Category: Technology

Despite an infatuation with most things e-ink, I’ve resisted the world of e-ink notebooks. I’m one of the few who once owned a Kindle DX, that huge e-reader that existed for only a few years before being retired.

In the last few years, we’ve seen Amazon get into e-ink scribes, while startups like ReMarkable have carved out their own niche with capable hardware for a reasonable price. Lenovo, having dabbled with e-ink on devices like the Yoga Book, has decided to join the fray with the Smart Paper.

While the product hasn’t yet launched in the US (and is now curiously absent from Lenovo’s retail site), the Smart Paper is now available in other countries, including the UK.

At around $400 (or £500 in the UK) it’s expensive. That’s more than the Kindle Scribe – and much more than the ReMarkable 2. I tried using the Smart Paper instead of a typical paper notepad, especially intrigued to see if the offline handwriting recognition would create a seamless way of sharing notes across to my laptop or phone. There are enough reasons that Lenovo’s digital notepad stands out – but not all of them are good.

Hardware

The Smart Paper has a relatively simple design, with an indent for the stylus, along the left side of the device, the only detail on the front of the device, besides the 10.3-inch E Ink touchscreen. You can interact with the screen through both the stylus and typical touch input, although you can’t scribble with your finger. The Smart Paper’s matte screen is crisp enough, at 227 pixels per inch (ppi), but noticeably a little jaggier than the Kindle Scribe’s 300-ppi screen, which is closer to a high-definition tablet display.

The hardware is solid too, and Lenovo bundles in both the stylus and a folio case for protecting the screen – which also keeps the stylus safe inside. Like the Kindle Stylus, the Lenovo pen can also be magnetically attached.

It’s more than sufficient for pencil sketches, doodles and note-taking. The Smart Paper’s matte finish makes it a delight to write on, and unlike the ReMarkable 2, it has a built-in light to use it regardless of ambient light levels. I only ever used it at its lowest brightness. (Who writes in the dark, anyway?) There’s also a built-in mic to record voice notes, but no speakers.

The Smart Paper’s stylus feels almost like a pencil, with a single flat side aiding grip. The writing experience is smooth and responsive – it’s not at iPad levels, but the 25 ms latency is smooth enough to ensure it doesn’t interrupt your writing flow. The nibs are replaceable, and it feels, well, as good as most other e-ink styluses I’ve used so far. Compared to the Kindle Scribe’s pen, I prefer Lenovo’s streamlined design: no buttons, no eraser ends, just an input device. Tech-wise, the stylus has tilt and pressure sensitivity (4,096 levels of pressure), to better show off nine different input styles, including some decent calligraphy nibs, highlighter and more straightforward pen options.

Software

Lenovo’s Smart Paper runs Android 11, but with an open-source twist, which should make for more powerful software that I’d hoped would go beyond Amazon’s Kindle Scribe. Sadly, unless you’re willing to dive into sideloading and software tinkering, it’s not remotely the Android experience I was hoping for. Instead, it’s a way for Lenovo to offer a responsive but simple touch interface.

The Smart Paper’s notepad templates run the gamut from simple lined paper to multi-column affairs for spreadsheets on the go. Lenovo claims there are 74 templates, but the majority of them are incredibly similar.

Beyond tapping with the stylus, you can use swipes and taps to navigate between notepad pages, but it’s so temperamental. A tappable icon to nudge you between pages – arrows would have been fine – would have saved me a lot of fruitless swipes.

Instead, I’d have to wrestle with sliding from the center of the display outwards. Do it wrong, and you’ll bounce out to your notepad library or go back a page instead of forward.

There are also the most basic of basic apps, including a clock, calendar and email client. The reader supports EPUB, PDF and Office files, alongside your digital notepads made on the Smart Paper itself. You can also record voice notes and even dictate notes, if you’re feeling lucky. There’s an eBooks.com app, which will be your principal place for book shopping.

The eBooks.com portal is… fine? Amazon, predictably, dominates ebooks, but at least there’s something here compatible with an established platform. Having said that, even books bought through eBooks.com don’t look great. There are no borders, so the text goes from edge to edge. Instead of jumping to the next page, the body text itself slides across the screen, which is a little jarring on a low-refresh-rate e-ink display. Barring the whole sideloading can of worms, the only way to get your Kindle books on here is to load them up on the Firefox browser, which requires a data connection.

You can pretty easily transfer compatible files if you already have a PDF of a book, or an EPUB file. There is one app that could make it easier to move files: Google Drive. But it isn’t on the homepage, it’s tabbed away. You also can’t use Drive to move your digital notebooks, though. Unfortunately, for that you need a special subscription.

This is where Lenovo’s Smart Paper app comes in. It offers cloud-synced notebook files, if you’re willing to pay for a subscription. It’s prohibitively expensive, though. Here in the UK, the shortest option is £9 per month for three months, with an upload limit of 5GB. It scales up from there for longer periods and even more storage. By comparison, Google Drive gives you 200 GB of storage for a mere £2.49 a month. (And it works on everything.)

Even more bafflingly, to subscribe to the service, you’ll need access to a Windows or Android device and subscribe from those apps. For some reason, Lenovo doesn’t offer subscription purchases on iOS, despite offering the app on the App Store. It’s yet another headache for an incredibly overpriced, underwhelming service. Unfortunately, there’s no easy workaround, even with those Google Drive shortcuts,

I initially thought the Smart Paper’s offline handwriting recognition would be the standout feature, but without easier ways to sync your files (or copy and paste text), it’s more of a handy skill that occasionally comes in useful. Once I’d converted my chicken scratch to digital text, I was still beholden to a data connection – and either Lenovo’s cloud sync or G Drive – to utilize those digital notes. I have a horrible feeling that, with pages upon pages of handwriting to convert, it would just be easier for me to type out my written notes, which defeats the purpose of the thing.

Wrap-up

The hardware is expensive, but solid. Despite those Android roots, though, it lacks the flexibility of upstarts like ReMarkable’s e-ink devices. While the Google Drive integration is useful, your digital scribblings are trapped in Lenovo’s pricey companion cloud service. Just a few more simple (relevant!) apps would also have made for a more compelling device. If there’s Google Drive hooks, why not try to get a basic interface for Google Docs? Even if it didn’t support handwriting recognition, the device lacks a way to transpose your text notes to a text editor easily.

Ignoring the poorly thought-out cloud subscription pricing, the Smart Paper is also almost £200 more than the ReMarkable 2. For that amount, the Smart Paper would have to be the perfect e-ink notepad, but it’s not.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lenovo-smart-paper-review-a-solid-e-ink-tablet-spoiled-by-the-cost-133056534.html?src=rss 

Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Z Flip 5 Retro, a limited-edition foldable that pays homage to the SGH-E700 (AKA the SGH-E715 in the US), which came out 20 years ago in 2003. It has the same indigo blue and silver color combo as the original and a few special widgets, but it’s otherwise the same foldable flip phone from earlier this year. This special edition will go on sale in Korea and several countries in Europe, but not the US.

The SGH-E700 was Samsung’s first mobile phone with an integrated antenna and became a certified hit, selling more than 10 million units. Weirdly, this isn’t even the first time Samsung has tugged at nostalgia strings with this phone: in 2007, Samsung effectively reissued the same phone with new radios as a nostalgia play, even though it was only four years old at the time.

— Mat Smith

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!​​

The biggest stories you might have missed

How to customize the double tap gesture on Apple Watch

The best gadgets for your pets

Is streaming video even still worth it?

What the evolution of our own brains can tell us about the future of AI

What we got right (and wrong) about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter

One year later, it’s X.

Exactly one year has passed since Elon Musk, fresh off a months-long legal battle that forced him to buy the company, strolled into Twitter headquarters carrying a sink. We weren’t entirely sure what to expect. But there was no shortage of predictions about just how messy and chaotic Twitter might become under Musk’s leadership. The biggest twist, however, might be Meta making its Twitter rival, Threads, into a viable (if flawed) alternative. Karissa Bell walks through what did (and didn’t) happen when Musk took charge.

Continue reading.

Threads is working on an API for developers

Threads aims to be the place for public conversations online.

Threads was missing a lot of features users would expect from a service similar to Twitter (now X) when it launched. But over the past few months, it has added more new features, but as it still doesn’t have an API, third-party developers can’t create features with hooks into their services. For example, local transport agencies can’t automatically post service alerts when a train is delayed.

According to Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, though, Threads is working on an API for developers — he just has some reservations. He’s concerned the API’s launch could mean “a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content.” Mosseri may be hinting at the early days of Threads, where people’s feeds were dominated by brands and accounts with (presumably) social media staffers posting up a storm.

Continue reading.

Google’s default search engine status cost it $26 billion in 2021

The figure was revealed in the DOJ’s antitrust trial against the search giant.

Google VP Prabhakar Raghavan testified the company paid $26.3 billion in 2021 for maintaining default search engine status and acquiring traffic. Most of that likely went to Apple, in order to remain the default search option on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Raghavan, who was testifying as part of the DOJ’s ongoing antitrust suit against the company, said Google’s search advertising made $146.4 billion in revenue in 2021, which puts the $26 billion it paid for default status in perspective. The executive added that default status made up the lion’s share of what it pays to acquire traffic.

Continue reading.

How to watch Apple’s Scary Fast event

The night time is the right time for new iMacs and laptops.

Apple’s holding another streaming event today, Monday October 30, at 8PM ET. Yes, that’s in the dead of night, and you can watch the stream on YouTube, on Apple’s website and on Apple TV devices. Here’s what you can expect to see.

Watch here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-samsung-pays-tribute-to-its-flip-phone-past-with-limited-edition-foldable-111618806.html?src=rss 

The Biden Administration unveiled its ambitious next steps in addressing and regulating artificial intelligence development on Monday. Its expansive new executive order seeks to establish further protections for the public as well as improve best practices for federal agencies and their contractors.

“The President several months ago directed his team to pull every lever,” a senior administration official told reporters on a recent press call. “That’s what this order does, bringing the power of the federal government to bear in a wide range of areas to manage AI’s risk and harness its benefits … It stands up for consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, advances American leadership around the world and like all executive orders, this one has the force of law.”

These actions will be introduced over the next year with smaller safety and security changes happening in around 90 days and with more involved reporting and data transparency schemes requiring 9 to 12 months to fully deploy. The administration is also creating an “AI council,” chaired by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, who will meet with federal agency heads to ensure that the actions are being executed on schedule.

Public Safety

“In response to the President’s leadership on the subject, 15 major American technology companies have begun their voluntary commitments to ensure that AI technology is safe, secure and trustworthy before releasing it to the public,” the senior administration official said. “That is not enough.”

The EO directs the establishment of new standards for AI safety and security, including reporting requirements for developers whose foundation models might impact national or economic security. Those requirements will also apply in developing AI tools to autonomously implement security fixes on critical software infrastructure. 

By leveraging the Defense Production Act, this EO will “require that companies developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety must notify the federal government when training the model, and must share the results of all red-team safety tests,” per a White House press release. That information must be shared prior to the model being made available to to the public, which could help reduce the rate at which companies unleash half-baked and potentially deadly machine learning products.

In addition to the sharing of red team test results, the EO also requires disclosure of the system’s training runs (essentially, its iterative development history). “What that does is that creates a space prior to the release… to verify that the system is safe and secure,” officials said.

Administration officials were quick to point out that this reporting requirement will not impact any AI models currently available on the market, nor will it impact independent or small- to medium-size AI companies moving forward, as the threshold for enforcement is quite high. It’s geared specifically for the next generation of AI systems that the likes of Google, Meta and OpenAI are already working on with enforcement on models starting at 10^26 petaflops, a capacity currently beyond the limits of existing AI models. “This is not going to catch AI systems trained by graduate students, or even professors,” the administration official said.

What’s more, the EO will encourage the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security to address AI threats “to critical infrastructure, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks,” per the release. “Agencies that fund life-science projects will establish these standards as a condition of federal funding, creating powerful incentives to ensure appropriate screening and manage risks potentially made worse by AI.” In short, any developers found in violation of the EO can likely expect a prompt and unpleasant visit from the DoE, FDA, EPA or other applicable regulatory agency, regardless of their AI model’s age or processing speed.

In an effort to proactively address the decrepit state of America’s digital infrastructure, the order also seeks to establish a cybersecurity program, based loosely on the administration’s existing AI Cyber Challenge, to develop AI tools that can autonomously root out and shore up security vulnerabilities in critical software infrastructure. It remains to be seen whether those systems will be able to address the concerns of misbehaving models that SEC head Gary Gensler recently raised.

AI Watermarking and Cryptographic Validation

We’re already seeing the normalization of deepfake trickery and AI-empowered disinformation on the campaign trail. So, the White House is taking steps to ensure that the public can trust the text, audio and video content that it publishes on its official channels. The public must be able to easily validate whether the content they see is AI-generated or not, argued White House officials on the press call. 

The Department of Commerce is in charge of the latter effort and is expected to work closely with existing industry advocacy groups like the C2PA and its sister organization, the CAI, to develop and implement a watermarking system for federal agencies. “We aim to support and facilitate and help standardize that work [by the C2PA],” administration officials said. “We see ourselves as plugging into that ecosystem.”

Officials further explained that the government is supporting the underlying technical standards and practices that will lead to digital watermarking’ wider adoption — similar to the work it did around developing the HTTPS ecosystem and in getting both developers and the public on-board with it. This will help federal officials achieve their other goal of ensuring that the government’s official messaging can be relied upon.

Civil Rights and Consumer Protections

The first Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights that the White House released last October directed agencies to “combat algorithmic discrimination while enforcing existing authorities to protect people’s rights and safety,” the administration official said. “But there’s more to do.” 

The new EO will require guidance be extended to “landlords, federal benefits programs and federal contractors” to prevent AI systems from exacerbating discrimination within their spheres of influence. It will also direct the Department of Justice to develop best practices for investigating and prosecuting civil rights violations related to AI, as well as, per the announcement, “the use of AI in sentencing, parole and probation, pretrial release and detention, risk assessments, surveillance, crime forecasting and predictive policing, and forensic analysis.”

Additionally, the EO calls for prioritizing federal support to accelerate development of privacy-preserving techniques that would enable future LLMs to be trained on large datasets without the current risk of leaking personal details that those datasets might contain. These solutions could include “cryptographic tools that preserve individuals’ privacy,” per the White House release, developed with assistance from the Research Coordination Network and National Science Foundation. The executive order also reiterates its calls for bipartisan legislation from Congress addressing the broader privacy issues that AI systems present for consumers.

In terms of healthcare, the EO states that the Department of Health and Human Services will establish a safety program that tracks and remedies unsafe, AI-based medical practices. Educators will also see support from the federal government in using AI-based educational tools like personalized chatbot tutoring.

Worker Protections

The Biden administration concedes that while the AI revolution is a decided boon for business, its capabilities make it a threat to worker security through job displacement and intrusive workplace surveillance. The EO seeks to address these issues with “the development of principles and employer best practices that mitigate the harms and maximize the benefit of AI for workers,” an administration official said. “We encourage federal agencies to adopt these guidelines in the administration of their programs.”

The EO will also direct the Department of Labor and the Council of Economic Advisors to both study how AI might impact the labor market and how the federal government might better support workers “facing labor disruption” moving forward. Administration officials also pointed to the potential benefits that AI might bring to the federal bureaucracy including cutting costs, and increasing cybersecurity efficacy. “There’s a lot of opportunity here, but we have to to ensure the responsible government development and deployment of AI,” an administration official said.

To that end, the administration is launching on Monday a new federal jobs portal, AI.gov, which will offer information and guidance on available fellowship programs for folks looking for work with the federal government. “We’re trying to get more AI talent across the board,” an administration official said. “Programs like the US Digital Service, the Presidential Innovation Fellowship and USA jobs — doing as much as we can to get talent in the door.” The White House is also looking to expand existing immigration rules to streamline visa criteria, interviews and reviews for folks trying to move to and work in the US in these advanced industries.

The White House reportedly did not preview the industry on this particular swath of radical policy changes, though administration officials did note that they had already been collaborating extensively with AI companies on many of these issues. The Senate held its second AI Insight Forum event last week on Capitol Hill, while Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak at the UK Summit on AI Safety, hosted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday.

At a Washington Post event on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) was already arguing that the executive order did not go far enough and could not be considered an effective replacement for congressional action, which to date, has been slow in coming. 

“There’s probably a limit to what you can do by executive order,” Schumer told WaPo, “They [the Biden Administration] are concerned, and they’re doing a lot regulatorily, but everyone admits the only real answer is legislative.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sweeping-white-house-ai-executive-order-takes-aim-at-the-technologys-toughest-challenges-090008655.html?src=rss