Mozilla is synonymous with Firefox, which remains one of the best web browsers in the world. But there’s a lot more happening at Mozilla these days, from cool mobile apps to exploring and protecting the internet. Check it out.
You probably know that Mozilla also makes apps like Thunderbird, and recently bought the read-it-later bookmarking app Pocket. Those are pretty well known though. It’s the smaller Mozilla initiatives that don’t get much limelight, and we’re here to fix that.
As you probably guessed, these apps and tools perform best with Mozilla Firefox, but they also work with Chrome, Safari, Edge, or any other modern browser.
Notes by Firefox (Android, Desktop): Synced Notes Between Mobile and Desktop
Mozilla’s latest experiment is an app for Android devices called Notes. This is a mobile version of the Notes app first released as part of Mozilla’s test pilot program.
Download the app on your Android and sign in using your Firefox account. It’ll quickly sync notes between the desktop browser and the app. Now you have a secure, encrypted notepad to jot down anything you want.
Notes by Firefox is actually quite similar to our favorite note-taking app, Simplenote. You can start unlimited notes, edit them with basic formatting, and read the plain text notes offline too.
Firefox has a nifty password manager built into the browser. With the use of Firefox Sync, you can access all those passwords on the desktop and the iOS version of Firefox. But apps like LastPass and 1Password give you those passwords outside of the browser, in other apps. The new Lockbox is here to fix that.
You can now continue to use the built-in Firefox password manager across your desktop and mobile devices, while still getting to sign in to apps with it. Just fire up Lockbox and tap an account. Now you can copy-paste the password into the relevant app, or sometimes, Lockbox will automatically open the app and log you in.
It’s a lot like some of the best password managers for iOS, including features like 256-bit encryption as well as fingerprint and Face ID support. And it’s completely free.
In April 2018, Mozilla launched its first full edition of the Internet Health Report, in what will now be an annual tradition. The full report is free to read online or to download as an ebook.
In the report, Mozilla tackles questions that are on the mind of anyone who uses the internet, covering topics like privacy, security, openness, digital inclusion, web literacy, and decentralization. Each section tells you why it’s an issue you should understand, what people across the world are doing to tackle it, and how it affects the internet today.
The report’s basic idea is to put a human angle to the state of the internet since humans are its biggest stakeholders. Anyone is free to download the abridged version as a PDF or explore the full version online, where you can also download it as an ePub. For more, read Mozilla’s short explanation.
IRL (Podcast): Mozilla’s Podcast About Online Life
IRL is Mozilla’s official podcast about the things that affect all of our real and digital lives because of the internet. Host Veronica Belmont specializes in highlighting issues that you aren’t probably aware of. Of course, she also talks about trending topics, usually with experts who guest star on the show.
IRL usually tackles the social or human side of online problems. For example, the latest episode talks about what you are giving up when you click that “Accept” button to give a bot or a human access to your private data. It’s a smart look at the cost of privacy and its real outcomes.
Belmont has just started the third season of IRL, so there are 14 episodes already waiting for you to binge. I’d especially recommend checking out the fourth episode of season two, titled Cloak of Invisibility. For anyone who likes to know about the internet and its many issues, IRL is one of the best podcasts you can listen to.
Hubs By Mozilla (Web, VR): Virtual No-Signup Chatrooms for Anyone
Mozilla is focussed on bringing a better experience to the fast-approaching world of virtual reality with the Firefox Reality browser. But more than that, Mozilla wants to remove barriers between closed platforms.
Hubs is a new initiative where anyone can create a virtual chatroom, and invite anyone to be a part of it by sharing a simple link. You’ll need to choose an avatar, and then use your microphone to talk with anyone in the room. It’s audio only, no text.
You don’t need a Firefox account; heck, you don’t even need Firefox and can actually use this on Google Chrome too. Anyone is free to create, share, or join a virtual room, from any device. Of course, the experience is best with a virtual reality headset.
Instagram has added a new Questions sticker designed to make your Stories much more engaging. As its name suggests the Questions sticker enables you to put out the call for friends to ask you questions, and you can reply directly to any that interest you.
In October 2017, Instagram introduced a Poll sticker allowing you to survey your friends. And in June 2018, Instagram introduced the option to add music to your Stories. Now, Instagram has introduced a Questions sticker likely to increase engagement levels.
You Can Now Ask Me Anything on Instagram
Instagram’s new Questions sticker allows you to either ask questions or ask your friends to ask you questions. You could type “Ask me anything!” and wait for the questions to roll in. Or you could, for example, ask friends what they think of your new haircut.
The idea is to get a conversation going, changing Stories from content to consume to content to interact with. As Instagram puts it, the Questions sticker is “a fun new way to start conversations with your friends so you can get to know each other better.”
How to Use the Instagram Questions Sticker
To add a Questions Sticker to a story take a photo or video as you would normally. Then select the Questions sticker from the sticker tray. Type out your message, and then place it wherever you want to in the aforementioned photo or video.
Friends can tap the sticker to reply directly to your question. Their reply will appear in your viewers’ list, and tapping on it will create a new story containing their question. While you’ll be able to see who has asked what, your friends will not be identified in Stories.
Update Instagram to the Latest Version
The Questions sticker is available on Android and iOS as part of Instagram 52. So if you aren’t yet seeing the option to add a Questions sticker to your Stories be sure to update the Instagram app on your smartphone to the latest version.
Instagram Stories continue to go from strength to strength, with more and more people using them every month. If you’re not yet on board, here are all the basics you need to know. And if you need extra help why not try these tips to make your Stories stand out.
Few computer issues are quite as frustrating as a PC that refuses to boot up. When your system can’t even initialize, it’s difficult to make any headway in locating the source of the problem.
Of course, there’s no reason to despair. Even if things look bleak for your PC, you can try plenty of fixes before it’s truly beyond repair. Windows 10 offers several methods of sorting out the boot process, and there are a few easy techniques you can carry out for yourself.
With any luck, this guide should help find the culprit behind your computer’s unwillingness to boot.
1. Try Windows Safe Mode
The most bizarre fix for Windows 10 boot problems is Safe Mode. It is an alternative boot scheme that starts your computer with a minimum of software. The modified boot process can bypass driver and software problems. The weird thing is, sometimes starting the computer in Safe Mode can fix boot problems. It’s not clear to me what processes run in Safe Mode, but experience has taught me it’s an effective and easy fix.
If your computer won’t boot, however, you might have problems entering Safe Mode. There are two relatively easy ways to get into it.
Method 1: Enter Safe Mode From the Windows Recovery
Most unbootable computers “hang” (or not progress beyond) the Windows splash screen. (For other Windows issues, please consult our guide to Windows troubleshooting.)
From here, you can force the computer to enter Safe Mode by interrupting the boot process three times in a row, which automatically triggers the Windows Recovery. From the Choose an option recovery window, choose Troubleshoot, then Advanced options, and then Startup Settings.
From Startup Settings, you can reboot the computer into Safe mode, either with the internet enabled or disabled. Either option should work.
Method 2: Safe Mode with a Windows 10 Recovery Drive
If you cannot enter Safe mode, you need to create a Windows 10 USB recovery drive. The recovery drive contains the Windows 10 recovery environment—which used to be accessible by tapping F8 on boot. Unfortunately, Microsoft decided to eliminate this feature.
Creating a recovery drive requires that you have another Windows 10 computer and a USB drive with at least 512MB of storage. If you want to create a system backup (you’ll see an option to back up system files to the recovery drive), you’ll need 16GB of storage.
Launch Control Panel > Create a recovery drive.
Then follow the guided instructions.
After creating the recovery drive, you can boot your computer from it only if you’ve turned on USB drives as bootable from the POST environment, also known as UEFI or BIOS. After enabling USB drives as bootable, insert the drive into your computer and restart (this may require hitting the reset button or holding the power button down for a few seconds).
2. Unplug All Your USB Devices
A serious issue with Windows 10 updates is that sometimes your computer won’t boot because of a conflict with a USB device. You can solve this problem by unplugging all USB devices (and any other unneeded peripherals) and restarting the computer.
If your computer stays on the same loading screen, removing all USB devices automatically solves the problem. Other times, you may need to restart the computer.
3. Turn Off Fast Boot
There’s a setting inside of your BIOS or UEFI called Fast Boot that allows Windows 8 and newer operating systems to boot very rapidly by preloading drivers. Unfortunately, Windows updates can break Fast Boot compatibility. Fortunately, Fast Boot can be toggled on and off through your BIOS.
The method to enter the BIOS/UEFI screen differs between computers. For instructions on how to find the correct way for your computer, please consult our guide to finding a computer’s UEFI/BIOS. For most people, tapping the Delete key while booting should trigger the POST environment. Two other common keys that might work are F2 and Escape.
After entering the BIOS or UEFI, the Fast Boot option normally is part of the Advanced options, although it can be anywhere.
If you don’t see any Fast Boot entry, your computer was made before 2013 as they did not include a Fast Boot option.
4. Try a Malware Scan
Malware is a major cause of an unbootable computer. The common method of dealing with malware that causes boot problems is an anti-malware program that can boot from a USB or DVD drive. Some companies provide this software for free, such as BitDefender’s rescue CD. One of my favorites is AVG Rescue CD (it can be installed onto a USB drive, despite the name).
After imaging the CD onto a USB drive, you can then boot the afflicted computer up with the drive inserted. If you’ve set the computer to boot from the rescue drive, it will start in the AVG rescue environment. Then perform the malware scan.
If you’re using a laptop, battery issues could well be the source of your system’s inability to boot properly. It’s worth testing an alternate charger cable to see if it solves the problem. Confirm that the cable is working by trying it out on another laptop. Next, remove your system’s battery and plug the device into a power source.
Removing the battery will help you discover if a hardware problem is to blame. The key here is to ensure that you’re only testing one element at any given time. If power issues interfere with the startup, it’s crucial that you know whether the battery, the charging cable, or another component requires replacement.
6. Boot to the Command Prompt Interface
When your computer can’t boot properly, it really can’t do much at all. However, it might still be possible to boot directly to the Command Prompt to expand its range of abilities. Using this interface, you can perform more troubleshooting procedures, and perhaps even fix your problem. You’ll need to have Windows 10 on a bootable disk or USB drive to carry out the procedure, so use another computer to set that up before you get started.
To boot to the Command prompt, start up your system. While it’s initializing, watch out for details of a combination of keys that will allow you to enter the BIOS. This information is typically delivered alongside the vendor logo.
Navigate to the Boot tab and make either the USB or DVD drive the first bootable device. Your choice here will depend on where your copy of Windows 10 is located. Again, the specifics of this process may vary from one system to another, so consult the on-screen instructions.
Next, insert the disk or drive containing Windows 10 into your system, save your configuration, and restart your PC.
When prompted, use your keyboard to specify that you want to boot using the disk or drive. Enter the requested language, currency, and input preferences, then select Repair your computer on the next screen. Next, select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt, you should then see a window to enter commands.
7. Use System Restore or Startup Repair
If you’re already booting Windows 10 from a disk or drive, it’s well worth utilizing a couple of utilities that are available as part of the process. Once you’ve booted from the drive as detailed above, you’ll get access to options that can get your PC back on track. Look out for links to System Restore and Startup Repair on the Advanced Options screen.
System Restore is a utility that allows you to return to a previous Restore Point when your computer was working normally. It can remedy boot problems that were caused by a change you made, rather than a hardware failure.
Startup Repair is a general-purpose troubleshooter for issues that prevent Windows from starting up. If you’re struggling to find the source of your boot issues, it’s a good idea to run the utility in case it can find a solution.
8. Reassign Your Drive Letter
A system with more than one drive installed can cause boot issues for Windows 10 users if their operating system (OS) volume has its drive letter unintentionally unassigned. However, you can fix this problem with a minimum of fuss by booting to the command prompt interface.
Boot to a command prompt window as explained above, then enter the following to run the disk partition utility:
diskpart
Once this is done, input list volume to print details of all the volumes currently hooked up to your system.
From here, you can use the select and assign letter commands to reassign the correct letter to an unassigned volume. For instance, if I wanted to assign the letter E to the Audio CD volume in the above image, I would first input “select volume 0” and then input “assign letter=E” to complete the process.
As ever, be very careful when making changes in the command prompt. Making mistakes here can quickly cause further problems from your PC.
9. Dodge the Windows 10 Bootloader
If you run into problems while trying to make a fresh installation of Windows 10, you may encounter the new version of the bootloader utility. This can sometimes interfere with attempts to reach an existing OS installation that’s present on another drive.
Fortunately, there’s a relatively straightforward way to remedy this situation. Boot to the command prompt interface and enter the following:
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy
Restart your computer, and you should find that the legacy bootloader interface has replaced the Windows 10 iteration. You should have no further problems entering Windows 10 Safe Mode or accessing your existing OS installation.
10. Try a Third-Party Utility
Figuring out what exactly is the cause of the problem is the most challenging part of remedying boot issues. When your system can’t even boot, it’s difficult to diagnose the problem. However, a third-party utility called Boot Repair Disk might have more success.
Boot Repair Disk is an open-source rescue disk that you can use to automatically find and fix issues preventing your PC from booting up. It’s very easy to use—you only have to select whether you’re using a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. The test and any fixes are carried out automatically, although there are options that allow for more close control.
It makes no guarantees to fix your PC, but it may well be able to pinpoint hidden problems.
11. Factory Reset
We’re getting into the more difficult and destructive repair options at this point. Aside from a factory reset, the more difficult options include restoring and refreshing your computer. Each has its own advantages and weaknesses. If you’ve tried all the other options, you’re probably frustrated.
Go for a factory reset. You’ll lose some apps and other data, but you can opt to keep some of your files. A Windows 10 factory reset (Microsoft refers to this process as just “reset”) restores the computer to its default operating state.
12. Repair Update (“In-Place Upgrade”)
The repair installation is similar to a factory reset, except in one big way: it completely reinstalls your computer. Unfortunately, it requires downloading the entire Windows operating system and you’ll need a functional Windows computer with an internet connection.
This method requires that you have a functional computer, a DVD or USB drive, and an internet connection. More or less, you must download and run the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool and use it to create a bootable installer.
This method is fairly complex, but I can recommend a video:
Windows 10 Boot Problems: Fixed!
Solving Windows 10 boot problems is worse than in Windows 7, thanks to the removal of an easy-to-access Safe Mode. (Yes, you read me right, Microsoft removed the F8 option for booting in Safe Mode to give us 2-second faster booting.) That’s why it’s extra important that you use a 16GB flash drive to create a system recovery drive.
Technology executives are pleading with the government to give them guidance on how to use facial recognition technologies, and now the American Civil Liberties Union is weighing in.
On the heels of a Microsoft statement asking for the federal government to weigh in on the technology, the ACLU has called for a moratorium on the use of the technology by government agencies.
“Congress should take immediate action to put the brakes on this technology with a moratorium on its use, given that it has not been fully debated and its use has never been explicitly authorized,” said Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel, in a statement. “And companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and others should be heeding the calls from the public, employees, and shareholders to stop selling face surveillance technology to governments.”
Meanwhile, Google employees revolted over their company’s work with the government on facial recognition tech… and Microsoft had problems of its own after reports surfaced of the work that the company was doing with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement service.
Some organizations are already working to regulate how facial recognition technologies are used. At MIT, Joy Buolamwini has created the Algorithmic Justice League, which is pushing a pledge that companies working with the technology can agree to as they work on the tech.
That pledge includes commitments to value human life and dignity, including the refusal to help develop lethal autonomous vehicles or equipping law enforcement with facial analysis products.
If you’re endlessly distracted by your co-workers in the gaping open office space you all share, you’re not alone. Compared to traditional office spaces, face-to-face interaction in open office spaces is down 70 percent with resulting slips in productivity, according to Harvard researchers in a new study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B this month.
In the study, researchers followed two anonymous Fortune 500 companies during their transitions between a traditional office space to an open plan environment and used a sensor called a “sociometric badge” (think company ID on a lanyard) to record detailed information about the kind of interactions employees had in both spaces. The study collected information in two stages; first for several weeks before the renovation and the second for several weeks after.
While the concept behind open office spaces is to drive informal interaction and collaboration among employees, the study found that for both groups of employees monitored (52 for one company and 100 for the other company) face-to-face interactions dropped, the number of emails sent increased between 20 and 50 percent and company executives reported a qualitative drop in productivity.
“[Organizations] transform their office architectures into open spaces with the intention of creating more [face-to-face] interaction and thus a more vibrant work environment,” study’s authors, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, wrote. “[But] what they often get—as captured by a steady stream of news articles professing the death of the open office is an open expanse of proximal employees choosing to isolate themselves as best they can (e.g. by wearing large headphones) while appearing to be as busy as possible (since everyone can see them).”
While this study is far from the first to point fingers at open office space designs, the researchers claim this is the first study of its kind to collect qualitative data on this shift in working environment instead of relying primarily on employee surveys.
From their results, the researchers provide three cautionary tales:
Open office spaces don’t actually promote interaction. Instead, they cause employees to seek privacy wherever they can find it.
These open spaces might spell bad news for collective company intelligence or, in other words, an overstimulating office space creates a decrease in organizational productivity.
Not all channels of interaction will be effected equally in an open layout change. While the number of emails sent in the study did increase, the study found that the richness of this interaction was not equal to that lost in face-to-face interactions.
Seems like it might be time to (first, find a quiet room) and go back to the drawing board with the open office design.
The company that brought you the best glass for your mobile device now gives you DSLR-like controls with their Pro Camera app. Features include full manual adjustment over ISO, shutter speed, white balance, image format and more.
It should be noted that if you don’t have a shiny new device you won’t be able to use the app to its full potential since some of its key features include 3D touch, dual lens control, RAW image format, 120 and 240 fps, and 4k resolution.
Moment says the app is for “anyone looking for pro, manual controls on their phone.” Being one of TechCrunch’s resident image makers, I figured I should take the app out for a spin and pit it against the stock camera app. I enlisted my photogenic friend, Jackie, to be my muse.
Scrolling through the manual settings was very easy and the UI never felt fumbly. The histogram is nice to have and utilizes that iPhone notch well. The app doesn’t have portrait mode, however, which Jackie and I would have loved because who doesn’t love that buttery (fake) bokeh – amirite? Manipulating the exposure in video mode was equally as easy. The app didn’t have an audio meter or level settings, so folks recording dialog or VO need to plan accordingly. Luckily, our shoot didn’t need it since we were shooting slow-mo.
For a couple extra bucks you can get the same manual controls, audio levels, + RAW with ProCam 5. But if you’re already invested in the Moment Lens ecosystem and primarily shoot photography then the upgrade could be a worthwhile addition.
You can save photos in HEIF, JPG, RAW and TIFF format. For video, you have the option to shoot in 24, 30, 60, 120, and 240 fps in either 720p, 1080p or 4k resolution. Free to try. $2.99 iOS and $1.99 Android to upgrade.
A novel SSD-based architecture called the Pooling Pyramid Network (PPN) whose model size is >3x smaller than that of SSD MobileNet v1 with minimal loss in accuracy.
Additionally, we are releasing pre-trained weights for each of the above models based on the COCO dataset.
Accelerated Training via Cloud TPUs
Users spend a great deal of time on optimizing hyperparameters and retraining object detection models, therefore having fast turnaround times on experiments is critical. The models released today belong to the single shot detector (SSD) class of architectures that are optimized for training on Cloud TPUs. For example, we can now train a ResNet-50 based RetinaNet model to achieve 35% mean Average Precision (mAP) on the COCO dataset in < 3.5 hrs.
Accelerated Inference via Quantization and TensorFlow Lite
To better support low-latency requirements on mobile and embedded devices, the models we are providing are now natively compatible with TensorFlow Lite, which enables on-device machine learning inference with low latency and a small binary size. As part of this, we have implemented: (1) model quantization and (2) detection-specific operations natively in TensorFlow Lite. Our model quantization follows the strategy outlined in Jacob et al. (2018) and the whitepaper by Krishnamoorthi (2018) which applies quantization to both model weights and activations at training and inference time, yielding smaller models that run faster.
Quantized detection models are faster and smaller (e.g., a quantized 75% depth-reduced SSD Mobilenet model runs at >15 fps on a Pixel 2 CPU with a 4.2 Mb footprint) with minimal loss in detection accuracy compared to the full floating point model.
Try it Yourself with a New Tutorial!
To get started training your own model on Cloud TPUs, check out our new tutorial! This walkthrough will take you through the process of training a quantized pet face detector on Cloud TPU then exporting it to an Android phone for inference via TensorFlow Lite conversion.
We hope that these new additions will help make high-quality computer vision models accessible to anyone wishing to solve an object detection problem, and provide a more seamless user experience, from training a model with quantization to exporting to a TensorFlow Lite model ready for on-device deployment. We would like to thank everyone in the community who have contributed features and bug fixes. As always, contributions to the codebase are welcome, and please stay tuned for more updates!
Acknowledgements This post reflects the work of the following group of core contributors: Derek Chow, Aakanksha Chowdhery, Jonathan Huang, Pengchong Jin, Zhichao Lu, Vivek Rathod, Ronny Votel, Xiangxin Zhu. We would also like to thank the following colleagues: Vasu Agrawal, Sourabh Bajaj, Wenzhe Li, Tsung-Yi Lin, Hernan Moraldo, Kevin Murphy, Sara Robinson, Andrew Selle, Shashi Shekhar, Yash Sonthalia, Zak Stone, Pete Warden, Menglong Zhu.
Apple has announced a new investment fund to foster clean energy usage in China. The company isn’t just trying to switch its own offices and facilities. Apple is also working with its suppliers to expand the use of clean energy across the board.
For this fund in particular, Apple and 10 suppliers will invest $300 million over the next four years. Overall, the company expects to finance multiple clean energy projects to produce 1 gigawatt of renewable energy in China.
Apple isn’t going to manage the fund itself. The company is partnering with DWS Group, a division of Deutsche Bank. DWS will also participate in the fund.
The company started working on renewable energy projects a few years ago. Earlier this year, Apple claimed that 100 percent of its offices, retail stores, data centers and Apple-owned facilities are now powered by renewable energy.
Apple is not there yet when it comes to suppliers. The company has launched the Supplier Clean Energy Program back in 2015 with 23 manufacturing partners, and regularly shares updates — Foxconn seems to be missing so far.
By 2020, Apple and its suppliers hope to generate 4 gigawatts of clean energy. And let’s be honest, this is great news for the planet.
Don’t look now, but the PC might not be dead. According to Gartner, collector of marketshare and industry metrics, worldwide shipments of personal computers just experienced the first year-over-year growth since 2012. Shipments totaled 62.1 million units, which is a 1.4 percent increase from the same time period in 2017. The report states “experienced some growth compared with a year ago” but goes on to caution declaring the PC industry as in recovery just yet.
The top five PC vendors all experienced growth with Lenovo seeing the largest gains of 10.5% — though that could be from Lenovo completing a joint venture with Fujitsu. HP grew 6.1%, Dell 9.5%, Apple 3% and Acer 3.1%. All good signs for an industry long thought stagnate. This report excludes Chromebooks from its data. PC vendors experienced growth without the help of Chromebooks, which are the latest challenger to the notebook computer.
Gartner points to the business market as the source of the increased demand. The consumer market, it states, is still decreasing as consumers increasing use mobile devices. Yet growth in the business sector will not last, it says.
“In the business segment, PC momentum will weaken in two years when the replacement peak for Windows 10 passes.” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner said in the report. “PC vendors should look for ways to maintain growth in the business market as the Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off.”
Consumers will likely continue, for the most part, to keep a computer around but since the web is the new desktop, the upgrade cycle for a causal user will keep getting longer. As long as a home has a computer that can run Chrome, that’s likely good enough for most people.
Adobe currently has three dozens apps in the App Store. But one app is still missing. According to a report from Bloomberg, the company could be working on a full-fledged version of Photoshop for the iPad. And it makes sense for a ton of reasons.
First, it’s clear that the iPad has become powerful enough to run complicated image editing software. Just two days ago, Serif launched Affinity Designer for the iPad, an Adobe Illustrator competitor. You can also look at benchmarks to find out that the iPad Pro is now more powerful than most mid-range laptops.
Second, now that you can effortlessly sync your files and projects across multiple devices, many people work using multiple devices. It’s been true for many years if you’re just working on a Microsoft Word file on your work computer and your personal laptop for instance. Maybe you use Dropbox or OneDrive to stay on the same page. But it’s also true with huge media libraries now.
A few years ago, people looked at their devices based on contexts. Maybe you had a work laptop, a couch-computing iPad, a big desktop computer for games, etc. But this is a thing of the past now that you can literally work from all your devices.
And when it comes to Photoshop, the Apple Pencil and touch screen makes the iPad a particularly useful device. Maybe you need a big screen to look at a photo, but maybe you want to use the Apple Pencil to interact with the photo.
Bringing Photoshop to the iPad could let you seamlessly work on the same file across multiple devices, switching back and forth between those two devices. Illustrators could really use this kind of flexibility and ditch their Wacom tablet.
You might remember that Apple has put together a Pro Workflow Team for the same reason. You could imagine launching Final Cut Pro X or Logic Pro X on an iMac and on an iPad to interact with a project in different ways. Apple may not be working on Macs with a touchscreen, but it’s clear that there will be ways to interact with a creative project using your finger or the Apple Pencil.
Finally, bringing Photoshop to the iPad makes sense on a business model perspective. Now that Adobe has shifted to a subscription model, the company needs to increase stickiness as much as possible. If you end up spending more time in Adobe apps because your favorite app is on all platforms, you’ll keep paying for Creative Cloud every month.
This project will be an engineering achievement. But this isn’t the first time Adobe is developing a single app for multiple platforms.
TIL the new Lightroom CC is almost entirely built in Lua, running the same codebase on iOS, Mac, Windows & Android using Adobe's new UI system & design language. Seems significant…
— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) July 13, 2018
Bloomberg says that we might hear more from Photoshop for iPad at the Adobe Max conference in October. Adobe’s chief product officer of Creative Cloud Scott Belsky confirmed that the company was working on releasing these new versions as quickly as possible.
Think you know the Raspberry Pi’s default operating system, Raspbian? Think again!
Over the last few releases, a bunch of new features have been added. Here’s what to look out for, why these features are useful, and how you can start making the most of them.
1. Setup Wizard
If you’ve ever installed Raspbian on to your Raspberry Pi’s SD card, you’ll probably know that started can be a bit of a pain. You can use the standard installation, or rely on NOOBS, but neither of these things offers an easy setup. There’s the PiBakery, for configuring your Raspbian installation before the image is written to SD card, but other than that, there’s a bit of tweaking required.
Not anymore.
With the June 2018 release of Raspbian comes the Setup Wizard, which lets you set your country and language, enter a new password, connect to a Wi-Fi network, and check for updates. Not only does this give you the best possible user experience, it also gets you online quickly, and overcomes that famous Raspberry Pi security issue: the pi/raspberry username and password combination that everyone knows.
You won’t need this on an already-setup Raspberry Pi, but if you’re curious, you can install the Setup Wizard to take a look at it:
sudo apt install piwiz
2. Pi Compatibility
You can get hold of several different models of Raspberry Pi, and thanks to the efforts of the Raspbian development team, the operating system runs well on all of them.
Due to hardware differences, however, some applications don’t run on lower-spec models. For instance, the Raspberry Pi Zero and original Raspberry Pi cannot run the Chromium browser (although several alternatives are available).
This means that instructions for performing tasks, building projects, whatever you’re doing, are the same regardless of Pi model.
3. Recommended Software Tool
Long ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation introduced the Pi Store, a browser-based app store for Raspbian. Within, you could find software suitable for running on the Raspberry Pi, everything from popular third party apps to amateur creations.
For some reason, this was retired, and more and more software was bundled with each Raspbian release.
Until June 1018, however, when Raspbian’s image size was reduced. This was done by cutting the number of apps bundled with the operating system. Via the new Recommended Software tool, however, these apps can be installed if required, as long as your Pi is connected to the internet.
After updating your Raspberry Pi, you can add the Recommended Software tool with
sudo apt install rp-prefapps
You’ll find the new Recommended Software tool in Menu > Preferences.
4. Chromium-Based Help Files
The latest version of Chromium is bundled into new Raspbian builds, and this now includes the arrival of some improved help files.
While older, lower-spec Raspberry Pis cannot run Chromium, the Raspberry Pi 2 and later can. Just make sure you keep the number of open tabs to a minimum! The June 2018 update of Raspbian features Chromium version 65 and some updated links to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website.
You’ll also find a new Get Started option in the desktop Help menu, linking to new help pages to help you get your Raspberry Pi up and running. Look out for tips and tricks for using the computer’s key features.
5. PDF Viewer Replaced
For a long time, the Raspberry Pi’s main operating system (many others are available) shipped with a built in PDF viewer, Xpdf. Easy enough to use, Xpdf was first released in 1995 and hasn’t improved considerably since then. It struggles with media-heavy PDFs too. It’s more suited to text-only documents.
The solution for Raspbian users has been to employ a different PDF reader, but in 2018 a new PDF reader has been added to the operating system.
Known as qpdfView, this is a document viewer with a tabbed interface, with search feature, configurable toolbars and keyboard shortcuts, thumbnail panes, multi-page layouts, form support, and compatibility with PostScript and DjVu documents. In short, it’s better than Xpdf.
Add qpdfView (and uninstall Xpdf) to an existing Raspbian installation with:
sudo apt install qpdfview
sudo apt purge xpdf
6. Screen Resolution and Pixel Doubling
As of March 2018, Raspbian has a new feature that improves support for the vast number of display types. Even standard desktop displays have a number of differences between how they display the output from your computer.
For powerful desktops with a lot of processing power and space, this is probably not a big issue… But it’s a different situation for little Raspberry Pis.
The Appearances Settings box (in Menu > Preferences) has been revised to feature a new Defaults tab. This allows screens in three categories (small, medium, and large) to have default icon size, font size, and other settings applied.
On the matter of display settings, Pixel Doubling has also been added. This is for ultra-high resolution displays, and is aimed more at Raspbian x86 rather than the Raspberry Pi version. Pixels can appear very small with UHD resolution displays, so enabling Pixel Doubling will beef things up a bit, converting every single pixel to a blockier 2×2 pixel.
Find Pixel Doubling in the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool, either on the desktop, or via:
sudo raspi-config
7. Network Booting
Usually, you’ll boot your Raspberry Pi from the SD card. You might even boot from a USB device. But thanks to a new feature, it’s now possible to boot your Raspberry Pi over Ethernet, using a central server.
This utilizes Preboot eXecution Environment (or PXE, pronounced “pixie”), and is widely known as network boot. PXE has been around in desktops and servers for many years, but its addition to Raspbian makes it possible to set up one or more Raspberry Pis as thin clients.
If you prefer to upgrade an existing installation, however, simply open the terminal and enter:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Doing this on a weekly or monthly basis will ensure your Raspberry Pi is running the most recent version of the operating system, and all packaged software.
To sum up, Raspbian has had the following features added in 2018:
Setup wizard
Backwards compatibility
Recommended software tool
New PDF viewer, qpdfView
Chromium update and web-based help files
Screen resolution and pixel doubling
Network booting (PXE)
What’s more, it isn’t only for Raspberry Pi computers. There’s a version of Raspbian for x86 desktop and laptop computers too!
Adobe currently has three dozens apps in the App Store. But one app is still missing. According to a report from Bloomberg, the company could be working on a full-fledged version of Photoshop for the iPad. And it makes sense for a ton of reasons.
First, it’s clear that the iPad has become powerful enough to run complicated image editing software. Just two days ago, Serif launched Affinity Designer for the iPad, an Adobe Illustrator competitor. You can also look at benchmarks to find out that the iPad Pro is now more powerful than most mid-range laptops.
Second, now that you can effortlessly sync your files and projects across multiple devices, many people work using multiple devices. It’s been true for many years if you’re just working on a Microsoft Word file on your work computer and your personal laptop for instance. Maybe you use Dropbox or OneDrive to stay on the same page. But it’s also true with huge media libraries now.
A few years ago, people looked at their devices based on contexts. Maybe you had a work laptop, a couch-computing iPad, a big desktop computer for games, etc. But this is a thing of the past now that you can literally work from all your devices.
And when it comes to Photoshop, the Apple Pencil and touch screen makes the iPad a particularly useful device. Maybe you need a big screen to look at a photo, but maybe you want to use the Apple Pencil to interact with the photo.
Bringing Photoshop to the iPad could let you seamlessly work on the same file across multiple devices, switching back and forth between those two devices. Illustrators could really use this kind of flexibility and ditch their Wacom tablet.
You might remember that Apple has put together a Pro Workflow Team for the same reason. You could imagine launching Final Cut Pro X or Logic Pro X on an iMac and on an iPad to interact with a project in different ways. Apple may not be working on Macs with a touchscreen, but it’s clear that there will be ways to interact with a creative project using your finger or the Apple Pencil.
Finally, bringing Photoshop to the iPad makes sense on a business model perspective. Now that Adobe has shifted to a subscription model, the company needs to increase stickiness as much as possible. If you end up spending more time in Adobe apps because your favorite app is on all platforms, you’ll keep paying for Creative Cloud every month.
This project will be an engineering achievement. But this isn’t the first time Adobe is developing a single app for multiple platforms.
TIL the new Lightroom CC is almost entirely built in Lua, running the same codebase on iOS, Mac, Windows & Android using Adobe's new UI system & design language. Seems significant…
— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) July 13, 2018
Bloomberg says that we might hear more from Photoshop for iPad at the Adobe Max conference in October. Adobe’s chief product officer of Creative Cloud Scott Belsky confirmed that the company was working on releasing these new versions as quickly as possible.
How much would you pay to leave our dumpster fire of a world for just a few minutes? Blue Origin is considering charging $200,000 to $300,000 according to a Reuters report. For that price, passengers would get a seat on Blue Origin’s New Shepard, the commercial space vehicle from Jeff Bezos’ rocket company.
The rocket would take passengers to suborbital space to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. This is done autonomously and can hold six passengers. Parachutes will return the capsule back to solid ground.
This claim comes from two people with knowledge of the space program’s pricing, Reuters says.
Passengers have time to start saving. Ferrying passengers to space is still a ways off for Blue Origin. The company has completed eight test flights including landing the rocket vertically, but has yet to strap a human into one of the seats. That’s apparently coming within weeks, one employee is quoted on saying in the Reuters’ report.
Blue Origin isn’t the only one selling tickets to space. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic says it has sold about 650 $250,000 tickets to space aboard its craft; launch dates have yet to be announced for that trip too.
Bezos has larger ambitions than just being an amusement ride. In May, speaking at the Space Development Conference in Los Angeles with the inimitable Alan Boyle, Bezos chatted about the idea of making the moon a center for heavy industry, which he thinks will help conserve resources here on Earth. When the time comes, he hopes that lunar residence and industry will be a shared privilege, with countries working together in a “lunar village” and combining their strengths rather than testing them against one another.
