Author: Techman

Entering or exiting Cochin International airport in India’s southern Kochi city, it is hard to miss the sea of solar panels glinting under the sun on a vast stretch of land on one side of the road and on top of a massive car park. Close by, a huge billboard proclaims the airport’s status as the world’s first airport fully powered by solar energy. The journey to that title began with a pilot project five years ago as airport authorities searched for ways to minimize ever-growing power bills.  “We put solar panels on the rooftop of Terminal One, we observed it for a year and we found it is quite good and can be safely scaled up,” said the airport’s managing director, V.J.Kurian. Now, the energy being produced by the…

India's southern Kochi city in Kerala state is among the world's most innovative airports, completely powered by solar energy. Winner of the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award for Entrepreneurial Vision in 2018, the project is testimony to India's ambitions of rapidly scaling up the use of solar power to reduce its carbon emissions. Anjana Pasricha has this report. ...

Called the "greenest office building in the world," the Bullitt Center in Seattle, Washington, generates its own electricity and its own water, collected from rain falling on the roof. Opened on Earth Day in 2013, the Bullitt Center has been nicknamed a "Living Building." Natasha Mozgovaya visited the green building to see for herself what makes it so unusual. Anna Rice narrates her report. ...

The world of work is going through a major transformation. Technological advances are creating new jobs and at the same time leaving many people behind as their skills are no longer needed. A new study by the International Labor Organization’s Global Commission on the Future of Work addresses the many uncertainties arising from this new reality. The International Labor Organization agrees artificial intelligence, automation and robotics will lead to job losses, as people’s skills become obsolete. But it says these same technological advances, along with the greening of economies also will create millions of new jobs. Change is coming The co-chair of the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, says these advances offer many opportunities. But he warns people must harness the new…

Chinese internet users lost access to Microsoft’s Bing search engine for two days, setting off grumbling about the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight online censorship. Microsoft Corp. said Friday that access had been restored. A brief statement gave no reason for the disruption or other details. Comments on social media had accused regulators of choking off access to information. Others complained they were forced to use Chinese search engines they say deliver poor results. “Why can’t we choose what we want to use?” said a comment signed Aurelito on the Sina Weibo microblog service. Government censorship Bing complied with government censorship rules by excluding foreign websites that are blocked by Chinese filters from search results. But President Xi Jinping’s government has steadily tightened control over online activity. The agency that…

A tiny fraction of Twitter users spread the vast majority of fake news in 2016, with conservatives and older people sharing misinformation more, a new study finds.    Scientists examined more than 16,000 U.S. Twitter accounts and found that 16 of them — less than one-tenth of 1 percent — tweeted out nearly 80 percent of the misinformation masquerading as news, according to a study Thursday in the journal Science. About 99 percent of the Twitter users spread virtually no fake information in the most heated part of the election year, said study co-author David Lazer, a Northeastern University political and computer science professor.  Spreading fake information "is taking place in a very seamy but small corner of Twitter,'' Lazer said.    Lazer said misinformation "super sharers'' flood Twitter: an average of 308 pieces of fakery…

Robots aren't replacing everyone, but a quarter of U.S. jobs will be severely disrupted as artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of existing work, according to a new Brookings Institution report. The report, published Thursday, says roughly 36 million Americans hold jobs with “high exposure” to automation — meaning at least 70 percent of their tasks could soon be performed by machines using current technology. Among those most likely to be affected are cooks, waiters and others in food services; short-haul truck drivers; and clerical office workers. “That population is going to need to upskill, reskill or change jobs fast,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings and lead author of the report. Muro said the timeline for the changes could be “a few years or it could be two…

Amazon's long search for a new headquarters location — nicknamed HQ2 — came to an end in November 2018, as the company decided to open offices in New York City and Crystal City in Northern Virginia. And while the opening of HQ2 is still months away, Natasha Mozgovaya visited the original Amazon HQ in Seattle. ...

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that 43 flights into New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport were required to hold after drone sightings at a nearby airport Tuesday, while nine flights were diverted. The incident comes as major U.S. airports are assessing the threat of drones and have been holding meetings to address the issue. The issue of drones impacting commercial air traffic came to the fore after London's second busiest airport, Gatwick Airport, was severely disrupted in December when drones were sighted on three consecutive days. An FAA spokesman said that Tuesday's event lasted for 21 minutes. The flights into Newark, the 11th busiest U.S. airport, were suspended after a drone was seen flying at 3,500 feet over nearby Teterboro Airport, a small regional airport about 17 miles…

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, has launched NASA experiments into space on a brief test flight. The New Shepard rocket blasted off Wednesday from West Texas, hoisting a capsule containing the experiments. The eight experiments were exposed to a few minutes of weightlessness, before the capsule parachuted down. The rocket also landed successfully, completing its fourth spaceflight. This was Blue Origin’s 10th test flight, all precursors to launching passengers by year’s end. The capsules have six windows, one for each customer. Blue Origin isn’t taking reservations just yet. Instead, the Kent, Washington, company is focusing on brief research flights. Wednesday’s flight lasted just over 10 minutes, with the capsule reaching 66 miles high, or 107 kilometers, well within the accepted boundary of space. Bezos is the founder of Amazon.…

Cameras and alarms keep offices and warehouses safe worldwide. But a new kind of security guard is making the rounds looking for anything that is unusual. Michelle Quinn reports. ...

American tech giant Google has opened a new office in Berlin that it says will give it the space to expand in the German capital.   CEO Sundar Pichai said Tuesday the space means Google could more than double the number of Berlin employees to 300. Google currently has 1,400 employees in Germany. Pichai says “the city has long been a capital of culture and media. Now it's also home to a fast-growing startup scene and an engine for innovation.” Google has faced regulatory headwinds in Europe, and was fined 50 million euros ($57 million) Monday in France for alleged violations of European data privacy rules. Google Central Europe vice president Philipp Justus didn't directly address the fine, but said Google's committed to transparency and clarity on what data is…

France's data watchdog fined Google nearly $57 million on Monday, saying the tech giant failed to provide users with transparent information on its data consumer policies and how their personal information was used to display advertising targeting them. The French agency CNIL said U.S.-based Google made it too difficult for internet users to understand and manage their personal preferences online. "The information provided is not sufficiently clear," the regulatory agency said, "for the user to understand the legal basis for targeted advertising is consent, and not Google's legitimate business interests." It was the first ruling using the European Union's strict new General Data Protection Regulation since it was implemented last year, a sweeping set of rules that has set a global standard forcing large American technology firms to examine their…

Russia's communication watchdog, Roskomnadzor, opened "administrative proceedings" Monday against Facebook and Twitter for non-compliance with country’s data laws, Interfax news agency reported. Roskomnadzor head Alexander Zharov is quoted as saying that U.S. social media giants have a month to comply or face legal proceedings. According to Roskomnadzor, Facebook and Twitter have not explained how and when they would comply with legislation that requires all servers used to store Russians' personal data to be located in Russia. Russia has introduced stricter internet laws in the past five years, among other things requiring search engines to share encryption keys with Russian security services. In April last year, thousands rallied in Moscow in support of internet freedom after Russian authorities attempted to block access to the popular messaging app Telegram. Telegram had refused…

In the future, a tattoo may not only be a way for someone to express themselves, it may also be used to monitor a genetic condition or even control a prosthetic device. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Home to Apple, Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is an American economic powerhouse, producing technology companies with global influence. But behind these influential American brands are scores of foreign workers who play a critical role in the Valley's tech workforce. Deana Mitchell reports. ...

Humanity's efforts to move into and peer into space seem to be experiencing something of a renaissance in the past few weeks. NASA's pictures of Ultima Thule continue to astound, as do Chinese pictures from their probe on the far side of the moon. Coming soon, the James Webb Telescope will allow NASA to look even farther into the great beyond. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Facebook may be facing the biggest fine ever imposed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations involving the personal information of its 2.2 billion users. The FTC is considering hitting Facebook with a penalty that would top its previous record fine of $22.5 million, which it dealt to Google in 2012 for bypassing the privacy controls in Apple's Safari browser, according to The Washington Post. The story published Friday cited three unidentified people familiar with the discussions. In an automated response, the FTC said it was unable to comment, citing its closure due to the U.S. government shutdown. Facebook declined to comment. The potential fine stems from an FTC investigation opened after revelations that data mining firm Cambridge Analytica had vacuumed up details about as many as 87…

A Duke University team expects to have a product available for election year that will allow television networks to offer real-time fact checks onscreen when a politician makes a questionable claim during a speech or debate. The mystery is whether any network will choose to use it. The response to President Donald Trump's Jan. 8 speech on border security illustrated how fact-checking is likely to be an issue over the next two years. Networks briefly considered not airing Trump live and several analysts contested some of his statements afterward, but nobody questioned him while he was speaking. Duke already offers an app, developed by professor and Politifact founder Bill Adair, that directs users to online fact checks during political events. A similar product has been tested for television, but is…

Electric car and solar panel maker Tesla said Friday it plans to cut its staff by about 7 percent. "The road ahead is very difficult," the company's founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an email to employees posted on the company's website. He said Tesla Inc. hopes to post a "tiny profit" in the current quarter but that after expanding its workforce by 30 percent last year, it cannot support that size of staff. Musk said in a tweet in October that Tesla had 45,000 employees. A 7 percent cut would involve laying off about 3,150 people. Tesla's shares tumbled earlier this month after it cut vehicle prices by $2,000 and announced fourth-quarter sales figures that fell short of Wall Street estimates. "Our products are too expensive for most…

A federal appeals court said Thursday it would not delay oral arguments set for Feb. 1 on the Trump administration's decision to repeal the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules governing internet providers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday asked the court to delay the arguments over its December 2017 repeal, citing the partial government shutdown. Without comment, the court denied the request. The FCC had no immediate comment on the decision. A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia have asked the court to reinstate the Obama-era internet rules and block the FCC's effort to pre-empt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet. Several internet companies are also part of the legal challenge, including Mozilla Corp, Vimeo Inc and Etsy Inc, as…

Whether buying a fish fillet at a supermarket or ordering steak in a restaurant, consumers will soon be able to use their phones to check instantly whether their food is green and ethical. Launched by environmental group WWF and investment firm BCG Digital Ventures, OpenSC is a website that harnesses blockchain technology to allow users to scan a QR code on a product or menu that reveals the full history and supply chain before they buy. "For those catching and producing things in a very unsustainable way, it's quite easy for them to hide behind the complexity of supply chains," said Paul Hunyor, Asia region head at BCG Digital Ventures in Sydney. "There is a lack of carrots for those doing good at the production end because it is very hard…

Take a minute and think about your heart. Can you hear it beating? Probably not, but you know it is. Now imagine your heartbeat “in color,” with rhythmic lighting to match. You can now see your unique beat pattern at a new interactive exhibit called “Pulse” at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. In this Log-on segment, VOA’s Carolyn Presutti shows us how your heartbeat joins others and becomes art. ...

Facebook says it is investing $300 million over the next three years in local news programs, partnerships and other initiatives. The money will go toward reporting grants for local newsrooms, expanding Facebook’s program to help local newsrooms with subscription business models and investing in nonprofits aimed at supporting local news. The move comes at a difficult time for the news industry, which is facing falling profits and print readership. Facebook, like Google, has also been partly blamed for the ongoing decline in newspapers’ share of advertising dollars as people and advertisers have moved online. Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of global news partnerships, acknowledges the company “can’t uninvent the internet,” but says it wants to work with publishers to help them succeed on and off the social network. “The industry is…

The founder of network gear and smart phone supplier Huawei Technologies says the tech giant would reject requests from the Chinese government to disclose confidential information about its customers.  Meeting with foreign reporters at Huawei's headquarters, Ren Zhengfei sought Tuesday to allay Western concerns the company is a security risk. Those fears have hampered Huawei's access to global markets for next-generation telecom technology.  Asked how Huawei would respond if Chinese authorities ask for confidential information about foreign customers or their networks, Ren said, "we would definitely say no to such a request.'' The United States, Australia, Japan and some other governments have imposed curbs on use of Huawei technology over concerns the company is a security risk. ...

Nature finds a way, the old saying goes. We see it in how animals fly, crawl, slink, dig and otherwise make their way through the world. Scientists have long recognized the ways in which evolution has perfected movement in the natural world, and mimicked it in their robot designs. Here's the latest, and it's simple and incredibly complicated all at the same time. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

A new form of social therapy is powering-on in the U.S. A group of former toy company employees bought a brand from their ex-employer and started developing robotic household animals that serve as friends and therapy aids to America's growing elderly population. Arash Arabasadi reports. ...

Home to Apple, Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is an American economic powerhouse, producing technology companies with global influence. But behind these influential American brands are scores of foreign workers who play a critical role in the Valley's tech workforce. Deana Mitchell reports. ...