Google employees demand Larry Page address walkout and retaliation

Google employees are still going strong and not letting up on their demands. Following a sit-in protesting retaliation last month, Googlers are making four demands.

“Google seems to have lost its mooring, and trust between workers and the company is deeply broken,” Google walkout organizers wrote on Medium today. “As the company progresses from crisis to crisis, it is clear Google management is failing, along with HR. It’s time to put HR on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) and bring in someone we trust to supervise it. It’s time to escalate.”

The first demand is for Google to meet the rest of the demands of the walkout. While Google did make some changes post-walkout, the company did not address all of the organizers’ demands. For example, Google failed to elevate its chief diversity officer to report directly to Pichai and also ignored the organizers’ request to add an employee representative to the board of directors.

Employees also want Alphabet CEO Larry Page to intervene and address the demands of the walkout.

“Larry controls Alphabet’s board and has the individual authority to make changes, where others do not,” the organizers wrote.

Additionally, employees are demanding Google unblock Meredith Whittaker’s transfer and let Claire Stapleton transfer to a new team. Whittaker, the lead of Google’s Open Research and one of the organizers of the walkout, said her role was “changed dramatically” while fellow walkout organizer Claire Stapleton said her manager told her she would be demoted and lose half of her reports.

“We call on Google to unblock Meredith’s transfer, and allow her to continue her work as before, fully funded and supported, and to allow Claire to transfer to a new team without continued retaliation and interference,” Googlers wrote.

Lastly, they want a transparent and open investigation of human resources and how it handles employee complaints. That’s because they say Google’s HR department is broken.

“Over and over again it prioritizes the company and the reputation of abusers and harassers over their victims,” they wrote. “The collateral damage is all around us. Time is up. We need third party investigators. Even Uber did this, bringing in Eric Holder and Arianna Huffington.”

Amidst scandals at Uber pertaining to sexual harassment, the company brought in an outside team to investigate the company’s culture. That’s what Googlers are now asking for. They want the investigators not to have any financial relationship with Google or Alphabet.

Google declined to comment but pointed to its previous statement regarding retaliation:

“We prohibit retaliation in the workplace and publicly share our very clear policy. To make sure that no complaint raised goes unheard at Google, we give employees multiple channels to report concerns, including anonymously, and investigate all allegations of retaliation.”

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Non-invasive glucose monitor EasyGlucose takes home Microsoft’s Imagine Cup and $100K

Microsoft’s yearly Imagine Cup student startup competition crowned its latest winner today: EasyGlucose, a non-invasive, smartphone-based method for diabetics to test their blood glucose. It and the two other similarly beneficial finalists presented today at Microsoft’s Build developers conference.

The Imagine Cup brings together winners of many local student competitions around the world with a focus on social good and, of course, Microsoft services like Azure. Last year’s winner was a smart prosthetic forearm that uses a camera in the palm to identify the object it is meant to grasp. (They were on hand today as well, with an improved prototype.)

The three finalists hailed from the U.K., India, and the U.S.; EasyGlucose was a one-person team from my alma mater UCLA.

EasyGlucose takes advantage of machine learning’s knack for spotting the signal in noisy data, in this case the tiny details of the eye’s iris. It turns out, as creator Brian Chiang explained in his presentation, that the iris’s “ridges, crypts, and furrows” hide tiny hints as to their owner’s blood glucose levels.

EasyGlucose presents at the Imagine Cup finals.

These features aren’t the kind of thing you can see with the naked eye (or rather, on the naked eye), but by clipping a macro lens onto a smartphone camera Chiang was able to get a clear enough image that his computer vision algorithms were able to analyze them.

The resulting blood glucose measurement is significantly better than any non-invasive measure and more than good enough to serve in place of the most common method used by diabetics: stabbing themselves with a needle every couple hours. Currently EasyGlucose gets within 7 percent of the pinprick method, well above what’s needed for “clinical accuracy,” and Chiang is working on closing that gap. No doubt this innovation will be welcomed warmly by the community, as well as the low cost: $10 for the lens adapter, and $20 per month for continued support via the app.

It’s not a home run, or not just yet: Naturally, a technology like this can’t go straight from the lab (or in this case the dorm) to global deployment. It needs FDA approval first, though it likely won’t have as protracted a review period as, say, a new cancer treatment or surgical device. In the meantime, EasyGlucose has a patent pending, so no one can eat its lunch while it navigates the red tape.

As the winner, Chiang gets $100,000, plus $50,000 in Azure credit, plus the coveted one-on-one mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

The other two Imagine Cup finalists also used computer vision (among other things) in service of social good.

Caeli is taking on the issue of air pollution by producing custom high-performance air filter masks intended for people with chronic respiratory conditions who have to live in polluted areas. This is a serious problem in many places that cheap or off-the-shelf filters can’t really solve.

It uses your phone’s front-facing camera to scan your face and pick the mask shape that makes the best seal against your face. What’s the point of a high-tech filter if the unwanted particles just creep in the sides?

Part of the mask is a custom-designed compact nebulizer for anyone who needs medication delivered in mist form, for example someone with asthma. The medicine is delivered automatically according to the dosage and schedule set in the app — which also tracks pollution levels in the area so the user can avoid hot zones.

Finderr is an interesting solution to the problem of visually impaired people being unable to find items they’ve left around their home. By using a custom camera and computer vision algorithm, the service watches the home and tracks the placement of everyday items: keys, bags, groceries, and so on. Just don’t lose your phone, since you’ll need that to find the other stuff.

You call up the app and tell it (by speaking) what you’re looking for, then the phone’s camera it determines your location relative to the item you’re looking for, giving you audio feedback that guides you to it in a sort of “getting warmer” style, and a big visual indicator for those who can see it.

After their presentations, I asked the creators a few questions about upcoming challenges, since as is usual in the Imagine Cup, these companies are extremely early stage.

Right now EasyGlucose is working well but Chiang emphasized that the model still needs lots more data and testing across multiple demographics. It’s trained on 15,000 eye images but many more will be necessary to get the kind of data they’ll need to present to the FDA.

Finderrr recognizes all the images in the widely used ImageNet database, but the team’s Ferdinand Loesch pointed out that others can be added very easily with 100 images to train with. As for the upfront cost, the U.K. offers a 500-pound grant to visually-impaired people for this sort of thing, and they engineered the 360-degree ceiling-mounted camera to minimize the number needed to cover the home.

Caeli noted that the nebulizer, which really is a medical device in its own right, is capable of being sold and promoted on its own, perhaps licensed to medical device manufacturers. There are other smart masks coming out, but he had a pretty low opinion of them (not strange in a competitor but there isn’t some big market leader they need to dethrone). He also pointed out that in the target market of India (from which they plan to expand later) isn’t as difficult to get insurance to cover this kind of thing.

While these are early-stage companies, they aren’t hobbies — though admittedly many of their founders are working on them between classes. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear more about them and others from Imagine Cup pulling in funding and hiring in the next year.

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Announcing Open Images V5 and the ICCV 2019 Open Images Challenge

Posted by Vittorio Ferrari, Research Scientist, Machine Perception

In 2016, we introduced Open Images, a collaborative release of ~9 million images annotated with labels spanning thousands of object categories. Since then we have rolled out several updates, culminating with Open Images V4 in 2018. In total, that release included 15.4M bounding-boxes for 600 object categories, making it the largest existing dataset with object location annotations, as well as over 300k visual relationship annotations.

Today we are happy to announce Open Images V5, which adds segmentation masks to the set of annotations, along with the second Open Images Challenge, which will feature a new instance segmentation track based on this data.

Open Images V5
Open Images V5 features segmentation masks for 2.8 million object instances in 350 categories. Unlike bounding-boxes, which only identify regions in which an object is located, segmentation masks mark the outline of objects, characterizing their spatial extent to a much higher level of detail. We have put particular effort into ensuring consistent annotations across different objects (e.g., all cat masks include their tail; bags carried by camels or persons are included in their mask). Importantly, these masks cover a broader range of object categories and a larger total number of instances than any previous dataset.

Example masks on the training set of Open Images V5. These have been produced by our interactive segmentation process. The first example also shows a bounding box, for comparison. From left to right, top to bottom: Tea and cake at the Fitzwilliam Museum by Tim Regan, Pilota II by Euskal kultur erakundea Institut culturel basque, Rheas by Dag Peak, Wuxi science park, 1995 by Gary Stevens, Cat Cafe Shinjuku calico by Ari Helminen, and Untitled by Todd Huffman. All images used under CC BY 2.0 license.

The segmentation masks on the training set (2.68M) have been produced by our state-of-the-art interactive segmentation process, where professional human annotators iteratively correct the output of a segmentation neural network. This is more efficient than manual drawing alone, while at the same time delivering accurate masks (intersection-over-union 84%). Additionally, we release 99k masks on the validation and test sets, which have been annotated manually with a strong focus on quality. These are near-perfect and capture even fine details of complex object boundaries (e.g. spiky flowers and thin structures in man-made objects). Both our training and validation+test annotations offer more accurate object boundaries than the polygon annotations provided by most existing datasets.

Example masks on the validation and test sets of Open Images V5, drawn completely manually. From left to right: thistle flowers by sophie, still life with ax by liz west, Fischkutter KOŁ-180 in Kolobrzeg (PL) by zeesenboot. All images used under CC BY 2.0 license.

In addition to the masks, we also added 6.4M new human-verified image-level labels, reaching a total of 36.5M over nearly 20,000 categories. Finally, we improved annotation density for 600 object categories on the validation and test sets, adding more than 400k bounding boxes to match the density in the training set. This ensures more precise evaluation of object detection models.

Open Images Challenge 2019
In conjunction with this release, we are also introducing the second Open Images Challenge, to be held at the 2019 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2019). This Challenge will have a new instance segmentation track based on the data above. Moreover, as in the 2018 edition, it will also feature a large-scale object detection track (500 categories with 12.2M training bounding-boxes), and a visual relationship detection track for detecting pairs of objects in particular relations (329 relationship triplets with 375k training samples, e.g., “woman playing guitar” or “beer on table”).

The training set with all annotations is available now. The test set has the same 100k images as the 2018 Challenge and will be launched again on June 3rd, 2019 by Kaggle. The evaluation servers will open on June 3rd for the object detection and visual relationship tracks, and on July 1st for the instance segmentation track. The deadline for submission of results is October 1st, 2019.

We hope that the exceptionally large and diverse training set will inspire research into more advanced instance segmentation models. The extremely accurate ground-truth masks we provide rewards subtle improvements in the output segmentations, and thus will encourage the development of higher-quality models that deliver precise boundaries. Finally, having a single dataset with unified annotations for image classification, object detection, visual relationship detection, and instance segmentation will enable researchers to study these tasks jointly and stimulate progress towards genuine scene understanding.

Appendicitis

Appendicitis

Samsung spilled SmartThings app source code and secret keys

A development lab used by Samsung engineers was leaking highly sensitive source code, credentials and secret keys for several internal projects — including its SmartThings platform, a security researcher found.

The electronics giant left dozens of internal coding projects on a GitLab instance hosted on a Samsung-owned domain, Vandev Lab. The instance, used by staff to share and contribute code to various Samsung apps, services and projects, was spilling data because the projects were set to “public” and not properly protected with a password, allowing anyone to look inside at each project, access, and download the source code.

Mossab Hussein, a security researcher at Dubai-based cybersecurity firm SpiderSilk who discovered the exposed files, said one project contained credentials that allowed access to the entire AWS account that was being used, including over a hundred S3 storage buckets that contained logs and analytics data.

Many of the folders, he said, contained logs and analytics data for Samsung’s SmartThings and Bixby services, but also several employees’ exposed private GitLab tokens stored in plaintext, which allowed him to gain additional access from 42 public projects to 135 projects, including many private projects.

Samsung told him some of the files were for testing but Hussein challenged the claim, saying source code found in the GitLab repository contained the same code as the Android app, published in Google Play on April 10.

The app, which has since been updated, has more than 100 million installs to date.

“I had the private token of a user who had full access to all 135 projects on that GitLab,” he said, which could have allowed him to make code changes using a staffer’s own account.

Hussein shared several screenshots and a video of his findings for TechCrunch to examine and verify.

The exposed GitLab instance also contained private certificates for Samsung’s SmartThings’ iOS and Android apps.

Hussein also found several internal documents and slideshows among the exposed files.

“The real threat lies in the possibility of someone acquiring this level of access to the application source code, and injecting it with malicious code without the company knowing,” he said.

Through exposed private keys and tokens, Hussein documented a vast amount of access that if obtained by a malicious actor could have been “disastrous,” he said.

A screenshot of the exposed AWS credentials, allowing access to buckets with GitLab private tokens. (Image: supplied).

Hussein, a white-hat hacker and data breach discoverer, reported the findings to Samsung on April 10. In the days following, Samsung began revoking the AWS credentials but it’s not known if the remaining secret keys and certificates were revoked.

Samsung still hasn’t closed the case on Hussein’s vulnerability report, close to a month after he first disclosed the issue.

“Recently, an individual security researcher reported a vulnerability through our security rewards program regarding one of our testing platforms,” Samsung spokesperson Zach Dugan told TechCrunch when reached prior to publication. “We quickly revoked all keys and certificates for the reported testing platform and while we have yet to find evidence that any external access occurred, we are currently investigating this further.”

Hussein said Samsung took until April 30 to revoke the GitLab private keys. Samsung also declined to answer specific questions we had and provided no evidence that the Samsung-owned development environment was for testing.

Hussein is no stranger to reporting security vulnerabilities. He recently disclosed a vulnerable back-end database at Blind, an anonymous social networking site popular among Silicon Valley employees — and found a server leaking a rolling list of user passwords for scientific journal giant Elsevier.

Samsung’s data leak, he said, was his biggest find to date.

“I haven’t seen a company this big handle their infrastructure using weird practices like that,” he said.

Read more:

• Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system
• A leaky database of SMS text messages exposed password resets and two-factor codes
• Chipotle customers are saying their accounts have been hacked
• We found a massive spam operation — and sunk its server
• Dow Jones’ watchlist of 2.4 million high-risk individuals has leaked
• Stop saying, ‘We take your privacy and security seriously’
• Robocaller firm Stratics Networks exposed millions of call recordings
• Massive mortgage and loan data leak gets worse as original documents also exposed

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11 Small Tips to Make Everyday Tasks Easier on Your Mac

While working on your Mac, you’ve probably noticed certain aspects aren’t as efficient as they could be. Wasting a minute here and there can add up over time, especially with tasks you do often. Saving time on your Mac can earn you more time to do something you enjoy.

It isn’t likely that every tip on this list will work for you. Even so, if you save a few minutes every day, you’ll earn back the time you took to try them out in short order.

1. Hide Your Dock by Default

The macOS Dock takes up a significant portion of your screen by default. This is handy for first-time Mac users, but for more experienced users it’s just a waste of screen real estate.

Hiding the Dock gives you more usable vertical space to work with. This is handy for all types of work, from coding to writing up Word documents. It’s also handy for browsing the web, since nearly all websites scroll vertically. More space on the screen means less time spent scrolling.

To do this, right-click on an empty area of the Dock and select Turn Hiding On.

2. Move Your Dock to the Side

Whether or not you’ve got your Dock hidden, its home at the bottom of the screen isn’t entirely optimal. It makes sense visually since the menu bar is at the top of the screen, but for maximum usability, try moving it to the left or right side.

Even with the 16:10 aspect ratio MacBooks use, you still have more horizontal screen space than vertical. Moving the Dock to one side takes advantage of this. I prefer the left-hand side, but try both and see what works for you.

To try this, right-click on the Dock, mouse over Position on Screen, and choose Left or Right.

3. Use Stacks

Some people use the desktop constantly, with files and folders scattered everywhere. Others use it as a temporary work area, deleting files or moving them to another location when they’re done. Either way, Stacks, which were introduced in macOS Mojave, can help keep your desktop nice and tidy.

Stacks simply organize similar files into neat little areas. You can use Stacks to group files by type, when they were last modified, or a few other pieces of metadata. If you sort by type, images will be gathered in one Stack while Word documents will be grouped in another.

To try this out, right-click on the desktop and select Use Stacks.

4. Replace Spotlight With Another Launcher

Spotlight has come a long way from the relatively barebones launcher it was a few macOS releases ago. Still, it’s not as powerful as it could be. If you’re a heavy Spotlight user but wish it could do more, try another launcher.

Alfred is a popular option; LaunchBar is another great choice. Both let you add extra functionality via third-party add-ons. With one of these apps, you can update your to-do list, search your notes, and even create files directly from your launcher.

5. Open Finder With a Keyboard Shortcut

This is a super-quick tip. If you frequently find yourself moving the mouse to the Dock just to open Finder, you might be glad to know there’s an alternative.

Hitting Cmd + Option + Space will bring up a search dialog for Finder. From here you can click anywhere as you normally would. If you open and close the Finder often, this shortcut can save you a few minutes a week.

6. Use the List View in Finder

It’s entirely possible to use the macOS Finder without ever adjusting how it displays files. Still, to see as much as possible without scrolling, it’s worth taking a look at the List and Column views.

You can select these views by going to the View menu and selecting as List or as Columns, but there’s a faster way. You can select List View by hitting Cmd + 2. Do this in a directory like Documents, and it will apply to sub-directories as well.

7. Take Advantage of Virtual Desktops

If you’ve never used the virtual desktops built into macOS, you’re about to discover that it’s like having a second monitor you never plugged in. Simply hit Control + Up Arrow or swipe three fingers up on the touchpad and you’ll get the Expose view.

Here, you’ll see a bar at the top of the screen. Drag a window up to this bar and you’ll see a plus sign at the right side. Move the window here, and you’ll send it to a new desktop. You can move between these using the Expose view, or by hitting Control plus the Left or Right arrow keys.

8. Use Tags in Finder

Tags have been available in the macOS Finder since OS X 10.9 Mavericks, but plenty of people forget they’re there at all. If you want to track certain files across different directories, tags are a handy way to add an additional layer of organization to your file system.

By default, a few tags like Work, Home, and Important are included in Finder. To help you get started, we have a guide showing you how to organize your Mac with Finder tags.

9. Supercharge the Touch Bar

A lot of people see the Touch Bar as a useless addition to modern MacBook Pro models. By default, it doesn’t have a lot to offer, but you can make it far more handy.

We’ve already compiled a list of tips to help you make the Touch Bar more useful. One great example is putting shortcuts to your favorite settings on the Touch Bar.

10. Try Bartender to Hide Your Menu Bar Icons

If you run a lot of apps, you might have accumulated more menu bar icons than you’d like. You don’t want to stop using the apps, so what do you do? Fortunately, you have an option.

Bartender 3 is a handy little app that does one task, and does it well: it organizes your menu bar icons. The app will cost you $15, but if you hate seeing a disorganized row of menu bar icons, it’s money well spent.

11. Don’t Forget About Siri

A lot of us tend to associate Siri with our iPhone or iPad, so it’s easy to forget that Siri is also available on Mac. If you have a recent MacBook Pro, the Siri icon is in the Touch Bar. For other models, you’ll see the icon in your menu bar on the right side.

Many of the same commands you use with Siri on iOS also work on a Mac. We put together a list of Siri tricks and commands you should try to help you get started.

Looking for Even More Mac Tips?

While none of these tips are life-changing on their own, using just a few of them will make your Mac a more productive environment. If you’ve checked all these out and are still looking for more tips, there are plenty more where these came from.

To streamline your computing even more, take a look at our list of hidden productivity tips and tricks for your Mac.

Read the full article: 11 Small Tips to Make Everyday Tasks Easier on Your Mac

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How to Record Your Windows Screen (No App Installations Required)

Wondering how to record your screen on Windows 10? Maybe you want to document a technical problem or create an instructional video to send to a friend.

Whatever your reasons for needing a screen recorder, you might be on a computer where you’re not allowed to install software (or just don’t want to). To that end, we’re going to show you several ways to record your screen with native Windows tools.

A Quick Note on Screen Recorder Apps

This list specifically focuses on built-in screen recorders for Windows. They’re great when you’re in a pinch, but we don’t advise using them as long-term solutions.

If you often make screencasts, we recommend looking at some of the best screencast apps. They offer many more features to create great screen recordings and are worth a look for power users.

1. How to Screen Record With Xbox Game Bar

Windows 10 users have a built-in tool for screen recording in the form of the Xbox Game bar. It’s intended as a game screen recorder for recording and streaming video games, but you can use it to record anything you like.

To start, open the Settings app and select the Gaming entry. On the Game bar tab, make sure you have the Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game bar slider enabled.

Press Win + G at any time to open the Game bar settings overlay. After pressing this shortcut for the first time, you’ll likely see a box of options appear with a Gaming features not available message. This is because the Game bar doesn’t recognize your desktop program as a game.

Check the Enable gaming features for this app to record gameplay box to make the features work. Now you can use the Win + Alt + R keyboard shortcut to start a recording any time. If you don’t like this shortcut, you can set a new one on the Settings page.

Before recording, it’s a good idea to press Win + G once more. Make sure the audio levels for your apps and outputs below are suitable. If you want to record audio from your microphone, you’ll need to click the Mic icon in the Game bar options. Alternatively, press the Win + Alt + M shortcut.

To stop your recording, press Win + Alt + R again. You’ll then find your recording at C:\Users\USERNAME\Videos\Captures.

2. Use the Steps Recorder

If you don’t need a full-blown video recording of your screen, the Steps Recorder (formerly Problem Steps Recorder) is a simpler solution. Instead of recording video, it grabs several screenshots of a process you illustrate. It’s a great way to capture the steps you take that prompt an error message, and a suitable alternative when you can’t send a large video file.

To start using it, search for Steps Recorder in the Start Menu. This launches a small window; click Start Record to begin. Once you’ve done so, walk through the steps that you want to capture.

If you need to add additional information about something, click the Add Comment button. This lets you highlight an area of the screen and leave additional notes. When you’re done, click Stop Record.

You’ll then see a new window with all the information it captured. It will record a screenshot every time you click or type, and keeps a log of what you click on and enter. This, along with some technical info at the bottom, lets someone who’s trying to help you see exactly what’s going on.

Once you’re satisfied with your recording, click Save and choose a place to save it. The data saves as a ZIP file, which you can easily share with whoever is working to fix your problem. You can, of course, keep it for your own use too.

For more tools like this, see our list of free screen recorders for your desktop.

3. How to Screen Record via YouTube Live Streaming

With those two built-in Windows methods out of the way, how do you screen record without installing anything in other ways?

In an interesting workaround, you can use YouTube live streaming as a Windows screen recorder app. Unfortunately, YouTube’s Hangouts on Air support page says that this feature is “going away later in 2019”. It recommends using YouTube.com/webcam as a quick streaming solution instead, but this doesn’t let you record your desktop. Thus, we cover the legacy solution here.

To start, head to YouTube and make sure you’re signed in. In the top-right corner of the screen, click the Upload button, which looks like a video camera, and choose Go live. Depending on the status of your account, you may need to verify some information before proceeding.

Next you’ll see a box where you can add some basic info to your stream. Here, click Classic Live Streaming in the bottom-right corner to access the older interface.

Under the Live streaming section on the left sidebar, select Events. Then choose New live event in the top-right corner.

Here, set the Title, Description, and Category to whatever you like. Importantly, make sure you change the privacy from Public to Private (or Unlisted if you want select people to watch it). Under Type, make sure to select Quick. Click the Go live now button to start.

Starting the Broadcast

Now you’ll see a new Google Hangouts On Air window with your webcam and microphone enabled, just like you’re in a Hangouts call. Click the icons at the top of the screen to mute your mic and video if you desire. Then find the Screencast icon on the left side, which looks like a green monitor with an arrow.

Once you click this, you’ll need to choose whether you want to capture an entire monitor or just one app’s window. Choose this, then click Start broadcast when you’re ready to go live.

Proceed through what you want to record, then click Stop broadcast when you’re done. After you close the Hangouts window, YouTube will save the video of your screencast to your channel.

Accessing Your Screencast

You can find your clip a bit later by clicking on your profile icon at the top-right of YouTube, choosing YouTube Studio, and selecting Videos on the left sidebar. At the top of this page, select Live to show archives of live streams, and you’ll find the recording under the Live replay section.

Be sure to change the visibility from Private to Public or Unlisted if you want to share it with others.

4. How to Record Your Screen With PowerPoint

This final Windows screen recorder is closer to a bonus; because it requires PowerPoint, it’s not a true installation-free solution. However, as so many computers have Microsoft Office installed, we include it in case none of the other methods work for you.

See how to record your computer screen with Microsoft PowerPoint for details.

Screen Recording the Easy Way

We’ve looked at several easy ways to screen record on Windows without installing any software. Whether you need a way to do this in an emergency or just want to know every way to record your screen, these give you plenty of methods.

Want a more advanced screen recording and broadcasting tool? You should take a look at OBS Studio and our complete guide to getting started with OBS Studio.

Read the full article: How to Record Your Windows Screen (No App Installations Required)

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Twitter Now Lets You Add GIFs to Retweets

You can now add a GIF, a video, or photos to retweets. You could previously only add a written comment, with no option to add media. This is a small-but-important change Twitter users have been asking for for some time. However, it’s no Edit button.

How to Add a GIF, Video, or Photos to a Retweet

Until now, when retweeting someone else’s tweet, you have only been able to add written commentary. The GIF and photos/video icons were faded and not available. However, Twitter has now added the ability to add a GIF, video, or photos to a retweet.

It's easy to express yourself by Retweeting with a comment. What if you could take it a step further and include media? Starting today, you can! Retweet with photos, a GIF, or a video to really make your reaction pop. Available on iOS, Android, and https://t.co/AzMLIfU3jB. pic.twitter.com/Oir5Hpkb2F

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 6, 2019

All you need to do is click on the “Retweet” icon under a tweet. Then, select “Retweet with comment”. Now, as well as being able to add your own thoughts in the form of words, you can add a GIF, a video, or photos which sum up your feelings on the tweet.

You may be wondering why this has taken Twitter so long to implement. Twitter claims it was quite a challenge to ensure the result wasn’t a mess. And the solution was to indent any media attached to the tweet being retweeted (though not on desktop).

Today we are introducing an update you’ve been waiting for — drum roll please — Retweet with GIF, photos, and video! ? Read on to get the behind-the-scenes process of why and how we designed this feature. https://t.co/UMMPkhoaFL

— Twitter Design (@TwitterDesign) May 6, 2019

Brands have already started using this feature to great effect, and we expect ordinary users to start doing so as well. After all, GIFs in particular offer an easy way to add commentary to a tweet which you’re then retweeting to your own followers.

What We Really Want Is the Ability to Edit Tweets

While being able to add a GIF to a retweet is neat, it’s not the feature most Twitter users are demanding. Since Twitter was launched in 2006, people have wanted the ability to edit their tweets. And yet we are still waiting for that to become a reality.

In January 2017, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that the company was “thinking a lot about” giving users the option to edit their tweets. And then in February 2019, Dorsey told Joe Rogan that an Edit button is still on the to-do list. So it may happen one day.

Image Credit: Denis Vahrushev/Flickr

Read the full article: Twitter Now Lets You Add GIFs to Retweets

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4 Excel Lookup Functions to Search Spreadsheets Efficiently

Most of the time, searching an Excel spreadsheet is pretty easy. If you can’t just scan through the rows and columns for it, you can use Ctrl + F to search for it. If you’re working with a really big spreadsheet, it can save a lot of time to use one of these four lookup functions.

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Once you know how to search in Excel using lookup, it wont matter how big your spreadsheets get, you’ll always be able to find something in Excel!

1. The VLOOKUP Function

This function allows you to specify a column and a value, and will return a value from the corresponding row of a different column (if that doesn’t make sense, it’ll become clear in a moment). Two examples where you might do this are looking up an employee’s last name by their employee number or finding a phone number by specifying a last name.

Here’s the syntax of the function:

=VLOOKUP([lookup_value], [table_array], [col_index_num], [range_lookup])

• [lookup_value] is the piece of information that you already have. For example, if you need to know what state a city is in, it would be the name of the city.
• [table_array] lets you specify the cells in which the function will look for the lookup and return values. When selecting your range, be sure that the first column included in your array is the one that will include your lookup value!
• [col_index_num] is the number of the column that contains the return value.
• [range_lookup] is an optional argument, and takes 1 or 0. If you enter 1 or omit this argument, the function looks for the value you entered or the next-lowest number. So in the image below, a VLOOKUP looking for an SAT score of 652 will return 646, as it’s the closest number in the list that’s less than 652, and [range_lookup] defaults to 1.

Let’s take a look at how you might use this. This spreadsheet contains ID numbers, first and last names, city, state, and SAT scores. Let’s say you want to find the SAT score of a person with the last name “Winters.” VLOOKUP makes it easy. Here’s the formula you’d use:

=VLOOKUP("Winters", C2:F101, 4, 0)

Because the SAT scores are the fourth column over from the last name column, 4 is the column index argument. Note that when you’re looking for text, setting [range_lookup] to 0 is a good idea. Without it, you can get bad results.

Here’s the result:

It returned 651, the SAT score belonging to the student named Kennedy Winters, who is in row 92 (displayed in the inset above). It would’ve taken a lot longer to scroll through looking for the name than it did to quickly type out the syntax!

Notes on VLOOKUP

A few things are good to remember when you’re using VLOOKUP. Make sure that the first column in your range is the one that includes your lookup value. If it’s not in the first column, the function will return incorrect results. If your columns are well organized, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Also, keep in mind is that VLOOKUP will only ever return one value. If you’d used “Georgia” as the lookup value, it would have returned the score of the first student from Georgia, and given no indication that there are in fact two students from Georgia.

2. The HLOOKUP Function

Where VLOOKUP finds corresponding values in another column, HLOOKUP finds corresponding values in a different row. Because it’s usually easiest to scan through column headings until you find the right one and use a filter to find what you’re looking for, HLOOKUP is best used when you have really big spreadsheets or you’re working with values that are organized by time.

Here’s the syntax of the function:

=HLOOKUP([lookup_value], [table_array], [row_index_num], [range_lookup])

• [lookup_value] is the value that you know and want to find a corresponding value for.
• [table_array] is the cells in which you want to search.
• [row_index_num] specifies the row that the return value will come from.
• [range_lookup] is the same as in VLOOKUP, leave it blank to get the nearest value when possible, or enter 0 to only look for exact matches.

This spreadsheet contains a row for each state, along with an SAT score in the years 2000–2014. You can use HLOOKUP to find the average score in Minnesota in 2013. Here’s how we’ll do it:

=HLOOKUP(2013, A1:P51, 24)

As you can see in the image below, the score is returned:

Minnesotans averaged a score of 1014 in 2013. Note that 2013 is not in quotes because it’s a number, and not a string. Also, the 24 comes from Minnesota being in the 24th row.

Notes on HLOOKUP

As with VLOOKUP, the lookup value needs to be in the first row of your table array. This is rarely an issue with HLOOKUP, as you’ll usually be using a column title for a lookup value. HLOOKUP also only returns a single value.

3-4. The INDEX and MATCH Functions

INDEX and MATCH are two different functions, but when they’re used together they can make searching a large spreadsheet a lot faster. Both functions have drawbacks, but by combining them we’ll build on the strengths of both.

First, though, the syntax of both functions:

=INDEX([array], [row_number], [column_number])

• [array] is the array in which you’ll be searching.
• [row_number] and [column_number] can be used to narrow your search (we’ll take a look at that in a moment.)

=MATCH([lookup_value], [lookup_array], [match_type])

• [lookup_value] is a search term that can be a string or a number.
• [lookup_array] is the array in which Microsoft Excel will look for the search term.
• [match_type] is an optional argument that can be 1, 0, or -1. 1 will return the largest value that is smaller than or equal to your search term. 0 will only return your exact term, and -1 will return the smallest value that is greater than or equal to your search term.

It might not be clear how we’re going to use these two functions together, so I’ll lay it out here. MATCH takes a search term and returns a cell reference. In the image below, you can see that in a search for the value 646 in column F, MATCH returns 4.

INDEX, on the other hand, does the opposite: it takes a cell reference and returns the value in it. You can see here that, when told to return the sixth cell of the City column, INDEX returns “Anchorage,” the value from row 6.

What we’re going to do is combine the two so that MATCH returns a cell reference and INDEX uses that reference to look up the value in a cell. Let’s say you remember that there was a student whose last name was Waters, and you want to see what this student’s score was. Here’s the formula we’ll use:

=INDEX(F:F, MATCH("Waters", C:C, 0))

You’ll notice that the match type is set to 0 here. When you’re looking for a string, that’s what you’ll want to use. Here’s what we get when we run that function:

As you can see from the inset, Owen Waters scored 1720, the number that appears when we run the function. This may not seem all that useful when you can just look a few columns over, but imagine how much time you’d save if you had to do it 50 times on a large database spreadsheet that contained several hundred columns!

Let the Excel Searches Begin

Microsoft Excel has a lot of extremely powerful functions for manipulating data, and the four listed above just scratch the surface. Learning how to use them will make your life much easier.

If you really want to master Microsoft Excel, you could really benefit from keeping the Essential Excel Cheat Sheet close to hand!

Image Credit: Cico/Shutterstock

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Facebook talked privacy, Google actually built it

Mark Zuckerberg: “The future is private”. Sundar Pichai: ~The present is private~. While both CEO’s made protecting user data a central theme of their conference keynotes this month, Facebook’s product updates were mostly vague vaporware while Google’s were either ready to ship or ready to demo. The contrast highlights the divergence in strategy between the two tech giants.

For Facebook, privacy is a talking point meant to boost confidence in sharing, deter regulators, and repair its battered image. For Google, privacy is functional, going hand-in-hand with on-device data processing to make features faster and more widely accessible.

Everyone wants tech to be more private, but we must discern between promises and delivery. Like “mobile”, “on-demand”, “AI”, and “blockchain” before it, “privacy” can’t be taken at face value. We deserve improvements to the core of how our software and hardware work, not cosmetic add-ons and instantiations no one is asking for.

AMY OSBORNE/AFP/Getty Images

At Facebook’s F8 last week, we heard from Zuckerberg about how “Privacy gives us the freedom to be ourselves” and he reiterated how that would happen through ephemerality and secure data storage. He said Messenger and Instagram Direct will become encrypted…eventually…which Zuckerberg had already announced in January and detailed in March. We didn’t get the Clear History feature that Zuckerberg made the privacy centerpiece of his 2018 conference, or anything about the Data Transfer Project that’s been silent for the 10 months since it’s reveal.

What users did get was a clumsy joke from Zuckerberg about how “I get that a lot of people aren’t sure that we’re serious about this. I know that we don’t exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now to put it lightly. But I’m committed to doing this well.” No one laughed. At least he admitted that “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

But it shouldn’t have to. Facebook made its first massive privacy mistake in 2007 with Beacon, which quietly relayed your off-site ecommerce and web activity to your friends. It’s had 12 years, a deal with the FTC promising to improve, countless screwups and apologies, the democracy-shaking Cambridge Analytica scandal, and hours of being grilled by congress to get serious about the problem. That makes it clear that if “the future is private”, then the past wasn’t. Facebook is too late here to receive the benefit of the doubt.

Facebook pivots to what it wishes it was

At Google’s I/O, we saw demos from Pichai showing how “our work on privacy and security is never done. And we want to do more to stay ahead of constantly evolving user expectations.” Instead of waiting to fall so far behind that users demand more privacy, Google has been steadily working on it for the past decade since it introduced Chrome incognito mode. It’s changed directions away from using Gmail content to target ads and allowing any developer to request access to your email, though there are plenty of sins to atone for. Now when the company is hit with scandals, it’s typically over its frightening efficiency as with its cancelled Project Maven AI military tech, not its creepiness.

Google made more progress on privacy in low-key updates in the runup to I/O than Facebook did on stage. In the past month it launched the ability to use your Android device as a physical security key, and a new auto-delete feature rolling out in the coming weeks that erases your web and app activity after 3 or 18 months. Then in its keynote today, it published “privacy commitments” for Made By Google products like Nest detailing exactly how they use your data and your control over that. For example, the new Nest Home Max does all its Face Match processing on device so facial recognition data isn’t sent to Google. Failing to note there’s a microphone in its Nest security alarm did cause an uproar in February, but the company has already course-corrected

That concept of on-device processing is a hallmark of the new Android 10 Q operating system. Opening in beta to developers today, it comes with almost 50 new security and privacy features like TLS 1.3 support and Mac address randomization. Google Assistant will now be better protected, Pichai told a cheering crowd. “Further advances in deep learning have allowed us to combine and shrink the 100 gigabyte models down to half a gigabyte — small enough to bring it onto mobile devices.” This makes Assistant not only more private, but fast enough that it’s quicker to navigate your phone by voice than touch. Here, privacy and utility intertwine.

The result is that Google can listen to video chats and caption them for you in real-time, transcribe in-person conversations, or relay aloud your typed responses to a phone call without transmitting audio data to the cloud. That could be a huge help if you’re hearing or vision impaired, or just have your hands full. A lot of the new Assistant features coming to Google Pixel phones this year will even work in Airplane mode. Pichai says that “Gboard is already using federated learning to improve next word prediction, as well as emoji prediction across 10s of millions of devices” by using on-phone processing so only improvements to Google’s AI are sent to the company, not what you typed.

Google’s senior director of Android Stephanie Cuthbertson hammered the idea home, noting that “On device machine learning powers everything from these incredible breakthroughs like Live Captions to helpful everyday features like Smart Reply. And it does this with no user input ever leaving the phone, all of which protects user privacy.” Apple pioneered much of the on-device processing, and many Google features still rely on cloud computing, but it’s swiftly progressing.

When Google does make privacy announcements about things that aren’t about to ship, they’re significant and will be worth the wait. Chrome will implement anti-fingerprinting tech and change cookies to be more private so only the site that created them can use them. And Incognito Mode will soon come to the Google Maps and Search apps.

Pichai didn’t have to rely on grand proclamations, cringey jokes, or imaginary product changes to get his message across. Privacy isn’t just a means to an end for Google. It’s not a PR strategy. And it’s not some theoretical part of tomorrow like it is for Zuckerberg and Facebook. It’s now a natural part of building user-first technology…after 20 years of more cavalier attitudes towards data. That new approach is why the company dedicated to organizing the world’s information has been getting so little backlash lately.

With privacy, it’s all about show, don’t tell.

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