Year: 2018

In the Baltic country of Lithuania, there’s growing debate over a Russian-owned taxi ride-sharing service that Lithuanian government officials warn could be spying on users through their smartphones. So, could an 'app' be the latest tool in Kremlin hybrid tactics, or has fear of all things Russian gone too far?  From Vilnius, Charles Maynes reports. ...

British-based startup ARC unveiled its first motorcycle model in Milan this week, one being described as fast, advanced and expensive. The so-called Vector costs more than $100,000, but ARC says it's for good reason. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. ...

Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website The Insider are suggesting that Russian intelligence has infiltrated the computer infrastructure of a company that processes British visa applications. The investigation, published Friday, aims to show how two suspected Russian military intelligence agents, who have been charged with poisoning a former Russian spy in the English city of Salisbury, may have obtained British visas. The Insider and Bellingcat said they interviewed the former chief technical officer of a company that processes visa applications for several consulates in Moscow, including that of Britain. The man, who fled Russia last year and applied for asylum in the United States, said he had been coerced to work with agents of the main Russian intelligence agency FSB, who revealed to him that they had access to the…

Companies could help refugees rebuild their lives by paying them to boost artificial intelligence (AI) using their phones and giving them digital skills, a tech nonprofit said Thursday. REFUNITE has developed an app, LevelApp, which is being piloted in Uganda to allow people who have been uprooted by conflict to earn instant money by “training” algorithms for AI. Wars, persecution and other violence have uprooted a record 68.5 million people, according to the U.N. refugee agency. People forced to flee their homes lose their livelihoods and struggle to create a source of income, REFUNITE co-chief executive Chris Mikkelsen told the Trust Conference in London. “This provides refugees with a foothold in the global gig economy,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s two-day event, which focuses on a host of human…

Facebook says it is getting better at proactively removing hate speech and changing the incentives that result in the most sensational and provocative content becoming the most popular on the site. The company has done so, it says, by ramping up its operations so that computers can review and make quick decisions on large amounts of content with thousands of reviewers making more nuanced decisions. In the future, if a person disagrees with Facebook's decision, he or she will be able to appeal to an independent review board. Facebook "shouldn't be making so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call with reporters Thursday. But as Zuckerberg detailed what the company has accomplished in recent months to crack down…

Super-realistic face masks made by a tiny company in rural Japan are in demand from the domestic tech and entertainment industries and from countries as far away as Saudi Arabia. The 300,000-yen ($2,650) masks, made of resin and plastic by five employees at REAL-f Co., attempt to accurately duplicate an individual's face down to fine wrinkles and skin texture. Company founder Osamu Kitagawa came up with the idea while working at a printing machine manufacturer. But it took him two years of experimentation before he found a way to use three-dimensional facial data from high-quality photographs to make the masks, and started selling them in 2011. The company, based in the western prefecture of Shiga, receives about 100 orders every year from entertainment, automobile, technology and security companies, mainly in…

Office workers often complain that the building is either too hot or too cold. Now, engineers and architects are working on creating "sentient buildings" that can cater to the personal needs and well being of each employee in the hopes of increasing productivity. VOA'S Elizabeth Lee has this report from Los Angeles. ...

China’s state-run Xinhua News has debuted what it called the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) anchor. But the novelty has generated more dislikes than likes online among Chinese netizens, with many calling the new virtual host “a news-reading device without a soul.” Analysts say the latest creation has showcased China’s short-term progress in voice recognition, text mining and semantic analysis, but challenges remain ahead for its long-term ambition of becoming an AI superpower by 2030. Nonhuman anchors Collaborating with Chinese search engine Sogou, Xinhua introduced two AI anchors, one for English broadcasts and the other for Chinese, both of which are based on images of the agency’s real newscasters, Zhang Zhao and Qiu Hao respectively. In its inaugural broadcast last week, the English-speaking anchor was more tech cheerleader than newshound,…

Democratic U.S. Representative David Cicilline, expected to become the next chairman of House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, said on Wednesday that Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself and Congress should take action. Cicilline, citing a report in the New York Times on Facebook's efforts to deal with a series of crises, said on Twitter: "This staggering report makes clear that @Facebook executives will always put their massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers." "It is long past time for us to take action," he said. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said a year ago that the company would put its "community" before profit, and it has doubled its staff focused on safety and security issues since then.…

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday launched the agency's first high-band 5G spectrum auction as it works to clear space for next-generation faster networks.  Bidding began Wednesday on spectrum in the 28 GHz band and will be followed by bidding for spectrum in the 24 GHz band. The FCC is making 1.55 gigahertz of spectrum available and the auctions will be followed by a 2019 auction of three more millimeter-wave spectrum bands — 37 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz.  "These airwaves will be critical in deploying 5G services and applications," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Wednesday.  5G networks are expected to be at least 100 times faster than current 4G networks and cut latency, or delays, to less than one-thousandth of a second from one-hundredth of a second in 4G. They also will allow for innovations in a number of different fields. While millimeter-wave…

The online sale of sex slaves is going strong despite new U.S. laws to clamp down on the crime, data analysts said Wednesday, urging a wider use of technology to fight human trafficking. In April, the United States passed legislation aimed at making it easier to prosecute social media platforms and websites that facilitate sex trafficking, days after a crackdown on classified ad giant Backpage.com. The law resulted in an immediate and sharp drop in sex ads online but numbers have since picked up again, data presented at the Thomson Reuters Foundation's annual Trust Conference showed. "The market has been destabilized and there are now new entrants that are willing to take the risk in order to make money," Chris White, a researcher at tech giant Microsoft who gathered the…

Robots with rigid metal frames are being used to help the paralyzed walk and have applications that could one day grant military fighters extra power on the battlefield. The problem is that they're uncomfortable and heavy. But researchers at Harvard University are working on lighter, flexible devices that move easily and don't weigh much. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Nigeria's Main One Cable took responsibility Tuesday for a glitch that temporarily caused some Google global traffic to be misrouted through China, saying it accidentally caused the problem during a network  upgrade.  The issue surfaced Monday afternoon as internet monitoring firms ThousandEyes and BGPmon said some traffic to Alphabet's Google had been routed through China and Russia, raising concerns that the communications had been intentionally hijacked.  Main One said in an email that it had caused a 74-minute glitch by misconfiguring a border gateway protocol filter used to route traffic across the internet. That resulted in some Google traffic being sent through Main One partner China Telecom, the West African firm said.  Google has said little about the matter. It acknowledged the problem Monday in a post on its website that said it was investigating the glitch and that it believed the problem originated outside the company.…