Archives for November 22, 2019

Now that Chrome OS has better printer support, the cloud service is shutting down.

If there’s anything Google loves as much as launching interesting new projects (say hello to Stadia and Duplex on the web!), it’s killing them off after a few years, and now we have an end date for Google Cloud Print. The service launched in 2010 as a way to make printers more accessible for Chrome OS, but 9to5Google points out a post on the support site that indicates its services are no longer needed.

Google correctly notes that it has improved native printer support on Chrome OS, but Cloud Print has been a welcome link from all kinds of devices to the printers we know, love and are endlessly frustrated by when they refuse to work. Its easy link to other services came through in the clutch more than once, but now we’re headed back to one-by-one setups and disparate printing apps.

If you’ve come to rely on the service, then you have until the end of 2020 to work out an alternative, because when the lights come on in 2021 — “devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print.” Cloud Print never even made it out of beta status.

Its Unlimited Extra and Unlimited Elite plans will include 5G service.

AT&T says it will roll out 5G service — not LTE-based 5G Evolution, just 5G — nationwide in 2020, but in the “coming weeks,” tens of millions of customers will get access as it reaches markets like Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Providence RI, Rochester NY and San Diego. Pre-orders for its first ‘low-band’ 5G smartphone, the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G, start on November 25th, and access to the higher-speed connection is included in two of its recently-launched plans, Unlimited Elite and Unlimited Extra.

According to the maps AT&T posted (PDF), it should have more widely-available 5G coverage than we’ve experienced in testing, or seen in very-specific block-by-block maps like the ones Verizon posted. Of course, we’ll have to try it out to see how well the signal spreads out.

According to CEO Thaddeus Arroyo, “”We’re now introducing consumers to the future of wireless with broad 5G service included in our best unlimited plans for 5G devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G.”

This is all in addition to AT&T’s existing 5G+ that serves businesses with mmWave spectrum and is “even faster and higher performing” in 21 cities. It’s expected to reach “parts” of 30 cities with 5G+ by early 2020.

It’s like WALL-E but in real life.

For all the advances made by robot companies like Boston Dynamics, we’re still a long way from having robots living among humans and performing assistive tasks in our day-to-day lives. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is taking on the this challenge through its experimental X Lab, where engineers are working on The Everyday Robot Project.

In a new blog post and subsequent profile by Wired, Hans Peter Brondmo, general manager of the X robotics project, explained that engineers are now focusing on the creation of robots that interact with people in meaningful ways and perform useful tasks.

Alphabet’s previous robotics venture was Boston Dynamics, famous for its humanoid bipeds and scary metal dogs. However, the company sold the division to Softbank in 2017.

The first use of mechanical comrades at The Everyday Robot Project was to sort trash in the Alphabet offices. Like many offices, Alphabet has a variety of trash cans for recyclables and waste, though inevitably people sometimes put items in the wrong one by accident. This contamination results in more items being sent to landfill instead of being recycled.

To address the problem, the engineers decided to teach robots to sort through trash and move items that were placed in the wrong receptacle. Traditionally, the approach would have been to code the robot to recognize certain items, then tell the robot to grasp an item and move it, and so on.

The X Lab took a different approach using simulation, reinforcement learning and collaborative learning. At night, virtual robots would practice sorting virtual trash in a virtual office. Then this training could be applied to real robots doing the real job. The lessons the real robots learned during the day were transferred back to the virtual robots for even more training.

The results are noticeable: The robots were able to learn the task through practice rather than having to have each part of the task hand coded. They were successful too, reducing waste contamination level from 20 percent to less than 5 percent. In the image above, you can see robots improving their sorting ability through practice: first the robot misses the cup, then it is able to move a bottle and finally it can move other items out of the way to access the can.

To continue the development of the robots, the team now want to see if they can transfer the knowledge accumulated through practice to different tasks without the need to rebuilt the robot or to add a lot of new code. Eventually, they hope the robots can help with other, more complex tasks, like assisting elderly people in their homes.

You won’t be able to get them this holiday season after all.

Bad news if you were looking to get your hands on (or gift) Microsoft’s surprisingly comfortable Surface Earbuds this holiday season: they won’t be available until the spring. Panos Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer, said the company needs a little more time “to get all the details right.”

Product-making is about the relentless pursuit to get all the details right, which takes time…sometimes more than we planned on. To ensure we deliver the best possible experience for you, our fans & customers, Surface Earbuds will now launch worldwide in Spring 2020 #Surface

— Panos Panay (@panos_panay) November 21, 2019

Microsoft had planned to release the $249 earbuds, which it revealed last month, this holiday season. They include a charging case and Microsoft says they can run for 24 hours on a single charge.

The wearables will offer Office 365 integration, with access to your Outlook email and calendar via voice control. Meanwhile, people who give presentations may find Surface Earbuds particularly useful, as they can transcribe speech and display it on screens in real time, and translate what people are saying into more than 60 languages. The wearables will also include Spotify integration with touch controls on Android.

Microsoft is promising other features for the Earbuds, including tapping to advance PowerPoint presentations and one-click pairing. That’s a lot for Microsoft to get right and it clearly feels the need to take extra time to ensure it does, but the delay could mean it ends up ceding more smart earbud market share to its rivals.

Apple has AirPods and Powerbeats Pro, while Amazon and Google recently announced Echo Buds and refreshed Pixel Buds 2 respectively. While Microsoft appears to have a different target audience in mind, missing out on shipping Surface Earbuds during the holiday season will surely come as a blow.