Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off the company’s annual I/O developers conference on Wednesday with a keynote address that included previews of a batch of new products. Among those showcased were Google Assistant, a tool that can understand and respond to complex questions in real time; and Home, Google’s highly anticipated response to Amazon’s Echo speaker.

Google VP of Product Management Mario Queiroz, pictured above, took the stage to demonstrate some of Home’s capabilities.

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With lucrative broadcast deals and cup competitions now crowding calendars, the sport of drone racing has become one of the primary factors driving the surge in demand for consumer drones.

Mountain Dew and DR1 Racing earlier this month announced a special DR1 Invitational presented by Mountain Dew. The one-hour broadcast will air on Discovery Communication’s Discovery and Science channels this August.

That’s just one example of the forces driving a consumer drone market that’s expected to be worth US$4.19 billion by 2024, according to Grand View Research.

That growth puts it on a pace that’s not too far behind that of the more established market for commercial drones, which will hit $4.7 billion by 2021, based on a Research and Markets report.

Drone racing will be big business in the upcoming years, predicted Justin Hamel, CEO of Mastaminds.

“I think drone racing is very intriguing — it’s got a very high-tech feel,” he told TechNewsWorld. “I haven’t done any drone racing yet personally, but I have dabbled around with a couple drones and I love them. Racing them would be the bee’s knees.”

Persistence. It’s what permeates the fabric of upcoming sci-fi odyssey No Man’s Sky, and it’s what will see the game well past its launch this summer.

While eager to set out into a digital space that’s populated with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets, gamers have, for the most part, expressed patience as the handful of developers at Hello Games marched toward the release of what may be the most ambitious game to date.

Of course, expectant fans were disappointed by last week’s confirmation of a rumor that the launch would be postponed from June to August, but some gamers reportedly were so angry they leveled death threats — not only against the bearer of the sad tidings, but also against Hello Games Managing Director Sean Murray.

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The composition is part of Project Magenta, which seeks to boost the capabilities of machine intelligence to create art and music.

Among other things, the Magenta team is developing algorithms that enable artificial intelligence systems to learn how to create compelling art and music on their own.

Magenta also seeks to build a community of artists, coders and machine learning researchers.

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