Is Artificial Intelligence Free?

I saw someone asked a question  How-can-AI-be-free? on Quora. Having keen interest in this field I tried to think of all possible reasons inside my mind. The question was not precise whether s/he wanted to know about whether the tools that we use for an AI project is free, or he was talking about languages, platforms and frameworks. But the answer was quite straightforward, AI is not quoted as a patent of any tech giant, neither it is a private hardware which only an individual can have access to. Artificial Intelligence is a subject/ field of study and knowledge is always free, all it requires is your mind to capture as much as you can. So I answered my logic or simply what I think about it. But together with this question another question which is my Blog Title to "Is AI Free" also seems to be valid. And here is what I answered:

 

Artificial Intelligence, this exciting research field in Computer Science itself is in it’s initial phase. And hundreds of tech giants, institutions, universities researchers are doing independent researches. And within last 8–10 years such research bodies have published Tools, Languages, Datasets, Frameworks and Libraries as well as community support platforms. It’s the knowledge about AI and necessary skills for performing the executions required prior to the concern about whether or not AI is free.

Just assume you’ve knowledge about AI and enough skills to program your robot/IoT whatsoever you want to, there won’t be any hindrance for you to implement your algorithms for a AI Project.

• There are huge datasets available from ImageNet to process, there are abundant online courses for free on Coursera.
• There are libraries in python liky SciPy , NumPy and Pybrain for the statistical analysis of data you use in your Machine Learning Projects.
• There are now foundations like Open AI and AI4ALL which aims to make this huge knowledge base of Artificial Intelligence to the open community.

And the lists about where you can get the resources for AI for free is abundantly available online. All you need to do is explore :)

7 Most Useful Quick Mac OS X Yosemite Tips

Mac OS X Yosemite is one of the best OS X Apple has ever introduced. With tons of improvements over OS X Mavericks and some UI changes has added extra flavour to user experience.

Here are 7 most useful quick tips for you to get most out of your Mac running OS X Yosemite.

TIP 1: QUICKLY TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS

Suppose you’re working on some stuffs and you really need focus and do not want to get disturbed by notifications that show up in the top-right corner of your Mac OS X, then here’s a small workaround.

You can either disable notifications from a specific app or you can also go for “do not disturb” mode which will temporarily disable notifications to show up for rest of the day.

Turn Off Notifications From Specific App in Mac OS X

• Visit System Preferences
• Click on Notification
• On the left, select the application from which you do not want to receive any notifications
• Now click on None as the alert style for that specific app

Quickly Turn Off Notifications in Mac OS X

Using Do Not Disturb to disable notification for rest of the day.

• From Menu bar, click on Notification Center icon
• Scroll down a bit
• Turn on Do Not Disturb

You can also use a shortcut to directly turn on Do Not Disturb mode in Mac OS X. Just hold alt key and click the Notification Center icon. The icon turns dim when notifications alert are disabled.

TIP 2: QUICKLY RELAUNCH FINDER

For starters, Finder in Mac OS X is just like My Computer in Windows. Finder makes it easy to access folders like Applications, Documents, Downloads, Movies, Music  Pictures, etc.

But within a period of time, Finder sometimes might become unresponsive due to various reasons. In that case you might need to know the ways to quickly relaunch the frozen finder.

There are two ways you can relaunch the Finder in your Mac.

Using Dock

• Hold down option key and right click on the Finder icon in the Dock
• Now select Relaunch

Using Shortcut Key

• Hold down option+command+esc keys together to open Force Quit Applications window
• Select Finder from the list of Applications
• Click Force Quit

Now you can easily relaunch the freezed Finder in your Mac.

TIP 3: CHANGE YOUR LOGIN ACCOUNT PROFILE PICTURE

The very first thing you do after owning a Mac is personalizing it, making the system more like yourself and set the system preferences according to your needs. And when it comes to personalizing needs, setting a login account profile picture is one of them.

Changing Your login account profile picture in Mac OS X

• From Menu Bar, Visit Apple Logo > System Preferences
• Click Users & Groups icon
• While you’re under Password tab, hover your mouse pointer over the present login account profile picture to get an edit option and click on it
• Now choose your image which you want to set as profile picture from the list of available places (Defaults, Recents, iCloud Photos, Faces, camera, Linked)

If you want to use a custom/downloaded photo as your profile picture, you’d have to drag the particular photo over the current profile picture. Scale the photo (zoom in/out) as per your need and finally click Done.

TIP 4: GENERATE STRONG & MEMORABLE PASSWORDS

Getting yourself a strong yet memorable password is a difficult task. No one really wants to compromise their accounts (eg, social networks, e-banking, etc) because of weak passwords. Passwords must never contain any information related to you and your lifestyle. Hackers might use the information related to you for brute-force attacks, and your accounts might get into wrong hands.

If you’re a Mac user, then there’s a way to generate a super strong as well as memorable passwords using Keychain Access, an application which handles all the password and certificate security in.

Make Mac OS X Generate Strong & Memorable Passwords

• Open Keychain Access Application (Finder > Applications > Utilities)
• From Menu Bar, Click on File and select New Password Item
• In next window, click on the key icon present beside Password field
• A small window pops up, and there’s the auto generated password in the Suggestion field
• To generate next password just select Memorable from the drop down menu

The length of auto generated password can be adjusted by sliding the Length slider menu.

TIP 5: CHECK VERSION OF APPS

It might be for checking the availability of newer versions or downgrading to older versions; whatever may be the reasons sometimes you might need to be aware of the version of app you’re currently running in your Mac. And there are two quick ways to know which version of application/software you’re using.

Knowing Which Version of App You’re Using in Mac

• Open Finder
• Go to Applications folder
• Single click the App whose version you want to know
• Press command + I
• Under General, you’ll get the Version of that specific app

And the next way is to open the application, and from the menu bar visit application’s menu > About.

TIP 6: INCREASE/DECREASE APP WINDOW RESIZE AREA

Mac users can resize the App/Software window by moving the cursor to the edges of an active window and finally click & drag; outside and inside so as to increase or decrease the window size respectively.

For some users moving the cursor to the exact edge can be difficult. But there’s a small workaround that increases the window resizing area, which makes it easy to resize app/software window quickly in Mac OS X.

Increasing/Decreasing App Window Resize Area in Mac

• Open Terminal (press command + SPACE, and type terminal)
• Enter the following command which changes the edge resize size to the value you set.

defaults write -g AppleEdgeResizeExteriorSize 15

Change the value 15 to some other number as per your need.

• Restart Your Mac

In case you want to revert back to default setting, enter the following command into the Terminal and restart your Mac.

defaults delete -g AppleEdgeResizeExteriorSize

TIP 7: CHANGE FINDER SIDEBAR ICON SIZE

Finder sidebar helps Mac user to quickly access their Favourites Locations (iCloud Drive, Airdrop, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, etc), Devices (flash drives), Tags, Network, etc. By-default Mac system shows medium sized icons in the sidebar. Some users might want to decrease or increase the icon size.

Changing Finder Sidebar Icon Size in Mac

• Visit System Preferences (Either for the dock, or Apple Logo > System Preferences…)
• Open General
• Next to Sidebar icon size heading, use the drop down menu to select the icon size (Small, Medium, Large)

Changes takes place immediately. Now open Finder window, you’ll notice that the icon size have changed according to the size you’ve selected.

CONCLUSION

I hope you found these Mac OS X Yosemite Tips helpful. These tips also work for OS X El Capitan, I have personally tested it on this new OS X too.

Stay subscribed to our blog for further updates.

How to View Complete Details About a WiFi Network in Mac OS

Whenever you’re connected to a Wireless network (WiFi) on your Mac OS X, you don’t get to see the complete details about that specific WiFi network. You can manage various WiFi settings by visiting Network preferences > WiFi > Advanced. While you can view very few details like your local IP address provided by the router, subnet mask, router’s IP address, setup DNS and proxies; from the Advanced settings window.

But there is a quick way, to view complete details about a WiFi network which includes BSSID, channel & country code of the router, signal strength, disturbance (noise), and the transfer rate of the network.

VIEW COMPLETE DETAILS ABOUT A WIFI NETWORK IN MAC

Make sure you’re connected to the WiFi network whose details you wish to view.

Now hold down option key and click on the WiFi icon on the menu bar. This time you’ll not only see the options to search and switch between the networks, you’ll also see a list of various technical details about the WiFi you’re connected to.

From the top are the interface name and the mac address of the WiFi adapter of your Mac system. The next extra option you get this time is Open Wireless Diagnostics. Without having to visit the advanced setting window you can directly diagnose WiFi problems, using this option.

BSSID is the mac address of the wireless access point (WAP).

RSSI is the strength of the signal of the Wireless network you’re connected to. RSSI stands for Received Signal Strength Indication, whose value ranges from -100 to 0. For a signal to have good strength, its value must be near to 0. That means, RSSI indication of -20dBm is better than -70dBm.

Tx Rate is the maximum speed of the network which is possible for data transfer inside that specific network.

PHY Mode shows which wireless technology standard does the network follow for the connection. Mostly, nowadays’s routers make use of 802.11n technology, but it might vary depending upon the router you’re using.

How to Free up Google Photos Storage From Google Drive

Over a period of time your phone definitely takes tons of photos and if you’re using Google Photos to backup your photos then I’m sure the storage might have been used to some GBs. Google Drive allows you to store max 15 GB of data (Drive, Gmail & Google Photos). For high-quality photos, Google gives you unlimited storage. But if the images are stored in original size, the upload quota is limited.

So if your photos have been accumulated in your drive account in original size and the storage is about to bid you bye bye, well here’s a way-out to free up Google Photos storage from Google Drive.

FREEING UP GOOGLE PHOTOS STORAGE

You can download all of your Google Photos to your local machine using Google Takeout.

Visit Google Takeout page and select the app Google Photos and click the “next” button to grab all the photos from your Google Account.

After you’ve downloaded all your photos (make sure you have all of them), delete the online copy of photos from Google Photos app.

Now within Google Photos app, visit settings > backup and select the quality of photos to “high quality”. Selecting high quality gives you unlimited storage quota for backing up your photos in Google Photos.

Facebook Spaces is live now

    

When Mark Zuckerberg  CEO of Facebook, first demo'd Facebook VR at  Oculus’ third annual virtual reality developer conference  on October 12- 2016. Where he  discussed the next phase of VR, including an exciting live demo of Facebook’s latest social VR experience . Facebook said they expected it to go live within a year. It's taken them just 6 months and here is :

Virtual Reality (VR) is buzzing word of todays'  Tech Era and to make VR more lively,Facebook launched Facebook Spaces BETA version. It's live now at https://www.facebook.com/spaces and can be used straight away via Oculus Rift. 

The  beta version of it will allows you to :

1.  Personalize your avatar with your Facebook photo
2.  Enter your Facebook photos or videos virtually with friends 
3.  Teleport yourself anywhere with your friends
4.  Take selfies in 3D with your friends and share them
5.  Draw in 3D with your friends, chat and collaborate
6.  Receive messenger calls even if your friends aren't in VR
7.  Delve  yourself into 360
8.  Capture the moment by creating the fun memories in VR and take selfie even in  costly areas : Mars.

and Explore more then you have ever imagined.

Additional Details: 

Language : English 

Space  Required : 1.35GB

Developer : Facebook VR

Publisher : Facebook

Supported controllers : Oculus and Touch 

Supported Players Modes : Sitting and Standing 

Supported Tracking Modes : Front-facing 

 As It's in Beta so  it may not be in store yet. But  you can add it here: 

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1036793313023466

How to Activate or Deactivate Cortana in Windows 10

Finally, Microsoft’s digital assistant “Cortana” has been embedded into the company’s desktop operating system – Windows 10. Using digital voice assistant, one can easily get small things (set alarm, remainder, search, etc) done and its a wise thing to activate it for increasing productivity level. Windows user can easily upgrade to the new version of Windows for free.

If you’ve upgraded to Windows 10 from previous versions, then “Cortana” might not be activated by default. So here’s an easy way to activate/deactivate her.

ACTIVATING/DEACTIVATING CORTANA IN WINDOWS 10

• Click Start button
• Select Cortana
• Within the settings, click the notebook icon (third icon down – on the left)
• Click the toggle button to turn on/off Cortana

TURNING OFF “HEY CORTANA” VOICE COMMAND

Cortana pops up herself when you use this command, that means she’s active all the time which is battery consuming too! So some people might prefer deactivating this voice command.

Go to Start > Cortana, and select the notebook icon. Click the toggle menu to turn off the voice command.

How to Visit Your WordPress Login Page

WordPress beginners might find it difficult to find and visit their WordPress login page. WordPress login page is the admin section of WordPress site which lets authentic users to login into their site’s dashboard, so they can manage their WordPress site from the back-end. Once you’re logged in to your WordPress dashboard you can publish posts & pages, change appearance, add or delete themes & plugins, add or remove users, and manipulate various site elements.

Once you’re familiar with WordPress, everything becomes quite easy. You can have a better site running under 5-10 minutes. But to edit your WordPress site app per your needs, you’ll first need to login to admin dashboard vi WordPress login page.

FINDING YOUR WORDPRESS LOGIN URL

You can simply access the login page of your WordPress site by entering /login/ or /admin/ slug after your WordPress site’s URL.

http://www.example.com/login/
http://www.example.com/admin/

These URL automatically redirect to the main login page of your WordPress site. If they do not properly redirect, you can make use of following URLs.

http://www.example.com/login.php/
http://www.example.com/admin.php/

The above example URLs are for the WordPress site running on the root domain. If you’re running your WordPress site on a subdomain, then you can access your site’s login page by adding /login/ or /admin/ slug to the subdomain URL. But if that does not redirect properly to the login page, use following URL structure.

http://subdomain.example.com/login.php/
http://subdomain.example.com/admin.php/

Once you’re familiar with these URL, you can easily access WordPress login page of your site or blog.

Unboxing Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

Big Companies Dream Big and never stop surprising with smart and Intelligent Products. Entangled to the wide world with technology, Mobile Phones acts as mirror as well as your screen to envision  innovative ideas. We live our lives through our phones. They're now our screens of choice to enjoy everything from TV shows to mind-blowing games. But smartphones still look the same as they did a decade ago. Until Now.

With bunch of surprising features Samsung, one huge tech giant has Officially Unleashed Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+. on 29th March, 2017. Infinity Display,Intelligent Interface,Face Recognition, Iris Scanner, Samsung DeX,Gear VR and Gear 360 are some of the major attractions that Samsung provides to its customers in Galaxy S8 and S8+. Let's review some of its outstanding feature here.

[Infinity Display]

bezel-less, full-frontal edge-to-edge screen,

The new Infinity Display gives you an incredible full screen experience. By creating a bezel-less, full-frontal edge-to-edge screen, the Galaxy S8 gives you more space for the things that matter. With this infinity display it gives you feeling of wide screen interface like you are viewing every corner of the object over your screen. Experience the cinematic looks of your world transparent through your phone. 

This phone is redesigned to function better than its previous version by making components smaller without compromising the performance. The Home Button is embedded under the screen and this phone has smoothly curved edges which looks so perfect. It has a wide area for doing multiple tasks at the same time. While you will not feel ani glitches during multitasking.

[A Whole New Way To Interact]

The Galaxy S8 also presents a whole new way to interact with your phone – Bixby. Bixby will be a new intelligent interface on our devices. With this feature, you can Say "Bixby"  to take the screenshot and text it to your friend on your contact list. It does that very fine. Isn't that cool to interact with your phone. Bixby also analyzes the object that it sees and provides insight about them. 

Once it learns about your routine, it will display only necessary information in your screen. This helps you to be updated with your routine and way you interact with your phone.

[Removing Everyday Barriers]

We constantly push ourselves to give you technology that makes your life easier through Face Recognition, Iris Scanner, Camera and more. You can unlock your phone with one touch i.e. finger scan or thorurgh face recognition. More to that you can secure your important file just with your eyes. Your eyes can only now see your important document.

Samsung DeX provides you a studio like experience with its feature of adding HDMI Cables and wireless keyboards, Mouse and Audio cables. You can use your phone like a computer and take advantage of it in your workstation.

[Opening New Worlds]

Virtual reality is another way to experience your new world. Like in S7, the Galaxy S8 connects with the Gear VR and also has a motion sensing wireless controller which makes it more realtime experience. It also has a Gear 360 which taker your 360 experience and enables you to livestream your special moments with your close ones.

This phone is still water resistant, captures high quality images and detects face for taking awesome selfie. Camera works perfect even during the low light and it's now easy to zoom. 

SPECIFICATION

Color Availability :  Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, Coral Blue, Arctic Silver, Maple Gold

Dimensions:  Galaxy S8                                           Galaxy S8+ 

                     (148.9 x 68.1 x 8.0 mm, 155 g)                  (159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm, 173 g)

Display:         Galaxy S8                                                   Galaxy S8+

                        5.8" Quad HD+ Super AMOLED              6.2" Quad HD+ Super AMOLED

                        (2960x1440)                                               (2960x1440) 
                        570 ppi                                                       529ppi

Camera:  [FRONT]                         
8MP AF
F1.7 Aperture
Pixel size: 1.22µm
Sensor size: 1/3.6"
FOV: 80
Wide selfie
[REAR]Dual Pixel 12MP AF
OIS (Optical Image Stabilization)
F1.7 Aperture
Pixel size: 1.4µm
Sensor size: 1/2.55"
FOV: 77
Max Zoom: 8x (digital)
Pro mode
Panorama
Slow motion
Hyperlapse
Food mode
Save as RAW file

• Video Recording:
• 4K video recording at 30 fps
• 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps or 60 fps
• 720p HD video recording at 30 fps
• VDIS (Video Digital Image Stabilization)
• Digital Zoom 8x
• High CRI LED Flash
• Slow Motion video support for 720p at 240 fps
• Hyperlapse video with stabilization
• Continuous Autofocus video
• Face Detection
• Tracking AF
• Take 9-megapixel still photos while recording 4K video
• Playback Zoom
• Video Location tags

Performance

• Octa-core (2.3GHz Quad + 1.7GHz Quad), 64 bit, 10nm processor
• Octa-core (2.35GHz Quad + 1.9GHz Quad), 64 bit, 10nm processor
• Memory:
• 4GB RAM (LPDDR4)
  64GB (UFS 2.1)
• OS: Android 7.0(Nougat)

Fore more details/pricing/specificaiton visit the official site of samsung which we have listed below at our reference section:

Reference: 

1. Samsung Galaxy 8 Specs
2. Samsung Official Youtube Channel
3. Images Credit: Samsung( taken from youtube, screenshots)

Goodenough Inventor of Lithium-Ion Battery Reveals Fast Charging, Noncombustible Batteries

King of Battery for almost four decades John Goodenough, Unleashes a new technology, first ever all-solid-state-battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries. With this breakthrough in the world of advanced batteries the skeptical world is finding a hard time to believe if this could drain the market of current lithium-ion batteries. Researchers demonstrated the new battery they invented have at least three times as much energy density as today’s lithium-ion batteries.

A team of engineers led by 94-year-old John Goodenough, professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage.

--UTNEWS

John Goodenought says, Cost, safety, energy density, rates of charge and discharge and cycle life are critical for battery-driven cars to be more widely adopted. We believe our discovery solves many of the problems that are inherent in today’s batteries.

People would find it as a bluff if any random person had claimed the invention of all-solid-state-battery. Goodenough being the pioneer and father of Lithium-ion battery, after this invention, people are saying that this could revolutionize the era with the hype of Electric cars and could challenge the automobile industry with the help of this invention.

Source: UT News

Windows 10 : How to Disable Login Screen Background Image

Windows 10 included Hero wallpaper that comes as a default wallpaper in final build of Windows 10. It also popped in the same image for the login background.

It might have pleased a few people but most of the people out there don’t seem to have liked it.

DISABLING THE LOGIN SCREEN BACKGROUND IMAGE IN WINDOWS 10

• Go to Start > type regedit
• On the folder tree (left side of regedit window), open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Policies > Microsoft > Windows > System
• By clicking System, you can see (Default) file on the right pane of the window.
• Right-click on the empty area > New > DWORD (32 bit) Value
• Name the file DisableLogonBackgroundImage (Remember: Name the file exactly mentioned here)
• Double-click the file:
  • To remove the Windows Hero background, set the Value data to 1.
  • To restore the Windows Hero background, set the Value data to 0.

This method sets the accent color to the background image in login screen. In the internet, you may find 3rd party software that commits to set user defined image but after the KB3081424 Windows Update, it seems to cause screen flickering issue between Lock Screen and Login Screen.