Year: 2018

Companies race to make self driving automobiles, but there's another race going on to create robots that can roam through neighborhoods, to deliver food and other purchases. Michelle Quinn reports on one robotic fleet in Berkeley, California. ...

Wasteless, an Israeli firm seeking to reduce food waste and save consumers money, won $2 million in funding Tuesday, as more businesses seek to cut food losses amid rising global hunger. The two-year-old firm sells software to supermarkets so that they can manage their stocks and reduce food prices as shelf life dwindles, reducing waste and boosting profits. "We inspire customers to be better citizens of the world and to take part in the war against food waste, while at the same time enjoying better prices," Ben Biron, one of the founders of Wasteless, said in a statement. Food waste is increasingly viewed as unethical, as well as environmentally destructive, dumped in landfills where it rots, releasing greenhouse gases, while fuel, water and energy needed to grow, store and carry…

Facebook on Tuesday hosted its first global summit spotlighting a growing Workplace platform launched two years ago as a private social network for businesses. While Facebook would not disclose exact figures, it said Workplace – a rival to collaboration services like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft – has been a hit and that ranks of users have doubled in the past eight to 10 months. The list of companies using Workplace included Walmart, Starbucks, Spotify, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic. "It is growing very fast," Workplace by Facebook vice president Julien Codorniou told AFP. "We started with big companies, because that is where we found traction. It is a very good niche." Workplace is a separate operation from Facebook's main social network and is intended as a platform to connect everyone in…

If you are listening to music, chances are you're on YouTube. A music consumer report by the industry's global body IFPI published Tuesday found that 86 percent of us listen to music through on-demand streaming. And nearly half that time, 47 percent is spent on YouTube. Video as a whole accounted for 52 percent of the time we spent streaming music, posing challenges to such subscription services as Spotify and SoundCloud. But while Spotify's estimated annual revenue per user was $20 (17.5 euros), YouTube's was less than a dollar. The London-based IFPI issued a broader overview in April that found digital sales for the first time making up the majority of global revenues thanks to streaming. The report published Tuesday looked into where and when we listen to music. It…

You see them everywhere in U.S. cities — young and old riding rented electric-powered scooters. When they are done, they can leave the scooters anywhere.  Someone has to find and charge the scooters, then return them to designated hot spots where customers can use them the next day. And that has given rise to a new line of work — scooter juicers.  Shivali Sharma is a stay-at-home mom in San Jose, California, and a Marine staff sergeant on medical leave. She works as a juicer to earn money while her boys sleep.  “The hunt is fun,” she said. It’s a new kind of piece work, made possible by GPS and phone apps.  Sharma and her family noticed the scooters being left on their streets. It intrigued them. “We were like,…

Google exposed the personal data of about 500,000 Google+ users to potential misuse by outside developers for years through a bug, then concealed the error to avoid consequences, according to an investigation published by The Wall Street Journal Monday. Parent company Alphabet Inc responded by announcing it would shut down Google+, a largely defunct social network launched in 2011 to compete with Facebook. Shares of Alphabet Inc fell by about 1 percent in response to the story.   "Our Privacy & Data Protection Office reviewed this issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether we could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response," Google said of the error in…

Twitter will strengthen rules rules to prevent sexual harassment and abuse on its platform, the social media company said Monday in an email to the collection of safety advocates, researchers and academics it uses help set its policies. There will also be harsher penalties for misconduct. The new guidelines include immediately and permanently suspending the accounts of anyone who posts or is the source of non-consensual nudity. Twitter's definition of non-consensual nudity will be expanded to include photos that are taken covertly. Third parties will now be able to report unwanted sexual advances from one user to another. Previously, only those directly involved in the matter could do so. Twitter also promised to publish new rules adding hate symbols and imagery to its definition of sensitive media. The changes come…

Facebook is launching the first electronic device to bear its brand, a screen and camera-equipped gadget intended to make video calls easier and more intuitive. But it's unclear if people will open their homes to an internet-connected camera sold by a company with a shoddy track record on protecting user privacy. Facebook is marketing the device, called Portal, as a way for its more than 2 billion users to chat with one another without having to fuss with positioning and other controls. The device features a camera that uses artificial intelligence to automatically pan and zoom as people move around during calls. The Portal will feature two different screen sizes. It will go on sale in early November for roughly $200 to $350. ...

The massive breach of Facebook and the exposure of the information of an estimated 50 million users last week has highlighted one of the problems with all the data we are putting out into the world. City planners share those concerns, but they're looking also looking at how "Big Data" may be a big boost in helping their own cities develop. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Saturday it currently had no reason to doubt statements from companies that have denied a Bloomberg report that their supply chains were compromised by malicious computer chips inserted by Chinese intelligence services. “The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise,” DHS said in a statement. “Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story,” it said. Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday cited 17 unidentified intelligence and company sources as saying that Chinese spies had placed computer chips inside equipment used by around 30 companies, as well as multiple U.S. government agencies, which would give Beijing…

The U.S. farm-to-table trend is definitely one of the latest. Americans are hungry for fresh, organic produce in their homes, and in many cases they are willing to pay more for it. But in an urban setting, residents don't have a farm next door. The company Iron Ox is looking to change that, with the help of robust robotics. VOA's Kevin Enochs has the story. ...

The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to revise safety rules that bar fully self-driving cars from the roads without equipment such as steering wheels, pedals and mirrors, according to a document made public on Thursday. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) "intends to reconsider the necessity and appropriateness of its current safety standards" as applied to automated vehicles, the U.S. Department of Transportation said in an 80-page update of its principles dubbed "Automated Vehicles 3.0." The department, as reported by Reuters earlier on Thursday, disclosed that the NHTSA wants comment "on proposed changes to particular safety standards to accommodate automated vehicle technologies and the possibility of setting exceptions to certain standards that are relevant only when human drivers are present." U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao released the…

The U.S. government warned Wednesday that a hacking group widely known as cloudhopper, which Western cybersecurity firms have linked to the Chinese government, has launched attacks on technology service providers in a campaign to steal data from their clients. The Department of Homeland issued a technical alert for cloudhopper, which it said was engaged in cyber espionage and theft of intellectual property, after experts with two prominent U.S. cybersecurity companies warned earlier this week that Chinese hacking activity has surged amid the escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing. Chinese authorities have repeatedly denied claims by Western cybersecurity firms that it supports hacking. Homeland Security Homeland Security released the information to support U.S. companies in responding to attacks by the group, which is targeting information technology, energy, health care, communications…

North Korea's nuclear and missile tests have stopped, but its hacking operations to gather intelligence and raise funds for the sanction-strapped government in Pyongyang may be gathering steam. U.S. security firm FireEye raised the alarm Wednesday over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrating the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophisticated and destructive attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries. It says the group is still operating and poses "an active global threat." It is part of a wider pattern of malicious state-backed cyber activity that has led the Trump administration to identify North Korea — along with Russia, Iran and China — as one of the main online threats facing the United States.…

Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future. He’s heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he’s strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own. Sure, Angus is a robot. But don’t hold that against him, even if he looks more like a large tanning bed than C-3PO. To Alexander, Angus and other robots are key to a new wave of local agriculture that aims to raise lettuce, basil and other produce in metropolitan areas while conserving water and sidestepping the high costs of human labor. It’s a big challenge, and some earlier efforts have flopped. Even Google’s “moonshot” laboratory, known as X, couldn't figure…