Google Stadia will be “faster and more responsive” than local gaming hardware

Google Stadia will be faster and more responsive than local gaming systems in “a year or two,” according to VP of engineering Madj Bakar. Thanks to some precog trickery, Google believes its streaming system will be faster than the gaming systems of the near-future, no matter how powerful they may become. But if the system is playing itself, does that really count?

Speaking with Alex Wiltshire in Edge magazine #338, Google’s top streaming engineer claims the company is verging on gaming superiority with its cloud streaming service, Stadia, thanks to the advancements it’s making in modeling and machine learning. It’s even eyeing up the gaming performance crown in just a couple of years.

“Ultimately, we think in a year or two we’ll have games that are running faster and feel more responsive in the cloud than they do locally,” Bakar says to Edge, “regardless of how powerful the local machine is.”

This would be achieved using Google’s homegrown streaming tech, which it’s been teasing ever since Stadia was first announced late last year with Project Stream. The company believes its tech is capable of overcoming the hurdles presented by over-the-web gaming, despite its extensive web of datacentres sitting potentially hundreds of miles away from a user.

Specifically Bakar notes Google’s “negative latency” will act as a workaround for any potential lag between player and server. This term describes a buffer of predicted latency, inherent to a Stadia player setup or connection, in which the Stadia system will run lag mitigation. This can include increasing fps rapidly to reduce latency between player input and display or even predicting user inputs.

Yes, you heard that correctly. Stadia might start predicting what action, button, or movement you’re likely to do next and render it ready for you – which sounds rather frightening.

So does that count as the fastest system if technically some clever algorithm is anticipating your actions for you? We’ve received a heads-up (thanks!) that negative latency, powered by a datacentre’s worth of computing silicon, may offer future cloud gaming systems flexibility to anticipate the likely action of a user and ensure a speedy response ready for that potential eventuality. Whether or not a player takes the anticipated path or another entirely remains dependent on local player inputs.

This flexible approach is possible due to the sheer mass of power available to a cloud gaming service, the likes of which is far beyond that of any local system. But it still relies on the technology maturing to a point that enables game devs to implement it.

Google is plenty confident Stadia will delight users, and in my own experience with the tech back at E3, I didn’t notice any actions going awry. However, that was in a Google-approved environment, and we’ll have to wait until Stadia’s launch this November to find out how efficient Stadia’s streaming algorithms are in the real world.

Essential Project Gem phone is taller and thinner than usual

Essential CEO and ex-Googler Andy Rubin have been teasing his company's second smartphone via Twitter. Starting with a video, Rubin, highlighted the color-shift material which covers the backs of his new smartphones. However, the bigger story is the form factor evident at first glance of this design from almost any angle. The official Essential Twitter account has since joined in with the sharing and hash-tagged the smartphone design 'Project GEM'.

The Essential PH-1 was Essential's first and only smartphone, so far. Announced on May 2017, and shipping from August the same year, it was the first mainstream device to feature a top of screen notch in its otherwise 'edge-to-edge' screen. The PH-1 was discontinued in December last year but a follow-up device promised, and it continues to be updated, reports Engadget.

The Essential PH-1 was Essential's first and only smartphone, so far. Announced on May 2017, and shipping from August the same year, it was the first mainstream device to feature a top of screen notch in its otherwise 'edge-to-edge' screen. The PH-1 was discontinued in December last year but a follow-up device promised, and it continues to be updated, reports Engadget.

Last year Rubin touted the combination of a relatively small smartphone screen and better voice commands as a combination that can reduce smartphone addiction. It will be interesting to see if such a feature is an advertised bonus of the PH-2. If not, how else will this be marketed in a world where smartphone screens are now commonly 6-inches in diagonal, and others are looking at foldable or dual screens to increase our pocketable device screen areas?

Google Faces iPhone Privacy Lawsuit After Court Reinstates Case

A U.K. lawsuit filed against Google by millions of iPhone users over data-collection claims was given the go-ahead by London appeals judges who overturned an earlier ruling that had thrown out the case.

The group, known as Google You Owe Us, were seeking as much as 3.2 billion pounds ($3.9 billion), according to documents filed with the court last year. The organization, which represents more than 4 million people, said the Alphabet Inc. unit unlawfully gathered personal information by bypassing Apple Inc.’s iPhone default privacy settings.

Led by consumer advocate Richard Lloyd, the group was given permission to hear the case as a “representative action” that is akin to a U.S. class action, after arguing that all the customers share mutual interests. The court said Lloyd had agreed to seek the “lowest common denominator” of damages, potentially lowering the value of the lawsuit.

“This case, quite properly if the allegations are proved, seeks to call Google to account for its allegedly wholesale and deliberate misuse of personal data without consent, undertaken with a view to a commercial profit,“ Judge Geoffrey Vos said Wednesday in the ruling.

Google plans to seek permission from the U.K.’s highest court to appeal.

The judge said that by tracking and collecting data from users’ browsing history, Google took something of value from them. That meant all users suffered the same loss and could be counted as one group, he said. The customers had no remedy available to them but to file the litigation, Vos said.

“Today’s judgment sends a very clear message to Google and other large tech companies: you are not above the law,” Lloyd said. “Google can be held to account in this country for misusing peoples’ personal data, and groups of consumers can together ask the courts for redress.”

Google responded by saying that the case should be dismissed.

“Protecting the privacy and security of our users has always been our No. 1 priority,” a Google spokeswoman said in an email. “This case relates to events that took place nearly a decade ago and that we addressed at the time.”

Google Pixel 4a could launch alongside Pixel 4 and 4 XL

Code uncovered from the latest version of Google's Camera app suggests that there is a third Pixel pixel device coming in the next wave of Google product launches. 

The discovery was made by 9to5Google, who dug into the code of the latest Camera leak and discovered a string of code showing three codenames alongside a product identifier which clearly indicates that these are Pixels from this year. 

Under code "isPixel2019" the three devices are codenamed Coral, Flame and Needlefish. It's the latter of the trio that seems to be a mystery third device.

It's already been established that the Coral and Flame are the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, begging the question: what is Needlefish?

In other code, it's discovered that it is, indeed, a Qualcomm-powered device, and the code from the camera app confirms that it is a Pixel. Which also confirms that it's a device which must have a camera.

The most logical conclusion then is that it's a smartphone. With the Pixel 4 and 4 XL being quite pricey flagships, the suggestion is that it is a more affordable Pixel phone launching alongside the two premium devices.

It would make sense, and many other hardware manufacturers seem to be going down that route. iPhone launched the 11 alongside the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. Samsung launched the Galaxy S10e alongside the S10 and S10+.

Perhaps the only fact that makes it seem unlikely is that the 3a and 3a XL have only been out for a relatively short amount of time.

If Google is to launch an affordable Pixel 4 alongside the other two, perhaps that's evidence that its 3a and 3a XL sales have been stronger than the more expensive ones, and that they should have launched them at the same time.

With this device only being mentioned in code, we don't yet know anything more concrete about it. There have been a number of leaks surrounding the 4 and 4 XL, but little - if anything at all - has surfaced regarding an upgraded version of the 3a.

For now, we'll be pocketing this in the "maybe" tray, and saving it until we hear any more evidence. There's always a possibility that it's merely a product Google is testing, and might not even become an officially launched smartphone.

Thieves are now using AI deepfakes to trick companies into sending them money

The publication reported last week that a UK energy company’s chief executive was tricked into wiring €200,000 (or about $220,000 USD) to a Hungarian supplier because he believed his boss was instructing him to do so. But the energy company’s insurance firm, Euler Hermes Group SA, told the WSJ that a clever AI-equipped fraudster was using deepfake software to mimic the voice of the executive and demand his underling pay him within the hour.

“The software was able to imitate the voice, and not only the voice: the tonality, the punctuation, the German accent,” a Euler Hermes spokesperson later told The Washington Post. The phone call was matched with an email, and the energy firm CEO obliged. The money is now gone, having been moved through accounts in Hungary and Mexico and dispersed around the world, the Post reports.

Later, after a second request from the thieves was made, the energy firm CEO called up his actual boss, only to find himself handling calls from both the fake and the real versions of the man simultaneously, which alerted the CEO to the ongoing theft. Euler Hermes declined to name the energy firm or its German parent company.

This may not be the first time this has happened. According to the Post, cybersecurity firm Symantec says it has come across at least three cases of deepfake voice fraud used to trick companies into sending money to a fraudulent account. Symantec told the Post that at least one of the cases, which appears to be distinct from the one Euler Hermes has confirmed, resulted in millions of dollars in losses.

The situation highlights the fraught nature of AI research, especially around the artificial creation of video and audio. While none of the big Silicon Valley companies with large, capable AI research institutions are openly developing deepfake video software, some are working diligently in the audio realm.

Google's controversial Duplex Service uses AI to mimic the voice of a real human being so that it can make phone calls on a user’s behalf. A number of smaller startups, many of which are located in China, are offering up similar services for free on smartphones, sometimes under questionable privacy and data collection terms. Meanwhile, researchers at tech companies and in academia are trying to develop deepfake-detecting software. Other researchers are unearthing the extent to which a convincing deepfake can be generated and purposed using even smaller amounts of data.

In other words, deepfakes are here, and they can be dangerous. We’re just going to need better tools to sort out the real from the fake.