Category: Technology

While working for a big consulting firm in Lagos, Nigeria, Afua Osei repeatedly encountered women who wanted to advance professionally but didn't know how. They needed guidance and mentoring. So, Osei and her colleague Yasmin Belo-Osagie started She Leads Africa, a digital media company offering advice, information, training and networking opportunities to help "young African women achieve their professional dreams," according to the website. Launched in 2014, it now has an online community of over 300,000 in at least 35 countries in Africa and throughout the diaspora. "I didn't plan to be an entrepreneur," Osei said this month at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual festival of music, film and tech innovation.  Anyone can be an innovator, Osei said in an interview, after co-hosting a meetup on starting and investing…

Visiting Subway's website on a personal computer might not seem to have anything to do with checking the NFL's app on a phone. But these discrete activities are the foundation for a new service to help marketers follow you around. Adobe, a company better known for Photoshop and PDF files, says the new initiative announced Wednesday will help companies offer more personalized experiences and make ads less annoying by filtering out products and services you have already bought or will never buy. But it comes amid heightened privacy sensitivities after reports that Facebook allowed a political consulting firm to harvest data on millions of Facebook users to influence elections. And Adobe's initiative underscores the role data plays in helping companies make money. Many of the initial uses are for better…

Three Facebook Messenger app users have filed a lawsuit claiming the social network violated their privacy by collecting logs of their phone calls and text messages. The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in northern California, comes as Facebook faces scrutiny over privacy concerns. Facebook acknowledged on Sunday that it began uploading call and text logs from phones running Google's Android system in 2015. Facebook added that only users who gave appropriate permission were affected, that it didn't collect the contents of messages or calls, and that users can opt out of the data collection and have the stored logs deleted by changing their app settings. The suit seeks class-action status. A message seeking comment from Facebook on Wednesday was not immediately returned. ...

There is a saying that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. That is the idea behind a new concept by an Israeli company that is taking trash from landfills and converting it into a plastic-like composite. The material is being used to make household items and furniture, as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block. ...

Elias, the new language teacher at a Finnish primary school, has endless patience for repetition, never makes a pupil feel embarrassed for asking a question, and can even do the "Gangnam Style" dance. Elias is also a robot. The language-teaching machine comprises a humanoid robot and mobile application, one of four robots in a pilot program at primary schools in the southern city of Tampere. The robot is able to understand and speak 23 languages and is equipped with software that allows it to understand students' requirements and helps it to encourage learning. In this trial, however, it communicates in English, Finnish and German only. The robot recognizes the pupil's skill levels and adjusts its questions accordingly. It also gives feedback to teachers about a student's possible problems. Some of…

FBI officials could have tried harder to unlock an iPhone as part of a terrorism investigation before launching an extraordinary court fight with Apple Inc. in an effort to force it to break open the device, the Justice Department’s watchdog said Tuesday. The department’s inspector general said it found no evidence the FBI was able to access data on the phone belonging to one of the gunmen in a 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, as then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress more than once. But communications failures among FBI officials delayed the search for a solution. The FBI unit tasked with breaking into mobile devices only sought outside help to unlock the phone the day before the Justice Department filed a court brief demanding Apple’s help, the inspector…

One of today’s most affordable sources of fossil-based energy is natural gas, which consists primarily of methane. Found in remote, deep underground reservoirs, the gas must be transported through long pipelines with thousands of connections, valves and pumping stations, which are inevitably prone to leaks. Scientists at IBM are testing a small, affordable gas detector that could be placed literally anywhere. VOA’s George Putic reports. ...

To get an idea of the data Facebook collects about you, just ask for it. You'll get a file with every photo and comment you've posted, all the ads you've clicked on, stuff you've liked and searched for and everyone you've friended — and unfriended — over the years.   Now, the company is under fire for collecting data on people's phone calls and text messages if they used Android devices. While Facebook insists users had to specifically agree, or opt in, to have such data collected, at least some users appeared surprised.   Facebook's trove of data is used to decide which ads to show you. It also makes using Facebook more seamless and enjoyable — say, by determining which posts to emphasize in your feed, or reminding you…

Internet gear maker Cisco Systems Inc. announced Monday that it will donate $50 million over five years to address the growing problem of homelessness in California's Santa Clara County and is encouraging other Silicon Valley companies to make similar efforts.   In a blog post, Chief Executive Chuck Robbins said people in the San Francisco Bay Area know homelessness has reached a crisis level, costing the county where many tech companies are based $520 million per year.   "Though homelessness seems intractable, I believe that it is a solvable issue," Robbins wrote. "I also feel very strongly that we have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to do something about it." Northern California's booming economy has been fueled by the tech sector. But the influx of workers coupled with…

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday it is investigating the privacy controls of social media giant Facebook in the aftermath of reports that the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users was compromised by the British voter profiling firm Cambridge Analytica. The consumer agency's announcement sent Facebook's stock price down another 2 percent, after a 14 percent plunge last week cut the company's market value by $90 billion. The FTC normally does not announce its investigations, but confirmed the probe after numerous news accounts last week said it had been opened. Acting consumer protection chief Tom Pahl said the FTC "is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that…

The controversy over the British-based data mining company, Cambridge Analytica, which faces allegations of using the personal data of millions of Facebook followers to influence the U.S. election, is reverberating in India, which is due to hold national elections next year. The website of the Indian affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI), has been taken down amid a dispute between the country’s two major political parties over using its services. Both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main opposition Congress Party have denied doing so. However Ovleno's site had listed the BJP, the Congress and a regional party known as the Janata Dal (United) among its clients. India’s Information Technology Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, last week warned of tough action against social media giants if the…

The exotic Tasmanian tiger once roamed Australia and New Guinea. It looked like a cross between a tiger and a dog, and is believed to have become extinct in the wild in the 20th century. The last one died in a zoo in the 1930’s. Using preserved Tasmanian tigers, Australian scientists did 3D scans of the animal, which they hope will explain why it evolved to look so much like a canine. VOA’s Deborah Block has more. ...

On the same day Facebook bought ads in U.S. and British newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media site faced new questions about collecting phone numbers and text messages from Android devices. The website Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages. Facebook said Sunday the information is uploaded to secure servers and comes only from Android users who opt-in to allow it. Spokeswomen say the data is not sold or shared with users' friends or outside apps. They say the data is used "to improve people's experience across Facebook" by helping to connect with others. The company also says in a website posting that it…

Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg apologized Sunday in full-page ads in nine major British and U.S. newspapers for the massive "breach of trust" at the social media giant that revealed personal information of millions of Facebook users. Zuckerberg did not mention the British firm accused of using the data, the voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica that obtained the cache of information from British researcher Alexsandr Kogan, who had been authorized by Facebook to collect the data as part of an academic study. Cambridge Analytica was paid $6 million by President Donald Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign for the White House to develop voter profiles. Zuckerberg said in the ads, "This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time" when Kogan…

Scientists are monitoring a defunct Chinese space station that is expected to fall to Earth around the end of the month, the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade. The head of the European Space Agency’s debris office, Holger Krag, says China’s Tiangong-1 space station will likely fall to Earth between March 30 and April 3. Krag said it still not yet known where the space station will hit Earth, but said it would be extremely unlikely for anyone to be injured when it does. Injury unlikely “Our experience is that for such large objects typically between 20 and 40 percent of the original mass, of 8.5 tons, will survive re-entry and then could be found on the ground, theoretically,” he said. “However, to be injured by…

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Even more so, when the invention is something a loved one needs. That was the case for a young Syrian woman who invented a GPS-equipped life vest. VOA's Faith Lapidus reports. ...

Increasingly popular wind turbines are getting bigger and making more power, but there is a limit to their size. At some point they become too big, too difficult to transport and install, and strong winds can bend them out of shape. But researchers led by scientists from the University of Virginia say there’s a way around it. VOA’s George Putic reports. ...

What does it take to build a thriving technology company – and an environment in which black techies, their financial backers and their markets can flourish? That question underpins the new VOA documentary "Beyond the Unicorn."  Subtitled "Africans Making IT in Silicon Valley," it explores how some Africans and African-Americans are finding their way in the tech sector's global capital in California. The 26-minute documentary profiles several entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and how they overcome hurdles. Its screening Wednesday evening, at a VOA event at the San Francisco campus of the French university INSEEC U., served as a springboard for a panel discussion spanning market potential, funding gaps and hiring disparities. First, a definition for the uninitiated. A unicorn is a private startup technology firm valued at $1 billion or more.…

Austin, Texas, is not California's Silicon Valley technology corridor. But companies from Silicon Valley and other major U.S. hubs are taking notice of Austin's growing tech scene. Austin's lower cost of living and doing business, combined with its smaller size, are just a few reasons that people are attracted to the area. VOA's Elizabeth Lee explains other reasons that tech companies are opening up shop there. ...

Now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken publicly about the firm's data controversy, the chief question remains whether the changes he outlined will be enough to restore the public's trust in the social media giant.   In a series of media interviews this week, Zuckerberg went into full damage control mode about how the company handled user data when it discovered in 2015 that 50 million users' data had been shared with Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy that advises political campaigns, thus breaking the company's rules.   He apologized. He called the recent controversy "a major breach of trust."   What now?   Congressional leaders have already called on Zuckerberg to testify in Congress — something that Zuckerberg appeared willing to do, according to the interviews, if he was "the…

Being black and working in the tech industry can be an isolating experience. New York nonprofit Ascend Leadership analyzed the hiring data of hundreds of San Francisco Bay-area tech companies from 2007 and 2015 and issued a report last year, detailing the lack of diversity in tech. Based on data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Ascend found that the black tech professional workforce declined from 2.5 percent in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2015. The outlook was even bleaker at the top. Despite 43 percent growth in the number of black executives from 2007 to 2015, blacks accounted for 1.1 percent of the total number of tech executives in 2015. "You're one in a sea full of people that just don't look like you," said Ari Melenciano, a…

Being black and working in the tech industry can be an isolating experience. But at the Afrotectopia festival in New York, it's what everyone has in common. Tina Trinh meets with the creative people exploring the intersection of race and technology. ...

A public apology by Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg failed Thursday to quell outrage over the hijacking of personal data from millions of people, as critics demanded that the social media giant go much further to protect user privacy. Speaking out for the first time about the harvesting of Facebook user data by a British firm linked to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, Zuckerberg admitted Wednesday to betraying the trust of its 2 billion users and promised to "step up." Vowing to stop data leaking to outside developers and to give users more control over their information, Zuckerberg also said he was ready to testify before US lawmakers — which a powerful congressional committee promptly asked him to do. With pressure ratcheting up on the 33-year-old CEO over a scandal that has wiped $60…

Two experts say video of a deadly crash involving a self-driving Uber vehicle shows the sport utility vehicle's laser and radar sensors should have spotted a pedestrian, and computers should have braked to avoid the crash. Authorities investigating the crash in a Phoenix suburb released the video of Uber's Volvo striking a woman as she walked from a darkened area onto a street. Experts who viewed the video told The Associated Press that the SUV's sensors should have seen the woman pushing a bicycle and braked before the impact. Also, Uber's human backup driver appears on the video to be looking down before crash and appears startled about the time of the impact. "The victim did not come out of nowhere. She's moving on a dark road, but it's an…

Facebook is coming under intense criticism following reports that information from 50 million users was gathered by a voter data firm. Lawmakers are demanding answers, and Facebook stock has lost about $35 billion in its value. Michelle Quinn reports on the threats the company faces. ...

A British tech company is using donated human heart tissue to replicate the "beating" action of heart muscle to aid preclinical testing of new drugs. Faith Lapidus reports. ...

Silicon Valley is less than 3% black, with an even smaller numbers of Africans. The race gap is actually much larger than the gender gap, and it’s growing. Join us for a live screening of "Beyond the Unicorn," a VOA documentary about the issue, followed by a Q&A session from Silicon Valley, the capitol of the U.S. technology sector. ...

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland to address Western government concerns that Russia exploits its anti-virus software to spy on customers, according to internal documents seen by Reuters. Kaspersky is setting up the center in response to actions in the United States, Britain and Lithuania last year to stop using the company’s products, according to the documents, which were confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The action is the latest effort by Kaspersky, a global leader in anti-virus software, to parry accusations by the U.S. government and others that the company spies on customers at the behest of Russian intelligence. The U.S. last year ordered civilian government agencies to remove the Kaspersky software from their networks. Kaspersky has strongly rejected the…