Facebook’s regulation dodge: Let us, or China will

Facebook is leaning on fears of China exporting its authoritarian social values to counter arguments that it should be broken up or slowed down. Its top executives have each claimed that if the U.S. limits its size, blocks its acquisitions, or bans its cryptocurrency, Chinese company’s absent these restrictions will win abroad, bringing more power and data to their government. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and VP of communications Nick Clegg have all expressed this position.

The latest incarnation of this talking point came in today and yesterday’s congressional hearings over Libra, the Facebook-spearheaded digital currency it hopes to launch in the first half of 2020. Facebook’s head of its blockchain subsidiary Calibra David Marcus wrote in his prepared remarks to the House Financial Services Committee today that:

“I believe that if America does not lead innovation in the digital currency and payments area, others will. If we fail to act, we could soon see a digital currency controlled by others whose values are dramatically different”

WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 16: Head of Facebook’s Calibra David Marcus testifies during a hearing before Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee July 16, 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee held the hearing on “Examining Facebook’s Proposed Digital Currency and Data Privacy Considerations.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Marcus also told the Senate Banking Subcommittee yesterday that “I believe if we stay put we’re going to be in a situation in 10, 15 years where half the world is on a blockchain technology that is out of reach of our national-security apparatus” .

This argument is designed to counter House-drafted “Keep Big Tech Out Of Finance” legislation that Reuters reports would declare that companies like Facebook that earn over $25 billion in annual revenue “may not establish, maintain, or operate a digital asset . . .  that is intended to be widely used as medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, or any other similar function.”

The message Facebook is trying to deliver is that cryptocurrencies are inevitable. Blocking Libra would just open the door to even less scrupulous actors controlling the technology. Facebook’s position here isn’t limited to cryptocurrencies, though.

Highlights from Facebook’s Libra Senate hearing

The concept crystallized exactly a year ago when Zuckerberg said “I think you have this question from a policy perspective, which is, do we want American companies to be exporting across the world?” in an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher.

“We grew up here, I think we share a lot of values that I think people hold very dear here, and I think it’s generally very good that we’re doing this, both for security reasons and from a values perspective. Because I think that the alternative, frankly, is going to be the Chinese companies. If we adopt a stance which is that, ‘Okay, we’re gonna, as a country, decide that we wanna clip the wings of these companies and make it so that it’s harder for them to operate in different places, where they have to be smaller,’ then there are plenty of other companies out that are willing and able to take the place of the work that we’re doing.”

When asked if he specifically meant Chinese companies, Zuckerberg doubled down, saying:

“Yeah. And they do not share the values that we have. I think you can bet that if the government hears word that it’s election interference or terrorism, I don’t think Chinese companies are going to wanna cooperate as much and try to aid the national interest there.”

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 10: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. Zuckerberg, 33, was called to testify after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

This April, Zuckerberg went deeper when he described how Facebook would refuse to comply with data localization laws in countries with poor track records on human rights. The CEO explained the risk of data being stored in other countries, which is precisely might happen if regulators hamper Facebook and innovation happens elsewhere. Zuckerberg told philosopher Yuval Harari that:

“When I look towards the future, one of the things that I just get very worried about is the values that I just laid out [for the internet and data] are not values that all countries share. And when you get into some of the more authoritarian countries and their data policies, they’re very different from the kind of regulatory frameworks that across Europe and across a lot of other places, people are talking about or put into place . . . And the most likely alternative to each country adopting something that encodes the freedoms and rights of something like GDPR, in my mind, is the authoritarian model, which is currently being spread, which says every company needs to store everyone’s data locally in data centers and then, if I’m a government, I can send my military there and get access to whatever data I want and take that for surveillance or military.

I just think that that’s a really bad future. And that’s not the direction, as someone who’s building one of these internet services, or just as a citizen of the world, I want to see the world going. If a government can get access to your data, then it can identify who you are and go lock you up and hurt you and your family and cause real physical harm in ways that are just really deep.”

Facebook’s newly hired head of communications Nick Clegg told reporters back in January that:

“These are of course legitimate questions, but we don’t hear so much about China, which combines astonishing ingenuity with the ability to process data on a vast scale without the legal and regulatory constraints on privacy and data protection that we require on both sides of the Atlantic . . .  [and this data could be] put to more sinister surveillance ends, as we’ve seen with the Chinese government’s controversial social credit system.”

In response to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ call that Facebook should be broken up, Clegg wrote in May that “Facebook shouldn’t be broken up — but it does need to be held to account. Anyone worried about the challenges we face in an online world should look at getting the rules of the internet right, not dismantling successful American companies.”

He hammered home the alternative the next month during a speech in Berlin:

“If we in Europe and America don’t turn off the white noise and begin to work together, we will sleepwalk into a new era where the internet is no longer a universal space but a series of silos where different countries set their own rules and authoritarian regimes soak up their citizens’ data while restricting their freedom . . . If the West doesn’t engage with this question quickly and emphatically, it may be that it isn’t ours to answer. The common rules created in our hemisphere can become the example the rest of the world follows.”

COO Sheryl Sandberg made the point most directly in an interview with CNBC in May:

“You could break us up, you could break other tech companies up, but you actually don’t address the underlying issues people are concerned about . . . While people are concerned with the size and power of tech companies, there’s also a concern in the United States about the size and power of Chinese tech companies and the … realization that those companies are not going to be broken up.”

WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 5: Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing concerning foreign influence operations’ use of social media platforms, on Capitol Hill, September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg faced questions about how foreign operatives use their platforms in attempts to influence and manipulate public opinion. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Scared Tactics

Indeed, China does not share the United States’ values on individual freedoms and privacy. And yes, breaking up Facebook could weaken its products like WhatsApp, providing more opportunities for apps like Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat to proliferate.

But letting Facebook off the hook won’t solve the problems China’s influence poses to an open and just internet. If Framing the issue as ‘strong regulation lets China win’ creates a false dichotomy. There are more constructive approaches if Zuckerberg seriously wants to work with the government on exporting freedom via the web. And the distrust Facebook has accrued through the mistakes it’s made in the absence of proper regulation arguably do plenty to hurt the perception of how American ideals are spread through its tech companies.

Breaking up Facebook may not be the answer, especially if it’s done in retaliation for its wrong-doings instead of as a coherent way to prevent more in the future. To that end, a better approach might be stopping future acquisitions of large or rapidly growing social networks, forcing it to offer true data portability so existing users have the freedom to switch to competitors, applying proper oversight of its privacy policies, and requiring a slow rollout of Libra with testing in each phase to ensure it doesn’t screw consumers, enable terrorists, or jeopardize the world economy.

Resorting to scare tactics shows that it’s Facebook that’s scared. Years of growth over safety strategy might finally catch up with it. The $5 billion FTC fine is a slap on the wrist for a company that profits more than that per quarter, but a break-up would do real damage. Instead of fear-mongering, Facebook would be better served by working with regulators in good faith while focusing more on preempting abuse. Perhaps it’s politically savvy to invoke the threat of China to stoke the worries of government officials, and it might even be effective. That doesn’t make it right.

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Parrotron: New Research into Improving Verbal Communication for People with Speech Impairments

Posted by Fadi Biadsy, Research Scientist and Ron Weiss, Software Engineer, Google Research

Most people take for granted that when they speak, they will be heard and understood. But for the millions who live with speech impairments caused by physical or neurological conditions, trying to communicate with others can be difficult and lead to frustration. While there have been a great number of recent advances in automatic speech recognition (ASR; a.k.a. speech-to-text) technologies, these interfaces can be inaccessible for those with speech impairments. Further, applications that rely on speech recognition as input for text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) can exhibit word substitution, deletion, and insertion errors. Critically, in today’s technological environment, limited access to speech interfaces, such as digital assistants that depend on directly understanding one's speech, means being excluded from state-of-the-art tools and experiences, widening the gap between what those with and without speech impairments can access.

Project Euphonia has demonstrated that speech recognition models can be significantly improved to better transcribe a variety of atypical and dysarthric speech. Today, we are presenting Parrotron, an ongoing research project that continues and extends our effort to build speech technologies that help those with impaired or atypical speech to be understood by both people and devices. Parrotron consists of a single end-to-end deep neural network trained to convert speech from a speaker with atypical speech patterns directly into fluent synthesized speech, without an intermediate step of generating text—skipping speech recognition altogether. Parrotron’s approach is speech-centric, looking at the problem only from the point of view of speech signals—e.g., without visual cues such as lip movements. Through this work, we show that Parrotron can help people with a variety of atypical speech patterns—including those with ALS, deafness, and muscular dystrophy—to be better understood in both human-to-human interactions and by ASR engines.

The Parrotron Speech Conversion Model
Parrotron is an attention-based sequence-to-sequence model trained in two phases using parallel corpora of input/output speech pairs. First, we build a general speech-to-speech conversion model for standard fluent speech, followed by a personalization phase that adjusts the model parameters to the atypical speech patterns from the target speaker. The primary challenge in such a configuration lies in the collection of the parallel training data needed for supervised training, which consists of utterances spoken by many speakers and mapped to the same output speech content spoken by a single speaker. Since it is impractical to have a single speaker record the many hours of training data needed to build a high quality model, Parrotron uses parallel data automatically derived with a TTS system. This allows us to make use of a pre-existing anonymized, transcribed speech recognition corpus to obtain training targets.

The first training phase uses a corpus of ~30,000 hours that consists of millions of anonymized utterance pairs. Each pair includes a natural utterance paired with an automatically synthesized speech utterance that results from running our state-of-the-art Parallel WaveNet TTS system on the transcript of the first. This dataset includes utterances from thousands of speakers spanning hundreds of dialects/accents and acoustic conditions, allowing us to model a large variety of voices, linguistic and non-linguistic contents, accents, and noise conditions with “typical” speech all in the same language. The resulting conversion model projects away all non-linguistic information, including speaker characteristics, and retains only what is being said, not who, where, or how it is said. This base model is used to seed the second personalization phase of training.

The second training phase utilizes a corpus of utterance pairs generated in the same manner as the first dataset. In this case, however, the corpus is used to adapt the network to the acoustic/phonetic, phonotactic and language patterns specific to the input speaker, which might include, for example, learning how the target speaker alters, substitutes, and reduces or removes certain vowels or consonants. To model ALS speech characteristics in general, we use utterances taken from an ALS speech corpus derived from Project Euphonia. If instead we want to personalize the model for a particular speaker, then the utterances are contributed by that person. The larger this corpus is, the better the model is likely to be at correctly converting to fluent speech. Using this second smaller and personalized parallel corpus, we run the neural-training algorithm, updating the parameters of the pre-trained base model to generate the final personalized model.

We found that training the model with a multitask objective to predict the target phonemes while simultaneously generating spectrograms of the target speech led to significant quality improvements. Such a multitask trained encoder can be thought of as learning a latent representation of the input that maintains information about the underlying linguistic content.

Overview of the Parrotron model architecture. An input speech spectrogram is passed through encoder and decoder neural networks to generate an output spectrogram in a new voice.

Case Studies
To demonstrate a proof of concept, we worked with our fellow Google research scientist and mathematician Dimitri Kanevsky, who was born in Russia to Russian speaking, normal-hearing parents but has been profoundly deaf from a very young age. He learned to speak English as a teenager, by using Russian phonetic representations of English words, learning to pronounce English using transliteration into Russian (e.g., The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog => ЗИ КВИК БРАУН ДОГ ЖАМПС ОУВЕР ЛАЙЗИ ДОГ). As a result, Dimitri’s speech is substantially distinct from native English speakers, and can be challenging to comprehend for systems or listeners who are not accustomed to it.

Dimitri recorded a corpus of 15 hours of speech, which was used to adapt the base model to the nuances specific to his speech. The resulting Parrotron system helped him be better understood by both people and Google’s ASR system alike. Running Google’s ASR engine on the output of Parrotron significantly reduced the word error rate from 89% to 32%, on a held out test set from Dimitri. Below is an example of Parrotron’s successful conversion of input speech from Dimitri:

Input from Dimitri	Audio
Output from Parrotron	Audio

We also worked with Aubrie Lee, a Googler and advocate for disability inclusion, who has muscular dystrophy, a condition that causes progressive muscle weakness, and sometimes impacts speech production. Aubrie contributed 1.5 hours of speech, which has been instrumental in showing promising outcomes of the applicability of this speech-to-speech technology. Below is an example of Parrotron’s successful conversion of input speech from Aubrie:

Input from Aubrie	Audio
Output from Parrotron	Audio
Input from Aubrie	Audio
Output from Parrotron	Audio

We also tested Parrotron’s performance on speech from speakers with ALS by adapting the pretrained model on multiple speakers who share similar speech characteristics grouped together, rather than on a single speaker. We conducted a preliminary listening study and observed an increase in intelligibility when comparing natural ALS speech to the corresponding speech obtained from running the Parroton model, for the majority of our test speakers.

Cascaded Approach
Project Euphonia has built a personalized speech-to-text model that has reduced the word error rate for a deaf speaker from 89% to 25%, and ongoing research is also likely to improve upon these results. One could use such a speech-to-text model to achieve a similar goal as Parrotron by simply passing its output into a TTS system to synthesize speech from the result. In such a cascaded approach, however, the recognizer may choose an incorrect word (roughly 1 out 4 times, in this case)—i.e., it may yield words/sentences with unintended meaning and, as a result, the synthesized audio of these words would be far from the speaker’s intention. Given the end-to-end speech-to-speech training objective function of Parrotron, even when errors are made, the generated output speech is likely to sound acoustically similar to the input speech, and thus the speaker’s original intention is less likely to be significantly altered and it is often still possible to understand what is intended:

Input from Dimitri	Audio
Output from Parrotron	Audio
Input from Dimitri	Audio
Output from Parrotron/Input to Assistant	Audio
Output from Assistant	Audio
Input from Aubrie	Audio
Output from Parrotron	Audio

Furthermore, since Parrotron is not strongly biased to producing words from a predefined vocabulary set, input to the model may contain completely new invented words, foreign words/names, and even nonsense words. We observe that feeding Arabic and Spanish utterances into the US-English Parrotron model often results in output which echoes the original speech content with an American accent, in the target voice. Such behavior is qualitatively different from what one would obtain by simply running an ASR followed by a TTS. Finally, by going from a combination of independently tuned neural networks to a single one, we also believe there are improvements and simplifications that could be substantial.

Conclusion
Parrotron makes it easier for users with atypical speech to talk to and be understood by other people and by speech interfaces, with its end-to-end speech conversion approach more likely to reproduce the user’s intended speech. More exciting applications of Parrotron are discussed in our paper. If you would like to participate in this ongoing research, please fill out this short form and volunteer to record a set of phrases. We look forward to working with you!

Acknowledgements
This project was joint work between the Speech and Google Brain teams. Contributors include Fadi Biadsy, Ron J. Weiss, Pedro Moreno, Dimitri Kanevsky, Ye Jia, Suzan Schwartz, Landis Baker, Zelin Wu, Johan Schalkwyk, Yonghui Wu, Zhifeng Chen, Patrick Nguyen, Aubrie Lee, Andrew Rosenberg, Bhuvana Ramabhadran, Jason Pelecanos, Julie Cattiau, Michael Brenner, Dotan Emanuel and Joel Shor. Our data collection efforts have been vastly accelerated by our collaborations with ALS-TDI.

Gastroenterology

Gastroenterology

Google’s Area 120 launches Byteboard to improve technical interviews

Area 120, Google’s lab for experimental projects, is launching Byteboard today, a new tool that aims to make the technical interview experience less tedious and more effective. The team argues that today’s interview process for software engineers just doesn’t cut it since it doesn’t really measure how well somebody would do in a day-to-day engineering job. Instead, it does a good job of figuring out how well somebody can remember material from an advanced algorithm class and then repeat that in a whiteboard session.

“Between day jobs and family responsibilities, the current technical interview process is anxiety-inducing and burdensome for candidates — benefiting those who have the time and resources to prepare, while creating a barrier for those who do not,” said Sargun Kaur, the General Manager for Byteboard. “So despite companies investing 7 to 9 hours per person on interviewing, they miss out on great, capable talent by testing for memorization instead of practical application of skills.”

Byteboard replaces this old-fashioned process with an identity-blind, project-based evaluation process that highlights real-world skills that will be used on the job. To do this, Byteboard presents the interviewees with a real-world coding environment, for example, and candidates can choose between their own coding environment or Byteboard’s embedded web editor. Supported languages include Java, Python, Ruby, C++, C# JavaScript (node.js) and Go.

Employees can customize what domains they want candidates to work on, Kaur said. To do this, the team works with each employer to understand what they are looking for.

It’s worth noting that Google isn’t the first to do this, though this project does fit in well with the company’s recent focus on job search tools. HackerRank and others already offer employers similar tools for evaluating candidates. Kaur argues that Byteboard is different, though.

“Most other technical interview platforms focus on digitizing the traditional approach to technical interviews, which primarily tests for understanding of overly theoretical concepts,” he told me. “This still unfairly benefits those who have the time and resources to prepare for these interviews that over-index on algorithms and data structures and doesn’t allow companies to accurately assess how likely a candidate is to succeed in their job. The Byteboard interview is designed to simulate what engineers actually do on the job, asking candidates to work on a project from its design to implementation.”

The results are then assessed by a group of highly experienced engineers who have been trained to review each interview — after it has been anonymized — and rate it according to a set of rubrics that evaluate about 20 software engineering skills.

Google stresses that the evaluation process is anonymous, which will hopefully take most of the bias out of at least the early interview process.

The team also notes that some companies that have already tested the service have been able to replace all of their pre-onsite interviews with Byteboard interviews. Betterment, for example, has used it to interview over 50 engineering candidates and found that 86 percent of the candidates that made it through the process were “strong candidates.”

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Nintendo introduces a Switch model refresh with better battery life

Nintendo already announced an entirely new Switch console this month, the Switch Lite, and now it’s bumping some of the specs on the existing Switch with a slightly updated version, spotted by The Verge. This update improves the hardware right where it counts when it comes to Switch portable playing power.

The new model will provide between 4.5 and 9 hours of battery life, depending on use, which is a big bump from the 2.5 to 6.5 hour rating on the original hardware that’s been offered to date. This is likely an improvement derived from a change in the processor used in the console, as well as more power-efficient memory, both of which were detailed in an FCC filing from last week.

Nintendo’s official Switch comparison page lists the models with improved battery life as model number ‘HAC-001(-01), with the bracketed addition distinguishing it from the original. You can check the version based on the serial number, with XKW preceding the newer hardware, and XAW starting off serials for the older, less power efficient version. No word on a specific street date, but if you’re in the market it’s worth taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to ensure this battery boosted hardware is the one you get.

In all other respects the two Switch models appear to be similar, if not identical, so it’s probably not enough of a change to get anyone considering an upgrade, unless the battery life on your current version really seems to fall about two hours short of your ideal play session length on average.

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Nexar’s Live Map is like Street View with pictures from 5 minutes ago

We all rely on maps to get where we’re going or investigate a neighborhood for potential brunch places, but the data we’re looking at is often old, vague, or both. Nexar, maker of dashcam apps and cameras, aims to put fresh and specific data on your map with images from the street taken only minutes before.

If you’re familiar with dash cams, and you’re familiar with Google’s Street View, then you can probably already picture what Live Map essentially is. It’s not quite as easy to picture how it works or why it’s useful.

Nexar sells dash cams and offers an app that turns your phone into one temporarily, and the business has been doing well, with thousands of active users on the streets of major cities at any given time. Each node of this network of gadgets shares information with the other nodes — warning of traffic snarls, potholes, construction, and so on.

The team saw the community they’d enabled trading videos and sharing data derived by automatic analysis of their imagery, and, according to co-founder and CTO Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz, asked themselves: Why shouldn’t this data shouldn’t be available to the public as well?

Actually there are a few reasons — privacy chief among them. Google has shown that properly handled, this kind of imagery can be useful and only minimally invasive. But knowing where someone or some car was a year or two ago is one thing; knowing where they were five minutes ago is another entirely.

Fortunately, from what I’ve heard, this issue was front of mind for the team from the start. But it helps to see what the product looks like in action before addressing that.

Zooming in on a hexagonal map section, which the company has dubbed “nexagons,” polls the service to find everything the service knows about that area. And the nature of the data makes for extremely granular information. Where something like Google Maps or Waze may say that there’s an accident at this intersection, or construction causing traffic, Nexar’s map will show the locations of the orange cones to within a few feet, or how far into the lanes that fender-bender protrudes.

You can also select the time of day, letting you rewind a few minutes or a few days — what was it like during that parade? Or after the game? Are there a lot of people there late at night? And so on.

Right now it’s limited to a web interface, and to New York City — the company has enough data to launch in several other areas in the U.S. but wants to do a slower roll-out to identify issues and opportunities. An API is on the way as well. (Europe, unfortunately, may be waiting a while, though the company says it’s GDPR-compliant.)

The service uses computer vision algorithms to identify a number of features, including signs (permanent and temporary), obstructions, even the status of traffic lights. This all goes into the database, which gets updated any time a car with a Nexar node goes by. Naturally it’s not in 360 and high definition — these are forward-facing cameras with decent but not impressive resolution. It’s for telling what’s in the road, not for zooming in to spot a street address.

Of course, construction signs and traffic jams aren’t the only things on the road. As mentioned before it’s a serious question of privacy to have constantly updating, public-facing imagery of every major street of a major city. Setting aside the greater argument of the right to privacy in public places and attendant philosophical problems, it’s simply the ethical thing to do to minimize how much you expose people who don’t know they’re being photographed.

To that end Nexar’s systems carefully detect and blur out faces before any images are exposed to public view. License plates are likewise obscured so that neither cars nor people can be easily tracked from image to image. Of course one may say that here is a small red car that was on 4th, and is on 5th a minute later — probably the same. But systematic surveillance rather than incidental is far easier with an identifier like a license plate.

In addition to protecting bystanders, Nexar has to think of the fact that an image from a car by definition places that car in a location at a given time, allowing them to be tracked. And while the community essentially opts into this kind of location and data sharing when they sign up for an account, it would be awkward if the public website let a stranger track a user all the way to their home or watch their movements all day.

“The frames are carefully random to begin with so people can’t be soloed out,” said Fernandez-Ruiz. “We eliminate any frames near your house and your destination.” As far as the blurring, he said that “We have a pretty robust model, on par with anything you can see in the industry. We probably are something north of 97-98 percent accurate for private data.”

So what would you do with this kind of service? There is, of course, something fundamentally compelling about being able to browse your city in something like real time.

On Google, there’s a red line. We show you an actual frame – a car blocking the right lane right there. It gives you a human connection,” said Fernandez-Ruiz. “There’s an element of curiosity about what the world looks like, maybe not something you do every day, but maybe once a week, or when something happens.”

No doubt we are many of us guilty of watching dash-cam footage or even Street View pictures of various events, pranks, and other occurrences. But basic curiosity doesn’t pay the bills. Fortunately there are more compelling use cases.

“One that’s interesting is construction zones. You can see individual elements like cones and barriers – you can see where exactly they are, when they’re started etc. We want to work with municiapl authorities, department of transportation, etc on this — it gives them a lot of information on what their contractors are doing on the road. That’s one use case that we know about and understand.”

In fact there are already some pilot programs in Nevada. And although it’s rather a prosaic application of a 24/7 surveillance apparatus, it seems likely to do some good.

But the government angle brings in an unsavory linen of thinking — what if the police want to get unblurred dash cam footage of a crime that just happened, or one of many such situations where tech’s role has historically been a mixed blessing?

“We’ve given a lot of thought to this, and it this concerns our investors highly,” Fernandez-Ruiz admitted. “There are two things we’ve done. One is we’ve differentiated what data the user owns and what we have. The data they send is theirs – like Dropbox. What we get is these anonymized blurred images. Obviously we will comply with the law, but as far as ethical applications of big data and AI, we’ve said we’re not going to be a tool of an authoritarian government. So we’re putting processes in place — even if we get a subpoena, we can say: This is encrypted data, please ask the user.”

That’s some consolation, but it seems clear that tools like this one are more a question than an answer. It’s an experiment by a successful company and may morph into something ubiquitous and useful or a niche product used by professional drivers and municipal governments. But in tech, if you have the data, you use it. Because if you don’t, someone else will.

You can test out Nexar’s Live Map here.

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AlphaSense, a search engine for analysis and business intel, raises $50M led by Innovation Endeavors

Google and its flagship search portal opened the door to the possibilities of how to build a business empire on the back of organising and navigating the world’s information, as found on the internet. Now, a startup that’s built a search engine tailored to the needs of enterprises and their own quests for information has raised a round of funding to see if it can do the same for the B2B world.

AlphaSense, which provides a way for companies to quickly amass market intelligence around specific trends, industries and more to help them make business decisions, has closed a $50 million round of funding, a Series B that it’s planning to use to continue enhancing its product and expanding to more verticals.

Today, the company today counts some 1,000 clients on its books, with a heavy emphasis on investment banks and related financial services companies. That’s in part because of how the company got its start: Finnish co-founder and CEO Jaakko (Jack) Kokko he had been an analyst at Morgan Stanley in a past life and understood the labor and time pain points of doing market research, and decided to build a platform to help shorted a good part of the information gathering process.

“My experience as an analyst on Wall Street showed me just how fragmented information really was,” he said in an interview, citing as one example how complex sites like those of the FDA are not easy to navigate to look for new information an updates — the kind of thing that a computer would be much more adept at monitoring and flagging. “Even with the best tools and services, it still was really hard to manually get the work done, in part because of market volatility and the many factors that cause it. We can now do that with orders of magnitude more efficiency. Firms can now gather information in minutes that would have taken an hour. AlphaSense does the work of the best single analyst, or even a team of them.”

(Indeed, the “alpha” of AlphaSense appears to be a reference to finance: it’s a term that refers to the ability of a trader or portfolio manager to beat the typical market return.)

The lead investor in this round is very notable and says something about the company’s ambitions. It’s Innovation Endeavors, the VC firm backed by Eric Schmidt, who had been the CEO of none other than Google (the pace-setter and pioneer of the search-as-business model) for a decade, and then stayed on as chairman and ultimately board member of Google and then Alphabet (its later holding company) until just last June.

Schmidt presided over Google at what you could argue was its most important time, gaining speed and scale and transitioning from an academic idea into full-fledged, huge public business whose flagship product has now entered the lexicon as a verb and (through search and other services like Android and YouTube) is a mainstay of how the vast majority of the world uses the web today. As such he is good at spotting opportunities and gaps in the market, and while enterprise-based needs will never be as prominent as those of mass-market consumers, they can be just as lucrative.

“Information is the currency of business today, but data is overwhelming and fragmented, making it difficult for business professionals to find the right insights to drive key business decisions,” he said in a statement. “We were impressed by the way AlphaSense solves this with its AI and search technology, allowing businesses to proceed with the confidence that they have the right information driving their strategy.”

This brings the total raised by AlphaSense to $90 million, with other investors in this round including Soros Fund Management LLC and other unnamed existing investors. Previous backers had included Tom Glocer (the former Reuters CEO who himself is working on his own fintech startup, a security firm called BlueVoyant), the MassChallenge incubator, Tribeca Venture Partners and others. Kokko said AlphaSense is not disclosing its valuation at this point. (I’m guessing though that it’s definitely on the up.)

There have been others that have worked to try to tackle the idea of providing more targeted, and business focused search portals, from the likes of Wolfram Alpha (another alpha!) through to Lexis Nexis and others like Bloomberg’s terminals, FactSet, Business Quant and many more.

One interesting aspect of AlphaSense is how it’s both focused on pulling in requests as well as set up to push information to its users based on previous search parameters. Currently these are set up to only provide information, but over time, there is a clear opportunity to build services to let the engines take on some of the actions based on that information, such as adjusting asking prices for sales and other transactions.

“There are all kinds of things we could do,” said Kokko. “This is a massive untapped opportunity. But we’re not taking the human out of the loop, ever. Humans are the right ones to be making final decisions, and we’re just about helping them make those faster.”

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Spotify Lite for Android, Finally Watch YouTube on Fire TV, Fix Common PC Gaming Problems

The latest news and tips in the tech podcast for technophobes, hosted this week by Christian Cawley and James Frew. Look out for details about Spotify Lite on Android, YouTube on the Fire TV, and some handy PC gaming fixes. We’ve also got some great offline productivity apps and a look at three secure email providers.

Really Useful Podcast Season 3 Episode 7 Shownotes

In this week’s show:

• Google’s tennis-flavored Easter egg
• Spotify Lite hits Android
• Finally watch YouTube on the Fire TV
• Microsoft release Windows 1.11
• Offline productivity apps
• 5 common PC gaming fixes
• 3 secure email providers

Want to hear more from Christian Cawley and James Frew? As well as contributing to MakeUseOf, they’re both on Twitter:

• @thegadgetmonkey
• @jimjamfroo

Remember, we are the tech podcast for technophobes. Share our podcast with anyone you think would benefit from our jargon-free clarity and honesty about technology. Subscribe to the Really Useful Podcast on:

• iTunes
• Spotify
• Player.FM
• Google Podcasts
• Stitcher.com
• YouTube

We’ll be back next week with another show.

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Google Translate’s Instant Camera Learns New Tricks

Before travelling abroad, it’s important to learn a few key words and phrases to help you communicate with the locals. However, unless you’re fluent, there are always going to be gaps in your knowledge. Which is where the Google Translate app can help.

Google Translate enables people to communicate more easily, regardless of any language barrier. The Instant Camera feature applies that idea to the written word, enabling you to point your phone at a sign or menu and have it translated before your very eyes.

Using the Google Translate Instant Camera

Now, as detailed on The Keyword, Google Translate’s Instant Camera has a few new tricks up its sleeve. The headline addition is support for 60 new languages, which means Google Translate’s Instant Camera can now translate 88 languages into 100+ languages.

Secondly, the Instant Camera could previously only translate from or to English. However, the Instant Camera can now translate from any of the 88 languages into any of the 100+ supported on Google Translate. Making it more useful for non-English speakers.

The Google Translate Instant Camera can now also automatically detect the language that needs translating. Previously, you had to select the source and target languages yourself, but now Google Translate will do that boring-but-necessary task for you.

Google is also hoping to improve accuracy by employing Neural Machine Translations. This reportedly reduces errors by anything between 55 and 85 percent. Finally, Google has overhauled the UI to make it easier to use, and sought to reduce the flickering.

Download: Google Translate for Android | iOS

The Best Apps for Learning New Languages

Even with these improvements Google Translate’s Instant Camera feature may mess up occasionally. However, it sure beats standing in front of a sign or staring at a menu trying to decipher it alone. And it’s a lot quicker than trying to become fluent in every language.

Still, if you’re a regular traveler we urge you do whatever is necessary to learn a new language. Luckily, there’s an app for that. Or rather several different apps. I personally use Duolingo, which made our list of the best language learning apps that work.

Image Credit: Torbakhopper/Flickr

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The Best Flowchart Templates for Microsoft Office

Creating a flowchart might be a very easy task for some. And if you have the time to spare, you can make a functional flowchart that’s also gorgeous. But do you really have that extra time to build a flowchart from a blank canvas?

These templates for Microsoft Office let you create a flowchart quickly in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Whether for a business purpose or a personal one, you will be off to a great start with these handy and easily editable options.

Why Use a Flowchart?

If you need to document or explain a process or procedure, there is no better way than with a visual. Rather than explaining steps in a document, a flowchart gives a clear picture that is easy to follow. It can be used in most any business industry, as well as your personal life.

In addition, it can aid in communication between groups. As described in the small business section of Chron.com, a Houston-based newspaper:

“The purpose of flowcharts are to communicate how a process works or should work without any confusing technical jargon.”

The Best Flowcharts for Microsoft Word

Process Flowchart

A basic process flowchart is used most often and normally what people think of when you say “flowchart.” This template from MyWordTemplates.org gives you a complete process flow that you simply edit to fit your needs. It is suitable for most any type of process flow.

Swimlane Flowchart

If you want a flowchart that displays a process, but also divides the steps into categories, then you need a swimlane (or swim lane) flowchart. As you can see in the screenshot below, the categories appear between parallel lines (lanes).

This type of flowchart template, also from MyWordTemplates.org, is commonly used for business processes that involve more than one department.

Sales Flowchart

Although this template is labeled as a sales flowchart, you can see from the workflow that you can use the template for most any process. It has a neat portrait appearance with traditional business colors. This free flowchart template comes in both A4 and letter sizes in a single download.

The Best Flowcharts for Microsoft Excel

Simple Flowchart

If you prefer to use Excel to create your flowchart, then check out this template titled Example Flow Chart Template on the Template.net website. (Note: There is no preview link to the template, so just scroll down the page until you see the title mentioned.) Like the Word template, you will see a basic flow that is easy to edit.

Basic Flowchart

This basic free flowchart template has a clean appearance and both A4 and letter-sized templates. As you move the shapes, the connectors are attached making it easy to rearrange. However, the text within the shapes needs to be moved separately.

Simple Process Flowchart

Another option for a simple flowchart is this next template from Edraw. It offers the basic flowchart shapes and connectors that are easily editable for more any type of process diagram.

Cross Functional Flowchart

This cross functional flowchart template, also from Edraw, is sometimes called a deployment flowchart. You can use this to show the steps in your process as well as the interactions between groups, teams, or departments.

The Best Flowcharts for Microsoft PowerPoint

Data Flow PowerPoint Template

Maybe you would like to create your flowchart in PowerPoint for a presentation or because of simple preference.

This free PowerPoint flowchart template from SlideHunter.com includes three different formats, each on its own slide. Even though they are called “data flow” templates, you can use them for process flows as well.

Format 1

The first flowchart format is a useful one for a decision-making process. Just pop your question into the red circle.

Format 2

The second format is ideal for situations where many pieces must be obtained or completed before a process can begin. You can also reverse it to start with the red circle and expand it from there.

Format 3

The third PowerPoint flowchart format is helpful when you want to show a simple process without a decision-based premise.

Process Diagram

Another SlideHunter.com template for PowerPoint with two options is this process diagram. The only difference between the two slides is that one uses colors while the other is gray. You can also check out the third slide for the clipart used, making it easy to copy and paste into another slide if needed.

Editing the Flowchart Templates

Since each template is used in a Microsoft Office application, you can make your changes to all of them using the same actions.

• You can change the color by selecting the shape, right-clicking to open the popup, and then choosing your color from the Fill option.
• You can edit the text by clicking on and then inside the shapes.
• You can remove objects by selecting them and clicking the Delete button.
• You can add similar objects by selecting them and using a copy/paste action.
• You can add new objects by clicking Insert > Shapes and then making your selection.
• You can move an object by selecting it and when the four-sided arrow appears, drag it to the new spot.

Flowcharts Are Easy to Create With Templates

Microsoft Visio is a wonderful tool for creating diagrams as that is its primary purpose. However, if you only have the basics of Microsoft Office with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, then these free flowchart templates are for you. There is no reason to create a flowchart from scratch, especially if you need one in a hurry.

Pick your application, download one of these terrific templates, and start charting that flow!

Alternatively, try one of these free flowchart tools for Windows, flowchart makers for macOS, or an online flowchart maker.

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Retro Gaming on Raspberry Pi: Understanding ROMs, RetroPie, Recalbox, and More

Virtual reality gaming is on the rise. Mobile gaming is increasingly popular. Playing MMOs with headsets for voice chat and streaming the experience is all the rage.

Experts predicted all this years ago.

But who could have foreseen the rise of retro gaming? What sane person could have guessed that a credit card-sized single-board computer would become instrumental in the retro gaming explosion?

The versatile Raspberry Pi can emulate a vast collection of gaming platforms. Interested in building a retro gaming machine with a Raspberry Pi? Here’s what you need to know about RetroPie ROMs, downloads, and more.

What You Need for a Raspberry Pi Gaming Center

You’ll need several elements for a robust and reliable Raspberry Pi retro gaming center. Before looking at the software, let’s first look at the hardware.

The Raspberry Pi

Since its 2012 release, the Raspberry Pi has had several iterations, each more powerful than the one before. These days, you have two reliable options.

• Raspberry Pi 4 (our coverage): Features a 1.5GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 system-on-a-chip (SOC) with up to 4GB LPDDR RAM (shared with the GPU). Measures 3.370 × 2.224 inches (85.60 × 56.5 mm). Has 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless networking and Bluetooth built in.
• Raspberry Pi Zero (our guide): uses a 1GHz single-core ARM1176JZF-S SOC with 512MB (shared with the GPU). This more compact device is 2.56 × 1.18 inches (65 × 30 mm), and has a wireless variant, the Zero W.

Although you can get good results using a Raspberry Pi 3B+, the increased performance on offer with the Raspberry Pi 4 means you should take that option.

Other Hardware and Cables

In addition to the Raspberry Pi, you’ll also need an HDMI cable, reliable microSD card, a keyboard/mouse combo for initial setup, and game controllers. While a 1GB Raspberry Pi 4 costs under $40, if you’re starting from scratch, you should be able to buy the complete kit for under $100.

However, if you’re opting for the enhanced RAM of the 4GB Raspberry Pi 4, you’ll find your budget stretched.

You might also opt for a starter kit, which includes most of what you need (save the keyboard and mouse).

The Best Raspberry Pi Retro Gaming Emulators

Once you’ve got your Raspberry Pi and associated hardware, it’s time to find the right emulators. While you can install these individually, it’s far preferable to install an emulation suite. This is a package—usually ready to be written to the microSD card—consisting of many top emulators. Any that aren’t included you can often add alongside the pre-installed emulators.

Six current projects are available to choose from. Before downloading, ensure they support the platforms you wish to emulate.

1. RetroPie

Probably the most famous of the retro gaming software options for the Raspberry Pi, RetroPie gives access to a vast collection of emulators, via the EmulationStation user interface. Emulators are presented via the RetroArch front end, while various ported games (several PC games run natively on the Pi) are bundled.

RetroPie also includes the MAME arcade machine emulator and supports numerous controllers.

Download: RetroPie

2. RecalBox

RecalBox supports over 40 emulators, including MAME, and in excess of 30,000 titles. Again, using the EmulationStation UI, and with emulation support from RetroArch/libretro.

Gaming is enhanced on RecalBox with the cheat codes, a Rewind tool (to help you undo in-game mistakes) and screenshot functionality.

RecalBox is quite like RetroPie but comes solely as a writable microSD card image and cannot be manually installed.

RecalBox and RetroPie both include the option to install Kodi.

Download: RecalBox

3. PiPlay

Featuring 12 emulated machines plus the ScummVM point-and-click adventure game platform, PiPlay is the compact alternative to RetroPie and RecalBox. You can download PiPlay and write it to a microSD card, or install directly to your Raspberry Pi via GitHub.

Without the slick UI of the EmulationStation, PiPlay has a more traditional, text-based user interface. It’s a stable emulation solution, however, with good support for popular controllers.

Download: PiPlay

4. Lakka

Describing itself as “a lightweight Linux distribution that transforms a small computer into a full-blown emulation console,” Lakka also uses RetroArch. Supporting around 40 emulators with thousands of games, Lakka is a strong alternative to RetroPie and RecalBox.

Game ROMs can be uploaded to Lakka from a separate PC over your network. By booting with BerryBoot or NOOBS, you can dual-boot Lakka alongside other Raspberry Pi operating systems.

Download: Lakka

5. Pi Entertainment System (PES)

An ArchLinux-based collection of emulators bundled with RetroArch, PES offers 18 hardware platforms plus MAME. There’s also Kodi and support for several game controllers (including the perennially popular PS3 and PS4 control pads).

PES also adds wireless networking and network gaming to retro platforms (except the N64), and can be dual-booted using BerryBoot.

Download: Pi Entertainment System

6. Batocera

An out-of-the-box retro gaming solution, Batocera is available for all Raspberry Pi models. It supports a wide number of gaming platforms; all you need to do is plug in a controller and play.

Minimal configuration is required with Batocera. Everything is pre-installed and enabled, although you’ll find that some platforms are unavailable on the Raspberry Pi. Versions of Batocera are available for x86 devices with a wider selection of supported emulators.

Download: Batocera

Which Emulation Suite Should You Choose?

With so many emulation systems to choose from, you might find your options a little overwhelming. Generally, if you want a system that will emulate almost anything, choose RecalBox or RetroPie. There’s very little difference between them.

For a more specific experience (featuring emulators you’re actually going to use), meanwhile, try Batocera, PiPlay, Lakka, or PES.

Where to Get RetroPie ROM Downloads

To enjoy games (or even applications) on an emulator, you’ll need to acquire ROMs. Both game ROMs and BIOS ROMs are required. It’s easy to overlook the requirement for the BIOS ROMs, but without these, the emulators cannot launch the games.

The legality of this is a bit muddy. It was once the case that if you owned the original, you were safe to use the ROM. These days, with peer-to-peer networking common even on apparently standard download sites, the practice is a bit risky.

Alternatives are available: the main solution is to create your own ROMs. Specialist hardware is available to do this, although it differs depending on the specifics of the platform. For example, you can purchase a USB device that connects a Commodore 64 Datasette (cassette player) to a PC.

This information is given, of course, strictly in the understanding that you retain the ROMs for your own use. A search of eBay may yield the results you’re looking for.

How to Add ROMs to RetroPie and Other Suites

ROMs must be copied to the correct directory on your Raspberry Pi. An FTP solution that supports SSH, such as FileZilla, is the best option here. However, some emulation suites offer a browsable interface for uploading ROMs from your main PC.

When it comes to playing the games, meanwhile, your chosen retro gaming suite will feature a user-friendly game library browser. All it takes is for you to navigate to the game you want (using the game controller) and launch it.

Retro Controller Options: What Can You Use?

Various controllers are compatible with your Raspberry Pi retro gaming rig. Wired controllers typically provide the best results, but some high-profile Bluetooth controllers should work.

These include Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 and 4 controllers. So, you can realistically use a PS4 controller on a Raspberry Pi with an N64 emulator. Mix and match!

Meanwhile, a large selection of USB controllers should work with your Raspberry Pi and chosen gaming suite. Configuration of controllers takes place when the Pi boots into RetroPie, RecalBox, etc., so you’ll quickly get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

For improved retro feels, meanwhile, old-style joysticks and console controllers with USB connectors are available.

See our list of the best RetroPie controllers for some ideas.

Consider a Retro-Themed Case

Case options are considerable. My own preference is to use a standard Raspberry Pi 3 case and keep it out of sight. You might prefer a prouder approach and display your Pi in a retro console-themed case. Plenty are available online, resembling mini SNES consoles, among many other retro device designs.

There’s also 3D printing. A ton of retro-styled cases can be bought as digital files, ready for production in a 3D printer. If you don’t have your own 3D printer, don’t worry. Many services are available that will produce 3D projects on your behalf. Simply select the case design you want and find a 3D printing service to produce it. They’ll require you to upload the design and pay up front, then ship it to you once complete.

Meanwhile, if you want to take a more hands-on approach to building a case, why not use a slick game station build as inspiration?

Retro Gaming on the Raspberry Pi: Easy Win!

You can accomplish a lot with a Raspberry Pi. It can be used as a media center, a desktop computer, or a music streaming device.

But perhaps the real killer application for a Raspberry Pi is as a retro gaming machine. As you’ve seen, it’s straightforward to set up and a library of ROMs will ensure you have games to play.

Want more gaming options or the Raspberry Pi? Here’s how to stream PC games to your Raspberry Pi.

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7 Sites to Send Free Text Messages to Cell Phones (SMS)

Even though users are slowly moving away from SMS text messages to other forms of text messaging, SMS text messages still have their uses.

But did you know that it’s possible to text someone from your computer? Indeed, many texting websites let you send free SMS messages. Many don’t even have a registration process.

Here are the best sites to send free text messages to cell phones.

1. TextEm

TextEm lets you send free text messages, but you need first to create an account. Although some people may prefer to send a message anonymously, having an account brings some notable benefits.

For example, you can curate a list of frequently used contacts and—depending on the recipient’s carrier—get replies back into your TextEm inbox. If the carrier does not support responses to TextEm, you can set up email replies instead.

More than 100 carriers from the United States and Canada are supported. If you need to send a message to a number outside North America, it is not the service for you.

TextEm does not support bulk messaging; you cannot send the same message to several numbers at the same time. Don’t worry, some of the other services we’ll discuss do have the feature.

2. SendSMSnow

SendSMSnow is another free SMS service which requires you to create an account before you can send messages.

Once you do make an account, you can generate a phonebook of contacts, add profile pictures, and receive replies to your messages in your personal inbox.

SendSMSnow also supports group messaging, though it is not free. For every message you send, you will be charged one cent for every user in the group. For example, a single SMS sent to a 20-person group would cost $0.20.

In theory, the service works with cell phone numbers worldwide. We have no way to verify the claims, but you can reasonably expect most North American and Europe carriers to be supported.

The number of characters in messages is capped at 130.

3. Txt2Day

Txt2Day lets you send free text messages online with no registration. That makes the service perfect for sending one-off messages without exposing all your personal information (perhaps, for example, if you’ve accidentally left your phone and home and urgently need to get in contact with someone).

The list of supported carriers is smaller than that offered by TextEm and SendSMSnow. It is predominately focused on the large US companies, though there’s also support for a few European and Mexican ones such as Movistar, Telcel, T Mobile UK, and Vodafone Italy.

Because you do not need to create an account to send messages, there is no way to receive replies on the site. As such, the service is unsuitable for back-and-forth conversations. Some carriers support email replies, but it’s hit-and-miss at best.

Your messages on Txt2Day can be up to 140 characters long.

4. OpenTextingOnline

OpenTextingOnline is a texting website that lets you send free SMS messages online without creating an account.

It works with carriers in about 50 countries. Most of North America and the European Union is covered, but so too are some less-common locations like India, Nepal, Panama, and New Zealand. Just be aware that not all the carriers in all the countries are supported. For more exotic locations, you might find only one or two work.

Again, because you do not need to make an account, you cannot receive replies to your messages. And unlike Txt2Day, email replies are not available.

The maximum number of characters per message is 140.

5. txtDrop

txtDrop is a well-established name in the world of free SMS online. It’s been operational since 2013 and according to its own statistics has successfully delivered almost 25 million messages in that time.

You don’t need to create an account, but you can receive replies in your email inbox should you wish.

txtDrop is also unique in that it offers a macOS widget. If you install it, you will be able to send messages directly from your Mac desktop without needing to visit the official site. And if you run a website, there’s even a widget you can use on your page.

The service only lets you send free messages to the United States and Canada. Other locations are not supported.

6. Send Anonymous SMS

Another way to send free text messages online with no registration is to head to Send Anonymous SMS.

As the name suggests, the service requires no personal details in order for you to send a free text message. So, if you want to prank someone, fire off a quick message, or just use a service to anonymously contact people, this service might be the answer.

Unlike the other free SMS sites we’ve mentioned, you can theoretically spoof a phone number that’ll show on the other person’s screen when they receive the message. It is unclear how that would work, but it’s worth a shot if you’re trying to pull off a prank. Just make sure you stay on the right side of the law.

Send Anonymous SMS has a maximum of 145 characters and supports more than 80 different countries around the world.

7. TextEmNow

The final service we like is TextEmNow. The main reason that it’s worth recommending is because of the site’s higher character count. Unlike most free SMS sites—which have a limit of around 150 characters—TextEmNow lets you write messages that are up to 300 characters long.

The site’s developers also claim they do not log any IP addresses. We can’t say whether it’s true, but every other texting site we have discussed explicitly say they do log IPs (for spam/abuse monitoring), so TextEmNow’s approach is a refreshing change.

Technically, you can use TextEmNow to text any mobile number in the world, but as we’ve seen elsewhere, location-specific restrictions may apply.

Sending Free Text Messages From a Computer

In summary, yes you can text someone from your computer for free. But the service that’s right for you depends on a few factors:

• Where is the recipient based?
• Do you need to be able to receive replies?
• Is anonymity a critical feature?
• Do you want to use a privacy-conscious service?

If you would like to learn more about using SMS, check out our articles on how to use SMS in a clever way and how to view SMS messages on your computer.

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