Author: Techman

A new mass spectroscopy machine is helping forensic scientists who are looking for a much better view of fingerprints on objects used in a crime. The current methods of making a copy of a fingerprint may not be good enough and DNA swabbing can damage…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order this month designed to strengthen the country's cybersecurity workforce, the front line against hackers, domestic and foreign. With 7 billion internet-connected devices in the world, and numbers expected to rise, the threat is growing. Faith Lapidus reports, web-connected…

A cat who lost his back legs when he was hit by a train got a new lease on life by getting new prosthetic limbs. They were designed by engineering students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison using a 3D printer. VOA's Deborah Block has more.…

Billionaire Richard Branson is moving Virgin Galactic’s winged passenger rocket and more than 100 employees from California to a remote commercial launch and landing facility in southern New Mexico, bringing his space tourism dream a step closer to reality. Branson said Friday at a news…

The question comes up over and over, with extremist material, hate speech, election meddling and privacy invasions. Why can't Facebook just fix it? It's complicated, with reasons that include Facebook's size, its business model and technical limitations, not to mention years of unchecked growth. Oh,…

France welcomed Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on Friday with a threat of sweeping new regulation. With Facebook under fire on multiple fronts, Zuckerberg is in Paris to show that his social media giant is working hard to limit violent extremism and hate speech shared online. But…

Nike wants to meet your feet. The sneaker seller will launch a foot-scanning tool on its app this summer that will measure and remember the length, width and other dimensions of customers' feet after they point a smartphone camera to their toes. The app will…

U.S. communications regulators are rejecting a Chinese telecom company's application to provide service in the U.S. due to national-security risks amid an escalation in tensions between the two countries.   The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted unanimously, 5-0 across party lines, to reject China…

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes says it's time to break up the social media behemoth. He says in a New York Times opinion piece that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has allowed a relentless focus on growth to crush competitors and "sacrifice security and civility for clicks." Hughes…

Earlier this month, officials from a group of 30 countries agreed to take a more coordinated approach to secure the next generation of fast mobile communication networks, known as 5G. The United States and others worry that technology companies located in countries with governments like…

A senior U.S. State Department official said there is no need for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to explicitly ban Chinese telecommunication company Huawei from taking part in the buildout of the U.S. 5G networks. The four largest U.S. telecom carriers —…

U.S. law enforcement officials announced on Wednesday the indictment of two Israeli operators of a website that referred hundreds of thousands of users to underground internet marketplaces to purchase drugs, weapons and other illegal products.     Tal Prihar, 37, an Israeli citizen living in…

Google’s self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, is teaming up with Lyft in Arizona to attempt to lure passengers away from ride-hailing market leader Uber. The alliance announced Tuesday will allow anyone with the Lyft app in the Phoenix area to summon one of the 10 self-driving…

Imagine a robot that can learn to walk by itself in about five minutes. Researchers at the University of Southern California have developed a robotic leg that can do just that with potential applications that range from helping in disaster areas to outer space. VOA’s…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to showcase much-anticipated updates to the company's hardware lines and artificial intelligence. Google will also likely address privacy updates as concerns about data sharing continue to plague the tech industry. Facebook dedicated much of its own conference last week…

When Google launched its now distinctive digital assistant in 2016, it was already in danger of being an also-ran. At the time, Amazon had been selling its Echo smart speaker, powered by its Alexa voice assistant, for more than a year. Apple's Siri was already…

Alphabet's Google is set to roll out a dashboard-like function in its Chrome browser to offer users more control in fending off tracking cookies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Cookies are small text files that follow internet…

Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems.   The software kit is being…

Virtual Reality had a fantastic year in 2016, with the release of several anticipated VR glasses, including the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Gaming and technology fairs presented the new toys proudly, but the boom quickly declined, leaving the technology to only niche applications.…

An innovative Czech company is changing the way we think of light, by capturing and transforming it in ways that save money and generally make the world a more beautiful place. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Lightweight, cheap to make and easier to send into outer space. Academics in the U.S. are developing an inflatable robot with money from the American space agency, NASA. NASA says the blow-up technology can handle the cosmos and existence back here on Earth. Arash Arabasadi…

European and American investigators have broken up one of the world’s largest online criminal marketplaces for drugs, hacking tools and financial-theft wares in raids in the United States, Germany and Brazil. Three German men, ages 31, 22 and 29, were arrested after the raids in…

Cybersecurity officials from dozens of countries on Friday proposed a set of principles to ensure the safety of next generation mobile networks amid concerns over the use of gear made by China's Huawei. The non-binding proposals were published at the end of a two-day meeting…

Vietnam is used to being an order taker. Companies such as Nokia and Samsung Electronics use the Southeast Asian country’s cheap labor to assemble consumer electronics for export. Those investments from abroad have slowly handed Vietnam the supplies, parts and know-how needed for local companies…

Nearly two weeks after a fiery explosion during a ground test of its new crew capsule, SpaceX confirmed Thursday that the vehicle was destroyed, but neither the company nor NASA, its primary customer, have publicly acknowledged the nature of the mishap. Instead, Hans Koenigsmann, vice…

The hugely popular social media site Facebook has banned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and several others for hate speech. Facebook said Thursday that the individuals violated its policy against instigating violence. "Individuals and organizations who spread hate or attack…

Britain's prime minister fired her defense minister Wednesday after finding 'compelling evidence' that he leaked information to journalists about a secret decision to allow China's tech giant Huawei to participate in some parts of the country's 5G network. State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports his…

For years, Facebook said it wanted to be the world’s digital town square. Now Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has a more intimate vision, the digital living room, enabling private conversations between people and groups. The company spelled out how it is changing at its annual…