Google CEO Sundar Pichai is adding another responsibility to his job: Pichai will also be the CEO of parent holding company Alphabet going forward, taking the helm from co-founder and longtime CEO Larry Page. From a report: Additionally, co-founder Sergey Brin will be resigning from his post as the president of Alphabet. Brin and Page jointly announced the leadership change in a blog post Tuesday afternoon, writing: "Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President. Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. He will be the executive responsible and accountable for leading Google, and managing Alphabet's investment in our portfolio of Other Bets."

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Amazon is leveraging machine learning to fight fraud, audit code, transcribe calls, and index enterprise data. From a report: Today during a keynote at its Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2019 conference in Las Vegas, the tech giant debuted Amazon Fraud Detector, a fully managed service that detects anomalies in transactions, and CodeGuru, which automates code review while identifying the most "expensive" lines of code. And those are just the tip of the iceberg. With Fraud Detector (in preview), AWS customers provide email addresses, IP addressees, and other historical transaction and account registration data, along with markers indicating which transactions are fraudulent and which are legitimate. Amazon takes that information and uses algorithms -- along with data detectors developed on the consumer business of Amazon's business -- to build bespoke models that recognize things like potentially malicious email domains and IP address formation. After the model is created, customers can create, view, and update rules to enable actions based on model predictions without relying on others.

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I had a little health scare a few weeks ago. As you may know, I broke a rib in a bike accident in September. Mostly healed now. I had to go in for an X-ray and my doctor said there was a shadow that she didn't like. I should go for a CT-scan she said, let's find out what's going on. If it's lung cancer, that's good news, she said, we found it early and it's probably treatable. If we wait for symptoms then it's often not treatable. I smoked for 31 years, she reminded me, in case I was feeling sorry for myself. Heh. So I scheduled the test, had a couple of weeks to think about it. I was obsessed. Maybe she knows and isn't saying until she's absolutely sure. I was convinced that was it, and my life was about to change to the life of a cancer patient. I know a little about it because like pretty much everyone I know people who have cancer. My father died from it. Anyway, no cancer. Knock wood. But I had the benefit of thinking I had it. So I got that experience, without the awful chemo and radiation and possible dying. I feel very lucky. I decided to tell this story now to give you an idea why I don't care that Chrome hates my websites. I do what my doctor says, mostly -- I don't give a shit what Google wants me to do. As Logan Roy says, have a nice day. ;-)

It's not just about Labour and the Conservatives.

Crowds vent fury over increased defence spending, nuclear weapon development and US leader's influence on UK politics.

Qualcomm uncorked this year's version of its Snapdragon Technology Summit by announcing the names of its two new upcoming Snapdragon chips, the Snapdragon 865 and the Snapdragon 765/765G. Not surprisingly, the emphasis this year is on 5G, and the "AI" which those chips will apply for software enhancements. From a report: Because this is the Snapdragon Technology Summit, we expect to hear more details of each of these chips in the coming days. For now, however, Qualcomm is just teasing the names and their basic capabilities. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips are some of the most prevalent processors in smartphones and a mainstay in high-end flagships, powering the Samsung Galaxy S10 and OnePlus 7 Pro among others. Both of these phones incorporate the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 that was introduced at last year's Snapdragon Summit, and it's fair to say we'd expect the eventual successor of those phones to use the new chips, as well. Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager of mobile at Qualcomm Technologies, introduced both the Snapdragon 865 and the Snapdragon 765/765G but said nothing about a enhanced "Plus" version, as Qualcomm introduced with the Snapdragon 855 Plus midway through this year. Specifically, Katzouian said, the Snapdragon 865 will be built around the Snapdragon X55, Qualcomm's second-gen 5G modem that the company launched in February of this year. The X55 was part of the "Project Limitless" PC platform Qualcomm showed off with Lenovo at Computex, but is expected to be much more of a factor within smartphones.

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Poll: How many phones do you carry?

Chrome keeps coming up with new things to complain about my sites. I ignore them. I wonder how many web devs pay attention to Google's complaints?

Clashes first erupted on Saturday after a young man self-immolated in the Sidi Bouzid region.

The senator from California ended her once-promising campaign, saying she lacked the funds to go forward.

US House impeachment report accuses Trump using powers of office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.

The company behind Lyrics website Genius, Genius Media Group, is suing Google for "unethical, unfair and anticompetitive" behavior. From a report: Genius alleges that traffic to its site started to drop because its lyrics -- which are annotated by its contributors -- are being copied, and then published by Google via the tech giant's lyrics partner, LyricFind. The lawsuit was filed in New York on Tuesday (December 3) and seeks "no less than $50 million" in "combined minimum damages" from both Google and Canada-based LyricFind. "Defendants Google LLC and LyricFind have been caught red-handed misappropriating content from Genius's website, which they have exploited -- and continue to exploit -- for their own financial benefit." The suit reads: "One of Genius's primary services is the development and maintenance of a vast repository of annotated music lyrics, some of which are artist-supplied and many of which are transcribed and refined by a community of over two million Genius contributors."

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Russia is to set up a new online site for its national encyclopedia after President Vladimir Putin said Wikipedia was unreliable and should be replaced. From a report: The move will ensure people can find "reliable information that is constantly updated on the basis of scientifically verified sources of knowledge," a government resolution said. Putin last month proposed replacing the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia Wikipedia with an electronic version of the Great Russian Encyclopaedia - the successor to the Soviet Union's main encyclopedia. "This, at any rate, would be reliable information offered in a modern form," Putin said then. Further reading: Putin Signs Law Making Russian Apps Mandatory On Smartphones, Computers.

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A top European human rights official is demanding immediate closure of makeshift camp, fearing a humanitarian crisis.

Head of an EU mission to Malta urges Joseph Muscat to quit over his handling of the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.