Month: November 2022

NASA once again makes moonshot history. Plus, the space agency’s astronauts take a stroll, and a piece of tragic space history found by accident. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.   ...

Taiwan's envoy to a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders is the 91-year-old billionaire founder of a computer chip manufacturing giant that operated behind the scenes for decades before being thrust into the center of U.S.-Chinese tension over technology and security. Morris Chang's hybrid role highlights the clash between Taiwan's status as one of China's top tech suppliers and Beijing's threats to attack the self-ruled island democracy of 22 million people, which the mainland's ruling Communist Party says it part of its territory. Taiwan's decision to send Chang instead of a political leader to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand reflects the island's unusual status. The United States and other governments have agreed to Chinese demands not to have official relations with Taiwan or have their leaders meet its president. Chang…

With Twitter’s human rights team eliminated, legal experts voice alarm about what it could mean for users around the world. Tina Trinh reports. Camera: Daniel Brody. ...

NASA is kicking off its new moon program with a test flight of a brand-new rocket and capsule. Liftoff was slated for early Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The test flight aims to send an empty crew capsule into a far-flung lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA's famed Apollo moonshots. The project is years late and billions over budget. The price tag for the test flight: more than $4 billion. A rundown of the new rocket and capsule, part of NASA's Artemis program, named after Apollo's mythological twin sister: Rocket power At 322 feet (98 meters), the new rocket is shorter and slimmer than the Saturn V rockets that hurled 24 Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. But it's mightier, packing 8.8 million pounds (4 million…

FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that the bureau has "national security concerns" about popular short-form video hosting app TikTok as the Chinese-owned company seeks U.S. government approval to continue operating in the country. Speaking during a U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee hearing on "worldwide threats to the homeland," Wray said the FBI's concerns about TikTok include "the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users." There is also concern, Wray said in response to a question, that the Chinese government could "control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations ... or to control software on millions of devices, which gives the opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices." In written testimony, Wray called the foreign…

Search giant Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users' locations, state attorneys general announced Monday.  The states' investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press story, which found that Google continued to track people's location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called "location history."  The attorneys general called the settlement a historic win for consumers, and the largest multistate settlement in U.S history dealing with privacy.  It comes at a time of mounting unease over privacy and surveillance by tech companies that has drawn growing outrage from politicians and scrutiny by regulators. The Supreme Court's ruling in June ending the constitutional protections for abortion raised potential privacy…

It’s not easy being Elon Musk. That was the message the new Twitter owner and billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX had for younger people who might seek to emulate his entrepreneurial success. “Be careful what you wish for,” Musk told a business forum in Bali on Monday when asked what an up-and-coming “Elon Musk of the East” should focus on. “I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same,” he continued. “I mean, the amount that I torture myself, is the next level, frankly.” Musk was speaking at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies taking place on the Indonesian resort island. He…

Twitter's new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job. Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content. But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs. Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated Saturday. She said she's concerned that there's going to be an increase in…

Australian researchers have identified 1,500 additional locations across the country that could be used as pumped storage hydropower facilities. They have said it should reduce Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels. Academics at the Australian National University have said pumped storage hydropower is a “low-cost, mass storage option” that could help Australia reach its emissions reduction targets. Emeritus Professor Andrew Blakers at the university’s College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics told VOA the process involves transferring water between two reservoirs or lakes at different elevations. He said water is pumped to the higher reservoir when there are plentiful supplies of wind and solar energy. The water is then released at night, or at other times when it is not windy or sunny, maximizing the use of the stored energy in the…

Twitter paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service Friday as fake accounts mushroomed and new owner Elon Musk brought back the "official" badge to some users of the social media platform. The coveted blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures. But a subscription option, open to anyone prepared to pay, was rolled out earlier this week to help Twitter grow revenue as Musk fights to retain advertisers. The flip-flop is part of a chaotic two weeks at Twitter since Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition. Musk has fired nearly half of Twitter's workforce, removed its board and senior executives, and raised the prospect of Twitter's bankruptcy. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it was watching Twitter…

Crypto exchange FTX filed for U.S. bankruptcy proceedings on Friday and founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO, in a stunning downfall that has sent shock waves through markets and drawn calls for better regulation of the digital industry. The distressed crypto trading platform had been struggling to raise billions in funds to stave off collapse after traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours and rival exchange Binance abandoned a proposed rescue deal. The company said in a statement shared on Twitter on Friday that FTX, its affiliated crypto trading firm Alameda Research and about 130 other companies have commenced voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware. FTX had raised $400 million from investors in January, valuing the company at $32 billion. It attracted…