We’re here, we’re loud, we’re disabled and proud
I discovered Disability pride only after going to a youth Disability conference where I learned — for the first time — how it felt to be a part of the majority in the room. Now I try to create that experience for more disabled people.
In addition to my marketing role where I work on naming our products, I’m also a lead on Google’s Disability Alliance employee resource group that is made up of thousands of Googlers. As part of this community, we advocate, build awareness, and share advice around Disability topics with the goal of creating innovative and inclusive products, programs, and practices. We help people understand the larger Disability community’s principle of “Nothing about us without us”, and for any new product or program at Google, we encourage everyone to think about “Nothing without us at all.”
Through building community and sharing our stories, we show that we can live full lives not despite our disabilities, but because we have accepted those disabilities with love. For Disability Pride Month, Googlers are celebrating their disabilities as part of their identities. I’m honored to have Parinita Das and Lio Benz share their stories with us.
Partnering with the NSF on a research institute for AI to improve elderly care
From the early days of the internet to the development of the Human Genome Project, U.S. government-funded R&D has yielded remarkable progress for society, and today it is an important engine for AI research. That’s why, last year, we were proud to announce our partnership with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide $5M to support the establishment of national research institutes working in the area of Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration (HAIC). This partnership—which is part of a more than $300M NSF investment in AI Research Institutes—will create vibrant research centers across the U.S. to advance how people and AI collaborate through speech, text, gestures, and more. It also builds on our partnership with the NSF on next generation networks, and our AI research collaborations with U.S. federal agencies on weather modeling, robust AI systems, whale population monitoring, and more.
Today, we are delighted to share that NSF has selected the AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING) led by Georgia Tech, along with Carnegie Mellon University, Oregon State University, and University of Massachusetts Lowell to receive the $20M AI Institute for HAIC grant. AI-CARING will improve collaboration and communication in elderly caregiving environments by developing AI systems that adjust to the evolving personal needs and behaviors of those requiring care. With our growing research presence in Atlanta, we’re excited to build on our rich history of collaboration with Georgia Tech and its partners in this effort—most recently supporting some of these universities’ work to help vulnerable populations find important information on COVID-19 and monitoring and forecasting disease spread.
With a growing population of older adults in need of caregiving, AI systems can be useful in a variety of contexts, like conversational assistants, health sensing, and improving coordination across the care network. For example, AI can help existing voice assistants better understand people with speech impairments, and can be integrated in home bathrooms to make them more accessible. The AI-CARING Institute will develop assistive AI agents across these types of contexts to help those requiring caregiving to sustain their independence and improve their quality of life. Additionally, this research will be the product of interdisciplinary teams—with expertise across AI, geriatrics, behavioral sciences, and design—working to ensure that AI is deployed responsibly in this context, with human-centered principles in mind.
Congratulations to the recipient universities of the AI Institute awards and the faculty, listed below. We look forward to learning from the team’s research, sharing our resources and expertise, and building a collaboration to help older adults lead more independent lives and improve the quality of their care.
Recipient university institutions:
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Oregon State University
- University of Massachusetts Lowell
Faculty:
- Sonia Chernova (Georgia Tech) – PI
- Elizabeth Mynatt (Georgia Tech) – Co-PI
- Reid Simmons (Carnegie Mellon University) – Co-PI
- Kagan Tumer (Oregon State University) – Co-PI
- Holly Yanco (University of Massachusetts Lowell) – Co-PI
40 anni fa il matrimonio di Carlo e Diana. Feci una diretta alla radio. Piccola storia vintage
29 luglio 1981. Io ero un giovane DJ in una radio privata di Pavia (Pavia Radio City). Insieme a un collega, Ezio P (che non so se vuole essere ricordato in questa vicenda), ci inventammo una diretta radiofonica per coprire a modo nostro la cerimonia del matrimonio del principe Carlo e di Lady Diana Spencer.
Descrivemmo alla radio lo sfarzoso, surreale matrimonio inventandoci notizie come la minaccia dei terroristi dell’IRA di attaccare il cocchio con uno spandiletame (o un bazooka, non ricordo bene).
Avevamo come “corrispondenti da Londra” la giornalista Susan Calvin (citazione asimoviana) e, se non ricordo male, il suo collega Patrick Cargill (uno dei più perfidi Numero Due de Il Prigioniero). Erano inventati e inesistenti, facevamo finta di tradurre al volo le loro corrispondenze. In realtà guardavamo le immagini alla TV.
Eravamo insomma semplicemente due scemi che prendevano in giro la pompa magna e l’assurdità del clamore mediatico pazzesco intorno al matrimonio dei membri della famiglia reale.
Da qualche parte devo avere ancora l’audiocassetta con la registrazione. Un giorno, quando il mondo sarà pronto, la pubblicherò.
Questa è una delle poche foto che ho di quel periodo (le altre ritraggono anche persone che nel frattempo hanno acquisito una reputazione da difendere). Il foulard era contro il mal di gola. Negli anni successivi la radio ebbe attrezzature migliori (e anche DJ migliori).
Facemmo il programma e io poi tornai a casa. Mia madre, serissima, mi chiese se era stato poi acciuffato il terrorista dell’IRA. Aveva ascoltato la mia diretta :-)
Aggiornamento: ho trovato il file audio. Che faccio? Ho lanciato un sondaggio su Twitter. Finora il 73% mi propone di metterlo online, il 19% suggerisce di metterlo all’asta per beneficenza e l’8% chiede di distruggerlo per salvarci tutti :-)
Questo articolo vi arriva gratuitamente e senza pubblicità grazie alle donazioni dei lettori. Se vi è piaciuto, potete incoraggiarmi a scrivere ancora facendo una donazione anche voi, tramite Paypal (paypal.me/disinformatico) o altri metodi.
FIFA 22, Lele Adani nuovo commentatore tecnico
Audience Explorer unlocks first-party data insights
If you’re hoping to attract new advertisers and earn the most value from your first-party data, it’s critical to explain what makes your audiences special. But it often takes technical skills or data expertise to develop insights that add order and meaning to your data.
To help simplify this process and increase the value of publishers’ first-party data, in the coming weeks we’ll be launching Audience Explorer for partners using Google Ad Manager’s Audience Solutions — a suite of premium features that enable publishers to ingest, build, activate and now analyze first-party audience segments within the platform.
Audience Explorer was built to help publishers better understand and activate their first-party audience data. Without needing advanced tools or technical capabilities, publishers will be able to analyze their audience segments, develop enhanced narratives about their data and optimize their monetization strategies for both reservation and Programmatic Direct deals.
Easing access to audience insights
Audience Explorer delivers new dashboards and improved workflows that help publishers who are investing in first-party data strategies more easily understand their audiences. To ensure the new capabilities met the needs of publishers, we worked with over a dozen global partners to help develop and test the new solution.
“Macy’s Media Network uses a data-driven approach to connect our shoppers with brands through a wide range of digital advertising services. Ad Manager’s Audience Explorer tool helps us manage and scale our first party audiences to effectively plan and deliver targeted media for our advertising partners.”
– Melanie Zimmermann, Vice President, Macy’s Media Network, Macy’s
“Partnering with Ad Manager on the development of Audience Explorer has been important for our first-party data initiatives. With more than 100 million monthly active users across our 1,200+ communities, the new dashboard will help us better understand our audiences and package our inventory in new, compelling ways for our advertiser clients.”
– David Domitrovic, Director, Data Strategy & Analytics, VerticalScope
Integrating the feedback we received, Audience Explorer allows publishers to visualize and interpret their first-party data in a variety of different ways. Partners can now explore the composition and behavior of a single audience segment, compare two segments side by side, or even overlap segments to better understand the similarities or differences in membership. Here are a few different ways publishers can benefit from Audience Explorer.
Scorecard table
When an Ad Manager user navigates to Audience Solutions in the platform, they’ll now be able to click on the title of an audience segment to open the new Audience Explorer dashboard. At the top of the dashboard, users will see the segment’s Scorecard. The Scorecard provides a quick snapshot of an audience segment over a specified period of time. High-level metrics in the Scorecard, like total unique identifiers or total ad impressions, can help publishers quickly understand which segments offer enough scale for the deals they’re working on.
Pharaoh’s Conclave levels up opportunity in gaming
It’s far from just fun and (video) games: esports is a rapidly-growing $1.5 billion industry.In 2020 alone, there was a 70% increase in the number of eSports viewers in the U.S., and it’s expected to total 474 million viewers by the end of this year.There are a range of lucrative careers in the competitive video gaming industry: professional player, announcer, coach, tournament organizer and game developer and designer, just to name a few. But not everyone is exposed to these opportunities.
As a lifelong gaming enthusiast and an educator with a PhD in computer science, I was concerned that Black and Brown school-aged kids and older youth weren’t being drawn to work in technology in general and esports in particular. While Black and Latinx youth in the U.S. spend more time per day on both mobile and console games than white youth, they make up less than 6% of the professional video game industry as adults. So my husband, Erich, and I founded Pharaoh’s Conclave (PCX), a platform, league and apprenticeship program that creates pathways for meaningful careers and wealth generation for Black and Brown youth.
La Famiglia Addams: Caos in Casa, nuovo trailer di gioco
Senza troppi giri di parole: perché il razzo di Jeff Bezos è così fallico?
È inutile far finta di niente: i razzi sono da sempre considerati dei simboli fallici, visto anche il loro ruolo nel prestigio internazionale degli stati e dei privati che li fabbricano. Ma il vettore New Shepard di Jeff Bezos, che pochi giorni fa ha trasportato i suoi primi passeggeri per un breve volo suborbitale, è particolarmente fallico. Come mai?
Lo spiega molto bene, e con una punta di ironia, Scott Manley nel video qui sotto (in inglese) da 9:33 in poi: la forma è derivata da considerazioni tecniche ben precise.
La prima considerazione è il diametro: i vettori devono essere trasportabili su strada per ridurre i costi, per cui non devono essere eccessivamente larghi (il progetto Apollo, con i dieci metri di diametro del vettore Saturn V, aggirò il problema usando chiatte e aerei speciali, con costi enormi; lo stesso fece lo Shuttle). Il diametro massimo praticabile su strada è circa quattro metri, considerate le curve e i margini di sicurezza.
Anche SpaceX, con il suo Falcon 9, si ferma grosso modo a questo diametro. Il Falcon Heavy usa tre vettori affiancati, derivati dal Falcon 9, che vengono trasportati individualmente e assemblati al centro di lancio. Per la Starship, invece, SpaceX aggira il problema costruendone gli esemplari direttamente nel punto di lancio.
La seconda considerazione è l’altezza, che insieme al diametro e alla capsula (sulla quale torno tra poco) conferisce al razzo le sue proporzioni davvero simili a quelle di un pene eretto. Di solito i razzi sono più snelli e allungati, ma nel caso di New Shepard il vettore deve soltanto compiere un salto suborbitale, per cui non c’è bisogno di tantissimo propellente e quindi non servono serbatoi enormi. Visto che il diametro e il volume necessario sono parametri fissi, l’altezza relativamente modesta e la forma poco slanciata sono semplici conseguenze di questi valori.
Poi c’è la forma della capsula, con la sua sagoma stondata e il suo diametro maggiore di quello del vettore: due cose piuttosto insolite che accentuano la somiglianza genitale. Anche qui, la forma risultante deriva solo da questioni tecniche.
Infatti anche la capsula va trasportata su strada, per cui non può avere un diametro superiore ai quattro metri circa, ed è necessario massimizzare il suo volume interno per dare spazio ai passeggeri. Inoltre deve avere una forma che la renda aerodinamicamente efficiente nel fendere l’aria durante la salita ma anche aerodinamicamente stabile durante la ricaduta verso la Terra, prima dell’apertura dei paracadute. Furono considerate numerose forme, fino a trovare quella ottimale… che però somiglia moltissimo a una parte anatomica ben precisa.
Il diametro maggiorato della capsula e della sommità del razzo rispetto al resto del veicolo è dovuto ancora una volta a esigenze aerodinamiche: in cima al vettore, infatti, c’è un anello che serve per stabilizzarne la discesa, un po’ come avviene con le bombe e le loro alette, spesso accompagnate da un anello.
L’anello di New Shepard ha infatti quattro pinne stabilizzatrici retrattili e otto alette di frenata aerodinamica, anch’esse retrattili e integrate nell’anello, come si vede bene in questa foto.
Il diametro della capsula, superiore a quello del vettore, fa sì che durante l’ascesa l’anello sia coperto dalla capsula stessa e quindi non causi interferenze aerodinamiche; una volta sganciata la capsula, invece, l’anello sporge ampiamente dalla sagoma cilindrica del vettore e quindi può agire bene come apparato di stabilizzazione.
Certo, come nota anche Scott Manley, è presumibile che a un certo punto qualcuno, in qualche meeting aziendale di Blue Origin, abbia fatto notare che stavano sviluppando un razzo a forma di enorme pisello, e che questa forma era però il risultato ineluttabile della fisica e dell’ingegneria. La forma segue la funzione.
Questo articolo vi arriva gratuitamente e senza pubblicità grazie alle donazioni dei lettori. Se vi è piaciuto, potete incoraggiarmi a scrivere ancora facendo una donazione anche voi, tramite Paypal (paypal.me/disinformatico) o altri metodi.
Instagram rende privati i nuovi account sotto i 18 anni
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Expanding our cloud infrastructure to support Australia’s digital future
Even pre-pandemic, the adoption of cloud services was on the rise as organisations looked to drive digital transformation for business resilience and innovation. The impact of COVID-19 has only served to accelerate this momentum. As we continue to support the digital future of businesses, we are launching our second Australian Cloud region in Melbourne, Victoria.
In 2017 we launched our first Cloud region in Sydney and, since then, we have continued to invest and expand across Australia in an effort to support the digital future of businesses. According to AlphaBeta, Google Cloud delivers almost AU$3.2 billion in annual gross benefits to business and consumers in Australia, including AU$686 million to our customers and AU$698 million to our partners.
The Melbourne Cloud region represents one part of our continued expansion in cloud infrastructure to support Australia’s digital future, and is a strong reflection of our commitment to enabling our Cloud customers and partners to continue growing, innovating, and driving digital transformation forward in the region.
Of the launch, Victorian Minister for Government Services Danny Pearson said, “We welcome Google’s investment in local cloud infrastructure that will support the growing cloud requirements of Victorian businesses.”
Our investment in local cloud infrastructure
Melbourne joins the existing 26 Google Cloud regions connected via our high-performance global network, helping customers benefit from low latency and high performance of their cloud-based workloads and leverage the cleanest cloud in the industry. Through our second Cloud region in Australia, customers will benefit from improved business continuity planning with distributed, secure infrastructure needed to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery, all while maintaining data sovereignty in-country.
Designed for high availability, the region opens with three availability zones to protect against service disruptions; we’re the first hyperscaler to provide this capability in Melbourne today. It offers a portfolio of key products, including Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner and BigQuery.
We also continue to invest in expanding connectivity across the Australia and New Zealand region by working with partners to establish subsea cables, including INDIGO and JGA South, and points of presence in major cities including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Auckland. We also work with interconnect partners to extend the reach of our secure network.
Helping customers in the era of the transformation cloud
Navigating the past year has been challenging for Australian organisations as they grapple with changing customer demands and greater economic uncertainty. Technology has played a critical role in managing these changes, and we’ve been fortunate to partner with and serve people, companies and government institutions to help them adapt, including Australia Post, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and Optus. Hear more about what they have to say here.
A shared responsibility for quality journalism
Today we are publishing a paper that draws from our decades-long experience working with news publishers and journalists. It offers some ideas for constructive paths forward to foster the sustainability of the quality journalism that informs and strengthens communities, and elevates the essential stories in our lives. This paper includes possible areas for public policy support, such as incentive structures, innovation programs and projects to share best practices. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas, we are publishing it to contribute to the wider discussion.
Supporting journalism has always been important to Google. As a company whose mission focuses on access to information, and whose success depends in large part on having a diverse open ecosystem of quality information, we are committed to helping find a path to a sustainable future for journalism. It’s why 20 years ago, we built Google News to help connect people to stories that impact their daily lives. We launched the Google News Initiative to support news publishers in their transition to a digital world; we do this through tools, technology and significant financial support for both existing newsrooms and new, diverse online news outlets and projects. More recently, we launched Google News Showcase, through which we pay publishers to create and curate quality content for a new online news experience.
Quality journalism enables communities to learn and share essential information, establish shared, accurate understandings of key public developments, and hold elected officials and institutions to account. And in this information age it has never been more essential for democratic discourse and social well-being. But digitization has challenged the underlying commercial model. That said, ensuring a sustainable, vibrant future for quality journalism needs to be done thoughtfully, and as a collective endeavor.
Sensible public policy can be a key component to addressing these challenges; such policy will work best if it is informed by a robust dialogue among a diverse range of stakeholders including publishers, journalists, policymakers, civil society and the private sector. We must identify the underlying challenges and consider novel solutions.
In the paper we are publishing today, we discuss three foundational proposals that we believe could help inform public policy approaches to supporting the future of quality journalism:
- Convening cross-sector experts to identify focus areas and collaborate on shared solutions;
- Investing in newsroom innovation and experimentation to identify and support sustainable business models; and
- Providing support for legacy institutions as they go through the digital transformation.
There are no easy solutions to the complex set of challenges facing the news industry today, which is why we have been working for years to support legacy newsrooms and new entrants focused on providing local news and quality journalism. The challenge is urgent – and across society we must work together to create sustainable solutions to these issues.
The experiences and lessons we describe in this paper would not have been possible without the valuable input we’ve received from the news partners we have worked with and learned from over the years. While there may be no simple solution, we are eager to listen, learn more and help drive innovation to support a successful public policy approach that results in a vibrant journalism ecosystem.
