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Univ of Utah studies find up to 27 seconds of mental distraction for drivers after using new hands-free technologies

Green Car Congress

One of the studies showed that it is highly distracting to use hands-free voice commands to dial phone numbers, call contacts, change music and send texts with Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri and Google Now smartphone personal assistants, though Google Now was a bit less distracting than the others. 3.3), as did Apple Siri (3.4,

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Researchers use Google Street View cars for high-resolution air pollution mapping

Green Car Congress

The team equipped two Google Street View vehicles with the fast-response Aclima Ei measurement and data acquisition platform and repeatedly sampled every street in a 30-km 2 area of Oakland, CA, over the course of a year, developing the largest urban air quality data set of its type. —Apte et al.

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Can We Identify a Person From Their Voice?

Cars That Think

In October, the Texas attorney general accused Google of violating the state’s biometric privacy law, saying the Nest home-automation device “records—without consent—friends, children, grandparents, and guests who stop by, and then stores their voiceprints indefinitely.” Forensic speaker comparison is primarily investigative.

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