New research shows Apple extended an already significant lead in the wearables market during the first quarter of 2020 on the back of strong demand for AirPods and Beats products.

Every day, developers and researchers are finding creative ways to leverage AI to augment human intelligence and solve tough problems. Whether they’re training a computer vision model that can spot endangered snow leopards or help us do our business expenses more easily when we scan pictures of receipts, they need a lot of quality pictures to do it. Developers usually crowd source these large batches of pictures by enlisting the help of gig workers to submit photos, but often, these calls for photos feel like a black box. Participants have little insight into why they’re submitting a photo and can feel like their time was lost when their submissions are rejected without explanation. At the same time, developers can find that these sourcing projects take a long time to complete due to lower quality and less diverse inputs.

We’re excited to announce that Trove, a Microsoft Garage project, is exploring a solution that can enhance the experience and agency for both parties. Trove is a marketplace app that allows people to contribute photos to AI projects that developers can then use to train machine learning models. Interested parties can request an invite to join the experiment as a contributor or developer. Trove is currently accepting a small number of participants in the United States on both Android and iOS.

A marketplace that puts transparency and choice first

Today, most data collection is passive, with many people unaware that their data is being collected or not making a real-time, active choice to contribute their information. And even those who contribute more directly to model training projects are often not provided the greater context and purpose of the project; there’s little to no feedback loop to correct and align data submissions to better fit the needs of project.

For people who rely on this data gig work as an important source of income, this rejection experience can leave them feeling frustrated and without any agency to contribute better submissions and a higher return on their time investment. With machine learning being a critical step in unlocking advancements from speech to image recognition, there’s an important opportunity to increase the quality of data, while making sure that contributors have the clarity and choice they need to participate in the process.

The Trove team has found a way to overcome these tough tradeoffs in a marketplace solution that emphasizes greater communication, context, and feedback between developers and project participants. “There’s a better way we can do this. You can have the transparency of how your data is being used and actually want to opt in to contribute to these projects and advance science and AI,” shares Krishnan Raghupathi, the Senior Program Manager for Trove. “We’d love to see this become a community where people are a key part of the project.”

To read more about key features and how Trove works for developers and contributors, check it out on the Garage Workbench.

Aspiring to higher quality data and increased contributor agency

The team behind Trove was originally inspired by thought leaders exploring how we can embrace the need for a large volume of data to enable AI advancements, while providing more agency to contributors and recognizing the value of their data. “We wanted to explore these concepts through something concrete,” shared Christian Liensberger, the lead Principal Program Manager on the project. “We decided to form an incubation team and build something that could show how things could be different.”

In creating Trove, the incubation team had to think through principles that would guide them as they brought such an experience to life. They believe that the best framework to produce the higher quality data needed to train these AI models involves connecting content creators to AI developers more directly. Trove was built with a design and approach that focuses on four core principles:

• Transparency See all the projects available, details about who is posting them, and how your data will be used
• Control Decide which projects you want to contribute to, and control when and how much you contribute
• Enrichment Learn directly from AI developers how your contributions are valuable, and see how your participation will advance AI projects
• Connection Communicate with AI developers to stay informed on projects you contributed to

“I love working on this project, it’s a continuous shift between the user need for privacy and control, and professionals’ need for data to innovate and create new products,” said Devis Lucato, Principal Engineering Manager for Trove. “We’re pushing the boundaries of all the technologies that we touch, exploring new features and challenging decisions determined by the status quo.”

Before releasing this experiment to external users, the team piloted Trove with Microsoft employees from across the US. While Trove is still in an experimental phase, the team is excited for even more feedback. “Our solution is still a bit rough around the edges, but we want to hear from the community about what we should focus on next,” shares Christian. Trinh Duong, the Marketing Manager on the project added, “My favorite part about working on this has been how much the app incorporates users into the experience. We want to invite our users to reach out and join us as true participants in the creation of this concept.”

The team is welcoming feedback from experiment participants here, and is enthusiastic for the input of users who are as passionate about the principles of transparency, control, enrichment, and connection as they are.

Request an invite and share your feedback

Trove will be able to try in the United States upon request while room in the experiment is still available. Request an invite to join the experiment, or request to add an ML project to the experiment.

This week at Bungie, we look to the sky.

Ever since this Season began, the Almighty has been hurtling through space on its collision course with Earth. The Cabal are not known for their graceful defeats. Every day we spend preparing our long lost Seraph to mount a response, that derelict destroyer rockets ever closer to our home, spelling certain doom for the City.

Rasputin is at full power. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. Now, eclipsing our own sun is a stark reminder that a great threat approaches. Eyes up!

What’s Next?

Diving Deep

In recent editions of “This Week At Bungie,” we’ve taken the cue directly from the community on what we should talk about. Our attention has been focused on your feedback. Our words have pointed toward what we plan to do to bring the game into alignment with what you’ve been talking about. With a summary of what we’ve promised and some updates on our progress, here is Production Director Justin Truman.

Justin: Hey everybody.

Five weeks ago, we promised a series of deep dives on the state of Destiny, and how we plan to change it in Season 11 and Year 4.   

We enlisted seven members of the Destiny Team to provide as much detail as we could, and I’d encourage you to go back and read any of the topics you may have missed:

We covered a lot of ground, and while we are going to continue to provide updates each week to topics you care about, we want to shift our focus in the coming weeks. 

We’ve said a lot about changes coming in Year 4, but we haven’t talked about how Year 4 begins. Very soon, we’ll do just that.

I kicked off this series of deep dives with some promises, but I want to end the series on a more personal note. Being unable to go to the office, trying to figure out how to keep building this game we love from our laptops and our couches has had me thinking a lot about commitment.

Videogame development is messy. Evolving Destiny 2 in an open, transparent way involves showing (and shipping) plenty of missteps along with the improvements. But it continues to be worth it, every step of the way, because I can honestly say this is the most welcoming, most passionate community of players I have encountered, in any game.

We’re committed to this game, to staying transparent about our plans, and to this relationship we have with our community. The reasons we started on this journey 10 years ago haven’t changed. We’re committed to building a world anyone can be a part of, where everyone can feel powerful, and where you might reconnect with old friends or make some new ones.

So we look forward to continuing this conversation, and continuing to evolve Destiny together. And in 12 days, we can’t wait to show you more of what we’ve been working on.

Stay safe out there, Guardians.

---

Ready for Prime Time

Triumphant

From one Season to the next, from one expansion to another, one constant is that that Player Support Team will be there to monitor your reports from the wild frontier. The #help forum is their base of operations. Their mission is to keep you out there fighting the darkness.

This is their report.

SEAL THE DEAL

• Almighty
• Flawless
• Conqueror

Players must earn these Seals and equip the associated Titles by the weekly reset on June 9, 2020, in order to be eligible for the Bungie Reward. Reward codes must then be claimed from the Bungie Rewards page by June 12, 2020, 9:59 AM PDT.

SEASONAL TRIUMPHS

As we approach the end of Season of the Worthy, certain Triumphs will no longer be available to earn in-game. Triumphs leaving at the weekly reset on June 9, 2020, include:

• Full-stack Warmind Security
• Object-Oriented
• Season 10: Nightfall
• Season 10: Vanguard
• Season 10: Glory
• Season 10: Power Bonus
• Multi-Threaded Spelunker
• And more.

THE LIE

Last week, Hotfix 2.8.1.3 was released to resolve an issue preventing players from progressing “The Lie” quest. Players will now have until the end of the Season of the Worthy to complete this quest and claim the associated reward before it become unavailable.

Players who continue to observe issues with the quest “The Lie” should report them on the #Help Forum.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• The Bonus Clan Bounty is not gaining progress from Nightfall: The Ordeal completions at Grandmaster difficulty.
• Zavala’s Authority ship shows the left engine thruster before the ship appears in orbit.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Trending Now

You know that old question about the tree that falls in the forest when there is no one around to hear it? The Movie of the Week is our answer. If a Guardian fires their favorite Exotic weapon, and it didn’t make it into a montage, did it make a sound? Here are some of the finest existential moments we discovered during our online wanderings this week.

Movie of the Week: Bunker Rave

Honorable Mention

The filmmakers have received the most storied emblem as evidence that Bungie is their number one fan. If you want your work to reach our eyes, your best venue is our Creations page.

Don’t call it a TWAB. I’ve been here for years.

Sure, @A_dmg04 and @Cozmo23 own this beat, but I wanted to take a shift. I’d love to be dusting off my travel luggage right about now. I’ll miss seeing your faces and making new connections out there in the world. That will happen again. For now, the traditions that shape what makes a Guardian a Guardian, year after year, must be obeyed. We’ll be firing all our cannons very soon.

We hope you’ll be around to enjoy the fireworks.

DeeJ, out.

Cloud based game services provider Gamestream has secured € 3.5 million, roughly $3.8 million, in additional funding to bolster the ranks of its B2B focused game streaming offerings.

While many cloud based game platforms aim to land directly in players homes, Gamestream instead partners with businesses like hotels and cruise ships to provide a readily-deployable streaming game platform then offered to those businesses’ customers as an amenity.

According to PocketGamer, that additional bit of funding now aims to help Gamestream is staff up its internal teams and accelerate plans to expand the offerings in its game library, a library that currently includes around 150 titles from the likes of Square Enix, Capcom, and more.

If you’re excited to get stuck into Catherine: Full Body on Nintendo Switch, you’ll be pleased to know that the game is now available to pre-order.

You’ll find it available on the Switch eShop for £44.99 / $49.99 with all DLC as standard, and also at a number of selected retailers. If you manage to find a physical pre-order, you should also be treated to a bonus Sheep Keychain while stocks last.

If you need a quick reminder, here’s a feature list for the game (remember, other details such as the game’s file size and news of a demo arrived just yesterday):

Key Features:
· This mature action-adventure puzzler will thrill players with a story that delves into relationships and the difficult choices we make
· Choices that will determine your fate in multiple story branches and 13 available endings
· Overcome challenging and addictive puzzles to survive the nightmare· Play on the go: whether it’s Versus or Co-op mode, it’s never a baaaa-d time to play with your friends
· Original Catherine: Full Body add-on content now included in game (Catherine ‘Ideal Voice’ Set, Playable Character Set, Persona 5 Joker Character & Commentary Set, Bonus Content: Horn-Rimmed Glasses)

Will you be getting a physical order in? Are you thinking of picking it up from the eShop instead? Tell us below.

Back in March, we shared a quick look at Clive ‘N’ Wrench, a brand new 3D platformer inspired by the ’90s classics. Today, pre-orders have gone live for a physical edition that’ll be exclusive to Switch.

Taking cues from the likes of Spyro the Dragon and Jak & Daxter, Clive ‘N’ Wrench features a story that revolves around time travel. Its heroes – Clive the rabbit and his monkey sidekick, Wrench – embark on a crazy adventure through time and space inside their very own, magical 1950s fridge. You couldn’t write it – except someone did.

It’s scheduled to launch this winter with eShop prices set to be at the £24.99 / €29.99 mark. If you’re wanting to treat yourself to a physical copy, though, you can grab a standard edition for £34.99 / €39.99, or a Collector’s Edition for £44.99 / €49.99. Pre-orders for these can be found at Numskull Games’ website.

Are you a fan of 3D platformers? Think this one might be another must-play game? Share your thoughts with us down below.

The 3DS slowly might be slowly but surely shuffling off its mortal coil, but it’s about to get a new lease of life (kinda) in the form of a new version of the 3DS emulator Citra, which has been officially ported to Android devices.

The team behind the emulator – which is pretty much complete on PC – have been bombarded by requests for an official version for ages (an unofficial port of Citra already exists on Android). However, this new version has been a real labour of love for the team, and while it’s still in beta, it’s running pretty well – as you can see from the video below. It even features tilt support.

The group behind Citra are keen to stress that the app doesn’t come with any games or copyrighted system files, which means it’s not infringing on Nintendo’s copyright. You’ll also need to dump your own 3DS games to use with Citra, as it doesn’t come with any. It is also pointed out that the emulator “is not affiliated, associated, authorised, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with Nintendo.” Just so you’re sure – after all, the Japanese company has form when it comes to protecting its games.

While emulating old video games from 30 years ago still remains something of a grey area, emulating titles which are still commercially available might be a little too cheeky for some – but, as we’ve spoken about in the past, emulation is preservation, and given the unique nature of the 3DS hardware, we might be thankfully of such projects in a decade or so.

If you’re like me, you try things first in your code and fix the bugs as they come. One frequent bug in Python is the IndexError: list index out of range. So, what does this error message mean?

The error “list index out of range” arises if you access invalid indices in your Python list. For example, if you try to access the list element with index 100 but your lists consist only of three elements, Python will throw an IndexError telling you that the list index is out of range.

Let’s have a look at an example where this error arises:

lst = ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl']

print(lst[3])

The element with index 3 doesn’t exist in the list with three elements. Why is that? The following graphic shows that the maximal index in your list is 2. The call lst[2] would retrieve the third list element 'Carl'. Did you try to access the third element with index 3? It’s a common mistake: The index of the third element is 2 because the index of the first list element is 0.

• lst[0] –> Alice
• lst[1] –> Bob
• lst[2] –> Carl
• lst[3] –> ??? Error ???

Try It Yourself: Before I tell you what to do about it, try to fix the code yourself in our interactive Python shell:

Exercise: Fix the code in the interactive code shell to get rid of the error message.

How to Fix the IndexError in a For Loop? [General Strategy]

So, how can you fix the code? Python tells you in which line and on which list the error occurs.

To pin down the exact problem, check the value of the index just before the error occurs. To achieve this, you can print the index that causes the error before you use it on the list. This way, you’ll have your wrong index in the shell right before the error message.

Here’s an example of wrong code that will cause the error to appear:

# WRONG CODE

lst = ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Ann', 'Carl'] for i in range(len(lst)+1): lst[i] # Traceback (most recent call last):

# File "C:\Users\xcent\Desktop\code.py", line 5, in <module>

# lst[i]

# IndexError: list index out of range

The error message tells you that the error appears in line 5. So, let’s insert a print statement before that line:

lst = ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Ann', 'Carl'] for i in range(len(lst)+1): print(i) lst[i]

The result of this code snippet is still an error. But there’s more:

0

1

2

3

4

Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Users\xcent\Desktop\code.py", line 6, in <module> lst[i]

IndexError: list index out of range

You can now see all indices used to retrieve an element. The final one is the index i=4 which points to the fifth element in the list (remember: Python starts indexing at index 0!). But the list has only four elements, so you need to reduce the number of indices you’re iterating over. The correct code is, therefore:

# CORRECT CODE

lst = ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Ann', 'Carl'] for i in range(len(lst)): lst[i]

Note that this is a minimal example and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But the general debugging strategy remains even for advanced code projects:

• Figure out the faulty index just before the error is thrown.
• Eliminate the source of the faulty index.

IndexError When Modifying a List as You Iterate Over It

The IndexError also frequently occurs if you iterate over a list but you remove elements as you iterate over the list:

l=[1,2,3,0,0,1]

for i in range(0, len(l)): if l[i]==0: l.pop(i)

This code snippet is from a StackOverflow question. The source is simply that the list.pop() method removes the element with value 0. All subsequent elements now have a smaller index. But you iterate over all indices up to len(l)-1 = 6-1 = 5 and the index 5 does not exist in the list after removing elements in a previous iteration.

You can simply fix this with a short list comprehension statement that accomplishes the same thing:

l = [x for x in l if x]

Only non-zero elements are included in the list.

String IndexError: List Index Out of Range

The error can occur when accessing strings as well:

s = 'Python'

print(s[6])

To fix the error for strings, make sure that the index falls between the range 0 ... len(s)-1 (included):

s = 'Python'

print(s[5])

# n

Tuple IndexError: List Index Out of Range

In fact, the IndexError can occur for all ordered collections where you can use indexing to retrieve certain elements. Thus, it also occurs when accessing tuple indices that do not exist:

s = ('Alice', 'Bob')

print(s[2])

Again, start counting with index 0 to get rid of this:

s = ('Alice', 'Bob')

print(s[1])

# Bob

Note: The index of the last element in any sequence is len(sequence)-1.

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!