Year: 2018

President Donald Trump concedes that some Apple Inc. products may become more expensive if his administration imposes "massive'' additional tariffs on Chinese-made goods, but he says the tech company can fix the problem by moving production to the U.S. "Start building new plants now. Exciting!'' Trump said Saturday in a tweet aimed at the Cupertino, California, company. This week, Apple said that a proposed additional round of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports would raise prices on some of its products, including the Apple Watch and the Mac mini. The company is highly exposed to a trade war between the U.S. and China. It makes many of its products for the U.S. market in China, and it also sells gadgets including the iPhone in China, making them a potential…

The number of wearable technologies that use sensors as medical tools to track a person’s well-being - is on the rise. All of them - need an electric charge or a battery source to operate, but a handful of researchers are trying to take batteries out of the equation. At the Texas A&M University in College Station, researchers are doing just that - looking at ways to use our own body heat to power all those sensors. Elizabeth Lee takes a look at the emerging new technology. ...

There has been an increasing number of wearable technologies that have health sensors as medical tools to track a person’s well-being. Many of these devices need to be charged or are battery-powered.  A handful of researchers want to take batteries out of the equation and instead, use waste body heat and convert that into useful electricity to power sensors.  “The average person is something like an 80-watt light bulb,” said Jamie Grunlan, Texas A&M University’s Linda & Ralph Schmidt '68 Professor in Mechanical Engineering. Grunlan and his team of researchers are working on using the waste heat the body gives off and converting that into useful electricity. The idea is to create printable, paintable thermoelectric technology that looks like ink and can coat a wearable fabric, similar to dyeing colors…

Twitter has permanently banned far-right media personality Alex Jones for violating its policy against "abusive behavior." Jones, who is known as a conspiracy theorist, has about 900,000 followers on Twitter. His Infowars website has hundreds of thousands of followers, as well. Twitter accused Jones of violating its policy after he was seen on television berating and insulting a CNN reporter waiting to enter congressional hearings on social media policies. Jones called the reporter a smiling "possum caught doing some really nasty stuff" and also made fun of his clothes. Twitter had previously suspended Jones' account, but now he is banned from posting on the social media site. Jones has yet to comment. Jones is one of the country's most controversial media figures, known for saying the President George W. Bush…

Tennis fans have descended on New York to watch the world's best players at the US Open — one of four Grand Slam tennis tournaments in the world. With so much action on the courts, staying on top of the matches is a nonstop job. But officials are employing extra help, in the form of artificial intelligence. Tina Trinh reports. ...

Facebook and Twitter executives defended their efforts to prevent Russian meddling in U.S. midterm elections before congressional panels Wednesday. The social media companies' efforts to provide assurances to lawmakers come amid warnings from internet researchers that Moscow still has active social media accounts aimed at influencing U.S. political discourse. VOA's Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill. ...

Josh Russell works as a systems analyst and programmer at Indiana University, has two daughters, and exposes Russian internet trolls in his spare time. Russell first became interested in the phenomenon of Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election, when he noticed a large amount of misinformation distributed about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He noticed how many accounts spreading misinformation, ostensibly run by American activists, were, in fact, operating from abroad, and were linked up to now notorious Russian “troll farms.” Today Russell collaborates with many American journalists in the fight against fake information on the internet. Question: We recently learned that Russian hackers attacked some conservative U.S. organizations, the Hudson Institute, for example, and the International Republican Institute. What, in your opinion, is driving this? Joshua Russell: Any organization…

Facebook and Twitter executives are insisting at two congressional hearings Wednesday they are aggressively trying to identify foreign actors who want to inflict damage on the U.S. before the November midterm elections. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told the Senate Intelligence Committee her company is "now blocking millions of attempts to register false accounts each and every day" and is "making progress on fake news." She said the company's recent efforts are "starting to pay off" but added "We cannot stop interference by ourselves." Sandberg said Facebook is "working with outside experts, industry partners and governments, including law enforcement, to share information about threats and prevent abuse" to avert further interference in American elections. Social media companies are under pressure over foreign meddling in U.S. elections, the spread of…

Ben Judah is the author of This Is London and Fragile Empire, a contributing writer at Politico, and an expert at the Hudson Institute. His think tank project on modern-day kleptocracy was recently targeted in a cyberattack that Microsoft has linked to the Fancy Bear (ATP28) hacking unit associated with Russian military intelligence. Judah spoke the Voice of America about the attack on the various right-leaning think tanks, Senate groups, and the current similarities between Moscow and Washington’s political climates. Question: What happened at the Hudson Institute? Why was your research targeted? Ben Judah: There is a lot I can’t discuss due to security procedures in place. But what happened is that Microsoft revealed that a series of think tanks and conservative organizations had been targeted by Russian hackers, including, specifically, the…

Amazon.com is in talks with Chile to house and mine massive amounts of data generated by the country's giant telescopes, which could prove fertile ground for the company to develop new artificial intelligence tools. The talks, which have been little reported on so far and which were described to Reuters by Chilean officials and an astronomer, are aimed at fueling growth in Amazon.com's cloud computing business in Latin America and boosting its data processing capabilities. President Sebastian Pinera's center-right government, which is seeking to wean Chile's $325 billion economy from reliance on copper mining, announced last week it plans to pool data from all its telescopes onto a virtual observatory stored in the cloud, without giving a timeframe. The government talked of the potential for astrodata innovation, but did not…

Twitter's CEO says the company is not biased against Republicans or Democrats and is working on ways to ensure that debate is healthier on its platform.   In prepared testimony released ahead of a House hearing Wednesday, Jack Dorsey says he wants to be clear about one thing: "Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules.''   The testimony comes as some Republicans say conservatives have been censored on social media and have questioned the platform's algorithms. Dorsey will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday afternoon on that subject, following a morning hearing before the Senate intelligence committee on foreign interference in social media.   At the Senate hearing, Twitter…

Russia on Tuesday said it has officially warned US internet giant Google against meddling in next Sunday's local elections by posting opposition leader Alexei Navalny's videos calling for mass protests. Representatives of Russia's electoral commission, the Prosecutor-General's Office and the state internet watchdog at a meeting alleged Navalny uses Google's services to disseminate illegal information and warned that the company may be prosecuted if it does not act to stop this. A Google spokeswoman declined to give a specific comment, telling AFP in an emailed statement that the company "reviews all valid requests from government institutions." Central Election Commission member Alexander Klyukin said the commission had sent an official letter to Larry Page, the CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, regarding Navalny's use of YouTube. The fierce Kremlin critic has…

Science fiction has long teased consumers about a future where robots are our personal assistants. But it's no longer science fiction. The recent spike in consumer-grade "smart speakers" that respond to users' voice commands has been given a face — with the help of a self-navigating robot that listens to its owner's commands. Arash Arabasadi has more. ...