Technology

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai responded to a report that Google has dramatically scaled back diversity and inclusion programs to appease conservative critics, promising that the company remains committed. “Diversity is a foundational value for us. Given the scale at which we build products and the fact we do it locally for our users, we are deeply committed to having that representation in our workforce,” said Pichai in an interview on The Vergecast. “What we are doing in the company is constantly at our scale. We look at that first — see what works, what we can scale up better. All I can say is we probably have more resources invested in diversity now than at any point in our history as a company.” Last week, NBC News reported that Google had ended a “well-liked” diversity program called Soj...

IFA 2020 will be taking place as an in-person event in Berlin this fall, conference organizers announced. However, it’ll look very different than previous years due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has seen almost every other major technology conference canceled or moved online this year. Set to run from September 3rd–5th, it’ll mark the first major conference to take place in the technology industry. “After all the event cancellations during the past months, our industry urgently needs a platform where it can showcase its innovation, so that it can recover and rebound,” commented Jens Heithecker, the executive director of IFA Berlin, noting that digital events could only do so much to replace the “immediacy, hands-on experience and human connections” of events like IFA. “#IFA20 will ...

OnePlus will temporarily disable a camera filter on the OnePlus 8 Pro after users discovered they could use it to see through certain plastics and clothes. Although the company has stressed that the “Photochrom” filter cannot see through thick materials, it apologized for “creating privacy concerns and causing troubles for OnePlus users and other netizens,” Abacus News reports. OnePlus announced the move in a statement on its Weibo page. The OnePlus 8 Pro was released back in April, but it wasn’t until last week that people started paying serious attention to what its camera was capable of. On Twitter, Ben Geskin demonstrated how the filter can be used to see through the Apple TV’s black plastic housing, while Unbox Therapy observed that it could even see through an (admittedly thin) black...

On Friday, Facebook made its fifth-largest known acquisition ever. The company bought Giphy, a database and search engine for the short looping videos known as GIFs, for $400 million. Today let’s talk about some of the reasons, stated and unstated, that Facebook bought Giphy, and then consider what might come next. The stated reason for acquiring Giphy, as expressed in this blog post from Instagram’s head of product announcing the deal, is twofold. One, Facebook can now build tighter integrations between the products to enhance stickers, stories, and other products. And two, it can make further investments in Giphy’s technology and content library to benefit all the companies that rely on Giphy for GIF supply. Here’s Vishal Shah: People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API...

Samsung has announced a new 50-megapixel camera sensor called the ISOCELL GN1. It’s Samsung’s first sensor to include both dual-pixel autofocus and Tetracell pixel-binning, which the company says should offer a combination of fast performance and good low-light image quality. The pixel size is 1.2μm, closer to what you’d find on a conventional phone camera sensor than the high-resolution chips that’ve become increasingly popular over the past year-plus. The obvious competitor is Sony’s new IMX689 sensor, featured in phones like the Oppo Find X2 Pro, which has 48 megapixels at 1.22μm. By default, Samsung’s sensor will take 12.5-megapixel photos with four pixels binned into one. The addition of dual-pixel phase-detection autofocus is noteworthy because Samsung had a recent high-profile failu...

Self-driving cars are having a really rough time gaining our trust. This is not a total shock considering autonomous vehicles remain theoretical and elusive for most people. The limited number of self-driving cars on the road today are mostly test vehicles that aren’t available to the riding public. Combine that with Americans’ very, shall we say, complicated feelings toward concepts like “freedom” and “control,” and you can see where this is going. Digging on technology in the streets, control freaks in the sheets. Digging on technology in the streets, control freaks in the sheets The latest poll to affirm this deep distrust comes from Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE), a coalition of industry players and nonprofits aimed at improving the public’s understanding of autonomous...

I didn’t go into today thinking that I would be awed by a sudoku puzzle. But after a tweet popped up on my timeline promising that I would not only watch a man spend nearly half an hour solving a puzzle, but that it would be “the highlight of my day,” I was intrigued. The result is one of the most incredibly satisfying videos I’ve ever seen. The man in question is Simon Anthony. He is one half of the sudoku YouTube channel Cracking the Cryptic, which posts several videos a week walking through some of the hardest and most interesting sudoku puzzles in the world. You’re about to spend the next 25 minutes watching a guy solve a Sudoku. Not only that, but it’s going to be the highlight of your day.https://t.co/gnuI31x0PT — Ben Orlin (@benorlin) May 17, 2020 The video sees Anthony ...

French self-driving vehicle company EasyMile will add seatbelts to its shuttles in order to be able to once again carry passengers in the US. EasyMile’s shuttles were suspended by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in late February after an incident where a passenger fell out of her seat during a sudden stop in Columbus, Ohio. EasyMile’s shuttles, which operate on a trial basis in about a dozen US cities, will also feature more signage and audio announcements that warn passengers about the possibility of sudden stops, and the company says it will train the safety operators on the shuttles to “remind passengers to hold on with feet firmly on the floor” while they are in motion. These “corrective actions” are the result of a back-and-forth with the NHTSA and the local...

Kevin Mayer is leaving his post as the head of Disney’s streaming efforts to become the CEO of the shortform video app TikTok, Disney announced today. He will also become the COO of TikTok’s owner, ByteDance. “Kevin has had an extraordinary impact on our company over the years, most recently as head of our direct-to-consumer business,” said Disney CEO Bob Chapek in a statement. Mayer starts at ByteDance on June 1st At ByteDance, Mayer will be responsible for “driving the global development of ByteDance, as well as overseeing corporate functions including corporate development, sales, marketing, public affairs, security, moderation, and legal,” according to ByteDance’s press release. “In his role as COO, Kevin will lead music, gaming, Helo, emerging businesses, and will serve as CEO of TikT...

BBC is launching a new experimental tool, BBC Together, that will let you watch or listen to BBC programming with others over the internet, with everyone seeing the same thing on-screen at the same time. It sounds a lot like Netflix Party but for BBC content. BBC Together works with any audio or video content from BBC iPlayer (which has on-demand video content from the BBC), BBC Sounds (which has on-demand audio content), Bitesize (which has educational content), BBC News, and BBC Sport, according to the BBC. You should be able to try it now on Taster, the BBC’s site for its experimental technologies. Share a link and your friends can watch with you Once you decide what you want to watch with others with BBC Together, you’ll be able to share a link with your friends so they can join in. If...

Asus has announced new videoconferencing hardware designed to run Google Meet meetings (via 9to5Google). The new gear includes a small computer that runs the calls, an external speaker, and, depending on which configuration you buy, you can also get a camera and a touch screen. The hardware could be useful for conference rooms in offices that rely on Google Meet as their videoconferencing tool of choice (once actually going into the office becomes more common, of course). The computer, which Asus calls the Google Meet Compute System, has an Intel Core i7 processor, a 128GB SSD, and a magnetic chassis so you can attach it to the included stand or more easily mount it out of sight, according to ASUS. It also has a number of ports, which you can see in the image below: With the Starter Kit an...

Elon Musk has always had a certain manic energy on Twitter, but in the past week, his output has taken a more troubling turn. Musk’s ongoing standoff with Alameda County health officials had inspired him to share a wave of disinformation, something he hasn’t backed off from even as much of it has been removed from the platforms themselves. But now, Musk seems to be moving into a more troubling part of the online sphere, and he risks taking a lot of his fans with him. Last night, Musk tweeted a confusing combination of the rose symbol for the Democratic Socialists of America and the red pill meme, a Matrix reference that has become a touchstone for anti-feminist communities online. It’s hard to say what Musk meant by all this, but it was clearly taken as a dog whistle by prominent red-pille...