Nintendo’s ‘souped-up’ NES Zelda loads you with gear for an easier adventure

Nintendo has set a strange new precedent with the release of Legend of Zelda SP on the Switch: it’s essentially the original NES game but Link starts loaded up with good gear and cash. In a way it’s no different from a cheat code, but the way it’s executed feels like a missed opportunity.

The game itself (SP stands for “special”) is described by Nintendo in the menu as a “souped up version” of the original: “Living the life of luxury!” It’s a separate entry in the menu with all the other NES games you get as part of the company’s subscription service.

You’re given the white sword, big shield, blue ring, and power bracelet, plus 255 rupees to replace that shield when a Like-like eats it. Basically they’ve given you all the stuff you can find on the overworld (including max bombs and keys), but no items you’d get from inside a dungeon. You also have six hearts, and traveling around a little bit I determined these were awarded by raiding nearby hidden areas, not simply assigned. Secret passages are already revealed, and so on.

Because it skips the title screen and save game selection it seems like someone must have essentially played through the game to this point (or more likely edited the values in game RAM) and then walked to the classic starting point and made a save state that automatically loads when you start or reset the game. This means the only way to save is to use the Switch’s built-in save states, not the rather inconvenient save method the game used.

It’s plain enough that this will be a less frustrating way to explore this famously difficult game, but it seems untrue to Zelda’s roots. I understand perhaps gifting the player some of the impossible to find things like a heart hidden inside a random block here or there. Getting some bombs to start is great too, and maybe even the rings (warping is helpful, and the game is pretty punishing so damage reduction is nice). But the white sword?

For one thing, a player experiencing the game this way misses out on one of the most iconic moments in all gaming — “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this!” Then the ritual lifting of the wooden sword. And then setting out into the world to die again and again.

And for me, the white sword was always sort of a rite of passage in the game — your first big step towards becoming powerful. You earned it by finding those extra heart containers, perhaps after asking in vain after it before you were ready. Once you have it, you’re cutting through enemies like butter.

To make it the default sword and to skip these steps seems like it causes the player to miss out on what makes Zelda Zelda.

To be fair, it’s not the only version of the game you can play — the original is available too. But it seems like a missed opportunity. Why not just have a save game you can load with this stuff, so you can continue playing as normal? Why not have the option baked into the launch of the original Zelda — have a couple secret save states ready with differing levels of items?

Nintendo has the opportunity to introduce a new generation to classic NES games here, having provided a rather barebones experience with the NES Classic Edition. Why not enhance them? Include the manual, god mode, developer commentary? This is the legacy the company has been stewarding for decades, and what better than to give it the respect it deserves?

I’m probably overthinking it. But this Zelda SP just seems like a rushed job when players would appreciate something like it, just not so heavy-handed. It’s not that these games are inviolable, but that if they’re going to be fiddled with, we’d like to see it done properly.

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Waymo’s self-driving cars hit 10 million miles

Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo has spent years testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads. What started as a trickle of miles driven each day has exploded in the past few years.

And now, the company has hit a new milestone as it prepares to launch a commercial ride-hailing service with fleets of self-driving vehicles.

Waymo announced Wednesday that its autonomous vehicles have driven 10 million miles on public roads in the United States. Keep in mind, that the company hit 8 million miles in July and had logged just 4 million miles in November 2017. In other words, Waymo’s pace is quickening.

These autonomous vehicle miles were logged in 25 cities, notably in Google’s hometown of Mountain View, California and in the greater Phoenix area, where the company launched an early rider program to shuttle passengers around the city. More than 400 early riders use the Waymo app and ride in their autonomous Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans.

The company’s progress on public roads is made possible by its investment in simulation, Waymo CEO John Krafcik noted in a post on Medium. The company will hit 7 billion miles driven in its virtual world by the end of the month.

“In simulation, we can recreate any encounter we have on the road and make situations even more challenging through “fuzzing,” Krafcik wrote. “We can test new skills, refine existing ones, and practice extremely rare encounters, constantly challenging, verifying, and validating our software. We can learn exponentially through this combination of driving on public roads and simulation.”

Of course, it’s not just about racking up miles.

Companies like Cruise and Waymo with large numbers of autonomous vehicles have been challenged to develop self-driving cars that can safely navigate complex urban environments and fit in with the millions of human drivers on the road. It’s not always smooth and traffic can stack up behind these cautious autonomous vehicles, sometimes requiring the human test driver to take manual control of the car.

“Today, our cars are programmed to be cautious and courteous above all, because that’s the safest thing to do,” Krafcik wrote. “We’re working on striking the balance between this and being assertive as we master maneuvers that are tough for everyone on the road. For example, merging lanes in fast-moving traffic requires a driver to be both assertive enough to complete the maneuver without causing others to brake and smooth enough to feel pleasant to our passengers.”

For now, Waymo vehicles are more circumspect and are designed to take the safest route, even if that means adding a few minutes to the trip, according to Krafcik.

The next 10 million miles, Krafcik said, will focus on building out the ride-hailing service to make it more convenient and efficient. For instance, the company is working to improve its routes, pick-ups, and drop-offs.

Waymo engineers are also applying advanced artificial intelligence and new in-house designed sensing systems to navigate complex weather conditions like heavy rain and snow, Krafcik said.

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Open Sourcing Active Question Reformulation with Reinforcement Learning

Posted by Michelle Chen Huebscher, Software Engineer and Rodrigo Nogueira, New York University PhD Student and Software Engineering Intern, Google AI Language

Natural language understanding is a significant ongoing focus of Google’s AI research, with application to machine translation, syntactic and semantic parsing, and much more. Importantly, as conversational technology increasingly requires the ability to directly answer users’ questions, one of the most active areas of research we pursue is question answering (QA), a fundamental building block of human dialogue.

Because open sourcing code is a critical component of reproducible research, we are releasing a TensorFlow package for Active Question Answering (ActiveQA), a research project that investigates using reinforcement learning to train artificial agents for question answering. Introduced for the first time in our ICLR 2018 paper “Ask the Right Questions: Active Question Reformulation with Reinforcement Learning”, ActiveQA interacts with QA systems using natural language with the goal of providing better answers.

Active Question Answering
In traditional QA, supervised learning techniques are used in combination with labeled data to train a system that answers arbitrary input questions. While this is effective, it suffers from a lack of ability to deal with uncertainty like humans would, by reformulating questions, issuing multiple searches, evaluating and aggregating responses. Inspired by humans’ ability to "ask the right questions", ActiveQA introduces an agent that repeatedly consults the QA system. In doing so, the agent may reformulate the original question multiple times in order to find the best possible answer. We call this approach active because the agent engages in a dynamic interaction with the QA system, with the goal of improving the quality of the answers returned.

For example, consider the question “When was Tesla born?”. The agent reformulates the question in two different ways: “When is Tesla’s birthday” and “Which year was Tesla born”, retrieving answers to both questions from the QA system. Using all this information it decides to return “July 10 1856”.

What characterizes an ActiveQA system is that it learns to ask questions that lead to good answers. However, because training data in the form of question pairs, with an original question and a more successful variant, is not readily available, ActiveQA uses reinforcement learning, an approach to machine learning concerned with training agents so that they take actions that maximize a reward, while interacting with an environment.

The learning takes place as the ActiveQA agent interacts with the QA system; each question reformulation is evaluated in terms of how good the corresponding answer is, which constitutes the reward. If the answer is good, then the learning algorithm will adjust the model’s parameters so that the question reformulation that lead to the answer is more likely to be generated again, or otherwise less likely, if the answer was bad.

In our paper, we show that it is possible to train such agents to outperform the underlying QA system, the one used to provide answers to reformulations, by asking better questions. This is an important result, as the QA system is already trained with supervised learning to solve the same task. Another compelling finding of our research is that the ActiveQA agent can learn a fairly sophisticated, and still somewhat interpretable, reformulation strategy (the policy in reinforcement learning). The learned policy uses well-known information retrieval techniques such as tf-idf query term re-weighting, the process by which more informative terms are weighted more than generic ones, and word stemming.

Build Your Own ActiveQA System
The TensorFlow ActiveQA package we are releasing consists of three main components, and contains all the code necessary to train and run the ActiveQA agent.

• A pretrained sequence to sequence model that takes as input a question and returns its reformulations. This task is similar to machine translation, translating from English to English, and indeed the initial model can be used for general paraphrasing. For its implementation we use and customize the TensorFlow Neural Machine Translation Tutorial code. We adapted the code to support training with reinforcement learning, using policy gradient methods.^*
• An answer selection model. The answer selector uses a convolutional neural network and assigns a score to each triplet of original question, reformulation and answer. The selector uses pre-trained, publicly available word embeddings (GloVe).
• A question answering system (the environment). For this purpose we use BiDAF, a popular question answering system, described in Seo et al. (2017).

We also provide pointers to checkpoints for all the trained models.

Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, and we believe that ActiveQA is an important step in realizing that mission. We envision that this research will help us design systems that provide better and more interpretable answers, and hope it will help others develop systems that can interact with the world using natural language.

Acknowledgments
Contributors to this research and release include Alham Fikri Aji, Christian Buck, Jannis Bulian, Massimiliano Ciaramita, Wojciech Gajewski, Andrea Gesmundo, Alexey Gronskiy, Neil Houlsby, Yannic Kilcher, and Wei Wang.

---

* The system we reported on in our paper used the TensorFlow sequence-to-sequence code used in Britz et al. (2017). Later, an open source version of the Google Translation model (GNMT) was published as a tutorial. The ActiveQA version released today is based on this more recent, and actively developed implementation. For this reason the released system varies slightly from the paper’s. Nevertheless, the performance and behavior are qualitatively and quantitatively comparable.^↩

Apple needs a feature like Google’s Call Screen

Google just one-upped Apple in a significant way by addressing a problem that’s plaguing U.S. cellphone owners: spam calls. The company’s new Pixel 3 flagship Android smartphone is first to introduce a new call screening feature that leverages the built-in Google Assistant. The screening service transcribes the caller’s request in real-time, allowing you to decide whether or not to pick up, and gives you a way to respond.

Despite the numerous leaks about Google’s new hardware, Call Screen and the launch of Duplex for restaurant reservations were big surprises coming from Google’s hardware event yesterday.

Arguably, they’re even more important developments than fancy new camera features  – even if Group Selfie and Top Shot are cool additions to Google’s new phone.

Apple has nothing like this call screening feature, only third-party call blocking apps – which are also available on Android, of course.

Siri today simply isn’t capable of answering phones on your behalf, politely asking the caller what they want, and transcribing their response instantly. It needs to catch up, and fast.

Half of calls will be spam in 2019

Call Screen, based on Google’s Duplex technology, is a big step for our smart devices. One where we’re not just querying our Assistant for help with various tasks, or to learn the day’s news and weather, but one where the phone’s assistant is helping with real-world problems.

In addition to calling restaurants to inquire about tables, Assistant will now help save us from the increasing barrage of spam calls.

This is a massive problem that every smartphone owner can relate to, and one the larger mobile industry has so far failed to solve.

Nearly half of all cellphone calls next year will be from scammers. And their tactics have gotten much worse in recent months.

They now often trick people by claiming to be the IRS, a bank, government representatives, and more. They pretend you’re in some sort of legal trouble. They say someone has stolen your bank card. They claim you owe taxes. Plus, they often use phone number spoofing tricks to make their calls appear local in order to get recipients to pick up.

The national Do-Not-Call registry hasn’t solved the problem. And despite large FCC fines, the epidemic continues.

A.I. handles the spammers 

In light of an industry solution, Google has turned to A.I.

The system has been designed to sound more natural, stepping in to do the sort of tasks we don’t want to – like calling for bookings, or screening our calls by first asking “who is this, please?” 

With Call Screen, as Google explained yesterday, Pixel device owners will be able to tap a button when a call comes in to send it to the new service. Google Assistant will answer the call for you, saying: “Hi, the person you’re calling is using a screening service from Google, and will get a copy of this conversation. Go ahead and say your name and why you’re calling.”

The caller’s response is then transcribed in real-time on your screen.

These transcripts aren’t currently being saved, but Google says they could be stored in your Call History in the future.

To handle the caller, you can tap a variety of buttons to continue or end the conversation. Based on the demo and support documentation, these include things like: “Who is this?,” “I’ll call you back,” “Tell me more,” “I can’t understand,” or “Is it urgent?”

You can also use the Assistant to say things like, “Please remove the number from your contact list. Thanks and goodbye,” the demo showed, after the recipient hit the “Report as spam” button.

While Google’s own Google Voice technology has been able to screen incoming calls, this involved little more than asking for the caller’s name. Call Screen is next-level stuff, to put it mildly.

And it’s all taking place on the device, using A.I. – it doesn’t need to use your Wi-Fi connection or your mobile data, Google says.

As Call Screen is adopted at scale, Google will have effectively built out its own database of scammers. It could then feasibly block spam calls or telemarketers on your behalf as an OS-level feature at some point in the future.

“You’ll never have to talk to another telemarketer,” said Google PM Liza Ma at the event yesterday, followed by cheers and applause – one of the few times the audience even clapped during this otherwise low-key press conference.

Google has the better A.I. Phone

The news of Call Screen, and of Duplex more broadly, is another shot fired across Apple’s bow.

Smartphone hardware is basically good enough, and has been for some time. Apple and Google’s modern smartphones take great photos, too. New developments on the camera front matter more to photography enthusiasts than to the average user. The phones are fine. The cameras are fine. So what else can the phones do?

The next battle for smartphones is going to be about A.I. technology.

Apple is aware that’s the case.

In June, the company introduced what we called its “A.I. phone” – an iPhone infused with Siri smarts to personalize the device and better assist. It allows users to create A.I.-powered workflows to automate tasks, to speak with Siri more naturally with commands they invent, and to allow apps to make suggestions instead sending interruptive notifications.

But much of Siri’s capabilities still involve manual tweaking on users’ parts.

You record custom Siri voice commands to control apps (and then have to remember what your Siri catch phrase is in order to use them). Workflows have to be pinned together in a separate Siri Shortcuts app that’s over the heads of anyone but power users.

These are great features for iPhone owners, to be sure, but they’re not exactly automating A.I. technology in a seamless way. They’re Apple’s first steps towards making A.I. a bigger part of what it means to use an iPhone.

Call Screen, meanwhile, is a use case for A.I. that doesn’t require a ton of user education or manual labor. Even if you didn’t know it existed, pushing a “screen call” button when the phone rings is fairly straightforward stuff.

And it’s not just going to be just a Pixel 3 feature.

Said Google, Pixel 3 owners in the U.S. are just getting it first. It will also roll out to older Pixel devices next month (in English). Presumably, however, it will come to Android itself in time, when these early tests wrap.

After all, if the mobile OS battle is going to be over A.I. going forward, there’s no reason to keep A.I. advancements tied to only Google’s own hardware devices.

 

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Apple needs a feature like Google’s Call Screen

Google just one-upped Apple in a significant way by addressing a problem that’s plaguing U.S. cellphone owners: spam calls. The company’s new Pixel 3 flagship Android smartphone is first to introduce a new call screening feature that leverages the built-in Google Assistant. The screening service transcribes the caller’s request in real-time, allowing you to decide whether or not to pick up, and gives you a way to respond.

Despite the numerous leaks about Google’s new hardware, Call Screen and the launch of Duplex for restaurant reservations were big surprises coming from Google’s hardware event yesterday.

Arguably, they’re even more important developments than fancy new camera features  – even if Group Selfie and Top Shot are cool additions to Google’s new phone.

Apple has nothing like this call screening feature, only third-party call blocking apps – which are also available on Android, of course.

Siri today simply isn’t capable of answering phones on your behalf, politely asking the caller what they want, and transcribing their response instantly. It needs to catch up, and fast.

Half of calls will be spam in 2019

Call Screen, based on Google’s Duplex technology, is a big step for our smart devices. One where we’re not just querying our Assistant for help with various tasks, or to learn the day’s news and weather, but one where the phone’s assistant is helping with real-world problems.

In addition to calling restaurants to inquire about tables, Assistant will now help save us from the increasing barrage of spam calls.

This is a massive problem that every smartphone owner can relate to, and one the larger mobile industry has so far failed to solve.

Nearly half of all cellphone calls next year will be from scammers. And their tactics have gotten much worse in recent months.

They now often trick people by claiming to be the IRS, a bank, government representatives, and more. They pretend you’re in some sort of legal trouble. They say someone has stolen your bank card. They claim you owe taxes. Plus, they often use phone number spoofing tricks to make their calls appear local in order to get recipients to pick up.

The national Do-Not-Call registry hasn’t solved the problem. And despite large FCC fines, the epidemic continues.

A.I. handles the spammers 

In light of an industry solution, Google has turned to A.I.

The system has been designed to sound more natural, stepping in to do the sort of tasks we don’t want to – like calling for bookings, or screening our calls by first asking “who is this, please?” 

With Call Screen, as Google explained yesterday, Pixel device owners will be able to tap a button when a call comes in to send it to the new service. Google Assistant will answer the call for you, saying: “Hi, the person you’re calling is using a screening service from Google, and will get a copy of this conversation. Go ahead and say your name and why you’re calling.”

The caller’s response is then transcribed in real-time on your screen.

These transcripts aren’t currently being saved, but Google says they could be stored in your Call History in the future.

To handle the caller, you can tap a variety of buttons to continue or end the conversation. Based on the demo and support documentation, these include things like: “Who is this?,” “I’ll call you back,” “Tell me more,” “I can’t understand,” or “Is it urgent?”

You can also use the Assistant to say things like, “Please remove the number from your contact list. Thanks and goodbye,” the demo showed, after the recipient hit the “Report as spam” button.

While Google’s own Google Voice technology has been able to screen incoming calls, this involved little more than asking for the caller’s name. Call Screen is next-level stuff, to put it mildly.

And it’s all taking place on the device, using A.I. – it doesn’t need to use your Wi-Fi connection or your mobile data, Google says.

As Call Screen is adopted at scale, Google will have effectively built out its own database of scammers. It could then feasibly block spam calls or telemarketers on your behalf as an OS-level feature at some point in the future.

“You’ll never have to talk to another telemarketer,” said Google PM Liza Ma at the event yesterday, followed by cheers and applause – one of the few times the audience even clapped during this otherwise low-key press conference.

Google has the better A.I. Phone

The news of Call Screen, and of Duplex more broadly, is another shot fired across Apple’s bow.

Smartphone hardware is basically good enough, and has been for some time. Apple and Google’s modern smartphones take great photos, too. New developments on the camera front matter more to photography enthusiasts than to the average user. The phones are fine. The cameras are fine. So what else can the phones do?

The next battle for smartphones is going to be about A.I. technology.

Apple is aware that’s the case.

In June, the company introduced what we called its “A.I. phone” – an iPhone infused with Siri smarts to personalize the device and better assist. It allows users to create A.I.-powered workflows to automate tasks, to speak with Siri more naturally with commands they invent, and to allow apps to make suggestions instead sending interruptive notifications.

But much of Siri’s capabilities still involve manual tweaking on users’ parts.

You record custom Siri voice commands to control apps (and then have to remember what your Siri catch phrase is in order to use them). Workflows have to be pinned together in a separate Siri Shortcuts app that’s over the heads of anyone but power users.

These are great features for iPhone owners, to be sure, but they’re not exactly automating A.I. technology in a seamless way. They’re Apple’s first steps towards making A.I. a bigger part of what it means to use an iPhone.

Call Screen, meanwhile, is a use case for A.I. that doesn’t require a ton of user education or manual labor. Even if you didn’t know it existed, pushing a “screen call” button when the phone rings is fairly straightforward stuff.

And it’s not just going to be just a Pixel 3 feature.

Said Google, Pixel 3 owners in the U.S. are just getting it first. It will also roll out to older Pixel devices next month (in English). Presumably, however, it will come to Android itself in time, when these early tests wrap.

After all, if the mobile OS battle is going to be over A.I. going forward, there’s no reason to keep A.I. advancements tied to only Google’s own hardware devices.

 

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How to Use an Android Phone as a Webcam for Your Computer

The Best Podcast Equipment for Starters and Enthusiasts

OK, Google: 20 Useful Things You Can Say to Your Android Phone

“OK Google” is a phrase you probably say so often that you may not think twice about it. From ordering an Uber to setting reminders and more, Google’s voice assistant has embedded itself into our lives.

Here are some of the best commands to give your Android phone. Make sure you learn how to use Google Assistant first if you’re unsure.

OK Google, Call and Text

This is an easy one, so if you’re not using it yet, you should start. Google Assistant can call anyone on your contact list or businesses around you.

Tell it to call [contact] or call [business] to start a call. If the name appears once in your contact list, the app will begin the call. If that person has more than one number, or if there are several businesses that answer to the same name, you’ll need to choose the one you want to call.

On a similar note, you can also use the command text [contact] to start a text message. Not only that, you can dictate the text message itself while you’re at it.

For example, try saying text [contact] I’ll be right there. All you’ll have to do next is choose the app you want to use to send it. You can edit the text too, if you want.

OK Google, Let’s Navigate

You may already know you can ask Google for directions to anywhere. After all, Google Maps is the navigation method of choice for a lot of people, even if they’re not on Android. But did you know you can ask for more than just directions?

To start, you can use the command where am I?, and Google will highlight your location on a map, along with an approximate address.

You can use the commands directions to, navigate to, and even how to get to. Then either say an exact address or a landmark name and Google will figure out where to go. If there are several places with a similar name, it will let you choose between them before it switches over to Google Maps for the actual directions.

Want to walk somewhere, bike somewhere, or use public transportation? No problem. A simple command like walking directions to or transit directions to will get you on the right track. Commands such as next bus to, or train timetable will also bring up helpful information, plus directions to the bus or train station if required.

As a bonus, you can also use the command map of with an address, name, or city to open Google Maps on that spot.

If that’s still not enough, then take a look at these awesome Google Maps hidden features.

OK Google, Create Reminders and Events

By saying remind me to followed by a phrase, Google will create your reminder, and ask you when you’d like it. Or you can say set a reminder, and Google will ask you for the reminder details alongside the date and time.

After setting one, you can say show me my reminders to see a list of everything you’ve got coming up.

Reminders can get even more sophisticated if you use geolocation. Try saying something like remind me to feed the cat when I get home. If Google doesn’t know where home is, you can set a location for it to remember. This can work with businesses too. For example, remind me to buy eggs when I get to the store.

Check out other cool ways to use Google Assistant reminders for more tips.

Setting events is similar. To create an event, say create an event or create a calendar event and state the event, day or date, and the time. You can also use the command schedule a meeting to arrange meetings with a person, date, time, and location.

The last task in this category is setting alarms. This is as simple as saying set alarm and specifying the time or how long from now. For example, set an alarm for three hours from now, or set an alarm for seven. You can use any alarm app you want for this.

OK Google, Open an App or Website

Use Google to open web pages you want to browse and even launch apps on your phone. Is it easier than tapping an app icon? Perhaps. But it’s certainly more fun.

To open an app, say open and the name of the app you want to launch. To go to a web page, say go to and give Google the URL. For example, if you say go to makeuseof.com, your browser will open to MakeUseOf!

OK Google, Send an Email

Android can remind you to complete tasks and add short notes for you, but did you know Google Assistant can also write whole emails? You don’t even have to launch your email app. Granted, I wouldn’t recommend using this for long emails, but if you’re only sending a line or two, it’s perfect.

If you want to keep it simple, say email or send email and specify a contact. This will start the email, letting you type it in yourself. If you want to go all-out, say something like email mom subject hello message I’m coming to visit you soon.

In much the same way, you can write Google+ posts by saying post to Google plus (if you actually use it).

OK Google, Translate

You’ll need the Google Translate app installed for this to work. If you don’t have it yet, ask to install the Google Translate app. Google will open the installation instructions, with a link to download the app.

Once installed, saying phrases such as translate to Spanish, or how do you say hello in German will make Google speak your translated phrase, along with related phrases, and the written words. Check out our overview of Google Translate on Android for more tricks.

More Google Assistant Commands

Who knows what else Google Assistant will be able to do in the future? You might be able to book a flying taxi, or have Google read your thoughts.

If you can’t wait until then, have you considered changing the Google Assistant voice, or asking the most popular Google Assistant questions?

Read the full article: OK, Google: 20 Useful Things You Can Say to Your Android Phone

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Product Hunt Radio: ‘Tinder babies’ and the power of connecting people online and offline

Internal Monologues

Internal Monologues

French designers build a 3D-printed metal watch

French watchmaker Unitam and 3D printing company Stainless teamed up to build a unique 3D printed watch, essentially the first of its kind. The team created the watch case using laser sintering to melt stainless steel 316L powder on a Renishaw AM250 printer.

The watch, which uses French-made hands and a Miyota movement, isn’t completely 3D printed. However, because 3D printing is now nearly foolproof and almost as good as injection molding, the teams will begin mass producing and selling these watches in the Unitam in Paris.

The watchmaker and the metals company showed off their watch at the Micronora trade show in France’s watchmaking city, Besançon.

It’s a clever and unique use case for 3D printing and I’d love to see more. Sadly, the current 3D printing systems can’t make small, complex parts for watch movements so we’re stuck with making larger, less complex parts until the technology truly takes off.

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What Is a Linux Beta Release and Should You Try One?

Weeks or months before a new release of a Linux-based operating system becomes available, a beta version often appears first. This offers a chance to see what’s coming down the pipeline ahead of time.

But should you download these beta releases?

What Is a Beta Version of a Linux OS?

In the computer software world, a beta version is an iteration of a program that has all of the features its developers intend but still needs to undergo testing to iron out any remaining bugs.

In short, a beta is almost ready for release but not quite there.

Beta is the second letter in the Greek alphabet. Beta releases often follow alpha releases (the first letter in the Greek alphabet), which are even earlier iterations that are sometimes available for public download. While betas are often in a state where they feel ready for public consumption, this is rarely the case with alphas.

Why Beta Versions Exist

Developers release betas for a number of reasons. These versions provide a chance for people to directly test new features, like those that appeared in the latest Ubuntu long-term support release.

Some passionate users will deliberately test software to hunt for bugs. People also provide quality assurance, covering issues as diverse as pointing out buttons that seem too small to recommending a pop-up window at first launch to clarify features. People who download beta releases specifically to help out developers, are known as beta testers.

Beta releases aren’t just for end users. These iterations provide app developers and hardware manufacturers a chance to test out their programs on an upcoming version of an OS before the official release. This way, Linux software that doesn’t come from OS developers can provide a reliable experience from day one.

Early betas also give journalists time to familiarize themselves with a platform before covering the launch. There are many components to an operating system. Without time to get accustomed to a system, a reviewer under pressure to publish a story as quickly as possible may provide inaccurate information.

Who Should Try Out Betas?

If you’re willing to help find bugs, provide constructive feedback, test out your app, or make a living covering software, then betas are explicitly for you.

But these aren’t the only reasons people download betas. Many grab them simply out of curiosity. This is especially common in the Linux world, where people are disproportionately comfortable with tinkering with their computers. You’re perfectly welcome to download the beta version of a Linux-based OS, but you need to foster the right expectations.

What to Expect From a Linux Beta Release

Beta releases can be fun. In addition to providing a glimpse of the future, they offer a chance to learn more about the Linux development process. Here are some things to keep in mind as you’re clicking the download button.

1. A beta does not represent the final product. It’s unfair to a developer to say you don’t use their software because you tried out the beta and the experience wasn’t yet stable or functional.
2. Things can change before the official release. While a beta is largely feature complete, that does not mean things are set in stone.
3. The experience may seem inconsistent and unreliable. Interface elements might shift around or disappear without a moment’s notice. Various components, or the entire desktop environment, may spontaneously restart.
4. Some things may not work at all. While most features may be good to go, developers may hold some functionality back for the full release, especially when a cloud service is involved.

It’s often possible to run a beta version of an OS on your PC without running into any glaring issues. You may have heard a friend do this, or you may have done this yourself. That’s fine. Just don’t assume things will go well next time just because things went well the last time.

What Are the Risks of a Linux Beta Release?

That’s a fair question. Enough beta versions of Linux OSes are so stable and dependable, they give the impression that all betas are safe to use.

But there’s one big risk. Bugs in beta software can result in data loss. This data loss can stem from a bug corrupting data on your hard drive, or a system crash that doesn’t allow programs to save data before shutting down.

Also, switching back to a non-beta version will likely involving reinstalling an OS from scratch. This is a similar situation to what we see on non-Linux software as well.

There’s also a risk to the Linux project itself. You may form a premature judgment of the Linux-based OS in question. You could even damage other peoples’ perceptions of a Linux-based OS if you talk too much about your experiences of the beta release. They may not know that you’re using experimental software that is explicitly not ready for public consumption.

You might have to wait a while before the official release. Sometimes beta periods are short and you can see things go stable in a matter of weeks. Other times, an OS stays in beta for months. Sometimes teams decide to delay the official release day if certain bugs persist.

Some of these issues risk more damage to a project than to you or your computer. But when the risk to your PC involves data loss, it’s wise to proceed with caution.

Staying Safe With a Linux Beta Release

So after reading this far, you’ve decided you’re going to download the beta version of a Linux OS. Now let’s talk about the precautions you can take to stay safe.

1. Install the beta on a secondary computer. If you have more than one machine lying around, one can serve as the PC you use for work or school. This primary machine runs a stable OS. Your second machine can then run whatever software you want without risk to your data.
2. Run the beta inside a virtual machine. A virtual machine runs a simulation of a PC on your computer. All of the data on this virtual PC is separate from your regular data. It’s a safe way to try out Linux OSes, but it doesn’t provide as smooth an experience as installing an OS directly to your hard drive.
3. Back up your data beforehand. If you are going to install a beta on your primary computer, at least make sure you have stored recent copies of your data in a safe place.

It simply isn’t possible to discover and fix all that the possible issues a piece of software might encounter without sticking it into the wild. Even with help, some Linux-based OSes still end up buggy.

Read the full article: What Is a Linux Beta Release and Should You Try One?

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HiKam A7 Outdoor Security Camera: Budget Friendly and Alexa Compatible

Robinhood cuts trading fees, grows profits with in-house clearing

As zero-commission stock trading app Robinhood starts preparing to IPO, an engineering investment two years in the making could accelerate its quest for profitability. Most stock broker services have to pay an external clearing house to reconcile trades between buyers and sellers. Now with 6 million accounts, that added up to a huge cost for Robinhood since it doesn’t demand a trading fee like the $7 to $10 that incumbent competitors E*Trade and Scottrade charge. Relying on outside clearing also introduced bottlenecks around its innovation and user sign ups, limiting onboarding to business hours.

But today Robinhood will start migrating accounts to its new in-house clearing service over the next few months. That will save it from paying clearing fees on stock, option, ETF, and cryptocurrency trades. In turn, Robinhood is eliminating or reducing some of its edge case fees. $10 broker assisted trades, $10 restricted accounts, $50 voluntary corporate actions, and $30 worthless securities processing will all now be free. Robinhood is meanwhile cutting its margin on fees passed on by banks or FedEx, so ACH reversal fees will drop from $30 to $9, overnight check delivery from $35 to $20 and overnight mail from $35 to $20.

“What’s really interesting is that this is the only clearing system built from scratch on modern technology in at least the last decade” Robinhood co-founder and co-CEO Vlad Tenev tells me. Most clearing services ran mainframes and Terminal-based UIs  that aren’t built for the pace of startup innovation. Going in-house “allows us to vertically integrate our business so we won’t have to depend on third-parties for foundational aspects. It’s a huge investment in the future of Robinhood that will massively impact our customers and their experience, but also help us out on building the kind of business we want to build.”

There’s a ton of pressure on Robinhood right now since it’s raised $539 million to date, including a $363 million Series D in May at a jaw-dropping $5.6 billion valuation just a year after raising at $1.3 billion. Currently Robinhood earns revenue from interest on money kept in Robinhood accounts, selling order flow to exchanges that want more liquidity, and its Robinhood Gold subscriptions where users pay $10 to $200 per month to borrow $2,000 to $50,000 in credit to trade on margin. Last month at TechCrunch Disrupt, Robinhood’s other co-CEO Baiju Bhatt told me the startup is now actively working to hire a CFO to get its business ready to IPO.

Whoever that CFO is will have an easier job thanks to Christine Hall, Robinhood’s Product Lead for Clearing. After stints at Google and Udacity, she was hired two years to navigate the regulatory and engineering challenges or spinning up Robinhood Clearing. She explains that “Clearing is just a fancy word for making sure that when the user places a trade, the price and number of shares matches what the other side wants to give away. In the less than 1 percent chance of error, the clearing firm makes sure everyone is on the same page prior to settlement.

Robinhood Clearing Product Lead Christine Hall

Forming the Robinhood Securities entity, Hall scored the startup the greenlight from FINRA, the DTCC, and the OCC. She also recruited Chuck Tennant, who’d previously run clearing firms and would grow a 70-person team for the project at Robinhood’s Orlando office. They allow Robinhood to clear, settle (exchanging the dollars and shares), and ensure custody (keeping records of asset movements) of trades. 

“It gives us massive cost savings, but since we’re no longer depending on a third-party, we basically control our destiny” Tenev says. No more waiting for clearing houses to adapt to its new products. And no more waiting the whole weekend for account approval as Robinhood can now approve accounts 24/7. These little improvements are critical to Robinhood staying ahead of the pack of big banks like Charles Schwab that are lowering their fees to compete as well as other startups offering mobile trading.

Clearing comes with additional risk. Regulatory scrutiny is high, and the more Robinhood brings in-house, the more security work it must do. A breach could break the brand of user trust it’s been building. Yet if successful, the launch equips Robinhood for an ambitious future beyond playing the markets. “The mission of the company has expanded a lot. It used to be all about stock trading. But if you look at Robinhood 5 years from now, it’s about being best-in-class for all of our customers’ financial needs” Tenev concludes. “You should be able to get everything from Robinhood that you could get from walking into your local bank.” That’s a vision worthy of the startup’s epic valuation.

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How to Repost a Video or Picture on Instagram

Google’s smart home sell looks cluttered and incoherent

If any aliens or technology ingenues were trying to understand what on earth a ‘smart home’ is yesterday, via Google’s latest own-brand hardware launch event, they’d have come away with a pretty confused and incoherent picture.

The company’s presenters attempted to sketch a vision of gadget-enabled domestic bliss but the effect was rather closer to described clutter-bordering-on-chaos, with existing connected devices being blamed (by Google) for causing homeowners’ device usability and control headaches — which thus necessitated another new type of ‘hub’ device which was now being unveiled, slated and priced to fix problems of the smart home’s own making.

Meet the ‘Made by Google’ Home Hub.

Buy into the smart home, the smart consumer might think, and you’re going to be stuck shelling out again and again — just to keep on top of managing an ever-expanding gaggle of high maintenance devices.

Which does sound quite a lot like throwing good money after bad. Unless you’re a true believer in the concept of gadget-enabled push-button convenience — and the perpetually dangled claim that smart home nirvana really is just around the corner. One additional device at a time. Er, and thanks to AI!

Yesterday, at Google’s event, there didn’t seem to be any danger of nirvana though.

Not unless paying $150 for a small screen lodged inside a speaker is your idea of heaven. (i.e. after you’ve shelled out for all the other connected devices that will form the spokes chained to this control screen.)

A small tablet that, let us be clear, is defined by its limitations: No standard web browser, no camera… No, it’s not supposed to be an entertainment device in its own right.

It’s literally just supposed to sit there and be a visual control panel — with the usual also-accessible-on-any-connected-device type of content like traffic, weather and recipes. So $150 for a remote control doesn’t sound quite so cheap now does it?

The hub doubling as a digital photo frame when not in active use — which Google made much of — isn’t some kind of ‘magic pixie’ sales dust either. Call it screensaver 2.0.

A fridge also does much the same with a few magnets and bits of paper. Just add your own imagination.

During the presentation, Google made a point of stressing that the ‘evolving’ smart home it was showing wasn’t just about iterating on the hardware front — claiming its Google’s AI software is hard at work in the background, hand-in-glove with all these devices, to really ‘drive the vision forward’.

But if the best example it can find to talk up is AI auto-picking which photos to display on a digital photo frame — at the same time as asking consumers to shell out $150 for a discrete control hub to manually manage all this IoT — that seems, well, underwhelming to say the least. If not downright contradictory.

Google also made a point of referencing concerns it said it’s heard from a large majority of users that they’re feeling overwhelmed by too much technology, saying: “We want to make sure you’re in control of your digital well-being.”

Yet it said this at an event where it literally unboxed yet another clutch of connected, demanding, function-duplicating devices — that are also still, let’s be clear, just as hungry for your data — including the aforementioned tablet-faced speaker (which Google somehow tried to claim would help people “disconnect” from all their smart home tech — so, basically, ‘buy this device so you can use devices less’… ); a ChromeOS tablet that transforms into a laptop via a snap-on keyboard; and 2x versions of its new high end smartphone, the Pixel 3.

There was even a wireless charging Pixel Stand that props the phone up in a hub-style control position. (Oh and it didn’t even have time to mention it but there’s also a Disney co-branded Mickey Mouse-eared speaker for kids, presumably).

What’s the average consumer supposed to make of all this incestuously overlapping, wallet-nagging hardware?!

Smartphones at least have clarity of purpose — by being efficiently multi-purposed.

Increasingly powerful all-in-ones that let you do more with less and don’t even require you to buy a new one every year vs the smart home’s increasingly high maintenance and expensive (in money and attention terms) sprawl, duplication and clutter. And that’s without even considering the security risks and privacy nightmare.

The two technology concepts really couldn’t be further apart.

If you value both your time and your money the smartphone is the one — the only one — to buy into.

Whereas the smart home clearly needs A LOT of finessing — if it’s to ever live up to the hyped claims of ‘seamless convenience’.

Or, well, a total rebranding.

The ‘creatively chaotic & experimental gadget lovers’ home would be a more honest and realistic sell for now — and the foreseeable future.

Instead Google made a pitch for what it dubbed the “thoughtful home”. Even as it pushed a button to pull up a motorised pedestal on which stood clustered another bunch of charge-requiring electronics that no one really needs — in the hopes that consumers will nonetheless spend their time and money assimilating redundant devices into busy domestic routines. Or else find storage space in already overflowing drawers.

The various iterations of ‘smart’ in-home devices in the market illustrate exactly how experimental the entire  concept remains.

Just this week, Facebook waded in with a swivelling tablet stuck on a smart speaker topped with a camera which, frankly speaking, looks like something you’d find in a prison warden’s office.

Google, meanwhile, has housed speakers in all sorts of physical forms, quite a few of which resemble restroom scent dispensers.

And Amazon now has so many Echo devices it’s almost impossible to keep up. It’s as if the ecommerce giant is just dropping stones down a well to see if it can make a splash.

During the smart home bits of Google’s own-brand hardware pitch, the company’s parade of presenters often sounded like they were going through robotic motions, failing to muster anything more than baseline enthusiasm.

And failing to dispel a strengthening sense that the smart home is almost pure marketing, and that sticking update-requiring, wired in and/or wireless devices with often variously overlapping purposes all over the domestic place is the very last way to help technology-saturated consumers achieve anything close to ‘disconnected well-being’.

Incremental convenience might be possible, perhaps — depending on which and how few smart home devices you buy; for what specific purpose/s; and then likely only sporadically, until the next problematic update topples the careful interplay of kit and utility. But the idea that the smart home equals thoughtful domestic bliss for families seems farcical.

All this updatable hardware inevitably injects new responsibilities and complexities into home life, with the conjoined power to shift family dynamics and relationships — based on things like who has access to and control over devices (and any content generated); whose jobs it is to fix things and any problems caused when stuff inevitably goes wrong (e.g. a device breakdown OR a AI-generated event like the ‘wrong’ photo being auto-displayed… ); and who will step up to own and resolve any disputes that arise as a result of all the Internet connected bits being increasingly intertwined in people’s lives, willingly or otherwise.

Hey Google, is there an AI to manage all that yet?

Read Full Article

Google’s smart home sell looks cluttered and incoherent

If any aliens or technology ingenues were trying to understand what on earth a ‘smart home’ is yesterday, via Google’s latest own-brand hardware launch event, they’d have come away with a pretty confused and incoherent picture.

The company’s presenters attempted to sketch a vision of gadget-enabled domestic bliss but the effect was rather closer to described clutter-bordering-on-chaos, with existing connected devices being blamed (by Google) for causing homeowners’ device usability and control headaches — which thus necessitated another new type of ‘hub’ device which was now being unveiled, slated and priced to fix problems of the smart home’s own making.

Meet the ‘Made by Google’ Home Hub.

Buy into the smart home, the smart consumer might think, and you’re going to be stuck shelling out again and again — just to keep on top of managing an ever-expanding gaggle of high maintenance devices.

Which does sound quite a lot like throwing good money after bad. Unless you’re a true believer in the concept of gadget-enabled push-button convenience — and the perpetually dangled claim that smart home nirvana really is just around the corner. One additional device at a time. Er, and thanks to AI!

Yesterday, at Google’s event, there didn’t seem to be any danger of nirvana though.

Not unless paying $150 for a small screen lodged inside a speaker is your idea of heaven. (i.e. after you’ve shelled out for all the other connected devices that will form the spokes chained to this control screen.)

A small tablet that, let us be clear, is defined by its limitations: No standard web browser, no camera… No, it’s not supposed to be an entertainment device in its own right.

It’s literally just supposed to sit there and be a visual control panel — with the usual also-accessible-on-any-connected-device type of content like traffic, weather and recipes. So $150 for a remote control doesn’t sound quite so cheap now does it?

The hub doubling as a digital photo frame when not in active use — which Google made much of — isn’t some kind of ‘magic pixie’ sales dust either. Call it screensaver 2.0.

A fridge also does much the same with a few magnets and bits of paper. Just add your own imagination.

During the presentation, Google made a point of stressing that the ‘evolving’ smart home it was showing wasn’t just about iterating on the hardware front — claiming its Google’s AI software is hard at work in the background, hand-in-glove with all these devices, to really ‘drive the vision forward’.

But if the best example it can find to talk up is AI auto-picking which photos to display on a digital photo frame — at the same time as asking consumers to shell out $150 for a discrete control hub to manually manage all this IoT — that seems, well, underwhelming to say the least. If not downright contradictory.

Google also made a point of referencing concerns it said it’s heard from a large majority of users that they’re feeling overwhelmed by too much technology, saying: “We want to make sure you’re in control of your digital well-being.”

Yet it said this at an event where it literally unboxed yet another clutch of connected, demanding, function-duplicating devices — that are also still, let’s be clear, just as hungry for your data — including the aforementioned tablet-faced speaker (which Google somehow tried to claim would help people “disconnect” from all their smart home tech — so, basically, ‘buy this device so you can use devices less’… ); a ChromeOS tablet that transforms into a laptop via a snap-on keyboard; and 2x versions of its new high end smartphone, the Pixel 3.

There was even a wireless charging Pixel Stand that props the phone up in a hub-style control position. (Oh and Google didn’t even have time to mention it during the cluttered presentation but there’s this Disney co-branded Mickey Mouse-eared speaker for kids, presumably).

What’s the average consumer supposed to make of all this incestuously overlapping, wallet-badgering hardware?!

Smartphones at least have clarity of purpose — by being efficiently multi-purposed.

Increasingly powerful all-in-ones that let you do more with less and don’t even require you to buy a new one every year vs the smart home’s increasingly high maintenance and expensive (in money and attention terms) sprawl, duplication and clutter. And that’s without even considering the security risks and privacy nightmare.

The two technology concepts really couldn’t be further apart.

If you value both your time and your money the smartphone is the one — the only one — to buy into.

Whereas the smart home clearly needs A LOT of finessing — if it’s to ever live up to the hyped claims of ‘seamless convenience’.

Or, well, a total rebranding.

The ‘creatively chaotic & experimental gadget lovers’ home would be a more honest and realistic sell for now — and the foreseeable future.

Instead Google made a pitch for what it dubbed the “thoughtful home”. Even as it pushed a button to pull up a motorised pedestal on which stood clustered another bunch of charge-requiring electronics that no one really needs — in the hopes that consumers will nonetheless spend their time and money assimilating redundant devices into busy domestic routines. Or else find storage space in already overflowing drawers.

The various iterations of ‘smart’ in-home devices in the market illustrate exactly how experimental the entire  concept remains.

Just this week, Facebook waded in with a swivelling tablet stuck on a smart speaker topped with a camera which, frankly speaking, looks like something you’d find in a prison warden’s office.

Google, meanwhile, has housed speakers in all sorts of physical forms, quite a few of which resemble restroom scent dispensers.

And Amazon now has so many Echo devices it’s almost impossible to keep up. It’s as if the ecommerce giant is just dropping stones down a well to see if it can make a splash.

During the smart home bits of Google’s own-brand hardware pitch, the company’s parade of presenters often sounded like they were going through robotic motions, failing to muster anything more than baseline enthusiasm.

And failing to dispel a strengthening sense that the smart home is almost pure marketing, and that sticking update-requiring, wired in and/or wireless devices with often variously overlapping purposes all over the domestic place is the very last way to help technology-saturated consumers achieve anything close to ‘disconnected well-being’.

Incremental convenience might be possible, perhaps — depending on which and how few smart home devices you buy; for what specific purpose/s; and then likely only sporadically, until the next problematic update topples the careful interplay of kit and utility. But the idea that the smart home equals thoughtful domestic bliss for families seems farcical.

All this updatable hardware inevitably injects new responsibilities and complexities into home life, with the conjoined power to shift family dynamics and relationships — based on things like who has access to and control over devices (and any content generated); whose jobs it is to fix things and any problems caused when stuff inevitably goes wrong (e.g. a device breakdown OR a AI-generated event like the ‘wrong’ photo being auto-displayed… ); and who will step up to own and resolve any disputes that arise as a result of all the Internet connected bits being increasingly intertwined in people’s lives, willingly or otherwise.

Hey Google, is there an AI to manage all that yet?

Read Full Article

12 Free VST Plugins Every Musician Must Have

Music production is now more accessible than ever before. Once an expensive hobby, free software like Audacity (along with powerful Audacity alternatives) make it open to all. Some of the biggest tracks in the last few years have been made by bedroom producers using cheap equipment.

While most music software has its own built in instruments and effects, learning how to use external VST (Virtual Studio Technology) provides you with thousands of tools to take your sound to the next level. Many of these VST plugins are free, and they can make a free setup sound like a professional studio.

Today we’ll look at 12 of the best free VST plugins.

1. Piano One

Sound Magic’s Piano One is arguably the best free acoustic piano VST available. The samples come from a Yamaha C7 Grand piano, captured using Sound Magic’s own Hybrid Modeling Engine technology. The free version lacks features but makes up for it with its incredible sound.

Download: Piano One

2. TAL-NoiseMaker

TAL-Noisemaker is a fully featured synthesizer with three oscillators, along with an array of effects and options. It is as comfortable creating soft and lush pads as it is creating harsh EDM lead lines and even drums.

The synth panel is intuitive, easy to use, and there are an array of presets bundled with it to help you get started quickly.

Download: TAL-NoiseMaker

3. VK-1 Viking Synthesizer

The VK-1 Viking Synthesizer is a lovingly created emulation of an analog monophonic synthesizer. On top of three oscillators, two modulation channels, and an LFO, accurate transistor ladder filter emulation give this synthesizer an authentic sound that is hard to match.

VK-1 is a “pay what you want” product, and therefore technically available for free. At a time when Moog is releasing $30 iPad synthesizer apps, trusting the user with the price is a bold move.

Download: VK-1 Viking Synthesizer

4. Spitfire Audio: Labs

It’s impossible to feature a single instrument from Spitfire Audio’s Labs project. Each one is unique, ranging from overdriven cellos to high-quality live drums, to strings recorded on vintage mics from a professional ensemble.

They are all available as easy-to-use free VST plugins.

Download: Spitfire Audio: Labs

5. Guitar Rig 5 Player

Guitar Rig has been the go-to name in all things amp simulation and guitar FX emulation for years. Guitar Rig 5 Player edition brings some of the functionality of the full program to a free VST download.

While limited compared to the Pro version, the Native Instruments Factory Selection library makes a powerful tool for guitarists lacking in hardware. Even non-guitarists will find this plugin perfect for making screaming synths and dirty sounding drums.

Download: Guitar Rig 5 Player

6. CamelCrusher

The CamelCrusher plugin is known and loved by producers with good reason. A deceptively simple combination of distortion, compression, and filtering add up to some meaty results. Presets ranging from “Annihilate” to “Tube Warmth” give great options for radically changing your sound quickly.

Camel Audio stopped distributing CamelCrusher after Apple acquired them, but the original version of the plugin is still freely available from third party VST sites.

Download: CamelCrusher

7. TAL Reverb 4

Free, simple, and almost universally loved, the TAL Reverb 4 is a great free plugin to give your sound some space. Based on the classic sound of vintage reverb units, it is capable of a lot more than its simple interface suggests.

Download: TAL Reverb 4

8. Glitchmachines Hysteresis

Glitchmachines make VST plugins and packs for those who love modern, sci-fi sounds. Hysteresis is a delay unit with a difference. Its primary design is to take any input sound and morph it in a variety of crazy ways—often leaving sounding radically different to the source sound.

While this VST will primarily be of interest to electronic music producers, the plugin can also be tamed to give more standard delay effects too. As with all of Glitchmachines VSTs, things get really interesting when you spend a little time in their documentation learning superuser tricks.

Download: Glitchmachines Hysteresis

9. Glitch 1.3

Illformed (also known as DBlue) is a name many producers know well. The Glitch VST does precisely as its name suggests. It takes your sounds and glitches them in a variety of mind-melting ways. Sounds get reversed, reshuffled, bitcrushed, and repitched, along with many other controllable presets.

Glitch 2 is now available, though Illformed still offers Glitch 1.3 for free, bundled with the excellent Tape Stop, Crusher, and Stretch effects.

Download: Glitch 1.3

10. 4ormulator Vocoder Extreme

Vocoders have gone from fringe devices used in experimental music to mainstream instruments used in hit songs. 4ormulator’s Vocoder Extreme allows users to emulate these sounds, along with some extra features you wouldn’t normally see on a free instrument.

By adding a variety of effects and resonators, the Vocoder Extreme can be used as an instrument in its own right. This is the perfect effect to learn the basics of vocoding, or, as 4ormulator say, create “…musical entropy generators, ambient chaos fields, or even resonant soup machines!”

Download: 4ormulator Vocoder Extreme

11. ReaPlugs

Reaper is a fully fledged DAW, and one of the best alternatives to Garageband.

What many people do not realize about Reaplugs (Reaper’s VST suite) is that they can use them with other programs. Reaplugs contains powerful compression and EQ tools, along with some unique ideas.

If you are already streaming your gaming sessions using OBS, then you can use these plugins to improve your sound quality. On the other hand, if you are learning JavaScript and looking for practice, then the ReaJS plugin allows you to create new sounds using code.

Download: ReaPlugs

12. MSI Stereo Buss

As the only purely mastering VST on this list, the MSI Stereo Buss is special. There are many free VST mastering plugins, modeling old analog sounds to give that final mesh and punch to tracks. The MSI Stereo Buss does it nicer than most.

Originally paid software, Minimal System Group re-released Stereo Buss as freeware in 2014, and it is still one of the best simple mastering tools out there.

Download: MSI Stereo Buss

Plugin and Play

Free VST plugins can completely change the way you create music. Almost all free music production software supports using them. This list should have helped you find new sounds to build tracks, or tools to make them sound better. There are however, many more out there waiting to be discovered.

Alternatively, if you are starting out with Ableton Live or another big name DAW, you’ll be glad to hear that these will work perfectly there too.

Read the full article: 12 Free VST Plugins Every Musician Must Have

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Snapchat becomes the mobile HBO with 12 daily scripted Original shows

Snapchat needs reasons for teens to come back every day as it struggles to grow amidst competition from Instagram, so it’s capitalizing on its Los Angeles roots. Today Snapchat unveiled its fall slate of a dozen “Original” video shows including its first scripted programs from top producers like Keeping Up With The Kardashians creator Bunim/Murray and Friday Night Lights writer Carter Harris.

The Snapchat Originals will appear in Discover, which will soon have a dedicated section for Shows, as well as new permanent Show Profile pages available through Snapchat search where users can sign up for push notifications when each episode is released. And with new Show Portal lenses, users can stick an augmented reality doorway in their Snaps that they can walk through to explore a scene from the Show and then tap to watch that Show, allowing them to spread virally.

Portal lenses use augmented reality to let viewers step inside a scene of an Original show and send the experience to friends

“Time spent watching shows on Snapchat has tripled this year alone” Snap’s VP of Original Content Sean Mills tells me. The stats on Snap’s previous 60 shows since the project launched two years ago made it clear there was an opportunity to double down, especially as original mobile programming efforts like Facebook Watch and Instagram’s IGTV have stumbled. NBC News’ twice daily show Stay Tuned has doubled viewership in the past year to 5 million unique viewers per day, over half of which watch at least 3 days per week, while SporsCenter’s show reaches 17 million monthly viewers.

Snap Inc was cagey about sharing exactly how the deals to produce the shows work. Some Originals are funded entirely by Snapchat, some fully by production studios, and some are joint efforts. They’re always shot vertically for Snapchat and will at least be exclusive to the platform for a window of time. Snap says the shows are created with fast-paced mobile behavior patterns in mind, employing overlaid graphics, split screens, quick cuts, and other modern video elements. 

One thing’s for sure: Snap doesn’t want to follow Facebook’s footsteps in funding original content. With Watch and Live, Facebook paid out big upfront sums to secure creators, but when that funding dried up, it was unclear how the unsubsidized shows would survive. “We want to set these things up for longer-term success” says Mills. “We’re not trying to just seed the market with huge investments and then hope it turns into something later. We’re very interested in the viability of this at the onset.”

Originals will be monetized by two or three six-second unskippable Commercial ads in each show sold by Snap, the producers, or again a combination. Snap will try to seduce advertisers by pimping out its new Originals at the NewFrontsWest conference today in LA. The company will also embark on perhaps its biggest marketing effort to date after focusing on minimalist yellow billboards and airport security tray ads. Snapchat will be running ads on Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube plus some outdoor marketing in LA to clue people into its revamped content lineup. The dedicated Shows carousel  should also help the premium content rise above the news publisher clickbait and shoddy user generated content currently stuffed into Discover.

As I wrote 18 months ago, Snap’s big opportunity is to fashion itself as the HBO of smartphones. Though the slate of Originals look higher quality than much of the reality-style and vlogger video content already made for mobile, Mills says Snap isn’t ready to commit the resources to forge its own tentpole Game Of Thrones or House Of Cards. “We’re still in the phase of learning about what the audience wants. We’re not setting up for one premium epic show that’s going to bring in all the rest” Mills tells me. “It’s possible that in three months or six months we’ll start making bigger bets after learning what works.” So essentially, Snap is in the Sex In The City, pre-Sopranos stage of turning into the mobile box office.

After losing 3 million daily users and sinking to 188 million total last quarter, Snapchat needs something to reverse the growth trend. While Instagram and Facebook’s other apps have copied Snapchat’s Stories and visual messaging features, the Silicon Valley giant has yet to nail how to do premium mobile video content. If Snapchat can be the place for must-see TV on the go, it could lure in new and churned users looking for a relaxing escape from the competitive world of social media success theater.

Here’s the full list of new Snapchat Originals:

• Endless Summer – Summer McKeen and Dylan Jordan try to balance love, friends, family, and fame in this intimate snapshot of their lives in Laguna Beach. Produced by Bunim/Murray Productions. Docuseries – launching 10/10
• Class of Lies – Best friends and college roommates Devon and Missy crack cold cases on their successful true-crime podcast. But can they solve the most important case of all when their best friend disappears without a trace? Produced by Makeready. Scripted – launching 10/10
• Co-Ed –  Juggling classes, parties, and down-the-hall crushes, freshman roommates Ginny and Chris try their best to face whatever college throws at them, discovering who they are along the way. Produced by Indigo Development, Entertainment Arts and DBP Donut. Scripted – launching 10/10
• Vivian – Vivian, the youngest scout at modeling agency Wilhelmina, takes us inside an exclusive world where she has the power to make wannabes’ dreams come true — but can she do that for herself? Produced by NBCU Digital Lab, the Intellectual Property Corp. in association with Wilhelmina. Docuseries – launching 10/22
• The Dead Girls Detective Agency – This darkly comedic supernatural soap follows Charlotte Feldman, a young woman who must work from beyond to figure out how and why she died, in order to avoid an eternity in purgatory. Based on the young-adult novel by Susie Cox. Produced by Indigo Development and Entertainment Arts, Insurrection, and Keshet. Scripted – launching 10/22
• V/H/S – The next generation of the horror anthology series brings four new frightening experiences to the palm of your hand. Produced by Indigo Development and Entertainment Arts and Studio 71. Scripted – Launching 10/28
• Bref – Based on the French format, Bref (loosely translated as “whatever”) is the story of a single man who is trying to live his best possible life with the least possible effort. Working title. Produced by Indigo Development and Entertainment Arts and Paramount TV. Scripted – launch date TBD
• Bringing Up Bhabie – Follow the dramas of up-and-coming rap sensation and “cash me outside” viral star Bhad Bhabie, both onstage and off. Produced by Invent TV. Docuseries – launch date TBD
• Growing Up Is a Drag – Follows the coming-of-age dramas of teen drag queens. Produced by Bunim/Murray Productions and PB&J TV + Docs. Docuseries – launch date TBD
• Stunt Brothers – Three daredevil brothers obsessed with Hollywood movies recreate them at home with explosive consequences, and explore their archives of stunts from across the last 20 years. Produced by Magilla Entertainment. Docuseries – launch date TBD
• Deep Creek – Follow a group of friends’ yearly summer trip to Deep Creek, Maryland — but this year, they all have emotional secrets to reveal. Produced by Woodman Park Productions. Scripted – launch date TBD
• #Vanlife – Romantic comedy about a young couple that decides to opt out of the rat race and start a new life in a 2004 Dodge Sprinter — only to discover the glamorous life they’ve been following through hashtags is actually just straight-up living in a van. Working title. Produced by Indigo Development and Entertainment Arts and Above Average. Scripted – launch date TBS

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