Microsoft Teams Up With VW To Make HoloLens Work In Cars

Microsoft has officially announced a new “moving platform” feature for the HoloLens 2, which is designed to let the augmented reality headset work in places like cars. The Verge reports: It addresses a long-standing HoloLens issue of moving environments confusing the headset’s sensors. The enhancement was developed in collaboration with Volkswagen, which has been experimenting with using the headset as a heads-up display in its vehicles. As Microsoft’s blog post explains, its augmented reality headset tracks movement using a combination of camera sensors and an inertial measurement unit (which typically includes accelerometers and gyroscopes). But in a car, the readings from these two sensors can conflict; the headset senses movement but sees a static environment. In other words, it was getting car sick.

That’s what VW discovered after it started investigating the use of augmented reality headsets to teach drivers how to get around a racetrack faster. It started collaborating with Microsoft to fix the sensor problem in 2018, and, eventually, the two developed a prototype system that allowed a car to display real-time information on a connected headset. The system allows virtual objects to be placed both inside and outside of the vehicle. One image released by Microsoft (above) shows the HoloLens 2 projecting a virtual map onto the dashboard of a car, with navigation arrows appearing ahead at key intersections. A second shows it alerting the driver to an upcoming pedestrian crossing.

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Major Mobile Tech Firm Buys Wordle!

Wordle!, an old mobile game with the same name as the viral online game Wordle, has been bought by mobile marketing firm and game maker AppLovin in an undisclosed deal. TechCrunch reports: While you may have now heard of the popular online game Wordle, later bought by The NYT, you may have missed the story earlier this year about how a mobile game of the same name was blowing up on the App Store. [Developer Steven Cravotta] said he had been surprised to find a game he created as a teenager five years ago suddenly being downloaded 40,000 times per day, up from just 10 downloads per day the month before, The WSJ had reported at the time. As it turned out, iPhone users had gone to the App Store in search of the Wordle game everyone was talking about and had been downloading Cravotta’s game by mistake.

Cravotta’s Wordle! game was similar to the online version that everyone was playing. He said he had created it as a teen because he wanted to make something that would challenge people’s minds and be a great game for kids. But the app never took off. Cravotta promoted it for around half a year, he says, before deciding to move on to other things. “It just sat in my developer account for the longest time getting maybe one to two downloads a day for six years … until all this craziness happened,” Cravotta tells TechCrunch.

The mobile game monetized through paid advertisements and in-app purchases. While Cravotta could have tweaked the game to make even more money to capitalize on the surge of users, he left it untouched. “I just kind of let it run and do its thing,” he says. According to data from Sensor Tower, the mobile game was downloaded approximately 18.9 million times. The vast majority of the installs (more than 99.6%) arrived after the web game went viral — with downloads spiking on Jan. 12, 2022. From Feb. 12, 2022 onward, the game has seen 13.7 million downloads — or about 72% of its lifetime installs since its April 2016 launch, the firm said. Today, the iOS game is still the No. 19 mobile game in the U.S. by average monthly active users as of the first quarter, right behind bigger titles like Among Us and just ahead of notable games like Minecraft and PUBG Mobile.

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AMD Doubles the Number of CPU Cores It Offers In Chromebooks

AMD announced the Ryzen 5000 C-series for Chromebooks today. “The top chip in the series has eight of AMD’s Zen 3 cores, giving systems that use it more x86 CPU cores than any other Chromebook,” reports Ars Technica. From the report: The 7nm Ryzen 5000 C-series ranges from the Ryzen 3 5125C with two Zen 3 cores and a base and boost clock speed of 3 GHz, up to the Ryzen 7 5825C with eight cores and a base clock speed of 2 GHz that can boost to 4.5 GHz. For comparison, Intel’s Core i7-1185G7, found in some higher end Chromebooks, has four cores and a base clock speed of 3 GHz that can boost to 4.8 GHz.

On their own, the chips aren’t that exciting. They seemingly offer similar performance to the already-released Ryzen 5000 U-series chips. The Ryzen 5000 C-series also uses years-old Vega integrated graphics rather than the upgraded RDNA 2 found in Ryzen 6000 mobile chips, which, upon release, AMD said are “up to 2.1 times faster.” But for someone who’s constantly pushing their Chromebook to do more than just open a Chrome tab or two, the chips bring potentially elevated performance than what’s currently available.

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Android’s App Store Privacy Section Starts Rolling Out Today

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Following in the footsteps of iOS 14, Google is rolling out an app privacy section to the Play Store on Tuesday. When you look up an app on the Play Store, alongside sections like “About this app” and “ratings and reviews,” there will be a new section called “Data privacy & security,” where developers can explain what data they collect. Note that while the section will be appearing for users starting today, it might not be filled out by developers. Google’s deadline for developers to provide privacy information is July 20. Even then, all of this privacy information is provided by the developer and is essentially working on the honor system.

Here’s how Google describes the process to developers: “You alone are responsible for making complete and accurate declarations in your app’s store listing on Google Play. Google Play reviews apps across all policy requirements; however, we cannot make determinations on behalf of the developers of how they handle user data. Only you possess all the information required to complete the Data safety form. When Google becomes aware of a discrepancy between your app behavior and your declaration, we may take appropriate action, including enforcement action.”

Once the section is up and running, developers will be expected to list what data they’re collecting, why they’re collecting it, and who they’re sharing it with. The support page features a big list of data types for elements like “location,” “personal info,” “financial info,” “web history,” “contacts,” and various file types. Developers are expected to list their data security practices, including explaining if data is encrypted in transit and if users can ask for data to be deleted. There’s also a spot for “Google Play’s Families Policy” compliance, which is mostly just a bunch of US COPPA and EU GDPR requirements. Google says developers can also indicate if their app has “been independently validated against a global security standard.”

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Bandcamp at Centre of Dispute Between Epic Games and Google

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you’d told us that Bandcamp’s acquisition by Epic Games would lead fairly swiftly to an argument with a tech giant, our money would have been on that giant being Apple. Nope. Epic Games is seeking a court injunction against Google, over changing rules on its Google Play Store for Android. Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond blogged about the dispute overnight, noting that since 2015, Bandcamp has used its own billing system to process payments made for music and merch within its Android app. “However, Google is now modifying its rules to require Bandcamp (and other apps like it) to exclusively use Google Play Billing for payments for digital goods and services, and pay a revenue share to Google,” wrote Diamond. “If Google’s policy changes stand, beginning on June 1st, we would have to either pass Google’s fees on to consumers (making Android a less attractive platform for music fans), pass fees on to artists (which we would never do), permanently run our Android business at a loss, or turn off digital sales in the Android app.” Diamond also said that the new policy could see a delay in payments for artists and labels, from the current 24-48 hours to “15 to 45 days after a sale,” while Epic’s filing notes that Google’s system can’t be used for purchases of physical items (merch and physical music), which would force it to use two separate payment systems anyway.

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Google Makes $100,000 Worth of Tech Training Free To Every US Business

Alphabet’s Google will provide any U.S. business over $100,000 worth of online courses in data analytics, design and other tech skills for their workers free of charge, the search company said on Monday. Reuters reports: The offer marks a big expansion of Google’s Career Certificates, a program the company launched in 2018 to help people globally boost their resumes by learning new tools at their own pace. Over 70,000 people in the United States and 205,000 globally have earned at least one certificate, and 75% receive a benefit such as a new job or higher pay within six months, according to Google.

The courses, designed by Google and sold through online education service Coursera, each typically cost students about $39 a month and take three to six months to finish. Google will now cover costs for up to 500 workers at any U.S. business, and it valued the grants at $100,000 because people usually take up to six months to finish. Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google, the company unit overseeing certificates, said course completion rates are higher when people pay out of pocket but that the new offer was still worthwhile if it could help some businesses gain digital savvy. Certificates also are available in IT support, project management, e-commerce and digital marketing. They cover popular software in each of the fields, including Google advertising services.

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Biden Administration Begins $3 Billion Plan for Electric Car Batteries

The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. The New York Times reports: President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have described the transition to clean energy as a way to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets and achieve true energy independence. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, last week called renewable energy “the greatest peace plan this world will ever know.” Yet currently, lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for electric car batteries and energy storage are processed primarily in Asia. China alone controls nearly 80 percent of the world’s processing and refining of those critical minerals.

Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to “reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain,” according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States “can become a dominant force in energy storage technology” and has a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment.” Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.

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Staff At London Law Firm Can Work From Home Full-Time — If They Take 20% Pay Cut

Staff at a top London law firm have been told they can work from home permanently â” but they will have to take a 20% pay cut. The Guardian reports: Managing partners at Stephenson Harwood are offering lawyers and other staff the option as City firms try to move beyond solely office-based working in a post-pandemic cultural shift to flexible and remote models. Junior lawyers at the company have starting salaries of 90,000 pounds, meaning anyone taking up the officer would lose about 18,000 pounds. Stephenson Harwood, one of the top 50 highest earning legal firms in the UK and with its headquarters in London, employs more than 1,100 people and has offices in Paris, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. A spokesperson for the firm told the Times that the new working policy would apply to staff at its London office and most of the company’s international offices. Partners will not be eligible, though. Full equity partners receive an average of 685,000 pounds annually.

The new salary sacrifice for full remote working policy is being introduced after the company’s experience of recruiting lawyers during the coronavirus pandemic who were not based in London, where living costs tend to be higher. However, the company said it expected only a few staff to take up the full-time work from home option because “for the vast majority of our people, our hybrid working policy works well.” Staff already have the option of working remotely for two days a week. “Like so many firms, we see value in being in the office together regularly, while also being able to offer our people flexibility,” the spokesman said.

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Google Rewards Employees Returning to Office with Private Lizzo Concert

As an apparent reward for returning to the office, thousands of Google employees were treated to a private Lizzo concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre near Google’s headquarters, reports CNBC:

Google implemented a return-to-office policy starting in early April, requiring employees to go to physical facilities at least three days a week. Staffers pushed back on the mandate and the prospect of navigating traffic jams, after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth of the past 15 years….

Google had delayed its return plans on multiple occasions, due mostly to surges in Covid-19 case numbers. But this time, the company stuck to its reopening schedule. In the early days back, employees were greeted with marching bands on campus, as well as photo booths, celebratory food and visits from prominent politicians.

“Thank you for being back!” Lizzo said. “Thank you for surviving! Google, we back, bitch!!” […] She inserted the company’s name into her popular song “Boys,” changing the lyrics from “I heard you a freak, too” to “I heard you a freak, Google!”

After two and a half years “of protecting others and ourselves but also being very disconnected,” Lizzo told the crowd, “It’s so incredible to see how connected we are right now!” CNBC reports.
Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Propaganda! Propaganda!”

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