On this week’s Drill Down podcast, driverless ride-sharing is emerging, Russia’s part in hacking the U.S. election, President-Elect Trump meets with tech leaders, Bill Gates leads a fight against climate change,  and much, much more.

Podcast

On this week’s Drill Down podcast, Pebble‘s dead, Google goes green, UK’s Snoopers Charter, Amazon Go, a DIY gif bot, some amazing game trailers, and much, much more.

Google Home is a little device that plugs into the wall and responds to your voice. It can play recorded music or the radio through services like Google Play Music and TuneIn, and it can respond to questions based on the knowledge Google has amassed throughout the 21st century. If you’ve got the correct hardware at home, like a Nest Thermostat, Samsung’s Smartthings, or Philips hue, Google Home can allow you to control some of your home’s functions with your voice.

We’ve had some time to get to know the Google Home and there are a LOT of things to like about it. Its voice recognition is robust and its audio is impressive for being a little tiny speaker. At the same time, when one looks at Google Home through the lens of a smarthome, AI, product, one quickly realizes that the device is not quite where the demonstrations were during the 2016 Google IO developers conference, nor is it a device that delivers on the promise of its advertisements.

On this week’s Drill Down podcast, was the U.S. election hacked?, Facebook compromises censorship to get into China, auto regulators want you off your apps, Google AI makes its own language, and much more.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and Black Friday left us — more or less — free from torrents of blood running red in our streets. As we move beyond the shopping hell that launched the holiday season, we can now focus on what it’s all about — giving people cool stuff. And while Christmas might have other meanings, that isn’t what this article is about. So without further ado, I’d like to list a couple of my personal suggestions to make the holidays substantially more holly jolly — especially if you have a cat… well, only if you have a cat, actually.

Here’s the 2016 Holiday Geek Gift Guide for Cat Lovers…