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Google Assistant uses ‘Duplex on the Web’ to buy your movie tickets

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If you own an Android phone, simply tell the digital helper that you want seats to a specific movie or search for showtimes using the Google app. Assistant will then take care of working through any website, which makes it handy for ones that aren’t optimized for mobile. It’s also able to automatically input any information you may need to complete a purchase. That includes any payment details, as long as they’re saved to Chrome.

As mentioned above, Assistant has been able to purchase movie tickets on your behalf since last year. What’s new is that Assistant now uses Duplex, Google’s AI reservation feature, to make things happen. Using a technology called Duplex on the Web, Assistant can navigate websites on its own. This effectively allows you to purchase movie tickets from almost any service that offers them. According to Google, the new Duplex feature works with more than 70 cinemas and movie ticketing services across the US and UK. Previously, Assistant only worked with Fandango.

Allowing you to buy movie tickets is just one of the use cases Google imagines for the technology. Like it showed off at its I/O developer conference earlier this year, you’ll also be able to use Duplex to book car rentals and more. The rollout of this feature is currently limited to the US and UK.

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NBC News: Zuckerberg had an undisclosed dinner with the president

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Last month Mark Zuckerberg publicly made a trip to Capitol Hill as he testified in front of lawmakers about Facebook’s Libra cyptocurrency plans. Tonight NBC News has revealed that Zuckerberg also made another stop that was not previously disclosed — a dinner at the White House with Facebook board member Peter Thiel and Donald Trump.

In a statement to NBC News, a Facebook spokesperson said “As is normal for a CEO of a major U.S. company, Mark accepted an invitation to have dinner with the President and First Lady at the White House,” although there’s no indication about why the meeting was, until now, a secret. Zuckerberg publicly met with Trump in the Oval Office earlier that month, and in the last day he toured the facility where Apple builds Mac Pros in Texas.

The second meeting also occurred at the same time Zuckerberg repeatedly spoke out in favor of maintaining Facebook’s policy to not fact check political advertising, a stance opposing candidates like Elizabeth Warren have claimed helps Trump.

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Apple cancels planned festival premiere of its TV+ movie ‘The Banker’

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Just a day before The Banker was supposed to premiere at the American Film Institute’s festival in Los Angeles, Apple yanked the movie while it looks into “some concerns surrounding the film.” Based on a true story about two black men in the 1960s who built up a real estate and banking empire by using a white man as the face of the enterprise, it stars actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Nia Long and Nicholas Hoult.

Apple:

We purchased The Banker earlier this year as we were moved by the film’s entertaining and educational story about social change and financial literacy. Last week some concerns surrounding the film were brought to our attention. We, along with the filmmakers, need some time to look into these matters and determine the best next steps. In light of this, we are no longer premiering The Banker at AFI Fest.

In its absence, Netflix will screen one of its movies, Marriage Story, on the last day of the event. Part of Apple’s strategy to build up its content library quickly is supposed to be the ability to get these movies on the big screen, so that they’ll be eligible for awards that Netflix’s streaming-only releases aren’t. While The Banker was scheduled to premiere on December 6th, that push may have to wait a bit.

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Trump ‘opens’ Texas Apple plant that’s built Mac Pros since 2013

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As planned, today Donald Trump took a tour of an Apple manufacturing facility in Texas alongside CEO Tim Cook. While impeachment hearings continued in D.C., the president tweeted that “Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America.” While Apple did claim in September that exemptions from tariffs the Trump Administration put in place made it possible to produce the new Mac Pro in Texas, a company called Flex has been assembling its high-end desktop computer there since 2013.

Apple also announced plans for a new 3 million square foot campus in Austin, that will not be a manufacturing plant, didn’t open today and wasn’t a part of the tour. It said production of the new Mac Pro is now under way, although it didn’t narrow down the “December” release window announced last week. As far as any hopes for further tariff exemptions that could help Apple, Reuters reports Trump responded “We’re looking at that” when asked about it.



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Google bans political ad targeting by affiliation and voter records

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These practices are in line with what you already see in conventional TV, radio and print ads, Google said.

The search firm is also taking a tougher stance on truth in advertising than Facebook, if only slightly. It’s clearing up its ad policies to explicitly forbid deepfakes, misleading census claims or any other ads and links that could “significantly undermine participation or trust” in elections and democracy. It only expects to crack down on a “very limited” number of ads and hasn’t talked about banning ads with other false claims, but this should represent a more clearly-drawn policy line.

You can also expect greater transparency for American ads. From December 3rd onward, Google’s political ad transparency in the US will expand from the federal level to include state-level candidates and politicians, ballot measures and any ads that mention parties regardless of scale.

The measures probably won’t satisfy those who expect Google to ban general falsehoods in ads. The stricter ad policy could still have a significant approach on internet campaigning in the future, though. In the US, candidates and political groups won’t have a way to limit ads to the party faithful — they’ll have to target a very general demographic and hope for the best.

This is also a distinct contrast to Facebook’s relatively loose ad controls and Twitter’s near-total ban on political ads. It’s far too soon to tell which methods will be the most effective, if any. However, you can safely presume that the online political ad landscape in 2020 will have changed substantially compared to 2018, let alone 2016.

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Sonos buys an AI startup to improve voice control for its speakers

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Snips is a small, 50-person outfit, and that was reflected in the size and speed of the deal. Sonos bought the firm for $37.5 million, and it quietly closed on November 14th.

The buyout is a recognition of an intensifying smart speaker market. Competitors have usually leaned more on voice assistants than audio quality to challenge Sonos, but that gap is closing — it’s now possible to get rival speakers that are comparable in both sound and smarts. Snips could help Sonos stand out by delivering performance that isn’t possible elsewhere.

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SpaceX’s first Starship pops its top during a ‘pressure test’ in Texas

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SpaceX has already moved on to manufacturing its next generation of ‘Mk3’ Starship frames, but the original model Elon Musk stood in front of two months ago popped open during an apparent “pressure test” at the company’s Boca Chica, TX site. According to site watchers like LabPadre, the top flew some 500 feet in the air as cryofluid sprayed everywhere. In slow-motion, it appears that fluid started bursting from the sides first.

In response to a question on Twitter, Elon Musk called the Mk1 model a “manufacturing pathfinder,” (Mk2 is under parallel construction in Florida) but noted the flight design is “quite different.” Just last week, SpaceX announced Crew Dragon static fire tests had been performed successfully following a previous explosion, but now the streak is broken. Musk said at the September event that a suborbital flight for the Mk1 design could happen within one to two months, but that seems less likely after today. Whether or not the Mk3 model is still potentially ready to fly in December remains to be seen.

Update: SpaceX has issued a statement on the test, saying it’s not a “serious setback.”

The purpose of today’s test was to pressurize systems to the max, so the outcome was not completely unexpected. There were no injuries, nor is this a serious setback.

As Elon tweeted, Mk1 served as a valuable manufacturing pathfinder but flight design is quite different. The decision had already been made to not fly this test article and the team is focused on the Mk3 builds, which are designed for orbit.



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WhatsApp banned over 400,000 accounts during Brazil’s election

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There is evidence of a likely culprit, however. A Guardian data study indicated that the “vast majority” of false info shared on WhatsApp during the election favored far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, with 42 percent of sampled right-wing messages containing false claims versus just 3 percent for the left-wing camp. The eventual winner was also connected to a scandal where companies were using a “blast messaging” service to bombard WhatsApp users with messages attacking his rival Fernando Haddad. Bolsonaro’s son, congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, also railed against WhatsApp’s decision to limit forwarding.

It’s not certain that Bolsonaro or anyone else benefited from bogus WhatsApp claims. Just because someone received fake info doesn’t mean they believed it or acted on it. All the same, this isn’t particularly reassuring. It suggests that candidates, advocacy groups or both are increasingly aggressive in their online efforts to influence voters, and that social media giants like Facebook may have a lot of work to do if they want to reduce meddling in the 2020 US elections.

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Mixer streamers can limit clip-making to their regular viewers

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If you’re a viewer, you’ll have a better shot at producing quality clips. You can trim clips to specific sections and preview the results before you publish them. You’re limited to at least 15 seconds and a maximum 60 seconds, but you’ll have a better chance of preserving a hilarious moment than you did before. Mixer is offering the new clip editor alongside the old one for a “short time” to ease the transition.

To some extent, Microsoft needs these tools. Now that it has high-profile streamers like Ninja and Shroud on Mixer, it’s dealing with a flood of users who might be new to the service (or new to these streamers, at least). This could help partnered streamers manage their channels and inrease the chances a given clip will be worth keeping.

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Sling TV now streams on Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max

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Sling TV users now have another way to stream their content. Beginning today, Sling TV is available on Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max. Users can control Sling with built-in voice controls on those devices, and on Nest Hub Max, they can pause and resume content on Sling using gesture controls — hold up your hand and look at the device to pause.

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