GoPro Hero5 Session review: A good action camera for the price but needs improvement

GoPro Hero5 Session is the latest ‘action’ camera launched by GoPro in the Indian market earlier this year. Session 5 is the mid-tier action camera with the premium GoPro Hero5 Black on the top as the premium offering by the company. The GoPro Hero5 Session is priced at Rs 29,500.

Action cameras are used to shoot sports, bike journeys, among other things that are dangerous for devices like DSLRs or smartphone cameras to shoot. The danger here refers to the equipment getting damaged while biking, swimming or engaging in other types of adventurous sports. This is the first time I have extensively used an action camera as my early encounters were limited to shooting with DSLRs and smartphone cameras.

GoPro Hero5 Session is supposed to be aimed at consumers who want the performance and feature set of GoPro action cameras, but at an affordable price point. So let’s jump in to see how Hero5 Session fares in the review.

Build and Design: 7.5/10

The build quality of Hero5 Session is sturdy and top notch for an action cam. The rubberised top along with solid plastic exterior on the sides works perfectly in securing the internals of the camera.

One thing to note is that you don’t get anything remarkable in terms of design except the form factor. Hero5 Session is shaped like a small cube along with a microSD card slot and USB Type-C slot to charge in through a push door on the left side from the back.

The GoPro Hero5 Session does not come with a microSD card out of the box and you need to use a high-speed card, Class 10 or more for smooth 4K recording.

The action camera is waterproof, up to 10 meters in water, without any need for a special case which is impressive in itself. However, it does not come with any accessories out of the box except for a case and two adhesive mounts. I was expecting more in terms of mounts out of the box.

Features: 7.5/10

The main highlight of the GoPro Hero5 Session is its 4K recording capabilities in such a compact form factor. The 4K recording is at a standard 30 frames per second. The camera comes with an extremely wide angle lens with 10 MP image resolution for photos with effective dimensions of 3648 x 2736 pixels. The shutter button is located on the top along with the menu switching mode at the back of the camera.

You need to use both the buttons to change the modes and cycle through the options given which becomes easier to operate after initial confusion. The camera gives you the option to shoot 4K at frame rates of 30 and 25 frames per second in Wide; 2.7K at frame rates 48, 30, 25, and 24 in SuperView, Wide, Medium and Linear along with the option to shoot 2.7K in 4:3 aspect ratio from the default 16:9.

Other modes include: 2K at 60, 50, 48, 30, 25, and 24 frames per second in Wide mode; 1080p in 90, 60, 50, 48, 30, 25, and 24 frames per second and 960p in 100, 60, 50, 30, and 25 frames per second in Wide mode.

The Camera gives up options to choose modes from Wide, Medium and SuperView while shooting 720p video at 100, 60, 50, 30, and 25 frames per second. You can not go below 720p while shooting with the camera which is weird at best because going down would have given us the option to shoot at higher frame rates for potential use in slow motion videos.

The camera comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for you to connect it to the GoPro ‘Capture’ app for Android as well as an iOS device. You can use the app to record, review or transfer the images and videos that you shot using the camera from the Wi-Fi connection. You can also control all the settings of the action cam and get a live video of what the GoPro can see at any given point.

The camera does support video stabilisation, but that is only limited if you shoot videos up to 2.7K and it is not available if you are shooting 4K. You can use the voice control to tell GoPro to shoot or start recording by saying “GoPro start recording”.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 10:05 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 10:10 am

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LeEco announces Le Pro 3 AI Edition smartphone with dual-camera setup in China

If you remember, there have been numerous leaks around a dual-camera equipped smartphone from LeEco. The wait is finally over. The company has announced the Le Pro 3 AI Edition in China, which is a well-equipped smartphone along with its own AI assistant.

The smartphone has been announced in two variants. There is one powered by a 2.4 GHz MediaTek Helio X23 processor which has 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. The other one is a more powerful variant running on a Mediatek deca-core 2.6 GHz Helio X27 chipset with 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage.

Rest of the features on both the variants remain the same. There is a 5.5-inch Full HD (1920×1080) display with 600 nits of maximum brightness. There is a dual-camera setup at the rear featuring two 13 MP cameras, one shoots in RGB while the other in monochrome. The cameras have an f/2.0 aperture, PDAF and a dual LED flash. You can also record 4K and 1080p videos at 30 fps as well as slow-mo 720p videos at 120 fps. The front camera is an 8 MP snapper with an f/2.2 aperture.

As for the battery, there a large 4,000 mAh unit and the handset runs on EMUI 5.9, which is based on Android Marshmallow. The rest of the features include Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, an infrared sensor and support for dual SIM.

LeEco also announced its very own AI assistant, which is called, of all things, LeLe. The AI assistant will be integrated with all LeEco apps and will work with a number of third-party applications. One can also activate it from the lockscreen. Just like most smartphone AI assistants, LeLe learns the usage patterns and improves over time.

The 4 GB version of the Le Pro 3 AI Edition is priced 1,799 Yuan (Rs 18,000 approx) while the higher 6 GB model is priced at 2,399 Yuan (Rs 24,000 approx). The smartphone will be available in China from 14 of April and will be available in gold, rose gold, and black colour options.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:10 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:10 am

Google’s new machine learning model can harness the processing power of your phone to improve AI

Image: Google

Google’s new machine learning algorithm harnesses the processing power of your smartphone to improve algorithms and save on data consumption by intelligent virtual assistants and the like.

Using a process called Federated Learning (FL), Google claims that they can “collaboratively share a prediction model while keeping training data on the device.” It might sound complicated, but it’s actually a simple, well thought-out solution to a problem that’s been haunting machine learning for years.

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I am excited about the progress here, really important work on machine learning without centralized training datahttps://research.googleblog.com/2017/04/federated-learning-collaborative.html …

6:05 AM - 12 Apr 2017

Federated Learning: Collaborative Machine Learning without Centralized Training Data

Posted by Brendan McMahan and Daniel Ramage, Research Scientists Standard machine learning approaches require centralizing the training da...

research.googleblog.com

 
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Machine Learning (ML) is used to design algorithms. These algorithms help in the functioning of what we know as artificial intelligence (AI). Siri, Google Assistant, Bixby, they’re all just algorithms.

But ML is used for more than just digital assistants. Google’s self-driving car, for example, learns to drive using ML. Essentially, data is harvested and analysed and then an algorithm is developed based on the results. This one-line description grossly oversimplifies how ML works, but you get the general idea.

For example, if you normally drink your coffee at 6 AM every day on weekdays and at 8 AM on weekends, ML will analyse the data and determine your coffee drinking patterns, potentially automating your coffee making process if you have, say, a smart coffee maker. More data might lead the algorithm to determine that you drink coffee late on public holidays as well, or the data might be tied to your heart rate, etc.

The possibilities are endless, but are predicated on a large amount of data, some of it very revealing and potentially a privacy nightmare.

Image: Google

Traditionally, this data would need to be harvested by some device, like your smartphone, and then sent to the cloud for processing. ML is then used to analyse the data further and learn from it, further improving algorithms.

As Google explains in its blog-post, this approach requires low-latency, high-bandwidth data transfer rates. Of course, the privacy issues also raise their head here and taking responsibility for the data can put a company in a tricky spot.

With FL, Google has changed how the learning process works. As they describe it, “your device downloads the current model, improves it by learning from data on your phone, and then summarises the changes as a small focused update.”

The data that’s actually sent to the cloud is the updated algorithm and not the actual data itself. The data remains on your phone at all times.

Google’s cloud-based FL then aggregates these updates and creates an improved model for all devices. This updated model is then sent to devices as an update and the process repeats itself.

Using this technique, Google claims that bandwidth needs can be dropped by up to 100x.

Better yet, for the sake of privacy, the cloud-based processing won’t happen unless “100s or 1000s of users have participated.” This ensures that the updates from a single user cannot be identified.

The updated algorithms that your phone creates are sent to the cloud in a compressed and encrypted manner to begin with.

Google has deployed this technique in their Gboard app to help improve its natural language processing, but as they refine the process, they hope to expand FL’s scope to other applications as well.

FL has the potential to fundamentally change the way models are developed in the future. More information can be found here.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:16 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:16 am

Samsung’s voice assistant Bixby could be delayed due to performance issues

With the announcement of its latest flagship duo, the Galaxy S8 and S8+, Samsung also revealed its very own voice assistant ‘Bixby‘. The new AI assistant was touted to work just like Google Assistant. It’s supposed to recommend context-aware information in the form of cards, allow voice control of apps and even allow for control of various smart Samsung devices.

At the time of its announcement, it was said that Bixby will only be available in English and Korean languages, but now there is a report that suggests that the AI assistant is not ready for the former language.

The new flagships are expected to go on sale this month in a variety of markets globally, but it might be missing the new voice assistant. According to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung will not launch the Galaxy S8 and S8+ with Bixby due to certain performance issues discovered in the past few weeks. While the English-language version of Bixby is expected to be delayed until the end of May, a Samsung spokesperson has confirmed that it won’t be available until spring in the US.

Apparently, the performance of the English version of Bixby lagged behind that of the Korean version. Company executives are said to be discussing as to when exactly they want to launch the English version.

This could be a big setback for Samsung as the S8 series has received a good initial response thanks to its amazing design. Then again, if, as we suspect, Bixby won’t be such a big deal, it shouldn’t matter that the S8’s flagship feature is missing.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:33 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:33 am

WikiLeaks reveals that NSA has been spying on Pakistan’s mobile networks

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Pakistan’s mobile networks, whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks has tweeted. “Hundreds of NSA cyber weapons variants publicly released including code showing hacking of Pakistan mobile system,” @wikileaks tweeted.

According to a report in Express Tribune on Monday, the hacker group “Shadow Brokers” released a new cache of information detailing how the NSA accessed private and public networks in other countries. A researcher on Twitter who identifies himself as ‘x0rz’ decrypted the files and uploaded them on Github, a web-based repository and internet hosting service.

“The researcher confirmed that the archives include evidence of NSA operators’ access inside the GSM network of Mobilink – one of the Pakistan’s most popular mobile services provider,” the report noted. The hacker group had previously released data suggesting the US agency may have been monitoring hundreds of IP addresses in Pakistan. The encrypted files were being decrypted by security researchers around the world.

“Shadow Brokers” had initially wanted to auction its data cache in exchange for Bitcoin but as no buyer turned up, they released the data online. This is not the first time that reports have surfaced claiming that the US NSA is snooping on other countries. According to a Daily Mail report in 2014, WikiLeaks disclosed documents that suggested the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was among six political parties from around the world the NSA was authorised to conduct surveillance on for gathering foreign intelligence. The authorisation was given by a secret American court, it said.

The leak was planned months ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, the report claimed. Another report in the Washington Post that also came in 2014 said the US has long had broad no-spying arrangements with four countries – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – in a group known collectively as the “Five Eyes”.

“But a classified 2010 legal certification – approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – lists 193 countries [including India], that would be of valid interest for US intelligence,” the Post said.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:45 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:41 am

Boeing has hired Norsk Titanium AS to 3D print titanium parts; to save $2-3 million off each plane

Boeing Co hired Norsk Titanium AS to print the first structural titanium parts for its 787 Dreamliner, a shift that the Norwegian 3-D printing company said would eventually shave $2 million to $3 million off the cost of each plane. The contract announced on Monday is a major step in Boeing’s effort to boost the profitability of the 787 and a sign of growing industrial acceptance of the durability of 3-D printed metal parts, allowing them to replace pieces made with more expensive traditional manufacturing in demanding aerospace applications.

Strong, lightweight titanium alloy is seven times more costly than aluminum, and accounts for about $17 million of the cost of a $265 million Dreamliner, industry sources say. Boeing has been trying to reduce titanium costs on the 787, which requires more of the metal than other models because of its carbon-fiber fuselage and wings. Titanium also is used extensively on Airbus Group SE’s rival A350 jet.

“This means $2 million to $3 million in savings for each Dreamliner, at least,” starting in 2018 when many more parts are being printed, Chip Yates, Norsk Titanium’s vice president of marketing, said in a telephone interview. Boeing builds 144 Dreamliners in a typical year. The company declined to comment on the estimate but said Norsk’s technology would help reduce costs.

The Dreamliner turned profitable last year after racking up nearly $29 billion in production-related losses. Norsk worked with Boeing for more than a year to design four 787 parts and obtain Federal Aviation Administration certification for them, Yates said.

Norsk expects the U.S. regulatory agency will approve the material properties and production process for printed parts later this year. That will “open up the floodgates,” Yates said, by allowing Norsk to print thousands of other parts for each Dreamliner, without each part requiring separate FAA approval, resulting in the millions in expecting savings per plane.

“You’re talking about tons, literally,” on the 787 that would be printed instead of made with traditional, expensive forging and machining, he said. General Electric Co is already printing metal fuel nozzles for aircraft engines. But Norsk and Boeing said the titanium parts are the first printed structural components designed to bear the stress of an airframe in flight.

Norsk said it will print initially in Norway, but aims to have nine printers running by year-end at a 67,000-square-foot (6,220-square-meter) facility in Plattsburgh, New York.

Reuters

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:57 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:57 am

European Union regulator will complete the Yahoo email hack investigation in ‘next couple of weeks’

Image Credit: Yahoo

Yahoo’s European regulator said it is preparing to give the U.S. Internet company the results of an investigation into the 2014 theft of data from 500 million users, including any remedial action to avoid a repeat of the breach. Yahoo said in September last year that hackers had stolen the data in 2014, prompting criticism from U.S. politicians into the delay in notifying customers.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, the lead European regulator on privacy issues for Yahoo because the company’s European headquarters are in Dublin, told Reuters she would issue the report “in the next couple of weeks”. “We are preparing to serve the final report on Yahoo EMEA Ltd and require of them any remedial actions we have identified,” Helen Dixon said in an interview. It will be up to Yahoo whether to make the report public, she said.

A new EU-wide data protection law coming into force in May 2018 allows fines of up to 4 percent of global turnover. Until then, however, the office of the Data Protection Commissioner said it has no administrative capability to fine a company. A spokesman for Yahoo said it has been cooperating with the commissioner’s office on the investigation and will review the findings carefully when they are available.

Reuters

Publish date: April 12, 2017 12:17 pm| Modified date: April 12, 2017 12:17 pm

Nasa and Amazon will stream a live conversation in 4K from the ISS on 26 April

Getty Images

For the first time ever, Earth-bound humans will partake of the glory of outer space via a 4K Ultra HD livestream, courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and Amazon.

The stream is primarily intended for broadcasters at the NAB Show convention to be held in Las Vegas on 26 April, but regular folks can also tune into the stream here. Nasa will also make the stream available as a recording after the event.

Variety reports that the stream will begin at 10:30 AM PT on 26 April, which would translate to 11:00 PM on 26 April in India.

The stream is actually a demo of Amazon’s Elemental encoding technology as well as the power of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its Content Delivery Network (CDN). Elemental is a next-gen encoding format for compressing high-resolution video content in real-time, and NAB is a broadcaster’s convention, after all.

Nasa is also understandably excited for the technology. The ability to stream in 4K means that Nasa administrators on the ground will be able to better monitor whatever it is they need to in deep space or the ISS.

The stream itself will involve a conversation between astronaut Dr Peggy Whitson on the ISS and AWS Elemental CEO and co-founder Sam Blackman, reports Variety. There will also be a panel discussion with various engineers from Nasa and Amazon as well as people working in the field of AR, VR and broadcasting.

The stream will be available in 4K and HD.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 12:39 pm| Modified date: April 12, 2017 12:41 pm

The OnePlus 3T will go on open sale on the OnePlus website from midnight on 12 April

The OnePlus 3T, one of the crowd favourites, is going on sale on OnePlus India’s website. The phone will be available in Gunmetal and Soft Gold at prices starting at Rs 29,999. The open sale will start at midnight on 12 April.

The OnePlus 3T is a minor upgrade to the original OnePlus 3. It’s only significant features are a Snapdragon 821 processor, a 16 MP front camera and a larger battery. A 128 GB variant of the device is also available, which should retail for Rs 34,999.

As an upgrade to the OnePlus 3, it’s not that significant, but it’s enough to keep it competitive with current flagships in the market.

The fact that it’s going on sale on the OnePlus store at midnight today isn’t of much note because you can order the device right now on Amazon and even have it delivered to your house by tomorrow.

But hey, if you hate Amazon, for whatever reason, you now have the option to pick up the device from another location. An additional option.

In a press release, OnePlus points out that anyone purchasing the device from the OnePlus Store or on Amazon will be get a chance to meet Amitabh Bachchan in person and win Rs 1 crore.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 2:18 pm| Modified date: April 12, 2017 2:18 pm

Facebook Messenger introduces group payments: Are payments in messaging apps the next big thing?

Representative image: AP

After introducing peer-to-peer in its Messenger app, Facebook today introduced group payments in Messenger. The service basically lets you send or receive payments from group members conveniently using the Messenger app, which is a great idea considering that most conversations and decisions happen in a messaging app.

For a service that started back in 2015, it hasn’t picked up even though Facebook is a worldwide service. However, with more apps jumping on to the mobile payments bandwagon, is this the future for messaging apps? WeChat’s WeChat Pay success story could have the answer.

Facebook Messenger’s payment service has plenty of connections that go way back. In March 2015, Facebook introduced its peer-to-peer payment service for the US market. Users could use debit cards from US banks and send money to friends using the popular messaging app.

In the same month at F8, a Facebook developers’ conference, Facebook also announced that it would start letting users interact with businesses on its social network. With Messenger now announced as a platform the possibilities were indeed limitless because users would also be able to open compatible third-party apps inside messenger.

Move to April 2016, and Facebook introduced its bot platform with an API to build chat bots that would interact with users.  And with group payments introduced today, it all adds up to what appears be the next big thing with messaging services — payments.

But two years later, Messenger may have many users, but its payments front has yet to pick up pace. And there are reasons for this. For starters, the service only works with debit cards issued by US banks. Users also have to live in the United States as the services are not available outside the US.

It’s all about how it’s done

While sending money via the messaging app is effective, it literally is way behind WeChat, its competitor from the Far East.

WeChat takes a different approach to the same. Its payment service is called WeChat Pay and you can not only send payments to friends and family, but even use the service to pay for daily items at retailers and even book a taxi.

The back end is run by Tencent (parent company) and supports a long list of both credit and debit cards in payments. More importantly, it even works with cards opened in the US and Canada (billing address needed).

As tested out by Tech in Asia, you can literally head into popular stores and buy everything from clothing to groceries. As reported by Reuters, Tencent charged its users 0.01 percent per transaction back in 2016. Tencent through its WeChat payments was expected to make twice as much as PayPal processed in a year.

Line Pay is another messaging app that took off in 2014. Similar to WeChat, the messaging app Line (that comes from Japan), allows for payments not just between users but even to other services. More importantly, Line Pay is available globally, unlike WeChat which is only available in China. Line also allows businesses to connect to customers using its Line@ app.

Everyone’s looking at payments

Truecaller, a popular crowd-sourced call filtering app, received a major update, one that also included a new Flash Messaging section and Truecaller Pay. The call filtering service that is now also a messaging service embraces Digital India and allows for cashless payments, allowing millions of users in the country to make a payment by either using their UPI ID or a mobile number registered with BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money).

The service however does not work via its messaging app, but, like WeChat, can be used to do more than just peer-to peer payments.

WhatsApp too is said to be working on a digital payment system that will once again use UPI. The messaging service is looking to hire an expert in Aadhaar, UPI and Bhim and is expected to launch a payments interfaced in 6 month’s time.

Owned by Facebook, WhatsApp’s reach will be far wider and will give a boost to digital transactions, provided it is implemented in the right manner. Hopefully it doesn’t repeat Facebook’s mistakes with Messenger.

Payments from mobile messaging apps are picking up pace. And with little to show in terms of features, they might as well turn into payment systems that could help boost their app usage.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 2:11 pm| Modified date: April 12, 2017 2:11 pm