Tech giants Google, Microsoft and Facebook are all applying the lessons of machine learning to translation, but a small company called DeepL has outdone them all and raised the bar for the field. Its translation tool is just as quick as the outsized competition, but more accurate and nuanced than any we’ve tried. I only speak a smattering of French in addition to my passable English, but luckily my colleague Frederic is a man of many tongues. We both agreed that DeepL’s translations were generally superior to those from Google Translate and Bing. Take, for example, the following passage...…Tech giants Google, Microsoft and Facebook are all applying the lessons of machine learning to translation, but a small company called DeepL has outdone them all and raised the bar for the field. Its translation tool is just as quick as the outsized competition, but more accurate and nuanced than any we’ve tried. I only speak a smattering of French in addition to my passable English, but luckily my colleague Frederic is a man of many tongues. We both agreed that DeepL’s translations were generally superior to those from Google Translate and Bing. Take, for example, the following passage...WW…

At first glance, genealogy may seem like a quiet hobby you take up in your retirement, but it’s also a big industry, with the likes of Ancestry, MyHeritage, Helix and others all vying for new users. You’d think that there isn’t much these companies can do to really differentiate themselves from each other, but they all offer a slightly different spin on the core theme of building family trees. In the last few years, both Ancestry and MyHeritage also expanded their business with DNA testing services — not to help you find potential health issues but to help you find your relatives and...…At first glance, genealogy may seem like a quiet hobby you take up in your retirement, but it’s also a big industry, with the likes of Ancestry, MyHeritage, Helix and others all vying for new users. You’d think that there isn’t much these companies can do to really differentiate themselves from each other, but they all offer a slightly different spin on the core theme of building family trees. In the last few years, both Ancestry and MyHeritage also expanded their business with DNA testing services — not to help you find potential health issues but to help you find your relatives and...WW…

AWS today the beta launch of , a new, fully managed low-code/no-code development tool that aims to make it easy for anybody in a company to build their own applications. All of this, of course, is backed by a database in AWS and a web-based, drag-and-drop interface builder.Developers can build applications for up to 20 users for free. After that, they pay per user and for the storage their applications take up.Image Credits: Amazon/AWS“Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them,” said AWS VP Larry Augustin in the...…AWS today the beta launch of , a new, fully managed low-code/no-code development tool that aims to make it easy for anybody in a company to build their own applications. All of this, of course, is backed by a database in AWS and a web-based, drag-and-drop interface builder.Developers can build applications for up to 20 users for free. After that, they pay per user and for the storage their applications take up.Image Credits: Amazon/AWS“Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them,” said AWS VP Larry Augustin in the...WW…

Adobe today announced a slew of updates to its various apps, ranging from Photoshop and Lightroom to Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator and its XD design tool. Like with some of its most recent releases, the emphasis of these updates is often on bringing more AI smarts to these applications with the help of the company’s Sensei platform. This includes Adobe’s recently launched .In addition to bringing more AI smarts to its applications, the updates also include the usual mix of new features, workflow enhancement and performance improvements.Among the new smart tools coming to...…Adobe today announced a slew of updates to its various apps, ranging from Photoshop and Lightroom to Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator and its XD design tool. Like with some of its most recent releases, the emphasis of these updates is often on bringing more AI smarts to these applications with the help of the company’s Sensei platform. This includes Adobe’s recently launched .In addition to bringing more AI smarts to its applications, the updates also include the usual mix of new features, workflow enhancement and performance improvements.Among the new smart tools coming to...WW…

The is currently suffering a major outage, and with that, multiple services that are hosted on the platform are also down, including everybody’s favorite tech news aggregator, .It looks like the problems started around 2:30pm PT and spread from there. Best we can tell, this is a worldwide problem and involves a networking issue, but IBM’s isn’t actually loading anymore and returns an internal server error, so we don’t quite know the extent of the outage or what triggered it. IBM Cloud’s Twitter account has also remained silent, though we found a hosted on a third-party server, which seems...…The is currently suffering a major outage, and with that, multiple services that are hosted on the platform are also down, including everybody’s favorite tech news aggregator, .It looks like the problems started around 2:30pm PT and spread from there. Best we can tell, this is a worldwide problem and involves a networking issue, but IBM’s isn’t actually loading anymore and returns an internal server error, so we don’t quite know the extent of the outage or what triggered it. IBM Cloud’s Twitter account has also remained silent, though we found a hosted on a third-party server, which seems...WW…

Google, in collaboration with a number of academic leaders and its consulting partner SADA Systems, today the launch of the , a new organization that aims to help open-source projects manage their trademarks.To be fair, at first glance, open-source trademarks may not sound like it would be a major problem (or even a really interesting topic), but there’s more here than meets the eye. As Google’s director of open source Chris DiBona told me, trademarks have increasingly become an issue for open-source projects, not necessarily because there have been legal issues around them, but because...…Google, in collaboration with a number of academic leaders and its consulting partner SADA Systems, today the launch of the , a new organization that aims to help open-source projects manage their trademarks.To be fair, at first glance, open-source trademarks may not sound like it would be a major problem (or even a really interesting topic), but there’s more here than meets the eye. As Google’s director of open source Chris DiBona told me, trademarks have increasingly become an issue for open-source projects, not necessarily because there have been legal issues around them, but because...WW…

Video meetings. While the move to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic may have made them mainstream, they are not without issues and more and more people are now opting out. For good reason. As it turns out, it’s really hard for our brains to sustain concentration while we’re trying to focus on 20 people in neat squares, all with different backgrounds and never quite looking at the camera. While we’ve had quite a bit of anecdotal evidence for this, Microsoft today released some of the research it did in this area, as well as new features in Teams that it hopes will make video meetings...…Video meetings. While the move to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic may have made them mainstream, they are not without issues and more and more people are now opting out. For good reason. As it turns out, it’s really hard for our brains to sustain concentration while we’re trying to focus on 20 people in neat squares, all with different backgrounds and never quite looking at the camera. While we’ve had quite a bit of anecdotal evidence for this, Microsoft today released some of the research it did in this area, as well as new features in Teams that it hopes will make video meetings...WW…

today that all of its core features are now available to all users, including those that are currently on free accounts. That means free unlimited private repositories with unlimited collaborators for all, including teams that use the service for commercial projects, as well as up to 2,000 minutes per month of free access to GitHub Actions, the company’s .Teams that want more advanced features like code owners or enterprise features like SAML support will still have to upgrade to a paid plan, but those now start at $4 per month and user for the Teams plans instead of the previous $9, with...…today that all of its core features are now available to all users, including those that are currently on free accounts. That means free unlimited private repositories with unlimited collaborators for all, including teams that use the service for commercial projects, as well as up to 2,000 minutes per month of free access to GitHub Actions, the company’s .Teams that want more advanced features like code owners or enterprise features like SAML support will still have to upgrade to a paid plan, but those now start at $4 per month and user for the Teams plans instead of the previous $9, with...WW…

During a press conference at the White House, President Trump today announced that the government is working with Google to build an online screening website for COVID-19.Update (4pm PT): Turns out, Trump was wrong. It’s Verily, not Google, that is building the site. Development is in its early stages and a first rollout will happen in the Bay Area. You can read about what’s really happening .The announcement was short on details, but the idea, it seems, is to give users the ability to enter their symptoms and see if they need additional testing. None of this sounds extremely complicated,...…During a press conference at the White House, President Trump today announced that the government is working with Google to build an online screening website for COVID-19.Update (4pm PT): Turns out, Trump was wrong. It’s Verily, not Google, that is building the site. Development is in its early stages and a first rollout will happen in the Bay Area. You can read about what’s really happening .The announcement was short on details, but the idea, it seems, is to give users the ability to enter their symptoms and see if they need additional testing. None of this sounds extremely complicated,...WW…

Arm today announced two new processors (or one and a half, depending on how you look at it). The company, which designs the chips that power the majority of the world’s cell phones and smart devices, launched both the newest Cortex-M processor (the M55) and the Arm Ethos-U55 micro neural processing unit (NPU).Like its predecessors, the new Cortex-M55 is Arm’s processor for . By now, its partners have manufactured over 50 billion chips based on the Cortex-M design. This latest version is obviously faster and more power-efficient, but Arm is mostly putting the emphasis on the chip’s machine...…Arm today announced two new processors (or one and a half, depending on how you look at it). The company, which designs the chips that power the majority of the world’s cell phones and smart devices, launched both the newest Cortex-M processor (the M55) and the Arm Ethos-U55 micro neural processing unit (NPU).Like its predecessors, the new Cortex-M55 is Arm’s processor for . By now, its partners have manufactured over 50 billion chips based on the Cortex-M design. This latest version is obviously faster and more power-efficient, but Arm is mostly putting the emphasis on the chip’s machine...WW…