Category: Technology

France’s Interior Ministry announced plans on Tuesday to beef up its emergency alert system to the public across social media. The ministry said in a statement that from June during immediate threats of danger, such as a terror attack, the ministry’s alerts will be given priority broadcast on Twitter, Facebook and Google as well as on French public transport and television. The statement said that Twitter will give “special visibility” to the ministry’s alerts with a banner. In a specific agreement, Facebook will also allow the French government to communicate to people directly via the social network’s “safety check” tool, created in 2014.  The ministry said that this is the first time in Europe that Facebook has allowed public authorities to use this tool in this way. This announcement comes…

The Trump administration is trying to give private companies a boost in their efforts to capitalize on space as a business venture. U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday signed a space policy directive aimed at streamlining regulations on commercial use of space. Trump signed the directive just days after Space X launched another rocket from California carrying satellites into orbit. WATCH: Trump space policy The launch and several others planned for June are examples of private industries' growing interests in space for commercial and scientific research. "It's a bit of a renaissance, a bit of a space 2.0. Finally, the commercial sector is starting to come back and do some really interesting things," said Will Marshall, co-founder and chief executive officer of Planet, a leading provider of geospatial data. The company…

Space X recently launched another rocket from California carrying satellites into space - accelerating interest by more businesses and research facilities that now view space as an opportunity. At this year's Milken Institute Global Conference, those in the space business describe why orbiting the Earth is so exciting. VOA's Elizabeth Lee has details from Los Angeles. ...

The FBI warned on Friday that foreign cybercriminals had compromised "hundreds of thousands" of home and small-office router devices around the world which direct traffic on the internet by forwarding data packets between computer networks. In a public service announcement, the FBI has discovered that the foreign cybercriminals used a VPNFilter malware that can collect peoples' information, exploit their devices and block network traffic. The announcement did not provide any details about where the criminals might be based, or what their motivations could be. "The size and scope of the infrastructure by VPNFilter malware is significant," the FBI said, adding that it is capable of rendering people's routers "inoperable." It said the malware is hard to detect, due to encryption and other tactics. The FBI urged people to reboot their…

A Portland, Oregon, family has learned what happens when Amazon.com Inc's popular voice assistant Alexa is lost in translation. Amazon on Thursday described an "unlikely ... string of events" that made Alexa send an audio recording of the family to one of their contacts randomly. The episode underscored how Alexa can misinterpret conversation as a wake-up call and command. A local news outlet, KIRO 7, reported that a woman with Amazon devices across her home received a call two weeks ago from her husband's employee, who said Alexa had recorded the family's conversation about hardwood floors and sent it to him. "I felt invaded," the woman, only identified as Danielle, said in the report. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again, because I…

A jury has decided Samsung must pay Apple $539 million in damages for illegally copying some of the iPhone’s features to lure people into buying its competing products. The verdict reached Thursday is the latest twist in a legal battle that began in 2011. Apple contends Samsung wouldn’t have emerged as the world’s leading seller of smartphones if it hadn’t ripped off the technology powering the pioneering iPhone in developing a line of similar devices running on Google’s Android software. Patents infringed Previous rulings had determined that Samsung infringed on some of Apple’s patents, but the amount of damages owed has been in legal limbo. Another jury convened for a 2012 trial had determined Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh reduced that amount to…

When a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted a Latvian software developer last week of running an underground clearinghouse for computer hackers, U.S. prosecutors highlighted it as an example of their commitment to combating cybercrime. "This verdict demonstrates our commitment to holding such actors accountable," said acting U.S. Attorney Tracey Doherty-McCormick. "I commend the work of the agents and prosecutors both in the United States and in Latvia, who worked together to bring him to justice." Not mentioned was the role played by Trend Micro, a Japanese cybersecurity firm that collaborated with the FBI to hunt down the developer, Ruslans Bondars, and an accomplice, Jurijs Martisevs, who jointly operated Scan4You, a site that helped hackers test their malware. In a report released after the verdict, Trend Micro offered an inside look…

French President Emmanuel Macron says his country will invest $76 million in African startups, saying innovation on the continent is key to meeting challenges ranging from climate change to terrorism. He spoke Thursday at a technology fair in Paris showcasing African talent this year. It is hard to miss the African section of Viva Tech. There are gigantic signs pointing to stands from South Africa, Morocco and Rwanda. And there are lots of African entrepreneurs. Omar Cisse heads a Senegalese startup called InTouch, which has developed an app making it easier to conduct financial transactions by mobile phone. “Globally, you have more than $1 billion per day of transactions on mobile money, and more than 50 percent are done in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said. Cisse says the challenges for African startups…

Oceanographers often say we know much more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than we do about nearly 70 percent of our own planet. That is because most of the Earth is covered in water, most of it deeper than 200 meters. There are several initiatives to map the oceans' floors and the latest comes from Japan. VOA's George Putic reports. ...

Twitter says it's adding special labels to tweets from some U.S. political candidates ahead of this year's midterm elections. Twitter says the move is to provide users with "authentic information" and prevent spoofed and fake accounts from fooling users. The labels will include what office a person is running for and where. The labels will appear on retweets as well as tweets off of Twitter, such as when they are embedded in a news story. Twitter, along with Facebook and other social media companies, has been under heavy scrutiny for allowing their platforms to be misused by malicious actors trying to influence elections around the world. The labels will start to appear next week for candidates for governor and Congress. ...

French President Emmanuel Macron is taking on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other internet giants at a Paris meeting to discuss tax and data protection and how they could use their global influence for the public good. Macron on Wednesday welcomed Zuckerberg and the leaders of dozens of other tech companies, including Microsoft, Uber, and IBM, at a conference named "Tech for Good" meant to address things like workers' rights, data privacy and tech literacy.   The meeting comes as Facebook, Google and other online giants are increasingly seen by the public as predators that abuse personal data, avoid taxes and stifle competition.   "There is no free lunch!" Macron joked to express his expectations of "frank and direct" discussions.   He said tech giants could not just be "free…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told EU lawmakers Tuesday that the social media network will always be in "an arms race" with those who want to spread fake news, but that the company will be working to stay ahead and protect the network's users. The social media giant has been under scrutiny since April when it became known that the Cambridge Analytica company harvested information on Facebook users to help Donald Trump during his 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. VOA's Zlatica Hoke reports. ...

U.S. civil liberties groups on Tuesday called on Amazon.com Inc. to stop offering facial recognition services to governments, warning that the software could be used to target immigrants and people of color unfairly. More than 40 groups sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos saying technology from the company's cloud computing unit was ripe for abuse. The letter underscores how new tools for identifying and tracking people could be used to empower surveillance states. Amazon has marketed a range of uses for its Rekognition service, unveiled in late 2016. These include detecting offensive content, identifying celebrities and securing public safety. In a blog post last year, Amazon said a new feature let customers "identify people of interest against a collection of millions of faces in near real-time, enabling use cases such as timely and accurate crime prevention." Customers provide…

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized to EU lawmakers on Tuesday, saying the company had not done enough to prevent misuse of the social network and that regulation is “important and inevitable.” Meeting the leaders of the European Parliament, Zuckerberg stressed the importance of Europeans to Facebook and said he was sorry for not doing enough to prevent abuse of the platform. “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility. That was a mistake and I am sorry for it,” Zuckerberg said in his opening remarks. In response to questions about whether Facebook ought to be broken up, Zuckerberg said the question was not whether there should be regulation but what kind of regulation there should be. “Some sort of regulation is important and inevitable,” he said. He…

Supervised by young engineers, workers at the start-up company Chakr Innovation in New Delhi cut and weld sheets of metal to make devices that will capture black plumes of smoke from diesel generators and convert it into ink.  In a cabin, young engineers pore over drawings and hunch over computers as they explore more applications of the technology that they hope will aid progress in cleaning up the Indian capital’s toxic air – among the world’s dirtiest.  While the millions of cars that ply Delhi’s streets are usually blamed for the city’s deadly air pollution, another big culprit is the massive diesel generators used by industries and buildings to light up homes and offices during outages when power from the grid switches off – a frequent occurrence in summer. Installed in…

Grocery stores in the U.S. are locked in a fierce battle for customers who often demand the convenience of home deliveries. Automation is increasingly becoming part of the competitive equation. When U.S. mail-order retail giant Amazon shook up the supermarket industry with its purchase of Whole Foods, America's second biggest food retailer, Kroger, responded by partnering with a British online supermarket known for its advanced warehouse technology. VOA’s George Putic reports. ...

A man was killed when the Tesla automobile he was driving veered off a road, crashed through a fence and plunged into a pond, authorities said Monday. California Highway Patrol spokesman Daniel Jacowitz said rescuers pulled the Tesla Model S from the pond early Monday and found the man's body inside. The driver was identified as Keith Leung, 34, of Danville, California, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's office. Kelly said it was too soon to know if the vehicle's semi-autonomous Autopilot mode was engaged when the crash occurred or whether the driver may have been speeding or intoxicated. Photographs of the car show that its backend was destroyed, its hood crumpled and windows shattered. The crash occurred near the cities of San Ramon and Danville…

Lisa Meyer's hair salon is a cozy place where her mother serves homemade macaroons, children climb on chairs and customers chat above the whirr of hairdryers. Most of the time Meyer is focused on hairstyles, color trends and keeping up with appointments. But now she's worried about how the European Union's new data protection law will affect her business as she contacts customers to seek permission to store their details. Even though she supports the law, Meyer fears it may cut her mailing list by 90 percent as people choose to withhold their data or simply overlook her emails.   "It will be difficult to market upcoming events," she said at her shop, Lisa Hauck Hair & Beauty in London.   Businesses from pizza parlors to airlines across the EU's…

A European Parliament meeting on Tuesday with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be broadcast live, parliamentary officials and the company said on Monday after controversy over plans for a closed-door hearing. Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who was criticized by legislators and some senior EU officials over arrangements for the discussion on public privacy concerns, tweeted that it was "great news" that Zuckerberg had agreed to a live web stream. A Facebook spokeswoman said: "We’re looking forward to the meeting and happy for it to be live streamed." Zuckerberg, who founded the U.S. social media giant, will be in Europe to defend the company after scandal over its sale of personal data to a British political consultancy which worked on U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign, among others. He will meet…

China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said. Citing the China National Space Administration, Xinhua said the satellite was launched at 5:28 a.m. (2128 GMT Sunday) on a Long March-4C rocket from the Xichang launch center in the southwest of the country. "The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the moon," Xinhua quoted Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, as saying. It said the satellite, known as Queqiao, or Magpie Bridge, will settle in an orbit about…

Drivers can choose from several GPS apps that can alert them to accidents or slow traffic so they can avoid them. But bike riders – who travel the same roadways as cars - are on their own. So an English university student designed an app to help cyclists report dangerous hot spots to other cyclists, and local governments. Faith Lapidus reports. ...

Facebook and European Union officials were locked in high-stakes negotiations Sunday over whether founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear Tuesday before EU lawmakers to discuss the site’s impact on the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Europeans, as well as Facebook’s impact on elections on both sides of the Atlantic and the spreading of fake news. Being debated is whether the meeting would be held after EU Parliament President Antonio Tajanibe agreed to have it live-streamed on the internet and not held behind closed-doors, as previously agreed. The leaders of all eight political blocs in the parliament have insisted the format be changed. Lawmakers say it would be deeply damaging for Zuckerberg, if he pulls out simply because they want him to hold what they say is the equivalent of a…

Edison did it. Eastman did it. And so did Steve Jobs. They invented products that changed our lives. But for every well-known inventor there are many other, less recognizable individuals whose innovative products have greatly impacted our world. Fifteen of those trailblazing men and women -- both past and present -- were recently honored for their unique contributions in a special ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, which is nestled in a corner of the vast atrium of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office building in Alexandria, Virginia. Augmented reality Stan Honey was honored for inventing a graphics systems that makes it easier for television viewers around the world to see key moments during live sporting events… such as sailing, car racing and American football. “What we…

A sick toddler is thriving thanks to his father's kidney and a practice surgery using 3-D printed organs. VOA's Steve Baragona explains. ...

Canadian computer scientists helped pioneer the field of artificial intelligence before it was a buzzword, and now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hoping to capitalize on their intellectual lead. Trudeau has become a kind of marketer-in-chief for Canada's tech economy ambitions, accurately explaining the basics of machine learning as he promotes a national plan he says will "secure Canada's foothold in AI research and training." "Tech giants have taken notice, and are setting up offices in Canada, hiring Canadian experts, and investing time and money into applications that could be as transformative as the internet itself," Trudeau wrote in a guest editorial published this week in the Boston Globe. Trudeau has been taking that message on the road and is likely to emphasize it again Friday when he addresses a…

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Apple founder Steve Jobs are some of America's best known inventors. But there are other, less recognizable individuals whose innovative products have greatly impacted our world. More than a dozen of them were recently honored for their unique contributions in a special ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum in Alexandria, Virginia. VOA's Julie Taboh has more. ...

For almost 20 years, cyclists have gathered in New York's Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for what might seem like an unusual ceremony the blessing of the bikes. Held the day before the city's Five Boro Bike Tour, the ceremony is meant to bring luck and safety to those who travel around the Big Apple on a bike. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. ...

After a career that included helping Alphabet's Google build out data centers and speeding packages for Amazon.com to customers, Jim Miller is doing what many Silicon Valley executives do after stints at big companies: finding more time to ride his bike. But this bike is a little different. Arevo, a startup with backing from the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency and where Miller recently took the helm, has produced what it says is the world's first carbon fiber bicycle with 3-D-printed frame. Arevo is using the bike to demonstrate its design software and printing technology, which it hopes to use to produce parts for bicycles, aircraft, space vehicles and other applications where designers prize the strength and lightness of so-called "composite" carbon fiber parts but are put…