Timnit Gebru, one of the best-known AI researchers today and co-lead of an AI ethics team at Google, no longer works at the company. She was featured in Google promotional material as recently as May. According to Gebru, she was fired Wednesday for sending an email to “non-management employees that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.” She said Google AI employees who…
Google is opening up Street View photography to a lot more folks. The company has announced that its latest Street View beta comes with a tool called connected photos. That lets anyone capture and publish photos from an Android phone, with no need for a fancy 360-degree…
Apple just gave an overhaul to its accessibility landing page to better highlight the native features in macOS and iOS that allow user’s devices to “work the way you do” and encourage everyone to “make something wonderful.” Now a new interview with Apple’s…
Google Maps will let you pin frequent destinations, transit routes with new ‘Go’ tab
December 4, 2020
Google launched a big Maps redesign in February and just this week introduced a new Community feed. Google Maps is now getting a simple but very useful “Go” tab on Android and iOS.
The new Google Maps “Go” tab subsumes today’s “Commute” section and significantly expands the functionality. Slotting in between “Explore” and “Saved,” the bottom bar icon shows a subway/train…
Back in August, Google introduced a native system for quickly sharing text, links, and images across its devices. Nearby Share will soon let you send Android apps to people near you.
The process starts with the sender visiting the “Manage Apps & Games” page in the…
Today, only the top books get audio versions narrated by professionals given that recording is a time-consuming process that doesn’t necessarily scale to every published work. Google is now working on auto-generated narrators that turn any book into an audiobook.
This…
Android Auto expands to more countries in Europe, Indonesia, more — here’s the full list
December 4, 2020
Google’s Android Auto platform has become a standard part of many new cars, much to the benefit of users. Now, Google is expanding where Android Auto is officially available, opening the platform up to quite a few new countries across the continent of Europe and more.
Over the coming months, Android Auto will be available in a few dozen additional countries across Europe including the…
Daimler announces $85 billion investment, mostly toward accelerating electrification
December 4, 2020
Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, announced a new investment plan worth €70 billion ($85 billion USD) for the years 2021 through 2025.
The automaker says that most of the investment will be used “to accelerate the transformation towards electrification and…
Google has baked some very useful accessibility features into the Android operating system over the years, and one of the most recent is “Voice Access.” That feature was supercharged with the debut of Android 11, and now those additional features are being brought to…
Vote Solar, the Coalition for Community Solar Access, and solar provider Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN) conducted a study that found that if just a quarter of US households were powered by local rooftop and community solar and storage, Americans would benefit financially and environmentally overall in a very big way.
The study was conducted by using an advanced grid planning tool called WIS:dom®-P that…
