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Calling all wildlife photographers (and their kids) – Here’s how you can see wild animals in your home

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This is an awfully frustrating time for wildlife photographers right now. And anybody who has kids. You’re stuck at home, can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything, can’t see anything interesting. Well, Google has the answer – augmented reality.

Google’s mobile search has a feature which allows you to search for an animal which can then be placed into your environment using your smartphone’s camera and augmented reality. It even appears to pick up on the ambient lighting and be able to apply it in realtime, too.

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Google Suite offers free streaming for everyone working from home during the coronavirus outbreak

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The coronavirus outbreak has made many people work, teach and study from home. To make this easier, Google Suite is now offering free access to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing. If your work has moved online as well, you can take advantage of this offer no matter where in the world you are.

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Google AI will stop assuming your gender and won’t tag you as “man” or “woman” in photos

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Google’s AI labels what it sees in your photos, and sometimes it doesn’t really do the best job. Now Google has announced some changes and its Cloud Vision API tool is going gender-neutral. Instead of labeling people in photos as “man” or “woman,” the tool will now play it safe and label them simply as “person.”

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Google Photos may have sent your private videos to random strangers

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Always be careful what you put in “the cloud”, people. Google Photos is facing yet another controversy as Google reveals that a “technical issue” may have included your videos in somebody else’s export download archive. Google faced a similar issue last year with Vu Android TVs that were showing other peoples photos.

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Google’s room-sized light dome uses 100 cameras to captures 3D models of the people inside it

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3D scanning has started to become a more integral part of photography and video for many people. Whether it’s to scan real-world objects to render on a computer and drop into the scene in post or to be able to produce physical 3d printed models to include as part of the set, its use has started to increase over the last few years.

It’s something that Google’s been working on for years, but this latest iteration uses what they call “volumetric capture” made up of 100 12-megapixel cameras and 331 LED lighting modules in a 360° setup to see all around an object to create a photorealistic 3D representation of the subject. This lets them capture every single detail, drop them into any scene they like, and relight the subject in post.

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Google and Samsung confirm massive Android Camera exploit affecting “hundreds of millions” of users

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There’s been constant paranoia about the cameras in smartphones for as long as smartphones have had cameras. Can somebody hack into your phone, turn on your camera and watch? Or record? Well, it turns out that yes, they can. At least, they can if you’re one of the potentially “hundreds of millions” of Android users on a Google or Samsung smartphone.

The issue was first discovered (at least, publicly) by the security research team at Checkmarx. They say that after a detailed analysis of the Google Camera app in the Pixel 3, they found a way to manipulate certain code to take control of the camera to shoot photos or record videos, even when the phone was locked with the screen off, and without the user knowing.

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Scientists have created contact lenses that “zoom” when you blink

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Google might have got a patent back in 2014, and then Sony in 2016, but scientists at the University of California San Diego have actually created a prototype contact lens that lets you “zoom” when you double-blink. Well, to be more accurate, it only functions when a specially made rig double blinks, but still, it’s a start.

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Google launches GalleryGo – a “Lite” edition of Google Photos for people with bad Internet

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Not everybody around the world has the easy access to mobile data or high-end smartphones that some of us do, and for those people, many online services have cut down versions of their apps that run on lower-end phones and useless bandwidth. Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and even Twitter all have “Lite” versions of their apps for those users.

Now, Google has announced Gallery Go, a slimline version of Google Photos designed for working offline to help those on limited or unreliable internet in developing markets like Nigeria. And it only takes 10MB of storage space on their phone.

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Researchers develop after-the-fact portrait relighting AI that works without 3D depth information

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When the iPhone X came along with its Portrait Lighting effects, a lot of people were very impressed. Apple was even claiming that you don’t need studio lighting at all anymore or any other fancy equipment. You just need your phone. And while the iPhone hasn’t taken over as the portrait photographer’s camera of choice, it’s an intriguing concept.

A concept so intriguing that researchers and engineers at UC San Diego and Google have taken it a few steps further. They’ve trained neural networks to relight portraits after the fact without requiring any 3D depth data and with a lot more control than a few Apple presets.

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Google Photos is sending your private shares public and you don’t even know it

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Researcher Robert Wiblin over at 80,000 Hours spotted something quite interesting about Google Photos recently. He noticed that privately shared links became publicly accessible. He told some friends who use Google Photos and they didn’t believe him. After all, why would Google allow such an oversight? Surely if you’re sharing privately with a specific person, then only that person can see it, right?

Apparently not. After doing a little digging, Robert was able to demonstrate that these privately shared links are publicly accessible from any Google account, or even if you’re not logged into Google at all – as shown when he was able to access a “private” shared link from an Incognito browser window.

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