One of the useful features of search engines like Google is the autocomplete function that enables users to find fast answers to their questions or queries. However, autocomplete search functions are based on ambiguous algorithms that have been widely criticized because they often provide biased and racist results. The ambiguity of these algorithm stems from the fact that most of us know very little about them — which has led some to refer to them as “black boxes.” Search engines and social medi
What do you need to make your garden grow? As well as plenty of sunshine alternating with gentle showers of rain – and busy bees and butterflies to pollinate the plants – you need good, rich soil to provide essential minerals. But imagine you had no rich soil, or showers of rain, or bees and butterflies. And the sunshine was either too harsh and direct or absent – causing freezing temperatures. Could plants grow in such an environment – and, if so, which ones? This is the question that colonists
A few months ago, I quit my job at Google after 10 years to join a 40 person startup (Replit). At the time, I had a hard time expressing why I needed to make the change, even though I knew with certainty. Writing this helped me sort it out. I left because I needed to fix my work-life balance. I joined Google in early 2011. Larry Page was beginning his second stint as CEO. Everybody was talking about a secret project named Emerald Sea. TGIF was on Fridays, and we attended in person. At the time i
If you had invested £100 (US$122) in the cryptocurrency Luna a month ago, you might have been quietly confident you’d made a sensible bet. But Luna’s value has since fallen drastically – at the time of writing, that £100 is worth around 4p (5¢). Luna was by no means the only victim in a week where cryptocurrencies were down 30%. Some have recovered to a certain extent, but this still represents an aggregate seven-day loss of over US$500 million (£410 million), prompting existential questions abo
DeepMind today unveiled a new multi-modal AI system capable of performing more than 600 different tasks. Dubbed Gato, it’s arguably the most impressive all-in-one machine learning kit the world’s seen yet. According to a DeepMind blog post: The agent, which we refer to as Gato, works as a multi-modal, multi-task, multi-embodiment generalist policy. The same network with the same weights can play Atari, caption images, chat, stack blocks with a real robot arm and much more, deciding based on its
It’s been a big week of updates on all things Google. Yesterday the company launched a bunch of handy updates for Android Auto, giving the in-car digital experience a much-needed refresh with added features and a far superior user interface. Let’s take a look. Split screen for the win I’m liking the split screen functionality Android‘s making split screen mode standard across all screen types and sizes, including widescreen and portrait. This removes the need to fiddle through lists of apps. Na
This week, escooter company Bird launched the latest tech to stop bad rider behavior. The Bird VPS (Visual Parking System) was shown on stage at Google I/O, demonstrating the latest tech to monitor escooter parking. The tool is powered by Google’s ARCore Geospatial API, enabling Bird to geo-localize parked scooters with pinpoint accuracy. This is achieved by taking advantage of the tech giant’s years of 3D scanning, global Street View data, and augmented reality technology. Let’s look at how it
Tesla has finally opened orders for its long-anticipated, electric Semi truck — to US customers at least. Expectedly, the automaker didn’t reveal any production date, but this week it did give us a better glance at performance figures, claimed range, and pricing. Credit: Tesla Performance specs Tesla will offer two different Semi models: one with 482km (300 miles) of range, and one with 804km (500 miles). Both are powered by four rear-axle motors. According to the company, they can deliver a 0 t
Some cryptocurrencies have always been fairly volatile, with values soaring or plunging within a short space of time. So for the more cautious investor, “stablecoins” were considered the sensible place to go. As the name implies, they are designed to be a steadier and safer bet. At the moment though, that stability is proving hard to find. The value of one of the most popular stablecoins, Terra (also known as UST), has fluctuated wildly in the last few days, before dropping dramatically – and is
Elon Musk said today he’s temporarily putting the Twitter deal on hold — because of bots. Yep, you read that right. Musk said the company has to prove that bots consist of less than 5% of users on the platform. This comes after a Twitter filing with SEC earlier this month, that claimed that the number of bots and spam accounts in its daily active users count — 229 million in Q1 2022 — is less than 5%. Removing bots from Twitter was the Tesla CEO’s one of the most advertised pitches when he was t