Tesla’s handling of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s proposal to take the carmaker private and its failure to promptly file a formal disclosure has raised governance concerns and sparked questions about how companies use social media. Musk stunned investors last Tuesday by announcing on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private in a potential $72…
read moreEven if you have “Location History” off, Google often stores your precise location. Here’s how to delete those markers and some best-effort practices that keep your location as private as possible. But there’s no panacea, because simply connecting to the internet on any device flags an IP address that can be geographically mapped. Smartphones also…
read moreA meteor shower lit up the skies above eastern Bosnia Saturday night, giving star gazers a rare opportunity to see a display of shooting stars with the naked eye. “I think that everybody should see this,” said Miralem Mehic, a Bosnian from an international group of star gazers who watched the light show at the…
read moreA NASA spacecraft rocketed toward the sun Sunday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before. The Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the corona, or outer solar atmosphere, that was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse. It eventually will get within…
read moreSamsung’s new smartphone illustrates the limits of innovation at time when hardware advances have slowed. The new phone, the Galaxy Note 9, will be faster and will last longer without a recharge. But while earth-shattering new features are in short supply, it will carry an earth-shattering price tag: $1,000. The minor improvements reflect a smartphone…
read moreUnmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, can become an important tool for farmers around the world within the next 10 years. Researchers at Texas A&M University in College Station are looking at different applications of precision farming with drone technology. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. …
read moreIf you’ve ever spent a lot of time in front of a computer, you’ve probably come away bleary eyed. That’s because you don’t blink as much when you are working on a computer, which could lead to dry eyes. With the popularity of video games and online activities, dry eye is becoming increasingly common in…
read moreTesla Inc’s board said it was evaluating taking the company private, a day after Chief Executive Elon Musk surprised shareholders with the idea of launching the biggest leveraged buyout of all time. In a statement on Tesla’s website on Wednesday, six of Tesla’s nine directors said the board had met several times over the last…
read moreAfter several social media outlets banned alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his show InfoWars earlier this week, Twitter announced it would be keeping Jones, sparking backlash from users. “We didn’t suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday. We know that’s hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules,” Twitter CEO…
read moreToday’s robots can be programmed to do many things – from vacuuming floors to assembling cars. But teaching them to recognize and correct a mistake is much harder to do. A group of scientists, led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, is trying to solve that problem. VOA’s George Putic has more. …
read moreTesla CEO Elon Musk is considering leading a buyout of the electric car maker in a stunning move that would end the maverick company’s eight-year history trading on the stock market. In his typically unorthodox fashion, the eccentric Musk dropped his bombshell on his Twitter account, which he has used as a platform for pranks,…
read moreThe FBI has started sharing information about online trolls and other suspicious users with top technology companies as part of the bureau’s behind-the-scenes effort to disrupt foreign influence operations aimed at U.S. elections, with officials saying it is the service providers’ responsibility to police malign messaging by Russia and other countries. “By sharing information with…
read moreModern technology is transporting students back to the 20th century, to the exact moment during World War II when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. No, it’s not time travel, but with the help of Virtual Reality – students are able to relive the 1945 U.S. attack which devastated the Japanese city, and…
read moreSeveral major media outlets announced Monday that they would be removing content from InfoWars, a far-right, conspiracy-peddling media source. On Monday, Apple announced it had removed hundreds of podcasts produced by InfoWars from its iTunes and podcast apps. Facebook said it had removed four pages belonging to InfoWars founder Alex Jones. And music-sharing app Spotify…
read moreFacebook says it has taken down four pages belonging to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for violating its hate speech and bullying policies. The social media giant said in a statement Monday that it also blocked Jones’ account for 30 days because he repeatedly posted content that broke its rules. The company said it “unpublished” the…
read moreA company that makes semiconductors for Apple iPhones says it is recovering from a virus outbreak but expects the incident to delay shipments and raise costs. Taiwan Semiconductor Co. Ltd. said 80 percent of the fabrication tools affected by Friday’s virus had been recovered by Sunday. TSMC expects full recovery on Monday. The company didn’t…
read moreFour Palestinian high school friends are heading to California this week to pitch their mobile app about fire prevention to Silicon Valley’s tech leaders, after winning a slot in the finals of a worldwide competition among more than 19,000 teenage girls. For the 11th graders from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the ticket of admission to…
read moreA new era in American spaceflight was unveiled Friday, with NASA presenting the flight crews that will carry out the first test flights and operational missions aboard commercial spacecraft to be launched from U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011. The test flights of the modules, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner…
read moreRemembering to take medications can be challenging for some people. But one day an implant may replace medications that need to be taken orally in certain cases. One lab in Houston is developing refillable implants placed under the skin to potentially deliver life-saving medicine at a low cost for various diseases. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports…
read moreApple made history Thursday when it became the first publicly listed U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion. The tech giant’s share price climbed well over 2 percent in mid-session trading, boosting it about 9 percent higher since Tuesday, when it announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and a buyback of $20 billion worth of its…
read moreA little-known dispute over 3D-printed guns has morphed into a national legal debate in the last week, drawing attention to a technology that seems a bit of sci-fi fantasy and — to gun-control advocates — a dangerous way for criminals to get their hands on firearms that are easy to conceal and tough to detect.…
read more3-D printers are being used extensively in industry, research, teaching and hobbies, printing with metal, plastic and even edible material such as dough. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are experimenting with another kind of 3-D printing — with yarn. VOA’s George Putic reports. …
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