Google unveiled its Pixel 4 smartphone and other new Made By Google hardware at an event Tuesday morning in New York City. Other products included a cheaper Pixelbook, more capable mesh WiFi system and a preview of new Google Buds earbuds coming next year.
Why it matters: Google intends for the Pixel to directly compete with Apple's iPhone and, while past versions have received positive reviews, it remains a relatively minor player in the smartphone market.
Current machine learning models aren't yet up to the task of distinguishing false news reports, two new papers by MIT researchers show.
The big picture: After different researchers showed that computers can convincingly generate made-up news stories without much human oversight, some experts hoped that the same machine-learning-based systems could be trained to detect such stories. But MIT doctoral student Tal Schuster's studies show that, while machines are great at detecting machine-generated text, they can't identify whether stories are true or false.
A pro-Trump meme maker also known as “Carpe Donktum” was briefly suspended from Twitter on Monday, after a violent parody aired during a conference at President Trump’s Miami-area golf resort depicting Trump stabbing and shooting media outlets and political opponents in the “Church of Fake News.”
Why it matters: Both the account holder and Twitter say the ban was due to a copyright issue. It's a bannable offense to re-upload older content previously removed from Twitter, which was what Donktum did Monday morning in response to the video's controversy, The Verge reports.
The American Trucking Association said the trucking industry saw a 68% increase in the number of female drivers from 2010 to 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Why it matters: The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the economy will need more truckers as the demand for goods increases. With the labor market continuing to tighten, employers are hiring from demographic groups that have not traditionally been associated with trucking.
Uber's ongoing layoffs continued Monday, with the company announcing cuts of about 350 employees across multiple units, including food delivery service Eats and its autonomous driving unit ATG, TechCrunch first reported and Uber confirmed to Axios.
Why it matters: This is the 3rd wave of layoffs in recent months at the company, which has been trying to cut costs and show investors a clearer path to eventual profitability. Uber's stock price, which is still not back to IPO levels, went up 4% on the news.
An ad by Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign that says Facebook has endorsed President Trump (before admitting the claim is a lie) is having its intended effect: raising tough questions about Facebook's policy of allowing politicians to make any claims they want.
Why it matters: Facebook has spent much of the last 2 years talking about its efforts to protect elections. But while Facebook is cracking down on foreign interference and deliberate voter suppression, it is giving political candidates carte blanche to distort and deceive.
