Google has been attacked over reported plans to launch a "censored" search engine in China. Amnest International has launched a petition against the plans, arguing that the apparently launch should be cancelled. Human rights campaigners claim developing a specifically censored search engine would be in conflict with the company's values and that it will limit freedom of expression. They also point out that Google's own staff appear to disagree with the plans. There are a lot of Easter Eggs hidden in Chrome, and more and more are discovered each year.

Dozens of Google employees are speaking out against the company's plan to build a special search engine for China. The employees have joined with Amnesty International, urging Google to cancel the project. The company's plan calls for a search engine that would comply with China's policy of online censorship, often known as the Great Firewall. JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: The Chinese blogger known as Super Vulgar Butcher used to post about the government's abuses of power. His blog became quite popular.

Amnesty International are holding protests across the globe today calling for an end to Googles plan of censoring their search engine in China. Demonstrations will take place outside Googles HQ's in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia,Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, The Netherlands and Spain. It was revealed that Google secretly built the censored search engine, code-named Dragonfly, to blacklist certain words such as'human rights' and'student protest'. Amnesty have launched a petition to stop works on the'dystopian' platform which are said to launch in China between January and April 2019. The human rights group say that the move would'set a dangerous precedent for tech companies enabling rights abuses by governments.'

More than half of parents struggle to keep up with the costs of the latest technology for their kids, it has emerged. Of 2,000 parents polled, one third admitted "going without" themselves in order to buy the latest products for their children. The study also found 37 per cent save all year to ensure their little ones have the same high-tech gadgets as their mates. How technology brought the #MeToo movement to India Over 75% of grandparents'learn about technology from grandchildren' Technology transforms how dogs sniff out poached African ivory But while eight in 10 parents feel'under pressure' to make sure their kid has the latest technology, seven in 10 have refused to buy brand new due to the sky-high price tags. And 38 per cent have opted for refurbished kit instead.

SAN FRANCISCO – Eleven employees comprising engineers and managers at Alphabet Inc.'s Google published an open letter on Tuesday, demanding that the company end development of a censored search engine for Chinese users, escalating earlier protests over the secretive project. Google has described the search app, known as Project Dragonfly, as an experiment not close to launching. But as details of it have leaked since August, current and former employees, human rights activists and U.S. lawmakers have criticized Google for not taking a harder line against the Chinese government's policy that politically sensitive results be blocked. Human rights group Amnesty International also launched a public petition on Tuesday calling on Google to cancel Dragonfly. The organization said it would encourage Google workers to sign the petition by targeting them on LinkedIn and protesting outside Google offices.

CHIBA – A 75-year-old man operating a Japanese language school has been found dead at his apartment in Chiba Prefecture, prompting police to launch a murder investigation. The body of Jiro Iwai, who managed the school as well as other companies, was found around 1:30 p.m. Sunday when a female employee visited his home to find him dead and bleeding from a wound to the head. Investigative sources said Iwai, who lived alone in an apartment in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, was likely struck multiple times in the killing. An autopsy showed he may have died of damage to his spinal cord. But despite the violent death, police said there were no signs of a struggle and that a light in the room where he was killed had been left on.

Our customers are living in a data-driven world and the volume of information they generate is growing exponentially. As a result, companies are increasingly investing in the hardware, software, and services needed to gain actionable insights from their data. By 2022, the total addressable market for artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and big data is expected to grow to approximately $160 billion.[1] However, according to Gartner, by 2020 half of organizations will lack sufficient AI and data literacy skills needed to extract business value from their data, and they are already demanding easier-to-implement, faster-to-deploy, and more cost-effective solutions for AI/ML and big data analytics.[2] Today, HPE announced that we are acquiring BlueData, a leading provider of AI/ML and big data analytics infrastructure software, which will significantly expand our footprint in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence and big data analytics space.

Controversies around race and machine learning have sparked debate among computer scientists over how to design machine learning systems that guarantee fairness. These debates rarely engage with how racial identity is embedded in our social experience, making for sociological and psychological complexity. This complexity challenges the paradigm of considering fairness to be a formal property of supervised learning with respect to protected personal attributes. Racial identity is not simply a personal subjective quality. For people labeled "Black" it is an ascribed political category that has consequences for social differentiation embedded in systemic patterns of social inequality achieved through both social and spatial segregation. In the United States, racial classification can best be understood as a system of inherently unequal status categories that places whites as the most privileged category while signifying the Negro/black category as stigmatized. Social stigma is reinforced through the unequal distribution of societal rewards and goods along racial lines that is reinforced by state, corporate, and civic institutions and practices. This creates a dilemma for society and designers: be blind to racial group disparities and thereby reify racialized social inequality by no longer measuring systemic inequality, or be conscious of racial categories in a way that itself reifies race. We propose a third option. By preceding group fairness interventions with unsupervised learning to dynamically detect patterns of segregation, machine learning systems can mitigate the root cause of social disparities, social segregation and stratification, without further anchoring status categories of disadvantage.

Hundreds of Google employees have signed an open letter published Tuesday on Medium demanding that the company cease work on Project Dragonfly, which is aimed at creating a search engine that the Chinese government would be able to control to censor certain results and surveil users. "International human rights organizations and investigative reporters have also sounded the alarm, emphasizing serious human rights concerns and repeatedly calling on Google to cancel the project," the letter reads in part. "So far, our leadership's response has been unsatisfactory." Google has kept much of Project Dragonfly under wraps, but news outlets like the Intercept have obtained documents revealing some of the details. The search engine reportedly would block websites having to do with democracy and political dissidents and also blacklist terms like "human rights." One of the prototypes also reportedly has the capability to link searches to users' phone numbers.

A security guard stands in front of Google's booth at the China International Import Expo earlier this month in Shanghai. A security guard stands in front of Google's booth at the China International Import Expo earlier this month in Shanghai. Several Google employees have gone public with their opposition to the tech giant's plans for building a search engine tailored to China's censorship demands. The project, code-named Dragonfly, would block certain websites and search terms determined by the Chinese government -- a move that, according to a growing number of workers at Google, is tantamount to enabling "state surveillance." "We are among thousands of employees who have raised our voices for months. International human rights organizations and investigative reporters have also sounded the alarm, emphasizing serious human rights concerns and repeatedly calling on Google to cancel the project," said the letter's signatories, whose group initially numbered nine employees but has ballooned since its publication on Medium.