17 April 2020

Europe’s PEPP-PT COVID-19 contacts tracing standard push could be squaring up for a fight with Apple and Google


A coalition of EU scientists and technologists that’s developing what’s billed as a “privacy-preserving” standard for Bluetooth-based proximity tracking, as a proxy for COVID-19 infection risk, wants Apple and Google to make changes to an API they’re developing for the same overarching purpose.

The Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) uncloaked on April 1, calling for developers of contacts tracing apps to get behind a standardized approach to processing smartphone users’ data to co-ordinate digital interventions across borders and shrink the risk of overly intrusive location-tracking tools gaining momentum as a result of the pandemic.

PEPP-PT said today it has seven governments signed up to apply its approach to national apps, with a claimed pipeline of a further 40 in discussions about joining.

“We now have a lot of governments interacting,” said PEPP-PT’s Hans-Christian Boos, speaking during a webinar for journalists. “Some governments are publicly declaring that their local applications will be built on top of the principles of PEPP-PT and also the various protocols supplied inside this initiative.

“We know of seven countries that have already committed to do this — and we’re currently in conversation with 40 countries that are in various states of onboarding.”

Boos said a list of the governments would be shared with journalists, though at the time of writing we haven’t seen it. But we’ve asked PEPP-PT’s PR firm for the info and will update this report when we get it.

“The pan-European approach has worked,” he added. “Governments have decided at a speed previously unknown. But with 40 more countries in the queue of onboarding we definitely have outgrown just the European focus — and to us this shows that privacy as a model and as a discussion point… is a statement and it is something that we can export because we’re credible on it.”

Paolo de Rosa, the CTO at the Ministry of Innovation Technology and Digital Transformation for the Italian government, was also on the webinar — and confirmed its national app will be built on top of PEPP-PT.

“We will have an app soon and obviously it will be based on this model,” he said, offering no further details.

PEPP-PT’s core ‘privacy-preserving’ claim rests on the use of system architectures that do not require location data to be collected. Rather devices that come near each other would share pseudonymized IDs — which could later be used to send notifications to an individual if the system calculates an infection risk has occurred. An infected individual’s contacts would be uploaded at the point of diagnosis — allowing notifications to be sent to other devices they had come into contact with.

Boos, a spokesman for and coordinator of PEPP-PT, told TechCrunch earlier this month the project will support both centralized and decentralized approaches. The former meaning IDs are uploaded to a trusted server, such as one controlled by a health authority; the latter meaning IDs are held locally on devices, where the infection risk is also calculated — a backend server is only in the loop to relay info to devices.

It’s just such a decentralized contacts tracing system that Apple and Google are collaborating on supporting — fast-following PEPP-PT last week by announcing a plan for cross-platform COVID-19 contacts tracing via a forthcoming API and then a system-wide (opt-in) for Bluetooth-based proximity tracking.

That intervention, by the only two smartphone platforms that matter when the ambition is mainstream adoption, is a major development — putting momentum in the Western world behind decentralized contacts tracing for responding digitally to the coronavirus crisis, certainly at the platform level.

In a resolution passed today the European parliament also called for a decentralized approach to COVID-19 proximity tracking. MEPs are pushing for the Commission and Member States to be “fully transparent on the functioning of contact tracing apps, so that people can verify both the underlying protocol for security and privacy, and check the code itself to see whether the application functions as the authorities are claiming”. (The Commission has previously signalled a preference for decentralization too.)

However backers of PEPP-PT, which include at least seven governments (and the claim of many more), aren’t giving up on the option of a “privacy-preserving” centralized option — which some in their camp are dubbing ‘pseudo-decentralized’ — with Boos claiming today that discussions are ongoing with Apple and Google about making changes to their approach.

As it stands, contacts tracing apps that don’t use a decentralized infrastructure won’t be able to carry out Bluetooth tracking in the background on Android or iOS — as the platforms limit how general apps can access Bluetooth. This means users of such apps would have to have the app open and active all the time for proximity tracking to function, with associated (negative) impacts on battery life and device usability.

There are also (intentional) restrictions on how contracts tracing data could be centralized, as a result of the relay server model being deployed in the joint Apple-Google model.

“We very much appreciate that Google and Apple are stepping up to making the operating system layer available — or putting what should be the OS actually there, which is the Bluetooth measurement and the handling of crypto and the background running of such tasks which have to keep running resiliently all the time — if you look at their protocols and if you look at whom they are provided by, the two dominant players in the mobile ecosystem, then I think that from a government perspective especially, or from lots of government perspectives, there is many open points to discuss,” said Boos today.

“From a PEPP-PT perspective there’s a few points to discuss because we want choice and implementing choice in terms of model — decentralized or centralized on top of their protocol creates actually the worst of both worlds — so there are many points to discuss. But contrary to the behavior that many of us who work with tech companies are used to Google and Apple are very open in these discussions and there’s no point in getting up in arms yet because these discussions are ongoing and it looks like agreement can be reached with them.”

It wasn’t clear what specific changes PEPP-PT wants from Apple and Google — we asked for more detail during the webinar but didn’t get a response. But the group and its government backers may be hoping to dilute the tech giants’ stance to make it easier to create centralized graphs of Bluetooth contacts to feed national coronavirus responses.

As it stands, Apple and Google’s API is designed to block contact matching on a server — though there might still be ways for governments (and others) to partially workaround the restrictions and centralize some data.

We reached out to Apple and Google with questions about the claimed discussions with PEPP-PT. At the time of writing neither had responded.

As well as Italy, the German and French governments are among those that have indicated they’re backing PEPP-PT for national apps — which suggests powerful EU Member States could be squaring up for a fight with the tech giants, along the lines of Apple vs the FBI, if pressure to tweak the API fails.

Another key strand to this story is that PEPP-PT continues to face strident criticism from privacy and security experts in its own backyard — including after it removed a reference to a decentralized protocol for COVID-19 contacts tracing that’s being developed by another European coalition, comprised of privacy and security experts, called DP-3T.

Coindesk reported on the silent edit to PEPP-PT’s website yesterday.

Backers of DP-3T have also repeatedly queried why PEPP-PT hasn’t published code or protocols for review to-date — and even gone so far as to dub the effort a ‘trojan horse’.

ETH Zürich’s Dr. Kenneth Paterson, who is both a part of the PEPP-PT effort and a designer of DP-3T, couldn’t shed any light on the exact changes the coalition is hoping to extract from ‘Gapple’ when we asked.

“They’ve still not said exactly how their system would work, so I can’t say what they would need [in terms of changes to Apple and Google’s system],” he told us in an email exchange.

Today Boos couched the removal of the reference to DP-3T on PEPP-PT’s website as a mistake — which he blamed on “bad communication”. He also claimed the coalition is still interested in including the former’s decentralized protocol within its bundle of standardized technologies. So the already sometimes fuzzy lines between the camps continue to be redrawn. (It’s also interesting to note that press emails to Boos are now being triaged by Hering Schuppener; a communications firm that sells publicity services including crisis PR.)

“We’re really sorry for that,” Boos said of the DP-3T excision. “Actually we just wanted to put the various options on the same level that are out there. There are still all these options and we very much appreciate the work that colleagues and others are doing.

“You know there is a hot discussion in the crypto community about this and we actually encourage this discussion because it’s always good to improve on protocols. What we must not lose sight of is… that we’re not talking about crypto here, we’re talking about pandemic management and as long as an underlying transport layer can ensure privacy that’s good enough because governments can choose whatever they want.”

Boos also said PEPP-PT would finally be publishing some technical documents this afternoon — opting to release information some three weeks after its public unveiling and on a Friday evening (a 7-page ‘high level overview’ has since been put on their Github here — but still a far cry from code for review) — while making a simultaneous plea for journalists to focus on the ‘bigger picture’ of fighting the coronavirus rather than keep obsessing over technical details. 

During today’s webinar some of the scientists backing PEPP-PT talked about how they’re testing the efficacy of Bluetooth as a proxy for tracking infection risk.

“The algorithm that we’ve been working on looks at the cumulative amount of time that individuals spend in proximity with each other,” said Christophe Fraser, professor at the Nuffield Department of Medicine and Senior Group Leader in Pathogen Dynamics at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, offering a general primer on using Bluetooth proximity data for tracking viral transmission.

“The aim is to predict the probability of transmission from the phone proximity data. So the ideal system reduces the requested quarantine to those who are the most at risk of being infected and doesn’t give the notification — even though some proximity event was recorded — to those people who’re not at risk of being infected.”

“Obviously that’s going to be an imperfect process,” he went on. “But the key point is that in this innovative approach that we should be able to audit the extent to which that information and those notifications are correct — so we need to actually be seeing, of the people who have been sent the notification how many of them actually were infected. And of those people who were identified as contacts, how many weren’t.

“Auditing can be done in many different ways for each system but that step is crucial.”

Evaluating the effectiveness of the digital interventions will be vital, per Fraser — whose presentation could have been interpreted as making a case for public health authorities to have fuller access to contacts graphs. But it’s important to note that DP-3T’s decentralized protocol makes clear provision for app users to opt-in to voluntarily share data with epidemiologists and research groups to enable them to reconstruct the interaction graph among infected and at risk users (aka to get access to a proximity graph).

“It’s really important that if you’re going to do an intervention that is going to affect millions of people — in terms of these requests to [quarantine] — that that information be the best possible science or the best possible representation of the evidence at the point at which you give the notification,” added Fraser. “And therefore as we progress forwards that evidence — our understanding of the transmission of the virus — is going to improve. And in fact auditing of the app can allow that to improve, and therefore it seems essential that that information be fed back.”

None of the PEPP-PT aligned apps that are currently being used for testing or reference are interfacing with national health authority systems, per Boos — though he cited a test in Italy that’s been plugged into a company’s health system to run tests.

“We have supplied the application builders with the backend, we have supplied them with sample code, we have supplied them with protocols, we have supplied them with the science of measurement, and so on and so forth. We have a working application that simply has no integration into a country’s health system — on Android and on iOS,” he noted.

On its website PEPP-PT lists a number of corporate “members” as backing the effort — including the likes of Vodafone — alongside several research institutions including Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for telecoms (HHI) which has been reported as leading the effort.

The HHI’s executive director, Thomas Wiegand, was also on today’s call. Notably, his name initially appeared on the authorship list for the DP-3T’s White Paper. However on April 10 he was removed from the README and authorship list, per its Github document history. No explanation for the change was given.

During today’s press conference Wiegand made an intervention that seems unlikely to endear him to the wider crypto and digital rights community — describing the debate around which cryptography system to use for COVID-19 contacts tracing as a ‘side show’ and expressing concern that what he called Europe’s “open public discussion” might “destroy our ability to get ourselves as Europeans out of this”.

“I just wanted to make everyone aware of the difficulty of this problem,” he also said. “Cryptography is only one of 12 building blocks in the system. So I really would like to have everybody go back and reconsider what problem we are in here. We have to win against this virus… or we have another lockdown or we have a lot of big problems. I would like to have everybody to consider that and to think about it because we have a chance if we get our act together and really win against the virus.”

The press conference had an even more inauspicious start after the Zoom call was disrupted by racist spam in the chat field. Right before that Boos had kicked off the call saying he had heard from “some more technically savvy people that we should not be using Zoom because it’s insecure — and for an initiative that wants security and privacy it’s the wrong tool”.

“Unfortunately we found out that many of our international colleagues only had this on their corporate PCs so over time either Zoom has to improve — or we need to get better installations out there. It’s certainly not our intention to leak the data on this Zoom,” he added.


Read Full Article

Europe’s PEPP-PT COVID-19 contacts tracing standard push could be squaring up for a fight with Apple and Google


A coalition of EU scientists and technologists that’s developing what’s billed as a “privacy-preserving” standard for Bluetooth-based proximity tracking, as a proxy for COVID-19 infection risk, wants Apple and Google to make changes to an API they’re developing for the same overarching purpose.

The Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) uncloaked on April 1, calling for developers of contacts tracing apps to get behind a standardized approach to processing smartphone users’ data to co-ordinate digital interventions across borders and shrink the risk of overly intrusive location-tracking tools gaining momentum as a result of the pandemic.

PEPP-PT said today it has seven governments signed up to apply its approach to national apps, with a claimed pipeline of a further 40 in discussions about joining.

“We now have a lot of governments interacting,” said PEPP-PT’s Hans-Christian Boos, speaking during a webinar for journalists. “Some governments are publicly declaring that their local applications will be built on top of the principles of PEPP-PT and also the various protocols supplied inside this initiative.

“We know of seven countries that have already committed to do this — and we’re currently in conversation with 40 countries that are in various states of onboarding.”

Boos said a list of the governments would be shared with journalists, though at the time of writing we haven’t seen it. But we’ve asked PEPP-PT’s PR firm for the info and will update this report when we get it.

“The pan-European approach has worked,” he added. “Governments have decided at a speed previously unknown. But with 40 more countries in the queue of onboarding we definitely have outgrown just the European focus — and to us this shows that privacy as a model and as a discussion point… is a statement and it is something that we can export because we’re credible on it.”

Paolo de Rosa, the CTO at the Ministry of Innovation Technology and Digital Transformation for the Italian government, was also on the webinar — and confirmed its national app will be built on top of PEPP-PT.

“We will have an app soon and obviously it will be based on this model,” he said, offering no further details.

PEPP-PT’s core ‘privacy-preserving’ claim rests on the use of system architectures that do not require location data to be collected. Rather devices that come near each other would share pseudonymized IDs — which could later be used to send notifications to an individual if the system calculates an infection risk has occurred. An infected individual’s contacts would be uploaded at the point of diagnosis — allowing notifications to be sent to other devices they had come into contact with.

Boos, a spokesman for and coordinator of PEPP-PT, told TechCrunch earlier this month the project will support both centralized and decentralized approaches. The former meaning IDs are uploaded to a trusted server, such as one controlled by a health authority; the latter meaning IDs are held locally on devices, where the infection risk is also calculated — a backend server is only in the loop to relay info to devices.

It’s just such a decentralized contacts tracing system that Apple and Google are collaborating on supporting — fast-following PEPP-PT last week by announcing a plan for cross-platform COVID-19 contacts tracing via a forthcoming API and then a system-wide (opt-in) for Bluetooth-based proximity tracking.

That intervention, by the only two smartphone platforms that matter when the ambition is mainstream app adoption, is a major development — putting momentum in the Western world behind decentralized contacts tracing for responding digitally to the coronavirus crisis, certainly at the platform level.

In a resolution passed today the European parliament also called for a decentralized approach to COVID-19 proximity tracking. MEPs are pushing for the Commission and Member States to be “fully transparent on the functioning of contact tracing apps, so that people can verify both the underlying protocol for security and privacy, and check the code itself to see whether the application functions as the authorities are claiming”. (The Commission has previously signalled a preference for decentralization too.)

However backers of PEPP-PT, which include at least seven governments (and the claim of many more), aren’t giving up on the option of a “privacy-preserving” centralized option — which some in their camp are dubbing ‘pseudo-decentralized’ — with Boos claiming today that discussions are ongoing with Apple and Google about making changes to their approach.

As it stands, contacts tracing apps that don’t use a decentralized infrastructure won’t be able to carry out Bluetooth tracking in the background on Android or iOS — as the platforms limit how general apps can access Bluetooth. This means users of such apps would have to have the app open and active all the time for proximity tracking to function, with associated (negative) impacts on battery life and device usability.

There are also (intentional) restrictions on how contracts tracing data could be centralized, as a result of the relay server model being deployed in the joint Apple-Google model.

“We very much appreciate that Google and Apple are stepping up to making the operating system layer available — or putting what should be the OS actually there, which is the Bluetooth measurement and the handling of crypto and the background running of such tasks which have to keep running resiliently all the time — if you look at their protocols and if you look at whom they are provided by, the two dominant players in the mobile ecosystem, then I think that from a government perspective especially, or from lots of government perspectives, there is many open points to discuss,” said Boos today.

“From a PEPP-PT perspective there’s a few points to discuss because we want choice and implementing choice in terms of model — decentralized or centralized on top of their protocol creates actually the worst of both worlds — so there are many points to discuss. But contrary to the behavior that many of us who work with tech companies are used to Google and Apple are very open in these discussions and there’s no point in getting up in arms yet because these discussions are ongoing and it looks like agreement can be reached with them.”

It wasn’t clear what specific changes PEPP-PT wants from Apple and Google — we asked for more detail during the webinar but didn’t get a response. But the group and its government backers may be hoping to dilute the tech giants’ stance to make it easier to create centralized graphs of Bluetooth contacts to feed national coronavirus responses.

As it stands, Apple and Google’s API is designed to block contact matching on a server — though there might still be ways for governments (and others) to partially workaround the restrictions and centralize some data.

We reached out to Apple and Google with questions about the claimed discussions with PEPP-PT. At the time of writing neither had responded.

As well as Italy, the German and French governments are among those that have indicated they’re backing PEPP-PT for national apps — which suggests powerful EU Member States could be squaring up for a fight with the tech giants, along the lines of Apple vs the FBI, if pressure to tweak the API fails.

Another key strand to this story is that PEPP-PT continues to face strident criticism from privacy and security experts in its own backyard — including after it removed a reference to a decentralized protocol for COVID-19 contacts tracing that’s being developed by another European coalition, comprised of privacy and security experts, called DP-3T.

Coindesk reported on the silent edit to PEPP-PT’s website yesterday.

Backers of DP-3T have also repeatedly queried why PEPP-PT hasn’t published code or protocols for review to-date — and even gone so far as to dub the effort a ‘trojan horse’.

ETH Zürich’s Dr. Kenneth Paterson, who is both a part of the PEPP-PT effort and a designer of DP-3T, couldn’t shed any light on the exact changes the coalition is hoping to extract from ‘Gapple’ when we asked.

“They’ve still not said exactly how their system would work, so I can’t say what they would need [in terms of changes to Apple and Google’s system],” he told us in an email exchange.

Today Boos couched the removal of the reference to DP-3T on PEPP-PT’s website as a mistake — which he blamed on “bad communication”. He also claimed the coalition is still interested in including the former’s decentralized protocol within its bundle of standardized technologies. So the already sometimes fuzzy lines between the camps continue to be redrawn. (It’s also interesting to note that press emails to Boos are now being triaged by Hering Schuppener; a communications firm that sells publicity services including crisis PR.)

“We’re really sorry for that,” Boos said of the DP-3T excision. “Actually we just wanted to put the various options on the same level that are out there. There are still all these options and we very much appreciate the work that colleagues and others are doing.

“You know there is a hot discussion in the crypto community about this and we actually encourage this discussion because it’s always good to improve on protocols. What we must not lose sight of is… that we’re not talking about crypto here, we’re talking about pandemic management and as long as an underlying transport layer can ensure privacy that’s good enough because governments can choose whatever they want.”

Boos also said PEPP-PT would finally be publishing some technical documents this afternoon — opting to release information some three weeks after its public unveiling and on a Friday evening (a 7-page ‘high level overview’ has since been put on their Github here — but still a far cry from code for review) — while making a simultaneous plea for journalists to focus on the ‘bigger picture’ of fighting the coronavirus rather than keep obsessing over technical details. 

During today’s webinar some of the scientists backing PEPP-PT talked about how they’re testing the efficacy of Bluetooth as a proxy for tracking infection risk.

“The algorithm that we’ve been working on looks at the cumulative amount of time that individuals spend in proximity with each other,” said Christophe Fraser, professor at the Nuffield Department of Medicine and Senior Group Leader in Pathogen Dynamics at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, offering a general primer on using Bluetooth proximity data for tracking viral transmission.

“The aim is to predict the probability of transmission from the phone proximity data. So the ideal system reduces the requested quarantine to those who are the most at risk of being infected and doesn’t give the notification — even though some proximity event was recorded — to those people who’re not at risk of being infected.”

“Obviously that’s going to be an imperfect process,” he went on. “But the key point is that in this innovative approach that we should be able to audit the extent to which that information and those notifications are correct — so we need to actually be seeing, of the people who have been sent the notification how many of them actually were infected. And of those people who were identified as contacts, how many weren’t.

“Auditing can be done in many different ways for each system but that step is crucial.”

Evaluating the effectiveness of the digital interventions will be vital, per Fraser — whose presentation could have been interpreted as making a case for public health authorities to have fuller access to contacts graphs. But it’s important to note that DP-3T’s decentralized protocol makes clear provision for app users to opt-in to voluntarily share data with epidemiologists and research groups to enable them to reconstruct the interaction graph among infected and at risk users (aka to get access to a proximity graph).

“It’s really important that if you’re going to do an intervention that is going to affect millions of people — in terms of these requests to [quarantine] — that that information be the best possible science or the best possible representation of the evidence at the point at which you give the notification,” added Fraser. “And therefore as we progress forwards that evidence — our understanding of the transmission of the virus — is going to improve. And in fact auditing of the app can allow that to improve, and therefore it seems essential that that information be fed back.”

None of the PEPP-PT aligned apps that are currently being used for testing or reference are interfacing with national health authority systems, per Boos — though he cited a test in Italy that’s been plugged into a company’s health system to run tests.

“We have supplied the application builders with the backend, we have supplied them with sample code, we have supplied them with protocols, we have supplied them with the science of measurement, and so on and so forth. We have a working application that simply has no integration into a country’s health system — on Android and on iOS,” he noted.

On its website PEPP-PT lists a number of corporate “members” as backing the effort — including the likes of Vodafone — alongside several research institutions including Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for telecoms (HHI) which has been reported as leading the effort.

The HHI’s executive director, Thomas Wiegand, was also on today’s call. Notably, his name initially appeared on the authorship list for the DP-3T’s White Paper. However on April 10 he was removed from the README and authorship list, per its Github document history. No explanation for the change was given.

During today’s press conference Wiegand made an intervention that seems unlikely to endear him to the wider crypto and digital rights community — describing the debate around which cryptography system to use for COVID-19 contacts tracing as a ‘side show’ and expressing concern that what he called Europe’s “open public discussion” might “destroy our ability to get ourselves as Europeans out of this”.

“I just wanted to make everyone aware of the difficulty of this problem,” he also said. “Cryptography is only one of 12 building blocks in the system. So I really would like to have everybody go back and reconsider what problem we are in here. We have to win against this virus… or we have another lockdown or we have a lot of big problems. I would like to have everybody to consider that and to think about it because we have a chance if we get our act together and really win against the virus.”

The press conference had an even more inauspicious start after the Zoom call was disrupted by racist spam in the chat. Right before this Boos had kicked off the call saying he had heard from “some more technically savvy people that we should not be using Zoom because it’s insecure — and for an initiative that wants security and privacy it’s the wrong tool”.

“Unfortunately we found out that many of our international colleagues only had this on their corporate PCs so over time either Zoom has to improve — or we need to get better installations out there. It’s certainly not our intention to leak the data on this Zoom,” he added.


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Leaked pics reveal Google smart debit card to rival Apple’s


Would you pay with a “Google Card?” TechCrunch has attained imagery that shows Google is developing its own physical and virtual debit cards. The Google card and associated checking account will allow users to buy things with a card, mobile phone or online. It connects to a Google app with new features that let users easily monitor purchases, check their balance or lock their account. The card will be co-branded with different bank partners, including CITI and Stanford Federal Credit Union.

A source provided TechCrunch with the images seen here, as well as proof that they came from Google. Another source confirmed that Google has recently worked on a payments card that its team hopes will become the foundation of its Google Pay app — and help it rival Apple Pay and the Apple Card. Currently, Google Pay only allows online and peer-to-peer payments by connecting a traditionally issued payment card. A “Google Pay Card” would vastly expand the app’s use cases, and Google’s potential as a fintech giant.

Google the financial services company?

By building a smart debit card, Google has the opportunity to unlock new streams of revenue and data. It could potentially charge interchange fees on purchases made with the card or other checking account fees, and then split them with its banking partners. Depending on its privacy decisions, Google could use transaction data on what people buy to improve ad campaign measurement or even targeting. Brands might be willing to buy more Google ads if the tech giant can prove they drive a sales lift.

The long-term implications are even greater. While once the industry joke was that every app eventually becomes a messaging app, more recently it’s been that every tech company eventually becomes a financial services company. A smart debit card and checking accounts could pave the way for Google offering banking, stock brokerage, financial advice or robo-advising, accounting, insurance or lending.

Young wealthy man pays card using mobile payment

Image Credits: jossnatu / Getty Images

Google’s vast access to data could allow it to more accurately manage risk than traditional financial institutions. Its deep connection to consumers via apps, ads, search and the Android operating system gives it ample ways to promote and integrate financial services. With the COVID-19 downturn taking shape, high-margin finance products could help Google develop efficient revenue opportunities and build its share price back up.

When TechCrunch asked Google for confirmation, it did not dispute our findings or assertions. The company offered us a statement it provided reporters following a November story, wherein Google told The Wall Street Journal it was experimenting in the checking account space. TechCrunch is the first to report Google’s debit card plans:

We’re exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the US to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools, while keeping their money in an FDIC or NCUA-insured account. Our lead partners today are Citi and Stanford Federal Credit Union, and we look forward to sharing more details in the coming months.

For now, Google’s strategy is to let partnered banks and credit unions provide the underlying financial infrastructure and navigate regulation while it builds smarter interfaces and user experiences. With people around the world suddenly more concerned about their finances amidst the coronavirus economic disaster, a debit card with more transparency and controls could be appealing.

First look at the Google Card

Traditional banking products can be clunky, often requiring phone communication with customer service or sifting through cluttered websites to address security issues. Google hopes to make financial management as intuitive as its email and mapping apps. The card and app designs shown here are not final, and it’s unclear when Google’s debit card may launch. But let’s take a look at what these internal Google materials reveal about its ambitions for its payment instrument.

The Google debit card will come co-branded with the Google name and its partnered bank. In the designs, it’s a chip card on the Visa network, though Google could potentially support other networks like Mastercard. Users are able to add money or transfer funds out of their account from the connected Google app, which is likely to be Google Pay, and use a fingerprint and PIN for account security.

Once connected to their bank or credit union account, users could pay for purchases in retail stores with a physical Google debit card, including with contactless payments, by just holding it up to a card reader. A virtual version of the card that lives on a user’s phone can also be used for Bluetooth mobile payments. Meanwhile, a virtual card number can be used for online or in-app payments.

Users are shown a list of recent transactions, with each including the merchant name, date and price. They can dig into each transaction to see the location on a map, get directions or call the store. If users don’t recognize a transaction, it’s easy to protect themselves with the card’s vast security options.

If a customer suspects foul play because they lost their card, they can lock it and optionally order a replacement while still being able to pay with their phone or online, thanks to Google’s virtual card number system that’s different than the one on their physical card. If instead they suspect their virtual card number was stolen by a hacker, they can quickly reset it. And if they believe someone has gained unauthorized access to their account, they can lock it entirely to block all types of payments and transfers.

The settings reveal options for notifications and privacy controls to “decide what information you share,” though we don’t have imagery of what’s contained in those menus. It’s unclear how much power Google will give customers to limit the company or merchant’s data access. Google’s decisions there could impact how transaction data might fuel its other businesses.

Fintech everywhere

Google is a relative late-comer to offering its own card. Apple launched its Apple Card in August, offering a slickly designed titanium Mastercard credit card backed by Goldman Sachs. It charges minimal customer fees, comes with a virtual card for use through Apple Pay and generates interest.

Apple Card

Apple does collect interchange fees from merchants, though, which Google could similarly gather to earn revenue. Last month, Apple changed the Card’s privacy settings to share more data with Goldman Sachs that might also help the two provide additional financial services. Apple Pay now accounts for 5% of global card transactions, and is forecast to hit 10% by 2024, according to Bernstein research. The underlines the gigantic market Google is gunning for here.

The stock brokerage and robo-advisor apps have also joined the payments race. Wealthfront launched cash accounts and debit cards last February, bringing in $1 billion in assets in two months and doubling the company’s total holdings to $20 billion by September. Betterment launched its checking product in October 2019 with a Visa debit card, but it doesn’t generate interest.

Robinhood botched the December 2018 launch of its checking accounts due to ineligible insurance, but relaunched in October 2019 with debit card withdrawls from 75,000 ATMs and a solid interest rate. It’s unclear how Google’s card will work with ATMs or how its checking accounts will generate interest.

Robinhood’s debit cards

The appeal for Google and the rest is clear. It seems whenever companies help move people’s money around, some of it inevitably “falls off the truck” and lands in their pockets. Financial services are typically low-overhead ways to generate revenue. That could be especially enticing, as Google has found many of its side hustle “other bets” to be unsustainable. It’s moved to prune some of these tertiary projects, such as its Makani wind energy kites.

Google may never find businesses as lucrative as its core in search and advertising, but it has the advantages to become a serious player in fintech. Its vast sums of cash, deep bench of engineering talent, experience building complex utilities, numerous consumer touch points and near-bottomless well of data could give it an edge over stodgier old banks and scrappier startups. And while Facebook slams into regulatory scrutiny and is forced to scale back its Libra cryptocurrency, Google’s more familiar approach via debit cards could pay off.


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Leaked pics reveal Google smart debit card to rival Apple’s


Would you pay with a “Google Card?” TechCrunch has attained imagery that shows Google is developing its own physical and virtual debit cards. The Google card and associated checking account will allow users to buy things with a card, mobile phone or online. It connects to a Google app with new features that let users easily monitor purchases, check their balance or lock their account. The card will be co-branded with different bank partners, including CITI and Stanford Federal Credit Union.

A source provided TechCrunch with the images seen here, as well as proof that they came from Google. Another source confirmed that Google has recently worked on a payments card that its team hopes will become the foundation of its Google Pay app — and help it rival Apple Pay and the Apple Card. Currently, Google Pay only allows online and peer-to-peer payments by connecting a traditionally issued payment card. A “Google Pay Card” would vastly expand the app’s use cases, and Google’s potential as a fintech giant.

Google the financial services company?

By building a smart debit card, Google has the opportunity to unlock new streams of revenue and data. It could potentially charge interchange fees on purchases made with the card or other checking account fees, and then split them with its banking partners. Depending on its privacy decisions, Google could use transaction data on what people buy to improve ad campaign measurement or even targeting. Brands might be willing to buy more Google ads if the tech giant can prove they drive a sales lift.

The long-term implications are even greater. While once the industry joke was that every app eventually becomes a messaging app, more recently it’s been that every tech company eventually becomes a financial services company. A smart debit card and checking accounts could pave the way for Google offering banking, stock brokerage, financial advice or robo-advising, accounting, insurance or lending.

Google’s vast access to data could allow it to more accurately manage risk than traditional financial institutions. Its deep connection to consumers via apps, ads, search and the Android operating system gives it ample ways to promote and integrate financial services. With the COVID-19 downturn taking shape, high-margin finance products could help Google develop efficient revenue opportunities and build its share price back up.

When TechCrunch asked Google for confirmation, it did not dispute our findings or assertions. The company offered us a statement it provided reporters following a November story, wherein Google told The Wall Street Journal it was experimenting in the checking account space. TechCrunch is the first to report Google’s debit card plans:

We’re exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the US to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools, while keeping their money in an FDIC or NCUA-insured account. Our lead partners today are Citi and Stanford Federal Credit Union, and we look forward to sharing more details in the coming months.

For now, Google’s strategy is to let partnered banks and credit unions provide the underlying financial infrastructure and navigate regulation while it builds smarter interfaces and user experiences. With people around the world suddenly more concerned about their finances amidst the coronavirus economic disaster, a debit card with more transparency and controls could be appealing.

First look at the Google Card

Traditional banking products can be clunky, often requiring phone communication with customer service or sifting through cluttered websites to address security issues. Google hopes to make financial management as intuitive as its email and mapping apps. The card and app designs shown here are not final, and it’s unclear when Google’s debit card may launch. But let’s take a look at what these internal Google materials reveal about its ambitions for its payment instrument.

The Google debit card will come co-branded with the Google name and its partnered bank. In the designs, it’s a chip card on the Visa network, though Google could potentially support other networks like Mastercard. Users are able to add money or transfer funds out of their account from the connected Google app, which is likely to be Google Pay, and use a fingerprint and PIN for account security.

Once connected to their bank or credit union account, users could pay for purchases in retail stores with a physical Google debit card, including with contactless payments, by just holding it up to a card reader. A virtual version of the card that lives on a user’s phone can also be used for Bluetooth mobile payments. Meanwhile, a virtual card number can be used for online or in-app payments.

Users are shown a list of recent transactions, with each including the merchant name, date and price. They can dig into each transaction to see the location on a map, get directions or call the store. If users don’t recognize a transaction, it’s easy to protect themselves with the card’s vast security options.

If a customer suspects foul play because they lost their card, they can lock it and optionally order a replacement while still being able to pay with their phone or online, thanks to Google’s virtual card number system that’s different than the one on their physical card. If instead they suspect their virtual card number was stolen by a hacker, they can quickly reset it. And if they believe someone has gained unauthorized access to their account, they can lock it entirely to block all types of payments and transfers.

The settings reveal options for notifications and privacy controls to “decide what information you share,” though we don’t have imagery of what’s contained in those menus. It’s unclear how much power Google will give customers to limit the company or merchant’s data access. Google’s decisions there could impact how transaction data might fuel its other businesses.

Fintech everywhere

Google is a relative late-comer to offering its own card. Apple launched its Apple Card in August, offering a slickly designed titanium Mastercard credit card backed by Goldman Sachs. It charges minimal customer fees, comes with a virtual card for use through Apple Pay and generates interest.

Apple Card

Apple does collect interchange fees from merchants, though, which Google could similarly gather to earn revenue. Last month, Apple changed the Card’s privacy settings to share more data with Goldman Sachs that might also help the two provide additional financial services. Apple Pay now accounts for 5% of global card transactions, and is forecast to hit 10% by 2024, according to Bernstein research. The underlines the gigantic market Google is gunning for here.

The stock brokerage and robo-advisor apps have also joined the payments race. Wealthfront launched cash accounts and debit cards last February, bringing in $1 billion in assets in two months and doubling the company’s total holdings to $20 billion by September. Betterment launched its checking product in October 2019 with a Visa debit card, but it doesn’t generate interest.

Robinhood botched the December 2018 launch of its checking accounts due to ineligible insurance, but relaunched in October 2019 with debit card withdrawls from 75,000 ATMs and a solid interest rate. It’s unclear how Google’s card will work with ATMs or how its checking accounts will generate interest.

Robinhood’s debit cards

The appeal for Google and the rest is clear. It seems whenever companies help move people’s money around, some of it inevitably “falls off the truck” and lands in their pockets. Financial services are typically low-overhead ways to generate revenue. That could be especially enticing, as Google has found many of its side hustle “other bets” to be unsustainable. It’s moved to prune some of these tertiary projects, such as its Makani wind energy kites.

Google may never find businesses as lucrative as its core in search and advertising, but it has the advantages to become a serious player in fintech. Its vast sums of cash, deep bench of engineering talent, experience building complex utilities, numerous consumer touch points and near-bottomless well of data could give it an edge over stodgier old banks and scrappier startups. And while Facebook slams into regulatory scrutiny and is forced to scale back its Libra cryptocurrency, Google’s more familiar approach via debit cards could pay off.


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Garbage Math


Garbage Math

How to co-parent as allies, not adversaries | Ebony Roberts and Shaka Senghor

How to co-parent as allies, not adversaries | Ebony Roberts and Shaka Senghor

When Shaka Senghor and Ebony Roberts ended their relationship, they made a pact to protect their son from its fallout. What resulted was a poetic meditation on what it means to raise a child together, yet apart. In this moving and deeply personal talk, Senghor and Roberts share their approach to co-parenting -- an equal, active partnership that rolls with the punches and revels in the delights of guiding their child through the world with thought and intention.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

How to Watch Instagram Live Videos on Your PC or Mac


If you’ve spent a lot of time on Instagram, you’ve no doubt seen Instagram Live videos. However, can you watch Instagram videos on desktop? The answer is yes, but with some caveats.

The first thing you need to know is that logging into your Instagram account on your web browser won’t help. Instead, you’ll need to download a Chrome extension in order to access the feature.

In this article, we list the various ways to watch Instagram Live videos on desktop…

What Is IG Stories for Instagram?

How to Watch Instagram Live IG Stories for Instagram

If you’re on a PC or Mac, the options to watch Instagram Live on computers is limited. In most cases, we actually recommend that you watch Instagram Live through the mobile app. If you want detailed instructions on how to do so, check out the Instagram help page for more information.

However, just because your options are limited does not mean that they don’t exist. You can watch Instagram Live on PC or Mac by using a Chrome extension.

One extension that allows you to view Instagram Live on PC is IG Stories for Instagram (not to be confused with Chrome IG Story).

IG Stories for Instagram is an extension that allows you to watch Instagram Live videos on a desktop computer. It also allows you to watch stories and download finished Live videos.

Please Note: The ability to download live videos is only available for Windows, as per the extension’s last update. There also seems to be some functionality issues currently affecting the app’s ability to download videos, as per the reviews.

However, after testing the extension, we’re happy to report that the ability to watch a Instagram Live video in a browser seems to work fine.

Another recently added feature includes the ability to upload images to your Instagram Story through the app.

How to Watch Instagram Live on PC or Mac

How to Watch Instagram Live on PC IG Stories

To watch Instagram Live desktop videos:

  1. Install the Chrome extension IG Stories for Instagram.
  2. Next, log into your Instagram account through a Chrome browser.
  3. Click on the app’s icon at the top of your screen.
  4. Choose Go to IG Stories.
  5. Once you click on Go to IG Stories, you’ll be taken to an extension version of your Instagram page.

On the IG Stories for Instagram page, you should see four categories along your search bar:

  • Friends
  • Location
  • Search
  • Upload

The section you see upon logging in is usually Friends.

On this page, there will be a list of your friends who have recently posted images or videos to their stories.

At the top of the Friends section—if your friends are currently broadcasting a live video—you’ll see that person’s username with a Live icon beside them. Click on the icon to start watching the live video:

Instagram Live Desktop

If there are no live videos playing, you can click on your friend’s “eye” icon to view their previously ended live videos that have been added to the Stories section.

You can also:

  • Download Stories.
  • Watch Stories from strangers that are tagged with a country location.
  • Search for Stories by Users, Tags, or Places.

This app is really handy if you want to watch Instagram Live on PC or Mac. However, you’ll want to use it in tandem with another app to access the full functionality of Instagram, as its focus is on live videos.

Additional Considerations

We also want to issue a caveat for this extension before you try it.

While checking the reviews, we noticed multiple complaints where users were prompted to download an .exe file when downloading a Live video. It was an .exe that some found to be unnecessary and/or suspicious. Some users even reported the .exe being flagged as malware.

Although the developer has done their best to address these concerns in the comments, and we were personally not prompted to download an .exe while testing, there were enough complaints that we felt a caveat was warranted. As always, use common sense when using any app.

For more information on Stories and how they play into this extension, here’s how to re-share Instagram posts to Stories.

Additional Live Instagram PC Apps Worth Trying

Stream Instagram Live Loola TV

If you’re not satisfied with the recommendation above, but still want to watch Instagram Live on computers or other devices, there are some other apps worth trying.

There’s a tool called Loola.tv that allows you to stream live videos from your desktop to multiple platforms, including Instagram. However, Loola is strictly geared towards content creators, not followers who want to watch Instagram Live on PC. Which means it isn’t suitable for watching videos in a browser, at least for the average user.

One of the best extensions we’ve tested is Desktop for Instagram, by Devanco.

With this app, you can search Instagram for recent videos and pictures. You can watch people’s Stories, post your own videos to IGTV, and download videos and pictures from Instagram to your desktop.

The developers claim that this extension lets you do everything you would normally do on the mobile Instagram app, including watching Instagram Live videos. However, after testing out Desktop for Instagram, we don’t think it quite lives up to the hype.

IG Stories for Instagram is still better suited for this purpose.

Tips for Finding Instagram Live Streams

Instagram Desktop App

No matter which app you try out, there are some simple tips for finding Instagram live streams. And these work on all of the extensions we’ve mentioned in this article.

  • Who you follow matters: If you want to watch Instagram Live streams from your friends, some people are far more likely to do live streams than others.
  • Instagram Stories: When you log into the app, or use an extension like Desktop for Instagram, you’ll see a row of avatars with colored circles at the top of your feed. This is your Stories section. If you see the words “Live” beneath a user’s avatar, this means that your friend is currently broadcasting.
  • Replay Live videos: If you happen to miss a live video, never fear. Instagram Live videos can be shared to Instagram Stories after they’re ended, although it should be noted that replays disappear from the feed after 24 hours. You can find out more on the Instagram help page for this feature.
  • Find new people to follow: By using Instagram’s Search and Explore option, you can find additional people to follow who may share live videos, too.

The Instagram Mobile App Is the Best Option

While all the extensions listed above are good, there is no seamless, bug-free way to watch Instagram Live on a PC or Mac. As such, the Instagram mobile app remains the best option if that’s what you want to do.

That said, you should still try IG Stories for Instagram, as it’s a good extension for watching live videos at this moment. In the meantime, if you’re new to Instagram, you should read our guide to IGTV and how it works in order to get yourself acquainted with the platform.

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10 Tips to Avoid (Spreading) Fake News During a Crisis


breaking-news-fake

Falsehood spreads so quickly through social media and the internet at large that avoiding it can seem impossible. How can you distinguish truth from fiction?

Let’s look at how to avoid fake news, as well as how you can avoid spreading fake news yourself. With some critical thinking and resources, you can help keep this problem from getting worse.

How to Spot and Avoid Fake News

First, let’s look at some ways to steer clear of fake news if you suspect you’re reading a false story.

1. Examine the Source

Fake News Website

Anyone can publish an article online, but that doesn’t make it true. To determine if something is true, you should start by looking at the website it was published on.

Is the website trustworthy? If it ends in a weird domain like “.news.co,” that’s questionable. You should read the About Us page to learn more about the website’s mission and credibility. Make sure that you aren’t mistaking content on a satire site as fact.

After examining the website, look at the author’s information. Are they a well-known and trusted figure in journalism? Do they have links to their personal website or social media pages, and are they verified on those platforms if so? You shouldn’t take opinions from a no-name commentator very seriously.

2. Consider the Article’s Quality

Reputable news sources won’t publish articles that are full of spelling or grammatical mistakes. If you notice any typos or other blatant errors, you’re probably reading a website with low credibility. The same goes for sensationalism, such as overuse of punctuation or dramatic language.

You should also check the date on the story. There’s a chance that a publisher could recycle an old story with a few altered details and pretend it’s fresh.

3. Trace the Information to the Source

Articles that make serious claims should be able to back them up. If the piece contains no quotes or links to sources, that’s a red flag. An author who quickly wrote up an inaccurate story likely didn’t bother to do proper research.

If there are sources given, examine them. Follow the chain of information to make sure this wasn’t all based on false premises, like an out-of-context quote.

You should also see if other reputable sources have spoken about the information. If nobody else backs up the claim, the chances are higher that it’s nonsense.

4. Use Fact-Checking Resources

factcheck org website

If you’re really not sure whether a story is fake or not, you can rely on resources who look into these stories all day. We’ve shown you the best fact-checking websites to help you verify whether online information is true.

Of course, even fact-checkers aren’t always 100% accurate. So while they’re useful, it’s always best to confirm the truth for yourself if you can.

5. Beware of Fake Images and Videos

With today’s advanced image manipulation tools, it’s relatively trivial for someone to create a believable fake image or even a video. You should thus never believe a story based solely on a screenshot, image, or video clip.

To see if an image has been manipulated, you can use tools like FotoForensics. It’s also smart to run the image through a reverse image search service so you can see if it’s been used elsewhere or altered.

Make sure you know about the risks of deepfakes too.

How to Avoid Spreading Fake News

Next, we’ll look at a few tips to help you avoid spreading fake news yourself, especially on social media.

6. Don’t Share Without Thinking

Facebook Share Story

It’s all too easy to click “Share,” “retweet,” or “forward” on stories without looking into them properly. Many people do this after reading just the headline and don’t even consider what’s actually in the article.

Resist the temptation to instantly share stories with your friends, especially if they seem sensational. People who trust you may see what you shared and take it as truth without looking at it themselves, which further contributes to the problem.

Finally, remember that “fake news” doesn’t just refer to made-up stories. Another form of fake news involves include putting a misleading spin on true information. You’ll often notice this when you compare facts in an article to a dramatic headline.

7. Include Verifiable Information When You Post

If you post an article or update related to a timely topic, you should include supporting information about the claim. Adding a link to a scientific journal, fact-checking page, or other trusted source will greatly add to the credibility of what you’ve said.

Additionally, having explicit details laid out gives others the chance to disprove them with facts themselves. Otherwise, a discussion on social media could devolve into a shouting match without any evidence, where nobody says anything of importance.

8. Contest Fake News When You See It

If you see someone share a story on social media that you know is false, don’t let it sit out and confuse others. You should comment on the post with a link to a trusted source that disproves the original article.

While not everyone who sees the post will bother to read your correction, its presence will hopefully at least give people pause before they take the original content at face value.

Depending on the service, you can also report false stories to the platform. For example, you can let Facebook know that an article is untrue by reporting it. Click on the three-dot Menu button at the top-right of a post on Facebook and choose Find Support or Report Post. After this, select False News as the reason and continue to submit your report.

Facebook Report Post

Facebook has started to mark stories as false after they’re verified by fact-checkers, so you may see a notice on such images when this happens.

9. Read Reputable Sources in the First Place

Fake news sometimes festers in the darker corners of the internet where there’s not as much accountability. To avoid exposing yourself to false stories as much as possible, you should stick to legitimate sites and reporters as much as you can.

Keep in mind, though, that just because a news company or brand is mainstream doesn’t mean that it’s trustworthy.

But once you’ve vetted some sources and feel you can reasonably trust them, you should get your news there instead of from social media. Consider using dedicated news apps to follow trusted sources.

10. Stay Calm During Developing Crises

A lot of fake news revolves around crisis situations, where a lot of information arrives at once. It’s difficult to separate truth from lies during these times, so you should be on your guard when breaking news comes onto the scene.

As a crisis develops, there’s a high likelihood that most sources don’t know what’s going on yet. To keep your attention and clicks coming, news sites will want to come up with something—even if it’s not accurate.

Keep an eye out for phrases like “we are getting reports” or “we are seeking confirmation.” Neither of these confirm that the source has any trustworthy information.

While it’s from a comedy movie, the below clip from Anchorman 2 illustrates how news outlets can spin a story way beyond its initial scope. Keep an eye out for these tactics in real-world scenarios.

Avoid Fake News: Think First!

We’ve looked at many ways to avoid fake news and keep yourself from spreading fake news on social media. In summary, you shouldn’t trust any sources without looking into them critically first, and never share content from a friend that you haven’t examined on your own.

It’s way too easy for false content to spread like crazy in today’s online environment. Everyone can do a little bit to keep fake news from propagating in their circles.

For more, you should know how to spot other common online fakes.

Read the full article: 10 Tips to Avoid (Spreading) Fake News During a Crisis


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Ableton Live for Beginners: How to Get Started


If you have decided to take your first steps into the world of music production, we’re here to help. With a beginner’s guide to Ableton Live, which outlines the basics you’ll need to get started.

Ableton Live is an excellent digital audio workstation (DAW for short). In fact, it is considered one of the best digital audio workstations, thanks to its simple user interface and intuitive controls. The ability to craft a simple tune, easily, is also a major advantage.

What Options Are Available?

The current release is Ableton Live 10, and it’s available in three tiers, so you can buy based on how many features you think you’ll need. If you are yet to take the plunge, we suggest going for the “Intro” tier option.

This is the cheapest and has less of the advanced features, so there is less to confuse you. You can grab a trial version of the software if you don’t want to make a financial commitment just yet.

Once you’ve installed Ableton Live, you are ready to start making music. However, as a beginner, you’re probably staring at a bunch of gray boxes right now wondering where to begin.

Don’t worry. Here are the basic tips absolute beginners will need to create a super-simple track with some of the supplied audio samples.

1. Create Your First Project

screenshot of session view

The first thing you will need to do is create your project. The project holds all of the information about your Live Set (basically what Ableton calls your track). It stores details about the samples or loops you use.

Ableton Live uses the project to remember the sample arrangement (where the samples appear in the track). Any effects you use, where they are used, and how they are used, are also project-specific. Any software instruments you use will also be noted in the project file (although you don’t need to know about these for now).

Once you have launched Ableton, you’ll be presented with a demo track. You can play this if you like and see how it sounds, but it isn’t really important at the moment. Next, head to File > New Live Set. You’re almost ready to start. Just save the newly-created Live Set down with a name of your choosing by selecting File > Save Live Set As.

Here, I’ve selected “MUO Breaks” as my Live Set name, as you can see from the top left-hand corner of the screenshot above. Now you’re ready to start navigating the workspace…

2. Preparing the Workspace

screenshot of arrangement view

If you take a look at your Ableton Live screen, then what you are seeing is the Session View. This is useful for jamming or creating a live performance with Ableton, generally using hardware. Check out our guide to the best USB midi controllers if you are interested in scoping out some of the options available to you.

However, as an absolute beginner, your current skills won’t match up to those required to work in Ableton’s performance mode. That’s fine, you can pick these skills up later when you’re more familiar with the app.

For now, let’s switch screens to the Arrangement View, which you can find to the left of the app window. The button with three horizontal bars toggles arrangement view. These bars will appear gray until you activate Arrangement View.

You’ll notice the screen layout changes. This is the area in which you can drop some samples and then move them around the workspace, hence “Arrangement Mode”.

The four default colored boxes to the right of the view represent different channels. Each channel provides the overall track with a different sound, so you might have one dedicated to the bassline, one for drum patterns, one for vocals, and so on.

As we are only working with samples for this very simple track, you can go ahead and remove the two channels that are titled “MIDI”. You don’t need those right now. Simply right-click in the colored square and select Delete. Repeat the process for the second unwanted MIDI track.

With those out of the way, you can turn your attention to the audio channels. Right-click in the blank space below the two remaining colored boxes. Now you can add a third audio channel. Click insert audio track and you’ll notice a third track pops up.

3. Understanding the Workspace

screenshot showing tempo, zoom, beat ruler, track display, and playback controls

There are several elements of the workspace that you will need to use for this tutorial. They have been indicated on the image above for quick identification. Here’s what they do:

  1. This is the Tempo or the speed of your track. BPM or beats per minute is the method of measuring tempo. Click into this box and type “172” then hit enter.
  2. This is Zooming Hotspot hovering your mouse over the zooming hotspot reveals a magnifying glass. Left-clicking in the box and holding down the mouse button allows you to zoom in and out with up/down gestures and you move the zoomed view left and right with corresponding mouse movements.
  3. The Beat-Time Ruler displays the numbers that correspond with each beat (depending on how closely zoomed in you are). You’ll notice how the top features numbers. This counts the bars in your music and indicates where you need to place your samples. The bars are initially displayed in groups of four (which is why the top of the track display reads 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, etc.)
  4. Track Display is where you’ll be dropping your samples.
  5. Track controls for play, pause, stop, and record.

3. Adding Samples

screenshot highlighting track name boxes

You will place your samples in the newly created channels so it is wise to rename them. In the color-coded “Track Name” box titled “1 Audio”, Right-click > Rename as you would with a computer file. Repeat this in the remaining two track-name boxes. I have renamed my three tracks as “Percussion”, “Bass”, and “Vocals”.

Samples are the snippets of sound that you can arrange to create music. These are the building blocks of your finished piece and, fortunately, Ableton Live 10 Suite has plenty to start with.

To the left of the screen, you’ll see the “Collections” pane. Under “Places”, you’ll see “Packs”. That is where you want to head to find the sounds you’ll be using to make your first basic track.

Next, click Packs > Core Library > Samples. This takes you into the library which is nicely broken down into categories for you.

screenshot highlighting the Collections window

Once you have clicked into the sample library, you can have a listen to all of the samples that Ableton Live 10 features as standard. There are some cool samples in there so have a listen and see if any take your fancy. You can preview a sample easily by clicking it once. Now let’s pop some samples into the audio channels.

Percussion

screenshot showing drum pattern in place

Go to Core Library > Samples > Loops > Breaks and Steps and locate the sample titled “Drum and Bass Straight 172 bpm”. Click and drag the sample into the audio channel you renamed earlier to percussion. You will notice how the sample starts at 1 and ends just before 5. This means the sample is four bars long.

Next, stretch the sample out by hovering over the edge of the clip title (the box at the top of the sample with the sample’s name in it) and dragging it out to the right. Drag it to the line with the number 17 above it. Hit play and take a listen. These are the drums for your song!

Bassline

screenshot showing bass samples added to track display

Go to Core Library > Samples > Synth > Dark Thought and locate the sample titled “Dark Thought C1”.

Before dropping the sample, use the zooming hotspot to zoom in until the Beat Time Ruler reveals the numbers consecutively (1, 2, 3, etc). Then, drag your bass sample and drop it in the “Bass” channel at the position corresponding with the number 5 on the beat time ruler. Next, repeat the process for the Beat Ruler markers corresponding with the numbers 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15.

screenshot with more bass added to the track display

Head back to the Dark Thought library and grab “Dark Thought C2”. This sound has a higher-sounding pitch. Drag and drop it to numbers 8, 12, and 16. You can take a listen to what you’ve made so far by hitting the “play” button in track controls.

Vocals

screenshot of track display with vocal added

Following the same processes as above, head to Core Library > Samples > Vocals and place “L10 Demo Voc Reverse” at the beat marker corresponding with the number 13 on the beat time ruler. Now you have a vocal in your track!

You Now Know the Very Basics of Ableton Live

Hit play and have a listen to the first sixteen bars of the song you have just created. Cool, eh? The great thing about Ableton is the ease with which you can learn the basics.

Head to File > Save Live Set and you can have a play around with the music you have created. Try adding in a couple more channels and some more sounds, making the track longer. Then you can have a go at making your own arrangement from scratch.

Once you have mastered these simple steps, you can add to your skills with our in-depth beginner’s guide to Ableton Live.

Read the full article: Ableton Live for Beginners: How to Get Started


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