Google wants to improve your smart home with iRobot’s room maps

Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. The two companies say the aim is to make smart homes “more thoughtful” by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes.
iRobot’s latest Roomba, the i7+, creates maps using a combination of odometry data (measuring how far the robovac’s wheels move) and low-res camera imagery. The resulting maps can be used to create custom cleaning schedules or to let users ask their Roomba to vacuum specific rooms. An integration with Google Assistant lets customers give verbal commands like, “OK Google, tell Roomba to clean the kitchen.”
Google and iRobot say this data will be useful for other smart home devices. The maps could be used to locate products like Wi-Fi-connected lighting, for example, automatically assigning names and locations to lights in customers’ bedroom, kitchen, and so on.
iRobot CEO Colin Angle told The Verge that the collaboration lays the foundations for future smart homes. “This idea is that when you say, ‘OK Google, turn the lights on in the kitchen,’ you need to know what lights are in the kitchen. And if I say, ‘OK future iRobot robot with an arm, go get me a beer,’ it needs to know where the kitchen and the refrigerator are.”
Google’s Michelle Turner, director of the company’s smart home ecosystem, says the dream is not just to create a smart home, but a “thoughtful home” that requires less input from users and adapts to their wants and needs. “We think a thoughtful home has context,” says Turner, “and that is something that iRobot has done an exceptional job on.”

Google is hosting a global contest to develop AI that’s beneficial for humanity

Some of the biggest hurdles in the field of artificial intelligence are preventing such software from developing the same intrinsic faults and biases as its human creators, and using AI to solve social issues instead of simply automating tasks. Now, Google, one of the world’s leading organizations developing AI software today, is launching a global competition to help spur the development of applications and research that have positive impacts on the field and society at large.
The competition, called the AI Impact Challenge, was announced today at an event called AI for Social Good held at the company’s Sunnyvale, California office, and it’s being overseen and managed by the company’s Google.org charitable arm. Google is positioning it as a way to integrate nonprofits, universities, and other organizations not within the corporate and profit-driven world of Silicon Valley into the future-looking development of AI research and applications. The company says it will award up to $25 million to a number of grantees to “help transform the best ideas into action.” As part of the contest, Google will offer cloud resources for the projects, and it is opening applications starting today. Accepted grantees will be announced at next year’s Google I/O developer conference.
Top of mind for Google with this initiative is using AI to solve problems in areas like environmental science, health care, and wildlife conservation. Google says AI is already used to help pin down the location of whales by tracking and identifying whale sounds, which can then be used to help protect from environmental and wildlife threats. The company says AI can also be used to predict floods and also to identify areas of forest that are especially susceptible to wildfires.
Another big area for Google is eliminating biases in AI software that could replicate the blind spots and prejudices of human beings. One notable and recent example was Google admitting in January that it couldn't find a solution to fix its photo-tagging algorithm from identifying black people in photos as gorillas, initially a product of a largely white and Asian workforce not able to foresee how its image recognition software could make such fundamental mistakes. (Google’s workforce is only 2.5 percent black.) Instead of figure out a solution, Google simply removed the ability to search for certain primates on Google Photos. It’s those kinds of problems — the ones Google says it has trouble foreseeing and needs help solving — that the company hopes its contest can try and address.

Facebook removes Iran-linked accounts followed by more than 1 million people

Facebook has identified more suspicious behavior on its platform linked to an ongoing Iranian influence campaign, the company announced today. In total, Facebook’s security team removed a combined 82 pages, groups, and accounts that were masquerading as US and sometimes UK citizens and organizations. Facebook prohibits “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on the platform, and due to this behavior’s proximity to the US midterm elections, the company says it promptly banned all instances of the network it discovered.
The existence of an Iranian influence campaign designed to sow division and amplify tensions in the US was first revealed back in August, and Google has similarly found evidence of the operation spreading to YouTube. “Despite attempts to hide their true identities, a manual review of these accounts linked their activity to Iran. We also identified some overlap with the Iranian accounts and Pages we removed in August,” writes Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy. “However, it’s still early days and while we have found no ties to the Iranian government, we can’t say for sure who is responsible.”
Facebook says it removed 30 pages, 33 Facebook accounts, and three groups on Facebook, and it found 16 new accounts on Instagram. The accounts and pages spent less than $100 on advertising, and they only hosted or co-hosted a total of seven events. However, about 1 million people followed at least one of the pages, while roughly 25,000 people joined at least one of the groups. On Instagram, around 28,000 people followed at least one of the Iran-linked accounts. The earliest account was created in June of 2016, but they were most active over the last year, Gleicher told reporters on a press call this morning.
As seen in the past with the extensive Russian operation to influence the 2016 US election, these efforts are mostly designed to stoke tensions around high-priority issues in the country, like immigration and race relations. Facebook provided a number of examples of the posts these pages and accounts posted, and many either profess anti-Trump sentiment or comment on recent controversies like the nomination hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It’s unclear if there was an equal number of pro-Trump and anti-Trump posts, though the larger point is that these operations seem designed simply to inflame current disagreements rather than spread propaganda unilaterally across the political aisle.

Fourth-generation pokémon are coming to Pokémon Go this week

Pokémon Go players will be able to considerably expand their pokédexes this week, as Niantic has confirmed the arrival of the fourth generation of pokémon. This generation first appeared in the Nintendo DS games Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, and hail from the Hokkaido-influenced Sinnoh region.
As with the third generation, Niantic will be rolling out the new pokémon in waves rather than all at once. The company says it’ll also be announcing new features and expansion to pokémon storage soon. Meanwhile, a handful of generation 3 pokémon — and even one from generation 2 — are yet to be added to the game, mostly because of unique characteristics that Niantic has to figure out how to integrate.
While the world-dominating hype from its launch has predictably subsided, Pokémon Go remains a phenomenally successful mobile game by any other metric, and continues to add features to attract new players and extract more money from the existing base. Recently the game finally enabled trading, while just this week the Android version got support for more advanced AR through Google’s ARCore SDK. Next month Pokémon: Let’s Go will be released for the Nintendo Switch, featuring heavy integration with Pokémon Go.

A military expert explains why social media is the new battlefield

After the 2016 US presidential election, social media came under scrutiny like never before, and what’s since come to light hasn’t been pretty: widespread consensus that foreign government-backed groups used platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to spread discord and division among the American public. In their new book, P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking make the argument that what we witnessed was a new form of global conflict, in which there are no bystanders.
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media is a look at the role social media plays in modern conflict. Singer has written extensively about the future of warfare, looking at robotics (Wired for War), cybersecurity (Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What You Need to Know), private military companies (Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry), and even speculative fiction (Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War). Now, he turns his attention to what warfare looks like when information can spread around the world instantly. Singer and Brooking look at how groups like ISIS have used platforms like YouTube and Twitter to spread their message around the world, taunting their opponents and enticing new recruits, while bad actors like Russian-backed groups found ways to game Facebook’s design to spread misinformation and lies.
The telegraph and then the telephone allowed us to connect personally from a distance at a speed not previously possible. Radio and then TV allowed one to broadcast out to many. What social media has done is combine the two, allowing simultaneous personal connection as never before, but also the ability to reach out to the entire world. The challenge is that this connection has been both liberating and disruptive. It has freed communication, but it has also been co-opted to aid the vile parts of it as well. The speed and scale have allowed these vile parts to escape many of the firebreaks that society had built up to protect itself. Indeed, I often think about a quote in the book from a retired US Army officer, who described how every village once had an idiot. And now, the internet has brought them all together and made them more powerful than ever before.

Facebook is adding support for 250-person chats in Groups

Today, Facebook is adding a new feature to Groups: giant, intergroup Messenger chats with the option to add up to 250 people, via TechCrunch.
The chats can also support audio or video calls with up to 50 people in them. The idea is that users in big groups — like a book club or surfing club — will be able to have smaller conversations about things like local meetups that may not be relevant to the entire group.
In-Group chats can be viewed by all members of the group, and anyone already in the group can join or be invited. Crucially, Facebook won’t spam you with notifications for each message in the thread until you accept the invitation to join, and users will be able to further filter that by only getting notifications when they’re directly @-mentioned. Group admins will also be able to shut down chats or set it so that only admins can start threads to help limit spam.

Google rebrands AR stickers as Playground and adds new animations

Google announced a rebranding of its augmented reality stickers feature today, with the name changing officially to Playground as part of the Pixel 3 hardware event that just wrapped in New York City. Playground will now exist as a special mode within the Pixel camera, and it will algorithmically suggest new AR animations to fit the scene you’re in, regardless of whether you’re using the front- or rear-facing lenses. In addition to the rebranding, Google is launching four new packs of these AR animations and fittingly calling them “Playmoji.”
Initially announced last fall as AR Stickers, these virtual animations were similar to the lenses and filters that Snapchat popularized a few years back. But a key difference is that these are entirely in 3D and are deployed with a much smarter sense of spatial and object recognition, thanks to Google’s advances in artificial intelligence. Google launched Strangers Things stickers, as well as a pack for Star Wars during The Last Jedi theatrical run late last year.

Jarvish’s smart motorcycle helmets will offer Alexa and Siri support and an AR display

Smart helmets seem like one of those great ideas that just haven’t really taken off yet, but that doesn’t mean that companies aren’t still trying. Jarvish — the latest to try to claim the crown — has an interesting take on the idea with its upcoming Jarvish X and Jarvish X-AR motorcycle helmets (via Engadget).
The Jarvish X is the more basic of the two models. It offers integrated microphones and speakers for Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa support so wearers have access things like directions, weather updates, and control music through voice control. There’s also a 2K, front-facing camera built into the helmet so you can record your ride. It’s set to cost $799 when it hits Kickstarter in January.
The X-AR goes a step beyond that, offering all of those features and adding a Google Glass-style augmented reality display for things like current speed, turn-by-turn directions, weather, incoming calls, and even a rearview mirror-esque video feed from a second rear-facing camera on the back of the helmet. It’s an ambitious idea, but it’ll really depend on how well it works in practice. (AR displays are notoriously tough to get right.) The added AR tech also makes the Jarvish X-AR far more expensive at $2,599, and it won’t be out until much later; a Kickstarter is planned for the second half of 2019.

Chinese spy chips would be a ‘god-mode’ hack, experts say

Chinese operatives allegedly poisoned the technical supply chain of major US companies, including Apple and Amazon by planting a microchip on their servers manufactured abroad, according to a Bloomberg report today. The story claims that one chip, which was reportedly planted on servers’ motherboards assembled for a company called Elemental by a separate company called Super Micro Computer, would allow attackers to covertly modify these servers, bypass software security checks, and, essentially, give the Chinese government a complete backdoor into these companies’ networks.
Affected companies are vigorously disputing the report, claiming they never discovered any malicious hardware or reported similar issues to the FBI. Even taking the Bloomberg report at its word, there are significant unanswered questions about how widely the chip was distributed and how the backdoor access was used.
But the mere idea of a malicious chip implant has already sent shock waves through the security world, which has traditionally focused on software attacks.

Google Assistant now helps you compare ride-hailing prices and summon a car

After announcing some updates to the Google Assistant user experience yesterday, today Google is rolling out a new way of booking rides with your voice — or at least getting most of the way there. Starting this week, you’ll be able to say “Hey Google, book a ride to” or “Hey Google, get me a taxi to” your destination.

Assistant will then respond by listing off price estimates and current wait times for Uber, Lyft, Ola, Grab, GO-JEK, “and many more” ride-hailing apps, according to Google. You can avoid the longer list and specify your preferred service by using its name when requesting a ride. This works on Android, iPhone, Google Home, and all other smart speakers that have Assistant built in. Support for smart displays is coming soon.

Previously, Assistant would kick you over to Google Maps for this info, as it already lists these price estimates for the services. Now it’s basically just surfacing that same information right in the Assistant window.

Facebook extends account deletion grace period from 14 to 30 days

Facebook recently extended the deletion grace period for terminating your main account from 14 to 30 days, the company confirmed to The Verge. Now, when you go to delete your Facebook account, you have up to one month to reverse the decision if you choose to log back in. Facebook won’t automatically restore your account if you log in, but it says you will have “the option to cancel your request.”
“We recently increased the grace period when you choose to delete your Facebook account from 14 days to 30 days,” says a Facebook spokesperson. “We’ve seen people try to log in to accounts they’ve opted to delete after the 14-day period. The increase gives people more time to make a fully informed choice.”
Of course, the extension of the grace period also means you must wait up to one month instead of just two weeks for the account to permanently disappear, along with all of your data. For those who are interested in leaving Facebook following news of last week’s major hack and the Cambridge Analytica scandal — or for reasons related to Facebook’s role in abetting fake news and election interference — it’s best to make that decision now so you can ensure your account and the data stored on you gets deleted as promptly possible.

What Tesla’s union-busting trial means for the rest of Silicon Valley

In some sense Tesla’s union question is an existential one: is Tesla a tech company or a car company? Car companies tend to have strong unions, while tech companies do not.
Musk runs Tesla like a tech company. Tesla’s done a top-to-bottom redesign of cars, and of the factory workflow. There are sudden pivots, and plenty of investment, despite a lack of profit — so far, so tech. Then you have the cars themselves: have to charge their batteries, the company can push over-the-air software updates to your car and totally change how it works, and uh they’re hackable. But they’re still cars: they go on roads, you drive them, and in most states you are legally compelled to buy car insurance for them.
Unions do exist in tech, though mostly among contract workers — the drivers of tech company employee shuttles have one, for instance. But Silicon Valley, the tech epicenter, exists in part because of opposition to unions, according to Alex Press. That’s how California beat out Boston in the post-World War II boom.