Nerf updates laser tag with smartphone AR

There’s nothing like a great new toy to make you mourn the ghost of bygone youth. I don’t have the opportunity to try many out at this job, but when I do, there’s an invariable pang of jealousy for kids today who have much broader access to sophisticated playthings than we did in our day.

Nerf Laser Ops Pro is a pretty solid example of this. It finds the company combining a solid bit of nostalgic IP with some modern technology, to good effect. The new toys, which hit virtual store shelves next Monday, look like a Nerf, play like a Lazer Tag and incorporate your smartphone to help take them a step beyond what either line has offered in the past.

Arguably the most compelling bit in all of this is the price point, with none of the sets running more than $50. I have a vague memory of the original Lazer Tag system being prohibitively expensive in my youth — or maybe that’s just what my parents told me because they didn’t want any fake guns lying around the house.

There was, after all, some controversy with the line from the outset. Here’s a pretty depressing story from the height of Lazer Tag’s success that no doubt caused its manufacturers to rethink the product’s presentation. In 1998, the brand was purchased by Hasbro, and in 2012, it was rolled into the Nerf line.

The foam gun brand has always offered a warmer, fuzzier take on toy weapons, and that’s very much at play here. The likelihood of ever mistaking Nerf Laser Ops Pro for a real gun is slim to none. That said, true diehards will likely miss the Knight Rider-esque black and red vibe of the original product. But if that’s enough to ruin your childhood, it was probably already on shaky ground to begin with.

The more important question is whether Laser Ops Pro is fun. I only played with it briefly today (reminder: I’m an adult with a job), but I can unequivocally state “yes” on that front. Habro’s done a good job marrying the new with the old here. The guns are big and plasticky and hearty, combining digital technology with mechanical haptic feedback.

Smartphone use is optional, which is good for the little ones. When you add that in, however, you get the benefit of things like leaderboards, states and GPS tracking (all secure and private, the company assures me). There’s also a fun little AR shooting game you can play when you’re all by your lonesome.

The blasters will be available online July 16, with retail availability next month. They’re a solid summer purchase for parents looking for ways to get their video game-obsessed offspring up off the couch while the weather’s still nice.

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Is insurance a rich enough game to disrupt?

Martha Notaras Contributor

Martha Notaras is a partner at XL Innovate.

For the last decade, the largest technology companies have increasingly looked outside of tech to grow their operations. From automotive to retail to groceries, these companies use massive competitive advantages in the form of data, consumer relationships and software engineers to fundamentally change markets.

Now, companies like Apple and Google and Amazon are eyeing innovation across the insurance landscape. For example, Amazon is teaming with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway to create a new way to approach health insurance, focusing first on the group’s own employees. On the retail side, Amazon is selling product insurance and extended warranties at the point of sale and investing in insurtech startups. Meanwhile, Tesla is developing an insurance product specific to the Model S. Waymo, Uber and Lyft are certainly having similar conversations internally.

Obviously, these are all preliminary steps. Insurance is a complex, multifaceted and, yes, risky business. In the end, whether or not companies like Amazon become insurers themselves depends on their appetite for risk, their ability to innovate and the potential pay off.

To start, let’s look at the reasons why tech giants are well-suited to upend the space.

They have direct consumer relationships

Like many businesses, a large aspect of a successful insurance business is distribution. Just look at brokers, which are a major means of distribution for insurers today — their cut can be up to 30 percent of the cost of an insurance policy. Brokers also see better margins than insurers themselves, usually around 10 percent net margins. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google (FAAMG) possess direct relationship with billions of consumers and could, over time, disrupt the broker business.

They have deep data and analytics

The big secret in insurance is that insurers are actually terrible at using their data. Different departments (marketing, underwriting, claims) rarely work together, and their data tends to be siloed. FAAMG, on the other hand, has put data at the core of their offering; they know how to leverage analytics and AI to create better products.

Tech giants may be tempted to use their troves of data to compete with insurers directly.

They also have access to data that insurers can only dream of having: global geospatial imagery of homes, infrastructure and buildings; location, browsing and advertising data; even real-world behavioral data from smartphones and IoT devices. Combining all these signals can create a very complete picture of human behavior, interests and risk profile.

They have an army of software engineers and a monopoly of AI talent

Tech innovation has long been a challenge for insurance incumbents. Old systems are difficult to displace in any industry, but the complexity of insurance, tradition of relying on the past to predict the future and silos of data can make it a Herculean effort. Tech giants, on the other hand, regularly cannibalize their own revenue with new products and can enlist tens of thousands of engineers to develop fantastic digital customer experiences and bring large-scale efficiencies to back-end insurance systems through better software and AI.

So, yes, FAAMG has a number of major advantages over insurance incumbents. But for tech giants, new verticals and initiatives are also longer-term decisions around margins and market scope. It’s an obvious point, but if FAAMG wants to jump into insurance, they’ll want a decent return. Can they find that in insurance?

There are a number of reasons why it might be a tough sell.

Ultra-low margins

Average insurance net margins are 3-8 percent, and 25-30 percent gross margins, which are meager for tech standards. Software companies average around 80 percent gross margins and around 15 percent net margins. Even consumer hardware like the iPhone — a costly endeavor by software standards — sees 55-60 percent gross margins.

Within insurance, health tends to have the highest margins, followed by property and casualty (i.e. home and auto insurance), followed by life insurance. So if anything, healthcare is probably the closest thing to “low-hanging fruit” — but it’s not exactly attractive to most companies outside insurance.

High risk

Such low margin also means that one major event can destroy a company’s balance sheet for an entire fiscal year (think disasters like hurricanes, fire, flood, etc.). In addition, tech companies don’t have the historical data and actuarial scientists that insurers have spent decades building up, so they might be more prone to misjudging their overall risk exposure.

Complex administration

For insurers, evaluating and underwriting policies is an expensive endeavor. Claims, customer support and back-end are costly and complex. That said, most insurance companies are already outsourcing the development of core administration software to companies like GuideWire and Duck Creek, and then customizing the software to meet their specific needs at the last mile. So it’s not as huge of a leap as it once was to think that the likes of Amazon or Google could develop similar infrastructure in-house to rival incumbent systems. Or, they could easily buy one of the development companies outright and subsume that expertise.

Amazon makes a big move

Still, the creation and underwriting of policies is something tech giants have avoided to date. Amazon has been working on warranties for certain products as an add-on to their margins — but these were backed and administered by The Warranty Group rather than Amazon itself. Before that, Amazon acted as a sales channel for SquareTrade and built up an understanding of the warranty business before diving in deeper. Tesla, as another example, announced it was selling Tesla-branded tailor-made policies for its vehicle owners, but those policies were backed by Liberty Mutual.

What role will tech giants in the U.S. play in the insurance landscape?

Then, in January, Amazon made a well-publicized announcement, in tandem with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan, around its intention to create a private healthcare option for their workers. We don’t know much about the initiative, but Amazon has been working on a healthcare technology project codenamed 1492 for some time. Rumors point to a “platform for electronic medical record data, telemedicine, and health apps.” Amazon’s technology paired with Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance knowledge and JPMorgan’s financial expertise makes the creation of a new health insurance entity more likely. If so, this would be a significant shot across the bow of U.S. healthcare insurers.

Of all the tech giants, it would not be a surprise if Amazon were the first to jump into insurance. Amazon has mastered the art of building massive businesses off of razor-thin margins. They’re also targeting health insurance, which presents the best margin opportunity. They can test their offering within the company first and then scale across their massive consumer base. Finally, they have a history of building out complex back-end services for their own purposes before offering it to their customers — just look at AWS.

Will other tech companies follow Amazon’s lead?

Signs point to yes. Recently, Google’s sister company, Verily, “has been in talks with insurers about jointly bidding for contracts that would involve taking on risk for hundreds of thousands of patients.” In addition, Apple will be opening a network of medical clinics for its employees.

It may not stop at health insurance. There’s no question technology is changing human behavior and society, and as the developers of much of this new tech, FAAMG will inevitably be pushed closer to other sectors of insurance, as well, including home and auto.

Autonomous vehicle fleets will make companies like Tesla, Google and Uber the owners of tens of thousands of cars, subjecting them to the risk that comes with that. Meanwhile, IoT hardware and accompanying services are bringing tech giants into the living room. That’s a literal statement when it comes to Amazon Key. Nest, Google Home and Amazon Echo are more innocuous, but provide all sorts of data about what’s going on inside the home and could, someday, help inform the creation of real-time home insurance policies.

East Asia as a leading indicator?

It also can be instructive to look at markets outside the U.S. In East Asia, businesses are taking a more aggressive posture vis-à-vis insurance. Baidu, Alibaba, Rakuten, Tencent and LINE have all shown some level of appetite for offering their own insurance products. These companies can verify identities, enforce trust and access the behavioral and financial data necessary to provide better policies than many insurance incumbents in those countries.

They also are exploring new ways of looking at risk and changing user behavior: Tencent’s WeSure is paying users to stay healthy by walking more, while Yongqianbao, a lending company, tracks unconventional digital data to determine credit risk, such as phone brand (iPhone users are less likely to default) and whether they let their phone batteries run down.

Still, the question remains: What role will tech giants in the U.S. play in the insurance landscape? Will they act as a channel for existing insurers, as a provider of data and analytics to those insurers or even as a provider of direct insurance themselves?

Insurance may not be lucrative-enough for tech giants in the short-term, but as real-time data and analytics are used to create insurance policies, tech giants may be tempted to use their troves of data to compete with insurers directly. Until then, we can expect insurers and tech giants to form alliances, as they have in East Asia, with tech companies using insurance and warranties as a value-add for their customers, and insurers using tech companies as a sales channel. Regardless, the story of FAAMG (and others) in insurance is undoubtedly just getting started, and we’ll have to check back in as the landscape develops.

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Your next summer DIY project is an AI-powered doodle camera

With long summer evenings comes the perfect opportunity to dust off your old boxes of circuits and wires and start to build something. If you’re short on inspiration, you might be interested in artist and engineer Dan Macnish’s how-to guide on building an AI-powered doodle camera using a thermal printer, Raspberry pi, a dash of Python and Google’s Quick Draw data set.

“Playing with neural networks for object recognition one day, I wondered if I could take the concept of a Polaroid one step further, and ask the camera to re-interpret the image, printing out a cartoon instead of a faithful photograph.” Macnish wrote on his blog about the project, called Draw This.

To make this work, Macnish drew on Google’s object recognition neural network and the data set created for the game Google Quick, Draw! Tying the two systems together with some python code, Macnish was able to have his creation recognize real images and print out the best corresponding doodle in the Quick, Draw! data set

But since output doodles are limited to the data set, there can be some discrepancy between what the camera “sees” and what it generates for the photo.

“You point and shoot – and out pops a cartoon; the camera’s best interpretation of what it saw,” Macnish writes. “The result is always a surprise. A food selfie of a healthy salad might turn into an enormous hot dog.”

If you want to give this a go for yourself, Macnish has uploaded the instructions and code needed to build this project on GitHub.

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How to Keep Your Slack Messages Private Using Shhlack Encryption

Communicating with your colleagues on Slack is a lot of fun. The instant messaging tool brings your workplace together into a single communication portal and removes reliance on long-winded email threads of yore.

But one thing Slack doesn’t do is protect your messages. For all of its amazing positives, Slack unfortunately doesn’t feature integrated encryption.

That’s where the Shhlack encryption tool for Slack comes in. Let’s take a look at Shhlack, what it is, and how you can use it to protect from prying eyes.

What Is Shhlack?

Shhlack is a message encryption service for Slack developed by Minded Security. The development of a messaging encryption tool was prompted by two things: changes to the Slack privacy policy, and GDPR compliance.

On April 20, 2018, Slack updated their privacy policy. The new privacy policy made a few additions and changes that make it easier for the owners of certain Slack plans to access the data of other users.

For instance, those with a Plus plan ($12.50 per user per month) can request access to a “self-service export tool” that allows them to download “all data from their workspace,” including “content from public and private channels and direct messages.”

Obviously, that’s quite a change. But there is another, more worrying change for Slack users:

“Automatic notices to employees will be discontinued. The employer will now decide whether users will be told their conversations are being exported.”

Before the privacy policy update, Slack users received a notification when their private messages were exported. But now, the entire Slack workspace can be downloaded without warning—so long as the Workspace Owner has previously informed its users that this is a possibility.

In a corporate environment, this equates to a formal notification that it might happen at some point, so most likely when you sign your contract.

In addition, Slack doesn’t enforce the measures. Slack confirmed to me that “it’s the responsibility of each Workspace Owner to ensure that both measures are in place” before they proceed to exporting the data via the self-service export tool.

Wait, My Boss Can Read My Slack Messages?

Your boss has a chance of reading your Slack messages if they have a Slack Plus plan or an Enterprise Grid plan. That means they’ll get to read all those super nice things you and your colleagues said about them!

However, this doesn’t completely apply to Free or Standard plans. Free or Standard Workspace Owners can use Standard Export to “export content from public channels only.” Private channels and messages require a “valid legal process,” the “consent of all members,” or the demonstration of “a requirement or right under applicable laws.”

How Does Shhlack Encryption Work?

Before Shhlack, if you and your team wanted or required the security and privacy of encrypted messaging, you would have to use a different service. That’s no longer the case, but how does Shhlack work?

Shhlack allows users to trade encryption keys to view messages with end-to-end encryption. Anyone else attempting to read the messages receives a string of jumbled characters.

Shhlack uses Pre-Shared Keys (PSK). PSK means that if you want Shhlack to encrypt your messages, you need to exchange your keys in the form of a passphrase. Only other users with the passphrase can decrypt your messages, and vice versa.

Interestingly, you can send messages using Shhlack encryption in group chats, but people without the passphrase only see gobbledygook.

The Two Downsides to Shhlack

The idea behind Shhlack is pure. Slack is fast becoming the workplace messaging tool of choice, from small businesses to global conglomerates. Data privacy is important, and users are worried about who can peek over their shoulder.

But Shhlack has a couple of issues.

First, you have to share your keys. Obviously, you cannot share your keys using Slack because someone could export the Workspace, find your keys, and crack your messages wide open. That’s out of the question.

Instead, you have to send your keys via an alternative secure messenger, such as Signal or Telegram, then enter them in Shhlack. But if you and the recipient both have Telegram or another encrypted messaging app, why not just use that for your messages in the first place?

Second, Reddit user ScottContini points out that “there is a security issue with the implementation [of Shhlack] due to a security issue in cryptojs.”

The issue stems from how CryptoJS converts passwords to keys, and how the current Shhlack CryptoJS implementation does this in an insecure way. Read the linked post above for more information regarding this issue (as well as more links that further detail the issue).

How to Install Shhlack

Before installing, consider that Shhlack is a work-in-progress and may not protect your messages. As such, “use it with a grain of salt!”

That said, the developers over at Minded Security have made it easy for you to add encryption to your Slack messages. Shhlack is available for:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Standalone installer (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Shhlack will only protect messages on the platform you install it on. For instance, if you install the Chrome extension, messages sent from your browser are secure, but those from your desktop app are not. Installing Shhlack is simple. Use the links above to head to the app store for your browser of choice, then follow the on-screen instructions to add to your browser.

Alternatively, download the standalone archive, then unzip using your favorite archive tool. The standalone archive contains a number of files. Locate patch_slack.bat, then right-click and select Run as administrator.

The first time you use Slack after installing the standalone or browser extension, a Shhlack dialog box will appear. (If it doesn’t, click the Shhlack padlock icon next to the message input box, or use the Alt + S shortcut.)

It has three tabs: Send Message, Manage Passphrases, and Master Key. Open the Manage Passphrases tab and select Add new passphrase. Add a Passphrase name, then add your Pre-shared passphrase. The Pre-shared passphrase is what you need to share with your intended encrypted message recipient, or else they will only see jumbled characters.

How to Send an Encrypted Message Using Shhlack

Open the Send Message panel, select your Passphrase name from the dropdown menu, and type your message. Hit OK when you’re ready.

The message will broadcast to whichever Slack channel you are currently in. Anyone with your pre-shared passphrase can unlock the message and read the contents. Those who don’t will see a mishmash of characters.

Here’s what a message looks like to the sender:

And here’s how it appears to users without the passphrase:

You can also send a message to your current channel using the previously selected passphrase by adding the @@@@ prefix to your text. For example:

@@@@ I love MakeUseOf

It’s that easy, just like the main Slack service. And really, Shhlack can be just another aspect of Slack for you to master.

Secure Messaging Alternatives to Slack

Of course, setting up and using Shhlack isn’t ideal for everyone. For some, it’s too fiddly (even if it’s well worth learning). For others, it could directly violate your workplace policies.

Don’t do anything that jeopardizes your job security. There are other messaging services out there that use encryption to keep your communications private!

Read the full article: How to Keep Your Slack Messages Private Using Shhlack Encryption

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WhatsApp now marks forwarded messages to curb the spread of deadly misinformation

WhatsApp just introduced a new feature designed to help its users identify the origin of information that they receive in the messaging app. For the first time, a forwarded WhatsApp message will include an indicator that marks it as forwarded. It’s a small shift for the messaging platform, but potentially one that could make a big difference in the way people transmit information, especially dubious viral content, over the app.

The newest version of WhatsApp includes the feature, which marks forwarded messages in subtle but still hard to miss italicized text above the content of a message.

The forwarded message designation is meant as a measure to control the spread of viral misinformation in countries like India, where the company has 200 million users. Misinformation spread through the app has been linked to the mob killing of multiple men who were targeted by false rumors accusing them of kidnapping children. Those rumors are believed to have spread through Facebook and WhatsApp.

Last week, India’s Information Technology Ministry issued a warning to WhatsApp specifically:

“Instances of lynching of innocent people have been noticed recently because of large number of irresponsible and explosive messages filled with rumours and provocation are being circulated on WhatsApp. The unfortunate killing in many states such as Assam, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tripura and west Bengals are deeply painful and regretable.

While the Law and order machinery is taking steps to apprehend the culprits, the abuse of platform like WhatsApp for repeated circulation of such provocative content are equally a matter of deep concern. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has taken serious note of these irresponsible messages and their circulation in such platforms. Deep disapproval of such developments has been conveyed to the senior management of the WhatsApp and they have been advised that necessary remedial measures should be taken to prevent  proliferation of  these  fake  and at times motivated/sensational messages. The Government has also directed that spread of such messages should be immediately contained through the application of appropriate technology.

It has also been pointed out that such platform cannot evade accountability and responsibility specially when good technological inventions are abused by some miscreants who resort to provocative messages which lead to spread of violence.

The Government has also conveyed in no uncertain terms that WhatsApp must take immediate action to end this menace and ensure that their platform is not used for such malafide activities.”

In a blog post accompanying the new message feature, WhatsApp encouraged its users to stop and think before sharing a forwarded message.

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My favorite summer toy is the GDP XD emulator

People ask me all the time about my favorite gadgets and I rarely have any answers. I’ve been playing with stuff since 2004 and I’m pretty gadget-ed out. But this year I’ve finally found something that I really enjoy: the GPD XD, an Android-based gaming handheld that lets you play multiple emulators including an endless array homebrew and classic ROMS.

As an early fan of the Caanoo I’m always looking for handheld emulators that can let you play classic games without much fuss. The Caanoo worked quite well, especially for 2010 technology, and I was looking to upgrade.

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My friend bought a GDP and showed it to me and I was hooked. I could play some wonderful old ROMs in a form factor that was superior to the Caanoo and this super cheap, super awful 4.3-inch device that emulates like a truck.

The GDP, which has two joysticks, one four-axis button, four shoulder buttons, and a diamond of game buttons, is basically a Wi-Fi enabled Android device with a touch screen. It runs Android 7.0 and has a MTK8176 Quad-core+ processor and 4GB of memory. It comes with NES, SNES, Arcade, and Playstation emulators built in as well as a few home-brew games. You can install almost anything from the Google Play store and it includes a file manager and ebook reader. It also has a micro SD card slot, HDMI out, and headphone jack.

To be clear, the GDP isn’t exactly well documented. The device includes a bit of on board documentation – basically a few graphics files that describe how to add and upload ROMS and emulators. There are are also a number of online resources including Reddit threads talking about this thing’s emulation prowess. The original model appeared two years ago and they are now selling an updated 2018 version with a better processor and more memory.

GPD recently launched another handheld, the Win 2, which is a full Windows machine in a form factor similar to the XD. It is considerably more expensive – about $700 vs. $300 – and if you’re looking for a more computer-like experience it might work. I have, however, had a lot of fun with the XD these past few months.

So whatever your feelings regarding ROMs, emulators, and tiny PCs, I’m pleased to report that I’ve finally pleased with a clever and fun bit of portable technology.

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Microsoft Launches $399 Surface Go Tablet

Microsoft has unveiled the Surface Go, its new, low-end iPad competitor. The Surface Go is a 10-inch Windows tablet which looks almost identical to the Surface Pro, but smaller and more affordable. But can it tempt people away from their iPads?

Microsoft’s Surface line has sold surprisingly well so far, thank you very much. However, Microsoft has never been able to compete with Apple on price and portability. Until now. The Surface Go is Microsoft most affordable and portable Surface product yet.

The Most Affordable Surface Yet

On the Windows Blog, Microsoft describes the Go as the “smallest, lightest, and most affordable Surface yet.” This represents Microsoft offering “a new entry point for the Surface family, while keeping the premium qualities that have come to define it.”

The Surface Go boasts a 10-inch display (with a 1800 x 1200 pixel resolution), an integrated kickstand with unlimited positions, a front-facing camera, and a USB-C 3.1 port. It’s powered by Windows 10 and the 7th Generation Intel Pentium Gold Processor 4415Y.

Prices start at just $399, which puts the Microsoft Surface Go within spitting distance of the 9.7-inch Apple iPad. For $399 you get 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage. However, if you’re willing to pay $549 you can get 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD.

The Microsoft Surface Go is available to pre-order in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

Coming to a Store Near You Soon

The Surface Go with Wi-Fi will start shipping (and appearing on store shelves) on August 2nd. Microsoft is promising to roll it out to more countries in the coming weeks. For those with good data plans, Microsoft will be launching an LTE model later this year.

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket you could always check out the Microsoft Surface Pro, which we described in our review as “the one tablet to rule them all”. Just follow our advice before swapping your MacBook with a Surface laptop.

Read the full article: Microsoft Launches $399 Surface Go Tablet

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A Complete Guide to Chromebook’s Accessibility Tools and Features

Accessibility features are an essential part of any operating system. Of course, they’re vital for people with disabilities, but most users can make use of them in some capacity.

Windows 10’s suite of accessibility tools is fantastic, and macOS also provides accessibility features. But how does a Chromebook stack up? Let’s take a look.

Note: Throughout this article, you will see the Search key feature prominently in shortcuts. However, the shortcuts will not work if you’ve remapped your Search key to Caps Lock (Settings > Device > Keyboard > Search).

ChromeVox

Ignore the futuristic-sounding name. ChromeVox is Google’s term for the operating system’s built-in screen reader.

You can enable ChromeVox by going to Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Text-to-speech and turning on the appropriate toggle. Alternatively, press Ctrl + Alt + Z on any page.

There’s a long list of shortcuts that let you use the tool, but the most important are:

• Search + K: Cursor location
• Search + B: Next button
• Search + L: Next line
• Search + E: Next editable text area
• Search + H: Next heading

Select to Speak

Select to Speak can read parts of a webpage out loud. Aside from the obvious benefits for people with vision impairments, you might find it useful if you’re eyes are feeling tired and you want to listen to an article rather than read it.

Enable Select to Speak in Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Text-to-speech > Select to Speak or press Ctrl + Alt + S to toggle the feature on and off.

To listen to text, you can either:

• Hold down Search and click a line of text.
• Hold down Search and drag your mouse over a section of text.
• Highlight the text you want to listen to and press Search + S.

High Contrast Mode

Chromebooks offer a high contrast mode. They invert your screen’s colors to make them stand out more prominently. Doing so will make your desktop look seriously cool, even if it gives you a headache after a few hours of use.

You can turn on high contrast mode by navigating to Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Use high contrast mode. Alternatively, use the Ctrl + Search + H keyboard shortcut.

Magnifier

There are two parts to the Chromebook’s magnifier tool. You can either enable a full-screen magnifier, or a docked magnifier.

The full-screen magnifier turns your display into a zoomed in version of whatever is being shown (i.e. you will not be able to see your whole desktop at the same time).

The docked magnifier places a zoomed in window at the bottom of your display, thus letting you see both your whole desktop and a close-up section of your screen at the same time.

For both options, you can customize the level of zoom. Go to Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Display and flick the toggle next to either Enable full-screen magnifier or Enable docked magnifier. You can choose your zoom level below each respective toggle.

You can adjust the level of zoom in real-time by using one of two shortcuts:

• Zoom in: Ctrl + Alt + Brightness up or Ctrl + Alt + two-finger scroll up
• Zoom out: Ctrl + Alt + Brightness down or Ctrl + Alt + two-finger scroll down

Sticky Keys

No, we’re not talking about when you accidentally throw a glass of soda over your keyboard (though we do have a few tips for fixing a water-damaged keyboard).

Sticky Key functionality lets you use keyboard shortcuts (such as the ones we have been referencing in this article) without needing to hold down the various keys at the same time. Instead, you can press them sequentially.

For example, if you want to use the keyboard shortcut for paste, you would not need to press Control and V in tandem. You could press Control, release it, then press V, and the paste feature would activate.

When Sticky Keys are enabled, you will see a small box in the upper right-hand corner of your screen that shows when keys are active in the current sequence. If you don’t complete the sequence within a few seconds, the box will vanish, and you will need to start again.

You can turn on Sticky Keys by going to Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Keyboard > Enable Sticky Keys.

On-Screen Keyboard

As the name suggests, enabling this feature will place a virtual keyboard on your screen. You can then type by clicking on the appropriate letters with your mouse pointer.

Again, this is another feature that everyone can make use of. Why? Because it gives you access to an emoji keyboard. Click on the three vertical dots on the left-hand side of the space bar, then select the smiley face.

Chrome is slowly implementing a way to type emojis in Chrome, but this trick gives you the functionality right now (rather than needing to use one of your Chromebook’s development channels) and lets you use emoji across the entire operating system rather than just in the browser.

The on-screen keyboard can be activated if you follow Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Keyboard > Enable on-screen keyboard.

Automatic Clicking

You can make Chrome automatically click objects on your screen merely by hovering the mouse over them.

This is useful if you don’t have a USB mouse handy and your Chromebook’s trackpad has become jammed.

You can even customize how long you need to hover for before a click is registered, thus preventing the possibility of accidentally clicking something you didn’t want to, just because you stopped moving your pointer.

To turn on the feature, go to Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Mouse and touchpad > Automatically click when the mouse cursor stops. Once the feature is enabled, you can set the timer in the dropdown box below.

Large Mouse Cursor

The final accessibility tool worth paying attention to is the large mouse cursor. If you’re casting your screen in a presentation or making an instructional video for YouTube, this is really useful. It lets you—and others—locate the cursor more easily.

You can turn on the large mouse cursor by going to Settings > Advanced > Manage accessibility features > Mouse and touchpad > Show large mouse cursor.

You might also find it useful to highlight the cursor while it’s moving. You turn on the feature in the same menu, just slide the toggle next to Highlight the mouse cursor while it’s moving into the On position.

Check Out the Chrome Web Store for More Options

If Chrome OS doesn’t offer the accessibility tools you need, check out the Chrome Web Store’s dedicated section. It offers a few tools that might provide what you’re looking for, including a color enhancer and caret (keyboard shortcut) browsing.

If you’d like to learn even more about Chrome OS, we’ve written an ultimate Chromebook guide for beginners.

Read the full article: A Complete Guide to Chromebook’s Accessibility Tools and Features

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Ledger finally has a good app for its crypto wallet

French startup Ledger has been working for a while on a brand new app to manage your crypto assets on your computer. The company is designing and manufacturing one of the most secure hardware wallets out there.

While it’s clear that security has always been the first focus of the company, the user experience has been lacking, especially on the software front. The company launched a new app called Ledger Live to handle everything you used to do with Chrome apps before.

That’s right, before today, the company relied on Google Chrome for its desktop apps. You had to install the browser first, and then install a new app for each cryptocurrency. There was also a main app to update the firmware. It could quickly become a mess.

Now, everything is centralized in a single app. After downloading and installing the app on Windows, macOS or Linux, you can either configure the app with an existing Ledger device or configure a new Ledger wallet.

The app first checks the integrity of your device and then lets you manage the device. You can upgrade the firmware and install apps on your Ledger Nano S or Ledger Blue from the “Manager” tab.

More interestingly, you can now add all your wallets to the Ledger Live app. You won’t have to switch from one app to another to view your wallets. When you click the add button, the app will try and retrieve existing wallets on your device. You can also generate a new set of keys (and a new wallet) from there.

Once you’ve added all your wallets, you can get an overview of your entire portfolio. The app gets historical pricing information from popular exchanges, such as Kraken and Bitfinex. You can also click on individual accounts to see how a specific cryptocurrency has evolved over time.

The portfolio interface looks like a Coinbase account. It’s well-designed and it’s a great way to get a quick look of your accounts.

Many Ledger users have been using tracker websites and apps. These services let you enter a cryptocurrency and the amount you own to get an overview of everything you own independently of the wallet.

Ledger’s new app partially replace tracker services. If you don’t need to check your balance from your phone, you can get enough information with the Ledger app. You can see your balance without having to plug your Ledger device.

The company is already working on new features. You’ll be able to view and manager ERC20 tokens in the future. So if you invested in a bunch of obscure ICOs, your tokens will be there too.

Ledger also told me that you could imagine an integration with decentralized exchanges eventually. This way, you would be able to send tokens to an address and get another set of tokens back on another Ledger-generated address. It would be a great way to exchange cryptocurrencies without signing up to a centralized exchange and leaving the Ledger app.

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Tilting Point expands its user acquisition fund to $132M in annual spending

Mobile games publisher and marketer Tilting Point is dramatically increasing its commitment to its user acquisition fund.

The company announced a $12 million fund at the end of 2016, which it said would help developers grow their games while remaining independent. Today it  revealed that it’s committing $132 million in annual spending to the fund.

CEO Kevin Segalla said that as mobile app stores become more and more crowded, “user acquisition has gotten incredibly complicated,” so most indie developers “don’t have the tech and the expertise to do it.”

That’s where Tilting Point comes in. President Samir El Agili said the company has built “machine learning technology to maximize and optimize user acquisition.” It likes to work on games that are at the “crossroads,” taking a solid game with a sustainable business model, then dramatically accelerating its growth with advertising.

The initial fund led to partnerships on Disruptor Beam’s Star Trek Timelines and Nukebox Studios’ Food Truck Chef.

Segalla said that given the fund’s success, the question became, “How can we do this at a much larger scale?” which led to the much larger fund commitment, thanks to capital committed by CFC Capital (Tilting Point’s majority shareholder) and Metropolitan Partners Group.

Just to be clear, the $132 million isn’t a price tag that Tilting Point is putting on its own services, and instead represents money that will actually be spent on advertising.

Segalla argued that the deals are structured in a way where Tilting Point’s incentives are properly aligned with the developer’s.

“This is not a loan that we’re giving them, it’s not something where we’re looking for equity, there’s no ongoing revenue share,” he said. Instead, the company is betting that that the spending will pay off in its relationship with developer and the resulting fees: “What we’re doing is risking our own capital because we believe in our marketing, our tech and our team.”

Tilting Point says it’s open to partnering with developers in any genre, and is also looking to work with developers internationally. Segalla predicted that fund could allow Tilting Point to work with 20 new games each year, though El Agili noted that the exact number will depend on the games: “The truth is, if get two to three games that do extremely well right away, we can start spending a lot of money.”

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Slack wants to make search a little easier with search filters

Slack’s search functions are getting another little quality-of-life update today with the introduction of filters, which aims to make search a little more granular to find the right answers.

The company also says searches are going to be more personalized. All of this is an attempt to get to the right files or conversations quickly as Slack — a simple collection of group chats and channels that can get out of hand very fast — something a little more palatable. As companies get bigger and bigger, the sheer amount of information that ends up in it will grow faster and faster. That means that the right information will generally be more difficult to access, and if Slack is going to stick to its roots as a simple internal communications product, it’s going to have to lean on improvements under the hood and small changes in front of users. The company says search is now 70% faster on the back end.

Users in Slack will now be able to filter search results by channels and also the kinds of results they are looking for, like files. You can go a little more granular than that, but that’s the general gist of it, as Slack tries to limit the changes to what’s happening in front of users. Slack threads, for example, were in development for more than a year before the company finally rolled out the long-awaited feature. (Whether that feature successfully changed things for the better is still not known.)

Slack now has around 8 million daily active users with 3 million paid users, and is still clearly pretty popular with smaller companies that are looking for something simpler than the more robust — and complex — communications tools on the market. But there are startups trying to pick away at other parts of the employee communications channels, like Slite, which aims to be a simpler notes tool in the same vein as Slack but for different parts of the employee experience. And there are other larger companies looking to tap the demand for these kinds of simpler tools like Atlassian’s Stride and Microsoft’s teams.

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Some iOS users report that 11.4 update triggers excessive battery drain

iOS users have been reporting problems with excessive battery drain after updating to iOS 11.4.

On Sunday, 9to5Mac reported on a raft of posts on Apple forums complaining about excessive battery drain since updating. ZDNet also flagged complaints around the issue early last month.

The update to Apple’s mobile operating system was released at the end of May, adding support for Messages in iCloud, plus some media and entertainment features, such as AirPlay 2 and support for two HomePod speakers to work as a stereo pair.

Safe to say, radically reduced battery life was not among the listed additions.

This TC writer also noticed an alarming depreciation in battery performance after updating to iOS 11.4 at the end of last month — with the battery level dropping precipitously even when the handset was left untouched doing nothing.

Looks like updating to iOS 11.4 has decimated iPhone battery life

— Natasha (@riptari) June 30, 2018

We reached out to Apple immediately after noticing the problem — but the company has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Judging by forum complaints, other iOS users have also found that updating to iOS 11.4 impacts the standby battery life of their device.

In my case checking the (beta) battery health feature in the iPhone settings threw no light on the abnormal performance, with maximum capacity reported as a (healthy sounding) 91%, as well a claim that “normal” peak performance was supported.

The ‘battery usage’ report that’s built into iOS also seemed unable to shed any light on what was causing the battery to drain so fast — listing an app that had been used prior to the previous charge as responsible for the largest chunk of usage. So evidently not identifying the real culprit.

In the end, rebooting my affected iPhone seemed to improve the battery drain issue. Though I can’t be sure whether or not the device has taken a small hit to battery performance as a consequence of the iOS update.

In the middle of writing this report, an additional update — iOS 11.4.1 — has been pushed out by Apple, though it’s not clear whether this explicitly fixes the battery drain issue or not. Battery drain is not listed among the bugs iOS 11.4.1 addresses. But, either way, it’s worth updating in case it helps.

Battery and performance issues have been something of a recurring problem for Apple’s iOS devices in recent years. Again in my case, my affected iPhone 6S only had its battery replaced under an Apple free battery replacement program last year — ironically as a result of a battery fault that caused unexpected shutdowns — so really the battery should have a decent amount of life left in it still.

And as (bad) luck would have it, the iPhone 5 I owned prior to this was also affected by an earlier Apple battery fault. So this is the third battery-related problem to strike the two iPhones I’ve owned over the past five years. Which is certainly unfortunate.

That said, two handsets lasting five years is a testament to Apple’s otherwise lasting build quality. (Albeit, this Samsung-branded portable battery pack has been the unsung workhorse hero stepping in when the batteries conked out, as TC colleagues can also testify…)

Meanwhile after more user complaints last year Apple was forced to apologize for not being more transparent with customers about how it handles performance on iOS devices with older batteries — clarifying that its software in fact slows down the maximum performance of iPhones with older batteries as a power management technique to avoid unexpected shutdowns.

The company has faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny as a result of this throttling of device performance.

Although it also quickly offered discounted $29 battery replacements to iPhone owners with an iPhone 6 (or later) whose battery “needs to be replaced” — as well as promising to add controls to iOS to enable users to switch off the feature if they choose.

For its forthcoming iOS 12 update — which was trailed at WWDC, and is due out this fall — Apple says the release will “double down” on performance, slating a slew of refinements, bug fixes and optimizations incoming. So, hopefully, any lurking battery and performance gremlins will soon be kicked into touch.

In the meanwhile, update. And reboot.

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Toast raises $115M at a $1.4B valuation to create a one-stop management tool for restaurants

While massive restaurant chains might have resources to build out their own management systems or integrate with larger point-of-sale providers, Toast — a provider of tools for restaurants to manage their business — is raising a big round of funding to go after everyone else.

Now Toast is a business valued at $1.4 billion thanks to a fresh infusion of $115 million in its latest round of funding. At its core, Toast is a point-of-sale for restaurants, though over time it’s added more and more services on top of that. Now the goal is to be not just a point of sale, but offer a whole system to help restaurants operate efficiently. That can range from the actual point of sale all the way to loyalty programs and reporting on that information. The round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from new investor Tiger Global Management and other existing investors.

“We’re just trying to keep our finger on the pulse to what matters to restauranteurs,” CEO Christopher Comparto said. “We hear a lot about the labor side of the equation. We’re working through what to do there. If you ask restaurants about the number one thing they’re thinking about, most respondents say it’s around labor — that’s a really big one.”

Starting off in 2011 as a point-of-sale business, the company now offers a complete suite of tools that help restaurants streamline both the front and back house of the restaurant. And as Toast collects more and more data on how restaurants are using its tools — like any startup with a lot of inbound data, really — it can start helping those restaurants figure out how to improve their businesses further. That might be modifying menus slightly based on what people are enjoying, or pointing them in the right direction as to when to make slight adjustments to their basic operations.

There’s also an online ordering part of the business. Toast helps restaurants boot up an online ordering part of their business quickly, in addition to offering tools to help streamline that process. A restaurant might deal with a flood of orders or throttle them if necessary. Businesses then get reports on their whole online ordering business, helping them further calibrate what to offer — and what might work better for the in-person experience as well.

The next focus for Toast, Comparto said, is figuring out the labor side of the equation. That comes down to helping restaurants not only find new employees, but also figure out how to retain them in an industry with a significant amount of turnover. Attacking the hiring part of the problem is one approach, though there are other approaches like Pared, which looks to turn the labor market for restaurants into an on-demand one. But there’s obvious low-hanging fruit, like making it easier to switch shifts among other things, Comparto said.

“1 in 11 working human beings work in restaurants,” Comparto said. “I would say we’re still trying to figure out what we can do as a central platform of record, continuing to carry a high quality network of partners or us building some things ourselves. We’re early days in figuring them out. If you go to any restaurant in Boston, and look at all the help wanted signs, you can see the barrier to being successful is a lot of times more on the employee side than on the guest side. Then once you have them hired, you have to think about how you can retain those employees and make sure they’re engaged and successful.”

Toast isn’t the only startup looking to own a point-of-sale and then expand into other elements of running a business, though. Lightspeed POST, which also offers a pretty large set of tools for brick-and-mortar stores — including restaurants — raised $166 million late last year.There are also the obvious point-of-sale competitors like Square that, while designed to be a broad solution and not just target restaurants, are pretty widely adopted and can also try to own that whole restaurant management stack from clocking in and out to getting reports on what’s selling well.

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Facebook is testing augmented reality ads in the news feed

Facebook is giving advertisers new ways to show off their products, including with augmented reality.

At its F8 developer conference earlier this year, Facebook announced that it was working with businesses to use AR to show off products in Messenger. Now a similar experience will start appearing in the News Feed, with a select group of advertisers testing out AR ads.

Ty Ahmad-Taylor, vice president of product marketing for Facebook’s global marketing solutions, showed off ads that incorporated his face into Candy Crush gameplay footage, and other ads that allowed shoppers to see how virtual sunglasses and makeup would look on their own faces.

“People traditionally have to go into stores to do this,” Ahmad-Taylor said. “People still really love that experience, but they would like to try it at home” — so this “bridges the gap.”

These ads look like normal in-feed ads at first, but they include a “Tap to try it on” option, which opens up the AR capabilities. And of course if you like the way it looks in AR, you can go ahead and buy the product.

Facebook says Michael Kors was the first brand to test out AR ads in the News Feed, with Sephora, NYX Professional Makeup, Bobbi Brown, Pottery Barn, Wayfair and King planning their own tests for later this summer.

Ahmad-Taylor made the announcement this morning at a New York City event for journalists and marketers highlighting Facebook’s advertising plans for the holidays.

In addition, he announced a new Video Creation Kit, which will allow advertisers to incorporate existing images into templates for mobile video ads. According to weight loss company Noom, which has been testing out these tools, the resulting videos performed 77 percent better than the static images.

Lastly, Facebook says it will continue to expand its support for shopping in Instagram Stories. It made shopping tags available to select brands in Stories last month, and for the holidays, it plans to roll that out to all brands that have enabled shopping in Instagram. It’s also making its collections ad format available to all advertisers.

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