Year: 2018

Shares of Amazon.com Inc fell 4 percent on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump again attacked the online retailer over the pricing of its deliveries through the United States Postal Service and promised unspecified changes. "Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon," Trump tweeted. "They lose a fortune, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country ... not a level playing field!" Trump has been vocal about his opposition to Amazon's use of the postal service and Monday's tweet adds to investor worries that the company could see more regulation. Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for a comment. Details of Amazon's payments to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) are…

"We've made a bunch of mistakes." "Everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times." "Not one day goes by when I don't think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust."   Sound familiar? It's Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a major privacy breach — seven years ago.   Lawmakers in many countries may be focused on Cambridge Analytica's alleged improper use of Facebook data, but the social network's privacy problems back more than a decade. Here are some of the company's most notable missteps and promises around privacy. 2007   The social media darling unveils its Facebook Platform to great fanfare. Zuckerberg says app developers can now access the web of connections between users and their friends,…

Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the world's ocean beds, yet they are home to a quarter of all marine life on the planet. But they are facing serious challenges that threaten their survival. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean island nation of the Seychelles, conservationists are coming up with new ways to save the reefs. VOA's Faith Lapidus narrates. ...

Having robots to do the dirty, tedious parts of the job is a dream come true in the construction business. Automation technology developers say robotics are transforming the industry, making it safer, and helping companies take on more projects and finish them faster. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates. ...

More than 1 billion people around the world have some sort of disability. Rong Shi of VOA's Mandarin service toured an exhibit in New York that showcases the latest gadgets and inventions designed to help those with a range of physical, sensory or cognitive abilities lead more independent lives and engage more fully in the world. Faith Lapidus reports. ...

The fallout continues for Facebook over how it handles user data and privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers are calling for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify, and regulators have opened investigations. Michelle Quinn reports on how the social media giant is facing a tipping point when it comes to dealing with user privacy. ...

A vehicle in a fatal crash last week in California was operating on Autopilot, making it the latest accident to involve a self-driving vehicle, Tesla has confirmed. The electric car maker said the driver, who was killed in the accident, did not have his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before the crash, despite several warnings from the vehicle. Tesla Inc. tells drivers that its Autopilot system, which can maintain speed, change lanes and self-park, requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel in order to take control of the vehicle to avoid accidents.  Tesla said its vehicle logs show the driver took no action to stop the Model X SUV from crashing into a concrete lane divider. Photographs of the SUV…

Russian ships are skulking around underwater communications cables, causing the U.S. and its allies to worry the Kremlin might be taking information warfare to new depths. Is Moscow interested in cutting or tapping the cables? Does it want the West to worry it might? Is there a more innocent explanation? Unsurprisingly, Russia isn't saying. But whatever Moscow's intentions, U.S. and Western officials are increasingly troubled by their rival's interest in the 400 fiber-optic cables that carry most of world's calls, emails and texts, as well as $10 trillion worth of daily financial transactions. "We've seen activity in the Russian navy, and particularly undersea in their submarine activity, that we haven't seen since the '80s," General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the U.S. European Command, told Congress this month. Without undersea cables,…

Was a leaked internal Facebook memo aimed at justifying the social network's growth-at-any-cost strategy? Or simply a way to open debate on difficult questions over new technologies? The extraordinarily blunt memo by a high-ranking executive — leaked this week and quickly repudiated by the author and by Facebook — warned that the social network's goal of connecting the world might have negative consequences, but that these were outweighed by the positives. "Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies," the 2016 memo by top executive Andrew "Boz" Bosworth said. "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools." While Bosworth and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the memo was only a way to provoke debate, it created a new firestorm for the social network mired in…

While wind turbines and solar cells generate power only when there is wind and sun, most rivers always flow and most ocean shores always experience tidal currents. At a recent energy summit organized by the U.S. Energy Department, a company from Maine displayed an innovative submersible generator that effectively harvests power from shallow rivers and tidal currents. VOA's George Putic has more. ...

A recent fatality involving one of Uber's self-driving cars may have created uncertainty and doubt regarding the future of autonomous vehicles, but it's not stopping automakers who say autonomous and self-driving vehicles are here to stay. At the New York International Auto Show this week, autonomous vehicles and electric cars were increasingly front and center as VOA's Tina Trinh reports. ...

A new coalition of tech giants and conservationists is looking to drastically reduce the amount of wild, and often endangered, animals that are trafficked via online services. As Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, they hope to cut 80 percent of the illegal trade by the end of the decade. ...

The family of a woman killed by an Uber Technologies Inc self-driving vehicle in Arizona has reached a settlement with the ride services company, ending a potential legal battle over the first fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle. Cristina Perez Hesano, an attorney with the firm of Bellah Perez in Glendale, Arizona, said "the matter has been resolved" between Uber and the daughter and husband of Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died after being hit by an Uber self-driving SUV while walking across a street in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe earlier this month. Terms of the settlement were not given. The law firm representing Herzberg's daughter and husband, whose names were not disclosed, said they would have no further comment on the matter as they considered it resolved. An Uber…

A Nigerian entrepreneur is turning plastic waste into rain coats, school bags, car covers and shoes. He says he is doing his part to fight pollution and encourage recycling while making a practical fashion statement. But not everyone is buying into it. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports. ...

While working for a big consulting firm in Lagos, Nigeria, Afua Osei repeatedly encountered women who wanted to advance professionally but didn't know how. They needed guidance and mentoring. So, Osei and her colleague Yasmin Belo-Osagie started She Leads Africa, a digital media company offering advice, information, training and networking opportunities to help "young African women achieve their professional dreams," according to the website. Launched in 2014, it now has an online community of over 300,000 in at least 35 countries in Africa and throughout the diaspora. "I didn't plan to be an entrepreneur," Osei said this month at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual festival of music, film and tech innovation.  Anyone can be an innovator, Osei said in an interview, after co-hosting a meetup on starting and investing…

Visiting Subway's website on a personal computer might not seem to have anything to do with checking the NFL's app on a phone. But these discrete activities are the foundation for a new service to help marketers follow you around. Adobe, a company better known for Photoshop and PDF files, says the new initiative announced Wednesday will help companies offer more personalized experiences and make ads less annoying by filtering out products and services you have already bought or will never buy. But it comes amid heightened privacy sensitivities after reports that Facebook allowed a political consulting firm to harvest data on millions of Facebook users to influence elections. And Adobe's initiative underscores the role data plays in helping companies make money. Many of the initial uses are for better…

Three Facebook Messenger app users have filed a lawsuit claiming the social network violated their privacy by collecting logs of their phone calls and text messages. The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in northern California, comes as Facebook faces scrutiny over privacy concerns. Facebook acknowledged on Sunday that it began uploading call and text logs from phones running Google's Android system in 2015. Facebook added that only users who gave appropriate permission were affected, that it didn't collect the contents of messages or calls, and that users can opt out of the data collection and have the stored logs deleted by changing their app settings. The suit seeks class-action status. A message seeking comment from Facebook on Wednesday was not immediately returned. ...

There is a saying that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. That is the idea behind a new concept by an Israeli company that is taking trash from landfills and converting it into a plastic-like composite. The material is being used to make household items and furniture, as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block. ...