Google Lens is now capable of recognizing a billion items

Google’s AI-based tool has grown exponentially over the past year. From around 250,000 items it could recognize when it launched on Photos and Assistant, it can now recognize over a billion items. Its optical character recognition engine has been further developed to read more product labels, which in turn allows it to recognize more goods. It’s also gotten more data from smartphone photos. This new number comes from the products that are available through Google Shopping so don’t expect it to know obscure items just yet. It also has been developed to recognize people, geometric shapes, and Wi-Fi network names.

Source: The Verge

Remove.bg makes quick work of removing backgrounds from images

By the power of AI, website Remove.bg does one job and does it kinda well. Sort of. If you need to quickly remove the background of an image, this single-purpose site can do it for you. You just need to upload the image you need to have the foreground be separated from background and then it’ll let you download a PNG version of the final product. No need to do anything. While the site claims it only works on people, it can separate other objects and the like as long as the subject is clearly in the foreground. It also isn’t perfect. It can sometimes be a bit confused with images where the background and foreground are a bit fuzzy—like that image of Elon Musk missing a bit of his eye. But again, if you need a quick fix and you aren’t so picky about the results, this might be a good site to keep in mind.

Source: The Verge

Microsoft creates Windows Sandbox to help test untrusted .exe files

Microsoft wants to help out business and power users with a new feature it’s launching for Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise. Instead of needing to set up virtual machines to check out unknown apps, Microsoft will let users launch apps in an isolated desktop environment with Windows Sandbox. This creates a temporary desktop environment that designed to be secure and disposable. Once you’re done running an app, the entire sandbox will be disposed. While it doesn’t need a virtual machine, it’ll require virtualization capabilities be enabled in the BIOS.

It creates a lightweight (100MB) installation of Windows to run an app. It makes use of Windows own hypervisor to create a separate kernel that’s isolated from the host PC. Windows 10 testers will get to try out this new feature once build 18305 arrives.

Source: The Verge

Prepare for the most anticipated games of 2019 on the Xbox

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There are many things we love about a new year, one of them is getting new games to play. Here’s a list of the big titles coming to the Xbox One in 2019. Quick note for the Microsoft Studios titles, those will be launched in Xbox Game Pass on the same date as their global release.

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