Technology - Google News

Leftovers you can’t eat: Black Friday deals you can still get - The Verge
Top artificial intelligence ethics researcher says Google fired her - New York Post
Jeff Bezos shows off Blue Origin’s BE-7 engine — and makes a bold prediction - GeekWire

Leftovers you can’t eat: Black Friday deals you can still get - The Verge

Posted: 05 Dec 2020 08:00 AM PST

This weekend, you can enjoy the last of the leftovers — not Thanksgiving leftovers. (There's still no end in sight for those at my house.) I'm talking about the deals left over from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It's a relative drought compared to the number of sales we saw last weekend in the thick of it all, but you can still get some of this year's best prices on headphones, video games, and smart speakers.

Here are this week's best deals.

Headphones

The headphones with arguably the most effective noise cancellation tech and best sound quality for the price are the Sony WH-1000XM4. They were down to $278 during Black Friday, but their current $298 price is still a good buy if you missed that.

The price of the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live is back down to the Black Friday deal we saw last week. At Woot, they cost $110, matching the lowest price yet, and you can have at your choice of color. These will arrive by Christmas.

Smart speakers

The Sonos One (gen 2) is $40 off its original $200 price at Best Buy, Amazon, and through Sonos itself. This model features microphones for smart assistant support (Google Assistant, Alexa), and it'll work alone or connected via Wi-Fi to other Sonos speakers.

Amazon's new lineup of Echo smart speakers that released this fall has received some big discounts lately, and perhaps the most appealing from a value perspective is the spherical Echo Dot for $29.

Video games

If you haven't yet signed up for Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft is offering a three-month subscription to the Game Pass Ultimate service (combining Xbox Live, Game Pass for console, PC, and Android via xCloud) for just $1 through its site. Since EA Play joined Game Pass, there are now even more games to play.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is down to $35 for the PS4 and Xbox One at Amazon and Best Buy. The Xbox One copy will grant you a free upgrade to the Xbox Series X / S version if you own one of Microsoft's next-gen consoles.
FIFA 21 is $25 at GameStop (usually $60), the lowest it's been. If you buy the PS4 version and upgrade to the PS5, you will receive the next-gen version free of charge until FIFA 22 releases.

Misc. deals

If you're a Target Circle member (it's free to sign up), you can get a one-time 10 percent discount on the purchase of a Target gift card through Saturday, December 5th. You'll see the deal in the top-left section on the Target Circle Offers page. According to the terms, the most you can save today is $50 off a $500 gift card. The good news is that this offer is valid in-store and online, and is good for email or standard mail delivery of gift cards.

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Top artificial intelligence ethics researcher says Google fired her - New York Post

Posted: 04 Dec 2020 01:52 PM PST

A top Google scientist on ethical artificial intelligence says she was fired after criticizing the company's diversity efforts, a claim the Alphabet Inc unit disputed on Thursday, in the latest brush-up between the internet giant and worker activists.

Timnit Gebru, who is Black, said on Twitter she was fired on Wednesday after sending an email to colleagues expressing frustration over gender diversity within Google's AI unit and questioning whether company leaders reviewed her work more stringently than that of people from different backgrounds. Gebru co-founded the nonprofit Black in AI that aims to increase representation of people of color in artificial intelligence and co-authored a landmark paper on bias in facial analysis technology.

Jeff Dean, head of Google's AI unit, told staff in an email reviewed by Reuters that Gebru had threatened to resign unless she was told which colleagues deemed a draft paper she wrote was unpublishable, a demand Dean rejected.

"We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google," Dean wrote in the email, adding, "we all genuinely share Timnit's passion to make AI more equitable and inclusive."

Gebru said in a series of Twitter posts that Google cut her off from its systems without warning or conversation with her about her concerns.

Gebru's abrupt departure adds to years of angst, including several resignations and firings, in the AI department and other organizations at Google over diversity and whether the company's efforts to minimize the potential harms of its services are sufficient.

More than 150 employees expressed support for Gebru, demanding Google strengthen its commitment to academic freedom and explain why it chose to "censor" her paper, according to a petition posted online. Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote on Twitter that Gebru's firing was "absolutely infuriating" and "a disaster."

Just Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint accusing Google of unlawfully monitoring and questioning several workers who were then fired for protesting against company policies and trying to organize a union.

Gebru's paper contended that technology companies could do more to ensure AI systems aimed at mimicking human writing and speech do not exacerbate historical gender biases and use of offensive language, according to a draft copy seen by Reuters.

In his email to staff, Dean said the paper had not been given to the company for review in a timely fashion and was submitted to a conference without Google's permission.

He also took issue with some of its conclusions, which he said relied on outdated concerns, including about the environmental impact of large numbers of computers crunching data.

Responding to the company's rejection of her work, Gebru wrote on Twitter last week: "Nothing like a bunch of privileged White men trying to squash research by marginalized communities for marginalized communities by ordering them to STOP with ZERO conversation. The amount of disrespect is incredible."

Google declined to comment on her departure beyond Dean's email, which was first reported by tech news site Platformer.

Gebru previously worked at Microsoft Research, and she co-authored a widely cited 2018 paper that found higher error rates in facial analysis technology for women with darker skin tones.

Her new paper, co-authored with non-Google staff, is still expected to be presented at a computer science conference in March, according a person familiar with the matter.

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Jeff Bezos shows off Blue Origin’s BE-7 engine — and makes a bold prediction - GeekWire

Posted: 04 Dec 2020 10:26 AM PST

BE-7 rocket engine test — Blue Origin's BE-7 rocket engine goes through a test firing. (Blue Origin Photo)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos heralded progress on the development of the rocket engine that's destined for use on the lunar lander that his Blue Origin space venture is building — but he also offered a glimpse into his crystal ball for future moon missions.

"This is the engine that will take the first woman to the surface of the moon," he wrote in an Instagram posting about the hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine.

On one level, the Instagram post — plus parallel updates from Blue Origin via Twitter and the Web — are focused on a new round of testing for the BE-7 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

This week, the test program kicked off a new series of tests.

"So far in this recent campaign, the thrust chamber was tested for a duration of 20 seconds," Blue Origin said. "This brings the cumulative testing time on the BE-7 thrust chamber to 1,245 seconds."

As Bezos notes, the BE-7 is designed to throttle its power between 2,000 and 10,000 pounds of thrust, which is a key capability for executing a precision landing on the moon. A single BE-7 will power the descent stage for the Blue Moon lander, which is part of the stack for the human landing system being proposed for NASA's use in its Artemis moon program.

Blue Origin is leading a "National Team" of space companies that also includes Lockheed Martin (responsible for the ascent stage), Northrop Grumman (responsible for the transfer element that would maneuver the lander in lunar orbit) and Draper (responsible for avionics).

Which brings us to the deeper level in Bezos' commentary: The National Team is one of three contenders to provide the Artemis program's human landing system. SpaceX and an industry team led by Alabama-based Dynetics are also in the hunt.

NASA hasn't yet selected which team (or teams) will go on to the next phase of development. And even if multiple teams are chosen, it may not be instantly clear which team would end up building the lander that's used for the Artemis program's first crewed mission to the moon, scheduled for as early as 2024.

By saying the BE-7 is "the engine that will take the first woman to the moon," Bezos is putting his mouth where his money is. (NASA phrases it as "the first woman and the next man," in recognition of the fact that the crew's likely to be diverse.)

Will Bezos be correct in his prediction that the National Team will win NASA's competition, and that the Blue Moon lander will set the next team of moonwalkers down on the lunar surface? We're likely to know more by February, when the space agency chooses who goes on to the next round.

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