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Google’s Top AI Researcher has been fired
Timnit Gebru, one of Google’s top-notch AI researchers has been abruptly fired. The development came to light after Gebru took to Twitter yesterday to share the news. As per the information trickling out through various media sources, Gebru was fired abruptly for sending controversial e-mails to her subordinates. Although the actual contents of this mail has still not been confirmed, but several reports claimed that in the mail Gebru has raised concerns over the growing toxic environment and under-representation of women in Google. She also accused that people promoting the rights of under-represented communities are often suppressed in the company.
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Amid anti-trust lawsuits, Facebook gets sued by DOJ for reserving high paying jobs for immigrants
The outgoing Trump government has added another number to the growing number of lawsuits against Facebook. However, DOJ’s latest lawsuit doesn’t pertain to Facebook’s monopolistic practices. The fresh lawsuit has accused the social media giant of improperly hiring immigrant workers. It has alleged that the social media giant had reserved high paying jobs to immigrant workers, when it could have very well hired indigenous American workers for the same position. Since coming to power in 2016, Trump has been aggressively cracking down on immigrant workers.
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COVID-19 supply chain is vulnerable to hackers, IBM study claims
Hackers have launched a global phishing campaign to target organization concerned with the logistical supply of COVI-19 vaccine, an IBM research study has found out. The study has further claimed that this phishing campaign has been around since September and is especially targeting the cold chain supply segment. The cold chain segment is supposed to preserve the vaccines at a low temperature. It has also claimed that 6 countries including Germany, Italy and South Korea are especially vulnerable to hackers.
4
Google Podcasts (Finally) supports private RSS feeds
Google Podcasts is finally on-boarding a feature that will support private RSS feed. This will enable users to access RSS feeds of shows that they have paid for. Surprisingly, Google took pretty long to introduce this standard feature. With few notable exceptions including Spotify, almost all podcast players support private RSS feed.
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Now IOS users can interact with Amazon Alexa via text
IOS users can now interact with Amazon Alexa users via text. Amazon evidently introduced this new feature quietly, since it did not made the news official through a press release. It is also unclear whether the new text feature will available to all the IOS users globally or is reserved only for the specific markets.