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TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO,  a young Indian engineer named Sundar Pichai boarded a plane for the first time, to fly to Pittsburgh. Thursday, he returned to Pittsburgh as CEO of Google, and announced plans to give away $1 billion. The money will go to projects that offer training and career coaching to people short on skills for a rapidly digitizing economy where businesses and their workers need fluency in coding, mobile apps, and social media to compete. Google says it has already given out $100 million of the total to nonprofits, including $10 million to Goodwill, for a program offering digital-skills training. A "Grow With Google tour" will spin up training events staffed by Google employees across the country, after Pittsburgh comes Indianapolis. “The nature of work is fundamentally changing,” Pichai said in a blog post today. “It’s a big problem and, at Google, whenever we see a big problem, we ask how we can make it easier for everyone to solve it.” It’s arguable ...

WHITE-COLLAR AUTOMATION HAS  become a common buzzword in debates about the growing power of computers, as software shows potential to take over some work ofaccountants and lawyers. Artificial-intelligence researchers at Google are trying to automate the tasks of highly paid workers more likely to wear a hoodie than a coat and tie—themselves. In a project called AutoML, Google’s researchers have taught machine-learning software to build machine-learning software. In some instances, what it comes up with is more powerful and efficient than the best systems the researchers themselves can design. Google says the system recently scored a record 82 percent at categorizing images by their content. On the harder task of marking the location of multiple objects in an image, an important task for augmented reality and autonomous robots, the auto-generated system scored 43 percent. The best human-built system scored 39 percent. Such results are significant because the experti...

EARLIER THIS YEAR,  when Microsoft showed off its new Surface Pro laptop, one part of the device stood out. The sleek tablet-PC hybrid was made, predictably, out of aluminum and glass, but its keyboard was covered in a soft-suede like fabric. Alcantara, specifically, the same material used in cars and designer handbags. “Everyone we showed had the same reaction: Whoa, that’s cool,” says Ralf Groene, head of industrial design for Microsoft devices. “And then some people got concerned. They said, you can't put fabric on laptops; no one puts fabric on laptops.” For the most part, that's been true. But recently, textiles have begun creeping into consumer electronics in a very real way. Earlier this month, Google showed off a line of products, a few of which were also covered in knitted fabric. Wrapped around the Google Home Mini and Max is a soft polyester-nylon fabric that the company developed from scratch. “Someone described these products as frien...

EVERY 95 MINUTES,  the Chinese satellite Zhuhai-1 02 makes a full pass around the planet, its solar-panel arms extending from its boxy body as it observes Earth. Sometimes, its path takes it over Pueblo, Colorado. There, more than 300 miles below, Mike Coletta’s receiving station can pick up Zhuhai’s transmissions. Because as sophisticated as space technology is, the terrestrial tech necessary to make contact with celestial satellites is surprisingly low. Coletta just has four TV antennas—the kind that look like 2-D pine trees—each pointed in a cardinal direction. They’re bolted into place along garage beams, a patio post, and the rooftop of his house. Inside his home office, on Tuesday, Coletta waits for Zhuhai's signals to appear. He sits in front of a laptop and an iPad, a big shelved monitor hovering above. Coletta has, since 2012, spent his free time eavesdropping on the sky, picking up satellite signals—signals that, for the most part, were never meant for hi...

MOST OF THE  time, I navigate to my social media appsreflexively, as though my finger and the icons are magnets. I don't even realize I'm doing it until my thumb taps the Instagram icon on my screen. Again. And again. And again. It’s a dirty digital habit, and it doesn’t make me happy. Maybe you can relate. Studies have repeatedly found that whilesocial media connects us to one another, it also makes us feel bad. And yet, we do it anyway. We do it because we can’t stop. So last month, I tried something new. I logged out of mysocial media accounts on my phone, and logged into them on my desktop. I set myself a goal to only engage with Facebook,Twitter, and Instagram on my laptop or work computer, hopefully offloading my biggest time suck to devices that I’m only around for part of the day. And you know what? It’s actually sort of working. Slowly, and with some lapses, I’ve felt my compulsory need to look atsocial media fade. In...

THIS WEEK SAW  a tragic start, when late Sunday night a man named Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas. Hoaxes and conspiracy theoriesflooded the internet in the immediate aftermath, as did questions—since answered—around how Paddock was able to fire at automatic speeds. We also took a look at gun-control tech—but didn't find much that's promising. There's at least a little levity—although more tragicomic, really—in Yahoo announcing that its one-billion account leak in 2013 was actually a three-billion account leak. You also might enjoy this handy guide to when Donald Trump is tweeting, and when one of his staffers has commandeered his account. Also, the Department of Energy's email about not leaking leaked, so that's fun. OK, back to terrible things. There's been an alarming rise incyberattacks against abortion clinics lately. Another NSA contractor let critical data slip. The Equifax leak took on a ...

YOU ALREADY GET  a Star Wars movie every year. Star Trek is coming at you from at least two directions. A good chunk of the Marvel movies are basically space opera. Bigscreen fascination with science fiction and fantasy is nothing new—but now you can add the many flavors of TV network, from legacy broadcast to basic cable to streamers. Forget comic books; somehow, SF/F novels have become Hollywood’s hottest IP. Some highlights of what may be on its way: Amazon is making Neal Stephenson’s  Snow Crash  and Larry Niven’s Ringworld , and a show based on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's  Good Omens  is in production. Universal is doingHugh Howey’s  Sand , Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven series, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s  Sirens of Titan  (with  Community  genius Dan Harmon at the helm), and Roger Zelazny’s  Lord of Light , a.k.a. the movie that the CIA  pretended  to be making when they ...

ADAM SAVAGE IS  known as the long-time co-host of MythBusters , and he currently helps run the science and technology website Tested. His latest project is a science fiction interview show called  Syfy25: Origin Stories , which he produced in partnership with Syfy. “Science fiction has meant so much to me over the years that the minute it got mentioned to me I was like, ‘Yeah! I’m in,'” Savage says in Episode 276 of the  Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Guests include showrunners like Ron Moore and David X. Cohen, authors like Neil Gaiman and Nnedi Okorafor, and media personalities like Chris Hardwick and Kevin Smith. The show celebrates the rich history of sci-fi across various media, and also explores the power of science fiction stories to make people think. “It acts as a Trojan horse,” Savage says. “This was a constant refrain that my guests kept mentioning, that science fiction can bypass people’s normal partisan filters.” Sci-fi has always faced h...

Thousands of magazines available to read right now The way we consume our media is changing. You’d be hard pushed not to know someone who has a subscription to Netflix or Spotify. That’s because these all-you-can-eat subscription services offer what you want to watch and listen to on-demand and in an instant. And now there’s a service that caters for the ultimate in content connoisseurs, the magazine reader. Readly offers thousands of magazines to read, on-demand, as many times you want for a monthly subscription fee.  There’s unlimited access to over 2,300 magazines at your fingertips - which means you can have a whole newsstand in your pocket, ready to digest at your own convenience.  And here’s the best bit: Readly is available for just £7.99 a month. So, if you currently buy on average two magazines a month then this service really is the ultimate no brainer.  Oh, and there’s more. Readly isn’t just available to you - it’s available on up to five devices...

This brand-new edition to the Echo family is a fun, versatile video device The Amazon Echo Spot was one of the more surprising reveals at Amazon's big Echo event, which saw a new redesigned Amazon Echo, a supercharged Amazon Echo Plus and the Amazon Show coming to the UK. The Echo Spot is a cross between an Echo Dot and a smaller version of the Amazon Show. It's a device that is extremely versatile – so much that Amazon hasn't really badged what it is. It's a smart alarm, a device to read messages and make video calls... it's also lovely looking. Spot as an alarm clock Unfortunately we didn't get a full hands-on with the Amazon Echo Spot as the devices at Amazon's event were in demo mode, but what we saw was impressive. Looks-wise, it's a little chunkier than your average smart camera. The screen is small, at 2.5 inches, but it's nice and bright. The design of the Spot is one of the best we've seen from Amazon, though. It's cert...