The Google Home Mini, like the Amazon Echo Dot, really started the smart speaker revolution -- and while the Google Home Mini launched in 2016, it's still humming along with more smarts than ever before. Right now at StackSocial the Google Home Mini is just $19.99 -- nearly 60% off its original $49.95 price tag. The big appeal of the Home Mini is adding the Google Assistant to your room. You can ask for your favorite music, a trivia game show to entertain the children and even questions. The assistant knows how far Earth is from the sun and the weather in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alike.

As artificially intelligent machines get smarter, their complex algorithms are getting more opaque, resulting in a black box. We don't know how the algorithm works, how a specific decision is made. The gaps in knowledge have powerful implications. How can we as designers bridge this gap, bring transparency and trust in our relationship with machines? The discussion around explainable AI (XAI) has focused on the technical challenge of interpretability.

Black Friday itself might be done and dusted but the best deals for 2019 will continue all weekend, plus Cyber Monday deals are just around the corner. That's good news for anyone late to the sales party as that means there's still a significant amount of savings to be had. You'll find those savings everywhere and anywhere, both at big box retailers like Best Buy, Walmart and Target as well as online at Amazon, NewEgg and B&H Photo. So when does Black Friday well and truly end? Admittedly, some deals were for Black Friday only and sold out within minutes or hours, but many deals started a few days before Black Friday and will continue through to Cyber Monday after Thanksgiving. There are many different kinds of deals coming up from laptops to phones to AirPods (although the latter is heading quickly out of stock). We've sadly had little in the way of a cracking Nintendo Switch Black Friday deal, and even the PS4 deals - while they have existed, and haven't been too bad - were more scarce than we expected. But, based on what we saw on Friday, there's a lot more to come. If you're thinking about a deal at the moment, or you're scared it will go cheaper on Cyber Monday, then our advice is simple: if it has a good discount attached to it, go for it! If you later find the product is cheaper elsewhere, you can always buy it again and return the original. Just make sure to check the retailer's terms and conditions for returning items. It's basically been Apple products that have been the winners - with $400 cashback on an iPhone 11, lower prices on AirPods and Apple Watches and MacBook / iPads being cheaper than ever before, it's been (and still is) the time to grab yourself a bargain. There's more in there too - Dyson has been popular for Black Friday 2019, DNA kits have been a surprise package and we've even seen great discount on power tools as well. Anyway, enough of telling you what you're getting, and onto the deals themselves - and if you want something more than what we've scavenged from the depths of the web, here are all the top Black Friday sales from around the web first: HP Laptop 15t: $979.99 $519.99 from HP This HP laptop is a phenomenal price and comes with a 15-inch display paired with a powerful 10th gen Intel Core i7 processor to power the whole thing. Perfect for fitness fanatics, the Powerbeats Pro offer an adjustable ear hook design that keeps your buds firmly in place.

It took senior editor Nicole Lee a bit of time to figure out where the Google Nest Hub (originally the Google Home Hub) fit into her life because it seemed too small to be used like a typical home assistant device. At a mere 7 inches, the smart display is meant to be a personal assistant for any room of the house. Because the Nest Hub lacks a camera, it's even good for the bedroom. Once Nicole started using the Nest Hub like a digital photo frame, albeit one with the smarts to control home automated devices that can also use Google apps, she began to see the strengths of this discreet commected display. In the end, she granted the Nest Hub a commendable score of 87. User reviewers, who always tend to score more harshly, gave the Nest Hub a passable score of 72.

Filings with the FCC provide more details on an anticipated addition to Google's smart home product lineup. As reported by 9to5Google, the filings seem to reveal some features of the yet-to-be-announced Nest mini -- the newest addition to the company's smart speaker lineup, not to be confused the the Google Home Mini. According to images in the filing, the device is wall-mounted and contains a cutout on the side rim of the speaker which is suspected to be a space for a headphone jack -- a feature reportedly being mulled according to prior reports from 9to5Google. A headphone port would allow the device to hook up to external audio sources like a laptop or computer and would also mimic a similar hardware design from the Echo Dot, Amazon's popular smart speaker. It's still unclear whether the cutout is indeed a place for a headphone jack as noted by The Verge which suggests the space could also be the location of the device's mute switch.

It's that time of year when football fans across the country get ready to cheer on their favorite professional and college teams. Aside from keeping tabs on the game from your big screen or mobile phone, you can also rely on Google Assistant to you be in the know this season. Google Assistant is similar to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri and can help you keep track of everything you need to bring to your game day tailgate while staying up-to-date on the latest scores from your favorite teams. To engage with the smart speaker, say, "Hey Google," or "OK, Google," and ask your question. There's no need to repeat the greeting during a conversation because Google Assistant can hold a continuous conversation.

You ever get the feeling no one is actually listening to you? Because if they were listening, you wouldn't have to constantly repeat everything you've said. Well, Google Home is your answer to that frustration. Because Google Home is always listening. No, Google home is more just… there.

"Hey Google, what are you?" If you want to witness the unfolding of an AI-fueled existential crisis, that's the question to ask your Google Home Mini. Google won't panic, it will just cheerfully tell you, "I'm your Google assistant." Then, if you're lucky, it may offer up some interesting facts for your enjoyment. But you'll still be no closer to answering your original question than you once were.

If you've taken the leap and added this cute little button of a machine to your smart home arsenal, congratulations! The Google Home Mini is about to revolutionize your life in ways you probably haven't realized it was even capable of yet. While you won't ever get the same sound quality out of the Google Home Mini as you could expect from it's OG sibling (the Google Home), it is comparable in pretty much every other way. Fun fact: If you've got multiple Google devices within earshot (your phone, the Google Home, a few Google Home Minis…) and they all hear you call out an "OK, Google," or "Hey, Google," at once, they'll sync up to ensure only one replies. And that's just the beginning of what this mini smart speaker is capable of.

If you haven't hopped aboard the smart speaker train, now is as good a time as any, as there are two relatively inexpensive ones on the market today--the Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot. If you're looking for a device that can play music, give you the weather, and operate your smart gadgets, you may have been eyeballing these small-but-mighty smart speakers. The question is, though, which one is better? How do the features compare? There are distinct differences in how each speaker--the Echo Dot, left, and Google Home Mini--lights up when given a command.