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Timnit Gebru

Two Google engineers resigned after the company fired AI researcher, Timnit Gebru

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A lot of disputes have been taking place in Alphabet Inc’s Google regarding ethics and work culture among the company’s employees. The intensity of the situation has been rattled as two engineers of Google resigned after the company dismissed the AI researcher Timnit Gebru. From the engineering department, one engineering director and a software developer quit Google and it’s a sign of not approving of the departure of Timnit Gebru.

Diversity and ethics have become a point of conflict on Google for some time now as David Baker, an employee of Google resigned last month. He worked at Google for sixteen years and during his departure, he said that Gebru’s dismissal “extinguished my desire to continue as a Googler”(witnessed by Reuters). David Baker worked as a director in the user safety division in Google. He also mentioned that the environment of Google was acting against the belief of diversity though it claimed otherwise. His exact words were “We cannot say we believe in diversity, and then ignore the conspicuous absence of many voices from within our walls.”

Resignation of Kannan

Vinesh Kannan, a software engineer who worked at Google resigned on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he tweeted about his resignation and that Google mistreated Timnit Gebru. He also mentioned April Christina Curley, an ex-employee of Google who claimed that she was wrongly fired by the company. The dismissal of April took place last year which means that the tension regarding diversity in work culture is going on in Google for a long time. Kannan also mentioned that both of them were wrong but Google declined to comment on this. The company has assured that it is trying its best to restore trust between the company and its employees, also it disputes April’s accusations.

Why the sudden disputes?

The tension regarding the departure of Timnit has been growing for the last few months. The workers in Google have demanded academic freedom and management commitments in the company’s research organization. In December, around 2,600 employees of Google signed a letter supporting Timnit, and last month more than 800 people joined a union to bring advancement in workplace protection.

The story of Timnit Gebru

Timnit Gebru is one of the most leading Black women who have a very impactful contribution in the field of ethical AI. Last year, Timnit was promoted by Google as the co-leader of a group focussed on ethical AI due to her remarkable performance in annual employee appraisal. After she was promoted, Jeff Dean, head of Google AI, only made a single comment regarding what she and her team are supposed to focus on. He mentioned that Timnit and her team should look forward to building software for processing human language that should abide by the AI principles of the company.

Timnit Gebru
Image Source: miro.medium.com

There was an exchange of email conversations between Timnit and Jeff during October 2020. Timnit informed Jeff that her team was working on a paper which was regarding the same area of understanding the complexity of language while Jeff told her that he would be interested in reading it. And, after six weeks of that conversation, Timnit was surprisingly fired by Google. She was on her vacation when she received the news.

Explaining Timnit’s departure

After Timnit was fired by Google, Jeff tried to explain the situation to his other employees. Jeff mentioned that the paper she and her team was working on didn’t meet the publication bar of the company. He also mentioned that the paper was missing relevant information regarding the recent improvements done in this field. While Timnit’s superiors tried to convince her to retract the paper Google’s Research team mentioned that the previous works of authors who claimed benefits of large language models were not scrutinized properly before approval. This created a lot of fuss questioning Google’s scrutiny process.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos To Quit as the CEO of Amazon by the End of Third Quarter of 2021

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The former richest man in the world, and the founder of the largest e-Commerce business, Amazon, Jeff Bezos has announced he’s stepping down as the CEO of Amazon. Bezos on Tuesday told its 1.3 million employees through an e-mail that he would be stepping down from his position of CEO of Amazon by the end of the third quarter of this year. After leaving his post as the CEO, he will join as the executive chairman of the board of directors of the company. On the other hand, Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon’s cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS), will replace Bezos as the CEO of Amazon.

More About Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world. He is a 57 years old American entrepreneur who founded Amazon on July 5, 1994. The company started as a seller of music and videos and became public only in three years of its founding. Today, the company is one of the biggest players in the online selling and purchasing business, offering major sales in grocery to electronics. Along with e-Commerce, the company is a major cloud computing provider, and the subsidiary that provides the service is called AWS (Amazon Web Service).

Jeff Bezos
Image Source: cnbc.com

Other than that, Amazon’s products and services include Kindle, FireTv, Alexa, Amazon Prime, Amazon Drive, Echo, Amazon Wireless, etc. Last year the company recorded a total sales of $386 Billion, 38% more than its sales in 2019. Jeff Bezos, too, for the past three consecutive years has been named as the richest person in the world by Forbes, having $202 billion net worth in 2020. Though this year he was replaced by the Tesla supremo Elon Musk.

What the Letter Said

Amazon’s current CEO, Jeff Bezos, announced he’s stepping down as the CEO of Amazon through an e-mail. He wrote, “I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.” In the letter, he talked about his 27 years of journey with Amazon and mentioned all the hard work put by his 1.3 million employees into the growth of the company.

Addressing his employees, he said, “I find my work meaningful and fun. I get to work with the smartest, most talented, most ingenious teammates. When times have been good, you’ve been humble. When times have been tough, you’ve been strong and supportive, and we’ve made each other laugh. It is a joy to work on this team.” He even talked about how Amazon has been helping the world with innovation, and about the rise in competition in this field, that too, inspired by Amazon only. He also wrote that the company like now will be focusing on new products and services for the people.

Not the End

Though Bezos is quitting as the CEO, he will be chairing the board of executives of the company. Also, being the major shareholder in Amazon, he will have most of the company’s operations under his control. On the other hand, the upcoming CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, has been working with Amazon since 1997 and has played a major role in the growth of AWS. About Andy Bezos said that since Andy has been working with Amazon since the beginning, everyone inside Amazon is familiar with him and Bezos has all the confidence in Andy.

The reaction of the Rivals

Amazon’s major rivals, including Sunder Pichai from Google, Marc Benioff from SalesForcea, and Satya Nadela the CEO of Microsoft, congratulated Bezos on joining as the chairman of the board of directors of Amazon. Sunder Pichai toasted Bezos for his two major projects Day 1 and the Earth Fund through his official Twitter account. Satya Nadela also took it to Twitter to congratulate the new Chairman and the upcoming CEO of Amazon for their new job roles. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce also expressed his joy by writing on Twitter that Amazon could not be in better hands.

Google Stadia

Google announced the shut down of Stadia in-house game development studios

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On 1st Feb 2021, Google announced to shut down its internal game development for Stadia for not being able to meet high rising costs of the same. “Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” said Phil Harrison, VP, and general manager of Google Stadia, in a blog post. From now on, Google’s game streaming service will be entirely dependent on the titles of other external game developers and game publishers. It is really unfortunate to witness the internal cloud-based game streaming service of Google shut down within a couple of years.

When Stadia was launched in 2019, the internal game development unit was expected to make titles for the service. But, with a heavy chest, the company has declared yesterday about shutting the internal game development unit. The in-house game development is costly and monetarily the company is not planning to invest in it. Phil Harrison also mentioned that Jade Raymond, Head of Google Stadia’s Games and Entertainment, will quit the company.

About Google Stadia

Google Stadia is a platform where one can play any online modern games using your smart devices. One doesn’t need to download or install the Stadia platform. Anyone who wants to play online games on Stadia can do it from television using a Chromecast Ultra, desktop, laptop, smartphone ( currently Pixel 3 and 3a models). If one has an internet speed of at least 35Mbps, Google Stadia can stream 4K resolution gameplay with HDR at 60fps.

Google Stadia
Image Source: pcgamer.com

In 2019, the company revealed the full online gaming platform where it provides two different options for playing games. One needs to buy a $10 per month Stadia Pro subscription. The user can either access Stadia’s game library on a remote server or can download and install the games on the computer. Some of the available games on Google Stadia are Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle, Baldur’s Gate 3, Borderlands 3, Cake Bash, Celeste, Crayta, The Crew 2, etc.

Future prospect of Google Stadia

Google launched the Stadia platform with the hope to stream online games across the globe. The best advantage of playing in Google Stadia is you don’t have to download or install any software and have access to the game anywhere and anytime. Recently with the success of Cyberpunk 2077, Google Stadia has proved the flexibility of this online game streaming service at a global level. Though the internal game development studio has been shut down, Google will still invest in the Stadia platform to give its users and potential customers the best cloud gaming experience ever. In the blog post by Harrison, he also mentioned that Google Stadia will still work to stream games on every possible screen in the future.

Google Stadia in 2021 has plans to invest and help the independent game developers take advantage of the Stadia platform and deliver their games directly to the players. Stadia’s gaming infrastructures are impressive and thus Google here has an opportunity to partner with interested gaming companies who want a streaming service for their games. In this way, Stadia can become a long-term sustainable solution for many game developers out there and big enterprises in the gaming industry as well. The internal development team, SDG&E will move to different roles in the Stadia. Currently, Google Stadia will focus more on establishing strong partnerships.

Other gaming opportunities

With Google Stadia’s in-house game development shutting down, new opportunities are also rising simultaneously in other companies. Asus in partnership with AFK Gaming has launched the ROG Academy Programme in India. This new program is bringing immense opportunities for all the budding game developers to participate in this contest and win existing opportunities. The gaming culture is constantly evolving in India and abroad thus opening new windows of opportunities and taking gaming seriously as a profession. The independent game developers can also use Google Stadia to stream their games and deliver them to the users if they are good enough. With time, more chances will come in the way of game developers in the upcoming years.

Asus ROG Academy Programme

Asus to recruit six gaming candidates in India for ROG Academy Program.

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Who would have thought a decade earlier that gaming would become a profession in our country? There are many gaming enthusiasts out there who are working hard to make their passion turn into professions. And, gamers are certainly one of them. To help the potential professional gamers of India, Asus has publicly announced the recruitment of six gamers in India to join the ROG Academy Programme.

Asus through their ROG Academy Programme will train these gamers at a professional level so that they can represent the brand both locally and globally. This program will help the best gamers in India to showcase their talent and pursue gaming as e-sports players professionally. Asus will arrange this program with the support from AFK Gaming to provide adequate and proper tutelage to these budding gamers of India.

Asus ROG Academy Program

ROG Academy Programme is a one-year long program divided into four quarterly sessions. This program focuses on the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, one of the most popular games in esports. Registration for this program will go on from 1st February to 10th February 2021. After rigorous selection procedures, six final candidates will be selected. These final candidates will get Rs 1,00,000 after completing three-month training and a monthly stipend of Rs 15,000 with a bonus during these three months.

Asus ROG Academy Program
Image Source: asus.in/ROG-academy

Gadgets 360 spoke to Arnold Su, Asus India’s Business Head, and Siddharth Nayyar, Co-founder, and Director of AFK Gaming to get detailed insight about this initiative in India and about the selection process. Based on the questions Gadgets 360 asked them, here is more information about the ROG Academy Programme and the future of esports in India.

Growth potential in terms of the overall gaming market in India

According to Arnold Su (AS), computer gaming can be divided into two sections, hardware, and software. In India, PC gaming has been booming since 2016 increasing the sale of PC gaming units to almost 9 folds in 2020. And, when it comes to e-sports, there are around 17 million active spectators in our country. ROG is mainly focussing on investing in the youths of India. The gaming culture has improved as the data plans have become affordable but still, infrastructure for e-sports has huge rooms for improvements.

Siddharth Nayyar (SN) says that the gaming market, in general, is growing a lot and that people are switching from mobiles to PC gaming for a better experience. More engagement can be expected in the competitive gaming space as companies like Riot and Valve are investing in the e-sports space.

What does the program plan on achieving?

Asus has been conducting ROG tournaments in India since 2017 so there is a scope to find more talents. During the pandemic, the ROG Showdown tournaments attracted a lot of gamers. Due to limitations to choices of entertainment during the pandemic, many people switched to mobile gaming and the mobile gamers witched to PC. The gaming industry boomed during the lockdown which is expected to continue even after the end of the pandemic. This is the reason Asus decided to launch this academy program to train more games and make them skillful. This is a unique program in the e-sports space first started by Asus.

Asus ROG Academy Program
Image Source: asus.in/ROG-academy

The selection process for the program

Applicants from 16-years old and above can enroll through participants between 16-18 years need parent’s consent to participate. 50 candidates will be selected in the first phase after an online assessment based on the knowledge of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In the second phase, the selected candidates will play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in teams which will be hosted by a server called SoStronk. 20 candidates will be shortlisted for the third phase from where six top candidates will be selected for the program. The applicants will need a basic gaming setup for participation. Currently, the program is only focusing on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and other games will be added later. The gaming perspective is slowly changing for parents as well. E-sports will be added in the Olympics of 2024 which will motivate more and more gamers to pursue it as a professional training sport.

E-sports challenges in India

Though the overall e-gaming scenario is improving in India, infrastructure and broadband are the two major challenges. The company is trying to reach out to tier-3 and tier-2 markets in India for broadening the gaming base. Siddharth Nayyar also mentioned that gaming culture will skyrocket in India if these markets are exposed to ASUS gaming laptops and good internet.

Airtel 5G

Airtel 5G service demonstration goes live in Hyderabad

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On Thursday, Airtel gave a live demonstration of its 5G network in Hyderabad. The company claims that it is the first telecom service provider in India to successfully give a live demonstration of its 5G service. According to Airtel, the newly launched 5G network has the capability to operate over the existing network technology of both mid-bands and sub-GHz bands.

Yesterday, the company successfully operated both 5G and 4G concurrently over the existing liberalized spectrum in the 1800MHz band through the Non-Standalone (NSA) network technology. (Gadgets 360) Airtel 5G service will increase the speed of existing technology by 10 times with 10 times latency and 100 times concurrency. This will help in improving the overall user experience from attending online calls to downloading movies and TV shows.

More about Airtel 5G network

Airtel worked jointly with Ericsson, its equipment partner to bring this new experience to its users. The company has claimed that the 5G network has the capability to work over existing network technology hence can operate in mid-bands of range 1800MHz, 2100MHz, and 2300MHz. The 5G service will also operate in the sub-GHz band of frequency 800MHz and 900MHz.The existing Airtel users can use 5G services by software upgrades as said by the operator.

Airtel is now waiting for the permission from Department of Telecom (DoT) to deploy 5G services dynamically. As both the 4G and the 5G services can be operated through the same spectrum block, it will only take months for the company to make it available. Though the live service in Hyderabad was successful yesterday, Airtel didn’t mention any timeline about the commercial rollout of the 5G services. But, the CEO of Bharti Airtel mentioned that the company is waiting for government approvals. As soon as they have the permission and enough quantity of the right spectrum band, they will make the rollout of the Airtel 5G service.

Gopal Vittal, MD, and CEO of Bharti Airtel said that made a comment that India has the potential to become the global center for innovations in 5G technology. He further said that to build a strong 5G ecosystem all the devices, applications, and network innovation should come together.

Demonstration of Airtel 5G service

Airtel carried out the 5G demonstration in Oppo Reno 5 Pro and Oppo Find X2 Pro. The company claims that there are more than 20 different smartphones, 5 models, in India that are ready to use the Airtel 5G services. The existing users of Airtel don’t need to upgrade their sim cards for 5G usage unlike what we used to do earlier for changing sim cards to 3G or 4G network. Since both the 4G and 5G service can be provided from the same spectrum block, things have become a lot simpler and easier in the switching part. The live demonstration of the 5G network is only available in some selected stores in Hyderabad.

Airtel 5G
Image Source: gadgets.ndtv.com

Jio’s attempt to launch 5G in India

Apart from Bharti Airtel, its leading competitor in the Indian telecom market, Reliance Jio has also started testing its 5G services. Recently, the company has announced the advanced 5G testing it is carrying out this year. The company has also mentioned that very soon it will be bringing the 5G service of Reliance Jio in India probably this year itself. Though the operator has promised to test its 5G network at a scale, the company hasn’t announced a date yet for any live demonstrations like Airtel. It is very likely that Jio might roll out the 5G services in the second half of this year. In a recent statement made by Mukesh Ambani, Chairperson of Reliance Industries, he said that the company will make the 5G services available at an affordable rate everywhere in the country.

6 months notice period for 5G rollout

Previously, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has announced that any telecom service provider should give a one-year notice before launching any new technology using the seven frequency bands that will be up for auction. But, yesterday DoT reduced the one-year notice period to 6-months. For the auction of the seven frequency bands, the government has planned to put a rate of Rs 3.92 lakh crore.

Apple Powerbeats Pro

Apple Releases Special Edition Powerbeats Pro With ‘Black-on-Black’ Aesthetics

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Earlier this week, Apple’s audio brand Beats in collaboration with Fragment Design has launched a new and special edition of Powerbeats Pro. The company call this design “black-on-black” as these new wireless earbuds have a pure black finish featuring Fragment Design’s FRGMT branding and the lightning logo on the earbuds. Even the charging case of this Apple’s special edition Powerbeats Pro comes in a pure black monochromatic design. This new gadget is giving an enticing look but specifications are almost the same as the regular Powerbeats Pro. 

Special Edition Powerbeats Pro Specifications

Apart from the pure black aesthetic look of the new special edition totally wireless earbuds, it comes with an Apple H1 chip. This chip allows the independent function of the two wireless earbuds like changing the volume, sharing wireless audio, etc. The new Powerbeats Pro claims to have better battery life. These earbuds come with a built-in battery which will provide 9 hours playback time after a single charge. An additional 24 hours of playback time is provided by the bundled case. It will be better for the customers to understand the performance one they use it themselves.

The most catchy feature of this special edition Powerbeats Pro is the “black-on-black” design giving an extremely exquisite outlook to this gadget. Both the wireless earbuds and the bundled case have the branding of Fragment Design to make the look very exclusive and set it apart from the Powerbeats Pro already available in the market. There are four different sizes of earplugs so that the users don’t face any difficulty fitting them inside the ear. It also comes with an adjustable ear hook so that the earbuds don’t fall off. Each of the earbuds also has a built-in sensor that will stop the music if you put it out of your ear.

Image Source: apple.com

You can also use the phrase “Hey Siri” for an audio-based control of the earbuds. Since the device has the option of audio-based control it comes with dual beamforming microphones, motion and speech accelerometers. This helps in recognizing speech and background noise cancelation. The earbuds have USB A type charging port. Though Apple’s special edition Powerbeats Pro will be available from 29th January 2021, the number of units up for sale has not been mentioned by the company.

Price and availability

The special edition Powerbeats Pro is priced at $249.99 which is approximately Rs 18,200. You can order these earbuds directly from the Apple website starting tomorrow. Since the number of units to be sold is unknown, you can have a look at the regular Powerbeats Pro, in case you are planning to buy either of them.

The regular Powerbeats Pro

If you check out the Apple website, the company is currently selling the Powerbeats Pro at $199.95, $50 less from the original price. These are totally wireless high-performance earphones that also provides 9 hours of playback time with a single charge. Along with the charging case, you can listen to the audio for more than 24 hours. You can use the earbuds during workouts as these are purely sweat and water-resistant. It also comes with adjustable ear hooks which are lightweight and provides stability so they won’t fall off. The regular Powerbeats Pro also has a hands-free working system and has the Apple H1 chip for better independent performance. Apart from the exclusive design in partnership with Fragment Design, the performance of both the earbuds are almost the same.

More about Fragment Design

Fragment Design is a brand from the multidisciplinary Japanese artist and designer, Hiroshi Fujiwara. Fujiwara’s designs are famous in the fashion and lifestyle domain of the modern fashion world. He collaborates with some of the leading famous brands and magazines around the world like Vogue, Converse, Supreme, Levi’s, etc. His main designs and contributions are spotted in sneakers and menswear. Fragment Design has also collaborated with Starbucks before. It is very different and unique to bring such a brilliant designer onboard to the realms of tech thus blending it with fashion.