Things to Expect from Google I/O This Year Around

Google’s Annual Developer Conference

Google I/O 2018 is an annual developer conference by Google announcing latest hardware, software together with numerous updates for prevailing services and apps. Google is said to organise a multi-day event each year to enable developer community.

 This is done to hasten with their latest hardware they tend to improve together with the software or update with the purpose of pushing out to products. This enables developers with the opportunity of getting their own apps, services tie-ins and integrations ready before Google launches its products. But consumers prefer to view the Google I/O show since Google has a tendency of making few announcements well-known.

Google I/O 2018 event is likely to take place on May 8 and would be concluding on May 10. The said event would take place at the Shoreline amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.

Online Puzzle

The date for Google I/O 2018 had been disclosed by Google through an online puzzle where numerous users supported The Verge in solving the puzzle by operating through room in Google Maps. This was with the intention of discovering clues and knowing the date and location of Google I/O 2018.

The clues comprised of a pineapple cake in one room probably a hint at the accurate name for Android P. Since Google had always tricked around with Android names, this could be another teaser for Android fans.

Android P – Next Segment of Mobile Operating System

Probably,Android P would be showcased at the event which is the next segment of the mobile operating system of Google. The one big visual renovation of Google that has not been shown officially and which most of us are not aware of is the gesture-based navigation system which was initially disclosed in March on Alphabet Scoop podcast followed up with limited extracts of last month.

Focus – Building Web/Enterprise Application/Mobile

Google would live stream its keynote and the video would be embedded whenever it is available. A raffle system has been utilised by Google and attendees randomly selected from those registered on the company’s website where the lucky winners would need to pay for the tickets. The cost would be $1,150 for general admission, $750 for community and $375 for academic. Google has closed the registration and has notified the raffle winners and no more tickets are on sale anymore. Google I/O 2018 setting technical in-depth sessions is aimed on building web, enterprise application and mobile with Google together with open sources like Chrome, Android and Chrome OS, APIs, together with Google Web Toolkit, App Engine and much more.

Google has utilised the developer conference to announce fresh software products as well as tools for consumers and developers. A developer preview of Android P, being the next version of the mobile operating system of Google, is already available. It is expected that at Google I/O 2018, the company would disclose more consumer-facing features and open the Android Beta program to the general public. Though the schedule for Google I/O 2018 is out, Google’s topic intended is not known during the event. A few clues are disclosed as to what may come up between May 8 and May 10.

Expectations at Google I/O 2018

Google is on the look-out for a P-linked name to trail Android Oreo and this could be an early disclosure of the forthcoming name of the Android version. More updates would be coming up at Google I/O 2018 event. Earlier last year, the first developer preview of Android O had been released in March. The company had released the public beta of Android O together with its latest Android Go, a feature of the operating system intended to power low-end devices in developing markets at the time of the I/O 2017. Last year, Google released the first developer preview of Android O in March, and then, it released the public beta of Android O, along with its new Android Go, a version of the operating system meant to power low-end devices in emerging markets, during I/O 2017. It also did demos of picture-in-picture, Notification Dots, etc.

Updates – Rollout during Google I/O 2018 Event

Powered by Google Assistant, Google Home is said to be the primary part of experience of Google as well as a part wherein the company has been competing with the line of smart speakers of Amazon Echo. More updates are expected during Google I/O 2018 for the standard Google Home shortly. Android Wear had recently been re-trademarked by Google, a wearable operating system to WearOS. Probably more updates are likely to come up during the event. The chat service Allo had been kept on hold by Google recently to keep its focus on Chats which is a service that tends to depend on SMS together with wireless carriers in creating iMessage type of services, according to The Verge report.Probably more updates regarding the rollout are likely to come up along with carrier partners with some kind of timetable to when users would start to see the Chat features.

Using Evolutionary AutoML to Discover Neural Network Architectures

Human Brain – Wide Range of Activities

The human brain has the potential of performing a wide range of activities most of which does not need much effort, for instance in conveying if a visual extract comprises of buildings, or animals. In order to perform this activity the artificial neural networks needs vigilant strategy from professions with several years of complex research, addressing each particular task in discovering what lies in an image, to name it a genetic variant or to assist in diagnosing a disease. One would prefer having an automated system of generating the precise architecture for any particular task. One of the methods of generating the architectures is by way of utilising evolutionary processes.

Old research for neuro-evolution of topologies had laid the foundation which enabled the application of these processes at scale, presently. Several of the groups have been operating on the subject inclusive of OpenAI, Uber Labs, and Sentient Labs together with DeepMind. Google Brain team certainly had been discerning about AutoML too.

Evolution - Scale Function on Construction – Architecture

Besides utilising learning based approaches it was also speculated on the use of computational resources to programmatically evolve image classifiers at exceptional scale.Queries addressed were: `Could we accomplish solutions with minimal expert participation? How good can artificially-evolved neural networks be at present?

The purpose was to enable evolution at scale function on constructing the architecture. The procedure found classifiers similar to hand made models at that point of time, beginning from the simple networks. This was inspiring since several applications needed minimum participation. For instance some would require improved model though could not have the time in being a machine learning professionals.

The next query that came up was,would a combination of hand-made and evolution perform better than any of these approaches. In a recent paper `Regularized Evolution for Image Classifier Architecture Search (2018) participation took place with the provision of sophisticated building blocks together with good initial conditions.

Scaling of Computation – New TPUv2chips – Google

Scaling of computation had been done utilising the new TPUv2chips of Google. With the combination of up-to-date hardware, skilful knowledge together with evolution the result produced state-of-the-art models on well-known benchmarks for classification of images namely CIFAR-10 and ImageNet. In the paper besides evolving the architecture, at the time of exploring the search space of early condition as well as the learning rate schedules, the population trains its networks.

 This consequence is that the development with enhanced hyper parameters producedentirely skilled models. When the experiments tend to begin, no professional input is essential. The second paper `Regularized Evolution for Image Classifier Architecture Search offered effects of applying evolutionary systems to search space. Mutations tend to adapt the cell by erratically reconnecting the inputs or switching the operations.

Though the mutation tends to be simple, the initial conditions are not. The population tends to get modified with models which tend to adapt to the outer stack of cells.However if the cells in such seed model tend to be unsystematic, there will be no beginning from simple model that eventually would make it simpler to obtain excellent models.

The paper has portrayed that evolution can locate state-of-the-art models which could compete or outdo hand-designs.

Working in DevOps Requires a Unique Set of Skills

Devops is a unique job in that it combines software development with operations management. As such, if you want to make this your career, you must hold an eclectic set of skills. You can do it. In fact, to help you out, here is a list of skills many believe make for a good devops engineer. Don’t forget to get your bachelor’s degree in software development. You can then move on and earn your master’s degree in operations management for the well-rounded education you will need for the job.

People Skills

One of the primary responsibilities of any person working in devops is to be the liaison between a business’ development and operations teams. You must be able to work with everyone on a project from concept through fruition. In fact, part of your responsibility will be to manage the workflow that allows the project to move forward. If you understand people, and how to get them together to work toward a common goal, you may be invaluable when it comes to devops jobs.

Technology Skills

Of course, each project will require different technology to make it happen, so you will also need to possess a broad understanding of various technologies out there. You must be knowledgeable in cloud, container concepts, continuous integration, deployment, infrastructure automation, orchestration, and source control. Ron Gidron from Automic Software explains that the best devops engineers are people who remain curious at all times.

Security Skills

All of this technology must be locked down, so you’ll also need to know a thing or two (or a million) about security. Because putting development and operations together streamlines processes, it increases the time in which a project is completed. This looks good on the bottom line, but it also opens up new networks to vulnerabilities. You must combine your knowledge of development and operations to ensure you protect the project against any security risks. Can you write security code?

Automation and Testing Skills

Because part of your job will be to develop network infrastructures, you will need to be savvy with automation and testing. In fact, James Giles IV of Datical states automation is one of a devops engineer’s primary jobs. You should be able to write scripts to automate administrative and engineering roles. This streamlines network processes and keeps any lists of manual tasks consistent for all IT and other applicable personnel. You need to test the systems, too, so make certain you have that experience.

Although the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have an exact job outlook for devops positions, the closest thing to this career is a software developer. That job outlook looks good – so good in fact, demand for good developers is projected to increase a whopping 24 percent by the year 2026. The average median salary for software developers in 2017 was over $100,000, and when you take into account you’ll earn more because you’ll manage operations, too, devops is a great career choice.

If you have the determination to succeed, you will – no matter what you choose to do. In the case of devops, the career is dynamic, exciting, and lucrative. With the right combination of education and experience, you should have no trouble securing a job in this field.

Apple iOS 11.3.1 Has A Nasty Surprise

Apple users are in for an Ugly surprise in iOS 11.3.1

So what is an update to an operating system supposed to do? You may say fix bugs and maybe introduce some new features to the OS, but apparently some think differently, exhibit Apple. Taking the example of Apple iOS 11.3, users expected bug fixes and some new features but all they got was some more bugs and the previous ones not really fixed, just forget about new features. This fiasco in turn put new pressure on Apple to make some serious changes with iOS 11.3.1, but then again we have a repeat iOS 11.3 performance but this time with a little kick and believe me this kick will hurt.

iOS 11.3.1 seems to have one fix in mind but other than that it fails to address any other issues, when in fact there were a host of other fixes that were desperately required. Now coming back to that special kick, with iOS 11.3.1, you get, maybe the most serious iOS 11.3 bug so far, an audio skipping issue. Thought you were smart huh in skipping the iOS 11.3 update and going straight to iOS 11.3.1, but now are thinking otherwise?

The Audio Skipping incident with iOS 11.3.1:

Incident or frequent occurrence is more like it. This issue seems to have affected a number of Apple users. So what exactly does this bug do?

The audio skipping problem actually skips or distorts your audio, whether it be listening to your music or podcast or receiving or making calls. It seems like you have a bad line but is actually the audio skipping bug that you get free with iOS 11.3.1

What’s more is that with the audio skipping bug in iOS 11.3.1, features like phone calls, podcasts, music playback are all made almost useless.

Reaction to the audio bug in iOS 11.3.1:

As you can imagine users are furious that they now have to contend with this bug over every other issue that is there. This problem too with iOS 11.3.1 seems to have also affected a large number of Apple users out there.

Some are even thinking of making a switch to Samsung after many years with Apple. Looks like the bug problem finally got to them. The audio skipping problem with iOS 11.3.1 also has nothing to do with battery life because users have also commented that their batteries are fine and that they still faced this problem with iOS 11.3.1

Something interesting with iOS 11.3.1: 

Apple seems to be secretly claiming that by updating to iOS 11.3.1, users will actually get this problem solved. This leads to more unsuspecting users updating to iOS 11.3.1 and then Voila! They are face with the dreadful audio skipping problem.

Apparently there is no end in sight with this problem. There seems to be no fix to the iOS 11.3.1 issue and while many claim that a hard reset of the iPhone with iTunes may help, there is no evidence to support it.

How Google Autocomplete works in Search

The Workings behind Google Auto complete

We all know what autocomplete is and how it works (basically) but what we don’t really know is how much time it saves for us. A post by Google shows that Google autocomplete saves around 25% of our typing time or in other words around 200 YEARS of typing time per day, Yes you read right 200 YEARS per DAY! On the other hand google autocomplete is especially useful for mobile devices as you don’t have to take too long on typing on a smaller screen. Though, most of us have become master typists at this point.

Google Autocomplete is a feature that you will find anywhere, that is wherever there is a Google search bar like obviously Google Home, Google app present in Android and iOS, Quick search box in Android and Omnibox address bar within Chrome. Type and there you have the predictions appear.

Google uses the term predictions in Google Autocomplete:

In a Google article recently posted, Google has specifically used the word predictions to describe Google autocomplete rather than suggestions and for good reason too. Google autocomplete tries to predict what you want to search for, rather than showing you what different things you can search for.
Determining of Predictions on Google Autocomplete:

Google looks at real searches done by other users, trending information and your location and passed searches to create predictions in Google’s Autocomplete. It fills in predictions according to words already typed and eliminates search predictions that do not match words as and when more info is typed by us.

Predictions against Google Autocomplete rules:

When it comes to giving predictions, Google does not want to shock users in getting out- of- context and insensitive searches so they have put up a set of rules to govern the same within Google autocomplete.

Some of the predictions that are against the rules are hateful comments against groups or individuals on the basis of race, religion etc., predictions that are violent and dangerous and harmful predictions.
Google also removes predictions from Google autocomplete that are based on valid legal requests, those that are related to spam and those that relate to piracy.

 

Control mechanisms in place in Google Autocomplete:

Google does its best when it comes to controlling inappropriate predictions but with sifting through billions of searches per day sometimes inappropriate predictions on Google autocomplete slip through the cracks and that is why sometimes we see things that at times can be shocking.

Google has also started a feedback tool since last year that has been useful to them in removing unwanted predictions from Google autocomplete. They also plan on increasing the criteria for determining what is considered hateful in removing unwanted suggestions from Google autocomplete.

Reporting of Unwanted predictions:

Individuals too now can report anything that appears inappropriate on Google autocomplete. For those using a desktop there is “report inappropriate predictions” link that appears on the bottom of a search box and for those on Android, users can long press on the prediction to report it.