Google has placed a virtual assistant at the heart of its latest smartphones and first voice-activated speaker. The two Pixel handsets are the first mobiles to trigger Google Assistant by pressing their home buttons, somewhat like Apple's Siri. The Home speaker lets the same artificial intelligence tool be controlled without use of a touchscreen. Google also unveiled new virtual reality kit and a 4K media streamer. However, the US company will have to overcome privacy concerns and convince users that chatting to a virtual assistant has advantages over using individual apps.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The star of Google's splashy launch event in San Francisco was the one with the speaking part: The super-smart digital helper Assistant whose task is to maintain the Internet giant's tight grip on consumers and their wallets as their attention shifts to smartphones and Internet-connected devices. Assistant will create a "two-way conversation between our users and Google," CEO Sundar Pichai said at a splashy launch event in San Francisco. The goal: "a personal Google for each and every user," Pichai said. At Tuesday's coming out party for Assistant, Google introduced two new devices, Amazon Echo competitor Google Home and Pixel smartphones as vessels to show off what Assistant can do and "get Assistant in the hands of our users," Pichai said. Google will now focus on this intersection of hardware and software, Rick Osterloh, chief of the company's new hardware division, told reporters.

Google Home has removable base accessories. NEW YORK--The inevitable showdown between Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant is getting closer. Google said Tuesday that its voice-activated Google Home speaker, the company's answer to Amazon's popular Echo speaker, will go on sale Nov. 4 for 129. Google Home is coming to the U.S. only at first, and will be sold in the online Google Play Store, as well as at Target, Walmart and Best Buy; Google starts taking preorders today. Home is a showcase for the newly unleashed Google Assistant, an artificial intelligence-infused virtual assistant that wouldn't feel out of place hanging out with other digital assistants, notably Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

The Pixel and Pixel XL may look new on the outside, but just like grandma says, it's what's inside that counts. Google has tweaked the underlying software that powers the Pixels, baking its AI Assistant directly into the phones and launching them with Nougat 7.1. Assistant is Google's conversational AI helper, similar to Microsoft's Cortana or Apple's Siri. Assistant's machine learning capabilities already power Allo, Google's mobile-only messaging app, and it also shows up in products like Google Home. In Allo, Assistant allows users to search for things like directions, restaurant suggestions and weather conditions with conversational phrases, and it even suggests responses (a la Inbox).

During its hardware-announcing extravaganza Google announced that its voice-powered assistant/Bluetooth speaker Google Home will cost 129 and will ship on November 4th. It's the stationary piece of Google's AI plans to make the platform all about you. "The goal is to build a personal Google for each and every user," CEO Sundar Pichai said. Like the Amazon Alexa platform, the voice-activated Google Home assistant will control connected home devices. But it also acts as a Chromecast that can stream and be used to control other Google casting devices with your voice.

This paper makes a small modification to a standard CNN architecture to improve results with small datasets. This shows a good improvement on CIFAR10/100 when trained with 40% of the data (usually 2-6%). I wish the authors shared their code though. They specifically mention using keras, so it's cant be more than a few hundred lines of python.

Google is betting that "Made By Google" will matter in the hardware market as it rolled out a pair of high-end smartphones using its Pixel brand. The real pitch: Google can integrate hardware and software with artificial intelligence at the core. CNET: Pixel and Pixel XL unveiled: Google's post-Nexus phones come out swinging What remains to be seen is how tech buyers will value Google as a hardware player and whether they'll pay up for devices promising an integrated experience from the search giant. After all, the Pixel devices start at 649. Rest assured that the Alphabet's Google is giving another run at hardware.

It's happened at the last two parties I've gone to in the Bay Area: At a certain point in the evening, a group of women ends up sitting together, forming a slightly closed-off circle. Maybe a single dude is hanging around, standing at the periphery. He'll interject once in a while, but there's not much he can add here: It's time to talk birth control. Those NuvaRing commercials where a gaggle of girl pals trades info about insertion and ease of use come off cloying and cliche, but … man. These conversations happen everywhere, and they reflect a big gap in information available about birth control methods.