Category: Technology

 Russia began implementing a ban on popular instant messaging service Telegram after the app refused to provide encrypted messages to Russia’s security services.  Russia’s state telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor said Monday that it had sent a notice to telecommunications operators in the country instructing them to block the service following last week’s court ruling that sided with the government to ban the app. “Roskomnadzor has received the ruling by the Tagansky District Court on restricting access in Russia to the web resources of the online information dissemination organizer, Telegram Messenger Limited Liability Partnership. This information was sent to providers on Monday 16th of April,” the watchdog said in a statement. In a statement posted on social media, Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov said, “We consider the decision to block the…

Farmers in the American South are upgrading their cattle to the 21st Century.  With tech tools like AI (artificial intelligence) and Wi-Fi, they are now able to monitor the herd and keep tabs on the animals that drive their business. Arash Arabasadi reports. ...

Rural communities in United States and elsewhere often use portable backup electricity generators in case of power outages. But these machines can be costly to run for longer times and require periodic attendance. A team from West Virginia University is developing a small, natural gas-powered generator that will be able to run for years. VOA's George Putic reports. ...

More trouble may be ahead for Facebook as the Philippine government said it is investigating the social media giant over reports information from more than a million users in the Philippines was breached by British data firm Cambridge Analytica. The Phliippines' National Privacy Commission, or NPC, said it sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to let him know the NPC is requiring that the company "submit a number of documents relevant to the case, to establish the scope and impact of the incident to Filipino data subjects." The privacy watchdog also said through its website it wants to determine whether there is unauthorized processing of personal data of Filipinos. The letter was dated April 11. A Facebook spokesperson tells the Reuters news agency the company is committed to…

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's compensation rose 53.5 percent to $8.9 million in 2017, a regulatory filing showed Friday, largely because of higher costs related to the 33-year old billionaire's personal security. About 83 percent of the compensation represented security-related expenses, while much of the rest was tied to Zuckerberg's personal usage of private aircraft. Zuckerberg's security expenses climbed to $7.3 million in 2017, compared with $4.9 million a year earlier. His base salary was unchanged at $1, while his total voting power at Facebook rose marginally to 59.9 percent. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, which has consistently reported stronger-than-expected earnings over the past two years, has faced public outcry over its role in Russia's alleged influence over the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg emerged largely unscathed after facing hours of questioning from U.S. lawmakers on how the personal…

If cancer is suspected in a patient, surgeons, in most cases, would have to cut some of the suspected tissue out and test it. Getting the results could be a long process. A new invention called a MasSpec Pen could cut the wait time to just seconds. VOA's Elizabeth Lee reports from Austin, Texas, where the pen was created. ...

Lawmakers in Washington peppered Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with tough questions this week about his firm's handling of user data and privacy. They also suggested new ways they or others might regulate internet firms. Michelle Quinn reports. ...

Nonprofit international organization for public competitions XPRIZE has announced 10 finalists in its race to develop new technologies to lower carbon-dioxide emissions. Each team will get an additional incentive of $5 million to scale up their ideas and present them for the top prize of $20 million. VOA's George Putic reports. ...

Facebook says it will stop spending money to fight a proposed California ballot initiative aimed at giving consumers more control over their data. The measure, known as the "California Consumer Privacy Act," would require companies to disclose upon request what types of personal information they collect about someone and whether they've sold it. It also would allow customers to opt out of having their data sold. The company made the announcement Wednesday as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg underwent questioning from Congress about the handling of user data. Pressure has mounted on Facebook to explain its privacy controls following revelations that a Republican-linked firm conducted widespread data harvesting. Facebook had donated $200,000 to a committee opposing the initiative in California — part of a $1 million effort by tech giants to…

A data leak that enabled political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access personal information from about 87 million Facebook users has generated an uproar and concerns over online privacy and the power of the major internet platforms. On VOA's Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren experts explore the issue and next steps to better protect user privacy while also preserving internet openness. VOA's Jesusemen Oni has more. ...

The next robot you see may have more in common with climbing pea plants than people. Faith Lapidus explains how plants are inspiring a scientific team at Stanford University to develop the next generation of robots. ...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers Wednesday the internet sector will need some form of regulation. After weathering heated questions from two Senate panels, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg returned to Capitol Hill Wednesday to face more questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the social media platform's transparency and user privacy. Zuckerberg said it "is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation" of internet companies, an idea that has been floated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. While it is not clear what that regulation would look like, lawmakers have said they want better protections after data breaches affected tens of millions of users. Zuckerberg cautioned lawmakers to be careful about what they propose, as larger companies like Facebook have more resources to comply with regulations than…

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday his company would step up efforts to block hate messages in Myanmar as he faced questioning by the U.S. Congress about electoral interference and hate speech on the platform. Facebook has been accused by human rights advocates of not doing enough to weed out hate messages on its social-media network in Myanmar, where it is a dominant communications system. "What's happening in Myanmar is a terrible tragedy, and we need to do more," Zuckerberg said during a 5-hour joint hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state into Bangladesh since insurgent attacks sparked a security crackdown last August. United Nations officials investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said last month…

Dumping sewage into a local river is common practice in some of America’s older cities.  With the benefits of modern engineering, cities like Washington D.C. will soon be able to divert hundreds of millions of liters of raw sewage every day to wastewater treatment plants instead of a river.  Arash Arabasadi reports. ...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill for the first time Tuesday, answering lawmakers' concerns about the social media giant's failure to protect the private information of as many 87 million users worldwide from Trump-affiliated political firm Cambridge Analytica. VOA's Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from a key day in the internet privacy debate on Capitol Hill. ...

The group known as the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots says fully autonomous lethal weapons that can strike selected targets are no longer within the realm of science fiction. The coalition says it wants pre-emptive action taken to ban them. Government experts will spend the next two weeks discussing the issue at a meeting of the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The Campaign to stop Killer Robots - a coalition of 65 non-government organizations - says the world is running out of time to prevent these systems from becoming a dangerous reality. Campaign co-founder Richard Moyes warns the world is moving closer to situations where machine intelligence, instead of humans, may make life and death decisions on the battlefield. “We need humans involved in these processes and it needs…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify publicly Tuesday before a group of U.S. senators after apologizing for the way his company handled data for millions of users. He is due to appear before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Commerce Committee, and on Wednesday will go before House lawmakers. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said users "deserve to know how their information is shared and secure," and that he wants to explore with Zuckerberg ways to balance safety with innovation. Zuckerberg met privately with lawmakers in Washington on Monday and released written testimony saying the social media network should have done more to prevent itself and the data of its members from being misused. "We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility,…

Facebook users in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, were especially exposed to recent data privacy breaches due to high user numbers and the popularity of an app at the core of the problem, analysts believe. According to Facebook figures, the data of 1.175 million users in the Philippines may have been “improperly shared” with London-based voter profiling firm Cambridge Analytica. That estimate is the second highest, single-country total after the United States. Indonesia ranks third at around 1.1 million people exposed to data breaches. Vietnam was ninth with 427,000. Filipinos had also enjoyed a personality quiz app that spread fast due to the sharing of results, said Renato Reyes, secretary general of the Bagong Alyansang Makabaya alliance of social causes in Manila. The app is suspected as a source of…

Apple on Monday said it had achieved its goal of powering all of the company's facilities with renewable energy, a milestone that includes all of its data centers, offices and retail stores in 43 countries. The iPhone maker also said nine suppliers had recently committed to running their operations entirely on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, bringing to 23 the total number to make such a pledge. Major U.S. corporations such as Apple, Wal-Mart and Alphabet have become some of the country's biggest buyers of renewable forms of energy, driving substantial growth in the wind and solar industries. Alphabet's Google last year purchased enough renewable energy to cover all of its electricity consumption worldwide. Costs for solar and wind are plunging thanks to technological advances and increased global…

On the eve of an expected grilling by U.S. lawmakers, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg once again apologized for inadequately protecting the data of millions of social media platform users and highlighted steps the firm is taking to prevent a repeat. In multiple interviews with news media outlets and in prepared remarks to be delivered on Capitol Hill, Zuckerberg on Monday acknowledged that the tools Facebook provides to promote human interconnectedness were exploited for ill or nefarious purposes.   “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg said in testimony released ahead of Tuesday’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees and Wednesday’s appearance before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.   “I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg added.  …

Social media giant Facebook is starting to notify 87 million of its users whether their personal data was harvested without their knowledge by Cambridge Analytica, the Britain-based voter profiling company U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign hired to target likely supporters in 2016. Facebook believes most of the affected users, more than 70 million, are in the United States, but there are also more than a million each in the Philippines, Indonesia and Britain. The company has apologized for the security breach, with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging the company made a "huge mistake" by not more closely monitoring use of the data and not taking a broad enough view of the company's responsibilities. Facebook allowed a British researcher to create an app on Facebook on which about 200,000…

Congress has plenty of questions for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who will testify on Capitol Hill Tuesday and Wednesday about the company's ongoing data-privacy scandal and how it failed to guard against other abuses of its service.   Facebook is struggling to cope with the worst privacy crisis in its history - allegations that a Trump-affiliated data mining firm may have used ill-gotten user data to try to influence elections. Zuckerberg and his company are in full damage-control mode, and have announced a number of piecemeal technical changes intended to address privacy issues.   But there's plenty the Facebook CEO hasn't yet explained. Here are five questions that could shed more light on Facebook's privacy practices and the degree to which it is really sorry about playing fast and loose…

Despite a global abundance of food, a United Nations report says 815 million people, 11 percent of the world’s population, went hungry in 2016. That number seems to be rising. Poverty is not the only reason, however, people are experiencing food insecurity. “Increasingly we’re also seeing hunger caused by the displacement related to conflict, natural disaster as well, but particularly there’s been an uptick in the number of people displaced in the world,” said Robert Opp, director of Innovation and Change Management at the United Nations World Food Program. Humanitarian organizations are turning to new technologies such as AI, or artificial intelligence, to fight global food insecurity. WATCH: Global Hunger Is Rising — Artificial Intelligence Can Help “What AI offers us right now, is an ability to augment human capacity.…

Despite a global abundance of food, a United Nations report says 815 million people, 11 percent of the world's population, went hungry in 2016. Advances in technology and artificial intelligence can help feed them, but there are challenges that keep first world technologies from reaching the developing world. VOA's Elizabeth Lee explains. ...

The next generation of life-saving robots could be inspired by cockroaches. Faith Lapidus explains how. ...

Facebook violates its users' privacy rights through the use of its facial recognition software, according to consumer groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Their complaint to the federal government focuses on the use of Facebook software that identifies people in photographs that are uploaded to its site. A complaint filed Friday by a coalition of consumer organizations with Federal Trade Commission said the social media giant "routinely scans photos for biometric facial matches without the consent of the image subject." The complaint says the company tries to improve its facial recognition prowess by deceptively encouraging users the participate in the process of identifying people in photographs. "This unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous identification of individuals undermines user privacy, ignores the explicit preferences of Facebook users, and is contrary to…

The European Union said Friday Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica. EU spokesman Christian Wigand said EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova will have a telephone call with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg early next week to address the massive data leaks. The EU and Facebook will be looking at what changes the social media giant needs to make to better protect users and how the U.S. company must adapt to new EU data protection rules. Wigand said that EU data protection authorities will discuss over the coming days ``a strong coordinated approach'' on how to deal with the Facebook investigation. Separately, Italy's competition authority opened an investigation Friday into…

Amazon is spending millions of dollars on lobbying as the global online retailer seeks to expand its reach into a swath of industries that President Donald Trump’s broadsides haven’t come close to hitting. Trump’s attacks over the last week targeted what Amazon is best known for: rapidly shipping just about any product you can imagine to your door. But the company CEO Jeff Bezos founded more than two decades ago is now a sprawling empire that sells groceries in brick-and-mortar stores, hosts the online services of other companies and federal offices in a network of data centers, and even recently branched into health care. Amazon relies on a nearly 30-member in-house lobbying team that’s four times as large as it was three years ago as well as outside firms to…