Opera browser to be infused with artificial intelligence

Opera, a name synonymous with web browsers will also soon catch up on the new bandwagon of artificial intelligence (AI). The company has invested in AI technology and in 2017 it could be the foundation behind all its products which include the Opera web browser on the desktop, Opera Mini on Android smart phones, Opera Max VPN, privacy and ad-blocking tool and its VPN client, revealed Opera’s Sunil Kamath.

Kamath, who is the company’s vice president for South and South East Asia revealed that its new Chinese parent Kunlun Tech has built a team in Beijing, China which works in tandem with Opera’s team in Scandinavia, which is working on a new AI platform.

This team is working on a new algorithm which works in tandem with content curation teams like the one in India.

“AI will be at the core of what we do,” said Kamath. “We want to use AI to be more predictive to give the consumer what he or she wants,” he added.

Opera which is the 5th largest web browser in the world and has over 300 million users across its range of products on mobile and desktop combined, is sitting on a lot of data. Opera believes this data can be used by AI to intelligently offer content to users who use its products.

Opera Neon a test bed for AI?

Opera which recently launched the Neon browser; an outlandish experimental web browser is hoping to use it like a test bed for all its new endeavors.

“Expect crazy AI stuff on Neon,” said Kamath. “I would say Neon is like a test bed for us. It will be the platform for us to test new technologies and get feedback from consumers and geeks alike,” he said.

The feedback it will receive will eventually trickle down the main Opera products which also holds true for its artificial intelligence dreams.

Kamath also believed that innovation on the desktop browser was important which za reason behind the investment behind Neon was.

“We want the consumer to choose, which is why we believe innovation on desktop is important,” Kamath added

Kunlun a positive influence

A lot of the new direction is because of Kunlun which is the new Chinese parent behind Opera. This also includes its move towards leveraging artificial intelligence.

“Even with the new Chinese owner we haven’t changed the way we work,” revealed Kamath.

Additionally, Kamath added that the core Opera technology and product team was still based out of Scandinavia.

He viewed being owned by a Chinese company to not being a disadvantage but rather felt that if a company was ethical in its practices, it would always do the right thing for its users.

Chinese billionaire Zhou Yahui who owns Beijing Kunlun Tech is in fact promoting a culture where Kunlun learns from Opera.

“He wants to incorporate some of the Opera practices in his organisation,” said Kamath.

Opera under Kunlun also doesn’t face the heat of the stock market as it is now privately held.

“Opera was always shareholder-oriented and now since we are a private company, we are very aggressive the way we build our market share,” revealed Kamath, citing the positive influence of the acquisition on the company.

1 billion users

One of the big ambitions Opera has under its new parent is to have 1 billion users. Google’s Chrome browser has already hit that mark, but Opera doesn’t intend to compete with it as it is far behind with 300 million users.

“Opera’s focus has been on increasing the pie of mobile users than focusing on taking away market share from the competition,” said Kamath.

In a way, Opera wants to more than triple its user base in two years. For this, it is hedging its bet on a mobile first strategy which is working in a market like India typified by the fact that India is the number 1 market for its Opera Max service which alone has 50 million users across the world.

“We are on a roadmap to get a billion users on Opera and if mobile is the most obvious channel, then yes,” said Kamath. “In emerging markets we are very mobile first,” he added, something that’s not new.

In India, it continues to work with likes of Micromax, Karbonn and Intex. In some cases, like in case of the Samsung Galaxy J, it opens up an application programming language (API) for a product like the Opera Max, and the OEM sells it like its own feature. This is another way it acquires users who don’t directly use its products.

Recently, it also launched a video on demand service in a bid to differentiate itself from the competition and offer more features to its users.

To help itself reach the 1 billion user mark, Opera sees India as key.

“In India we want to double our market share in the next two years from where we are today. We will depend on technology and distribution which means we will invest in this market and we will go into tier 2 and tier 3 cities and create a brand to get mobile users on board, and if Opera is the entry channel for that, it will be great,” said Kamath.

Apple says iOS 10.2.1 has reduced unexpected iPhone 6s shutdown issues by 80%

Over the past couple of iPhone versions users have complained of “unexpected” shutdowns of their devices. Some iPhone 6, 6s, 6 Plus and 6s Plus devices could basically go dark unexpectedly, forcing a user to have to plug them into an outlet to get them to power back on.

Apple has been working on this very annoying bug and it says it has come up with a fix of sorts that should mitigate the problem on a majority of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices. The fix is actually already on your iPhone if you have installed iOS 10.2.1 — something that around 50 percent of iOS users have already done. After letting the fix simmer on customer devices, Apple now has statistics to share on how it has improved the issue, citing 80 percent reduction on iPhone 6s and 70 percent reduction on iPhone 6 devices.

Currently, iPhone 7 devices are not impacted by this issue. It’s also important to note that there was a similar but different issue that had the same unexpected shutdown symptoms late last year that resulted in a battery recall of some devices. These are not the same issue or fix.

Here is the comment of them:

With iOS 10.2.1, Apple made improvements to reduce occurrences of unexpected shutdowns that a small number of users were experiencing with their iPhone. iOS 10.2.1 already has over 50% of active iOS devices upgraded and the diagnostic data we’ve received from upgraders shows that for this small percentage of users experiencing the issue, we’re seeing a more than 80% reduction in iPhone 6s and over 70% reduction on iPhone 6 of devices unexpectedly shutting down.

We also added the ability for the phone to restart without needing to connect to power, if a user still encounters an unexpected shutdown. It is important to note that these unexpected shutdowns are not a safety issue, but we understand it can be an inconvenience and wanted to fix the issue as quickly as possible. If a customer has any issues with their device they can contact AppleCare.

As far as I’m able to understand what happened here, Apple found that sudden spikes of activity to the maximum power draw could cause older batteries, which had some mileage on them, to deliver power in an uneven manner, which would cause an emergency shutdown of the devices. Brand new batteries would not be affected, but as most phone batteries run through charge cycles they get less effective (this is a well-known byproduct of lithium-ion technology and one reason everyone wants to get rid of it as soon as someone figures out something better) and more susceptible to these kinds of triggering spikes.

Whatever tweaks Apple made to its power management system have enabled them to reduce the shutdowns heavily — but not eliminate them entirely. For those cases where a device still shuts down, folks will be able to restart without having to plug it in on iPhone 6s and 6s Plus devices.

It’s also my understanding that there is a fix in on the newer beta versions of iOS that should allow the auto-restart in iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 models, as well.

At some point a battery will be so worn out that it will need to be replaced, as Apple outlines on its site. A new “your battery needs service” message is also coming to the battery info screen inside Settings on iOS 10.2.1 over the next few days. This will only show up for batteries that Apple feels need it — which will add a bit more transparency to people wondering when Apple considers the battery worn down enough to get swapped out. Though the exact metrics by which it decides that a battery has reached end-of-life are still opaque, Apple does give some hints on its own page about maximum charges and lifetime.

While the issue has not been killed off entirely, this should provide some sort of relief for users who were annoyed by the problem.

Driverless cars - no halfway house?

The progress in driverless car technology over recent years has been astounding. A future when you can hop in and have a sleep while an autonomous vehicle takes you to your destination appears to be closer than anyone thought just five years ago.

Getting there, however, will involve quite a few stages, with cars getting more and more autonomous but human drivers still having some role. Or will it?
A report by Bloomberg says Ford is going to skip a step and go straight to fully autonomous driving. The article says that is because engineers who are testing the company's self-driving vehicles are falling asleep at the wheel because there is so little for them to do.
Ford tells me that only part of this story is true: "Reports that Ford engineers were falling asleep while testing autonomous vehicles are inaccurate."
But it goes on to say that "high levels of automation without full autonomy capability could provide a false sense of security".
That means it is difficult for the driver to suddenly take control if there is a situation where the technology is not up to it. And that's why it is going to head straight to what is known as SAE level four - "autonomous capability that will take the driver completely out of the driving process in defined areas".
SAE is a global organisation of automotive engineers that has come up with a definition of six levels of automation, from zero - where the driver is in full control - to five, where the car does everything in all circumstances.
In January, at CES in Las Vegas, Ford's Ken Washington told me confidently that the company would have a fully autonomous car on the road by 2021: "The vehicles we are going to put in our 2021 fully autonomous ride service will not have a steering wheel, they won't have a brake pedal," he explained.
"So this means there's no issue with drivers having to take over control because the vehicle will know how to handle all scenarios."
Building up trust
Most of the car industry seems to believe that the evolution of automation will be a more gradual affair, with drivers slowly learning to trust their cars to do ever more. But I can see why Ford sees a problem with a halfway house, where the driver only occasionally needs to take over.
Last year, I drove a Tesla in Autopilot mode down an American freeway - and found it a nerve-wracking experience. My hands hovered over the steering wheel and my foot over the brake, ready to act if needed. As the technology improves, perhaps we will get more relaxed about taking our hands off the wheel, eating a sandwich or watching a video - but that could then make us less capable of responding quickly when we need to take over.
That is why Ford wants to move swiftly to full autonomy - but is that practical? I caught up with a leading British figure in this field, Professor Paul Newman, whose Oxbotica firm is developing autonomous vehicles.

He thought Ford was serious about that 2021 target but stressed that what it was promising was not a car that would drive itself anywhere but what he called "mobility as a service". The vehicles would be owned by the company and would operate as a sort of autonomous taxi: "It would be a limited service on specific routes. Just like a bus can't go anywhere, you would only operate this where you were confident that it would work."
Professor Newman believes that we will first see fully autonomous vehicles operating at quite slow speeds in cities rather than on motorways. "The trick is then to have the machines learn through use and ever expand their domains."
So we have two competing strategies. Most of the car industry is looking to build ever more autonomous capabilities into something that will still look like a traditional car, in the expectation that it will take until 2030 to reach the full autonomy of SAE level five.
But both Ford and Google seem confident that building vehicles that won't look so familiar will get them to level four - full autonomy in defined areas. They hope that will change the way we think about road transport far more quickly. Let battle commence...

How to Bypass iPad and iPhone Activation Lock for Free

When Apple unveiled IOS 7 in 2013 it also introduced a new security feature to deter theft and help locate lost and stolen iPhones and iPads. The security feature which is locked to the Apple ID is called Activation Lock, or iCloud lock, and until today has remained part and parcel of all IOS firmware versions.

Activation lock comes into life as soon as Find My iPhone is enabled in the iPhone or iPad. This of course after the user has logged and thus enabled the Apple ID account.

With this tool, Apple has these intentions:

Registration of your device with an Apple ID is a necessary security measure to help recover your device once it is lost.
You can use the iCloud website or other Apple device to wipe out iPhone data remotely.
You are also able to send a message or tone remotely, alerting the person with your device that it is misplaced or stolen.
A thief should not be able to use stolen iPad or iPhone which is attached to an Apple ID.

Steps to Help Bypass iCloud Lock Screen

The good news is that you can bypass the activation lock if you somehow forgot the Apple ID of your device, or purchased one that is attached to another Apple ID unknown to you.

The following steps should kick-start your rescue mission:

Use Apple Enterprise Support or Genius Bar
Reset Apple ID and password if eMail address password is known to you
Use the eMail Address Configured in the mail app
Use the previous owner to bypass activation lock
Use third party unlock services

1. Contact Apple Enterprise Support or Genius Bar

Apple Enterprise support and Genius Bar should be the first line of rescue if you have messed up your Apple ID.

Following the introduction of Activation Lock, Apple also launched Device Enrollment Program (DEP) and Apple Configurator for enterprise support.

The DEP setup which permits centralized registration of all enterprise iPads and iPhones under Mobile Device Management, is aimed at educational and similar institutions.

All iDevices are managed under an administrator who can remotely disable Activation lock if required.

When DEP is deployed on an iPhone, it will generate a special bypass code every time its user activates Find my iPhone.

This way, the administrator can bypass any assigned Apple ID and redeploy the iPhone to another user.

A scenario where a disgruntled employee or runaway pupil activates Apple ID, is handled under this arrangement.

Business - Device Enrollment Program - Apple
The Device Enrollment Program provides a streamlined way to deploy your corporate-owned iOS devices.
The situation is different when you forget an individual Apple ID or buy an iDevice locked to an Apple ID belonging to another individual. The Enterprise support does not apply in this situation and recourse for you may lie with the fellows at the Genius Bar.

Just in case you reside near one such bar, say your prayers and walk in. Make sure to carry proof of purchase, or else you may have frustrating walks ahead of you.

Unfortunately, even with proof of purchase, encounter with the Genius Bar team may not be helpful always.

Ultimately, you may have to find a way to reset the Apple ID or make use of some other solutions as explained below.

2. Reset Apple ID and Password

If the Genius Bar is less than helpful and you have forgotten only the Apple ID password, the online Apple reset procedure should be helpful.

Head over to iForgot Apple ID page and feed in your details to reset your Apple ID password. The automated system will help you reset your password.

The following are preconditions for you to reset Apple ID online:

Know the answers to Apple ID security questions.
Have access to the email address associated with your Apple ID.

 If you still remember the password to the email address attached to the Apple ID in question, simply ask to reset the password and you will receive an email prompting you to reset the password. Very simple.