NASA’s Insight Mars lander will gaze (and drill) into the depths of the Red Planet

NASA’s latest mission to Mars, Insight, is set to launch early Saturday morning in pursuit of a number of historic firsts in space travel and planetology. The lander’s instruments will probe the surface of the planet and monitor its seismic activity with unprecedented precision, while a pair of diminutive cubesats riding shotgun will test the viability of tiny spacecraft for interplanetary travel.

Saturday at 4:05 AM Pacific is the first launch opportunity, but if weather forbids it, they’ll just try again soon after — the chances of clouds sticking around all the way until June 8, when the launch window closes, are slim to none.

Insight isn’t just a pretty name they chose; it stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, at least after massaging the acronym a bit. Its array of instruments will teach us about the Martian interior, granting us insight (see what they did there?) into the past and present of Mars and the other rocky planets in the solar system, including Earth.

Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has been pushing for this mission for more than two decades, after practically a lifetime working at the place.

“This is the only job I’ve ever had in my life other than working in the tire shop during the summertime,” he said in a recent NASA podcast. He’s worked on plenty of other missions, of course, but his dedication to this one has clearly paid off. It was actually originally scheduled to launch in 2016, but some trouble with an instrument meant they had to wait until the next launch window — now.

Insight is a lander in the style of Phoenix, about the size of a small car, and shot towards Mars faster than a speeding bullet. The launch is a first in itself: NASA has never launched an interplanetary mission from the West coast, but conditions aligned in this case making California’s Vandenberg air base the best option. It doesn’t even require a gravity assist to get where it’s going.

Did you know? I’ll be the 1st spacecraft to travel from the West Coast of the U.S. to another planet. My rocket can do that—we’ve got the power.
More on launch: https://t.co/DZ8GsDTfGc pic.twitter.com/VOWiMPek5x

— NASAInSight (@NASAInSight) May 2, 2018

“Instead of having to go to Florida and using the Earth’s rotation to help slingshot us into orbit… We can blast our way straight out,” Banerdt said in the same podcast. “Plus we get to launch in a way that is gonna be visible to maybe 10 million people in Southern California because this rocket’s gonna go right by LA, right by San Diego. And if people are willing to get up at four o’clock in the morning, they should see a pretty cool light show that day.”

The Atlas V will take it up to orbit and the Centaur will give it its push towards Mars, after which it will cruise for six months or so, arriving late in the Martian afternoon on November 26 (Earth calendar).

Its landing will be as exciting (and terrifying) as Phoenix’s and many others. When it hits the Martian atmosphere, Insight will be going more than 13,000 MPH. It’ll slow down first using the atmosphere itself, losing 90 percent of its velocity as friction against a new, reinforced heat shield. A parachute takes off another 90 percent, but it’ll still be going over 100 MPH, which would make for an uncomfortable landing. So a couple thousand feet up it will transition to landing jets that will let it touch down at a stately 5.4 MPH at the desired location and orientation.

After the dust has settled (literally) and the lander has confirmed everything is in working order, it will deploy its circular, fanlike solar arrays and get to work.

Robot arms and self-hammering robomoles

Insight’s mission is to get into the geology of Mars with more detail and depth than ever before. To that end it is packing gear for three major experiments.

SEIS is a collection of six seismic sensors (making the name a tidy bilingual, bidirectional pun) that will sit on the ground under what looks like a tiny Kingdome and monitor the slightest movement of the ground underneath. Tiny high-frequency vibrations or longer-period oscillations, they should all be detected.

“Seismology is the method that we’ve used to gain almost everything we know, all the basic information about the interior of the Earth, and we also used it back during the Apollo era to understand and to measure sort of the properties of the inside of the moon,” Banerdt said. “And so, we want to apply the same techniques but use the waves that are generated by Mars quakes, by meteorite impacts to probe deep into the interior of Mars all the way down to its core.”

The heat flow and physical properties probe is an interesting one. It will monitor the temperature of the planet below the surface continually for the duration of the mission — but in order to do so, of course, it has to dig its way down. For that purpose it’s installed with what the team calls a “self-hammering mechanical mole.” Pretty self-explanatory, right?

The “mole” is sort of like a hollow, inch-thick, 16-inch-long nail that will use a spring-loaded tungsten block inside itself to drive itself into the rock. It’s estimated that it will take somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 strikes to get deep enough to escape the daily and seasonal temperature changes at the surface.

Lastly there’s the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, which actually doesn’t need a giant nail, a tiny Kingdome, or anything like that. The experiment involves tracking the position of Insight with extreme precision as Mars rotates, using its radio connection with Earth. It can be located to within about four inches, which when you think about it is pretty unbelievable to begin with. The way that position varies may indicate a wobble in the planet’s rotation and consequently shed light on its internal composition. Combined with data from similar experiments in the ’70s and ’90s, it should let planetologists determine how molten the core is.

“In some ways, InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars’ formation 4.5 billion years ago,” said Banerdt in an earlier news release. “It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems.”

In another space first, Insight has a robotic arm that will not just do things like grab rocks to look at, but will grab items from its own inventory and deploy them into its workspace. Its little fingers will grab handles on top of each deployable instrument and grab it just like a human might. Well, maybe a little differently, but the principle is the same. At nearly 8 feet long, it has a bit more reach than the average astronaut.

Cubes riding shotgun

One of the MarCO cubesats.

Insight is definitely the main payload, but it’s not the only one. Launching on the same rocket are two cubesats, known collectively as Mars Cube One, or MarCO. These “briefcase-size” guys will separate from the rocket around the same time as Insight, but take slightly different trajectories. They don’t have the control to adjust their motion and enter an orbit, so they’ll just zoom by Mars right as Insight is landing.

Cubesats launch all the time, though, right? Sure — into Earth orbit. This will be the first attempt to send Cubesats to another planet. If successful there’s no limit to what could be accomplished — assuming you don’t need to pack anything bigger than a breadbox.

The spacecraft aren’t carrying any super-important experiments; there are two in case one fails, and both are only equipped with UHF antennas to send and receive data, and a couple low-resolution visible-light cameras. The experiment here is really the cubesats themselves and this launch technique. If they make it to Mars, they might be able to help send Insight’s signal home, and if they keep operating beyond that, it’s just icing on the cake.

You can follow along with Insight’s launch here; there’s also the traditional anthropomorphized Twitter account. We’ll post a link to the live stream as soon as it goes up.

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Chrome on desktop now mutes annoying autoplays by learning from your behavior

There’s little that’s more annoying on the web than videos that start playing automatically and with their volume up. Over the course of the last few years, Chrome and other browser vendors have started to combat this, but for the most part, those solutions relied on the user explicitly taking action. Now, following the launch of a similar feature on mobile, Chrome on desktop is also getting much smarter about which sites it’ll allow to autoplay and which it’ll block — and it’ll learn from your behavior to personalize this feature.

Google says a “significant number of autoplays” are paused and muted, or have their tabs closed, within six seconds. I’m actually guessing most people close those tabs faster, but six seconds seems like a good enough measure to know whether a user wanted to hear the sound from a video or not.

Going forward, Google will learn from your own browsing behavior and learn which sites you’ll want to mute. For users who aren’t logged in — or who are new to Chrome — the browser will automatically mute about 1,000 sites by default based on that six-second measure it’s using to detect annoying sites.

The company promises that this new system, once you’ve trained it, will block about half of unwanted autoplays. But since none of these systems are perfect, Google admits that it’ll occasionally get things wrong and that you’ll have to manually unmute some sites.

On mobile, Google uses a somewhat different system for allowing autoplays. Here, it’ll allow them when a site has been added to the home screen by a user. I doubt a lot of people do this, even with sites they regularly visit, so on mobile this pretty much amounts to a complete ban on autoplays.

It’s worth noting that this is all about audio. Videos that are muted when they autoplay will still be allowed to autoplay. Google also allows autoplays when a user has tapped or clicked somewhere on the site during a browsing session, which seems like a loophole that the company will hopefully close soon.

 

 

 

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Google’s Advanced Protection program now allows access from Apple’s mobile apps, too

Last October, Google launched its Advanced Protection Program for users who want to ensure the highest degree of protection for the data they store in services like Gmail, Google Calendar and Drive. Users who need that kind of protection can opt into this program, but, in return, they have to use security keys for the two-step verification and can only access their Google data from Google’s own web and mobile apps.

Today, Google is opening up this last restriction a bit by allowing access through Apple’s own native iOS apps like Mail, Calendar and Contacts. Users in the Advanced Protection program can now choose to give those apps access to their data, too.

“Our goal is to make sure that any user-facing an increased risk of online attacks enrolls in the Advanced Protection Program,” Dario Salice, Google’s product manager for this services, writes. “Today, we’ve made it easier for our iOS users to be in the program, and we’ll continue our work to make the program more easily accessible to users around the globe.”

Like before, the program is meant mostly for those users who are most likely to become the victim of a sophisticated attack, including journalists, activists, politicians and business leaders. By supporting Apple’s own native apps, the service will likely be attractive to a wider audience now. For some reason, not everybody loves Google’s own mobile apps, after all.

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Washé raises $3.5 million for its on-demand car washing service and biz platform

Another startup wants to make on-demand car washing work, where others have failed. Washé, a Boca Raton-based service for on-demand washes, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to continue to grow its business, which involves a mobile app consumers use to connect with Washé’s network of around 1,000 licensed and insured car washing professionals.

The round was led by veteran tech entrepreneur Ron Zuckerman, currently a board member at TV Time, and included other, unnamed investors.

Washé, which operates in parts of Florida, Southern California, and more recently, Georgia and New Jersey, has performed roughly 100,000 car washes to date in the South Florida market – its largest – and is currently seeing 125 percent growth, it says.

To use the service, customers download the Washé app to their phones, create a profile and pick a package. There are four available, ranging from $30 to $120. With a tap of a “Wash Me Now!” button, a mobile washer (or Washér, as the company says) is deployed to the customer’s location, like their home or office. The washer has all their own equipment, so the job can really be anywhere – they don’t need the customer’s power or water.

When the job is a complete, customers are sent a photo of the work and can choose to tip or rate the washer in the app.

Washers are primarily existing business owners who use the service as lead generation, allowing them to focus on making money – not finding customers. Washé’s focus, meanwhile, is on the customer experience – it vets the washers, and inspects their vehicles and equipment before bringing them on.

But Washé will also train those who want to be their own boss, and it sells car wash equipment to help them get started. The products are available at local Washer hubs and online at The Washé Store – which gives it an e-commerce business on the side of its B2C operation. In addition, washers without a van can rent a branded one from Washé to use.

Washers can set their own hours and are paid through the app, including tips. These payments are automatically deposited to their bank account. Washé keeps 70 to 80 percent of the transaction, like a typical marketplace, with the variance depending on things like package or location.

Beyond the consumer-facing service, the startup also offers a service for businesses who want to offer car washes as an amenity for employees, customers, or others on-site. The company offers its tech platform for businesses to track and manage car wash activity. It currently partners with corporations, valets, hotels, and travel companies, including Office Depot, Citrix, Curbstand, Jetsmarter, and the Setai Hotel. Some of these are single locations, not large deals, as this business is just getting off the ground.

The B2B business is more flexible, however, offering more options for packages and pricing, as well as specific times Washé will be available.

The fundraise will be focused on growing both the B2C and B2B operations, the company says, as well as hiring to expand its 15-plus person team in Boca Raton.

 

 

The idea of bringing services to the customer is of growing interest in an on-demand world, where you can order nearly anything online, and have it show up at your location – sometimes just an hour or so later. Washé believes that services like the one it offers will be able to ride this wave, as people begin to expect not just products – but anything else they need – to come to them, as well.

Specifically, the company points to recent market intelligence from IBIS World Industry, which says there’s a $3 billion mobile car wash industry in the U.S, and a $10 billion total U.S. car wash industry. IBIS expects that demand to grow over the next five years, too.

Of course, on-demand car washing hasn’t always fared well. It’s extremely difficult to become the “Uber for X,” (in this case, car washes), and Washé still has a long way to go to prove itself.

But the company believes its focus on matching supply and demand will help it to succeed.

“What is key is that you have to balance the supply and demand. So you have to really understand how to how to engage your supply channels…our supply is equally as important to us as our customers,” explains Washè CEO Matt Stadtmauer.

Stadtmauer previously worked in the investment industry, specifically hedge funds, before getting the bug to do something more entrepreneurial. He says he got the idea to try Washé from a friend, and developed the app with help from Tel Aviv-based Execute – meaning, the technical side of the business is currently outsourced to some extent.

The company tested the market for over six months in 2016 in Boca Raton, and had saw some success.

“[Washé has a] strong go-to-market strategy, plus a scalable footprint that allows us to take what was initially a B2C model and grow it into a vertically-integrated business where we’re doing B2B,” says Stadtmauer. “We have product line for the do-it-yourself market, in addition to strategic integrations with other apps and the auto care space. We have a very interesting roadmap that touches all the various four points of our vertical business lines,” he adds.

Washé is currently available on iOS, where it has a notably good 4.7-star rating, and Android, where it’s a 3.9. Customers complaints relate to the quality of the wash, which can be subjective, but also a tough problem to address at scale. Other times, the complaints are more technical in nature – something that Washé could improve by bringing engineering and development more in-house.

 

The app has been live since April 2016, initially in a smaller, beta period. It now plans to expand further into L.A., plus new markets in Arizona, greater California, and the Tri-State area, among others.

“Washé is leading the way in the on-demand car wash space by offering an innovative platform for both consumers and businesses,” said Ron Zuckerman, in a statement. “Washé’s success over the past two years demonstrates tremendous growth potential and I’m excited to work with them to expand Washé in the U.S and globally.”

 

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Dual Boot vs. Virtual Machine: Which One Is Right for You?

If you want to run multiple operating systems on one machine, or multiple copies of the same operating system, then you only have two ways to do it: dual boot or virtual machine. Both methods are useful, but they serve different purposes.

Not sure which one is right for you? Then you’ve come to the right place. We’ll go through a series of questions that you should ask yourself. Your answers to these questions will let you know which method is better for your particular needs.

Note: If you don’t know what a virtual machine is, start with our introductory article on what virtual machines are and why they’re useful.

Do You Have a Powerful Computer?

Normally, 100 percent of your hardware is dedicated to running the operating system on your computer. But when you use a virtual machine, you’re running a second operating system within your primary operating system. This means your hardware splits between the two operating systems.

On older computers and laptops, dual booting is really your only option. When you dual boot, you can switch between operating systems and dedicate all your hardware to one at a time. The more powerful your hardware, the more viable a virtual machine becomes. In that case, a virtual machine is usually preferable.

How much power does a virtual machine require? It depends on the operating system. If you’re running a lightweight Linux distro, you don’t need much. If you’re virtualizing Windows 10 within macOS, then you’ll need a more modern rig.

Will You Do CPU or GPU-Intensive Tasks?

Even with a powerful computer, virtual machines can be problematic when doing resource-intensive tasks like gaming, 3D animation, video editing, etc.

This is because virtualization involves a bit of emulation, and emulated operating systems aren’t as efficient as native operating systems. So if you’re going to do anything that hogs the CPU or GPU, it’s better to go with a dual boot setup instead.

Will You Use One Operating System at a Time?

Virtual machines are great for multitasking, allowing you to switch between multiple operating systems with a simple Alt + Tab. But if you’re going to sit inside a virtualized operating system for hours at a time, it may not be the best choice.

For example, let’s say your main operating system is Windows but you’re a programmer and prefer to code in a Linux environment. If you’re going to bury yourself in a three-hour coding session, might as well dual boot into Linux and take full advantage of the speed of a native operating system.

Does Your Computer Run on an SSD?

These days, SSDs have gotten so fast that you can shut down and restart a computer within seconds. This is great news for dual boot setups.

With an HDD, switching from one operating system to another could take 5-10 minutes, and doing that multiple times a day can be maddening. But with an SSD, you can hop from Windows to Ubuntu in under a minute, which is comparable to the time it’d take to spin up a virtualized Ubuntu. So if you have an SSD, think about dual booting.

Do You Just Want to Run a Specific App?

Let’s say you’re perfectly happy as a Linux user. You prefer the environment, and you’re more comfortable in GNOME than in Windows. But you’re a photographer and you need to use Adobe Lightroom to edit a few images for a client.

This is one case where dual booting is overkill. If you just want to run a particular app that isn’t available on your native operating system, that’s when a virtual machine really shines. In facts, it’s arguably the most practical use-case for virtual machines.

Are You Just Testing Out an Operating System?

Maybe you’ve been a Windows user all your life and you’ve heard all kinds of praise for Linux, but aren’t sure if you’re ready to commit to a full-scale migration. In that case, don’t dual boot. Use a virtual machine.

While dual booting is convenient, “uninstalling” a dual boot setup can be quite a pain in the neck. Sometimes you can’t without risking the integrity of your disk partitions or your system’s bootloader. But you can create and delete virtual machines at will, which makes them perfect for one-off trialing of operating systems.

Do You Need Extra Security Against Malware?

One of the biggest benefits of a virtual machine over dual booting is that a virtual machine is sandboxed. This means a virtualized operating system runs in a completely isolated environment. For the most part, nothing within the virtualized operating system can affect the native operating system.

So if you’re testing for security vulnerabilities or checking the efficacy of a security suite, always do it inside a virtual machine. If you get infected by malware, you can just delete the virtual machine and start over.

Do You Want the Ability to Clone an Operating System?

Here’s something you can do in a virtual machine that’s impossible with a dual boot setup: You can create a full snapshot of the entire operating system and save it as a single file, then move that file to another computer and launch it as a virtual machine on that other computer. In essence, you’ve cloned it.

Clones are useful for portability, so you can take your system with you anywhere without needing the actual physical machine. They’re also useful for creating system backups, so if something goes wrong, you can spin up an exact replica of your system before everything went awry. Most virtualization software supports cloning like this.

More to Know About Dual Boot vs. Virtual Machine

By now, you should have a clearer idea of whether you’d be better off with a dual boot setup or a virtual machine. But if you’re still unsure, check out our article on the best way to run multiple operating systems on a single computer.

If you’ve decided to go for the virtual machine method, you’ll want to read our comparison of VirtualBox and VMware Player, which are the two best virtualization tools for Windows. On the other hand, the best virtualization software for Mac is Parallels Desktop. Good luck!

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How to Check If Your Online Accounts Have Been Hacked

The protection of personal data and information is often the spotlight thanks to incidents like the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. But most information leaks are not due to companies willingly selling your data. Rather, they are the result of breaches and hacks.

To make matters worse, you often only hear about these data breaches years later. Luckily, there are several online tools that can help you determine whether your accounts are secure. Here are a few of the best tools to check whether your online accounts have been hacked or compromised.

Have I Been Pwned

Have I Been Pwned is one of the best ways to check if your online accounts have been compromised. The tool uses your email address to check whether it is associated with any hacked data. Security expert Troy Hunt created the website, which lets users cross-reference their information with databases of breached credentials which were made public on sites like Pastebin.

All you need to do is write your email address in the website’s search bar. The site will then identify whether your email appeared in any compromised data.

If your email address is associated with a data breach, the website specifies the date of the breach, the affected service or company, and details on the leaked data.

You can also use Have I Been Pwned to sign up for a notification service which will let you know if your account appears in any new data breaches.

Facebook Login History

Over time Facebook has released more tools for users to check if their account is secure. The latest such tool lets you check if Facebook sold your data to Cambridge Analytica.

However, your Facebook account dashboard can help you keep tabs on your account security by giving you details on login locations and current active sessions. You can find this tool in under Settings > Security and login.

Facebook provides a list of locations and devices with active sessions under a tab called “Where you’re logged in”. If you see something out of the ordinary, such as an unrecognized device or a location you haven’t visited, you can report it or log out of the session using the drop-down menu next to each listing. The list also lets you see the last login date to give you more context.

If you have tons of active sessions on devices that you’re not using, we recommend you log out of them to increase your overall account security.

BreachAlarm

BreachAlarm is an alternative tool to Have I Been Pwned, which uses a similar process to check if an email address is associated with hacked data. It also provides data on leaked passwords.

The main difference between BreachAlarm and Have I Been Pwned is that the former offers a paid service for businesses. This service allows users to subscribe to notifications on data breaches where their email accounts and employee credentials have appeared.

You can also sign up for other plans which offer different levels of email support from BreachAlarm employees.

Sucuri SiteCheck

Hackers don’t only target personal online accounts such as social media, but also websites. While bigger websites have a number of security measures in place, websites of small businesses or bloggers often suffer from hacks.

You can check your own website for malware with the Sucuri SiteCheck, a free domain malware scanning tool. Sucuri searches a domain address for any known malware, its blacklisting status, website errors, and any out-of-date software. It will also identify whether you have a website firewall.

We tested the tool with known malware sites versus sites we know are secure to confirm that the tool can accurately identify a compromised site.

While SiteCheck offers users the option to sign up to Sucuri services to address vulnerabilities, the tool is free.

Twitter Account Access History & Permissions

Much like Facebook, Twitter allows users to monitor login locations and active sessions. This can help you determine if an unauthorized third party is accessing your account.

To do this, simply open the Your Twitter Data menu within your Twitter settings. Here you can find a login history for your account. This history includes a list of locations from where your account has been accessed, as well as the app that accessed your account.

If you use scheduling apps such as Zoho Social or Buffer, you can expect to see a few foreign locations in your account history. This is because Twitter is noting the IP Location of the app, rather than the physical location where you are using the app.

Should you see a foreign country in your location history, check under the app names to see whether it’s a service you have authorized. If you see an app you don’t recognize, or one you no longer use, you can revoke access under the Twitter Applications tab.

Pwned Passwords

Pwned Passwords is part of Have I Been Pwned, but instead of checking email addresses, the tool checks lists of leaked passwords. This is particularly useful to know as many hackers use credential stuffing to access user accounts.

If you’re a person who recycles their password or uses the same password across all accounts, it’s essential to know whether your password is actually safe. Pwned Passwords includes half a billion passwords exposed by breaches.

The tool does note that even if your password hasn’t appeared in any breaches, this doesn’t mean it is a good password. So even if you get the all-clear, you should make sure to create strong passwords for all your accounts.

Google Accounts: Device Activity and Security Events

Google’s security tool allows users to check the activity and login locations for all Google-related apps and accounts. In order to access this history, simply sign into your Google profile and select “device activity and security events”. Under this tab, you will see any password changes or added recovery options that have taken place in the past 28 days.

You can also check how many devices are currently logged into your Google accounts. Any security events will also have a geo-location tag, which means that you can check exactly where it happened.

If you notice anything suspicious, you should select the option to Secure Your Account.

To manage the apps which have access to your Google account, go to Sign-in & security > Apps with access to your account > Manage apps. Here you can review your apps and revoke permissions if needed.

Manually Check for Data Breaches

While many of the tools on this list are quite comprehensive, they only allow you to check certain credentials or specific accounts. That’s why using a tool like PrivacyRights.org can be useful to determine your account safety.

The website has a record of all data breaches in the US since 2005. This is a total of over 8,000 breaches.

Privacy Rights acts as a data breach search engine, allowing you to filter results according to company names, industry, date of breaches and more. This requires a bit more effort than the other tools on this list, but it addresses some of the gaps. For example, BreachAlarm and Have I Been Pwned won’t be able to tell you about data breaches of accounts that don’t include your email address—such as online banking accounts or online university accounts.

But with the Privacy Rights search tool, you can check if your bank or university has suffered a data breach in the past decade. Simply search for the name of your institution to see if it was hacked.

The site won’t be able to tell you whether your specific data was compromised. However, by identifying whether an institution was breached, you can get a heads up on whether you should change your login details. For example, searching for Equifax will bring up details about the infamous Equifax data breach.

Don’t Get Hacked While Seeing If You’ve Been Hacked

It incredibly important to keep your accounts secure and to make sure your data isn’t compromised. At the same time, your eagerness to do this should not be the source of a breach.

Some tools available on the web aren’t secure. Or worse, they are posing as security tools but are actually attempting to harvest credentials. This is just one of the ways hackers access your accounts.

When checking up on your account security, make sure to only use tools which others have vouched for. If a third-party site requires you to provide more than a simple email address, rather avoid it.

Even if you haven’t been affected by a breach, you should always consider increasing your online account security. For tips on how to do this, read our guide on setting up two-factor authentication for your social accounts.

Image Credit: belchonock/Depositphotos

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Forget Apple Notes: 5 Unique Note-Taking Apps for Mac

Most people take notes in some capacity. But what’s the best way to do so digitally on your Mac?

While Apple has its own Notes app for macOS, it’s still a bit lacking for power users, even when you know the best Apple Notes tricks. Compared to other options, Notes is pretty barebones.

So what are the best alternatives for Apple Notes on Mac? Choose one of these options to help you become a more efficient digital note-taker!

1. Agenda

Agenda is a recent newcomer to the note-taking scene, but it has a unique approach to your notes. With Agenda, your notes get organized in a complete timeline, designed to help you move forward with projects and other tasks.

Speaking of timelines, Agenda can even integrate with your calendar and detect other notes related to the one you’re currently working on, so referring back and forth between notes is easy. Agenda combines note-taking, task management, and calendars into one, so you know what’s on your plate now and in the future.

Agenda is flexible. Notes get grouped into categories and projects, and you can format each note to your liking, turn it into a checklist, feature code snippets for programmer logs, or whatever else you need.

You can assign a date to each note, which acts like a due date or reminder for when you need to finish something. These reminder notes then appear in the On the Agenda section, which shows important notes similar to a task list. Even better, Agenda’s full feature set is free.

But it also has a premium version, which costs $25. With this, you get more tools like choosing calendars, saving searches, exporting Markdown, hiding watermarks on printed pages, and more. Your purchase permanently entitles you to all the new features released during one year.

Since it’s completely free with no limits, Agenda is worth a try. Plus, an iOS version is coming in spring 2018, where all data will sync through iCloud.

Download: Agenda (Free, in-app purchase available)

2. Zoho Notebook

Sometimes all you need to focus on your notes are cards. And that’s exactly what Zoho Notebook offers.

Notes can end up in all kinds of formats, like checklists, sketches, audio clips, and even files. The magic behind Notebook is that the app recognizes the type of note you’re creating, and sets a card specifically designed for that format.

The generic Text card lets you drop in formatted text, lists (including checklists), audio, and photos. You could even use the Notebook Web Clipper to add web clippings to your text note. And as you continue to edit the text note, you can browse through previous versions if needed.

Even though you can use a checklist in a Text card, the dedicated Checklist card functions differently. Checked items drop to the bottom of the list so it’s more organized. You can even display Checklist cards in the Notification Center widget, as if it was standalone.

Audio cards include complete transcriptions of the recordings, and you can add extra text notes while playing back the audio. Photo cards allow you to drop in as many pictures, web clippings, or documents as needed, and you can drag them around to rearrange. File cards let you view files, and are different from attachments in a note. Plus, you can just drag and drop files from your Mac into Notebook.

Zoho Notebook has even more features in the mobile version, and all of your data syncs across devices since it’s stored in the cloud. All you need is a free Zoho account. You can take a look at Zoho’s business model information if you’re concerned about security and privacy.

Download: Zoho Notebook (Free)

3. Bear

If you want a powerful yet tastefully designed note-taking app, look no further than Bear. Bear is a beautiful app, featuring gorgeous typography and themes. But underneath this are powerful features.

Like many writing apps, it supports the lightweight markup language called Markdown. As you write in Markdown, Bear’s syntax highlighting makes it easy to see a live preview of how the final product looks.

Organization in Bear is a bit different than you’d expect. Most note-taking apps utilize notebooks or folders, but Bear focuses on tags, which are easier to manage in the long run.

Just insert something like #work in a note, and the tag acts like a folder. You can even add sub-tags, like #work/email. You can view all notes under a tag by clicking it in the sidebar.

One of the best reasons to use Bear is the interlinking notes. When you want to link to a note for reference, simply type double brackets followed by note you want to link to. Bear utilizes autocomplete to figure out what note you’re linking to after a few characters. Check out our article on reasons to use Bear over Apple Notes.

Bear lets you add images them inline, so they blend with the rest of your note. You can export your notes in a variety of formats, such as HTML, DOCX, PDF, Markdown, and even images.

While Bear looks basic on the surface, it’s packed with a ton of useful features. It’s free to use on one device, but the premium subscription ($15 annually) lets you sync across multiple devices, offers advanced export options, and provides great themes.

Download: Bear (Free, subscription available)

4. Microsoft OneNote

OneNote is one of Microsoft’s most underrated products, and works especially well if you already use other Office products.

There are a lot of reasons to like OneNote, the biggest being that it’s cross-platform. If you take notes on multiple devices or decide to stop using a Mac, your notes will stay with you. While the Mac version is missing some key features from the Windows offering, it’s still packed with a lot of useful tools.

OneNote uses notebooks for organizing, with each note taking a page in a notebook. Notes can consist of anything: plain or formatted text, tasks, diagrams, tables, embedded files, audio recordings, and more. There’s even the option to highlight important text, or you can add tags like Question, Important, and To Do.

For those who don’t love typing, OneNote also supports freehand drawing. You can freely draw or sketch notes using your mouse, trackpad, or even a third-party drawing tablet.

There’s a lot you can do with OneNote. Check out our full guide to OneNote and overview of OneNote for Mac.

Download: Microsoft OneNote (Free)

5. Pear Note

Do you regularly record audio and take notes at the same time? Pear Note is designed for you. The app comes with basic text formatting support, but the real magic is in the audio recording capabilities.

As you record audio, Pear Note also keeps track of what you type. When you play the audio back, Pear Note highlights every keystroke you took while recording. You can even click anywhere in your text to jump to that point in the recording. This is great if you missed something, since you can add in more text if needed. It also helps you interpret what a note meant.

On top of the handy audio recording, Pear Note can record video with the audio when you need visuals. There’s even support for slides, so you can import PDFs, PowerPoint, or Keynote files and PearNote jumps to the moment in the recording when you change slides.

Pear Note is an older application that also has an iOS version. While no new features are planned, it still works fine. The developer plans to fix any issues should they arise with future OS updates.

Download: Pear Note ($40)

Your Mac: The Ultimate Note-Taking Machine

Notes are an important part of life. Whether taken by hand or digitally, notes help us remember what we can’t keep in our memories. Thankfully, your Mac paired with these apps makes it easier than ever before.

No matter which app you choose, you can benefit from tips on taking better digital notes.

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Fitbit Versa Review: Fitbit’s Best Wearable Yet?

How to See and Delete the Data Windows 10 Collects and Sends to Microsoft

Windows 10’s April Update brings a slew of new features. Some of these make existing Windows 10 tools even better, while others address longtime concerns of users.

One tool that falls into the latter category is a new diagnostic data viewer. Windows 10 has long received criticism for collecting extensive telemetry data and sending it back to Microsoft. Now, the company is giving you the ability to review what your PC collects and delete it if you wish. (Note that you must be running the April 2018 Update to use this feature.)

How to See and Delete the Data Windows 10 Collects

1. First, enable data viewing. Head to Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback. and enable the Diagnostic data viewer. Note that this will take up about 1GB of space.
2. Click the Diagnostic Data Viewer button and you’ll jump to the Microsoft Store to download the Diagnostic Data Viewer app. Install it, then click that button again or launch the app from your Start Menu.
3. Inside the app, you’ll see a lot of diagnostic information. The left side collects “events,” and clicking one shows you exactly what was sent to Microsoft.
4. Use the search box to look for information about certain apps if you like. You may want to try this after spending some time in your favorite programs.
5. To export a copy of the data for your own use, click the Export button on the left to download it as a CSV file.
6. Finally, if you’d like to delete this diagnostic data from Microsoft’s servers, click the Delete button back on the Settings page.

Don’t forget to disable this setting and save 1GB of space if you don’t plan to check it often. Also, on the Diagnostics & feedback page, you can change your setting from Full to Basic to send Microsoft less information.

For further reading, check out the complete guide to Windows 10 privacy settings.

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How to Download Your Entire Facebook History

Whether you’re leaving Facebook for good or just curious about what data the social network has collected on you, you might want to download your Facebook data.

The option to download your Facebook data has existed since 2010, as Mark Zuckerberg made clear when he promised to fix Facebook after the Senate hearings of April 2018.

So let’s take a look at how to download your Facebook data, what’s included, and, perhaps most importantly, what’s not included.

How to Download Your Facebook Data/History

All Facebook users are able to request the data download via their General Account Settings. It’s not possible to use Facebook’s mobile apps to do this. Instead you’ll need to login to the desktop website using a browser:

1. Open a new tab in your web browser and head to Facebook.com and login.
2. Click on the downward arrow in the top-right corner and choose Settings, or head to Facebook.com/settings.
3. At the bottom of the General tab click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data.“
4. Select what you would like to include, or leave everything selected (default) then click Create File.
5. Wait until your data is ready to download. You will receive a notification when it’s done.
6. Click on the notification, review the file size, then click Download.
7. Enter your account password to confirm your identity, then wait for the download to complete.

Your data will be delivered in a ZIP archive (how to extract files from a ZIP archive). The size of all my data was 178.5MB, which is about a decade’s worth of light use. This took around three minutes for Facebook to process and make available. If you’re a heavy user, expect to wait longer.

Customizing Your Facebook Data Download

There are a few options included when you click that Download a copy link on the General Account Settings tab. You can change:

• Date range: Handy if you don’t want to trawl through years of data to find something.
• Format: Choose between HTML (default) and JSON. If in doubt, leave it at HTML.
• Media quality: Higher will mean a larger download size, though this is still going to be worse than the quality of the original upload due to Facebook’s aggressive compression.

You can also exclude certain items from the download. If you want a slim download and don’t need your videos and photos, omit them and watch your download size tumble.

Exploring Your Downloaded Facebook Data

Once you’ve got your ZIP file downloaded, extract it and you’ll see a basic folder hierarchy that matches up with the items you selected or deselected earlier. You’re free to trawl through these folders, but it’s a lot easier to open index.html in the root folder.

This is essentially a front-end for all your data. You can click on individual sections to see the information contained within them, in chronological order. You can click your name in the top-right corner if you want to head back to the index.

Some of the more interesting (alarming?) troves of information are:

• Ads Interests: Essentially topics that Facebook describes as “most relevant to you.” This is worth a look since many of the categories probably don’t apply to you, at least that was the case with my data.
• Advertisers who’ve uploaded a contact list with your information: Facebook describes these as advertisers who “run ads using a contact list they’ve uploaded which includes contact info that you’ve shared with them or with one of their data partners.”
• Advertisers that you’ve interacted with: Just how ad-savvy are you?
• Messages: Including those you thought you’d deleted.
• Friends: Including juicy categories like Rejected friend requests and Removed friends you’d forgotten about.
• Calls and messages: Showing up for many Android users, as an iOS user I had nothing here.

What’s Not Included in Downloaded Facebook Data?

Facebook doesn’t give away everything it knows about you, just the things you’ve explicitly shared. There are some limited advertising flags, like your broader interests and adverts you’ve interacted with; but these don’t tell the whole story.

ProPublica identified over 52,000 unique “attributes” Facebook uses to classify its users. Most of these metrics, like “away from family” and “breastfeeding in public” do not appear in the Ad Interests section of your Facebook download.

Instead you’ll need to find the list titled “Your Categories” in the Ad Preferences section of your Facebook settings to see what Facebook thinks it knows about you. This is inferred data—descriptors used to categorise you based on all manner of interactions with Facebook services.

Other categories seem oddly empty in my own personal download. Location history was bare, despite my having checked in to venues and events on numerous occasions. What is Facebook doing with the GPS information it uses to track your logins and active sessions?

The social network clearly knows more about you than it includes in the download, and users need to be aware of this. We don’t know what data Facebook collects based on our browsing history—which profiles we visit and when, the groups we are most active in—but it’s almost certainly happening.

It’ll be interesting to see legislation evolve as the authorities continue to probe into Facebook’s handling of user data.

Downloading Other Facebook Photos and Videos

So what if you want to download a video or photo that you’ve been tagged in? Facebook does not include these in your data download, since they’re not technically yours. There are plenty of legitimate reasons you might want to grab media from the site. Fair use laws protect your right to use this content in many jurisdictions.

We’ve covered plenty of tools to help you download public Facebook videos, including Downvids and FBDown. FBDown simplifies the process even further by way of a browser extension.

Downloading private Facebook videos is a little more difficult, since you’ll need to grab the page source code and paste it into a specific private video downloader. FBDown Private Video Downloader seems like the best bet in this instance.

We’ve shown you how to download Facebook photos before too, and most of these techniques involve use a desktop browser and the basic functionality of a webpage. If you’re looking for something a little more serious, try Ensky’s Album Downloader for Google Chrome.

Is It Time to Delete Facebook?

It’s fair to say that Facebook has something of an image problem at the moment. However, despite massive data breaches and seemingly insidious advertising practices, more people are using the service than ever before. Which is all kinds of crazy.

There are plenty of reasons to stop using Facebook right now, but there are also reasons to not delete your Facebook. So, the choice is yours. However, regardless of whether you decide to dump Facebook, there’s no reason not to at least download your data.

Image Credit: Christoph Scholz/Flickr

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Watch these robotic soccer players play a nail-biter of a match

As a hater of all sports I am particularly excited about the imminent replacement of humans with robots in soccer. If this exciting match, the Standard Platform League (SPL) final of the German Open featuring the Nao-Team HTWK vs. Nao Devils, is any indication the future is going to be great.

The robots are all NAO robots by SoftBank and they are all designed according to the requirements of the Standard Platform League. The robots can run (sort of), kick (sort of), and lift themselves up if they fall. The 21 minute video is a bit of a slog and the spectators are definitely not drunk hooligans but darn if it isn’t great to see little robots hitting the turf to grab a ball before it hits the goal.

I, for one, welcome our soccer-playing robot overlords.

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Google Assistant now works with 5,000 smart home devices

With I/O just a matter of days away, Google’s gone on the offensive with Assistant. In a blog post this morning, the company is talking up its smart home play in a major way, noting an admitted pretty impressive bump in hardware compatibility. By its count, the number of compatible devices recently hit the 5,000 mark.

That number is up from 1,500 in January — an admittedly impressive jump in a short time frame. That, in itself, was a pretty decent jump since Google Home launched in late 2016 with little to no third-party device compatibility.

And, of course, that number’s set to grow quite a bit in the coming months. We’ll likely get more information on that at the big show next week, but a number of brands are just over the horizon, including Logitech’s Harmony hubs and Dish’s Hopper receivers, the latter of which will be getting Assistant functionality in the coming month. Google says it’s also working with more partners to bake Assistant directly into more smart TVs.

The company’s recently added a number of security devices to its list, including the Nest doorbell, which was the first product to add Assistant-based smart doorbell notifications. ADT, First Alert, Vivint Smart Home, August and Schlage will all be adding Assistant functionality down the road, as well.

The smart home is currently the key battlefield for smart assistants. Amazon made an important step in that direction with the addition of a hub to the Echo Plus, and Apple has been laying the groundwork for some time with its HomeKit offering and, more recently, the HomePod. In many ways, smart speakers are a means to end as companies push to make their assistant the centerpiece of the connected home experience.

Google also recently announced plans to follow in Amazon’s footsteps by making investments in early-stage startups that utilize Assistant.

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HTC confirms its newest flagship smartphone will arrive May 23

Perennial smartphone struggler HTC has revealed its newest smartphone — the U12/U12+ — will launch on May 23. The big spoiler from the company is that the phone will include… components.

Coming Soon. A phone that is more than the sum of its specs. pic.twitter.com/m2skJSK0qt

— HTC (@htc) May 3, 2018

That isn’t exactly an informative teaser, but we do actually have a flavor for what HTC will bring to market.

Serial leaker Evan Blass, writing for VentureBeat, revealed a dual-camera setup on the reverse of the phone, with a Snapdragon 845 chipset, 6GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage under the hood.

HTC badly needs this device to be a winner. Its most recent results for Q4 2017 were grim with a loss $337 million from total sales of $540 million. The company did get a cash boost from a $1.1 billion deal to sell some of its tech and talent to Google, but that wasn’t reflected in these results.

The firm is putting that capital to use for “greater investment in emerging technologies” that it says will be “vital across all of our businesses and present significant long-term growth opportunities.” The fruits of that aren’t likely to be seen for a while yet.

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How to Uninstall Kodi Repos

Kodi repos are the bane of many users’ lives. It’s almost impossible to stay abreast of which are working, which have been depreciated, and which pose a security risk.

The problem has recently become much more prevalent thanks to the ongoing crackdown on TV Addons. For those who don’t know, the website—which had its own repo—has been accused of providing copyrighted material illegally. It’s now the subject of two lawsuits in two countries.

As a result of the crackdown, many other repos and addons closed down voluntarily in a bid to avoid similar prosecutions. The mass closure prompted us to write about Kodi repos you need to uninstall right now. But that raises the question: How exactly do you uninstall a Kodi repo?

How to Uninstall Kodi Repos

To uninstall Kodi repos, just follow the simple step-by-step instructions below. Note: This method will work on desktop, mobile, and smart TV versions of Kodi.

1. Open the Kodi app.
2. Make sure you’re looking at the home screen.
3. Go to System > Settings.
4. Click on Addons.
5. On the menu in the main panel, click on Install from Repository.
6. Scroll down and find the repo you want to remove.
7. Click on the repo’s name to highlight it, then right-click on it.
8. From the context menu, select Addon Information.
9. Finally, on the last window, hit the Uninstall button.

Remember, it’s sensible to spend some time clearing out your old repos every now and again. Failure to do so leaves you exposed from a security standpoint.

For more information about how to use the app for all your home entertainment needs, check out our beginner’s guide to Kodi.

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Nintendo’s new president aims to build a billion-dollar mobile gaming business

It’s a time of optimism and transition at Nintendo, where brisk sales of the Switch have bolstered its bottom line and new leadership signals a fresh approach to the market. Shuntaro Furukawa, the new president, told the Nikkei that one of his plans is to pursue mobile gaming with more vigor, aiming to build it into a billion-dollar business.

Furukawa is taking over from Tatsumi Kimishima, who took the helm temporarily after the tragic and sudden death of the beloved Satoru Iwata in 2015. He’s only 46, and clearly as a member of the younger generation has different outlook on mobile, which the company completely avoided until very recently.

“The idea that something will emerge that transforms into something big, in the same manner as game consoles, is the defining motive of the Nintendo business,” he told the Nikkei. “From what I can see, smartphone games are the ones I want to expand the most.”

He said he envisions the smartphone side of the game company to become a 100 billion yen business – short of a billion at the present exchange rate, but why not round up? The company did a trillion yen in sales last year, so it’s not like we’re going to run out of zeroes.

The company’s tentative forays into the field have been a mixed success. Pokemon Go was, of course, a worldwide phenomenon, but widely criticized for half-baked gameplay and other issues. Mario Run was a perfectly fun game but many mobile player balked at its high up-front price. Then Fire Emblem: Heroes has proven popular and a financial success — but its reliance on “loot box” mechanics and in-game microtransactions soured the experience for many.

A new game and franchise, Dragalia Lost, is coming this summer.

Nintendo is releasing a mobile RPG this summer

Clearly Nintendo is still finding its feet in this relatively unfamiliar territory, though long practice with the DS (in many ways very like a smartphone) means that mobile gaming, if not a core competency, is at least core-adjacent. And popular franchises like Advance Wars and Professor Layton are great matches for mobile.

No one should expect a smartphone equivalent to sprawling, beautiful games like Breath of the Wild, but Nintendo has handheld fun in its blood and there’s no reason to think they won’t nail it after a few tries.

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Spotify misses on revenue in first earnings report with 170M users

In Spotify’s first ever earnings report, the streaming music came up short, pulling in $1.36 billion revenue in Q1 2018. That’s compared to Wall Street’s estimates of $1.4 billion in revenue and an adjusted EPS loss of $0.34. Spotify hit 170 million monthly active users, up 6.9 percent from 159 million in Q4 2017 and 99 million ad-supported users. It also hit 75 million Premium Subscribers, up 30 percent year-over-year, and 75 million paid subscribers, up 5.6 percent from 71 million in Q4 and up 45 percent YoY.

Interestingly, the MAU account seems to indicate that 4 million of Spotify’s 75 million subscribers pay but don’t listen.

 

Spotify’s results were in line with the guidance it gave yet Wall Street was still disappointed. Spotify shares promptly fell over 8 percent in after-hours trading to around $156, beneath its IPO pop a month ago but still above its $149 day one closing price and $132 IPO pricing.

Spotify’s Gross Margin was 24.9 percent in Q1, over the top of its guidance range of 23-24 percent. Its operating loss was $48.9 million, and its has $1.91 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q1.

As for Q2 guidance, Spotify expects 175 to 180 million MAU, 79 to 83 million paid subscribers, and $1.3 to $1.55 billion in revenue, excluding the impoact of foreign exchange rates. It’s planning an operating loss of $71 million to $167 million, in part due to a $35 million to $42 million expense related to its direct listing debut on the public markets.

Spotify is hoping to boost paid subscriber numbers by first luring more users to its free ad-supported service. Last month it unveiled a revamped free tier that lets users listen to songs on-demand on particular Spotify-controlled playlists instead of only being able to play in shuffle mode. The idea is that once users get a taste of on-demand listening, they’ll pay to upgrade so they can listen to whatever they want across the whole catalog.

That strategy could not only boost subscriber numbers, but also give Spotify more leverage over the record labels. More than 30 percent of all Spotify listening now happens on its owned playlists. That gives it the power to choose what will become a hit, and in turn means record labels need to play nice. This could help Spotify secure more exclusive content and a better bargaining position in royalty negotiations.

How Spotify is finally gaining leverage over record labels

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