of its line of computers. Microsoft is also diving into FPGA as a potential approach for machine learning problems.

Still, that it’s looking into ASIC and FPGA does seem to be just that — dipping toes into the water for FPGA and ASIC. Nvidia has a lot of control over the AI space with its GPU technology, which it can optimize for popular AI frameworks like TensorFlow. And there are also a large number of very well-funded startups exploring customized AI hardware, including Cerebras Systems, SambaNova Systems, Mythic, and Graphcore (and that isn’t even getting into the large amount of activity coming out of China). So there are, to be sure, a lot of different interpretations as to what this looks like.

One significant problem Facebook may face is that this job opening may just sit up in perpetuity. Another common criticism of FPGA as a solution is that it is hard to find developers that specialize in FPGA. While these kinds of problems are becoming much more interesting, it’s not clear if this is more of an experiment than Facebook’s full all-in on custom hardware for its operations.

But nonetheless, this seems like more confirmation of Facebook’s custom hardware ambitions, and another piece of validation that Facebook’s data set is becoming so increasingly large that if it hopes to tackle complex AI problems like misinformation, it’s going to have to figure out how to create some kind of specialized hardware to actually deal with it.

A representative from Facebook did not yet return a request for comment.

Read Full Article