Monthly Archives: May 2019

Coral updates: Project tutorials, a downloadable compiler, and a new distributor

Posted by Vikram Tank (Product Manager), Coral Team

coral hardware

We’re committed to evolving Coral to make it even easier to build systems with on-device AI. Our team is constantly working on new product features, and content that helps ML practitioners, engineers, and prototypers create the next generation of hardware.

To improve our toolchain, we're making the Edge TPU Compiler available to users as a downloadable binary. The binary works on Debian-based Linux systems, allowing for better integration into custom workflows. Instructions on downloading and using the binary are on the Coral site.

We’re also adding a new section to the Coral site that showcases example projects you can build with your Coral board. For instance, Teachable Machine is a project that guides you through building a machine that can quickly learn to recognize new objects by re-training a vision classification model directly on your device. Minigo shows you how to create an implementation of AlphaGo Zero and run it on the Coral Dev Board or USB Accelerator.

Our distributor network is growing as well: Arrow will soon sell Coral products.

gVisor: One Year Later

Last year at KubeCon EU 2018, we open-sourced gVisor to help advance the container security field. Container isolation was -- and continues to be -- an important topic in containers, and we wanted to share how we’ve addressed this at Google with the broader community. Over the past year, we’ve listened to your feedback and made enhancements to the project, improving integration and support for Kubernetes, and growing our contributor community.

Extending Kubernetes Support

One of the most common requests we heard was for better Kubernetes support. When we launched, gVisor supported Docker and had only minimal (and experimental) support for Kubernetes. One year later we now support full integration with Kubernetes via containerd and MiniKube. This includes the ability to run multiple containers in a single pod, full terminal support with kubectl exec, and enforcement of pod cgroup policies. We've also tightened security by isolating our I/O proxies (known as "gofers") in seccomp sandboxes.
Our Docker support has also improved; gVisor now obeys CPU and memory limits when passed to Docker. We also support interactive terminals via docker run -it and docker exec -it, and we exposed gVisor's native save/restore functionality via the experimental docker checkpoint command.

Increasing Compatibility and Performance

Since launch, we’ve increased our compatibility with many popular workloads and released a suite of over 1,500 syscall tests. This test suite helps to prevent regressions and also makes it easier for contributors to get started developing and testing their changes to gVisor.
Along with compatibility, we've also increased our performance significantly, particularly around networking. Network-heavy workloads like webservers are an important use case for potential gVisor users, and we've made a lot of optimizations to our network stack, such as enabling Generic Segmentation Offloading (GSO). This has resulted in more than a 3x improvement in tcp_benchmark throughput. We've also implemented some RFCs in our TCP/IP stack like SACK which helps maintain throughput with lossy network connections. We've published many performance benchmarks on our website, and will update those as we continue to make progress.

Growing the gVisor Community

We’ve also made our development process more open by moving bugs to a GitHub issue tracker, holding monthly community meetings, and starting a new developer-focused mailing list. We've also published a new governance model and code of conduct for our community.

In the last year we focused on improving our documentation, including new user guides, architecture details, and contribution guides, so that it is easier for new users to learn about gVisor and start using and contributing to the project. You can view these docs on a new website we created, gvisor.dev. Both the website and documentation are open to contributions. The changes have brought in contributions from dozens of users all over the world.
We're very excited about the future of gVisor and the great community we are building. We'd love to hear more feedback and look forward to continuing working towards more open infrastructure and collaboration. To learn more and get involved, check out our new home at gvisor.dev, particularly the community page where you can join our mailing lists and find the next community meeting.

By Nicolas Lacasse and Ian Lewis, gVisor Team

Dev Channel Update for Chrome OS

The Dev channel has been updated to 76.0.3807.0 (Platform version: 12236.0.0) for most Chrome OS devices. This build contains a number of bug fixes, security updates and feature enhancements. View changes here.

If you find new issues, please let us know by visiting our forum or filing a bug. Interested in switching channels? Find out how. You can submit feedback using ‘Report an issue...’ in the Chrome menu (3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser).


Cindy Bayless
Google Chrome

Improve efficiency and collaboration with G Suite for Nonprofits

Time is important. As a nonprofit, every minute that your staff spends searching for emails or coordinating meetings is time away from making a difference for the communities or causes they serve. G Suite for Nonprofits is designed to help nonprofits work faster, smarter, and more collaboratively across different locations, at no charge. Here are a few ways G Suite for Nonprofits can help your team be more productive.


Present your nonprofit professionally

With Gmail, you can create an unlimited number of personalized email addresses for your team (like [email protected]). Your staff will be able to communicate with volunteers, supporters and the community with professional emails coming from your nonprofit's custom domain, resulting in brand awareness and increased trust in your communications.


Make your next grant proposal pop

A successful grant proposal needs inspiring, structured, and concise content to stand out when competing against hundreds. Often you don’t have much time, you’re on a shoestring budget, and your co-workers are in different time zones. G Suite provides templates and suggested layouts to give your documents and slides a professional look, so that you can focus on content rather than design. Grammar suggestions in Docs make you a more confident writer, especially handy if you are working against a tight deadline. Real-time collaboration lets each member of your team contribute to the same file from anywhere.  And with all of these tools, your team will become even more productive and collaborative.


Manage your volunteers

There are lots of ways G Suite can  help you engage with your volunteers more efficiently. When you create a Site, you can include a page to provide some background on your nonprofit and share volunteers success stories, add sections for onboarding and training materials, and post upcoming volunteer opportunities with an embedded Calendar. You can also embed a Form for volunteers to sign-up. The information they submit is automatically and safely stored in Sheets so you won’t misplace paper sign-up forms anymore. For reliable communications and updates, create a Group with all your volunteer emails. You can send an email to everyone in the group with one address, invite the group to an event, or share documents.


Coordinate your nonprofit board

Nonprofit boards are at the core of your strategy and coordinating them can be tricky, especially when members are spread across in many locations. With G Suite, you have the tools you need to coordinate with your board effectively. You can schedule board meetings on Calendar, and directly add members to the event. With Hangouts Meet, those who can’t participate in person will be able to join in a video call or dial in from their phone.


Control your data securely

Privacy and security are critical to nonprofits, especially when managing personal information that may be sensitive. G Suite is built on stringent privacy and security standards and allows you to add users easily, manage devices, and configure security and settings so that your data stays safe. This is essential, especially if your nonprofit has high turnover of staff or volunteers.


G Suite for Nonprofits has helped many nonprofits to become more efficient and spend more time serving the community. Find out more about how G Suite for Nonprofits can help you.

Improve efficiency and collaboration with G Suite for Nonprofits

Time is important. As a nonprofit, every minute that your staff spends searching for emails or coordinating meetings is time away from making a difference for the communities or causes they serve. G Suite for Nonprofits is designed to help nonprofits work faster, smarter, and more collaboratively across different locations, at no charge. Here are a few ways G Suite for Nonprofits can help your team be more productive.


Present your nonprofit professionally

With Gmail, you can create an unlimited number of personalized email addresses for your team (like [email protected]). Your staff will be able to communicate with volunteers, supporters and the community with professional emails coming from your nonprofit's custom domain, resulting in brand awareness and increased trust in your communications.


Make your next grant proposal pop

A successful grant proposal needs inspiring, structured, and concise content to stand out when competing against hundreds. Often you don’t have much time, you’re on a shoestring budget, and your co-workers are in different time zones. G Suite provides templates and suggested layouts to give your documents and slides a professional look, so that you can focus on content rather than design. Grammar suggestions in Docs make you a more confident writer, especially handy if you are working against a tight deadline. Real-time collaboration lets each member of your team contribute to the same file from anywhere.  And with all of these tools, your team will become even more productive and collaborative.


Manage your volunteers

There are lots of ways G Suite can  help you engage with your volunteers more efficiently. When you create a Site, you can include a page to provide some background on your nonprofit and share volunteers success stories, add sections for onboarding and training materials, and post upcoming volunteer opportunities with an embedded Calendar. You can also embed a Form for volunteers to sign-up. The information they submit is automatically and safely stored in Sheets so you won’t misplace paper sign-up forms anymore. For reliable communications and updates, create a Group with all your volunteer emails. You can send an email to everyone in the group with one address, invite the group to an event, or share documents.


Coordinate your nonprofit board

Nonprofit boards are at the core of your strategy and coordinating them can be tricky, especially when members are spread across in many locations. With G Suite, you have the tools you need to coordinate with your board effectively. You can schedule board meetings on Calendar, and directly add members to the event. With Hangouts Meet, those who can’t participate in person will be able to join in a video call or dial in from their phone.


Control your data securely

Privacy and security are critical to nonprofits, especially when managing personal information that may be sensitive. G Suite is built on stringent privacy and security standards and allows you to add users easily, manage devices, and configure security and settings so that your data stays safe. This is essential, especially if your nonprofit has high turnover of staff or volunteers.


G Suite for Nonprofits has helped many nonprofits to become more efficient and spend more time serving the community. Find out more about how G Suite for Nonprofits can help you.

Pick up the pace with three fitness apps, powered by Google Maps

When I began training for my first marathon 12 years ago, planning my routes was a big challenge. I’d often write directions on my wrist or carry a crumpled up paper map in my pocket. I’ve run many more marathons since then, and just last month, ran the Boston Marathon for the first time. But my training for Boston was vastly different because of my work at Google. I’m on a team that helps businesses—like those who build location-enabled fitness apps—to integrate data and insights from Google Maps into their products. So this time around I relied on a few of those apps to train, instead of my usual primitive methods (pro tip: paper maps don’t handle sweat very well).

Today’s the last day of National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, so I’m highlighting a few companies that are using Google Maps to keep their users (like me!) in the zone. Here are a few of my personal favorites and how they use Google Maps Platform.

Garmin

Overview of my route and stats from my Garmin Forerunner


Feeling a little safer while training

New runners don’t have to train without a location-enabled device (known in the running community as running “naked”). But if you’re like me and have been running for over a decade, you may remember the thrill of having only a vague sense of your pace and distance––and of course, getting hopelessly lost.

Now I rely on my smartphone and Garmin Forerunner to help keep me on pace and on track, and suggest new trails and routes. Garmin uses our highly accurate location technology to provide metrics such as speed, distance, and elevation, as well as safety features. When running on remote trails, I can quickly and discreetly activate the assistance feature if I ever feel unsafe and share my location with pre-selected emergency contacts.

NordicTrack

Doing a Street View run in Lago di Vernago, Italy


Training with real-world imagery and conditions

When I’m not running outdoors, I’m logging miles on my NordicTrack treadmillbefore my kids wake up. Although treadmillers seem impervious to that particular flavor of boredom, running indoors doesn’t mean staring at a blank wall anymore.

NordicTrack, a treadmill made by ICON Health & Fitness, the world’s largest fitness equipment manufacturer, lets you trace a route anywhere in the world and run that route using Google Street View. So when temperatures hit triple digits or dip anywhere below 50 degrees (which is Texan for “freezing”), I can do a loop around my favorite neighborhood in Paris, or run up to one of Mount Everest’s base camps without leaving the house.

I can also run several marathon courses right on the treadmill. Using information from Google Maps Platform, NordicTrack automatically accounts for real-world conditions. When training for the Boston Marathon this year, I was able to simulate the infamous Heartbreak Hill (worth preparing for both physically and mentally!). And when doing a coached workout, the speed automatically increases during intervals, allowing me to focus on my workout without having to make manual adjustments.

ZombiesRun

My stats after a Zombies, Run! adventure

Finding new ways to push my limits

Sometimes you have to find new ways to motivate yourself to run farther or to get out and train when you’re not feeling up to it. As someone who suffers from kinemortophobia (that’s a fear of zombies, to save you the Google search), I was reluctant to try Zombies, Run!. But I’m so glad I did. It combines storytelling, role playing, gamification, and fitness to help people push their limits. The game weaves our location data and distance info into a riveting and surprisingly hilarious storyline where you avoid zombies and collect supplies along your journey. Zombies, Run! helps push me a little harder whenever I hear those zombies getting closer and helps me run just a little further when I’m close to the end of a mission.

While zombies chase me as I train for the Tunnel Marathon in September, I’m hoping to break my personal record and qualify for the next Boston Marathon. Whether it’s discovering new running routes around the world on my treadmill or exploring new trails with my Garmin (still managing to get lost sometimes!), I’m proud to be a part of the team that brings Google Maps to fitness companies to keep us connected and moving.

Source: Google LatLong


Update on Project Strobe: New policies for Chrome and Drive

Third-party apps and websites create services that millions of people use to get things done and customize their online experience. To make this ecosystem successful, people need to be confident their data is secure, and developers need clear rules of the road. That’s why last year we announced Project Strobe, a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to your Google account and Android device data.


As a result of our review, we implemented new policies across Gmail and Android to better protect your data. For example, with changes to SMS and Call Log permissions for Android apps, the number of apps with access to this sensitive information has decreased by more than 98 percent. These apps are still able to deliver core services to people just by switching to permissions that access less sensitive data, or by eliminating minor functionality in their apps.


Today, we’re announcing additional changes as a result of Project Strobe, including new policies for Chrome extensions and the Drive API. Here’s what’s new:


Trustworthy Chrome Extensions
There are more than 180,000 extensions in the Chrome Web Store, and nearly half of all Chrome desktop users actively use extensions to customize Chrome and their experience on the web—helping them keep track of to-dos or find shopping deals online. This ability to improve and personalize online experiences depends on a vibrant community of Chrome browser developers.


Last October, we shared our intention to ensure that all Chrome extensions are trustworthy by default. Today, as part of Project Strobe, we’re continuing that effort with additional Chrome Web Store policies. Specifically:

  1. We’re requiring extensions to only request access to the appropriate data needed to implement their features. If there is more than one permission that could be used to implement a feature, developers must use the permission with access to the least amount of data. While this has always been encouraged of developers, now we’re making this a requirement for all extensions.
  2. We’re requiring more extensions to post privacy policies, including extensions that handle personal communications and user-provided content. Our policies have previously required any extension that handles personal and sensitive user data to post a privacy policy and handle that data securely. Now, we’re expanding this category to include extensions that handle user-provided content and personal communications. Of course, extensions must continue to be transparent in how they handle user data, disclosing the collection, use and sharing of that data.


We’re announcing these changes in advance of the official policy rollout this summer to give developers the time needed to ensure their extensions will be in compliance. Developers can learn more about these changes in our FAQ.


Tightening the Drive API
Last fall we updated our user data policy to provide additional guidelines and restrictions for apps seeking to access your Gmail data. Today we’re announcing plans to extend the same policy to Google Drive, which will give you more control over what data third-party apps can access in Drive.


When you connect third-party apps, Drive gives you one central place to keep all your files and helps you easily collaborate with others. With this updated policy, we’ll limit apps that use Google Drive APIs from broadly accessing content or data in Drive. This means we’ll restrict third-party access to specific files and be verifying public apps that require broader access, such as backup services.


These changes will go into effect early next year. Visit the Cloud blog for more details.

Our top priority is to protect user data and keep it safe, while continuing to enable developers to build features that people want and need. As we continue the work of Project Strobe, we’ll also work with our developer partners to give them appropriate time to adjust and update their apps and services

By Ben Smith, Google Fellow and Vice President of Engineering

Demo Day Asia 2019: the countdown to Bangkok begins

Top-notch startups from all over the region applied to be a part of our second Demo Day Asia, with ideas ranging from an imaging device for early breast cancer detection to making solar energy more accessible while improving education opportunities for kids. This year, we’re pleased to welcome eleven startups from around the region as finalists. Drumroll please…

Demo Day Asia finalists 2019

Demo Day Asia 2019 finalists include Anywhr (Singapore), Glazziq (Thailand), Kyna (Vietnam), Lily Medtech (Japan), Matelabs (India), Modoo (China), Soundbrenner (Hong Kong), Talkiplay (Australia), Tello Talk (Pakistan), Wahyoo (Indonesia), Yolk (Korea) 

The finalists will travel to Bangkok next month where they’ll take part in our Google for Startups Demo Day at the Techsauce Global Summit. As part of this, they’ll experience three days of mentorship, programming and networking to help them grow their businesses. This will culminate in a much anticipated pitch, where the finalists will have a chance to share their business propositions with our distinguished judges, including Jeffrey Paine from Golden Gate Ventures, Justin Nguyen from Monk's Hill Ventures, and Shannon Kalayanamitr from GOBI Partners.  

As we saw at our first ever Demo Day Asia last year, there’s no shortage of ideas coming from this part of the world. We’re thrilled to give these talented entrepreneurs the opportunity to shine, to connect them with top investors, and help them realize their visions to solve big problems. Our countdown to Bangkok is on, and we can’t wait to highlight and support the next great tech champions of the region.

Dev Channel Update for Desktop

The dev channel has been updated to 76.0.3806.1 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.



A partial list of changes is available in the log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.
Abdul Syed
Google Chrome

Two new formatting tools available in Docs

Quick launch summary 

We’re introducing two new features in Google Docs that will help you format your work:

Insert section breaks and view section breaks in Docs
You can now insert a next page or continuous section break in Google Docs by going to Insert > Break. From here, you can select next or continuous. Note both types of breaks will start at the place of your cursor location.

To easily view where section breaks are located in your document, you can use the new show section breaks tool by going to View > Show section breaks. When Show selection breaks is enabled, you’ll see a blue dotted line where each section break is located.



Adjust margins per section 
It’s now possible to use the ruler to adjust the left and right margins by section. Previously, it was only possible to adjust the margins for the entire document.

If you don’t make a selection, the ruler will adjust the margins for the section that corresponds to the cursor location. Or, you can highlight multiple sections of your doc to be adjusted.

You can also adjust margins per-section by going to File > Page Setup.

Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions

  • Available for all G Suite editions.

On/off by default?

  • This features will be ON by default.

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