In all my years of reviewing personal technology gadgets, I can count the number of times my jaw has dropped when learning about a new product. It’s good to be a skeptical journalist! But I failed to maintain that detachment when Google demoed a few imaging tricks on its new …
Read More »Google Assistant Finally Gets a Generative AI Glow-Up
Google went big when it launched its generative AI fight-back against OpenAI's ChatGPT in May. The company added AI text-generation to its signature search engine, showed off an AI-customized version of the Android operating system, and offered up its own chatbot, Bard. But one Google product didn’t get a generative …
Read More »Your Cheap Android TV Streaming Box May Have a Dangerous Backdoor
When you buy a TV streaming box, there are certain things you wouldn’t expect it to do. It shouldn’t secretly be laced with malware or start communicating with servers in China when it’s powered up. It definitely should not be acting as a node in an organized crime scheme making …
Read More »Google’s Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 Have Arrived. Here’s What’s New
Google's October hardware event took place this morning in New York City. During its presentation, the company showed off three new pieces of hardware: the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones, and the Pixel Watch 2. The new phones are flush with new features, from secure face authentication and …
Read More »AI Algorithms Are Biased Against Skin With Yellow Hues
After evidence surfaced in 2018 that leading face-analysis algorithms were less accurate for people with darker skin, companies including Google and Meta adopted measures of skin tone to test the effectiveness of their AI software. New research from Sony suggests that those tests are blind to a crucial aspect of …
Read More »This Exec Is Forcing Google Into Its First Trial Over Sexist Pay Discrimination
More than 20,000 fed-up Google employees staged a worldwide walkout in 2018 to demand a safer, fairer workplace for women after scandals over sexual harassment and unequal pay roiled the company. That fight was not an unqualified success: Pay equity data remains scarce and organizers say they suffered retaliation. But …
Read More »How to Stop Google Bard From Storing Your Data and Location
With its most recent update, Google Bard can now sort through your trove of Google Docs, rediscover ancient Gmail messages, and search through every video on YouTube. Before experimenting too much with the new extensions available for Google’s chatbot, it's worth going over the steps you can take to protect …
Read More »Apple, Microsoft, and Google Just Fixed Multiple Zero-Day Flaws
Fall is here, but hot zero-day summer shows no signs of cooling down, with the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Google fixing flaws being used in real-life attacks. Some major enterprise fixes were released during the month, including a Cisco patch for a vulnerability with a maximum CVSS score of …
Read More »Fitbit’s Charge 6 Fitness Tracker Has Built-In Google Features
Fitbit's flagship fitness tracker finally has a successor after two years: the Fitbit Charge 6. Ever since Google acquired Fitbit, the company has slowly been adding Google features to its trackers, and the Charge 6 is the latest to receive apps like Google Maps for route-tracking and Google Wallet for …
Read More »Meet the Law Geeks Exposing Google’s Secretive Antitrust Trial
Months out of law school, Yosef Weitzman already has a huge courtroom role in the biggest antitrust trial of the century. In a US federal trial that started last week, Google is accused of unlawfully monopolizing online search and search ads. The company’s self-defined mission is to make the world's …
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