Year: 2023

A "cybersecurity issue" led to the shutdown of some casino and hotel computer systems at MGM Resorts International properties across the U.S., a company official reported Monday.  The incident began Sunday and the extent of its effect on reservation systems and casino floors in Las Vegas and states including Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York and Ohio was not immediately known, company spokesman Brian Ahern said.  "MGM Resorts recently identified a cybersecurity issue affecting some of the company's systems," the company said in a statement that pointed to an investigation involving external cybersecurity experts and notifications to law enforcement agencies.  The nature of the issue was not described, but the statement said efforts to protect data included "shutting down certain systems." It said the investigation was continuing.  A…

DuckDuckGo, which has long complained that Google's tactics have made it too tough to get people to use their search engine on a mobile phone, will be one of many rivals to the online search giant eyeing a once-in-a-generation antitrust trial set to begin Tuesday. The United States will argue Google didn't play by the rules in its efforts to dominate online search in a trial seen as a battle for the soul of the Internet. The U.S. Justice Department is expected to detail how Google paid billions of dollars annually to device makers like Apple Inc. AAPL.O, wireless companies like AT&T T.N and browser makers like Mozilla to keep Google's search engine atop the leader board. DuckDuckGo has also complained, for example, that removing Google as the default search…

As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills. The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether the country's hyper-digitalized approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills. Swedish Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm, who took office 11 months ago as part of a new center-right coalition government, was one of the biggest critics of the all-out embrace of technology. "Sweden's students need more textbooks," Edholm said in March. "Physical books are important for student learning." The minister…

The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure. But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing. As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers, including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google, have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption. But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI's most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive…

Members of the International Radio and Television Union from about 50 countries, meeting this week in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, say a lack of infrastructure and human and financial resources remains a major obstacle to the switch from analog to digital broadcasting in public media, especially in Africa. They are asking governments and funding agencies to assist with digitalization, which they say is necessary in the changing media landscape. More than half of Africa's media is yet to fully digitalize. Increasing reports of cross-interference between broadcasting and telecom services is a direct consequence of switchover delays, they said. Professor Amin Alhassan, director general of Ghana Broadcasting Corp., says most African broadcasters are not serving their audiences and staying as relevant as they should because of the slow pace of digital…

It started with an image of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on her China trip last month, reportedly taken on what the Chinese tech giant Huawei is touting as a breakthrough 5G mobile phone. Within days, fake ad campaigns on Chinese social media were depicting Raimondo as a Huawei brand ambassador promoting the phone. The tongue-in-cheek doctored photos made such a splash that they appeared on the social media accounts of state media CCTV, giving them a degree of official approval. VOA contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce for a reaction but didn't receive a response by the time of publication. Chinese nationalists spare no effort to tout the Huawei Mate 60 Pro — equipped with domestically made chips — as a breakthrough showing China's 5G technological independence despite U.S.…

Russia’s cyber operations may not have managed to land the big blow that many Western officials feared following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but Ukrainian cyber officials caution Moscow has not stopped trying. Instead, Ukraine’s top counterintelligence agency warns that Russia continues to refine its tactics as it works to further ingrain cyber operations as part of their warfighting doctrine. "Our resilience has risen a lot," Illia Vitiuk, head of cybersecurity for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said Thursday at a cyber summit in Washington. "But the problem is that our counterpart, Russia, our enemy, is constantly also evolving and searching for new ways [to attack]." Vitiuk warned that Moscow continues to launch between 10 and 15 serious cyberattacks per day, many of which show signs of being…

China is turning to artificial intelligence to rile up U.S. voters and stoke divisions ahead of the country’s 2024 presidential elections, according to a new report. Threat analysts at Microsoft warned in a blog post Thursday that Beijing has developed a new artificial intelligence capability that can produce “eye-catching content” more likely to go viral compared to previous Chinese influence operations. According to Microsoft, the six-month-long effort appears to use AI-generators, which are able to both produce visually stunning imagery and also to improve it over time. “We have observed China-affiliated actors leveraging AI-generated visual media in a broad campaign that largely focuses on politically divisive topics, such as gun violence, and denigrating U.S. political figures and symbols,” Microsoft said. “We can expect China to continue to hone this technology…

Japan launched a rocket Thursday carrying an X-ray telescope that will explore the origins of the universe as well as a small lunar lander. The launch of the HII-A rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan was shown on live video by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, known as JAXA. "We have a liftoff," the narrator at JAXA said as the rocket flew up in a burst of smoke and then flew over the Pacific. Thirteen minutes after the launch, the rocket put into orbit around Earth a satellite called the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, which will measure the speed and makeup of what lies between galaxies. That information helps in studying how celestial objects were formed, and hopefully can lead to solving the mystery of…

Green hydrogen is being touted around the world as a clean energy solution to take the carbon out of high-emitting sectors like transport and industrial manufacturing. The India-led International Solar Alliance launched the Green Hydrogen Innovation Centre earlier this year, and India itself approved $2.3 billion for the production, use and export of green hydrogen. Global cooperation on green hydrogen manufacturing and supply is expected to be discussed by G20 leaders at this week's summit in New Delhi. What is green hydrogen? Hydrogen is produced by separating that element from others in molecules where hydrogen occurs. For example, water — well known by its chemical symbol of H20, or two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom — can be split into those component atoms through electrolysis. Hydrogen has been produced…

Yuriy Fedorenko got his call sign Achilles for bravery and independence. Before the war, he was working full time as a Kyiv city council deputy; today, he is fighting against Russian forces in Donbas as commander of an attack drone squadron. Anna Kosstutschenko has his story. VOA footage by Pavel Suhodolskiy ...