Category Archives: Google

GREENVILLE, NC(WNCT) It thats time of year for you to enjoy yourfavorite Girl Scout cookies. Google is alerting us to the ones we like the most and where we can get them.

This season there will be a newly released cookie,Adventurefuls.These cookies are a caramel and brownie combo that youre sure to quickly fall in love with. Also, Google has released trends for each states top searched cookies.

According to Google,Thin Mints are the most searchedcookiesof all time. Last week, according to Google, the search for Girl Scout Cookies Near Me increased 450%. Google broke down the search results among some of the top cities in the United States, including Durham.

Heres what they found were the most popular cookies:

Some other interesting locations in the South included Charleston, S.C.:

In Atlanta, the top searches were:

Sorry, no Google results for Greenville.

However, that hasnt stopped many people who are excited to get their orders in or stop by a spot where they are being sold. In fact, through a partnership with Doordash, you can have cookies delivered to where you live and work.

The search ofdoesdooordashdeliver Girl Scout cookies increased 2,600% on Google just recently.

Girl Scout Cookies went on sale earlier this month. If you want information on how you can order them through the Girl Scout app, click here.

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Girl Scout cookies are always trending (yum). Heres what Google says are some of our favorite choices - WNCT

Tech giant Google on Monday announced plans to open a new office in Pune in the second half of 2022. Google's Pune facility will help it build advanced enterprise cloud technologies in collaboration with global engineering teams, provide real-time technical advice, and deliver product and implementation expertise that customers turn to Google Cloud.

Im pleased to share that Google is opening an office in Pune, and the first Googlers in the space will be in our Cloud Product Engineering, Technical Support and Global Delivery Center organizations," said Anil Bhansali, VP of Cloud Engineering, India, Google Cloud.

Google said it has kicked off hiring, alongside rapidly growing teams in Gurugram, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

This new location is expected to open in the second half of 2022 but our hiring starts now alongside our rapidly growing teams in Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Bangalore," Bhansali writes in a Google blog post.

This planned expansion is the latest in a series of investments by Google Cloud to fuel our customer growth and valued offerings to organizations of all sizes."

Interested candidates can visit the official portal of Google vacancies to find out more about the open roles.

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Google starts hiring IT professionals for its new office in Pune - Mint

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gestures during a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, on January 22, 2020.

FABRICE COFFRINI | AFP | Getty Images

Four attorneys general are suing Google for allegedly misleading users about when the company was able to track their location.

The bipartisan group of attorneys general from the District of Columbia, Indiana, Texas and Washington allege in separate lawsuits filed Monday that Google deceived users from at least 2014 to 2019 by leading them to believe that turning off Location History settings would make the service stop tracking their locations. But, the AGs allege, a user's location could still be tracked by Google unless they also turned off settings in the Web & App Activity section.

Google describes Web & App Activity as a way to personalize experiences for users by saving searches and activity in a user's account.

The AGs allege that Google misled users to believe that once they turned their Location History off, their location would not longer be tracked.

"Yet, even when consumers explicitly opted out of location tracking by turning Location History off, Google nevertheless recorded consumers' locations via other means," the Washington lawsuit alleges. "Although Web & App Activity setting is automatically enabled for all Google Accounts, the Company's disclosures during Google Account creation did not mention or draw consumers' attention to the setting until 2018."

A 2018 report from the Associated Press revealed the basis of the allegations in the lawsuits.

The AGs allege that Google profited from the deception by fueling its advertising business with such data. The lawsuits specifically request the court to require Google to offload any algorithms created with the allegedly ill-gotten gains, alongside monetary profits.

Google didn't immediately provide a statement but pointed to comments a judge in a similar case brought by Arizona's attorney general made.

"A reasonable fact finder could find that a reasonable, or even an unsophisticated, consumer, would understand that at least some location information is collected through means other than LH," the judge wrote in a recent filing, referring to Location History.

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Four AGs sue Google for allegedly tracking you without permission - CNBC

In 1998, a computer science PhD student called Larry Page submitted a patent for internet search based on an obscure piece of mathematics. The method, known today as PageRank, allowed the most relevant webpages to be found much more rapidly and accurately than ever before. The patent, initially owned by Stanford, was sold in 2005 for shares that are today worth more than $1bn. Pages company, Google, has a net worth of well over $1tr.

It wasnt Page, or Googles cofounder Sergey Brin, who created the mathematics described in the patent. The equation they used is at least 100 years old, building on properties of matrices (mathematical structures akin to a spreadsheet of numbers). Similar methods were used by Chinese mathematicians more than two millennia ago. Page and Brins insight was to realise that by calculating what is known as the stationary distribution of a matrix describing connections on the world wide web, they could find the most popular sites more rapidly.

Applying the correct equation can suddenly solve an important practical problem, and completely change the world we live in.

The PageRank story is neither the first nor the most recent example of a little-known piece of mathematics transforming tech. In 2015, three engineers used the idea of gradient descent, dating back to the French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy in the mid-19th century, to increase the time viewers spent watching YouTube by 2,000%. Their equation transformed the service from a place we went to for a few funny clips to a major consumer of our viewing time.

From the 1990s onwards, the financial industry has been built on variations of the diffusion equation, attributed to a variety of mathematicians including Einstein. Professional gamblers make use of logistic regression, developed by the Oxford statistician Sir David Cox in the 50s, to ensure they win at the expense of those punters who are less maths-savvy.

There is good reason to expect that there are more billion-dollar equations out there: generations-old mathematical theorems with the potential for new applications. The question is where to look for the next one.

A few candidates can be found in mathematical work in the latter part of the 20th century. One comes in the form of fractals, patterns that are self-similar, repeating on many different levels, like the branches of a tree or the shape of a broccoli head. Mathematicians developed a comprehensive theory of fractals in the 80s, and there was some excitement about applications that could store data more efficiently. Interest died out until recently, when a small community of computer scientists started showing how mathematical fractals can produce the most amazing, weird and wonderful patterns.

Another field of mathematics still looking for a money-making application is chaos theory, the best-known example of which is the butterfly effect: if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, we need to know about it in order to predict a storm in the North Atlantic. More generally, the theory tells us that, in order to accurately predict storms (or political events), we need to know about every tiny air disturbance on the entire planet. An impossible task. But chaos theory also points towards repeatable patterns. The Lorenz attractor is a model of the weather that, despite being chaotic, does produce somewhat regular and recognisable patterns. Given the uncertainty of the times we live in, it may be time to revive these ideas.

Some of my own research has focused on self-propelled particle models, which describe movements similar to those of bird flocks and fish schools. I now apply these models to better coordinate tactical formations in football and to scout players who move in ways that create more space for themselves and their teammates.

Another related model is current reinforced random walks, which capture how ants build trails, and the structure of slime mould transportation networks. This model could take us from todays computers which have central processing units (CPUs) that make computations and separate memory chips to store information to new forms of computation in which computation and memory are part of the same process. Like ant trails and slime mould, these new computers would benefit from being decentralised. Difficult computational problems, in particular in AI and computer vision, could be broken down in to smaller sub-problems and solved more rapidly.

Whenever there is a breakthrough application of an equation, we see a whole range of copycat imitations. The current boom in artificial intelligence is primarily driven by just two equations gradient descent and logistic regression put together to create what is known as a neural network. But history shows that the next big leap forward doesnt come from repeatedly using the same mathematical trick. It comes instead from a completely new idea, read from the more obscure pages of the book of mathematics.

The challenge of finding the next billion-dollar equation is not simply one of knowing every page of that book. Page spotted the right problem to solve at the right time, and he persuaded the more theoretically inclined Brin to help him find the maths to help them. You dont need to be a mathematical genius yourself in order to put the subject to good use. You just need to have a feeling for what equations are, and what they can and cant do.

Mathematics still holds many hidden intellectual and financial riches. It is up to all of us to try to find them. The search for the next billion-dollar equation is on.

David Sumpter is professor of applied mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and author of The Ten Equations that Rule the World: And How You Can Use Them Too

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Equations built giants like Google. Wholl find the next billion-dollar bit of maths? - The Guardian

Google Health formally disbanded last year, with the unit instead choosing to spread its efforts across the organization. In this iteration, the company is working to imbue each of its numerous divisions with health expertise, Google chief medical officer Karen DeSalvo said during the Axios Pro kickoff event.

Why it matters: Google isnt backing away from health, but rather deepening its investment in the category by infusing its work into virtually every sector of the company, from wearables to partnerships with hospitals and health systems.

Behind the scenes: Many of those divisions resulted from health and wellness acquisitions, so it will be interesting to see how Google continues to bring them into the larger company fold.

Details: Wearables are also part of a broader suite of sensing devices, DeSalvo says, so when we work with a health plan, they're thinking about how to bring those tools to bear for customers, because people want digital-first, but also digital sensing. So we're increasingly looking for ways we can be helpful to health systems to give personalized insights to their customers.

Erin co-authors the Axios Pro newsletter on health tech deals. Subscribe at AxiosPro.com.

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The latest iteration of Dr. Google - Axios

Google is launching a limited beta of its app to bring Android games to Windows PCs. Google Play Games will be available in beta in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan today, allowing Windows PC owners to play popular Android games like Mobile Legends, Summoners War, State of Survival, and Three Kingdoms Tactics.

Players in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan will be able to sign up to access the beta and access Googles standalone app on Windows PCs. Google is promising seamless gameplay sessions between a phone, tablet, Chromebook, and Windows PC, suggesting that youll be able to easily resume games between multiple devices.

Players can easily browse, download, and play their favorite mobile games on their PCs while taking advantage of larger screens with mouse and keyboard inputs, says Arjun Dayal, group product manager for Google Play Games. No more losing your progress or achievements when switching between devices; it just works with your Google Play Games profile!

Google Play Games will also include Play Points that can be earned while playing Android games on PCs. Google only announced its plans to bring Android games to PCs a month ago, but its still not clear what technology the company is using to get Android games running on Windows PCs. The Google Play Games app will be a native Windows app that wont involve game streaming, though, and Google is opening up a developer site today that should start to provide more information for game developers.

Googles announcement comes months after Microsoft started testing Android apps on Windows 11 PCs. Microsoft has built an underlying Windows Subsystem for Android, which is capable of running Android apps from a variety of sources. Microsoft uses it in partnership with Amazon to allow native installs of games and apps from the Amazon Appstore on Windows, but despite workarounds, Google Play isnt officially supported yet.

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Google launches beta of Android games on Windows PCs - The Verge

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

The biggest news in tech this week was Microsoft acquiring game publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. On todays Vergecast, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks with games reporter Ash Parrish and senior reporter Alex Heath about the acquisition, the issues behind the culture at Activision Blizzard, and what this means for the gaming space in the future.

The crew also discusses Alexs scoop this week that Google is building an AR headset, internally codenamed Project Iris, that it hopes to ship in 2024.

Later in the show, Verge policy editor Russell Brandom joins to discuss the ongoing battle between the FAA, AT&T, Verizon, and airlines over activating 5G towers around airports, as well as the tech antitrust bills developing in Congress this week.

You can listen to the show here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.

Further reading:

The Vergecast

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Vergecast: Microsoft to acquire Activision, Google building a headset, and the 5G battle with airlines - The Verge

Google offers many ambient sounds from the Google Assistant, including one for white noise that might help block out noise to make it easier to sleep or study. The company seemingly changed its white noise sound last week, and many expressed frustration with the update, as reported by 9to5Google. But Google tells us it has fixed what it describes as an issue, and the sound should work like it used to.

There was an issue impacting our white noise experience. Its fixed now and working as it previously did, Google spokesperson Robert Ferrara said in a statement to The Verge.

The change had been disruptive for a lot of people, as documented in this Google Nest community thread which had more than 150 replies when we first published this story on Monday. Some described the changed white noise as quieter or sounding muffled. One person said their child has asked to use another white noise generator instead of a Google Nest Hub. Another said their toddler has observed the change and wakes up during the night.

To help those that wanted the original white noise back before Google fixed it, a user on Reddit uploaded a one-hour track of original one and longer versions of it to Google Drive that would have theoretically used as workarounds. Google also offers other ambient sounds, like forest sounds and rain sounds, and you can see the full list here.

Update January 18th, 7:12PM ET: Added statement from Google saying the issue was fixed.

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Google fixes issue with the Assistants white noise sound that had sparked user outcry - The Verge

Hey Google, whats the factorial of 100?

There are several clips doing the rounds of what happens when you ask Google Assistant this question. The response is both hilarious and terrifying.

The factorial of 100 is the multiplication of 100 by every whole number less than it. In other words, 100 x 99 x 98 x 97 x 96 x . x 3 x 2 x 1.

The answer is a big number. Clearly.

Yet Google Assistant gives the wrong answer. Or rather, its answer is rounded up. (Siri abbreviates in a more sensible way.)

Todays puzzle is to do the sum properly:

How many zeros does the factorial of 100 really have at the end of it?

All that is required to solve this puzzle is knowledge of elementary arithmetic. Such as the fact that, if a number has a 0 at the end, it means this number is divisible by 10.

Ill be back at 5pm UK with the solution.

PLEASE NO SPOILERS Please discuss your favourite Siri and Google Assistant responses.

I set a puzzle here every two weeks on a Monday. Im always on the look-out for great puzzles. If you would like to suggest one, email me.

Im the author of several books of puzzles, most recently the Language Lovers Puzzle Book. If you are addicted to Wordle, I promise you will like this book. I also give school talks about maths and puzzles (online and in person). If your school is interested please get in touch.

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Can you solve it? The viral maths video that will have you in stitches - The Guardian

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (Jan. 19, 2022) Ninety-five percent of Americans believe misinformation is a problem, according to a poll conducted by The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The majority of those surveyed say social media giants, its users and some U.S. politicians are responsible for its reckless spread.

While the nation attempts to wrestle the infodemic with strategies for accountability, the vast majority of the proposed solutions are for English speakers, leaving a serious gap for the countrys 41 million people who speak Spanish at home.

The Poynter Institutes MediaWise has developed educational resources to provide tools to Spanish-speaking people in the United States over the age of 50 to be more critical consumers of online content. The MediaWise en Espaol program, supported by the Google News Initiative, will build off the success of the nonprofits highly effective digital media literacy program for senior citizens and provide the older Spanish-speaking population with an on-demand, online course and educational resources on social media at no cost.

Misinformation has no language or age barriers, and amplifies how vital quality information is for the world, said Ashley Alese Edwards, US Partnerships Manager, Google News Lab. The Google News Initiative is proud to partner with MediaWise and Noticias Telemundo on this important project and other efforts aimed at strengthening news literacy and stopping the spread of harmful misinformation.

Research from a Nielsen study centers Hispanics as a vulnerable target of misinformation due to a greater dependency on the role social media and messaging apps play within the community to connect with friends and family around the world. The report reads, much of the content, both user-generated and shared, is in Spanish, Spanglish or colloquial Spanish, challenging conventional fact-checking and content moderation procedures to keep up.

In recent elections, false and misleading information online has influenced peoples perceptions of where candidates stand on certain issues, said Miriam Valverde, MediaWise en Espaol program manager. During the COVID-19 pandemic, false information has also led some people to question the safety and value of evidence-based public health measures.

The MediaWise en Espaol program will offer media literacy tips and training to empower older Spanish-speaking adults to spot misinformation online, including on the most popular social media platforms. The program will feature a microlearning course on WhatsApp and an informational video series on YouTube with internationally-recognized journalists from Noticias Telemundo and MediaWises newest ambassadors, Jos Daz-Balart and Julio Vaqueiro.

We understand that these programs are more likely to have a positive impact if they are delivered and supported by someone people trust, said Aaron Sharockman, who oversees media literacy and fact-checking initiatives at Poynter. Jos and Julio are serious journalists who have built meaningful relationships with their audiences over more than 40 years combined. They are the ideal partners for this innovative and important work.

Noticias Telemundo is a leading news provider in Spanish with award-winning news productions, documentaries, investigative reports and news events such as political debates, forums and town halls. The news network has a combined 11 million followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and Noticias Telemundo is the most-watched Spanish-language broadcast channel on YouTube with over 870 million views and more than 5 million subscribers. This year, Noticias Telemundo has reached an average of 3 million adults over the age of 50 every week across its news shows.

Noticias Telemundo is deeply committed to ensuring the Hispanic community has the most accurate news and information, and this partnership is another important step to narrow the Spanish-language misinformation gap, said Gemma Garcia, Noticias Telemundos senior vice president for digital news. MediaWise en Espaol is a critical piece in our fact-checking efforts to combat misinformation at a time when fact-based news and information is critical for the Latino community.

For more information, visit poynter.org/mediawise-en-espanol.

Media Contact:Tina DyakonDirector of MarketingThe Poynter Institutetdyakon@poynter.org727-553-4343

About The Poynter Institute

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media, and 21st-century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, and at newsrooms, conferences, and organizations around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, offers the worlds largest online journalism curriculum, with hundreds of interactive courses and tens of thousands of registered international users. The Institutes website produces 24-hour coverage about media, ethics, technology, and the business of news. Poynter is the home of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact, the International Fact-Checking Network and MediaWise, a digital information literacy project for young people, first-time voters, and senior citizens. The worlds top journalists and media innovators rely on Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians, and broadcasters. This work builds public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment, and discourse that serves democracy and the public good. Learn more at poynter.org.

About MediaWise

MediaWise is a nonpartisan, nonprofit digital media literacy initiative led by The Poynter Institute: Its mission is to teach Americans of all ages how to sort fact from fiction online. MediaWise content has been viewed more than 57 million times by more than 6% of the U.S. population since the project launched in 2018. The MediaWise program teaches people through in-person and virtual training events, online educational videos, fact-checking content reported by the MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network, and its MediaWise Ambassador program a group of prominent journalists and influencers who help promote the MediaWise mission. In 2020, Poynter launched the MediaWise Voter Project (#MVP2020) to teach first-time voters how to find reliable information online about the U.S. presidential election, a new initiative supported by Facebook. MediaWise for Seniors was announced in June 2020 to bring MediaWise tips to the 50+ population in advance of the general election. MediaWise for Seniors has a program funded by AARP to provide resources to their membership and a program funded by Facebook bringing virtual training and a social media awareness campaign to the senior population. The foundation of MediaWise was created with support from Google.org as part of Google News Initiative. Learn more at poynter.org/mediawise.

About Google News Initiative

The Google News Initiative works side-by-side with publishers and journalists to build a more sustainable, diverse and innovative news ecosystem. Through programs, products and partnerships, we strive to advance the practice of quality journalism and strengthen publisher business models in the digital age.

Since 2018, our $300 million funding commitment has supported more than 7,000 news partners in over 120 countries and territories around the world. Weve provided training for over 400,000 journalists on skills including digital verification, data visualization, and machine learning through in-person trainings. And we have worked to bring together industry leaders around the world, cultivating a diverse news community to spur innovation and tackle pressing issues like media literacy and misinformation.

About Noticias Telemundo

Noticias Telemundo is a leading news provider for U.S. Hispanics. Its award-winning television news broadcasts, airing from the Telemundo Center, include the newscasts Noticias Telemundo with Julio Vaqueiro, Noticias Telemundo Fin de Semana with Vanessa Hauc, and Noticias Telemundo Medioda with Felicidad Aveleyra. The Noticias Telemundo Digital Team provides continuous content to U.S. Hispanics via its growing online and mobile platforms. Noticias Telemundo Investiga produces investigative reports and in-depth documentaries. Noticias Telemundo Planeta Tierra offers environmental and climate change related information. In addition, Noticias Telemundo produces award-winning news specials, documentaries and news events such as political debates, forums and town halls.

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The Poynter Institute's MediaWise, Noticias Telemundo and Google News Initiative join forces to help Spanish speakers separate fact from fiction...