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Tech News Today for March 14, 2017

Tech News for Tuesday March 14, 2017

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land says Google is hiring 10,000 real humans to work on the search algorithm and teach it to recognize offensive or factually wrong websites. A Google rep told Search Engine Land that they were avoiding the term "fake news" in favor of the phrase, "demonstrably inaccurate information," even though that's not nearly as catchy. The contract workers are called "quality raters" and will mark racial slurs, graphic violence, and other upsetting content, not necessarily to remove it from search results, but rather to flag it and teach the algorithm how to deal content like it in the future. Read more at searchengineland.com.

Theres a new luxury smartwatch in town! Tag Heuer announced its next Android Wear smartwatch, the Connected Modular 45, and like its name implies, it’s a modular system with 56 total designs and up to 500 design combinations. Tag says it made extra effort to build the watch the way it builds its other luxury mechanical watches. And with the modular design, the consumer can even swap the Connected module out for a mechanical module to increase the longevity of the timepiece. But it comes at a cost: $1600, that’s $100 more than its previous smartwatch from 2015, the Tag Heuer Connected. Read more at theverge.com.

Volvo just announced their newest electric car and it's taking on Tesla with an affordable starting price of between $35,000 to $40,000, and a range of 250 miles. Mike Murphy from Quartz says we're still not sure about the look of the new car or whether it will be a variant of an existing Volvo model, but we should be able to drive one by 2019. The Chevy Bolt was promised last fall and its still only available in limited areas. Read more at qz.com.

Continuing on the wearable beat: Visa introduced a new wearable that might make your beach combing a bit less cumbersome. Visa launched a new pilot program coinciding with the World Surf League’s 2017 Quicksilver and Roxy Pro Gold Coast competition that will allow a special prototype pair of sunglasses act as someone’s digital wallet. An embedded NFC chip lives in the arms of the sunglasses that negotiates the payment when tapped to a supporting terminal. The sunglasses will need to be removed in order to pay. Read more at cnbc.com.

If you're on the east coast and snow bound, we're thinking of you. Stay safe. Stay inside. Watch every episode of TNT twice and if you need a snow plow, there's an app for that. CNN Tech reports that Plowz and Mowz, both with a Z will give you a quote through the app or online, and you'll get a notification when the driver is on the way. And you can bet there's surge pricing. CNN says expect to pay $50 or more during winter storm Stella. Read more at money.cnn.com.

Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Brad Sams from Petri.com to talk about Microsoft's release of Teams, the company's Slack competitor. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.

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