Category: Business

Companies including GM, Ford, Google and solar energy producers said on Tuesday they would work together to establish standards for scaling up the use of virtual power plants (VPPs), systems for easing loads on electricity grids when supply is short. Energy transition nonprofit RMI will host the initiative, the Virtual Power Plant Partnership (VP3), which will also aim to shape policy for promoting the use of the systems, the companies said. Virtual power plants pool together thousands of decentralized energy resources like electric vehicles or electric heaters controlled by smart thermostats. With permission from customers, they use advanced software to react to electricity shortages with such techniques as switching thousands of households' batteries, like those in EVs, from charge to discharge mode or prompting electricity-using devices, such as water heaters,…

A mission to launch the first satellites into orbit from Western Europe suffered an “anomaly" Tuesday, Virgin Orbit said.   The U.S.-based company attempted its first international launch on Monday, using a modified jumbo jet to carry one of its rockets from Cornwall in southwestern England to the Atlantic Ocean where the rocket was released. The rocket was supposed to take nine small satellites for mixed civil and defense use into orbit.   But about two hours after the plane took off, the company reported that the mission encountered a problem.  "We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information," Virgin Orbit said on Twitter.   Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, was founded by British billionaire Richard Branson. It…

The public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth. Seattle Public Schools filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court. The 91-page complaint says the social media companies have created a public nuisance by targeting their products to children. It blames them for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media and providing additional training to teachers. “Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of…

Is the metaverse closer than we think? It depends on whom you ask at CES, where companies are showing off innovations that could immerse us deeper into virtual reality, otherwise known as VR. The metaverse — essentially a buzzword for three-dimensional virtual communities where people can meet, work and play — was a key theme during the four-day tech gathering in Las Vegas that ends Sunday. Taiwanese tech giant HTC unveiled a high-end VR headset that aims to compete with market leader Meta, and a slew of other companies and startups touted augmented reality glasses and sensory technologies that can help users feel — and even smell — in a virtual environment. Among them, Vermont-based OVR Technology showcased a headset containing a cartridge with eight primary aromas that can be…

The past year has been difficult for startups everywhere, but running a company in Ukraine during the Russian invasion comes with a whole different set of challenges. Clinical psychologist Ivan Osadchyy brought his medical device, called Knopka, to this year's consumer technology show known as CES in Las Vegas in hopes of getting it into U.S. hospitals. His is one of a dozen Ukrainian startups backed by a government fund that are at CES this year to show their technology to the world. "Two of our hospitals we operated before are ruined already and one is still occupied. So this is the biggest challenge," Osadchyy said. "The second challenge is for production and our team because they are shelling our electricity system and people are hard to work without lights,…

Major tech companies are appealing to consumers' evolving lifestyles, tastes and personal values with connected devices that touch on nearly every aspect of daily life. From the CES 2023 consumer technology show in Las Vegas, VOA's Tina Trinh has the story. Video editor: Matt Dibble ...

Tens of thousands of tech innovators and their fans are flocking to Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Deana Mitchell has spotted some up-and-coming tech trends. ...

With Russian rockets targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure and electrical grid, scientists in the northern city of Sumy, some 330 kilometers east of Kyiv, are hoping to start mass producing solar technology that could help keep the lights on. Olena Adamenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera and video editing by Mykhailo Zaika. ...

Amazon.com layoffs will now stretch to more than 18,000 jobs as part of a workforce reduction it previously disclosed, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a public staff note on Wednesday. The layoff decisions, which Amazon will communicate starting January 18, will largely impact the company's e-commerce and human-resources organizations, he said. The cuts amount to 6% of Amazon's roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce and represent a swift turn for a retailer that recently doubled its base pay ceiling to compete more aggressively for talent. Jassy said in the note that annual planning "has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we've hired rapidly over the last several years." Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers including warehouse staff, making it America's second-largest private employer after Walmart. It has…

European Union regulators on Wednesday hit Facebook parent Meta with hundreds of millions in fines for privacy violations and banned the company from forcing users in the 27-nation bloc to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity.  Ireland's Data Protection Commission imposed two fines totaling 390 million euros ($414 million) in its decision in two cases that could shake up Meta's business model of targeting users with ads based on what they do online. The company says it will appeal.  A decision in a third case involving Meta's WhatsApp messaging service is expected later this month.  Meta and other Big Tech companies have come under pressure from the European Union's privacy rules, which are some of the world's strictest. Irish regulators have already slapped Meta with four other…

CES 2023 opens this week in Las Vegas. After an unusually low turnout last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues, organizers say the consumer electronics show is back in full swing. VOA’s Julie Taboh shows us some of what to expect. ...

The Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest technology trade show in the world, is once again open for business. After two challenging years coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, which was particularly difficult for the conference and trade show industry, CES is expected to welcome about 100,000 attendees this week in Las Vegas. That's down about 40% from CES 2020 but still a significant jump in the numbers who attended in 2022. Over the past two years, CES managed to put on its show, which was all digital in 2021 and a hybrid digital and in-person in 2022 amid the Omicron surge. This year, the Consumer Technology Association, the trade organization that puts on the annual event, says about one-third of the attendees are coming from outside the U.S. "On the exhibitor…

Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world's first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers. That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own. Experts say it may be…

The latest leaps in artificial intelligence in everything from cars to robots to appliances will be on full display at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opening Thursday in Las Vegas. Forced by the pandemic to go virtual in 2021 and hybrid last year, tens of thousands of show-goers are hoping for a return to packed halls and rapid-fire deal-making that were long the hallmark of the annual gadget extravaganza. "In 2022, it was a shadow of itself — empty halls, no meetings in hotel rooms," Avi Greengart, an analyst at Techsponential told Agence France-Presse. "Now, [we expect] crowds, trouble getting around and meetings behind closed doors — which is what a trade show is all about." The CES show officially opens Thursday, but companies will begin to vie for…

Marie Rodriguez of Bountiful, Utah, began using social media when she enlisted in the U.S. Navy. At first, she saw it as a positive thing. "It helped me to really keep in touch with people at home while I was deployed and living overseas," she told VOA. However, in the two months since Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Rodriguez and many of its hundreds of millions of users have been forced to reevaluate their feelings about the platform and about social media in general. "I don't think he's been positive at all," Rodriguez said. "He's allowing all of these previously banned accounts back on the platform, and I'm seeing more offensive Tweets — more anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ hate speech." "Some social media platforms over-patrol," she added, "but Twitter isn't…

The popular Chinese video app TikTok has been banned from all U.S. House of Representatives-managed devices, according to the House's administration arm, mimicking a law soon to go into effect banning the app from all U.S. government devices. The app is considered "high risk due to a number of security issues," the House's Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) said in a message sent on Tuesday to all lawmakers and staff and must be deleted from all devices managed by the House. The new rule follows a series of moves by U.S. state governments to ban TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd, from government devices. As of last week, 19 states have at least partially blocked the app from state-managed devices over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to…

Taking to the air could be one solution to help get around traffic jams on city highways. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles on plans to get air taxis flying in time for the city’s 2028 Summer Olympics. ...

The end of 2022 saw major layoffs at Twitter, Amazon, Salesforce and Snap. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, had its first layoffs ever, cutting about 13% of its staff. Deana Mitchell looks at what the tech job losses mean for the future. ...

Virtual reality, an immersive technology embraced by gamers, has moved into medicine, where it is used for stress relief, physical therapy, pain management and other applications. Mike O’Sullivan has more.   ...

Nearly a week after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said that the accounts of suspended journalists would be reinstated, at least six remain blocked. Voice of America’s chief national correspondent, Steve Herman, is among them. Twitter suspended the accounts Dec. 15 over posts about another removed account — @Elonjet — which uses public data to track Musk’s private jet and other aircraft. On Thursday, the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington-based whistleblower protection and advocacy organization, filed a complaint to Congress over the suspension of Herman and other journalists. “All of this is disturbing,” GAP’s Senior Counsel David Seide wrote in a letter addressed to the House and Senate commerce committees. “For no rational reason, Twitter and Mr. Musk wrongly muzzled and continue to muzzle Voice of America’s reporter and…

French authorities plan to use an AI-assisted crowd control system to monitor people during the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a draft law seen by AFP on Thursday. The system is intended to allow the security services to detect disturbances and potential problems more easily, but will not use facial recognition technology, the bill says. The technology could be particularly useful during the highly ambitious open-air opening ceremony  with Olympians sailing down the river Seine in front of a crowd of 600,000 people. French police and sports authorities faced severe criticism in May after shambolic scenes during the Champions League final in Paris when football fans were caught in a crowd crush and teargassed. The draft law, which was presented to the cabinet on Thursday, proposes other security measures including…

Between the close of this year's climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh and the 2023 climate event slated for December 2023 in the UAE, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are all working to position themselves as new electric vehicle powerhouses. Signaling an era where next-generation electric vehicles are made in a region most strongly associated with fossil fuels, manufacturers in the three countries are seeing new forms of government backing and technology-driven partnerships with international automotive companies.   Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has set the most ambitious targets for electric vehicle manufacturing. Last month Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the first Saudi vehicle brand Ceer to design, manufacture, and sell sedans and sports utility vehicles targeting consumers in the kingdom and the broader Middle East. Ceer…

If not Elon, then who? That’s a question many are contemplating since Elon Musk, Twitter’s CEO, said this week he was actively looking for a new leader to run the social media network. Musk’s proclamation comes after more than 10 million respondents said in a Musk-created Twitter poll that he should resign. Musk followed up with a tweet that he would resign as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job.” It was one of many twists in the company’s chaotic restructuring since Musk took over in late October, a period that has included mass layoffs and resignations, advertisers fleeing, policy changes and reversals, and the suspension of some journalists’ accounts. Musk’s management style is “break-it-to-build it,” said Andrew Miller, chief growth officer at Interbrand North America,…

Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter's CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job.  Musk's announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by.  "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" Musk tweeted. "After that, I will just run the software & servers teams."  Since taking over San Francisco-based Twitter in late October, Musk's run as CEO has been marked by quickly issued rules and policies that have often been withdrawn or changed soon after being made public.  He has also alienated some investors in his electric vehicle company Tesla who are concerned that…

Elon Musk had an eventful year, capping 2022 with a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, a takeover that almost didn’t happen. The controversial CEO has brought changes and disruptions, layoffs and resignations that put Twitter’s fate into question. VOA’s Tina Trinh has more. ...

More than half of 17.5 million users who responded to a poll that asked whether billionaire Elon Musk should step down as head of Twitter voted yes when the poll closed on Monday.  There was no immediate announcement from Twitter, or Musk, about whether that would happen, though he said that he would abide by the results.  Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday, he asked Twitter users to decide if he should stay in charge of the social media platform after acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media websites.  In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms…

Twitter users will no longer be able to link to certain rival social media websites, including what the company described Sunday as "prohibited platforms" Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon. It's the latest move by Twitter's new owner Elon Musk to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet. "We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter," the company said in a statement. The banned platforms include mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump's Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for…

A prominent video game creator who helped lead Facebook's expansion into virtual reality has resigned from the social networking service's corporate parent after becoming disillusioned with the way the technology is being managed. John Carmack cut his ties with Meta Platforms, a holding company created last year by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a Friday letter that vented his frustration as he stepped down as an executive consultant in virtual reality. "There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy," Carmack wrote in the letter, which he shared on Facebook. ""Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say, 'Half? Ha! I'm at quarter efficiency!'" In response to an…