21 April 2020

Exploring Evolutionary Meta-Learning in Robotics




Rapid development of more accurate simulator engines has given robotics researchers a unique opportunity to generate sufficient amounts of data that can be used to train robotic policies for real-world deployment. However, moving trained policies from “sim-to-real” remains one of the greatest challenges of modern robotics, due to the subtle differences encountered between the simulation and real domains, termed the “reality gap”. While some recent approaches leverage existing data, such as imitation learning and offline reinforcement learning, to prepare a policy for the reality gap, a more common approach is to simply provide more data by varying properties of the simulated environment, a process called domain randomization.

However, domain randomization can sacrifice performance for stability, as it seeks to optimize for a decent, stable policy across all tasks, but offers little room for improving the policy on a specific task. This lack of a common optimal policy between simulation and reality is frequently a problem in robotic locomotion applications, where there are varying physical forces at play, such as leg friction, body mass, and terrain differences. For example, given the same initial conditions for the robot’s position and balance, the surface type will determine the optimal policy — for an incoming flat surface encountered in simulation, the robot could accelerate to a higher speed, while for an incoming rugged and bumpy surface encountered in the real world, it should walk slowly and carefully to prevent falling.

In “Rapidly Adaptable Legged Robots via Evolutionary Meta-Learning”, we present a particular type of meta-learning based on evolutionary strategies (ES), an approach generally believed to only work well in simulation, we can effectively and efficiently adapt a policy to a real-world robot in a completely model-free manner. Compared to previous approaches for adapting meta-policies, such as standard policy gradients which do not allow sim-to-teal adaptation, ES enables a robot to quickly overcome the reality gap and adapt to dynamic changes in the real world, some of which may not be encountered in simulation. This represents the first instance of successfully using ES for on-robot adaptation.
Our algorithm quickly adapts a legged robot’s policy to dynamics changes. In this example, the battery voltage dropped from 16.8V to 10V which reduced motor power, and a 500g mass was also placed on the robot's side, causing it to turn rather than walk straight. The policy is able to adapt in only 50 episodes (or 150s of real-world data).
Meta-Learning
This research falls under the general class of meta-learning techniques, and is demonstrated on a legged robot. At a high level, meta-learning learns to solve an incoming task quickly without completely retraining from scratch, by combining past experiences with small amounts of experience from the incoming task. This is especially beneficial in the sim-to-real case, where most of the past experiences come cheaply from simulation, while a minimal, yet necessary amount of experience is generated from the real world task. The simulation experiences allow the policy to possess a general level of behavior for solving a distribution of tasks, while the real-world experiences allow the policy to fine-tune specifically to the real-world task at hand.

In order to train a policy to meta-learn, it is necessary to encourage a policy to adapt during simulation. Normally, this can be achieved by applying model-agnostic meta-learning (MAML), which searches for a meta-policy that can adapt to a specific task quickly using small amounts of task-specific data. The standard approach to computing such meta-policies is by using policy gradient methods, which seek to improve the likelihood of selecting the same action given the same state. In order to determine the likelihood of a given action, the policy must be stochastic, allowing for the action selected by the policy to have a randomized component. The real-world environment for deploying such robotic policies is also highly stochastic, as there can be slight differences in motion arising naturally, even if starting from the exact same state and action sequence. The combination of using a stochastic policy inside a stochastic environment creates two conflicting objectives:
  1. Decreasing the policy’s stochasticity may be crucial, as otherwise the high-noise problem might be exacerbated by the additional randomness from the policy’s actions.

  2. However, increasing the policy’s stochasticity may also benefit exploration, as the policy needs to use random actions to probe the type of environment to which it adapts.
These two competing objectives, which have been noted before, seek to both decrease and increase the policy’s stochasticity and may cause complications.

Evolutionary Strategies in Robotics
Instead, we resolve these challenges by applying ES-MAML, an algorithm that leverages a drastically different paradigm for high-dimensional optimization — evolutionary strategies. The ES-MAML approach updates the policy based solely on the sum of rewards collected by the agent in the environment. The function used for optimizing the policy is black-box, mapping the policy parameters directly to this reward. Unlike policy gradient methods, this approach does not need to collect state/action/reward tuples and does not need to estimate action likelihoods. This allows the use of deterministic policies and exploration based on parameter changes and avoiding the conflict between stochasticity in the policy and in the environment.

In this paradigm, querying usually involves running episodes in the simulator, but we show that ES can be applied also for episodes collected on real hardware. ES optimization can be easily distributed and also works well for training efficient compact policies, a phenomenon with profound robotic implications, since policies with fewer parameters can be easier deployed on real hardware and often lead to more efficient inference and power usage. We confirm the effectiveness of ES in training compact policies by learning adaptable meta-policies with <130 parameters.

The ES optimization paradigm is very flexible. It can be used to optimize non-differentiable objectives, such as the total reward objective in our robotics case. It also works in the presence of substantial (potentially adversarial) noise. In addition, the most recent forms of ES methods (e.g., guided ES) are much more sample-efficient than previous versions.

This flexibility is critical for efficient adaptation of locomotion meta-policies. Our results show that adaptation with ES can be conducted with a small number of additional on-robot episodes. Thus, ES is no longer just an attractive alternative to the state-of-the-art algorithms, but defines a new state of the art for several challenging RL tasks.

Adaptation in Simulation
We first examine the types of adaptation that emerge when training with ES-MAML in simulation. When testing the policy in simulation, we found that the meta-policy forces the robot to fall down when the dynamics become too unstable, whereas the adapted policy allows the robot to re-stabilize and walk again. Furthermore, when the robot’s leg settings change, the meta-policy de-synchronizes the robot’s legs causing the robot to turn sharply, while the adapted policy corrects the robot so it can walk straight again.
The meta-policy’s gait, which experiences issues when facing a difficult dynamics task. Left: The meta-policy lets the robot fall down. Center: The adapted policy ensures the robot continues to walk correctly. Right: Comparative measurement of the robot’s height.
The meta-policy’s gait, under changes to the robot’s leg settings. Left: The meta-policy allows the robot veer to the right. Center: The adapted policy ensures the robot continues to walk in a straight line. Right: Comparative measurement of the robot’s walking direction.
Adaptation in the Real World
Despite the good performance of ES-MAML in simulation, applying it to a real robot is still a challenge. To effectively adapt in the noisy environment of the real world while requiring as little real-world data as possible, we introduce batch hill-climbing, an add-on to ES-MAML based on previous work for zeroth-order blackbox optimization. Rather than performing hill-climbing which iteratively updates the input one-by-one according to a deterministic objective, batch hill-climbing samples a parallel batch of queries to determine the next input, making it robust to large amounts of noise in the objective.

We then test our method on the following 2 tasks, which are designed to significantly change the dynamics from the normal setting of the robot:
In the mass-voltage task (left), a 500g weight is placed on the robot’s side and the voltage is dropped to 10.0V from 16.8V. In the friction task (right), we replaced the rubber feet with tennis balls, to significantly reduce friction and hinder walking.
For the mass-voltage task, the initial meta-policy steered the robot significantly to the right due to the extra mass and voltage change, which caused an imbalance in the robot’s body and leg motors. However, after 30 episodes of adaptation using our method, the robot straightens the walking pose, and after 50 episodes, the robot is able to balance its body completely and is able to walk longer distances. In comparison, training from scratch on an easier, noiseless task from only simulation required approximately 90,000 episodes, showing that our method significantly reduces sample complexity on expensive real world data.
Qualitative changes during the adaptation phase under the mass-voltage task.
We compared our method to domain randomization and the standard policy gradient approach to MAML (PG-MAML) only, presenting the final policies qualitatively, as well as metrics from the real robot to show how our method adapts. We found that both domain randomization and PG-MAML baselines do not adapt as well as our method.
Comparisons between Domain Randomization and PG-MAML, and metric differences between our method’s meta-policy and adapted policy. Top: Comparison for the mass-voltage task. Our method stabilizes the robot’s roll angle. Bottom: Comparison for the friction task. Our method results in longer trajectories.
Future Work
This work exposes several avenues for future development. One option is to make algorithmic improvements to reduce the number of real-world rollouts required for adaptation. Another area for advancement is the use of model-based reinforcement learning techniques for a lifelong learning system, in which the robot can continuously collect data and quickly adjust its policy to learn new skills and to operate optimally in new environments.

Acknowledgements
This research was conducted by the core ES-MAML team: Xingyou Song, Yuxiang Yang, Krzysztof Choromanski, Ken Caluwaerts, Wenbo Gao, Chelsea Finn, and Jie Tan. We would like to give special thanks to Vikas Sindhwani for his support on ES methods, and Daniel Seita for feedback on our paper.

Simple URL Tricks for Google Drive You Should Know


With Google Drive, you can store files in the cloud and share them easily with anyone. Open any file in Google Drive, click the Share button and you’ll get a URL (link) that others can use to access your file. This is common knowledge but Google Drive has plenty of URL tricks up its sleeve that will make these simple Drive links even more powerful.

Google Drive URL Tricks

Google Drive Download Links

Google Drive Web Viewer

Google Drive includes a built-in web viewer so people can view your shared files - from Microsoft Office documents to videos to AutoCAD drawings - directly in their browser. You can use this web viewer to view online files without having to download the files to your computer.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=FILE_URL

Replace FILE_URL with the full http link of the online document and anyone can view your file in the browser itself. Here’s an example.

Reader Mode for Google Drive Files

You can view native Google documents in reader mode (sans the Google UI) by simply replace /edit in the Google Drive file URL with /preview.

So if the original share link of a file in Google Drive is:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SHEET_ID/edit

You can view the same document in a clean, reader mode using the link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SHEET_ID/preview

Here’s a Google Sheet, Google Document and Google Slides presentation in preview mode that is less-cluttered without any menus and toolbars and thus loads faster.

Embed Google Documents in Web Pages

The /preview is useful when you need to embed a document, spreadsheet or presentation from Drive in your web page using the IFRAME tag as in this live example.

 <iframe src="https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/preview" height="600px" width=“800px" allowfullscreen>
 </iframe>

Download and Export Google Drive Files

The native file viewer is useful but sometimes you may want to bypass the built-in Google Docs viewer and force the browser to download the file instead of opening it. Thus if a user has Photoshop on their computer, the PSD file that you have shared through Google Drive will open in Photoshop and not in their web browser.

When you upload any file in Google Drive and share it, the shared link looks like this:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=DRIVE_FILE_ID

The FILE_ID is unique for every file in Google Drive. If you copy this FILE_ID and use it in the URL below, you’ll get a direct link to download the file from Google Drive (example).

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=DRIVE_FILE_ID

If you wish to open the file in the Google Drive web viewer, the viewer URL would be (example):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/DRIVE_FILE_ID/view

The directly download URL trick works for native Google documents as well. This comes really handy if you want to give users an option to download your Google Document as a read-only PDF file or your Google Spreadsheet as an Excel XLS file.

Google Docs - Direct Downloads

Any document in your Google Drive has a URL like:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/DOC_FILE_ID/edit

Replace /edit with /export?format=, add the file format that the document should be saved as and your download link is ready (example).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/DOC_FILE_ID/export?format=pdf
https://docs.google.com/document/d/DOC_FILE_ID/export?format=doc

The above links will now download the same Google document in Word (.docx) and PDF formats. You can also specify txt, html, odt (OpenDocument) or epub for downloading the Google Document as an e-book.

Like Google Documents, the URLs of presentations in Google Drive have this format:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/PRESENTATION_ID/edit

The direct download links for Google Slides is slightly different then Google Documents. Here replace /edit with /export/format where format can be pptx for downloading Google Slides as Microsoft Powerpoint files or PDF for exporting the presentation as a PDF slideshow.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/PRESENTATION_ID/export/pdf
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/PRESENTATION_ID/export/pptx

The direct links for downloading the same presentation deck in PowerPoint (.pptx) and PDF formats are below: For instance, here’s a presentation on Google Slides that you directly download as a PDF or a PPT file.

Download Google Slides as PNG Files

With Google Slides, you can either export the entire presentation as a PDF or you can create links to individual slides that will download the slide as a high-res PNG file.

All you need to do is add ?pageid=pPAGE_NUMBER to the export url. So if I were to download the 10th slide as a PNG file, the URL would be:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/export/png?pageid=p10

Also see: Link Directly to specific Google Slide

Open your Google Spreadsheet in Google Drive, make the sheet Public (or share with Anyone with a link) and make a note of the shared URL. It should be something like this:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID/edit

The direct download links for Google Sheets are similar to Google Docs and the sheets can be exported as PDF, Excel XLSX and CSV files.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=xlsx
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=pdf
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=csv

For instance, here’s the COVID-19 spreadsheet and you can directly download the file as PDF or XLS file with simple manipulation of the original sheet URL.

Also see: Email Google Sheets on Schedule

Copy and Make any shared Google Drive File your own

Replace /edit with /copy in the URL of any native Google Drive file and anyone can click that link to quickly make a copy of that file in their own Google Drive. Try here.

Original Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/edit

Copy Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/copy

The /copy URL trick works for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Google Scripts. Add ?copyComments=true if you would like the copied document to include the comments from the original document. Set includeResolvedCommentsOnCopy=false to skip copying resolved comments and copyCollaborators=false to not share the copied document with the original collaborators.

You can use it for Google Forms as well but the form will be copied to another user’s Google Account only if the form owner has granted access to the form.

Invite users when copying documents

If you add userstoinvite=email@domain.com to the copy URL, the Google user who is copying the document will be prompted to share the document with the specific Google account immediately after copying the document.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/copy?userstoinvite=emailaddres

Google Drawings - Embed as Image

You can export your Google Drawings as SVG, PNG, JPEG or PDF files by replace /edit in the drawing URL with /export/FORMAT.

For instance, if the Google Drawing URL in Drive is:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/FILE_ID/edit

The direct link for downloading the drawing in vector format like SVG or as a PDF file would be:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/FILE_ID/export/svg
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/FILE_ID/export/pdf
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/FILE_ID/export/jpg

You can even use these links to embed Google Drawings as inline images in your HTML webpages using the <img> tag as shown here.

 <p>
   <img src="https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/FILE_ID/export/png" alt="Google Drawing" />
 </p>

Also see: The Most Important Google URLs


Google switches its Shopping search service to mostly free listings


Google is making a change to its product search offering meaning that unpaid listings picked by algorithm will dominate results displayed on the Google Shopping tab, instead of mostly paid product listings.

In a blog post announcing the move, Bill Ready, president of Google’s commerce division, cited the coronavirus pandemic as a catalyst for Google to speed up a pre-existing plan to switch from Shopping results being determined by paid ad auction to mostly free listings.

Making Shopping listings free for merchants is one way the tech giant is looking to support struggling retailers through the COVID-19 crisis, he suggested.

“Beginning next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free product listings, helping merchants better connect with consumers, regardless of whether they advertise on Google,” wrote Ready. “With hundreds of millions of shopping searches on Google each day, we know that many retailers have the items people need in stock and ready to ship, but are less discoverable online.”

The expansion of free listings is slated to be completed by the end of April. Initially it will only take place in the US — but Google says it intends to roll out the change globally before the end of the year.

While Google is packaging the change as a gesture to help cash-strapped retailers during a time of economic crisis there’s no doubt the tech giant is also spying strategic opportunity to expand its role in ecommerce in the midst of a coronavirus-shaped boom.

With millions of people stuck at home, and scores of physical stores closed or with heavily restricted access, online shopping has seen huge uplift.

So far, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has been the most notable winner, adding a reported $24BN to his personal wealth since the shutdown began — while ad giants like Google are facing heavy exposure to the crisis, as advertisers hunker down and rip up their 2020 marketing budgets.

If Google Shopping can start returning better results for products, and indeed results for more products, there’s an opportunity for the search giant to grow its share of shopping traffic and grab listings clicks from shoppers who might otherwise have run product queries directly on Amazon.

Google is also using the new free product listings feature as a value add ‘carrot’ — to encourage advertisers to (keep) paying it for ads.

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings,” is how Ready pitches the switch.

As SearchEngineLand points out, this is actually Google returning to its roots — given the first version of its Shopping service (which was then called Froogle) was also free to list.

The switch to purely paid came in 2012. Though the changes now will still see paid product listings slotted into the top of Google search results if users search for product keywords, as well as into the top of the Shopping tab. So Google isn’t giving up all product ad revenue.

In terms of how it works, existing users of Google’s Merchant Center and Shopping Ads who have already opted into the “surfaces across Google program” won’t have to do anything else — and may already be eligible to show products in what Google’s help center describes as “the unpaid experiences”.

Those needing to opt in can do so by selecting “Growth” and then “Manage programs” in the left nav menu and then choosing the “surfaces across Google” program card.

“You can also add products to your product feed, to make even more products discoverable in these free listings,” Google adds.

For new users of its Merchant Center it says it’s aiming to ramp up the onboarding process “over the coming weeks and months”. But presumably there may be some delay in getting access.

Accompanying the switch is a “new partnership” with PayPal — which Google says will allow merchants to link their accounts in order to “speed up our onboarding process and ensure we’re surfacing the highest quality results for our users”.

Existing partnerships to help merchants manage products and inventory, including those with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, are ongoing, it adds.

What’s not mentioned in Google’s blog post is that its Shopping service has faced antitrust intervention in the European Union which slapped Google with a $2.7BN fine back in 2017 — finding it had systematically given prominence to its own shopping comparison service in results while also demoting rival comparison shopping services.

The company later rolled out tweaks to the Shopping service in Europe that it said are intended to comply with the antitrust ruling, letting comparison services bid to be displayed in the ads displayed at the top of product related search results. Though rivals have continued to complain about the ‘remedy’, and the EU’s competition chief suggested last year that additional changes may be needed.


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What's missing from the American immigrant narrative | Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

What's missing from the American immigrant narrative | Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Recounting her story of finding opportunity and stability in the US, Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez examines the flaws in narratives that simplify and idealize the immigrant experience -- and shares hard-earned wisdom on the best way to help those around us. "Our world is one that flourishes when different voices come together," she says.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Disruptor Beam relaunches as gaming infrastructure-maker Beamable


Disruptor Beam, the mobile gaming startup behind Star Trek Timelines, has a new name and a new business. It’s now calling itself Beamable, and it’s selling a set of tools to help game developers add commerce and social functionality to their titles.

The company’s direction became clear earlier this year when it sold Timelines to Tilting Point so that it could focus on its developer tools. Now Beamable is officially launching its Early Access program for games that are live, or that are scheduled to go live in the next 12 months.

CEO Jon Radoff told me that Disruptor Beam first built this technology for its own games — not just Timelines, but also Game of Thrones Ascent and Walking Dead: March to War.

Radoff suggested that there’s a real need for this as gaming continues shifting towards a “games as a service” model, where developers don’t just release a title and move on, but rather continue adding new features and content, while additional ways to make money from players.

Beamable screenshot

Image Credits: Beamable

The largest developers with the most popular games can support this approach, but he said, “For the next 5,000 games on the app stores, any of the things they’ve built are pretty primitive and they really need help.”

He added, “For these developers, 30% or 40% of their effort goes into making a cool game, and all the other money and time goes into things the player doesn’t really see — the store and the commerce … It’s kind of like a tax on their ongoing operation.”

With Beamable, on the other hand, developers can add take advantage of the infrastructure that the company has already built for in-game storefronts, merchandising, content management and social interactions. The platform also ties together the company’s backend infrastructure with the Unity 3D editor and the live gameplay experience.

“Other products we’ve investigated are just middleware,” said Tap Slots CEO Markus Weichselbaum in a statement. “Beamable is fully-integrated with Unity, including user interfaces that work in both the Unity 3D editor and game clients. This saves us massive amounts of time we’d otherwise spend in the guts of the technology and rediscovering best practices, instead of doing what we need to do: designing great games.”

In addition to selling Timelines, Disruptor Beam also shifted its business by shutting down Ascent and March to War, and it’s sold an unnamed, still-in-development title to East Side Games.

Beamable team

The Beamable team Image Credits: Beamable

Radoff suggested that when Disruptor Beam started, the market for licensed games tied to major entertainment franchises was still “the Wild, Wild West” providing “a tremendous opportunity” for startups to innovate. Now, however, it’s a “mature market” that’s dominated by larger developers.

Radoff also acknowledged that he spent much of 2019 “trying to figure out how to have my cake and eat it too” — in other words, how the company could turn the game platform into a business while continuing to develop games of its own.

“Ultimately, I concluded that game development is an obsession,” he said. “When you have a company in which any amount of game development is happening, no matter what you do, you’re always going to be obsessed with game development, and that obsession tends to push out your ability to create great technology or a great product for developers.”

Instead, Radoff decided to sell off the company’s games and try to build an organization (now operating remotely via Zoom, like everyone else) that’s equally obsessed with building a development platform — primarily for mobile games, but also for PC and console.


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Sonos launches Sonos Radio, a free streaming radio service including artist and genre stations


Sonos has launched its first in-house music streaming offering: Sonos Radio, a digital streaming radio service that includes both existing radio stations from TuneIn and iHeartRadio, as well as its own original programming through three new products including two ad-free offerings and one ad-supported option.

The original streaming options from Sonos include Sonos Sound System; an ad-free single station hosted by Sonos itself, that will play “new and well-known” music, along with snippets of stories from artists about their music, as well as hours guest-hosted by select artists themselves. Sonos says this is all about mixing crowd-pleasers with the occasional song you might’ve missed, in a bid to create a single stream that will have broad appeal.

There’s also Artist Stations, which also don’t have any ads, and which are hand-curated by artists and feature a selection of songs they love or that have inspired them. The first such station, debuting with the Sonos Radio launch, is Thom Yorke’s ‘In the Absence Thereof…’, and there are more to follow in the “coming weeks,” including stations from Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, David Byrne and more.

The final component of the original Sonos streaming content is Sonos Stations, which include over 30 dedicated genre stations. These are also free, but are ad-supported, so you’ll hear the occasional promotional message throughout the stream, kind of like you get with Spotify’s free tier.

To date, Sonos has acted strictly as an integrator for the services of others, operating the platform layer to provide in-house, multi-room streaming via its Sonos speaker and audio equipment products. This marks its first foray into doing something on the services side, so it’s a big change. I asked about whether this signals further moves into streaming, including through a potential paid premium offering with on-demand content, which would more directly compete with some of its biggest partners including Apple, Google and Spotify, and Sonos Product Marketing Director Ryan Richards didn’t shut the door on that possibility.

“This is about lean-back listening, it’s about discovery,” he said. “There are a lot of options for active listening out there, too, and so what we’re really focused on is first and foremost making the best possible radio service for our customers. In the future, we’ll see how that changes, but that’s what we’re focused on now.”

At launch, the global radio option backed by iHeartRadio and TuneIn will be available globally, but Sonos Radio’s original products will only be available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia, with the company planning to expand availability in future. Its in-house offerings are powered by a deal with Napster to use their streaming catalog, and Richards told me that that arrangement also bounds the availability of the services. Sonos is working on signing up additional streaming licensing partners for an expanded geographic footprint and catalogue size, however.

The new Sonos Radio features won’t be compatible with voice control via either Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa on Sonos hardware that supports that at launch, though Richards says the company is looking at adding that as a future feature update. Sonos also acquired a startup that built its own smart voice assistant last November, so that could potentially still result in another in-house offering to lessen its reliance on partners at some point in the future.

To get access, anyone with a Sonos system should see the new offering in their Sonos app via a software update available today.


Read Full Article

Sonos launches Sonos Radio, a free streaming radio service including artist and genre stations


Sonos has launched its first in-house music streaming offering: Sonos Radio, a digital streaming radio service that includes both existing radio stations from TuneIn and iHeartRadio, as well as its own original programming through three new products including two ad-free offerings and one ad-supported option.

The original streaming options from Sonos include Sonos Sound System; an ad-free single station hosted by Sonos itself, that will play “new and well-known” music, along with snippets of stories from artists about their music, as well as hours guest-hosted by select artists themselves. Sonos says this is all about mixing crowd-pleasers with the occasional song you might’ve missed, in a bid to create a single stream that will have broad appeal.

There’s also Artist Stations, which also don’t have any ads, and which are hand-curated by artists and feature a selection of songs they love or that have inspired them. The first such station, debuting with the Sonos Radio launch, is Thom Yorke’s ‘In the Absence Thereof…’, and there are more to follow in the “coming weeks,” including stations from Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, David Byrne and more.

The final component of the original Sonos streaming content is Sonos Stations, which include over 30 dedicated genre stations. These are also free, but are ad-supported, so you’ll hear the occasional promotional message throughout the stream, kind of like you get with Spotify’s free tier.

To date, Sonos has acted strictly as an integrator for the services of others, operating the platform layer to provide in-house, multi-room streaming via its Sonos speaker and audio equipment products. This marks its first foray into doing something on the services side, so it’s a big change. I asked about whether this signals further moves into streaming, including through a potential paid premium offering with on-demand content, which would more directly compete with some of its biggest partners including Apple, Google and Spotify, and Sonos Product Marketing Director Ryan Richards didn’t shut the door on that possibility.

“This is about lean-back listening, it’s about discovery,” he said. “There are a lot of options for active listening out there, too, and so what we’re really focused on is first and foremost making the best possible radio service for our customers. In the future, we’ll see how that changes, but that’s what we’re focused on now.”

At launch, the global radio option backed by iHeartRadio and TuneIn will be available globally, but Sonos Radio’s original products will only be available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia, with the company planning to expand availability in future. Its in-house offerings are powered by a deal with Napster to use their streaming catalog, and Richards told me that that arrangement also bounds the availability of the services. Sonos is working on signing up additional streaming licensing partners for an expanded geographic footprint and catalogue size, however.

The new Sonos Radio features won’t be compatible with voice control via either Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa on Sonos hardware that supports that at launch, though Richards says the company is looking at adding that as a future feature update. Sonos also acquired a startup that built its own smart voice assistant last November, so that could potentially still result in another in-house offering to lessen its reliance on partners at some point in the future.

To get access, anyone with a Sonos system should see the new offering in their Sonos app via a software update available today.


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WhatsApp and WHO launch stickers to help people get through these tough times


WhatsApp is deepening its collaboration with the World Health Organization as people across the globe grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. The Facebook-owned service said today it is attempting to appeal to users in a language that they speak “billions” of times a day on its platform: Stickers.

The service, with more than 2 billion users, today introduced a new sticker pack, called “Together At Home,” that captures the moments and emotions that people are going through each day.

The stickers, developed in collaboration with the WHO, are available in 10 languages, including Arabic, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

“This pack offers creative ways to remind people to wash their hands, maintain distance, exercise, and importantly to celebrate medical heroes as well as the personal heroes in all of our lives,” WhatsApp, which added stickers feature on its platform in 2018, wrote in a blog post.

Stickers have become especially popular in developing markets such as India. Hike, a Tencent-backed messaging service in India, has added tens of thousands of stickers in recent months on its app and says it can’t make enough of them fast enough for its users.

Last month, WhatsApp collaborated with the WHO to launch an information service that reached more than 10 million users within days. The Facebook-owned service is also working with federal and state governments in many markets to help them deliver authoritative information about the infectious disease in many countries.

Additionally, WhatsApp said it is also introducing a new sticker pack based on the popular Japanese character Rilakkuma to give people more ways to express everyday emotions.

More features are on their way. The service has started to test group video and audio calls with eight users, up from four it supports currently. The feature, when rolled out to all users, could help WhatsApp compete more directly with Houseparty and Zoom that have reported major surge in their respective userbases in recent weeks.

WhatsApp, which recently introduced new limit on forwarding messages on its app, has also confirmed it is working on a new feature to help users identify whether the text or media content they have received asserts accurate information.


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VanMoof introduces new S3 and X3 electric bikes


VanMoof is releasing a new generation of its electric bike. In many ways, the VanMoof S3 and its smaller version the VanMoof X3 are refined versions of the VanMoof Electrified S2 and X2. It features an updated motor, hydraulic brakes and a familiar design.

If you’re not familiar with VanMoof bikes, the company has been building electric bikes with some smart features, such as an anti-theft system. There’s an integrated motion detector combined with an alarm, a GPS chip and cellular connectivity. If you declare your bike as stolen, the GPS and cellular chips go live and you can track your bike in the VanMoof app.

The company wants to control as much of the experience as possible, which means that it designs the bike in house, sells it on its website and in its own stores. 80% of orders happen on the website and VanMoof now has nine stores around the world. The company has sold 120,000 bikes over the years.

The S3 and X3 still feature the iconic triangular-shaped futuristic-looking frame. The electric motor has been updated — it is more powerful, more responsive, quieter and smaller. You’re not going to constantly switch from one gear to another as there’s an electronic gear shifting system — it has been updated from two gears to four gears. All you have to do is jump on the bike and start pedaling.

A big improvement compared to the previous generation is that the S3 and X3 now feature hydraulic brakes instead of mechanical disc brakes. And you’ll find the good old boost button on the handlebar to get an extra burst of acceleration when you need it.

When it comes to design, the saddle has been redesigned, the coating on the bike is now matte and you’ll see a lot of changes across the board. The only difference between the S3 and X3 is that the S3 is designed for taller people while the X3 is designed for smaller people. Unfortunately, it looks like the battery is still not removable.

The company is trying to control the supply chain as much as possible. It works with a small set of suppliers to manufacture custom components and then tries to cut out as many middleperson as possible to bring costs down. The VanMoof S3 and X3 cost €1,998 but the company could raise the introductory price in the future due to pressure on the supply chain.

Here’s a video of the previous generation VanMoof Electrified X2 we shot a couple of months ago:


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Facebook Avatars, a Bitmoji competitor, launches in Europe


Facebook Avatars, which lets users customize a virtual lookalike of themselves for use as stickers in chat and comments, is now available across Europe, the company said today.

The social giant’s Avatars, a clone of Snapchat’s popular Bitmoji, was first unveiled last year and introduced to users in Australia. The feature is aimed at making engagements on Facebook fun, youthful, visually communicative, and “more light-hearted.” Users can create their avatar from the sticker tray in the comment section of a News Feed post or in Messenger.

As my colleague Josh Constine wrote last year, “Avatars aren’t quite as cute or hip to modern slang as Bitmoji. But they could still become a popular way to add some flare to replies without resorting to cookie-cutter emoticons or cliche GIFs.” A number of companies including Xiaomi have replicated Bitmoji in recent years.

A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that Avatars was available in Australia and New Zealand prior to Tuesday’s announcement. The company has not disclosed how users have received the feature.

More to follow…


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Jamf Now Makes Managing Apple Devices Easy for Small Businesses


At even the best of times, setting up and managing dozens of devices can be a challenge for any small or medium-sized business. But when your entire team is working remotely, even basic tasks such as installing updates can seem impossible.

Jamf Now provides a simple solution for any business that uses Apple technology. This online platform allows you to manage every iPhone, iPad, and Mac in one simple interface. You can even set up new devices remotely, and push updates to colleagues who are working at home.

Apple MDM

Over the past few years, many businesses have switched to Apple. While iPhones and MacBooks are easy to use, a good onboarding process is proven to improve staff productivity and retention rates.

Through Jamf Now, you can set up a new device and install essential apps in minutes. Your employees receive a link that takes them to an enrollment screen. With a couple of taps, they can jump on the system, get connected to Wi-Fi, and access their company inbox.

To speed up the process even more, you can create Blueprints — templates of how devices should be set up, from settings to apps.

Once a device is connected to Jamf Now, it arrives in your digital inventory. From here, you can adjust permissions and perform maintenance, such as installing software updates and enforcing data encryption. Given that small businesses account for 58% of data breaches, this stuff is pretty important.

Affordable for All

Starting at $2 per device/month, Jamf Now is also truly affordable. Want to give it a try? Sign up today and add your first three devices free.

Read the full article: Jamf Now Makes Managing Apple Devices Easy for Small Businesses


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5 DIY Resources to Repair Appliances and Fix Common Problems at Home


DIY Resources to Repair Appliances and Fix Common Problems at Home

You don’t always need a professional to repair a malfunctioning appliance or product. These internet experts will teach you DIY fixes for any common problems in the household.

You are stuck at home and isolating yourself. But what do you do if your refrigerator breaks down, or your car won’t start, or there’s a big plumbing problem at home? Even though such services are available, relying on repairmen seems like it should be the last resort.

Experts on the internet can help you fix many small issues. You’ll find simple DIY guides with tools you already have at home, detailed YouTube videos, and appliance manuals that you may have misplaced. If you still can’t figure it out, there are safe communities to ask questions.

1. ManualsLib and Manual Agent (Web): Find Digital Copy of Lost Manuals

Find lost manuals of appliances and gadgets at ManualsLib and Manual Agent

Not every problem requires you to break out the toolkit and get some grease on your hands. Before you dive in, first check the manual. Much like the famed “turn it off and on again” solution, the appliance manual often has ways to troubleshoot common malfunctions.

If you lost your manual, check two websites to find it. ManualsLib has been around for a long time and is one of the most useful websites you don’t know about. It hosts a catalog of 2.8 million product manuals. Manual Agent is comparatively new, with 700,000 manuals. But in both places, you will find it easy to search or browse to find a manual for your product.

The difficult part is when you don’t know your appliance’s model name or number. These manual libraries can’t help then.

If you purchased it online, there’s a chance you might have the receipt in your inbox archives. You could also try going to the manufacturer’s website, as some manufacturers let you search for products based on the year of purchase. It’s a long shot, but it might just work out.

2. Family Handyman (Web): Repair Appliances and Fix Common Problems

Learn how to fix problems at home with guides from Family Handyman

Part of the Reader’s Digest family, Family Handyman boasts of an extensive catalog of guides. Mainly, you need to check the How To & Repair section, which breaks down issues into appliance repair, automotive, household, pest control, plumbing, woodworking, and so on. You can also browse based on rooms, making it easier to find correlated projects that you can perhaps accomplish together.

The step-by-step guides feature simple language that’s easy to understand for a complete novice. In most cases, you don’t need any background knowledge of DIY tools.

The clearly labeled photos make a big difference in ensuring you won’t make mistakes. Usually, the guides include both text as well as a short video, depending on what you prefer.

If you’ve got some extra time, try out the Family Handyman DIY University. Professionals teach online classes on a variety of projects and skills. It even has a few limited-time free classes for things like wood finishing or adding kitchen storage.

3. Repair Clinic (Web): Best for Beginners to Diagnose and Fix Appliance Problems

Repair Clinic has step-by-step guides to fix common appliance problems and to buy spare parts

Let’s say your refrigerator or washing machine isn’t working. But “not working” is such a generic term that a Google search doesn’t help you get any closer to solving the problem.

Repair Clinic is an excellent place for the layperson to figure out what the actual issue is, and how to fix it.

Start at “Repair Help” and key in the malfunctioning appliance’s model number or choose from a list of products. You will see a list of several common problems with that type of product, in plain English, so you can figure out what is and isn’t your problem. This is where Repair Clinic is better than a random Google search.

Once you’ve found your problem, go through the recommended solutions one by one. Repair Clinic lists them by severity, so make sure you have ruled out the first cause before moving on the next one.

The website claims it has over 4,500 videos by technicians, over 7,000 diagrams and manuals, and over 700 articles to solve common problems.

Apart from suggesting fixes, Repair Clinic also sells parts and shows you how to remove, replace, or install items. If they still ship to you, you might save money with a DIY repair job.

4. Remove and Replace (Web): Super Simple Repairs and Household Hacks

Remove and Replace has simple instructions to fix common household problems and repair appliances

Is the washing machine not filling with water? Is the hose leaking? Is the stove oven knob broken or missing? Is the refrigerator not cold enough? Remove and Replace will solve all of these everyday problems in a house, often offering ingenious tips and hacks.

The articles follow a simple pattern. It talks about the possible causes of the problem from least to most difficult to fix. These will include commonsense solutions as well as some advanced ideas, and even videos from experts.

The website often adds photos and illustrations that make it much easier for non-engineers to visualize the issue. After all, understanding the problem is a key step to solving it.

The only gripe with Remove and Replace is how difficult it is to browse the website. You’ll have to use the search bar to find your issue, or scroll through the giant list of articles in the right sidebar.

5. DIY Chatroom (Web): Active Community to Ask Questions

DIY Chatroom has a community full of people ready to help with questions regarding home repair and applianaces

While all of the above websites make it their mission to simplify DIY repairs, you might still be stuck. That’s okay. It can still be confusing, it can feel like too much information, or you might simply need a human to explain it to you.

If that’s you, go to DIY Chatroom, one of the best online forums for DIY repairs and fixes.

The community is extremely active always. Find the right section (home improvement, appliances, windows and doors, automotive, PC repair, etc.) and search for your issue.

If no one has had a similar issue in the past, create a new thread to ask your query. Be as clear as you can be about your problem, and provide photos if you can. The folks at DIY Chatroom are generally quite helpful, but being civil and detailed will get answers more quickly.

The website also has general articles worth checking out. You’ll find advice on home repair, home improvement, painting, remodeling, landscaping, and interior decorating. If you’re new to using tools, do check the Equipment and Safety section before you start.

Repair Your Own Gadgets

Much like home improvement and appliances, you can fix your own laptop, smartphone, speakers, or other gadgets. While the websites in this article focus on DIY repairs and fixes for the household, there are specialist portals where you can learn to fix your own gadgets. Try it out, it’s easier than you think.

Read the full article: 5 DIY Resources to Repair Appliances and Fix Common Problems at Home


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Samsung’s Galaxy Watch blood pressure monitoring app approved by South Korean regulators


Samsung Electronics announced today that its blood pressure monitoring app for Galaxy Watches has been approved by South Korean regulators. Called the Samsung Health Monitor, the app will be available for the Galaxy Watch Active2 during the third quarter, at least in South Korea, and added to upcoming Galaxy Watch devices.

TechCrunch has contacted Samsung for more information on when the app, which uses the Galaxy Watch Active2’s advanced sensor technology, will be available in other markets.

It was cleared by South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for use as an over-the-counter, cuffless blood pressure monitoring app. The app first has to be calibrated with a traditional blood pressure cuff, then it monitors blood pressure through pulse wave analysis. Users need to recalibrate the app at least once every four weeks.

According to a recent report by IDC, in the last quarter of 2019, Samsung wearables ranked third in terms of shipments, behind Apple and Xiaomi, with volume driven by its Galaxy Active watches. Samsung has sought to differentiate its smartwatches with a focus on health and fitness monitoring, including sleep trackers.

 


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The Best (Free) Speech-to-Text Software for Windows


speech-to-text-windows

Looking for the best free speech to text software on Windows?

The best speech-to-text software is Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) but it comes at a price. But how does it compare to the best of the free programs, like Google Docs Voice Typing (GDVT) and Windows Speech Recognition (WSR)?

Dragon Home 15.0, Dictate Documents and Control your PC – all by Voice, [PC Download] Dragon Home 15.0, Dictate Documents and Control your PC – all by Voice, [PC Download] Buy Now On Amazon $119.99

This article compares Dragon against Google Docs Voice Typing and Windows Speech Recognition for three typical uses:

  • Writing novels.
  •  Academic transcription.
  • Writing business documents like memos.

Comparing Speech Recognition Software: Dragon Vs. Google Vs Microsoft

We will look at the nuances between the three below, but here’s an overview on their pros and cons which will help you quickly make a decision.

1. Dragon Speech Recognition

Dragon Naturally Speaking beats Microsoft’s and Google’s software in voice recognition.

DNS scores 10% better on average compared to both programs. But is Dragon Naturally Speaking worth the money?

It depends on what you’re using it for. For seamless, high-accuracy writing that will require little proof-reading, DNS is the best speech-to-text software around.

2. Windows Speech Recognition

If you don’t mind proofreading your documents, WSR is a great free speech-recognition software.

On the downside, it requires that you use a Windows computer. It’s also only about 90% accurate, making it the least accurate out of all the voice recognition software tested in this article.

However, it’s integrated into the Windows operating system, which means it can also control the computer itself, such as shutdown and sleep.

3. Google Docs Voice Typing

Google Docs Voice Typing is highly limited in how and where you use it. It only works in Google Docs, in the Chrome Browser, and with an internet connection.

But it offers several options on mobile devices. Android smartphones have the ability to transcribe your voice to text using the same speech-to-text engine that also works with Google Keep or Live Transcribe.

And while Dragon Naturally Speaking offers a mobile app, it’s treated as a separate purchase from the desktop client.

Dragon and Microsoft work in any place you can enter text. However, WSR can execute control functions whereas Dragon is mostly limited to text input.

Download: Live Transcribe for Android (Free)

Speech-to-Text Testing Methods

In order to test the accuracy of the dictation with the tools, I read aloud three texts:

  • Charles Darwin’s “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties”
  • H.P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu”
  • California Governor Jerry Brown’s 2017 State of the State speech

When a speech-to-text software miscapitalized a word, I marked the text as blue in the right-column (see graphic below). When one of the software got a word wrong, the misspelled word was marked in red. I did not consider wrong capitalizations to be errors.

I used a Blue Yeti microphone which is the best microphone for podcasting and a relatively fast computer. However, you don’t need any special hardware. Any laptop or smartphone transcribes speech as well as a more expensive machine.

Test 1: Dragon Naturally Speaking Speech-to-Text Accuracy

dragon naturally speaking speech to text test sample

Dragon scored 100% on accuracy on all three sample texts. While it failed to capitalize the first letter on every text, it otherwise performed beyond my expectations.

While all three transcription suites do a great job of accurately turning spoken words into written text, DNS comes out way ahead of its competitors. It even successfully understood complicated words such as “hitherto” and “therein”.

Test 2: Google Docs Voice Typing Speech-to-Text Accuracy

google docs voice typing text to speech sample

Google Docs Voice Typing had many errors compared to Dragon. GDVT got 93.5% right on Lovecraft, 96.5% correct for Brown, and 96.5% for Darwin. Its average accuracy came out to around 95.2% for all three texts.

On the downside, it automatically capitalized a lot of words that didn’t need capitalization. It seems the engine also hasn’t improved in accuracy since I last tested GDVT three years ago.

Test 3: Microsoft Windows Speech Recognition Text-to-Speech Accuracy

Microsoft’s Windows Speech Recognition came in last. Its accuracy on Lovecraft was 84.3%, although it did not miscapitalize any words like GDVT. For Brown’s speech, it got its highest accuracy rating of around 94.8%, making it equivalent to GDVT.

For Darwin’s book, it managed to get a similarly high score of 93.1%. Its average accuracy across all texts came out to 89%.

Are Free Transcription Services Worth Using?

  • Dragon Naturally Speaking got a perfect 100% accuracy for voice transcription.
  • Microsoft’s free voice-to-text service, Windows Speech Recognition scored an 89% accuracy.
  • Google Docs Voice Typing got a total score of 95.2% accuracy.

However, there are some major limitations to free text-to-speech options you should always keep in mind.

GDVT only works in the Chrome browser. On top of that, it only works for Google Docs. If you need to enter something in a spreadsheet or in a word processor other than Google Docs, you are out of luck.

Our test results indicate it is more accurate than WSR, but you have to keep in mind that it only works in Chrome for Google Docs. And you will always need an internet connection.

WSR can make you more productive with its hands-off computer automation features. Plus, it can enter text. Its accuracy is the weakest out of the services that I tested.

That said, you can live with its misses if you are not a heavy transcriber. It’s on par with Google Docs Voice Typing but limited to Windows.

For most users, the free options should be good enough. However, for all those who need high levels of transcription accuracy, Dragon Naturally Speaking is the best option around. As an occasional user, if you need a free service, Google Docs Voice Typing is a viable alternative.

These tools prove that your voice can make you more productive. Now, try out Google Voice Assistant which is the best voice-control assistant you can use right now to manage everyday tasks.

Read the full article: The Best (Free) Speech-to-Text Software for Windows


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