Year: 2023

A new optical ground station has been built by the Australian National University to help the U.S. space agency, NASA, and others explore space and safely reach Mars. The Australian team has developed a new type of space communication using lasers. Researchers say the system will allow them to connect with satellites and NASA-crewed missions beyond low-Earth orbit. The project is supported by the Australian Space Agency’s Moon to Mars initiative. The Australian National University Quantum Optical Ground Station is based at the Mount Stromlo Observatory, near Canberra. It is a powerful telescope that will support high-speed advanced communications with satellites orbiting at distances from low-Earth orbit to the moon. Kate Ferguson, associate director for strategic projects at the Australian National University Institute for Space, told VOA current communication systems…

Facebook and Instagram fail to protect underage users from exposure to child sexual abuse material and let adults solicit pornographic imagery from them, New Mexico's attorney general alleges in a lawsuit that follows an undercover online investigation. "Our investigation into Meta's social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex," Attorney General Raul Torrez said in a statement Wednesday. The civil lawsuit filed late Tuesday against Meta Platforms Inc. in state court also names its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, as a defendant. In addition, the suit claims Meta "harms children and teenagers through the addictive design of its platform, degrading users' mental health, their sense of self-worth and their physical safety," Torrez's office…

Spotify says it is planning to lay off 17% of its global workforce, amounting to around 1,500 employees, following layoffs earlier this year of 600 people in January and an additional 200 in June. The music streaming giant is continuing its effort to cut costs and work toward becoming profitable, said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a prepared statement. “By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient,” he said. “We need to be both.” The layoffs come following a rare quarterly net profit of about $70.3 million in October. The company has never seen a full year net profit. “I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance,” Ek said. “We debated making smaller…

Paul Lane uses his mouth, cheek and chin to push buttons and guide his virtual car around the Gran Turismo racetrack on the PlayStation 5. It's how he's been playing for the past 23 years, after a car accident left him unable to use his fingers. Playing video games has long been a challenge for people with disabilities, chiefly because the standard controllers for the PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo can be difficult, or even impossible, to maneuver for people with limited mobility. And losing the ability to play the games doesn't just mean the loss of a favorite pastime, it can also exacerbate social isolation in a community already experiencing it at a far higher rate than the general population. As part of the gaming industry's efforts to address the…

In what Guatemalan authorities described as a national security incident, hackers affiliated with the activist group Anonymous disabled multiple government webpages Saturday. The attacks were in support of demonstrations led by Indigenous organizations in the Central American country. For almost two weeks, demonstrators have been calling for the resignation of Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras, saying she has tried to undermine the popular vote that made progressive Bernardo Arévalo the president-elect. Posting on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter, hackers under the handle @AnonGTReloaded announced, "This October 14 #Anonymous will attack the Government of Guatemala, but this time we do not come alone." The hackers targeted government webpages with floods of automated traffic until they crashed, a technique known as distributed denial-of-service attacks. Webpages for Guatemala's judicial…

Malawi launched its first-ever Centre for Artificial Intelligence and STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — Friday at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. Established with support from various U.S.-based universities, the center aims to provide solutions to the country's innovation and technology needs. The project's leader, Zipangani Vokhiwa, a science professor at Mercer University in the U.S. and a Fulbright scholar, says the center will help promote the study and use of artificial intelligence, or AI, and STEAM for the socioeconomic development of Malawi and beyond. "Economic development that we know cannot go without the modern scientific knowledge and aspect so the center will complement vision 2063 for Malawi as a country that needs to be moving together with the country developments in science," Vokhiwa said.…

Africa is the site of a new battle for influence as Washington ramps up efforts to build an alternative critical minerals supply chain to avoid reliance on China. Beijing dominates the processing of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other resources from the continent that are needed for the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles. But at the Green Energy Africa Summit this week in Cape Town, which was held on the sidelines of Africa Oil Week, few were willing to talk about it directly. Asked whether the U.S. was playing catch-up with China, one of the panel’s speakers, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources Kimberly Harrington, said simply that Washington was looking to "diversify." For his part, fellow panelist Chiza Charles…

As Hamas militants and rockets entered Israel Saturday, so too did a barrage of disinformation. The conflict is being fought not only on the ground but also on the internet. VOA’s Robin Guess has the story. Liam Scott contributed to this report. ...

The European Union has expanded its warnings that tech companies must remove illegal content from their platforms, or risk facing severe legal penalties. Following the militant Islamist group Hamas' attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory airstrikes in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, social media firms have seen a surge in misinformation related to the conflict, including doctored images and mislabeled videos, alongside images of graphic violence. On Tuesday, EU industry chief Thierry Breton told Elon Musk to curb disinformation on his messaging platform X, warning it was being used to disseminate illegal content and false information in the wake of recent violence in the Middle East. Breton issued a similar warning to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, urging the company to ensure strict compliance with European law. In his…

Utah on Tuesday became the latest U.S. state to sue TikTok, alleging the company is "baiting" children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits. TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app's safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit. "We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary," Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City. Arkansas and Indiana have filed similar lawsuits, while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether state attempts to regulate social…