Day: November 14, 2018

Google’s decision to absorb DeepMind’s health division has sparked privacy fears

Spain is wasting no time. The country plans to dramatically decarbonize its economy by 2050, and that includes banning a lot of cars, according to a draft law the Ministry for Ecological Transition published Tuesday.

The Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition seeks to ban the sale of vehicles that depend on fossil fuels (including hybrids) by 2040, according to a document the ministry sent Earther. Electric cars and their charging stations will take over. Spain also plans to take its electricity production 100 percent renewable by 2050, which will further help it reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 90 percent below 1990 levels by then.

Why? To meet the goals set forth by the Paris Agreement and avoid global climate catastrophe, of course.

“Our proposal is to reduce Spain’s current greenhouse gas emissions by a third in just a decade, which we consider an international milestone and a sign of our firm commitment to the fight against climate change,” said Spain’s ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera, to Climate Home News.

If this draft law goes into force, Spain will end fossil fuel subsidies and the issuing of permits for oil and gas infrastructure both on land and offshore. All existing oil and gas operations must cease by the end of 2040. In their place, Spain wants to install at least 3,000 megawatts of solar and wind energy a year over 10 years. The country also plans to conduct a study to figure out a way to sustainably and equitably wean itself off oil, gas, and coal. Spain’s already planning on re-training programs for workers in these sectors.

But it’s not just about industry and cars. Spain is bringing this effort into people’s homes with plans to update its housing stock to be more energy efficient. Between 2021 and 2030, Spain plans to retrofit at least 100,000 homes a year with special attention to homes in “vulnerable groups,” per the text. Beginning in 2025, all new buildings must be “zero energy consumption.” Any building the government leases must also meet this requirement by 2025, or leases won’t renew.

Now, none of this is for certain. The Spanish Parliament must support the ministry’s proposed law as they work to finalize the text. And the new Socialist Party that took hold with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s election in June, under which this effort is happening, is the minority party in parliament, so this process likely to take a while, according to El País. Plus, the Spanish government requires National Integrated Energy and Climate Plans, which will lay out the proposed energy portfolio, and a Low Emissions Strategy, which assesses the steps necessary to meet these goals, to complement this plan draft law. And some critics don’t think even this plan goes far enough.

Regardless, this law is a dramatic step forward in a time when the world is ramping up its oil and gas infrastructure. Maybe if Spain cuts off oil and gas, the rest of the world will fall in line.

Google has a new, experimental web app for you to try: Squoosh. It uses the latest in image compression technology to cram your pictures into smaller file sizes with a minimal loss of quality, but what really impresses about the app—coded in the WebAssembly programming language—is its speed, even under a relatively heavy load.

“This powerful image compression tool launches almost instantly, and then manages a smooth UI even when it’s doing heavy work, including using WebAssembly to do more with codecs the browser doesn’t have baked in,” the team from Google Chrome Labs.

The Squoosh app itself is incredibly simple to use. Load it up in your browser, then drag and drop an image into the browser tab or click Select an image to upload one from your computer (there’s no Google Photos integration here yet). If you don’t have a picture to hand, use one of the sample ones along the bottom.

In the lower left, you can simply convert the image into another format using the default settings—WebP, PNG, JPEG, whatever you like. You’ll be told how much smaller the resulting file will be, and you can save it to disk.

On the right you get more control over the compression: Pick your compression standard from the drop-down menu (MozJPEG, OptiPNG, WebP, and so on), then use the slider to change the strength of the compression. More compression means smaller file sizes and lower image quality.

Changes are applied in real time as you make them—use the slider on the picture preview to see how your selected compression options are affecting the quality of the image (the zoom controls can help here to make the individual pixels and artifacts visible).

To squash your image down further, you can resize it or reduce the number of colors using the options on the right-hand panel. Click Show advanced settings for even more control, though these settings (including smoothing and noise shaping) are unlikely to be of much use or interest unless you’re a developer.

After that just click the download button (bottom right) and you’re done. We came away very impressed with the file size reductions Squoosh could achieve, without losing too much in the way of image quality, though that’s largely down to the power of the compression algorithms behind the app, rather than the app itself.

There’s no option for batch processing images yet, unfortunately, which rather limits its appeal—if you’re used to selecting compression options in the image editor of your choice, then Squoosh doesn’t really offer anything you make you rush into switching.

Beyond image compression though, Google’s real aim here is to show how complex apps, doing some fairly demanding work, can load up quickly in the browser—which means better web apps across the board.

The competition

While it’s fair to say you might not open up your browser to use Squoosh instead of simply using something like Photoshop to compress your images, it’s also true that it’s hard to beat as far as web-based image compression apps go—at least for single images. TinyPNG, for instance, works with JPEG and PNG files can handle up to 20 at once, and preserves transparency—but it doesn’t give you as many options or a built-in preview.

Similarly, ImageResize.org will compress up to 20 of your JPEG and PNG images at once, but it doesn’t offer anything in the way of previews or compression options. The compression is a little rougher here too, which helps with file sizes but not image quality. The same site will resize your images as well as compress them if needed, though not at the same time.

Compressor.io is the closest web app to Squoosh that we could find. It lets you choose between two levels of compression, and it actually gives you a preview too, as well as supporting four file types: JPEG, PNG, GIF, and SVG. You can only process one file at a time though, and there is an image size limit of 10MB.

If you need to quickly compress a whole bunch of pictures at once, give ILoveIMG a try: It lets you upload dozens of pictures at once (15 as a guest, 30 as a registered free user), but won’t let you choose the compression level (that’s selected automatically for you to maximize image quality).

You’ve got plenty more options too, but none that really give you the granular control that Squoosh does. It’s the same on the desktop: Programs like OptiPNG and PNGGauntlet for Windows and ImageOptim and Squash for Mac are a breeze for chewing through dozens of pictures at once but don’t give you a lot of customization options as far as the compression levels go.

The recently updated RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool) for Windows does give you the before and after comparison that Squoosh does. It also lets you choose the compression level manually, and can even handle batches of images at once—if you need to resize a lot of images on Windows, it’s one of the best choices.

For most users though, image compression is something they don’t have to think about: Squoosh and every app like it is really aimed at web developers and people who spend time publishing content to the web. Those users typically need to work with a lot of images at once, which means Squoosh—as detailed and fast as it is—is of limited value, especially with so many alternatives around.

Still, if you have a handful of pictures to need to reformat or compress—or you just want to check in on the state of web apps today—Squoosh is definitely worth a look. It’s still early days for the app, and if it can add batch processing further down the line, it’ll quickly become one of the most appealing options out there.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 13, 2018 at 05:42PM

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 14, 2018 at 09:48AM

The second (and likely last) snap-on accessory for the Essential Phone is here. Essential’s Audio Adapter HD can now be purchased for $149 through the Essential Store.

The Audio Adapter HD has been in the works for some time (recently hit the FCC, picked up software support for it) and we’re actually kind of surprised it ever arrived for purchase. Essential has all but ditched making phones and the original Essential Phone is now over a year old. Still, it’s here for those who need high-quality audio and a headphone jack.

And that’s the sell from Essential. This Audio Adapter HD features a high-resolution ESS Sabre DAC with hardware MQA rendering. We’re talking an audiophile-grade amp made from machined titanium that has LED lights to tell you the level of content being played. And yeah, it adds a headphone jack to a headphone jack-less phone.

To attach to your Essential Phone, all you’ll do is slap it on the backside where its PINs are. That’s at least kind of handy.

Interested? Have at it.

Buy Essential Audio Adapter HD