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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

1/31/2018 11:07:00 PM

AMD beats Q4 gauges, income up 34 percent

For the present quarter, AMD anticipates that income will develop somewhat to $1.55 billion.




AMD announced superior to expected final quarter financials on account of expanded deals in its processing and designs fragment. Be that as it may, its present quarter viewpoint and preventative articulation sent offers down twilight. 

The semiconductor producer posted net salary of $61 million, or 6 pennies for each offer. 

Non-GAAP income were 8 pennies for each offer on income of $1.48 billion, up 34 percent year-over-year. 

Money Street was anticipating that AMD should post profit of 5 pennies for each offer on income of $1.41 billion. 

For the entire year, AMD detailed income of $5.33 billion and net wage of $43 million or 4 pennies for every offer. AMD saw a 60 percent year-over-year increment in registering and illustrations deals. 

"2017 denoted a key articulation point for AMD as we re-molded our item portfolio, conveyed 25 percent yearly income development, extended gross edge and accomplished entire year productivity," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We are considerably more amped up for 2018 as we dispatch our next flood of elite items and keep on positioning AMD as one of the head long haul development organizations in the innovation business." 

Here's a nearer breakdown of the organization's execution, by office: 

Processing and designs: Segment income expanded 60 percent year-over-year to $958 million. AMD says the expansion was driven by solid offers of Radeon illustrations and Ryzen work area processors. 

Venture, inserted and semi-custom: Segment income expanded 3 percent year-over-year to $522 million driven by server income. Successively, income diminished 37 percent driven via regularly bring down semi-custom SoC income, AMD said. 

For the present quarter, AMD gauges income to be around $1.55 billion, give or take $50 million, an expansion of 32 percent year-over-year. 

"The present quarter was driven by quality in Ryzen and Radeon Graphics and things appear to click into equip as you would anticipate from the item incentive," examiner Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy, said. "Processing and designs was up an eye popping 60%. It regularly takes seventy five percent for anything in the datacenter to kick in and we are seeing proof of Epyc and datacenter designs hitting, all integrity for AMD. I anticipate that AMD will improve in 2018 as Ryzen portable and Ryzen with coordinated designs will be promptly accessible. Epyc and datacenter Radeon designs will have yet one more month to heat and I'm expecting some greater outcomes here next quarter." 

Because of US assess change, AMD said it got a $18 million duty credit. 

In its profit report, AMD issued a preventative articulation that its business could be antagonistically affected by factors outside its control, including the Meltdown and Specter blemishes: 

AMD's endeavors to counteract and address security vulnerabilities can be expensive and might be incompletely compelling or not effective by any stretch of the imagination. For example, AMD's moderation endeavors, including the arrangement of programming or firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities, could bring about unintended outcomes, for example, antagonistic execution framework operation issues and reboots. AMD may likewise rely upon outsiders, for example, clients, merchants and end clients to send AMD's alleviations or make their own, and they may deferral, decrease or change the execution of such alleviations. AMD's associations with its clients could be unfavorably influenced as some of its clients may quit obtaining AMD items, decrease or postpone future buys of AMD items, or utilize contending items. Any of these activities by AMD's clients could unfavorably influence its income. AMD is likewise subject to claims identified with the as of late revealed side-channel abuses, for example, "Phantom" and "Emergency," and may confront cases or case for future vulnerabilities. Genuine or saw security vulnerabilities of AMD items may subject AMD to unfriendly exposure, harm to its image and notoriety, and could tangibly hurt AMD's business or money related outcomes. 

For monetary 2018, AMD will receive another income acknowledgment standard, yet expects the effect on income to be insignificant. 

AMD's offers were down more than 6 percent in post-retail exchanging.




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1/31/2018 10:04:00 PM

Hands on: Asus E201 VivoBook with Windows 10S

The Asus E201 VivoBook is a shoddy method to attempt Windows 10S, if that is the thing that you need to do. Redesign it to Windows 10 Pro and it turns into a strong 11.6in journal for schools or for use in the field.



The Asus E201 is a strong 11.6-inch Windows 10S workstation with a decent multi-touch trackpad and a fair spill-safe console, however some dislike the position of the oblique punctuation line key.  

The most alluring thing about the Asus E201 VivoBook - a strong 11.6-inch Windows 10S workstation - is that you can overhaul it to Windows 10 Pro. I needed to attempt a PC running 10S to check whether I could get by without conventional Windows programs, and the appropriate response is yes, yet not for long. For genuine clients, it has an indistinguishable stumbling feeling from a Chromebook, however it's not as terrible, in light of the fact that at any rate you can run Microsoft Office. Be that as it may, as with Chromebooks, the disadvantages of Windows 10S can progress toward becoming preferences for school kids, for unpracticed clients, and maybe for some corporate purposes, if in-house applications have been produced for particular errands. 

Windows 10S is a rendition of Windows that will just run applications from the Windows Store. It pieces clients from introducing conventional applications from the web: they are a wellspring of hazard. There's nothing amiss with that on a fundamental level, yet there are two issues for commonplace Windows clients. To begin with, you can't run either the top of the line applications or the recognizable utilities that you've depended on for quite a long time. Second, the Windows Store doesn't have almost enough great quality applications. (No, this isn't news, yet following five years, there should be more.) 

In any case, it would not be right to state that Windows 10S can't run customary Win32 programs. It can. There are a lot of them incorporated with Windows 10S. 

In the wake of experiencing the 10S's delightful voice-based set-up, I was promptly profitable with the Asus E201 in light of the fact that regardless it incorporates Notepad and Wordpad. These matured projects were not on the Windows 10S Start menu and there were no tiles for them, however regardless they ran flawlessly well. What's more, in light of the fact that the new Settings application doesn't offer every one of the controls you may need, the old Control Panel program and different utilities still keep running also. Once more, these are work area programs composed for the old Win32 API, not the new Windows Runtime presented for applications in Windows 8. 

There should come a day when each window utility is accessible in application shape. This will empower Microsoft to strip out the entire Win32 subsystem, abandoning a littler, speedier, more secure, touch-mindful rendition of Windows for schoolchildren and general shoppers. I may wager on it happening some time this century, however it doesn't take a gander right now. Best, at that point, to consider Windows 10S as a locating shot or an organizing post for that magnificent future. 

Before anybody has a fit, I don't foresee Microsoft expelling Win32 from Pro and Enterprise forms of Windows. Organizations have dug in programming, and expert clients have settled in propensities. In reverse similarity of uses, information and business forms is still what keeps Microsoft in business. 

Strong equipment 

Aside from that, I appreciated utilizing the Asus E201. It is an exceptionally strong, spill-safe machine intended to take the sort of discipline that PCs endure in schools. The finished complete can rest easy and might make you more averse to drop it, however it does even now indicate fingerprints. 

While the E201 is sensibly light at 1.2kg, it's not thin at 2.25cm (0.9 inches), on the grounds that different things are more vital. These incorporate reparability - you can evacuate both the back and the console/top plate for upkeep - and a battery life of 11-12 hours with direct settings. 

The specialized particular, the console and trackpad are each of the notably better than what you find in most low-end purchaser PCs. For a begin, you get 4GB of memory and 64GB of capacity, rather than the 2GB/32GB fitted to the least expensive buyer machines. It can bolster up to 8GB/128GB. 

The touchpad feels great, and the keys have more go than you may expect in a modest PC. The key format is for the most part regular, and the two vast move keys make up for the marginally short spacebar and half-stature bolt keys. The oblique punctuation line key (\) has gone walkies, however not every person preferred it amongst Z and the Shift key. 

The sides of the E201 give two USB 3.0 ports, a SD card peruser, a HDMI port and an earphone jack, in addition to the power attachment. Sadly, there isn't a wired Ethernet port, however you could simply utilize a USB connector. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are, obviously, inherent. 

The processor is a 1.1GHz double center Intel Celeron N3350, which is generally moderate, yet it blasts to 2.4GHz. Generally speaking, execution feels much like the more natural quad-center Intel Atom x5-Z8500. The Celeron's TDP is just 6W, which assists with the battery life. A quicker quad-center Pentium N4200 variant is accessible, in the event that you can discover one. 

Asus E201 



The 1366 x 768-pixel hostile to glare screen isn't the most great part. Hues showed up to some degree level, particularly on my 50 percent brilliance setting. You need to focus on screen points to receive the best in return. Nonetheless, it's flawlessly serviceable, and I've seen more awful screens on £199/$199 PCs... despite the fact that I've likewise observed some better ones, as well. 

The Asus E201 is a clamshell outline, in the convention of the best netbooks of old. The screen isn't touch-delicate, and it just lies level (turning through 180 degrees) rather than collapsing behind the console. Along these lines, it doesn't do double obligation as a tablet. I don't know how essential that is for schools, but rather it's most likely not a downside for organizations who may esteem the machine's harder development for work in the field. 

The Asus E201NA-GJ008T-OSS is right now offering for £269.98 (inc VAT) at different spots. That is great incentive for a 4GB/64GB workstation since it incorporates a three-year guarantee. In the UK, Asus offers it coordinate for £292.99.




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1/31/2018 08:49:00 PM

Meltdown and Spectre Is your PC vulnerable?

A new app gives you a simple overview of your system's vulnerability status, as well as what kind of performance hit the patches might be having.




Want to know if your PCs are vulnerable to the Meltdown and Spectre attacks? Want to get an idea of the sort of performance hit the patches might entail? Want to temporarily disable the update for testing purposes? There's an app that can do all this.

Enter InSpectre, yet another excellent freeware utility created by Steve Gibson of GRC.com.

Using InSpectre is about as simple as it gets -- download the 126KB file (yes, kilobytes, not megabytes!), and on first run (no, there's no installation process) it will give you a clear overview of your system's Meltdown and Spectre status, as well as offering an indication as to whether the patches have an impact on system performance (this is based on the processor/operating system information and not a benchmark).

InSpectre can also be used to disable protection on PCs (note that enabling and disabling protection requires a reboot). Why might you want to do that? Well, you might want to do this for testing purposes or to regain lost performance.

Enabling and disabling Meltdown and Spectre protection is carried out by modifying registry entries as detailed here.

InSpectre can also output more in-depth data about the system and how the tool comes to its conclusions about the system's vulnerability status.

InSpectre can also be run on Linux and macOS systems, but it has to be run using WINE.



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1/31/2018 07:20:00 PM

Windows 10 plus your top Android apps: Chuwi teases new Hi8 Air dual-boot tablet

Chuwi will soon launch a budget-friendly eight-inch tablet running Windows 10 and Android.



Chinese hardware maker Chuwi is gearing up to release a budget tablet that runs Windows 10 as well as your favorite Android apps.

Chuwi, which has built a reputation for well-priced Microsoft Surface clones, will soon launch the Hi8 Air, an eight-inch tablet aimed at students.

The device will run Windows 10 and Android 5.1 and shares many of the same specs as the Hi8 Pro that was released in 2016.

An obvious drawback is that it runs Android Lollipop, which Google released in 2015. However, given the Hi8 Pro was less than $100, the Hi8 Air should also meet the slimmest of budgets.

A Chuwi spokeswoman was unable to tell ZDNet the price or release date for the Hi8 Air, but noted that it won't be promoted through a crowdfunding campaign as the company has done with several previous laptops, such as the SurBook.

The Hi8 Air will have a 1,920 x 1,200-pixel full HD display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. As with the Hi8 Pro, it features an Intel Cherry Trail CPU, 2GB of memory, and 32GB of eMMC storage with expandable memory up to 128GB.

The tablet has a 4,000mAG battery, a micro USB port, a micro HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It also supports Bluetooth 4.0 and Chuwi is throwing in a Bluetooth keyboard in the box with the charger.

The Hi8 Air isn't as well-specced as some of Chuwi's previous dual-boot tablets such as the Hi 10 Plus, which also shipped with Android 5.1-based Remix OS, but for a probable sub-$100 price with a keyboard included, it could be well-received.


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1/31/2018 01:55:00 PM

Apple iPhone X request goads stress, however might be lost in front of Q1 comes about

The vulnerability around iPhone X request is starting a ton of horror on Wall Street. Rest in peace super cycle.



Apple is allegedly cutting requests for the iPhone X as interest for the expensive handset aren't holding up regardless of animoji-drove promoting. The unavoidable issue is whether iPhone X request matters when the main thing up for snatches is Apple's item blend and normal offering cost. 

Basically, Apple can, in any case, indicate solid interest for the iPhone regardless of whether the iPhone X isn't satisfying exclusive standards as a superior gadget. It's profoundly likely that the iPhone X value point- - $999 and up- - is basically driving buys of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Review that iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus deals began moderately as purchasers sat tight for the iPhone X to arrive. 

Macintosh can win electronic restorative record amusement with Health Records in iOS 11.3: Here's 7 reasons why | Apple-based retail tech indicates portable at the center of business | iPhone X has the score however this is Samsung's answer for full-screen shows | Apple grows US capital spending, plans to include 20,000 employment, put resources into server farms 

Play this out and what you have is a premium iPhone X that'll order a sound segment of offers with the heft of income getting from mid-level gadgets. As it were, Apple's income blend will look like general organizations. No other organization other than Apple would be relied upon to offer a top-notch item that will represent the majority of offers. All things considered, if each purchaser just needed to pay for a higher end SKU no seller could ever make a mid-level item. 

The speculating diversion about iPhone X request has been in progress for a considerable length of time. The most recent from The Wall Street Journal is that Apple intends to make 20 million iPhone X handsets in the main quarter, down about half from an underlying arrangement. Investigators anticipate that aggregate iPhone shipments will be up 1.5 percent for the quarter finished Dec. 31. 

This is what's extremely going on: This quarter is the first with iPhone X in the overlap. Accordingly, there's a ton of vulnerability about normal offering costs and item blend. Apple doesn't know how the redesign cycle will play out since it hasn't had a trio of new iPhones sometime recently. 

Experts are anticipating that Apple should convey income of $87.06 billion in its fiscal first quarter with profit of $3.83 an offer on a non-GAAP premise. 

What's lost is the iPhone X unit shock is that Apple's top-notch gadget is just losing deals to its more affordable iPhones. Dislike a client taking a gander at the iPhone X is bouncing to Android. As a stage play, Apple can, in any case, expand its benefit on a client by means of administrations. 

Apple's most concerning issue is that the super cycle that experts envisioned about hasn't played out. Oppenheimer expert Andrew Uerkwitz noted: 

It shows up the "supercycle" we as a whole needed isn't here...$54B in free income (FY18) should do instead...We bring down our March '18 and June '18 iPhone shipment appraises by 10M and 8M units, separately. We trust high cost and absence of convincing highlights in iPhone X will keep a lower than anticipated number of clients from exchanging or overhauling. We accept not even the X could break the substitution extension cycle. 

Over the long haul, Uerkwitz stresses that Apple is made a beeline for slowing down development as gadgets change to man-made brainpower drove highlights. 

Macquarie investigator Ben Schachter as of late featured Apple's administrations income potential. "Basically Services and the application biological system will probably be in charge of a huge level of Apple's future benefit development (we really appraise more than 80%). In any case, Apple needs to ensure that designers keep concentrated on the Apple biological community and increment the utility of applications for its clients. Tim Cook's emphasis on AR is plainly fixing to this," he said. 

We can banter about whether the iPhone X is a flounder, however it may not make any difference as long as Apple keeps its clients in the biological system and purchasing extra administrations.



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1/31/2018 12:54:00 AM

IT infrastructure spending shifting toward cloud deployments

Conventional IT framework spending is losing steam as private and open cloud construct outs quicken, as indicated by IDC.




Spending on data innovation foundation, for example, servers, stockpiling, and systems administration went to cloud organizations, as per IDC. 

The exploration firm said that IT foundation spending in 2017 gave to cloud will add up to $46.5 billion, up 20.9 percent from 2016. Spending on non-cloud IT foundation fell 2.6 percent in 2017, yet despite everything it represents 57.2 percent of aggregate spending. 

All things considered, unmistakably IT foundation spending is heading off to the cloud. Consider: 

57.2 percent of spending on IT framework went to customary utilize cases, however that is down from 62.4 percent in 2016. 

Open cloud server farms represent the dominant part (65.3 percent) of IT framework spending dedicated to cloud organizations. 

The development rate for open cloud IT framework spending is 26.2 percent for 2017. 

Off-premises private cloud spending speak to 13 percent of IT framework spending. On-premises private cloud spending is 62.6 percent of spending on IT framework gave to private cloud. 

In cloud IT conditions, organizing and figure spending each grew 22 percent in 2017, with capacity developing at a 19.2-percent cut.


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Tuesday, January 30, 2018

1/30/2018 10:43:00 PM

Samsung launches 800GB Z-SSD for super computing

The new SZ985 SSD boasts an ultra-low latency of 16 microseconds.



Samsung Electronics has launched an 800GB solid state drive, the SZ985 Z-SSD, aimed at supercomputing, the firm announced.

The new offering boasts five times less latency than of NVMe SSDs and is aimed at high-speed cache data and log data processing, the company said.

The single port, four-lane Z-SSD comes with Z-NAND with 10 times higher cell read performance than 3-bit V-NAND.

It has an ultra-low latency controller with 1.5GB LPDDR4 DRAM that allows 1.7 times faster random read performance at 750,000 IOPS and a write latency of 16 microseconds, five times less than NVMe SSD PM963.

It also has a random write speed of up to 170,000 IOPS.

It comes with a five-year guarantee for 30 drive writes per day or a total of 42 petabytes. It also has a mean time between failures of 2 million hours.

A 240GB version will also be introduced at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2018 next month.

Last week, Samsung unveiled 4K-ready 860 Pro and 860 EVO SSDs with V-NAND.

Last month, it began production of 512GB eUFS aimed at smartphones.




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1/30/2018 10:17:00 PM

Google starts selling its $249 Clips camera, but you need to join a wait list to get one

Google's hands-free AI camera goes on sale but then quickly sells out.


Google unveiled its Clips camera alongside the Pixel 2 back in October, but the company only finally made it available for purchase over the weekend.

The $249 Clips hands-free camera uses AI running on an Intel Movidius chip to decide when to take a snap of family and friends. The device is meant to be placed in living rooms or clipped to chairs to take natural-looking photos in the background.

The camera went on sale over the weekend, but as Android Police noted, delivery times were quickly pushed out to early March. Google has now stopped taking new orders, offering customers the option of joining a waitlist.

Clips take motion photos, not unlike Apple's Live Photos, except the clips are seven seconds long and don't have any audio.

Its AI learns to recognize faces and over time will focus on taking clips of the people it's familiar with.

Since the device has no screen, the clips need to be shared with a compatible phone for viewing, but all clips can be transferred wirelessly to the phone app. The camera has a 130-degree field of view and takes video at 15 frames per second. It has 16GB of internal storage.

Clips, for now, is only available in the US. Google hasn't said whether it will be released in other markets.

Google says it built Clips with privacy and control in mind. While it could be uncomfortable knowing a camera is always on and watching your family at home, the machine learning happens on the device rather than in the cloud. Also, the camera light is activated when it's recording.




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Cool storage at CES 2018
1/30/2018 08:35:00 PM

Cool storage at CES 2018

Storage is the hardest problem in computer systems because it is the only part that is persistent. Without storage, your computer could be anyone's computer. Here's the cool storage I saw at CES 2018.


Consumer storage is being revolutionized by cloud storage, and CES reflected that fact. But blockchain also made an appearance, much to my surprise.

Here's the rundown:

FILEGEAR

A small, $299, router-sized box with 4 USB ports and an Ethernet port to connect to a router, Filegear promises to connect to all your local drives and cloud storage, and then automagically organize all the files so they all appear in one place.

This has a lot of potential - I've got three cloud storage providers and way more than 4 USB drives - so I've asked for a review copy. Stay tuned.

MONUMENT

Monument is similar to Filegear, but optimized for photos (it has an SD card slot for ingest and HDMI for display). Also like Filegear, Monument promises to organize your photos, using AI. It will also back up your content to a remote Monument if you buy two.

One big plus for Monument: while it does less than Filegear, it is also almost half the price, $169. I've also asked them for a review copy so we can all learn more about it.

SKEEP

Skeep is an iOS and Android app that is designed to put you back in control of your social network data. Manage which apps - including Facebook and Twitter - access your data. Manage permissions. Unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters.

I'm not on Facebook, but I like what the Skeep team is attempting. My only question for them, which I've asked, is how will they make money? I hope they figure it out. In the meantime I'm going to try their app and will report back.

PIKCIO

Pikcio is aimed at enterprises like banks, insurers, and healthcare providers. It uses blockchain to allow customers to transfer validated data, without forcing re-authentication and re-verification.

Enterprises will buy the technology, but it should benefit consumers by reducing the friction of highly personal data while keeping it secure. My major question is how well the blockchain infrastructure will scale.

QNAP

QNAP is a long time player in prosumer storage, but they're jumping on the the AI bandwagon with QuAI, an AI developer package. It is intended to allow data scientists and developers to build, train, optimize, and deploy machine learning apps directly on QNAP's NAS storage.

Artificially intelligent storage? It's about time! And speaking of time, QNAP was a little murky on when QuAI will be released.

THE STORAGE BITS TAKE

Since the Universe hates your data, figuring out how to preserve it is a constant battle. The cloud can help, but the surest strategy is multiple copies in different places on different media, including the 1,000 year DVD.

But with your data spread out, how do you access it? That's the question Filegear and Monument are attempting to answer, and I hope they succeed.

But not only does the universe hate your data, there's an entire planet of hackers trying to steal it for commercial or nefarious purposes. Entropy is like a constant wind in your face, while hacking is a gusty storm of different threats.

I'm pleased to see young companies taking on these challenges. We need all the help we can get.




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Cool startup products at CES 2018
1/30/2018 07:33:00 PM

Cool startup products at CES 2018

Even though CES is no longer the Consumer Electronics Show - it's just CES - there are still many startups with consumer gadgets. I spent 2 days in Eureka Park so you don't have to. Here's (some) of what I found.


ULTIMATE GAMING CHAIR

A Ukrainian company, MMOne Project, is offering a robot arm with a gaming chair on the end. The arm can flip you over and extends up to 12 feet high. Great for dogfighting in virtual reality. Watch their short trailer here.

CINEMA SNOWGLOBES

Do you like snowglobes? What if they showed movies? Cinema Snowglobes has married the traditional snowglobe with a small projector so the globe can present a video, with snow!

WIRAL CAM

Wiral - pronounced "viral" - was promoting their low-cost cable cam for small camcorders and stabilizers. It's motorized and can go where drones can't, such as through a forest. Makes incredible shots easy.

MODULAR CAMERA SLIDER

Most camera sliders are pretty clunky, and not something you'd pack into the mountains to get a great timelapse shot. But Dyno has built a modular slider that snaps together in seconds and, being plastic, is light enough to carry anywhere. And it's affordable!

OPEN SOURCE DRONE

Zano has taken a defunct Kickstarter project and is turning it into a Raspberry Pi for drones. It isn't a product - yet - but they're looking for people to help develop the technology.

THE STORAGE BITS TAKE

Evolutionary biology has a theory called punctuated equilibrium, which posits that ecosystems remain stable until a major shock - asteroid impact, volcanism, global warming (or cooling) - punctuates the environment. In response, evolution creates lots of new creatures, many that go nowhere, until a relative few emerge as dominant.

Technology seems to follow a similar trajectory. The newest shocks are AI, the blockchain, and IoT. Despite the hype around all three at CES, I'm sure that we have yet to see the vendors and applications that will become dominant around these technologies.

When the PC revolution started in the 70s, dozens of now-forgotten firms began and, for a while, flourished. Ohio Scientific, Cromemco, and Processor Technology were all innovative PC companies who got rolled by Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack.

CES is the world's largest toy show, and I've only scratched the surface of what the startups were doing. Smart furniture? Check. Smart glasses? Check. Smart clothing? Check. Smart pet bed? Yup.

Many of these will fall by the wayside, for reasons of cost, ease of use, or failing to find a niche. But the ones that succeed, even in a niche, will make our world a better place.

To the optimistic ones, I salute you. Good luck!


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1/30/2018 01:09:00 PM

Cloud AutoML: How Google aims to simplify the grunt work behind AI and machine learning models

Google's Cloud AutoML uses the company's research and technology to enable enterprises to customize models and tune algorithms with their proprietary data.




Google plans to automate the creation of machine learning models and enable enterprise developers to customize as it aims to use artificial intelligence as a primary use case for Google Cloud Platform. The primary argument will be that Google Cloud Platform's tools for machine learning will produce higher quality models faster.

On Wednesday, Google outlined Cloud AutoML, an alpha effort to give developers technology that can automatically create a machine learning model. Google will start with AutoML Vision and then move through its differentiating categories such as translation, video, and natural language processing.

Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist for Google Cloud AI, said Google has been offering standard AI building blocks, but it became clear that enterprise customers needed to customize models with their own data. "AI and machine learning is still a field with high barriers," she said.

What's the plan to democratize AI? Google's Jia Li, head of research and development of Google Cloud AI, said the automation of technologies such as transfer learning, training, and model optimization will be critical. With automation, Li said customers will be able to improve quality of models much faster. Developers can then turn these models into simple application programming interface (API) calls.

In a blog post, the two Lis noted:

Currently, only a handful of businesses in the world have access to the talent and budgets needed to fully appreciate the advancements of ML and AI. There's a very limited number of people that can create advanced machine learning models. And if you're one of the companies that has access to ML/AI engineers, you still have to manage the time-intensive and complicated process of building your own custom ML model. While Google has offered pre-trained machine learning models via APIs that perform specific tasks, there's still a long road ahead if we want to bring AI to everyone.
Here's a look at what AutoML aims to streamline:


Pricing for this AutoML effort, which starts with AutoML Vision to analyze and optimize images, will be based on API usage and compute. Rajen Sheth, director of product management Google Cloud AI, said customers will pay for the consumption of the API and compute. "We will work with each customer to determine pricing to match their expectations for the problem they are trying to solve," said Sheth.

Google's AutoML Vision will roll out first with early customers such as Disney and Urban Outfitters.



Sheth added that customers will own their data and their proprietary models under the privacy policies of Google Cloud Platform. "This product gives a lot of autonomy back to the customers," said Jia Li.

SELLING QUALITY MODELS

With AutoML, Google is essentially saying quality will be the main selling point for the service. Google's core pitch is that it will use its research and technology to democratize data. Jia Li noted that AutoML is "powered by cutting edge research" and the ability to train models to be production ready faster.

Sheth said these quality models will be created with a simple graphical user interface that shows you the model deployed and the quality. "Quality really matters," Sheth said.

Jia Li said Google has benchmarked its methods compared to existing publicly known techniques to conclude that its models are better and easier to produce.




Even though Google Cloud Platform is simplifying model creation with AutoML it's not all unicorns and rainbows. Companies will need to tag their data and prepare it for AutoML. "In order to create a model for your own purposes, you will still need multiple steps such as model prep, tuning and evaluation as well as iteration. We're providing the technology underneath to remove barriers," Jia Li said.

The launch of AutoML is primarily aimed at developers and independent software providers. Sheth, however, said "I could see this expanding quite a bit to analysts and product people." After all, there are many people in an organization who need to deal with data.

For those looking to deep dive on the models, Google cited the following references on its AutoML post:

Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition, Barret Zoph, Vijay Vasudevan, Jonathon Shlens, and Quoc V. Le. Arxiv, 2017.

Progressive Neural Architecture Search, Chenxi Liu, Barret Zoph, Jonathon Shlens, Wei Hua, Li-Jia Li, Li Fei-Fei, Alan Yuille, Jonathan Huang, Kevin Murphy, Arxiv, 2017

Large-Scale Evolution of Image Classifiers, Esteban Real, Sherry Moore, Andrew Selle, Saurabh Saxena, Yutaka Leon Suematsu, Quoc Le, Alex Kurakin. International Conference on Machine Learning, 2017.

Neural Architecture Search with Reinforcement Learning, Barret Zoph, Quoc V. Le. International Conference on Learning Representations, 2017.

Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning, Christian Szegedy, Sergey Ioffe, Vincent Vanhoucke, and Alex Alemi. AAAI, 2017.

Bayesian Optimization for a Better Dessert, Benjamin Solnik, Daniel Golovin, Greg Kochanski, John Elliot Karro, Subhodeep Moitra, D. Sculley. NIPS, Workshop on Bayesian Optimization, 2017.




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1/30/2018 02:14:00 AM

Leaving Windows: How the Pixelbook replaced my Surface Pro 4, no regrets

The world continues to move to the cloud and less is being done with offline apps. Last month I put my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 on the shelf and connected my new Google Pixelbook to my external Dell monitor as I went all in with a Chromebook.




My first Surface Pro computer was purchased five years ago and since then I moved onto the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4. While these are fantastic computers for the daily train commuter and business traveler, Windows can also be a frustrating experience and there may be another alternative that meets your needs better.

I tested out the original Google Chromebook in 2013 and ever since then I have lusted after the Google hardware. The Surface Pro line is also rather stunning, but the high-end Google Chromebook hardware is even better.

Since a Google Pixelbook was not sent for evaluation, I bought one to test out in October at a time when I was testing it against an Apple iPad Pro 10.5. I ended up returning the Pixelbook within the two week period and since then I also sold off my iPad Pro. ZDNet's Jason Cipriani tested the Pixelbook and posted his full review, which discussed many of the great aspects of the Pixelbook.

While the Google Pixelbook was out and available, my Surface Pro 4 and Windows 10 continued to cause daily frustration. For example, in order to use the Microsoft Arc Touch Surface mouse I had to completely restart the Surface Pro 4 each time I came back to it after it went to sleep. I also had to pack along a specific charger when I traveled. The Windows updates appeared at inconvenient times and took time to install. Google Chrome, my preferred browser, also seemed to slow down with many tabs open. Overall, the Windows experience was just wearing me down.

While I am a professional engineer by day and a mobile tech blogger by night, I'm at a point in my engineering career where I don't have the daily need to run AutoCAD, Rhino, or other Windows engineering apps. I spend most of my time in Word, Outlook, OneNote, and other document and drawing review apps. Writing for ZDNet just requires a text editor, web browser, and basic photo editor. Thus, my life has evolved to the point where Windows is no longer a required operating system.

As Christmas approached and Google offered $100 off the Pixelbook, I decided it was time to gift myself a Pixelbook and try it again. This time, as soon as it arrived, I took the Surface Pro 4 off the dock and put it on the bookshelf. I picked up an Aukey USB Type C hub and plugged in my external touchscreen Dell monitor while connecting the Microsoft Surface Arc Mouse via Bluetooth. With both the HDMI cable and USB cable plugged into the hub from my monitor, I have full touch capability on the monitor as well as on the Pixelbook. The Aukey hub also charges up my Pixelbook at the same time.

Over the past month, I have used the Pixelbook with an external monitor at my desk, around the house as a portable computer, on my daily train commute, and on the road to Vegas and San Francisco. The Pixelbook hardware is as glorious as I remember with the only questionable design element being the rather large bezels around the display. I have used the Pixelbook in laptop, tablet, and tent mode media viewing orientations.

There has been only one reason I have had to pull out the Surface Pro 4 and that is to record the MobileTechRoundup podcast with Skype and Audacity. I may be able to figure out a solution with Android apps, but that is truly the last hurdle I have to jump to forget about the Surface Pro 4.

Here are some of the key apps I have discovered and why I use them on the Pixelbook:

Text: I've been writing articles online for 17 years and continue to write everything in HTML. Text is a Chrome OS app that gives me the basics I need to be extremely productive with writing articles in offline mode. It is exactly what I want and available for free.

Google Keep: I capture thoughts and ideas all day and use Google Keep as my quick note taking application.

Wunderlist: This app is used to list all of my planned ZDNet posts while also serving as my shared todo list with my family.

Files: I use this app to manage my downloaded files and those found on Google Drive.

Chrome photo editor: With ZDNet I have basic photo editing needs so I take photos with my phones, upload to Google Photos, and then perform basic editing (crop, resize, basic touchup) with the default image editing tool found in Chrome OS.

OneNote and Evernote: I used these two apps for cross-platform note taking and plan to use them more with the Pixelbook pen.

Google Docs, Sheets, and Microsoft Office: I use these apps to create and edit various Office documents. They work well on the Pixelbook and the excellent keyboard helps me crank out work.

Google Play Movies and Netflix: I download content before I travel and have enjoyed several movies on recent trips. I also stream Netflix content at home on one display while I browse the internet on my external monitor.

Deltek Touch Time and Expense: This is an Android app I use for my weekly engineering timesheets. It has a rather terrible user interface, but the full application requires Internet Explorer. I understand it will be updated in 2018 to support other browsers and hope it gets better as it is rather painful to enter hours in its current configuration.

For everything else I need for work, there are websites that let me be productive on the Google Pixelbook. With the desktop class browser, I am able to fully engage with the ZDNet CMS and have been able to enjoy a fully functional experience. With devices like the Apple iPad Pro, there were browser limitations that prevented me from a full and complete CMS experience.

It's a joy to forget about virus scanning, security updates, and other failures (such as Bluetooth mouse connections) while using the Pixelbook. I have been more efficient and happier using the Pixelbook and have absolutely no regrets about spending nearly $1,000 for this new device.

In addition to apps, there are both keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures that have made my life more efficient. Due to the $100 discount, I also purchased the Pixelbook pen, but so far I haven't yet integrated the pen into my daily usage routine.

I will soon be posting my thoughts on a couple WaterField Designs bags that help me carry the Pixelbook on my daily routine. Jason also recently let me know about a free Pixelbook pen loop that may make carrying the pen less painful too.

The Google Pixelbook will not work for everyone, but it also will work for a lot more folks than you may think. As I perform more of an engineering management role, rather than an engineering calculation role, there is less need for dedicated unique ship design apps. With the Pixelbook, OneNote, Google Sheets, Outlook Web Access, and other apps and websites meet my needs.

The Google Pixelbook is expensive, but it is also well built and performs flawlessly. I have been able to write more ZDNet content at a faster pace with the Pixelbook than with the Surface Pro 4. The hardware is so fantastic that I want to use it daily and look forward to creating content, browsing the internet, watching media, communicating with people, and computing on the go.

Seamless updates, lightning fast startup and performance, Android application support, and long battery life make the Google Pixelbook a serious contender for an ultimate computing device for those looking for the best.




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1/30/2018 01:23:00 AM

Linux and Intel gradually hack their way to a Specter fix

Settling the chip security gaps Meltdown and Specter will take a long, long time, yet Linus Torvalds and Intel designers are gradually moving to answers for Linux.



Apparition and Meltdown are real outline blemishes in present day CPUs. While they're available in every current processor, on the grounds that Intel chips are so broadly utilized, Intel is taking a large portion of the warmth for these bugs. No place has the feedback been more sweltering than on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). That is on account of dissimilar to Apple and Microsoft working framework designers and OEMS like Dell and HP, Linux software engineers do their work in the open. In any case, when Linux and Intel designers aren't contending, they are gaining ground. 

It didn't begin well. As Linux's maker Linus Torvalds said on the LKML when news of the issues broke, "I think some individual within Intel needs to truly investigate their CPUs, and really concede that they have issues." Later, Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the Linux stable branch, composed this is "a course book case of how not to communicate with the Linux piece group appropriately". 

At that point, things warmed up again when irritated by new Intel recommended patches, Torvalds growled, "Is Intel truly anticipating making this poo design? Anyone conversed with them and disclosed to them they are f*cking crazy?" 

David Woodhouse, an Intel Linux part build, answered: 

On the off chance that the option was a two-decade item review and giving everybody free CPUs, I don't know it was totally crazy. 

Surely it's a frightful hack, however hello - the world was ablaze and at last we didn't need to simply kill the datacentres and backpedal to goat cultivating, so it's not all terrible. 

As a hack for existing CPUs, it's just about bearable - as long as it can kick the bucket altogether by the people to come. 

Meanwhile, Intel's endeavors to settle these issues simply over the chip's equipment and underneath the working framework with microcode has come to nothing. To start with, Intel suggested individuals quit utilizing its present firmware refreshes. From that point forward, Dell and HP pulled Intel's surrey Meltdown and Specter microcode fixes. 

Torvalds hasn't been awed, yielding, "Intel really appears to anticipate making the best decision for emergency (the principle question being _when_). Which isn't an immense shock, since it ought to be anything but difficult to fix, and it's a truly blaring enormous gap to drive through. Not making the best choice for emergency would be totally inadmissible." But, he proceeded with, "Intel is _not_ anticipating making the best decision for the aberrant branch hypothesis. Truly, that is totally unsatisfactory." 

What's more, in addition, "As it seems to be, the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE." You can simply depend on Torvalds to call them the way he sees them. 

In any case, Woodhouse answered that while it's a "terrible hack in the transient I could live with [it]." 

In a later message, Woodhouse proceeded with, "I think we've secured the specialized piece of this now, not you like it - not that any of us *like* it." He at that point clarified the rationale behind these "junk" patches. 

This is about Specter variation 2 [CVE-2017-5715], where the CPU can be deceived into mispredicting the objective of a backhanded branch. What's more, I'm particularly taking a gander at what we can do on *current* equipment, where we're restricted to the hacks they can figure out how to include the microcode. 

The new microcode from Intel and AMD includes three new highlights. 

One new component (IBPB) is an entire hindrance for branch forecast. Subsequent to frobbing this, no branch targets adapted before will be utilized. It's sort of costly (request of size ~4000 cycles). 

The second (STIBP) shields a hyperthread kin from following branch expectations which were found out on another kin. You *might* need this when running disconnected procedures in userspace, for instance. Or on the other hand extraordinary VM visitors running on HT kin. 

The third element (IBRS) is more muddled. It's intended to be set when you enter a more special execution mode (i.e. the portion). It avoids branch targets learned in a less-advantaged execution mode, BEFORE IT WAS MOST RECENTLY SET, from producing results. Be that as it may, it's not only a 'set-and-overlook' include, it additionally has hindrance like semantics and should be determined to *each* passage into the portion (from userspace or a VM visitor). It's *also* costly. Also, a terrible hack, however for some time it was the main choice we had. 

Other than being extremely chaotic, the inadequacy with all these patches is they definitely back off procedures. Google's Retpoline fix is a "monstrous execution win", Woodhouse concedes. Retpoline works by hindering all processors' aberrant branch expectations, which is the place Specter lives. 

In any case, Woodhouse proceeded, "Not every person has a retpoline compiler yet" and the Intel "Skylake, and that age of CPU centers," which would even now be helpless. The "IBRS arrangement, appalling however it is, addressed that". As it seems to be, utilizing just Retpoline "opens a *little* bit of a security gap". 

The work proceeds on an approach to stay away from "rubbish" patches, while as yet keeping Intel Skylake - Intel's 6th era processor family - safe. Ingo Molnar, a Red Hat Linux piece engineer, has recommended a technique, which seems to protect Skylake from Specter. 

Something must be finished. These openings empower programmers to get around framework assurances on all PCs, servers, and cell phones. Up until now, thump on silicon, nobody's figured out how to abuse them. Be that as it may, it won't be long. Meanwhile, the fixes to date all back off frameworks. 

As the Linux talks and Intel microcode news appear, we're as yet a long, long route from an entire fix. 

At long last, since we recognize what's new with Linux, doesn't imply that macOS and Windows aren't confronting precisely the same. They are. We're not simply catching wind of them.




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Monday, January 29, 2018

1/29/2018 10:44:00 PM

Western Digital beats market expectations for Q2 with record revenue

The hard disk drive and memory chip maker saw record revenue of $5.3 billion, thanks to solid demand for enterprise and NAND based products.




Western Digital reported its second quarter financial results on Thursday, beating market expectations thanks to a "healthy" demand in enterprise storage and NAND flash.

The company reported a net loss of $823 million, or $2.78 a share. Non-GAAP earnings were $3.95 per share on revenue of $5.3 billion, up from $4.9 billion from a year ago. The company said the net loss was due to a $1.6 billion repatriation tax as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Wall Street was looking for earnings of $3.79 a share on revenue of $5.29 billion.

"We continued our strong financial performance in the December quarter, with nine percent year-over-year revenue growth, driven by each of our major end-market categories and solid execution by our team," Steve Milligan, CEO of Western Digital, said in a statement. "We once again generated strong operating cash flow, reflecting continued healthy demand in our end markets, most notably for our capacity enterprise hard drives and flash-based products.

Western Digital said it generated approximately $1.2 billion in cash from operations during the second quarter. It ended the quarter with $6.4 billion total cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities.

For Q3, Western Digital told Wall Street it expects revenue of $4.9 billion and Non-GAAP earnings of $3.20 - $3.30 per share.

Shares of Western Digital fell roughly four percent in after hours trading Thursday.





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1/29/2018 10:07:00 PM

Intel posts solid Q4, rides server farm gathering and says it'll reestablish trust in its security endeavors

Intel's security inconveniences generally had no effect on its final quarter, which was pushed by its server farm unit and development in the Internet of things.



Intel announced solid final quarter comes about as its server farm bunch demonstrated income development of 20 percent with the Internet of things unit up 21 percent. 

The organization, which is being hit by the aftermath from the Specter and Meltdown security defects, noticed that security was a best need. Chief Brian Krzanich said in an introduction that one of his key messages was that Intel will "reestablish trust in information security with client first criticalness, straightforward and auspicious correspondence. 

Intel has been under flame recently because of the response to its security issues. 

By and large, the chip monster revealed final quarter non-GAAP profit of $1.08 an offer on income of $17.1 billion, up 4 percent from a year back. Intel lost 15 pennies an offer in the final quarter due to a $5.4 billion charge coming from charges on seaward profit. 

Money Street was expecting final quarter profit of 86 pennies an offer on income of $16.34 billion. 

For 2017, Intel detailed net pay of $9.6 billion, or $1.99 an offer, on income of $62.8 billion. The organization likewise said it was raising its profit 10 percent to $1.20 an offer every year. 

Krzanich said the organization is profiting from its interests in memory, programmable arrangements, correspondences and self-governing driving. 

Intel additionally got a lift from its "information driven" units. Intel noticed that it saw "solid execution from information driven organizations, which represented 47 percent of Intel's final quarter income, an unequaled high." 





Concerning the viewpoint, Intel anticipated first-quarter income of $15 billion with profit for each offer of 65 pennies an offer (70 pennies an offer non-GAAP) give or take 5 pennies an offer. For 2018, Intel anticipated income of $65 billion with profit for every offer of $3.30 ($3.55 non-GAAP). 

Money Street was searching for Intel to report first-quarter non-GAAP income of 72 pennies an offer on the income of $15.03 billion.




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1/29/2018 08:50:00 PM

Fitbit announces #Made4Fitbit challenge winners, extends Pebble smartwatch support for six months

Over 10,000 developers have registered to work with Fitbit OS and the winners of a recent developer challenge were announced. Current Pebble smartwatch owners also qualify for a $50 Fitbit Ionic discount.




The Fitbit Ionic, see our full review, is the first Fitbit to launch with Fitbit OS. New apps and watchfaces launched in December and with a recent development challenge we now have even more apps to use on this fitness-focused watch.

APP CHALLENGE RESULTS

Fitbit stated that more than 10,000 developers have registered for access to the Fitbit SDK and many are hopefully developing apps and watchfaces for Fitbit OS. Winners of the recent #Made4Fitbit app challenge were announced Jiulong Zhao winning the grand prize with his HIIT (high-intensity interval training) app, named HIIT.

Three were three categories in the app challenge, Health + Wellness, Sports + Fitness, and Transportation + Local. Winners of each category were:

Health + Wellness: Water Logged which allows you to log how much water you're drinking each day into your Fitbit account and see how it stacks up against your daily goal.

Sport + Fitness: Cadence Coach trains you to run at your optimal cadence to help reduce the risk of overstriding (hitting the ground with your heel instead of midfoot) and help minimize the impact on your hips and muscles.

Transportation + Local: SaltyDog brings seafaring to your wrist displaying your speed in knots and current compass heading.

Second and third place winners were also highlighted in the app challenge announcement. I've been wearing the Fitbit Ionic off and on with plans to start wearing it again daily starting 1 February in order to use the GPS for running and other apps for bodyweight exercises.

PEBBLE OWNERS

Fitbit acquired Pebble's assets in 2016, did not include the hardware, and promised to keep Pebble software and services running through 2017. Today, Fitbit announced it will support the Pebble ecosystem for another six months, until 30 June 2018, so you have more time to fully enjoy your Pebble smartwatch.

In addition, Pebble announced that current Pebble smartwatch owners with a valid serial number can get a $50 discount on a new Fitbit Ionic.

Fitbit states that Pebble devices and mobile apps will continue to work after 30 June 2018, but the following Pebble services will end:

  • Pebble app store
  • Pebble forum
  • Voice recognition features
  • SMS and email replies
  • Timeline pins from third-party apps (Calendar pins will keep working)
  • CloudPebble development tool


There will be no further updates to Pebble's mobile apps for iOS and Android. The latest versions of both Pebble apps remain compatible with current versions of iOS 11 and Android 8.1 Oreo. Users should note that it's possible for future iOS or Android updates to break Pebble compatibility.




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