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Your iPhone now serves as a Google security key

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You no longer need Android to use your phone as a Google security key. Google has updated Smart Lock for iOS to let you use your device’s “built-in security key” — that is, the Secure Enclave built into every iOS device with Touch ID or Face ID. From then on, you’ll just need your iPhone or iPad nearby (plus your usual password) for two-factor authentication when you sign into Google on a desktop using Chrome. It uses a Bluetooth connection to ensure that it’s really you and not some distant intruder.

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Amazon reinstates FedEx Ground as a shipping option for Prime sellers

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The loss of FedEx ground shipping put many third-party Amazon sellers in a bind over the busy holiday period. CNBC reported some merchants had to resort to other methods, sometimes at a higher cost, for Prime orders. They were still able to use FedEx Ground for non-Prime packages, as well as FedEx Express over the holidays.

FedEx might not be a permanent option for ground shipping, though. The courier said in August it wouldn’t renew its ground delivery contract with Amazon’s own packages (though third-party sellers could still use the service). Amazon has expanded its own delivery network in recent years, including using drones, as it takes more direct control over distribution.

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Apple’s rackmount Mac Pro is now available

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The system starts at $6,499, or $500 more than the standard tower. Like before, though, the price can quickly spiral upward depending on your needs. Max it out with a 28-core Xeon, 1.5TB of RAM, dual Radeon Pro Vega II Duo cards, 8TB of SSD storage, an Afterburner card and a Magic Mouse/Magic Trackpad combo and you’re going to pay over $54,000. You likely won’t pay nearly that much in practice (nearly half that maxed-out price comes from the RAM), but it’s an option for those pros who will spare no expense.

In some ways, this represents Apple’s pro efforts coming full circle. It stopped selling the Xserve rackmount back in January 2011, leaving Mac-inclined companies to use tower-based servers instead — and the cylindrical Mac Pro made that even harder. The rack version of the new Mac Pro isn’t a perfect replacement for the Xserve (it’s much thicker and doesn’t have front drive bays), but it could fill a conspicuous gap that has existed for nine years.

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What we’re buying: Steinberg UR22C audio interface

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Marc DeAngelis

Marc DeAngelis
Contributing Writer

One of my hobbies is playing music. My friend and I saved up for an 8-track Tascam recorder in the early 2000s and got hooked on recording tracks. Once digital audio workstations came down in price, I tossed aside the magnetic tapes. Recently, I decided to upgrade my computer to the latest 27-inch iMac, and I saw an excuse to change up my music-making peripherals as well.

My old audio interface, which translates microphone and instrument signals into something that a computer can understand, uses a FireWire 800 connection. Apple hasn’t shipped any computers with FireWire since 2012, so to get my mini studio back up and running, I could either buy an adapter for $7 or a whole new interface for about $200. Naturally, I went with the latter. I chose the latest iteration of Steinberg’s UR22C ($190) thanks to its built-in MIDI ports, Yamaha‘s D-Pre preamps and — neurotic though my reasoning may be — its USB 3.1 connection.

The vast majority of audio interface manufacturers still use USB 2.0. Companies like Focusrite claim that, while USB 3.0 has a much greater bandwidth than USB 2.0, it doesn’t reduce a signal’s latency and therefore has no practical benefit. What these companies are missing is the fact that USB 3.0 differs from USB 2.0 in how it handles something called data polling.

Steinberg

With USB 2.0, data is transmitted after the host (the computer) asks the device (the audio interface) if it has any data to send. The device may have data to send, but has to wait until it’s pinged — or polled — by the host to actually send the data. With USB 3.0 — and by extension USB 3.1 — the device can send data as soon as it’s ready. In short, USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 do provide lower latency.

What this means for musicians is that there will be less time between pushing a key on a synth and the resulting audio playing from the speakers. And yes, a USB 2.0 interface would in all likelihood handle my audio needs perfectly fine, but why downgrade when I could upgrade to USB 3.1?

The UR22C worked perfectly fine out of the box. Typically I have to go into Apple’s Logic Pro preferences and make some adjustments to eliminate any lag, but to my ears, I didn’t even need to. I hooked up my Nord Lead 2X in stereo mode for some panning effects, set the interface to max bit rate and sample length, and hit record. Even though the UR22C had to process two tracks simultaneously, I couldn’t find any problems in the recordings.

I’m looking forward to plugging my Shure Beta 57 mic into one of the unit’s two combination inputs and testing out the Yamaha D-Pre preamps, which are usually only found in higher-end units.

In terms of build quality, the UR22C is impressive, but not quite up to snuff with my previous interface, the Presonus FireStudio Mobile. The UR22C is housed in an understated black and gray metal enclosure and looks natural atop my black JBL 305 monitor. Where the unit falls short, in my opinion, is its controls. The FireStudio Mobile had microswitched knobs, so changing gain setting was super intuitive. The only thing close offered by the UR22C is a detented 12 o’clock setting on its mix knob. One nice feature though is the oversized output volume knob, which makes it easy to adjust when switching between loud and quiet synth presets.

Overall, I’m happy with the UR22C, though part of me questions whether I should’ve just gotten over my USB 2.0 neurosis and purchased the more widely used Focusrite Scarlett 4i4.

“IRL” is a recurring column in which the Engadget staff run down what they’re buying, using, playing and streaming.

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PlayStation’s new Back Button accessory is a wasted opportunity

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The accessory is a $30 addition to your existing controller, which circles impulse-buy territory. But what does this peripheral’s peripheral do?

It plugs into the DualShock 4 through the 3.5mm headphone port — there’s a headphone port on the back button attachment, so it’ll still work with headsets and PSVR — and works straight off the bat.

The integrated OLED screen sounds more spectacular than it is — just a monochrome read-out where you can tell which buttons are mapped. Press down on it to light up current settings, press it again to cycle to the next button profile (you can have up to three) and long-press it to reassign keys.

Why include an OLED display on this thing as it tries to catch up with SCUF controllers or the Xbox’s well-regarded, but expensive, Elite controller? There’s some method to the madness. The inclusion means that the DualShock 4 (plus peripheral) works with anything it’s already compatible with, whether that’s a PC or an Android phone. All the ‘menus’ are there, built-in. That said, I’m not sure why Sony didn’t just put it on the front. Yeah, you won’t need to look at it much, but you will need to look at it at some point.

PlayStation 4 back button attachment

The triggers themselves are sensitive, with very shallow travel. They feel far more premium than my existing DS4 controller’s L1 / R1 keys, which didn’t take much beating. Now, is this what we can expect from the PlayStation 5’s next-gen controller? Sony has already promised haptic feedback on trigger buttons — something that would point to more elaborate trigger keys. And if this is how they’re going to feel, I’m excited about it. Sony can probably ditch the hulking OLED readout, though. There are more elegant solutions, I’m sure, for the DualShock 5.

So which buttons are you going to remap? For a lot of you, it’ll be the L3 and R3, AKA the worst buttons. Pushing down on an analogue stick in a pinch has been a recipe for disaster, leading to melee attacks when you meant to sprint, and often imminent death when you make a mistake. In a lot of games, holding L3 down has become the defacto sprint button.

Games that demand both quick reflexes and combined inputs benefit most from the new peripheral. In Overwatch, a more sensitive trigger finger is a welcome addition, but I found that when using both the two pairs of L and R buttons, in addition to the new triggers, my fingers would overlap. It’s a little cramped at times.

Another game that benefits from some button flexibility is Sekiro. Not only can I move without being dependent on the lock-on view, but I can jump and dodge without any finger traffic jams. It’s why a passionate group of gamers swear by Steam’s controller. RIP.

With any kind of controller change from stock, I want more customization. The best thing about third-party controllers has often been the addition of turbo, where holding a button down (or cycling through an option) offered rapid-fire input, far faster than most mere mortals are capable of. It’s the perfect thing for smashing through RPG-mini games or charging up finishing moves. I can understand why it’s not here — it’s cheating — but I’d have welcomed even more customization. Maybe multi-button input, like one button replicating square and triangle at the same time? It seems like a missed opportunity.

Something I can’t test as an able-bodied gamer is the accessibility factor, here. For anyone that has issues with fine hand control, the addition of large paddles or transplanting any button to a more easy-to-reach location, could be a literal game-changer. Microsoft has taken this notion and run with it a whole lot further, but it’s good that Sony is making moves in this direction, even if it’s not quite at the scale of an entirely new controller.

To its credit, though, the Back Button makes for a relatively cheap upgrade, at $30. In comparison, the SCUF Vantage 2, aimed at pro gamers, costs roughly $200. If you’re a medium- to high-level gamer, Sony’s new peripheral might be the perfect fit. For the rest of us, it’s likely a taste of the future of DualShock. The attachment goes on sale January 23rd, next week.

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Google plans to nix third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022

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Given the importance of cookies to the advertising and publishing industries (and Google itself) in terms of displaying relevant ads, that would lead to significant changes in how tracking works on the web as well as how many websites earn revenue. Through the Privacy Sandbox, Google aims to let advertisers still display personalized ads without users giving up too much of their personal data or browser history.

Director of Chrome engineering Justin Schuh noted in a blog post that Google can’t bring an end to third-party cookies without some help. “We need the ecosystem to engage on these proposals,” he wrote. Google aims to start testing the waters over the next year by getting some advertisers and publishers to trial some of the measures it’s developing.

The Privacy Sandbox is still a work in progress, so it remains to be seen exactly how it’ll work in practice. Google previously said the toolkit would, for instance, group people by interests without impacting their privacy so they could be presented with more relevant ads. Schuh acknowledged to TechCrunch that Google has faced resistance on some of its proposals, “but in all corners, some of the proposals have been received very well.”

He said Google is open to other ideas that don’t lessen its privacy and security aims, but it’s looking for more than quick fixes. Other browsers, such as Firefox, can block third-party cookies. But Google thinks “this has unintended consequences that can negatively impact both users and the web ecosystem.” Marketers might double down on alternative, potentially more invasive workarounds, such as fingerprinting. As such, Schuh said, “We just don’t see any alternative but to fix the architecture of the web.”

Google has other plans to shore up privacy and security. It has announced measures to clamp down on cross-site tracking, some of which it will implement in Chrome next month.

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Senator asks FTC to investigate questionable ad blocking practices (updated)

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You're not the only one concerned that ad blocking companies may have taken customers for a ride by whitelisting advertisers willing to pay. Senator Ron Wyden has sent a letter to the FTC asking the regulator to investigate ad blocking companies over…

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KeyStep Pro aims to be the MIDI command center of your home studio

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The KeyStep Pro has 37 key velocity sensitive keyboard with aftertouch. But, what’s really important is that you can use those keys to play through riffs, melodies and chord progressions and save them to the polyphonic sequencer. There’s four independent sequencers on board, each of which can hold 16 patterns, up to 64 steps in length. Oh, and you can chain up to 16 of those patterns together to create entire songs. And track one can function as a dedicated 16-part drum sequencer. There are 16 pads across the front that make it easy to edit the steps in your sequence, and they should come in particularly handy with that drum sequencer. Not to mention there’s a robust arpeggiator on board.

The KeyStep Pro also continues the tradition of including as many different types of ports as possible. Each track in the sequencer has dedicated CV (control voltage) outs for pitch, mod and gate, so that you can connect modular synths and Eurorack gear. Plus there are eight dedicated drum gate outputs for controlling drum machines. But wait, there’s more: You’ll also find clock in and out ports for syncing up things like Korg Volcas, a 5-pin MIDI in port, as well as two 5-pin MIDI outs, an output just for the metronome and, of course, USB. I’m fairly certain there isn’t a piece of music gear made after 1983 that this thing couldn’t control.

In short, the KeyStep Pro combines all the best elements of the BeatStep Pro and the KeyStep in one package. And it’s surprisingly affordable too at a list price of $399. Though, we wouldn’t be surprised if the actual retail price ended up being closer to $350 when it starts shipping this Spring.

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Facebook taught its AI to speak math

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My numerical idiocy aside, Facebook has trained an AI to solve the toughest of math problems. Real superstring stuff. In effect, FB has taught their neural network to view complex mathematical equations “as a kind of language and then [treat] solutions as a translation problem for sequence-to-sequence neural networks.”

This is actually quite a feat since most neural networks operate on an approximation system: they can figure out if an image is of a dog or a marmoset or a steam radiator with a reasonable amount of certainty but precisely calculating figures in a symbolic problem like b – 4ac = 7 is a whole different kettle of fish. Facebook managed this by not treating the equation like a math problem but rather like a language problem. Specifically the research team approached the issue using neural machine translation (NMT). In short, they taught an AI to speak math. The result was a system capable of solving equations in a fraction of the time that algebra-based systems like Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab would take.

“By training a model to detect patterns in symbolic equations, we believed that a neural network could piece together the clues that led to their solutions, roughly similar to a human’s intuition-based approach to complex problems,” the research team wrote in a blog post released today. “So we began exploring symbolic reasoning as an NMT problem, in which a model could predict possible solutions based on examples of problems and their matching solutions.”

Essentially the research team taught the AI to unpack mathematical equations much in the same way that we do for complex phrases, like the example below. Instead of breaking out the verbs, nouns and adjectives, the system silos the various individual variables.

The researchers focused primarily on solving differential and integration equations, but, because those two flavors of math don’t always have solutions for a given equation, the team had to get tricky in generating training data for the machine learning system.

“For our symbolic integration equations, for example, we flipped the translation approach around: Instead of generating problems and finding their solutions, we generated solutions and found their problem (their derivative), which is a much easier task,” the team wrote and which I vaguely understand. “This approach of generating problems from their solutions — what engineers sometimes refer to as trapdoor problems — made it feasible to create millions of integration examples.”

Still, it apparently worked. The team achieved a success rate of 99.7 percent on integration problems and 94 percent and 81.2 percent, respectively, for first- and second-order differential equations, compared to 84 percent on the same integration problems and 77.2 percent and 61.6 percent for differential equations using Mathematica. It also took FB’s program just over half a second to arrive at its conclusion rather than the several minutes it required for existing systems to do the same.

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Lyft forms yet another group to address passenger safety

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Lyft and its competitor Uber have both faced criticism for failing to effectively address sexual assault and harassment claims. Lyft has publicly acknowledged that its response has fallen short, and the company now faces a lawsuit, which accuses Lyft of failing to protect its female passengers. It’s unclear how many sexual assault claims Lyft has received, but one of the lawyers involved in the lawsuit said “the cases are coming to us at a rate of five to 10 per week.” In Uber’s first biennial US Safety Report, released in December, the company said it received nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assault in the US in 2017 and 2018.

Lyft’s Safety Advisory Council will include include representatives from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), It’s On Us, a public awareness campaign launched by Barack Obama, and law enforcement groups. It’s hard to say whether the Safety Advisory Council will be any more effective than other Lyft safety groups, like its Safety Policy and Community Compliance (SPCC) team or its Trust and Safety team.

In its blog post, announcing the Safety Advisory Council, Lyft did not specifically mention sexual assault. But, the company claims that, in 2020, it’s “doubling down” on its investment in safety, with more time, resources and employees working on safety.

In a statement, Lyft’s VP of Safety and Customer Engagement Eman Barhoumeh said”

“As the Lyft platform grows, we are seeing issues that are endemic in our society manifest on our platform and have an opportunity to address them. Issues that are so nuanced, complex and widespread in our society require sophisticated solutions that go beyond standard product design. To identify these solutions, and ensure they are implemented thoughtfully, we must consider the perspectives of a diverse set of subject matter experts.

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