NYC and Boston were handed huge setbacks this week when Amazon and GE decided to bail on their commitments to build headquarters in the respective cities on the same day. But it’s worth pointing out that while these large tech organizations were pulling out, Google was expanding in both locations.
Yesterday upon hearing about Amazon’s decision to scrap its HQ2 plans in Long Island City, New York City Mayor De Blasio had this to say: “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity. We have the best talent in the world and every day we are growing a stronger and fairer economy for everyone. If Amazon can’t recognize what that’s worth, its competitors will.” One of them already has. Google had already announced a billion dollar expansion in Hudson Square at the end of last year.
In fact, the company is pouring billions into NYC real estate with plans to double its 7000 person workforce over the next 10 years. As TechCrunch’s Jon Russell reported, “Our investment in New York is a huge part of our commitment to grow and invest in U.S. facilities, offices and jobs. In fact, we’re growing faster outside the Bay Area than within it, and this year opened new offices and data centers in locations like Detroit, Boulder, Los Angeles, Tennessee and Alabama,” wrote Google CFO Ruth Porat.”
Just this week, as GE was making its announcement, Google was announcing a major expansion in Cambridge, the city across the river from Boston that is home to Harvard and MIT. Kendall Square is also is home to offices from Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Akamai, Digital Ocean and a plethora of startups.
Google will be moving into a brand new building that currently is home to the MIT Coop bookstore. It plans to grab 365,000 square feet of the new building when it’s completed, and as in NYC will be adding hundreds of new jobs to the 1500 already in place. Brian Cusack, Google Cambridge Site lead points out the company began operations in Cambridge back in 2003 and has been working on Search, Android, Cloud, YouTube, Google Play, Research, Ads and more.
“This new space will provide room for future growth and further cements our commitment to the Cambridge community. We’re proud to call this city home and will continue to support its vibrant nonprofit and growing business community,” he said in a statement.
As we learned this week, big company commitments can vanish just as quickly as they are announced, but for now at least, it appears that Google is serious about its commitment to New York and Boston and will be expanding office space and employment to the tune of thousands of jobs over the next decade.
Posted by Danijar Hafner, Student Researcher, Google AI
Research into how artificial agents can improve their decisions over time is progressing rapidly via reinforcement learning (RL). For this technique, an agent observes a stream of sensory inputs (e.g. camera images) while choosing actions (e.g. motor commands), and sometimes receives a reward for achieving a specified goal. Model-free approaches to RL aim to directly predict good actions from the sensory observations, enabling DeepMind's DQN to play Atari and other agents to controlrobots. However, this blackbox approach often requires several weeks of simulated interaction to learn through trial and error, limiting its usefulness in practice.
Model-based RL, in contrast, attempts to have agents learn how the world behaves in general. Instead of directly mapping observations to actions, this allows an agent to explicitly plan ahead, to more carefully select actions by "imagining" their long-term outcomes. Model-based approaches have achieved substantial successes, including AlphaGo, which imagines taking sequences of moves on a fictitious board with the known rules of the game. However, to leverage planning in unknown environments (such as controlling a robot given only pixels as input), the agent must learn the rules or dynamics from experience. Because such dynamics models in principle allow for higher efficiency and natural multi-task learning, creating models that are accurate enough for successful planning is a long-standing goal of RL.
To spur progress on this research challenge and in collaboration with DeepMind, we present the Deep Planning Network (PlaNet) agent, which learns a world model from image inputs only and successfully leverages it for planning. PlaNet solves a variety of image-based control tasks, competing with advanced model-free agents in terms of final performance while being 5000% more data efficient on average. We are additionally releasing the source code for the research community to build upon.
The PlaNet agent learning to solve a variety of continuous control tasks from images in 2000 attempts. Previous agents that do not learn a model of the environment often require 50 times as many attempts to reach comparable performance.
How PlaNet Works
In short, PlaNet learns a dynamics model given image inputs and efficiently plans with it to gather new experience. In contrast to previous methods that plan over images, we rely on a compact sequence of hidden or latent states. This is called a latent dynamics model: instead of directly predicting from one image to the next image, we predict the latent state forward. The image and reward at each step is then generated from the corresponding latent state. By compressing the images in this way, the agent can automatically learn more abstract representations, such as positions and velocities of objects, making it easier to predict forward without having to generate images along the way.
Learned Latent Dynamics Model: In a latent dynamics model, the information of the input images is integrated into the hidden states (green) using the encoder network (grey trapezoids). The hidden state is then projected forward in time to predict future images (blue trapezoids) and rewards (blue rectangle).
To learn an accurate latent dynamics model, we introduce:
A Recurrent State Space Model: A latent dynamics model with both deterministic and stochastic components, allowing to predict a variety of possible futures as needed for robust planning, while remembering information over many time steps. Our experiments indicate both components to be crucial for high planning performance.
A Latent Overshooting Objective: We generalize the standard training objective for latent dynamics models to train multi-step predictions, by enforcing consistency between one-step and multi-step predictions in latent space. This yields a fast and effective objective that improves long-term predictions and is compatible with any latent sequence model.
While predicting future images allows us teach the model, encoding and decoding images (trapezoids in the figure above) requires significant computation, which would slow down planning. However, planning in the compact latent state space is fast since we only need to predict future rewards, and not images, to evaluate an action sequence. For example, the agent can imagine how the position of a ball and its distance to the goal will change for certain actions, without having to visualize the scenario. This allows us to compare 10,000 imagined action sequences with a large batch size every time the agent chooses an action. We then execute the first action of the best sequence found and replan at the next step.
Planning in Latent Space: For planning, we encode past images (gray trapezoid) into the current hidden state (green). From there, we efficiently predict future rewards for multiple action sequences. Note how the expensive image decoder (blue trapezoid) from the previous figure is gone. We then execute the first action of the best sequence found (red box).
Compared to our preceding work on world models, PlaNet works without a policy network -- it chooses actions purely by planning, so it benefits from model improvements on the spot. For the technical details, check out our online research paper or the PDF version.
PlaNet vs. Model-Free Methods
We evaluate PlaNet on continuous control tasks. The agent is only given image observations and rewards. We consider tasks that pose a variety of different challenges:
A cartpole swing-up task, with a fixed camera, so the cart can move out of sight. The agent thus must absorb and remember information over multiple frames.
A finger spin task that requires predicting two separate objects, as well as the interactions between them.
A cheetah running task that includes contacts with the ground that are difficult to predict precisely, calling for a model that can predict multiple possible futures.
A cup task, which only provides a sparse reward signal once a ball is caught. This demands accurate predictions far into the future to plan a precise sequence of actions.
A walker task, in which a simulated robot starts off by lying on the ground, and must first learn to stand up and then walk.
PlaNet agents trained on a variety of image-based control tasks. The animation shows the input images as the agent is solving the tasks. The tasks pose different challenges: partial observability, contacts with the ground, sparse rewards for catching a ball, and controlling a challenging bipedal robot.
Our work constitutes one of the first examples where planning with a learned model outperforms model-free methods on image-based tasks. The table below compares PlaNet to the well-known A3C agent and the D4PG agent, that combines recent advances in model-free RL. The numbers for these baselines are taken from the DeepMind Control Suite. PlaNet clearly outperforms A3C on all tasks and reaches final performance close to D4PG while, using 5000% less interaction with the environment on average.
One Agent for All Tasks
Additionally, we train a single PlaNet agent to solve all six tasks. The agent is randomly placed into different environments without knowing the task, so it needs to infer the task from its image observations. Without changes to the hyper parameters, the multi-task agent achieves the same mean performance as individual agents. While learning slower on the cartpole tasks, it learns substantially faster and reaches a higher final performance on the challenging walker task that requires exploration.
Video predictions of the PlaNet agent trained on multiple tasks. Holdout episodes collected with the trained agent are shown above and open-loop agent hallucinations below. The agent observes the first 5 frames as context to infer the task and state and accurately predicts ahead for 50 steps given a sequence of actions.
Conclusion
Our results showcase the promise of learning dynamics models for building autonomous RL agents. We advocate for further research that focuses on learning accurate dynamics models on tasks of even higher difficulty, such as 3D environments and real-world robotics tasks. A possible ingredient for scaling up is the processing power of TPUs. We are excited about the possibilities that model-based reinforcement learning opens up, including multi-task learning, hierarchical planning and active exploration using uncertainty estimates.
Acknowledgements This project is a collaboration with Timothy Lillicrap, Ian Fischer, Ruben Villegas, Honglak Lee, David Ha and James Davidson. We further thank everybody who commented on our paper draft and provided feedback at any point throughout the project.
Android app support for Chrome OS has been available for a while. But while you can install the majority of them on any Chromebook, only a handful are properly compatible with the operating system.
If an app is updated for Chromebooks, it will be much more reliable and support Chrome OS’ built-in multitasking tools. Therefore, here are the best third party apps you should install on your Chromebook.
1. Netflix
Netflix was one of the first apps to be updated for Chromebooks. While you can obviously stream from the Chrome browser too, there are a few benefits of downloading the dedicated app. The biggest of all is that you can download content for offline consumption which is perfect for scenarios like when you’re about to board a flight.
Plus, if you have a lower-end Chromebook, streaming on the mobile app is a significantly better experience than doing it from a Chrome tab. This is especially the case for HD videos.
If you’re not comfortable with Google’s suite of productivity apps and want a more advanced platform, try Microsoft’s alternative. All the apps under Microsoft’s Office lineup for Android including OneNote, Word, PowerPoint, and Skype can work with Chromebooks. You have access to nearly every essential feature such as editing documents, templates, cloud sync, and more.
What’s more, they can be operated in multi-window modes. However, unless you have a Chromebook with a screen size less than 10.1-inches, Microsoft Office is not free. You will need an Office 365 subscription to unlock the ability to create, edit, or print documents.
Adobe’s host of creative apps have been re-engineered to be compatible with Chrome OS as well. Whether you want to edit pictures or PDF documents or sketch, Adobe’s apps are the place to be.
From Lightroom CC to Acrobat Reader, Chromebooks are now compatible with most of Adobe’s major titles. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that these are still Android apps, not their full-fledged desktop counterparts. However, all of them are free unless you want to employ any of the premium features.
While Google now preloads its own note-taking app on touchscreen-equipped Chromebooks, you can also give Evernote a shot. For Chromebooks, its mobile app offers a special tablet interface so that you can utilize the entire screen real estate.
In the landscape orientation, the app also automatically shifts to a sleek, tabular UI — ideal for those lengthy research sessions. Furthermore, you can create shortcuts for particular notes for getting into them right from the app launcher. There are doodling options too if you own a stylus and want to jot down handwritten notes.
Chrome OS’ pre-installed local video player is rather limited both in terms of performance and capabilities. To overcome that, we recommend taking a look at VLC’s mobile app. It offers all the tools you would need to play any kind of clip on your Chromebook.
On top of that, you can play videos in a movable window if you’d like to watch it while working on another app. In the touchscreen mode, a bunch of gestures are available allowing you to quickly perform an action like skipping ten seconds ahead.
Slack’s mobile app is compatible with Chrome OS too and features a two-column layout similar to the desktop client. It functions flawlessly if you’re using the Chromebook as a tablet and can be placed in the multi-window mode.
One of the best task management apps, TickTick has been tweaked to properly support Chrome OS as well. That means whether you’re planning your day in the portrait or landscape orientation, you won’t encounter any delays or odd behaviors. Even advanced features like the Pomo Timer work as intended. There are a multitude of other reasons to try TickTick if you haven’t already yet.
While Chromebooks are not primarily built for video editing, there are a few ways non-pro users can do it. One of those is with GoPro’s free Quik app.
GoPro’s full-fledged video-editing app comes with a ton of features that cater to both amateurs and professionals. You can either decide to let the app build stories from your media for you, or pick the effects, transitions and other aspects yourself.
In addition, GoPro Quik even has advanced video editing tools such as managing frame layouts, captions for each moment, color-grading, and more. Even if you want to quickly generate an edited video, GoPro Quik won’t disappoint with its wide range of themes.
Android’s premier podcast streaming app is optimized for Chromebooks as well. When fired up in landscape mode, you’re greeted with a dense homescreen of album arts from featured podcasts. Like others, it sports a two-tab layout with links to other sections situated on the left. Unfortunately, Pocket Casts is not free and charges an upfront fee of $3.99.
If you’re an artist, Autodesk’s SketchBook app is a must-have for your Chromebook. It has a ton of features whether you’re casually sketching or painting your next masterpiece. The app is compatible with styluses and can even detect pressure. Therefore, you can press harder for a darker gradient and vice versa. SketchBook is also entirely free.
Squid is the best mobile app for handwritten notes and the company has partnered with Google to bring low-latency ink to a few Chromebooks. The app lets you choose from a wide selection of backgrounds like college-ruled, graphs, and more. Plus, you have the ability to import documents and scribble over them for purposes such as signing.
Whether it’s editing videos or signing documents, there’s now an app for your Chromebook. Since it’s a desktop operating system, you also have a bunch of abilities to multitask between them. And to do that, you will need to familiarize yourself with these eight tips for multitasking like a pro on Chrome OS.
Most people are pretty good at keeping backups of their valuable data on external hard drives. But what happens if the drive becomes corrupted?
It’s a lesson in why you should always make an offsite backup with a cloud provider as well as a local copy—but it’s too late for that now.
Thankfully, if you use a few little workarounds, you can reformat an external hard drive without losing everything on it.
Yes, It Is Possible!
A quick browse on the web’s many tech forums reveals that too many people think “data recovery” and “format drive” are mutually exclusive terms. They aren’t.
It’s perfectly possible to wipe your hard drive without losing all your data. The process requires you to format your drive, then use data recovery tools to salvage your data.
The methodology for the formatting part of the process differs depending on whether you’re using a Windows computer or macOS. We’re going to cover both platforms; keep reading to learn more.
How to Reformat a Drive on Windows
The process to reformat an external hard drive on Windows is straightforward.
Firstly, connect your external hard drive to your computer using a USB port. Wait for Windows to recognize the connected drive.
Next, open File Explorer, navigate to This PC in the left-hand column, and click on the shortcut.
In the Devices and Drives section of the main window, you should see your external hard drive. Right-click on the drive’s icon to bring up the context menu, then select Format from the list.
Make sure the Quick Format box is ticked and leave all the other settings the same.
Finally, click on the Format button and wait for the process to complete.
To reiterate—it is extremely important to ensure the Quick Format checkbox has a tick in it. If you do a full format of your drive, you will lose all your data.
How to Reformat a Drive on Mac
MacOS doesn’t have a Quick Format box, but you can still achieve the same result by tweaking a particular setting.
To begin, open the Finder app and select Applications from the left-hand panel.
Scroll down the list of applications until you come to the Utilities folder. Open the folder and locate Disk Utility.
Within the Disk Utility app, you should see your external hard drive listed under External on the left-hand side of the screen. Click on your drive’s name.
Now turn your attention to the top of the window and click on the Erase button. The operating system will prompt you to wipe the drive.
Do not proceed—you need to click on the Security Options link. It’s vital to ensure the slider is moved all the way to the left side of the scale. If the slider is not in the correct position, you will lose some (or all) of your files. The data recovery process will be impossible.
Why Is Quick Format Important?
If you want to use data recovery software, you need to perform a Quick Format (or the Mac equivalent)—but why?
Think of your files as books on a bookshelf. The filesystem is like the catalog that tells you where the books are kept. Performing a Quick Format is akin to throwing away the catalog but keeping the books themselves. You wouldn’t be able to find the books as easily, but they are still there.
In more technical terms, a Quick Format only deletes the file system journaling. It doesn’t overwrite the entire drive with binary zeroes. The files stay, but File Explorer/Finder can no longer see them because they don’t have any information about where to look. The files remain there until they are overwritten with new data from the user.
Don’t Add More Files
At this stage, it’s imperative that you don’t write any new data to your hard drive.
As we just explained, any new data will directly overwrite the old (now hidden) files. And the overwriting won’t take place on a file-for-file basis. By sending a new file to your external hard drive, you could corrupt hundreds of the files that you need to retrieve.
Just move straight onto using the data recovery software.
Using Data Recovery Software
Now it’s time to turn to a data recovery app. It is specialized software that can find files on a hard drive without a catalog which tells it where to look.
Quite a few data recovery apps have a free tier. Sometimes, the free tier is restricted to a certain number of files or amount of storage. If you’re trying to recover lots of data, you might need to get your wallet out.
Here are three data recovery apps you can try:
1. Prosoft
Available on: Windows, Mac
Prosoft is a data recovery app that’s available on both Windows and Mac. It can recover more than 100 different file types, recognize duplicate files among those you want to restore, and offers a recovery preview before you begin the process.
The free trial lets you see a preview so you can be sure it’s going to work before you buy.
Download:Prosoft (Free trial, $99 for a full license)
2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard
Available on: Windows, Mac
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is probably the most well-known data recovery app.
Unlike Prosoft, it lets you recover 2GB of data for free. All mainstream file types are supported.
If you need to recover more than 2GB of data, you will need to pay for the Pro version. It costs $69.99 for a lifetime license.
As we mentioned at the start, all these problems can easily be avoided if you make multiple backups of your data.
At the very least, you should keep an onsite and offsite backup. In a dream world, have a backup on a NAS drive, with a cloud storage provider, on an external hard drive, and with a dedicated backup app provider.
If you ever wanted to purchase a smartwatch or a pair of sneakers for under $10, now’s your chance with Wish, the discount store of the web.
Browsing Wish is like browsing a store from an alternate universe. With cell phones for $30, and some items even sold for free, you have to wonder if this site’s legitimacy is just wishful thinking.
We explore how Wish can offer such low prices and what you can do to avoid scams.
What Is Wish?
Wish (wish.com) is an online marketplace for anything you can imagine. From hair extensions to selfie lighting, and laptops, its inventory seems endless.
It’s famous for low price tags on so-called expensive items. However, the products don’t come directly from Wish itself; instead, they’re sold by different sellers. Wish only takes a portion of their profits.
Why Are Items so Cheap on Wish?
Head to wish now. See how some items often feature a price that’s crossed out? Wish sellers cut that “original” price down to almost nothing. Keep in mind that sellers have the power to make up whatever original price they want.
For example, take a look at this smartwatch. Its price has been supposedly slashed from $269 to a mere $10:
You’re probably wondering why Wish sellers can have such low prices. While many products are made from the cheapest materials available, the low prices also have a lot to do with where most of the products ship from: China.
China’s lenient labor policies allow retailers to produce massive volume of goods for very little cost. Wish products are often shipped by the seller, saving them from maintaining a physical store. The products can also be stored in warehouses owned by Wish and get shipped as soon as a customer places an order.
Searching YouTube for Wish unboxings can give you an idea of Wish’s product quality.
Is Wish Safe and Legit?
Despite its unbelievable prices, Wish is completely legit. That means the $0.50 earbuds you buy will be shipped to your home, but they may or may not work. But hey, it’s only $0.50 right?
Although it’s a legit site, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any knockoffs. Just use common sense—when you see a designer handbag selling for only $20, you should be skeptical.
In addition to the risks of knockoffs, you should know that some of the items you find on Wish are risky buys. Electronics might be poorly made or clothing might not fit right.
Just like the old saying goes: “You get what you pay for.”
Will Wish Steal My Information?
You’re probably hesitant to type your credit card information on a website that sells a leather watch for $1. The truth is that Wish is just about as safe as any other online retailer.
In order to view products on Wish, you’ll need to make an account. This means inputting your full name and email. Wish also tracks your computer’s IP address, social network information, location, your internet browser, and even the items you click on.
There’s always the possibility of a website being hacked, and Wish is no exception. Concerned about data breaches? Wish itself won’t steal your information. Some may even say that it’s a worthy alternative to Amazon.
Tips for Buying on Wish Safely
So you want to take the plunge and order something from Wish? There are several things you should know before starting your Wish haul.
If you’re familiar with the risks of shopping with AliExpress, you won’t be surprised at the precautions you have to take when ordering from Wish. Take a look at these four tips to ensure you make a safe purchase.
1. Don’t Ignore Reviews
Sometimes it’s okay to take reviews with a grain of salt. Buyers often nitpick an item if it doesn’t mean their specific expectations, so you ignore it.
However, you should not do this on Wish. Wish reviewers will let you know the ugly truth behind that $13 drone you want so bad.
If the reviews on the item you want are mostly negative, you might want to reconsider your plan to purchase it. On the other hand, some items are “Verified by Wish Shoppers.” This means that a product has received positive reviews from customers.
2. Be Aware of Long Shipping Times
Used to two-day Amazon Prime shipping? Wish will be your wake-up call.
Wish ships from China. That means it could take a long time to get to your doorstep. Let’s just say that one week is a quick shipping time for Wish. Some users report that their item doesn’t arrive for months after their order.
It’s also possible that your item won’t come at all. According to several complaints, it’s not uncommon for a buyer’s item to never reach their home. Always keep track of your order.
3. Watch Out for Misleading Descriptions
One of the biggest issues on Wish is incorrect product descriptions and images. Descriptions aren’t always accurate and images can make the product look better than it actually is.
In this case, it’s better to pay more attention to customer reviews than the product descriptions.
4. Choose the Right Size
If you’re buying clothing on Wish, make sure to look at the size chart. The small, medium, or large in your country might not correspond with the clothing sizes from Wish.
Since most clothes from Wish come from China, the clothes are often in Asian sizes. Luckily, Wish shows a meter on clothing items that let you know whether it runs large or small.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Wish’s affordable prices make it tempting to go on an all-out shopping spree. While you might want to fill your cart with cheap electronics and jewelry that would typically cost hundreds of dollars, you should second-guess yourself every now and then.
Just like Wish, other online retailers come with a host of possible scams as well. Shop smarter by heeding these tips for avoiding common eBay scams, which can be applied to Wish as well.
Because it has the burden of carrying the meaning of a layout, typography can make or break a good design. However, it isn’t something only for artists and advertisers to think about. People from all walks of life can benefit from understanding how typography works.
To take full advantage of typography, you need to understand the elements that go into it. We’ve compiled a list of basic terms together with their explanations that will help you navigate the world of typography.
1. Typefaces and Fonts
What we commonly refer to as fonts, such as Arial and Times New Roman, aren’t actually fonts. They’re typefaces.
A typeface, also known as a font family, is a set of fonts that share the same fundamental design elements. On the other hand, a font is a specific variation within that family based on a number of characteristics, namely:
Weight: This refers to how thick or how light a font is. Most typefaces have a spectrum of weights with descriptive names, from ultra-light or thin to bold or heavy. The middle of a range of weights is called “medium” or “regular.”
Italicization: This refers to whether or not a font slants to the right. Italicized fonts are called either “oblique” or “italic.”
Condensation and Width: These refer to how broad or how narrow the width of the font is. When a font is narrow, it is usually referred to as “condensed” while broad fonts are referred to as “wide” or “extended.”
Style: This refers to a change in the presentation of a typeface rather than its core design. For example, some families have an “outline” font, which is essentially the same as the regular font except only showing an outline of each character.
To get a better idea of this, we’ll use the most common font in design—Helvetica Neue—as an example. Helvetica Neue is a typeface, as there are many fonts within its family.
Under Helvetica are a variety of weights, such as black, medium, and thin. There are also extended and condensed versions. For each weight and width, there is a corresponding oblique version. All of these variations on weight, width, and italicization are individual fonts.
2. Serif, Sans-Serif, and Script
If you’ve ever been around designers, you’d know that one of the first things they think about when designing a layout is whether to use Serif or Sans-Serif. But what exactly do these two things mean?
“Serif” means “tail” in Latin, while “sans” means “without.” Therefore, a serif is a typeface with a tail at the end of the body. On the other hand, a sans-serif refers to a typeface that does not have a tail.
In addition to sans-serif and serif, there are three additional classifications that designers use to refer to typefaces. A script refers to one that simulates curved handwriting or calligraphy. These are especially popular for wedding invitations.
A display has unique, eccentric characteristics and is normally intended to be seen in large sizes. These are the fonts you see on Halloween posters or billboards.
Lastly, a monotype typeface has characters that all have the same width. Programmers use these in order to view blocks of code more easily.
Here are a couple of examples of each that you will likely recognize, as they are word-processing defaults:
If you’ve ever used a word processor, you probably already know what alignment is. It refers to which side of the margin a block of text lines up with.
A paragraph can be aligned to the left, the center, or the right. By default, you should try to keep most blocks of text left-aligned, as the human eye automatically starts reading from the left.
Most programs have a fourth alignment option, which is justified alignment. Justified alignment means that the lines in a block of text align themselves to both sides of the margin. This is normally achieved by changing the width of spaces between words.
Justified alignment can be further divided into four types, depending on which side the final line aligns itself to. If a block of text is fully justified, that means that all lines in a block of text will align to either side. This normally looks a bit messy but can be useful when designing certain materials.
4. Contrast and Hierarchy
In the above image, your eyes probably looked immediately at the second sentence. That is because of the size, the variation in fonts, and the use of the striking red color. The second sentence uses the principle of contrast.
In design, contrast refers to the idea of creating noticeable differences between elements in a layout. When working with typography, it means changing anything from the typeface and weight to the color of text.
On the other hand, hierarchy refers to the use of contrast to highlight the importance of certain elements over others.
For example, in a typical PowerPoint presentation, the header of a slide is normally the biggest element and uses a thicker font. On the other hand, in a research paper, the citations at the bottom of a page have a smaller font size than the rest of the body text.
5. Tracking, Leading, and Kerning
One of the most confusing things for a novice designer is the difference between tracking, leading, and kerning.
Tracking refers to changes in the spacing between all characters in a line. When you increase the tracking of a word, you are uniformly increasing the spaces between every letter. Changes in tracking normally happen for printed posters and social media layouts. And these are the tools you need to create shareable social media images.
This is different from kerning, which refers to the changes in spacing between each character. In the example above, the kerning between the letters “K” and “e” was decreased, while the kerning between the other letters remained the same. You normally take kerning into consideration when you’re designing very large layouts with few characters.
On the other hand, leading is the amount of space between lines in a block of text. In word-processing, when you change a paragraph to “double-space,” you’re doubling the leading between lines. Leading is especially important if you’re typing something with a large amount of text, such as a report or a magazine layout.
Typography Is for Everyone
Whether you’re a professional designer making a layout for a client, a student writing a paper, or a corporate professional working on a slideshow, the way that your text is presented can make all the difference. So, with that in mind, it’s important to understand the most important elements.
Microsoft Exchange support exists on Linux, but it generally isn’t pretty. You can take this both literally and figuratively. You can add Microsoft Exchange support to Thunderbird with plugins but it isn’t intuitive, and while Evolution supports Microsoft Exchange, that app isn’t always user-friendly.
Hiri is a cross-platform app that succeeds in making Microsoft Exchange emails, contacts, calendars, and tasks both easy and enjoyable to use on Linux. Here’s why Hiri is the best Linux Exchange client and how to get started with it.
What Does Hiri Offer?
One of the main focuses of Hiri seems to be ease of use. This, combined with the design, which uses plenty of whitespace to keep things from looking cluttered, makes using the app a pleasant experience.
Hiri is opinionated about its design, which may or may not appeal to you. For example, the width of the center pane will always be the same regardless of the size of your monitor or the width of your window. The Hiri website says this is because the optimal length of a sentence is roughly 96 characters.
Both Hiri’s look and functionality are customizable with what it calls Skills. These are bits and pieces of functionality that you can enable and disable at will to add and remove features. The Dashboard Skill, for example, will remind you not to check your email too often. We’ll explore more of these Skills later in this article.
How Much Does Hiri Cost?
Unlike a lot of apps available for Linux, Hiri is not free software in either sense of the term. It is not free in that is not open source, nor is it available free of charge.
Hiri’s pricing structure is somewhat unusual as well. The app is not an outright purchase but instead uses a subscription model. Hiri is available for $39 per year, but also currently offers a lifetime license for $119. That seems simple enough, but when you buy the app also affects how much you’ll pay for it.
When you first install Hiri, you’ll immediately begin the free seven-day trial that the company offers. If you wait until the end of this period to subscribe, you’ll pay the price listed above. For each day earlier that you pay for the software, you’ll pay a little less.
If you pay on the first day, the annual subscription only costs $20, rather than the full $80. The price goes up each day until eventually it reaches the standard price. This is an unusual strategy, but if you install Hiri and love it immediately, paying right away can save you a little money.
Installing and Configuring Hiri
Because it’s proprietary and paid software, you won’t find Hiri in the software repositories of many Linux distributions. The Hiri team doesn’t create DEB or RPM packages either. Instead, they have offered to use the Snap format favored by Ubuntu.
This means that installing the software is very easy for most users. If you’re using Ubuntu, you can find Hiri in the Ubuntu Software app. For other distributions, as long as you have Snap installed, you can type the following to install Hiri:
sudo snap install hiri
If you can’t or don’t want to install Hiri via Snap, installation is still fairly simple. Head to the Hiri download page and click on the Linux option. Now open up your terminal and change to the directory that you downloaded Hiri to.
cd ~/Downloads
Next extract the archive file:
tar xf Hiri.tar.gz
Finally, move into the newly extracted folder and launch the app:
cd hiri
./hiri.sh
Adding Your Email Accounts
Once you launch the app, you’ll be prompted to enter the details for the accounts you want to use with Hiri. Enter your email address and then you’ll be prompted for your password. If your account uses two-factor authentication, you’ll need to create an app password to use with Hiri.
One thing to know before you start is that right now Hiri only supports the Microsoft email ecosystem. This means Exchange accounts, as well as outlook.com, hotmail.com, and live.com email addresses.
Right now, there is no support for other formats like IMAP, though the Hiri team has said that the company does plan to add this feature sometime in the future.
How to Use Hiri
How easy Hiri is to use depends on how much of a Microsoft Outlook power user you are. It’s actually going to be easier if you aren’t an Outlook master.
As an example, some keyboard shortcuts are the same as those found in Outlook, but not all of them. You can press Ctrl + R to reply to a message, but you’ll need to press Ctrl + N to create a new email instead of Ctrl + Shift + N as you would in Outlook.
Hiri is very much its own app, and if you think of it this way you’ll adapt to it quickly. If you’re frequently switching between Hiri and Outlook though, you’ll need to memorize two sets of keyboard shortcuts.
Choosing and Using Hiri Skills
A big part of using Hiri comes down to its Skills. To choose the Skills you want to use, head to the Skills Center by clicking the lightning bolt icon on the left sidebar.
If you want to narrow down email to just what you need to act on, you’ll want to enable the Action/FYI Skill. This separates email into two categories: Actionable is email that you need to do something with, while FYI is for all those unnecessary cc’d emails as well as any emails that are just informational.
The Task List Skill puts a Tasks pane at the side of your inbox, similar to the To-Do Bar in Outlook. This lets you see your tasks easily, while dragging an email into this box creates a new task.
The Reminders Skill adds a reminder icon to the Email Action Bar. This is similar to the Snooze functionality found in some other email clients, taking the email out of your inbox until a later date.
The Dashboard Skill, as mentioned above, is meant to save you from yourself when it comes to checking email. After 90 seconds of inactivity, a popup will launch, reminding you not to check your email too much.
There are a few other skills to help you write better subject lines, delegate emails, and get your inbox to zero. A new Skill is on the way as well that will let your rate emails. All of these are worth exploring to customize your email experience.
Looking for a Free Email Client Instead of Hiri?
For the most part, email is something a lot of people have grown used to using for free, and this extends to email clients. If you’re looking for another email app, either because you don’t want to spend the money or because you need IMAP support, you’ve got plenty of options.
Fortunately, you don’t need to waste time looking around. Check our list of the best email clients on Linux to find what you’re looking for.
On January 8, 2019, we saw the first instance of “clipper malware” on the Google Play store. It disguised itself as an innocent app to fool people into downloading it, then began redirecting cryptocurrency funds to the malware’s author.
But what is clipper malware, how does it work, and how can you avoid an attack?
What Is Clipper Malware?
Clipper malware targets cryptocurrency wallet addresses during a transaction. A wallet address is like the cryptocurrency version of a bank account number. If you want someone to pay you in cryptocurrency, you give them your wallet address and the payee enters it into their payment details.
Clipper malware hijacks a cryptocurrency transaction by swapping a wallet address with one owned by the malware author. When the user goes to make a payment from their cryptocurrency account, they end up paying the malware author instead of their intended recipient.
This can cause some serious financial damage if the malware manages to hijack a high-value transaction.
How Clipper Malware Works
Clipper malware performs this swap by monitoring the clipboard of the infected device, where copied data is stored. Every time the user copies data, the clipper checks it to see if it contains any cryptocurrency wallet addresses. If it does, the malware swaps it out with the malware author’s address.
Now, when the user goes to paste the address, they’ll end up pasting the hijacked address instead of the legitimate one.
Clipper malware exploits the complicated nature of wallet addresses. These are long strings of numbers and letters that are seemingly chosen at random. Unless a user has used a wallet address multiple times, there’s very little chance that they’ll notice that it’s been swapped.
Even worse, its complexity means people are far more likely to copy and paste the address—exactly what the clipper malware wants!
How Long Has It Been Around?
Clipper malware, by itself, is nothing new. It entered the scene around 2017, and mainly focused on Windows-based machines. Since then, clipper malware for Android has been developed and sold on the black market, and infected apps could be found on shady sites.
Such sites were the staging ground for the 2016 Gooligan malware, which infected 1 million devices.
This is the first instance of an app on the official Google Play store being infected with clipper malware. Successfully uploading an infected app to the official store is every malware distributor’s dream scenario. An app on the Google Play store carries a certain air of authenticity, making it more trustworthy than apps found on a random website.
This means people typically download and install apps from the store without question, which is exactly what malware authors want.
Which Apps Contained Clipper Malware?
The First Android cryptocurrency clipboard exchanger found on Google Play.
Its goal is to change copied address of cryptocurrency wallet of recipient for the attacker's.
The clipper malware dwelled within an app called MetaMask. It’s a real service that enables browser-based distributed applications for the cryptocurrency Ethereum. MetaMask doesn’t have an official Android app yet, so the malware authors capitalized on this to make people think it did.
This phony MetaMask app did more than swap out cryptocurrency addresses in the clipboard. It also asked for the user’s Ethereum details as part of a fake account set-up. Once the unsuspecting user had entered the details, the malware authors had all the information they need to log into the account and drain it for themselves.
Fortunately, a security firm discovered clipper malware before it did too much damage. The fake MetaMask app was uploaded on February 1st 2019, and was reported and removed just over a week later.
The Rise in Cryptocurrency Attacks
While this attack vector is new, it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. Cryptocurrencies are very big business these days, and with it comes the potential to make a large amount of money. While most people are satisfied with making money via legal means, there will always be some that seek to exploit others instead.
Cryptojackers are a favorite of malware authors around the globe. These hijack a device’s processor to make it mine cryptocurrency for the author, preferably without the end-user even noticing.
Much like this clipper malware example, security firms found cryptojackers infecting apps on the Google Play store. As such, this may be just the start of cryptocurrency-based malware attacking users on Android phones.
How to Avoid a Clipper Malware Attack
This may sound very scary, but avoiding a clipper malware attack is quite simple. Clipper malware depends on the user being ignorant of its existence and ignoring the warning signs. Learning about how clipper malware works is a big step toward defeating it. By reading this article, you’ve already done 90 percent of the work!
First, always make sure you download apps from the Google Play store. While Google Play is not perfect, it’s a lot safer than shady sites on the internet. Try to avoid sites that act as a ‘third-party store’ for Android, as these are far more likely to contain malware than Google Play.
When downloading apps on Google Play, double-check the app’s total downloads before installing. If an app hasn’t been around for long and has a low download count, downloading it could be risky. Likewise, if the app claims it’s the mobile version of a popular service, double-check the developer name.
If the name differs (even slightly) from the official developer’s name, it’s a big warning sign that something is wrong.
Even if your phone does get infected with clipper malware, you can avoid an attack by being careful. Double-check any wallet addresses that you paste to ensure it hasn’t changed mid-way through. If the address you paste is different to the one you copied, clipper malware is lurking on your system.
Do a full virus scan and delete any shady apps you may have installed recently.
Clipping the Wings of Clipper Malware
Clipper malware can be devastating for anyone who handles large amounts of cryptocurrency. The complicated nature of wallet addresses, combined with a typical user’s tendency to copy and paste, gives clipper malware a window of opportunity to strike.
Many people may not even realize what they’re doing until it’s too late!
Fortunately, defeating clipper malware is simple. Never download suspicious apps, and double-check all wallet links before confirming a transaction.
Raising children can be an overwhelming experience, especially for first-time parents. You might feel totally lost on what to do in certain situations, experience loneliness if you aren’t able to socialize as much, or just be seeking advice from people who have gone through this before.
As it turns out, YouTube can be a great resource for parents. You’ll find plenty of channels with fun ideas for entertaining your kids and tackling the everyday challenges of parenthood. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the best YouTube channels for parents…
We start with the most popular parenting YouTube channel, which has racked up over 1 billion video views. It releases new videos weekly in several different shows. These include Play for kids’ activities, Mom Hacks that offers tricks, and Eat for great family recipes. You’ll find vlogs and similar content as well.
The above video is from the Eat series. It covers easy snacks for a movie night at home if you’re tired of boring microwave popcorn. The recipes are simple, so you don’t have to be a master cook to whip them up.
In this Play series video, you’ll see a few fun games one of the moms came up with; all of which revolve around numbered stickers. It’s a great way for toddlers to practice fine motor skills and some basic numbers/letters.
As you’ll notice, the videos on WhatsUpMoms are quick, varied, and informative. Every mom should give them a look for some simple ways to make every day a little more fun.
Recommending that you subscribe to a hospital’s YouTube channel might sound a bit weird, but there’s a surprising amount of content for parents here. You’ll find videos on various parenting topics from toddlers to teenagers, with advice from medical professionals.
The above short clip discusses the differences between the types of ear infections your child could suffer from. Knowing this can help you determine whether it’s a routine infection or has a different cause, and take the appropriate action.
Another video takes a similar quick-fire look briefly at the evolution of the car seats you can expect to use as your child grows up.
Not all of the videos are of professional quality, and most are short. But there’s some good advice here for the puzzling situations you might find yourself in during parenthood. And it’s better to get advice on these topics from qualified professionals rather than random people online.
YouTube has endless entertainment for kids, but it’s vital for parents to know what their children are watching. If you’re not familiar, YouTube has had issues with creepy videos masquerading as children’s entertainment showing up thanks to the autoplay feature.
Take a look around and you’ll find full episodes of popular Nick Jr. shows. This one is a full 11-minute episode of Top Wing, a show where young bird cadets at Top Wing Academy help their community.
If you don’t have time for a full episode, this channel also hosts quick clips from various shows. In the one above, Thomas the Train talks about his trip to China.
Some of Nick Jr.’s channel content is in other languages, so you may have to skip a few videos. But you can rest assured that everything here is appropriate for all ages.
This channel revolves around the “peaceful parenting” method. Avital, the channel host, looks at various aspects of this style of parenting and life and provides advice around it in weekly videos.
One of the best ways to keep a positive attitude in your home is staying thankful. The above video looks at practical ways to raise grateful children and hopefully make that a pattern in their lives.
Busy parents will appreciate this look at how Avital stays so productive. She gives practical ways to get more done every day. Give it a look if you feel like you’ve been stuck in a rut lately.
Of course, this parenting style isn’t for everyone, so you might find it’s not a fit for your family. But there are still some solid suggestions and thinking patterns to consider from this perspective.
This channel is run by a community of moms who discuss all sorts of aspects of the parenting journey. Some of them are tips videos, others are podcast-style talks, and others still are features on specific topics.
The above video is the hosts’ 2019 kickoff, which makes it a great place to start if you’re new to the channel. It details their plans for The Mom’s View for the coming year, so you’ll know what to expect.
TMV features guests from other channels sometimes, too. This featured clip shows Piper Backholm, another parenting YouTuber, talking about vulnerability. It’s an open and honest look you’ll appreciate if you’re sick of the filtered content you usually see on social media.
Even Parents Can Learn Something From YouTube
If you’re feeling a little lost in your parenting and could use some tips, take a trip to YouTube. Of course, how you parent your children is up to you, so you shouldn’t make any major decisions based on these YouTube channels for parents. However, we’re sure you’ll still find something to enjoy.
As a bonus, the Millennial Moms channel has lots of quality content. However, it hasn’t posted a new video in almost a year, so we didn’t include it above.
Samsung’s newest product launch happens next week, but already the Korean tech giant has revealed its entire upcoming range of wearable devices that will seemingly be unveiled alongside the Galaxy S10.
That’s because the company’s Galaxy Wearable’s app was uploaded today with support for a range of unreleased products which include wireless earbuds, a sports-focused smartwatch, and a new fitness band.
First reported by The Verge — and originally noticed by @SamCentralTech on Twitter — the new wearables include a Galaxy Sport smartwatch, fitness bands Galaxy Fit and Galaxy Fit e, Galaxy Buds, Samsung’s take on Apple’s AirPods. The devices have all been teased in various leaks in recent weeks but this confirmation from the Samsung app, deliberate or inadvertent, appears to all but confirm their impending arrival.
That said, we really can’t tell too much about the respective devices based on the app, which just shows basic renders of each device.
Still, that might just be enough of a tease to general a little more interest in what promises to be Samsung’s biggest consumer launch event of the year.
The Samsung unveiling comes days before Mobile World Congress, the mobile industry’s biggest event of the year, kicks off — so expect to see new product launches coming thick and fast over the coming weeks.
ChargedUp, a U.K. startup that offers a mobile charging network that takes inspiration from bike-sharing, has closed £1.2 million in seed investment. Leading the round is Sir John Hegarty’s fund The Garage, and the ex-Innocent Smoothie founders fund JamJar. The funding will be used to grow the offering across the U.K. and for international expansion.
Founded by Hugo Tilmouth, Charlie Baron, Hakeem Buge and Forrest Skerman Stevenson, ChargedUp has set out to solve the dead mobile phone battery problem with a charging network. However, rather than offer fixed charging points, the team has developed a solution that lets you rent a mobile charging pack from one destination and return it at different location if needed. That way, mobile phone use remains mobile.
“It’s annoying and inconvenient to be out and about with a dying phone battery,” says CEO Hugo Tilmouth. We’ve all been there and I was inspired to do something about it through my own experiences. I was at a cricket match at London’s Lord’s Cricket Ground and waiting for a call for a last round interview with a large tech firm, and was running very low on charge! I ended up having to leave the cricket ground, buy a power bank and then rode a Boris Bike home and the light bulb went off in my head! Why not combine the flexibility of the sharing economy with the need of a ‘ChargedUp’ phone!”.
The solution was to create multiple distribution points across a city, located in the venues where people spend most of their time. This includes cafes, bars and restaurants. “Our solution uses an app to enables users to find the nearest stations, unlock a sharable power bank, and then return it to any station in the network and only pay for the time they use. Our goal is to be never five minutes from a charge,” adds Tilmouth
In the next six months, ChargedUp says it will expand its network of over 250 vending stations in London’s bars, cafes and restaurants across to other large metropolitan areas in the U.K. Last month, the young startup partnered with Marks and Spencer to trial the platform in its central London stores. If the trial is successful, ChargedUp says it could lead to providing its phone charging solution to all M&S customers by the end of 2019.
“Since launch we have delivered over 1 million minutes of charge across the network, and our customers love the service,” says Tilmouth. “Like the sharing scooter and bike companies, we operate a time based model. We simply charge our users a simple price of 50p per 30 mins to charge their phones. We also make revenue from the advertising space both on our batteries and within our app”.
With regards to competition, Tilmouth says ChargedUp’s most direct competitor is the charging lockers found in some public spaces, such as ChargeBox. “We do not see this as a viable alternative to ChargedUp as users are forced to lock their phones away preventing them from using them while it charges. They are also prone to theft and damage. We are also differentiated by our use of green energy offsetting throughout the network,” he says.
Meanwhile, in a statement investor Sir John Hegarty talks up the revenue opportunities beyond rentals, which includes advertising, rewards and loyalty. “At its simplest, ChargedUp addresses a massive need in the market, mobile devices running out of power. But more than that, ChargedUp provides advertisers with a powerful medium that connects directly with their audience at point of purchase,” he says.
Prior to today’s seed round, ChargedUp received investment from Telefonica via the Wayra accelerator and Brent Hoberman’s Founders Factory.
