Category: Technology

With parents often playing catch-up with the fast pace of technology, it's often difficult to really know what their children are doing on their electronic devices. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports. ...

U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to approve legislation that would give the government new ways to review foreign technology investments in the United States to guard against national security threats. Trump had at first called for imposing limits on Chinese investments in U.S. technology companies and high-tech exports to China, but shifted to urging lawmakers to enhance an existing review process. He said Wednesday the revamped reviews would give the government the "ability to protect the United States from new and evolving threats posed by foreign investment while also sustaining the strong, open investment environment to which our country is committed and which benefits our economy and our people." He said the legislation would give the government "additional tools to combat the predatory investment practices that threaten our…

As gigabytes of data flow from field to fingertips, click by click, the technological divide has been closing between teams at the World Cup. While the focus has been on the debut of video assistant referees, less obvious technical advances have been at work in Russia and the coaches have control over this area, at least.  No longer are the flashiest gizmos to trace player movements and gather data the preserve of the best-resourced nations. All World Cup finalists have had an array of electronic performance and tracking systems made available to them by FIFA. “We pay great attention to these tools,” Poland coach Adam Nawalka said. “Statistics play an important role for us. We analyze our strength and weaknesses.” The enhanced tech at the teams’ disposal came after football’s…

Barbie, the world's most iconic doll, is venturing into coding skills in her latest career as a robotics engineer. The new doll, launched Tuesday, aims to encourage girls as young as seven to learn real coding skills, thanks to a partnership with the kids game-based computing platform Tynker, toymaker Mattel said. Robotics engineer Barbie, dressed in jeans, a graphic T-shirt and denim jacket and wearing safety glasses, comes with six free Barbie-inspired coding lessons designed to teach logic, problem solving and the building blocks of coding. The lessons, for example, show girls how to build robots, get them to move at a dance party, or do jumping jacks. According to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics, 24 percent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) jobs were held by women in 2017.…

A former top U.S. Defense Department official is questioning the morality of Google’s decision not to renew a partnership with the Pentagon. "I believe the Google employees have created a moral hazard for themselves,” former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work said Tuesday. Google announced earlier this month that it would not renew its contract for Project Maven, after 13 employees resigned and more than 4,600 employees signed a petition objecting to their work being used for warfare. Project Maven seeks to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to help detect and identify images captured using drones. Many of the Google employees who objected to the project cited Google’s principle of ensuring its products are not used to do harm. But Work, who served as deputy defense secretary from 2014 through July…

The human backup driver in an autonomous Uber SUV was streaming the television show "The Voice" on her phone and looking downward just before fatally striking a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix, according to a police report. The 300-page report released Thursday night by police in Tempe revealed that driver Rafaela Vasquez had been streaming the musical talent show via Hulu in the 43 minutes before the March 18 crash that killed Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a darkened road outside the lines of a crosswalk. The report said the crash, which marks the first fatality involving a self-driving vehicle, wouldn't have happened had the driver not been distracted. Dash camera video shows Vasquez was looking down near her right knee for four or five seconds before the crash. She looked…

Intel Corp Chief Executive Brian Krzanich resigned on Thursday after a probe found his consensual relationship with an employee violated company policy. The head of the largest U.S. chipmaker is the latest in a line of powerful men in business and politics to lose their jobs or resign over relationships viewed as inappropriate, a phenomenon highlighted by the #MeToo movement. "An ongoing investigation by internal and external counsel has confirmed a violation of Intel's non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managers," Intel said in a statement. The board named Chief Financial Officer Robert Swan as interim CEO and said it has begun a search for a permanent CEO, including both internal and external candidates. Intel declined to give any further information about the probe. Intel shares fell 1.5 percent in…

Social media app Instagram announced Wednesday that it would be increasing its time limit for videos posted on its platform from one minute to 10 minutes, as part of a general expansion of the app's video capabilities. The photo-sharing app also announced it would be launching a stand-alone app called IGTV to host these long-form videos. The app will be available this week, according to technology website, The Verge. "When you watch longer video, you need a different context," Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom told The Verge. "We really wanted to separate those two, so you could choose which adventure you wanted to go down." The longer videos will also be available through a tab in the original Instagram application. Accounts with wide audiences will be able to post…

Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway have picked well-known author and Harvard professor Dr. Atul Gawande to transform the health care they give their employees. The three corporate titans said Wednesday that Gawande will lead an independent company focused on a mission they announced earlier this year: figure out ways to improve a broken and often inefficient system for delivering care. Health care researchers have said any possible solutions produced by this new venture will be felt well beyond the estimated 1 million workers the three companies employ in the United States. Other businesses that provide employee health coverage are eager to find solutions for health care costs that often rise faster than inflation and squeeze their budgets in the process. Berkshire Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett has described health…

Barely six months after inaugurating a tiny software-coding boot camp in a basement in Tokyo, Silicon Valley transplant Kani Munidasa stood before some of Japan's top business leaders in February with a warning: software was threatening their future. A Sri Lankan native with a Japanese mother and wife, Munidasa was speaking at the invitation of Nobuyuki Idei, a former chief executive of Sony. Idei had offered to become an adviser to the boot camp, called Code Chrysalis, whose mission of bringing Japan's software engineering up to global standards and helping its companies transform aligned with his own. "Idei-san told me, 'Tell it as it is; don't sugar-coat anything. They need to hear that change has to happen,'" Munidasa said, recalling how he showed up at the executives' meeting in a…

Two men on motorbikes approached a broken-down vehicle in Caracas one day earlier this month in what could have been a nightmare scenario in one of the world's most dangerous cities where roadside robberies and murders are an everyday occurrence. The men took up positions either side of the green four-wheel-drive vehicle, with a 33-year-old female schoolteacher behind the wheel, and guarded it until a tow truck arrived two hours later to cart it off to a garage. The two guards are employees of a new mobile application called "Pana" - "Buddy" in Venezuelan slang - which dispatches security crews to stranded drivers who request help. It's a reflection of how Venezuelans are turning to technology to overcome the dangers and nuisances of living in the crisis-hit country. Mobile payment…

When Neha Maldar testified against the traffickers who enslaved her as a sex worker in India, she spoke from the safety of her own country, Bangladesh, via videoconferencing, a technology that could revolutionize the pursuit of justice in such cases. The men in the western city of Mumbai appeared via video link more than 2,000 km (1,243 miles) west of Maldar as she sat in a government office in Jessore, a major regional hub for sex trafficking, 50 km from Bangladesh's border with India. "I saw the people who had trafficked me on the screen and I wasn't scared to identify them," Maldar, who now runs a beauty parlor from her home near Jessore, told Reuters. "I was determined to see them behind bars." "I told them how I was…

Laura was barely 18 when a palm reader told her she could make $180 a month working in beetroot farms in Russia — an attractive sum for a girl struggling to make a living in the town of Drochia, in Moldova's impoverished north. That she had no passport, the fortune teller said, was not a problem. Her future employers would help her cross the border. "They gave me a [fake] birth certificate stating I was 14," Laura, who declined to give her real name, told Reuters in an interview. That was enough to get her through border controls as she traveled by bus with a smuggler posing as one of her parents. It was the beginning of a long tale of exploitation for Laura — one of many such stories…

Parents suspicious that their children may be addicted to video games now have support from health authorities. The World Health Organization has listed "gaming disorder" as a new mental health problem on its 11th edition of  International Classification of Diseases, released on Monday. But as VOA's Zlatica Hoke reports, not all psychologists agree that compulsive gaming should be on that list. ...

Norway tested a two-seater electric plane on Monday and predicted a start to passenger flights by 2025 if new aviation technologies match a green shift that has made Norwegians the world's top buyers of electric cars. Transport Minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen and Dag Falk-Petersen, head of state-run Avinor which runs most of Norway's airports, took a few minutes' flight around Oslo airport in an Alpha Electro G2 plane, built by Pipistrel in Slovenia. "This is ... a first example that we are moving fast forward" towards greener aviation, Solvik-Olsen told Reuters. "We do have to make sure it is safe - people won't fly if they don't trust it." He said plane makers such as Boeing and Airbus were developing electric aircraft and that battery prices were tumbling, making it feasible…

Intel topped a list issued on Monday ranking how well technology companies combat the risk of forced labor in their supply chains, overtaking HP and Apple. Most of the top 40 global technology companies assessed in the study by KnowTheChain, an online resource for business, had made progress since the last report was published in 2016. But the study found there was still room for improvement. “The sector needs to advance their efforts further down the supply chain in order to truly protect vulnerable workers,” said Kilian Moote, project director of KnowTheChain, in a statement. Intel, HP and Apple scored the highest on the list, which looked at factors including purchasing practices, monitoring and auditing processes. China-based BOE Technology Group and Taiwan's Largan Precision came bottom. Workers who make the…

Apple is trying to drag the U.S.'s antiquated system for handling 911 calls into the 21st century.   If it lives up to Apple's promise, the next iPhone operating system coming out in September will automatically deliver quicker and more reliable information pinpointing the location of 911 calls to about 6,300 emergency response centers in the U.S.   Apple is trying to solve a problem caused by the technological mismatch between a system built for landlines 50 years ago and today's increasingly sophisticated smartphones that make most emergency calls in the U.S.   The analog system often struggles to decipher the precise location of calls coming from digital devices, resulting in emergency responders sometimes being sent a mile or more from people pleading for help.   ...

It's happened to many of us. You fumble for your camera to record a precious moment but you're a little too late. A delayed touch of the button, an opportunity missed forever. But now entrepreneurs in the Netherlands are hoping to change that dynamic with a new camera that can capture events even before you hit the record button. VOA's Julie Taboh has more. ...

Federal prosecutors have indicted Elizabeth Holmes on criminal fraud charges for allegedly defrauding investors, doctors and the public as the head of the once-heralded blood-testing startup Theranos. Federal prosecutors also brought charges against the company’s former second-in-command. Holmes, who was once considered a wunderkind of Silicon Valley, and her former Chief Operating Officer Ramesh Balwani, are charged with two counts conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said late Friday. If convicted, they could face prison sentences that would keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives, and total fines of $2.75 million each. Technology a fraud Prosecutors allege that Holmes and Balwani deliberately misled investors, policymakers and the public about the accuracy of…

Apple Inc on Friday announced a multiyear deal with Oprah Winfrey to create original programming, a coup in the battle for A-list talent and projects in the booming digital entertainment market. "Together, Winfrey and Apple will create original programs that embrace her incomparable ability to connect with audiences around the world," Apple said in a statement. Apple gave no details of the type of programming that Winfrey would create, the value of the deal, or when it might be released. Winfrey had no immediate comment. Winfrey, 64, an influential movie and TV producer who also publishes a magazine, is expected to appear on screen, a source familiar with the deal said. Apple has not said how it plans to distribute its programming, to which it has committed an initial $1…

Judging by the size of the crowd and the number of exhibitors at the fourth annual Consumer Electronics Show Asia, which opened Wednesday in Shanghai, China is well on its way toward catching up with the United States in consumer technology. A mirror image of the older and bigger sister show in Las Vegas, CES Asia 2018 presents the latest hardware and software for everyone. VOA's George Putic has more. ...

Apple Inc said Wednesday it will change its iPhone settings to undercut the most popular means for law enforcement to break into the devices. The company told Reuters it was aiming to protect customers in countries where police seize phones at will and all users from the risk that the attack technique will leak to spies and criminals. The privacy standard-bearer of the tech industry said it will change the default settings in the iPhone operating system to cut off communication through the USB port when the phone has not been unlocked in the past hour. That port is how machines made by forensic companies GrayShift, Cellebrite and others connect and get around the security provisions that limit how many password guesses can be made before the device freezes them…

Twitter announced Wednesday it would be updating its services to make it easier for users to find content about major events such as natural disasters and the FIFA World Cup that begins on Thursday. "We're keeping you informed about what matters by showing the tweets, conversations and perspectives around topics you care about," Keith Coleman, product vice president, said in a blog post.  "Our goal is to make following what's happening as easy as following an account." Users will receive notifications about breaking news stories based on their personal interests — the accounts they follow or what they tweet about, Coleman explained. These notifications will become available in the coming weeks to users in the United States. When clicked, users will be taken to a specialized timeline about the topic.…

By mixing dance with the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, an all-girl public school in New York encourages its students to go into the Stem fields. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, while women make up half of the college-educated workforce, less that 30 percent of science and engineering jobs are filled by women. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. ...

Vietnamese lawmakers have approved a new cybersecurity law that human rights activists say will stifle freedom of speech. The law will require online content providers such as Google and Facebook to remove content deemed offensive by authorities within 24 hours, and store the personal data of its customers on servers based in Vietnam, and to open offices in the Communist-run country. Clare Agar, Amnesty International's director of global operations, issued a statement denouncing Tuesday's passage of the law. Agar said "the online space was a relative refuge" within Vietnam's "deeply repressive climate" where people could go to share ideas and opinions "with less fear of censure by the authorities." The new law now means "there is no safe place left," Agar said. The United States and Canada urged Vietnam to…

The Boring Company, based in California, is close to opening its first exciting venture - a 3.2 kilometer underground tunnel designed to convince Californians that traveling underground at high speed may solve their state’s ubiquitous traffic jams. It is the brainchild of Elon Musk, the U.S. billionaire who founded the electric car company Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. VOA’s George Putic has more. ...

The Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the United States’ net neutrality rules — which mandated internet service providers to not discriminate in their handling of internet traffic — took effect Monday, reigniting fears from internet freedom advocates of potential manipulation of consumers’ internet access. The FCC voted in December to overturn its net neutrality rule, first put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. With its repeal, the door is now open for internet service providers to block content, slow data transmission, and create “fast lanes” for consumers who pay premiums. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a staunch critic of net neutrality, wrote Sunday that while he “support[s] a free an open internet,” the overturning of the Obama-era rule will allow the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] to “once again be…

Despite astonishing advances in robotics, today's machines often struggle to accomplish what insects do routinely. So robotics researchers are taking advantage of nature's billions of years of experience. They are learning from bees to build flying machines that can learn and navigate their environments. VOA's Steve Baragona has more. ...