Google launches Android Q Beta 2 with multitasking Bubbles, foldables emulator, and zoomable microphones

Google today launched the second Android Q beta with multitasking Bubbles, a foldables emulator, zoomable microphones, and more. If you’re a developer, this is your second Android Q preview, and you can start testing your apps against this release by downloading the new preview from developer.android.com/preview. The preview includes an updated SDK with system images for the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, and the official Android Emulator. If you’re already enrolled in the beta and received the Android Q Beta 1 on your Pixel device, you’ll automatically get the update to Beta 2.

Google launched Android Q Beta 1 in March. It’s moving much faster than in previous Android betas — three weeks between developer previews is unheard of. To help Google keep up the betas coming, you can submit feedback, as well as file platform issues, app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues.

Beta 1 brought additional privacy and security features, enhancements for foldables, new connectivity APIs, new media codecs and camera capabilities, NNAPI extensions, Vulkan 1.1 support, and faster app startup. Beta 2 builds on those with a few more additions.

Beta 2 features

For Beta 2, Google is talking more about Scoped Storage, which is now enabled for new app installs. The idea here is to let developers see exactly what is affected. Scoped Storage lets apps use their private sandbox without permission, but requires new permissions to access shared collections for photos, videos, and audio. Google has a developer guide that explains how to handle key use-cases. To test, developers have to enable Scoped Storage using the adb command. If your app has a use-case that’s not supported by Scoped Storage, Google asks that you take this survey.

Beta 2 also supports Bubbles, a new way for users to multitask and re-engage with apps. If you’ve ever used Facebook Messenger on Android, you know what this is all about. Google now wants to build that functionality right into the platform with Android Q “while helping to make interactions consistent, safeguard user privacy, reduce development time, and drive innovation.” Bubbles help users prioritize information, take action deep within another app while maintaining their current context, and carry an app’s functionality around with them as they move between activities on their device. They are great for messaging, ongoing tasks and updates like phone calls or arrival times, and can offer quick access to notes, translations, or tasks. Bubbles is built on top of Android’s notification system — you can send a bubble through a notification with BubbleMetadata by calling setBubbleMetadata (sample implementation.

Beta 2 lets developers build for foldable devices through Android Q enhanced platform support, combined with a new foldable device emulator, available as an Android Virtual device in Android Studio 3.5 in the canary release channel. To set up a runtime environment for your app, you can now configure a foldable emulator as a virtual device (AVD) in Android Studio — the foldable AVD is a reference device that lets you test with standard hardware configurations, behaviors, and states, and will be used by Google’s device manufacturer partners. To ensure compatibility, the AVD meets CTS/GTS requirements and models CDD compliance. It supports runtime configuration change, multi-resume, and the new resizeableActivity behaviors. You can use the canary release of Android Studio 3.5 to create a foldable virtual device to support either of two hardware configurations: 7.3-inch (4.6-inch folded) and 8-inch (6.6-inch folded) with Beta 2. In each configuration, the emulator gives you on-screen controls to trigger fold/unfold, change orientation, and quick actions.

While Beta 1 significantly improved Android’s sharesheet, Beta 2 now lets you offer a preview of the content being shared by providing an EXTRA_TITLE extra in the Intent for the title, or by setting the Intent’s ClipData for a thumbnail image. Google updated the sample application to help you out.

Next up, Beta 2 gives apps more control over audio capture through a new MicrophoneDirection API. You can use the API to specify a preferred direction of the microphone when taking an audio recording or control zoomable microphones, letting your app choose the recording field dimension using setMicrophoneFieldDimension(float).

Lastly, Android Q Beta 1 introduced restrictions as part of Google’s effort to move apps toward only using public APIs. Beta 2 makes a few minor updates to those lists to minimize impact on apps. The company is promising public alternative APIs “for valid use-cases” before restricting access, so if an interface that you currently use in Android 9 Pie is now restricted, you should request a new public API.

Beta schedule

The goal of the second beta is the same as the first: Let early adopters and developers play with the build early so they can explore new features and APIs for apps, test for compatibility, and give feedback before more details are shared at I/O 2019, scheduled for May 7 to May 9.

Last year, there were five developer previews (four betas). This year, Google is planning six betas in total. Here’s the preview schedule:

• March: Beta 1 (initial release, beta)
• April: Beta 2 (incremental update, beta)
• May: Beta 3 (incremental update, beta)
• June: Beta 4 (final APIs and official SDK, Play publishing, beta)
• Beta 5 (release candidate for testing)
• Beta 6 (release candidate for final testing)
• Q3: Final release to AOSP and ecosystem

Google is asking developers to make their apps compatible with Android Q so that their users can expect a seamless transition when they upgrade. If you find any bugs, you can report them here.

Prominent AI researchers call on Amazon to stop selling Rekognition facial analysis to law enforcement

In a letter published today, a cohort of about two dozen AI researchers working in tech and academia are calling on Amazon’s AWS to stop selling facial recognition software Rekognition to law enforcement agencies.

Among those who object to Rekognition being used by law enforcement are deep learning luminary and recent Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, Caltech professor and former Amazon principal scientist Anima Anandkumar, and researchers in fields of computer vision and machine learning t Google AI, Microsoft Research, and Facebook AI Research

Rekognition has been used by police departments in Florida and Washington, and has reportedly been offered to the Department of Homeland Security to identify immigrants.

“We call on Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement as legislation and safeguards to prevent misuse are not in place,” reads the letter. “There are no laws or required standards to ensure that Rekognition is used in a manner that does not infringe on civil liberties.”

The researchers cite the work of privacy advocates who are concerned that law enforcement agencies with little understanding of the technical aspects of computer vision systems could make serious errors, like committing an innocent person to jail, or trust autonomous systems too much.

“Decisions from such automated tools may also seem more correct than they actually are, a phenomenon known as ‘automation bias’, or may prematurely limit human-driven critical analyses,” the letter reads.

The research also criticizes Rekognition for its binary classification of sexual orientation as male or female, an approach that can lead to misclassifications and cites the work of researchers like Os Keyes whose analysis of gender recognition research found few examples of work that incorporate transgender people.

The letter takes issue with arguments made by Amazon’s deep learning and AI general manager Mathew Wood and global head of public policy Michael Punke, who reject the results of a recent audit that found Rekognition misidentifies women with dark skin tones as men 31% of the time.

The analysis, which examined the performance of commercially available facial analysis tools like Rekognition, was published in January at the AAAI/ACM conference on Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Society by Inioluwa Deborah Raji and Joy Buolamwini.

The report follows the release a year ago of Gender Shades, analysis that found facial recognition software from companies like Face++ and Microsoft had limited ability to recognize people with dark skin tones, especially women of color.

Timnit Gebru, a Google researcher who coauthored Gender Shades, also signed the letter published today.

A study the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released last summer found that Rekognition inaccurately labeled members of the 115th U.S. Congress as criminals, a label Rekognition was twice as likely to bestow on members of Congress who are people of color than their white counterparts.

Following the release of the paper and an accompanying New York Times article, Wood claimed the research “draws misleading and false conclusions.”

In response, the letter published today says that in multiple blog posts Punke and Wood “misrepresented the technical details for the work and the state-of-the-art in facial analysis and face recognition.” The letter also refutes specific claims made by Wood and Punke, like the assertion that facial recognition and facial analysis have completely different underlying technology.

Instead, the letter asserts that many machine learning researchers view the two as closely related and that facial recognition data sets can be used to train models for facial analysis.

“So in contrast to Dr. Wood’s claims, bias found in one system is cause for concern in the other, particularly in use cases that could severely impact people’s lives, such as law enforcement applications.”

The letter opposing law enforcement use of Rekognition comes weeks after members of the U.S. Senate proposed legislation to regulate the use of facial recognition software.

For its part, Amazon said it welcomes some form of regulation or “legislative framework,” while Microsoft urged the federal government to regulate facial recognition software before law enforcement agencies abuse it.

Verizon launches mobile 5G network early, stripping South Korea of bragging rights

Though South Korea’s government expected its three cellular carriers to be the world’s first to offer commercial 5G services with smartphones based on the 3GPP’s official 5G standard, Verizon today launched its mobile 5G network ahead of schedule — a win for the U.S. company as it sought to establish further global 5G bragging rights.

“Verizon customers will be the first in the world to have the power of 5G in their hands,” said Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. “This is the latest in our string of 5G firsts. Verizon launched the first commercial broadband 5G service last October, Verizon 5G Home, and now we’re lighting up our 5G Ultra Wideband network in Chicago and Minneapolis, providing the world’s first commercial 5G mobile service with a 5G-enabled smartphone.”

Verizon originally scheduled the launch of its mobile 5G network for April 11 with plans to offer Motorola’s Moto Z3 and 5G Moto Mod as the first commercial smartphone. The launch covers parts of only two U.S. cities — Chicago and Minneapolis — but will enable customers to use unlimited 5G data in those cities, falling back to 4G or sub-4G speeds outside covered areas.

South Korea has twice attempted to establish bragging rights as the world’s first country with commercial 5G networks. Last December, the country launched what it said was commercial 5G service, though its carriers had no 5G smartphones or consumer service plans to sell. This week, after 5G smartphone and plan approval delays, the country corralled its carriers and Samsung to launch actual 5G service plans and phones for customers — starting Friday, April 5.

Sensing opportunity, Verizon said today that it moved up the launch by a week, giving its customers “first time ever” access to “a commercial 5G network with the world’s first commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone.” Verizon says customers “should expect typical download speeds of 450 Mbps, with peak speeds of nearly 1 Gbps, and latency less than 30 milliseconds,” with network advancements coming throughout the year.

Whether Verizon, AT&T, or South Korea’s carriers “won” this particular 5G race largely comes down to semantics. AT&T launched a mobile 5G network with a hotspot last December, but still isn’t offering either a smartphone or wide commercial service. Verizon launched its pre-standards 5G Home service in four cities last October before today’s 5G Ultra Wideband Network launch in two different cities. On Friday, South Korean carriers are promising 5G coverage in upwards of 80 towns and cities, using the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G — a phone that doesn’t require a 5G accessory for service.

As of today, the 5G Moto Mod is available as a $200 accessory to the $480 Moto Z3, making the total cost of the 5G-capable smartphone $680 — substantially lower than South Korea’s $1,200 entry price tag for the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, and the $1,050 price tag for LG’s V50 ThinQ with 5G. U.S. pricing hasn’t been announced for the Korean phones, but the S10 5G is expected to launch soon on Verizon’s network.

For now, the Moto Z3 is Verizon’s only 5G option, and the carrier is currently offering it for only $10 per month over 24 months if purchased with a new line, or with an online upgrade. The carrier has promised to offer 5G in 30 U.S. citiesthis year, and has unlimited 5G plans ranging from $85 to $105. All of the plans have unlimited 5G, but differ in how much 4G/LTE and tethering data users get before they’re subject to “data de-prioritization.”

With only two days remaining before South Korea’s government-coordinated launch of commercial 5G services, top carrier SK Telecom today announced a series of aggressive last-minute promotions to win early adopters for its next-generation network. Following smaller rival Korea Telecom’s unexpected revelation of unlimited 5G service plans yesterday, SK Telecom said that it is spiffing up its previously reported limited data service plans with freebies and is already planning to revise its prices based on early usage data.

SK Telecom’s free offerings are designed to spotlight its “5GX” network’s ability to deliver higher-quality and lower-latency wireless services than were previously imaginable. To that end, the carrier said its video service, Oksusu, has added a 5GX section with three types of 5G-optimized content: VR, UHD, and 5G Max.

Through the end of June 2019, the company will let 5GX users consume Oksusu’s VR experiences and 4K UHD videos without depleting their data caps and will provide 5GB of free data for users of mobile and VR games — notably including Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The 5G Max video mode will allow VR headset users to watch 4K movies, documentaries, and extreme sports on a virtual IMAX-style screen.

Oksusu is also offering 12K ultra-widescreen sports broadcasts — 3 times the width of 4K UHD — with the promise of getting live sporting events 15 seconds earlier than other services. A new 5GX social VR service is designed to let multiple people watch baseball games together in a VR environment, and SK Telecom will bring UHD-quality video and voice calling to the 13 million users of its T Phone service.

The carrier is also offering discounts and extra data to certain early adopters of its 5GX data plans, which were revealed by Yonhap earlier this week.

• 5GX Slim: 8GB of 5G data for 55,000 won ($49), with 1Mbps speeds after the data cap.
• 5GX Standard: 150GB of 5G data for 75,000 won ($66), with 5Mbps speeds after the data cap.
• 5GX Prime: 200GB of 5G data for 95,000 won ($84).
• 5GX Platinum: 300GB of 5G data for 125,000 won ($110).

SK Telecom now says that customers who sign up for Prime or Platinum plans before the end of June 2019 will receive unlimited 5G data through the end of December 2019. It also noted that customers on certain contracts can receive 25% discounts on the above prices.

While SK Telecom is touting the strength of its 5G offerings, noting that it has the widest 5G network coverage in the country, superior quantum cryptographic security, and the fastest peak speeds — 2.7Gbps when using hybrid 4G-5G connections — it’s clearly concerned about the potential impact of unlimited and lower-priced 5G plans from rivals.

Following Korea Telecom’s proclamation yesterday that unlimited data will be “essential” to 5G, SK Telecom says it’s planning to revise its 5G data prices “after analyzing the data usage patterns of subscribers of unlimited plans.” That’s an unusual statement for any business to make just ahead of selling something new, but it reflects continued global debates over how to properly offer and price potentially game-changing 5G technologies.

Carriers around the world are closely watching both the pricing and performance of early U.S. and South Korean 5G data plans, as similar offerings are currently being contemplated in dozens of countries. U.S. carriers Verizonand AT&T have split on whether to offer unlimited or limited cap mobile 5G services

How to activate Microsoft Office 2019/2016

Microsoft Office is one of the most popular office software suites and the 2019 edition adds improved security and several new features.

A lot of users have made the switch to Office 365, which is a cloud-based subscription. In that case, your email account is linked to your activation key and the subscription should be renewed depending on your plan.

Even so, Office 2019/2016 with its lifetime license is still available as an alternative to the 365 subscription service. In this post, we’ll discuss and explain in detail how to activate Office 2019/2016.

How to check Office Activation Status

Before anything else, you should check the activation status of your Office copy. Open any Office application such as Word, Excel, or PowerPoint and go to File -> Account. You will find the activation status on the right under Product Information.

If it says Product Activated then it means you have a valid license for your Office copy and the problem is solved.

If there’s a yellow highlighted box that says Activation Required this means you will need to activate your copy which we will explain below.

You can also use the Command Prompt to find out the activation status of your Office program. To use this method, find the Microsoft Office installation folder, typically
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16.

Don’t miss: How to transfer a Windows 10 license to another computer

Click the Start button and type ‘cmd’ without quotes then click the first result from the list to run the Command Prompt. In the Command Prompt enter the following command then press Enter:

CD <Office installation path>

where ‘Office installation path’ should be replaced with the location of the Microsoft Office installation folder as explained above. Next, execute the command below:

cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

The current license status should be displayed after running the script, along with other details.

How to activate Microsoft Office 2019/2016

There are several methods you can use to activate Microsoft Office 2019/2016 and to use these, you will need an unlicensed copy of the program installed on your computer.

1. Sign in using your Microsoft account

If you’ve already purchased a license or you are performing a reinstall of Office on another computer you won’t need a product key. You simply need to sign-in using the Microsoft account you used to purchase the license.

Don’t miss: Connect your phone to your Windows PC

Office will detect that your account has a valid license and if you have multiple Office licenses linked to your account, the program will display them all and let you choose the one you want to use for activation. Here’s how to do it:

Open an Office application such as Word or Excel. Sign in using the pop-up prompt or navigate to File->Account->Product Activation.

Enter the login credentials for the Microsoft account linked to your Office license. If you have multiple licenses, choose the one you want to use from the list.

2. Activate Office using product key

If you purchased your Office license from a store (be it physical or online), you should have received it as a product key. While you can directly activate Office using the product key it’s recommended you link it to your account first and then sign in using the same account. Here’s how this works (make sure you have the product key on hand):

Visit office.com/setup. Log in using your Microsoft account. Enter the 25-character long product key then select your country and language. Hit Next and you’ll be redirected to the Microsoft Services and Subscriptions page.

Find the activated product and click Install to download the setup file. Run it to install Office on your PC. When prompted, sign in using the Microsoft account you just linked to your product key.

Don’t miss: How To Block a WiFi network in Windows 10

Of course, you can skip the step above if you already have Office installed. In that case, you can sign in from File->Account->Product Activation.

3. Activate via the Activation Wizard

If your copy of Office was in the trial period which is now over or was never activated you’ll be prompted with an Activation Wizard. The same can happen if you changed some hardware on your computer.

In this situation, you can definitely rely on the Activation Wizard to solve your problem. It’s very easy to use since it will take you through the activation process step by step and all you need to do is follow the on-screen instructions.

You can choose to activate Office over the Internet (the most convenient option) but you can also opt to activate it over the phone assisted by Microsoft Support. The second option can certainly come in handy if you’re having problems with the activation.

How To Block a WiFi network in Windows 10

Windows 10 automatically detects all WiFi networks within range and displays them all when you click on the taskbar network icon. This is not a bad thing though – it enables us to easily choose a network.

Nevertheless, you might want to block a WiFi network in Windows 10, or even more, if your connections list is too cluttered, or you’re often nearby public networks you don’t trust. Blocking a network is an excellent way of making sure you never connect to it by accident.

How to block a WiFi network in Windows 10

For whatever reason, Windows doesn’t provide any stock option to block specific WiFi networks. However, it is still possible to block a WiFi network in Windows 10 via the Command Prompt.

Keep in mind that blocking a WiFi network will remove it from the network connections list and you won’t be able to connect to it.

Begin by opening the Command Prompt with administrative rights. To do this, search for “command prompt” in the Start menu, right-click it and select “Run as Administrator”.

Use the command below to block the WiFi network once you replace the “Network Name” using the network’s name or SSID:

netsh wlan add filter permission=block ssid="Network Name" networktype=infrastructure

This will add the WiFi network to the blacklist and it won’t be visible in the connections pop up anymore.

Unblock a WiFi network in Windows 10

Perhaps at some point, you might want to allow the blocked WiFi network. In this case, its entry needs to be removed from the blacklist. Once you replace “Network Name” with the actual name of the blocked network in the command below, run it in Command Prompt to unblock the network.

netsh wlan delete filter permission=block ssid="Network Name" networktype=infrastructure

Since the WiFi network you’re trying to unblock is not displayed in the network connections list anymore, you might not remember its exact name. In this case, use the command below to list both allowed and blocked WiFi networks:

netsh wlan show filters

Once you find the name of the network you can use the previous command to unblock it.

Connect your phone to your Windows PC

The Fall Creators Update has brought the ability to link an iPhone or an Android to your computer. This will make it possible to start browsing on your smartphone and continue on your PC.

While smartphones have powerful hardware these days, some activities such as reading extremely long articles are much more comfortable on the large screen of a PC or a laptop. For this reason, you might want to connect your phone to your Windows PC and that’s a very simple task.

How to connect your phone to your Windows PC

To start, open the Settings app and click the Phone category. Sign into your Microsoft account (this is required) if you weren’t already and click the “+” sign next to the “Add a phone” option.

A new window will open (you might need to wait a bit for its contents to load). You’ll be prompted to enter your phone number. Click the “Send” button once you fill in your number.

Usually, such verification processes would send a confirmation code to your phone via SMS. However, Microsoft decided to take a more marketing-oriented approach so instead of a code you’ll be sent a link to install Microsoft Edge on your mobile device.

Like it or not, you will need to install Edge if you want to link your phone to your PC. Once you click the link in the message and install the browser you will also need to sign into your Microsoft account from within Edge.

Being forced to install Edge on your smartphone is a minor inconvenience although other than this the entire process is as straightforward as possible. Now you just need to restart your computer and your phone should appear as linked in the Settings -> Phone section.

From now on, you can surf the web using Edge on your phone and if you want to continue reading something on your PC, tap the share button located in the middle of the bottom options bar. From the pop-up, select your PC and this will automatically open a new tab in Edge on your computer.

There’s also an option called “Continue later”. If you use that, a notification will be sent to your computer, reminding you to read later. To access it, click the icon in the lower-right corner of your desktop. This will open the Windows notification center. You should have a section called “Continue from your phone” where you can access all the links you’ve sent from your smartphone.