Category: Technology

Virtual reality allows the user to enter a different world through sight and sound. Several researchers and companies are adding a third element to the virtual experience: the sense of touch. Researchers in haptics, meaning the feeling of touch, are incorporating this sense into virtual reality with real-world applications.  French company Go Touch VR created a device called VRtouch that straps onto the fingertips. The device applies varying pressure to the fingertips that correlates to what the user is seeing, touching and lifting in the virtual world.  “That will open enormous possibilities,” said Eric Vezzoli, co-founder of Go Touch VR. Applications for the touch device include allowing users to undergo training in a safe virtual environment. Vezzoli said strapping three of the VR touch devices on each hand — the…

Seven years ago, a computer beat two human quizmasters on a Jeopardy challenge. Ever since, the tech industry has been training its machines even harder to make them better at amassing knowledge and answering questions. And it's worked, at least up to a point. Just don't expect artificial intelligence to spit out a literary analysis of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace any time soon. Research teams at Microsoft and Chinese tech company Alibaba reached what they described as a milestone earlier this month when their AI systems outperformed the estimated human score on a reading comprehension test. It was the latest demonstration of rapid advances that have improved search engines and voice assistants and that are finding broader applications in health care and other fields. The answers they got wrong…

It seems like a game everyone wins: Some of China's biggest tech companies, looking to hook in new consumers, are using cash prizes to draw millions of contenders to mobile-based online quiz shows. Up to 6 million people at a time log into the free, live games on their smartphones to answer a series of rapid-fire questions in an elimination battle, with those remaining sharing the prize money. Over the weekend, search engine giant Baidu and video game maker NetEase launched their own online shows, joining news feed platform Toutiao, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd-owned UCWeb and Wang Sicong, the scion of Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin. But how they will cash in on the games and stay on the right side of government censors might prove to be a tricky question.…

There's little doubt that virtual reality is likely to be the future of video gaming. Now, a Russian company in Moscow is pushing the limits of the technology with a game changing VR experience. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Facebook took a hard look in the mirror with a post Monday questioning the impact of social media on democracies worldwide and saying it has a “moral duty” to understand how it is being used. Over the past 18 months, the company has faced growing criticism for its limited understanding of how misinformation campaigns and governments are using its service to suppress democracy and make people afraid to speak out. “I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t,” wrote Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s product manager of civic engagement. Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook has been looking more critically at how it is being used. Some of what it found raises questions about company’s long-standing position that social media is a force…

No cashiers, no lines, no registers — this is how Amazon sees the future of in-store shopping. The online retailer opened its Amazon Go concept store to the public Monday, selling milk, potato chips and other items typically found at a convenience shop. Amazon employees have been testing the store, which is at the bottom floor of the company's Seattle headquarters, for about a year. The public opening is another sign that Amazon is serious about expanding its physical presence. It has opened more than a dozen bookstores, taken over space in some Kohl's department stores and bought Whole Foods last year, giving it 470 grocery stores. But Amazon Go is unlike its other stores. Shoppers enter by scanning the Amazon Go smartphone app at a turnstile. When they pull…

Initial tests in Nevada on a compact nuclear power system designed to sustain a long-duration NASA human mission on the inhospitable surface of Mars have been successful and a full-power run is scheduled for March, officials said on Thursday. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. Department of Energy officials, at a Las Vegas news conference, detailed the development of the nuclear fission system under NASA's Kilopower project. Months-long testing began in November at the energy department's Nevada National Security Site, with an eye toward providing energy for future astronaut and robotic missions in space and on the surface of Mars, the moon or other solar system destinations. A key hurdle for any long-term colony on the surface of a planet or moon, as opposed to NASA's six short lunar…

Move over traditional billboards. Three-dimensional, slightly hypnotic holograms may soon replace two-dimensional signs and ads. Several companies with this technology said 3D holograms will revolutionize the way businesses and brands talk to potential customers. "It’s already replacing billboards, LED screens, LCD screens, because there hasn't been any revolution in the display industry for decades," said Art Stavenka, founder of Kino-mo, a company with offices in London and Belarus.  The main hardware of the technology is a blade that emits a strip of light creating holograms of images and words. Multiple blades can be synchronized for larger holograms. "As soon as this piece of hardware spins, you stop seeing hardware and you start seeing (a) hologram, and the piece of hardware spins fast enough so a human eye does not see…

Those two-dimensional billboards that dot the landscape of many cities around the world may soon be replaced -- with 3-D holograms. Companies working on this technology say it will revolutionize the way businesses and brands talk to potential customers. VOA's Elizabeth Lee got a glimpse of advertising's future at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. ...

Robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies were all on display at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2018 trade show. The event showcased the ways retailers are keeping pace with shoppers' round-the-clock spending. Tina Trinh reports. ...

Social media giant Facebook said Friday that it would begin to prioritize "trustworthy" news outlets on its site in order to counteract "misinformation." The company said it would ask its more than 2 billion users to rank the news organizations they trusted in order to prioritize "high-quality news" over less trusted sources. It said the new ranking system would seek to separate news organizations trusted only by their own subscribers from ones that are broadly trusted across society. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post that the company was not "comfortable" deciding which news sources are the most trustworthy in a "world with so much division." "There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today," he wrote. "Social media enables people to spread information faster than…

The worst nightmare for parents is probably a child wandering off and getting lost. And for parents who want to keep their kids within their reach and still give them a chance to play freely and be adventurous, a New York company is offering a solution. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates. ...

Social media companies Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube have greatly accelerated their removals of online hate speech, reviewing over two thirds of complaints within 24 hours, new EU figures show. The European Union has piled pressure on social media firms to increase their efforts to fight the proliferation of extremist content and hate speech on their platforms, even threatening them with legislation. Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube signed a code of conduct with the EU in May 2016 to review most complaints within a 24-hour timeframe. The companies managed to meet that target in 81 percent of cases, EU figures seen by Reuters show, compared with 51 percent in May 2017 when the European Commission last monitored their compliance with the code of conduct. EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has…

A major hacking operation tied to Lebanon's main intelligence agency has been exposed after careless spies left hundreds of gigabytes of intercepted data exposed to the open internet, according to a report published Thursday. Mobile security firm Lookout, Inc. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said the haul, which includes nearly half a million intercepted text messages, had simply been left online by hackers linked to Lebanon's General Directorate of General Security. "It's almost like thieves robbed the bank and forgot to lock the door where they stashed the money," said Mike Murray, Lookout's head of intelligence. Lookout security researcher Michael Flossman said the trove ran the gamut, from Syrian battlefield photos to private phone conversations, passwords and pictures of children's birthday parties. "It was everything. Literally…

The Catholic church is going digital in Paris.   The city's diocese will introduce a system allowing contactless card payments during Sunday's mass at Saint Francois de Molitor, a church located in an upscale and conservative Paris neighborhood.   The diocese explained Thursday that five connected collection baskets with a traditional design will be handed out to mass attenders during the service. They will choose on a screen the amount they want to donate - from 2 to 10 euros ($2.4 to $12.2) - and their payment will be processed in “one second.”   The diocese insisted “this new gesture remains extremely close to the usual” one, yet parishioners will still be able to use cash for their donations.   According to the diocese, donations amount to 79 percent of…

While the calving of cliff-sized chunks of ice off the polar glaciers is a very visible effect of climate change, what’s happening, unseen, below the ice shelf is a more significant indicator of the warming seas. A new generation of robots is being launched to monitor those changes. Faith Lapidus reports. ...

 U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would announce a decision soon on whether to slap tariffs on imported solar panels, and quipped that when countries dump subsidized panels in the United States, “Everybody goes out of business.” The solar industry is anxiously awaiting the decision, which will have wide-reaching implications for the sector. Domestic panel producers opposed to cheap imports would benefit from a tariff. But installers that have relied on the lower-cost hardware for their recent breakneck growth would suffer. In an interview with Reuters, Trump declined to say how he would land on the case — which was triggered last year by a domestic manufacturer’s trade grievance — but complained about the effect of imports on U.S. panel makers. “You know, they dump ’em — government-subsidized,…

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it would conduct a new, comprehensive search of its records for possible propaganda that Russian operatives may have spread during the run-up to Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership. Some British lawmakers had complained that the world's largest social media network had done only a limited search for evidence that Russians manipulated the network and interfered with the referendum debate. Russia denies meddling in Britain's vote to exit the European Union, known as Brexit, or in the 2016 U.S. elections. Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google and YouTube have been under intense pressure in Europe and the United States to stop nations from using tech services to meddle in another country's elections, and to investigate when evidence of such meddling arises. Facebook's new search…

Apple is planning to build another corporate campus and hire 20,000 workers during the next five years as part of a $350 billion commitment to the U.S. economy. The pledge announced Wednesday is an offshoot from the sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code championed by President Donald Trump and approved by Congress last month.   Besides dramatically lowering the standard corporate tax rate, the reforms offer a one-time break on cash being held overseas.   Apple plans to take advantage of that provision to bring back more than $250 billion in offshore cash, generating a tax bill of roughly $38 billion.   The Cupertino, California, company says it will announce the location of a second campus devoted to customer support later this year.     ...

The world’s biggest Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is over but this year’s battle for consumers and their pocketbooks has only began. As smaller companies do not have the resources for research and development, big companies, such as Samsung, Canon and others, have a common message for them – let your imagination tell you how to use our technologies. VOA’s George Putic reports. ...

A group of 21 U.S. state attorneys general filed suit to challenge the Federal Communications Commission's decision to do away with net neutrality on Tuesday, while Democrats said they needed just one more vote in the Senate to repeal the FCC ruling. The attorneys general filed a petition with a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to challenge the action, calling it "arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion" and saying that it violated federal laws and regulations. The petition was filed as Senate Democrats said they had the backing of 50 members of the 100-person chamber for repeal. Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement that all 49 Democrats in the upper chamber backed the repeal. Earlier this month, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she would back…

A French start-up has become the first company to start factory production of hydrogen-powered bicycles for use in corporate or municipal fleets. Pragma Industries, which is based in Biarritz, France and makes fuel cells for military use, has sold some 60 hydrogen-powered bikes to French municipalities including Saint Lo, Cherbourg, Chambery and Bayonne. At about 7,500 euros per bike, and at least 30,000 euros for a charging station, the bikes are too expensive for the consumer market, but Pragma is working to cut that to 5,000 euros, which would bring their price in line with premium electric bikes. "Many others have made hydrogen bike prototypes, but we are the first to move to series production," said founder and chief executive Pierre Forte. The firm's Alpha bike runs for about 100…

New clean energy investment worldwide rose by 3 percent last year to $333.5 billion from a year earlier, driven by a surge in solar photovoltaic (PV) installations, research showed on Tuesday. The figure is below 2015's record amount of $360.3 billion, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) said in an annual report. Solar investment totaled $160.8 billion in 2017, up 18 percent from the previous year even though technology costs have fallen. Just over half of that was spent in China, the research showed. "The 2017 total is all the more remarkable when you consider that capital costs for the leading technology — solar — continue to fall sharply. Typical utility-scale PV systems were about 25 percent cheaper per megawatt last year than they were two years earlier," said Jon Moore, the chief…

A recent decision by the United States' Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality, which are rules designed to prevent the selective blocking or slowing of websites, has wide-ranging implications for China, which never believed in net neutrality and banned hundreds of foreign websites. The decision could result in a major trade war involving Chinese telecom and Internet companies, which are interested in accessing the U.S. market, analysts said. The move will allow American telecom service providers to charge differential prices for various services and even examine the data of their customers. Though this aspect has stirred controversy in the United States, the situation there is still very different from the realities in China. "In China, the government is monitoring and controlling the networks whereas [in U.S.] it is, at…

Attempting to open sealed age-old books and documents without damaging them is difficult. Now scientists in Switzerland have perfected an X-Ray technique to read the fragile records without even touching them. VOA’s Deborah Block explains how. ...

Palestinians in the West Bank are finally getting high-speed mobile data services, after a yearslong Israeli ban that cost their fragile economy hundreds of millions of dollars, impeded tech start-ups and denied them simple conveniences enjoyed by the rest of the world.   Palestinian cell phone providers Wataniya and Jawwal are expected to launch 3G broadband services in the West Bank by the end of this month, Palestinian officials said, after Israel assigned frequencies and allowed the import of equipment.   "It's about time," Wataniya CEO Durgham Maraee said of the anticipated launch, speaking to The Associated Press at company headquarters in the West Bank last week. ``It has taken a very, very long time.''   The belated move to 3G comes a decade after Palestinian operators first sought Israeli…

[Uganda is mulling over the idea of creating its own social media platforms. But social media users and government critics see this as a potential effort to control free expression. Facebook and Twitter should brace themselves for competition from Uganda. With no name yet or date on when the new services will be operational, the Uganda Communications Commission is planning to launch its own social media platforms. Commission Director Godfrey Mutabazi says Uganda has many young people who have come up with innovations and applications that can be deployed to serve the population. “There is open information for everything. We have got over almost 70 percent penetration," he said. "We are moving into digital era, data communication. We are hope that by the end of this year 20-25 percent, maybe…

Vietnam is adding pressure on foreign internet firms to keep data on local users and be more accessible to the country’s authorities as the country tightens control over online dissent. A bill that the Southeast Asian country’s Ministry of Public Security offered to legislators this month would require foreign internet services to open representative offices if they have at least 10,000 Vietnamese users or if otherwise requested, official media say. The bill being reviewed by the National Assembly also calls for making the same foreign companies store data on Vietnamese users in Vietnam, VnExpress International reported Jan. 11.  Those providers should collect “important data collected or generated from activities in the country,” the report adds. Legislation on normally free-wheeling foreign internet firms such as Facebook and Google, both popular among…