neighborhood
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Nextdoor makes it easier to find free stuff your neighbors are giving away
You won't need an account to browse the items your neighbors are giving away.
Amazon's Sidewalk neighborhood WiFi will work with Echo and Tile devices
Amazon's Sidewalk neighborhood WiFi should arrive later this year.
Computers are learning to size up neighborhoods using photos
Us humans are normally good at making quick judgments about neighborhoods. We can figure out whether we're safe, or if we're likely to find a certain store. Computers haven't had such an easy time of it, but that's changing now that MIT researchers have created a deep learning algorithm that sizes up neighborhoods roughly as well as humans. The code correlates what it sees in millions of Google Street View images with crime rates and points of interest; it can tell what a sketchy part of town looks like, or what you're likely to see near a McDonald's (taxis and police vans, apparently).
Ubisoft planning to expand Toronto studio to 800 employees within 10 years
Ubisoft Montreal, as we've reported before, is a huge video game outfit with a large team of developers coordinating multiple projects at a time, across up to six different studios. Ubisoft wants to repeat that structure in its new Toronto studio, according to the Financial Post. The French company is adding over 600 employees to the current staff of 210 over the next 10 years, which means an investment of over $500 million in that time.That has big ramifications, not only for Ubisoft's future as a publisher and developer, but for Toronto's Wallace Avenue neighborhood as well (where these employees will live, work, and spend all of this money). As for the studio itself, it's currently at work on five upcoming Ubisoft titles, including the next Splinter Cell. As more and more is invested in the operation there, that list will probably grow.