A Sydney restaurant is using a Chinese-made, multi-lingual hospitality robot to address chronic staff shortages as Australia’s economy begins to recover from COVID-19 lockdowns and border closures. The robot waiter is programmed to know the layout of the tables and delivers food from the kitchen. It is also multi-lingual, programmed to communicate in English and Mandarin. The…
read moreAustralian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest’s philanthropic organization will help 18 small news publishers in the country to negotiate collectively with Google and Facebook to secure licensing deals for the supply of news content. Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation on Monday said it would submit an application with the country’s competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission…
read moreFrustrated with slow or no action, some Americans are using Bluetooth trackers to retrieve stolen items themselves. It’s a risky strategy that isn’t endorsed by police and could put users in harm’s way, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports. …
read moreAfter making a promise on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold about 900,000 shares of the electric car maker’s stock, netting over $1.1 billion that will go toward paying tax obligations for stock options. The sales, disclosed in two regulatory filings late Wednesday, will cover tax obligations for stock options granted to Musk in…
read moreThe United States and China surprised the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Wednesday with a joint declaration to take action to limit global warming over the next decade. The declaration came as delegates entered the final hours of negotiations to agree on a final text at the conference that will outline how the world…
read moreA coalition of 19 countries including Britain and the United States on Wednesday agreed to create zero emissions shipping trade routes between ports to speed up the decarbonization of the global maritime industry, officials involved said. Shipping, which transports about 90% of world trade, accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions. U.N. shipping…
read moreU.S.-based drugmaker Pfizer is seeking to make a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine available to all adult Americans 18 years of age and older. Pfizer filed the request Tuesday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, citing a new clinical trial involving 10,000 volunteers who received a third injection of the two-dose vaccine, which it…
read moreFacebook Inc. said on Tuesday it plans to remove detailed ad-targeting options that refer to “sensitive” topics, such as ads based on interactions with content around race, health, religious practices, political beliefs or sexual orientation. The company, which recently changed its name to Meta and which makes the vast majority of its revenue through digital…
read moreFour astronauts returned to Earth on Monday, riding home with SpaceX to end a 200-day space station mission that began last spring. Their capsule streaked through the late night sky like a dazzling meteor before parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Recovery boats quickly moved in with spotlights. “On behalf of…
read moreAustralia’s electric car industry has criticized the government’s new policy to build thousands of charging stations as “far too little, too late.” The Australian government Tuesday pledged $132 million to speed up the rollout of hydrogen refueling and electric charging stations. The Electric Vehicles Council says an Australian government plan to build electric vehicle charging stations and hydrogen-powered vehicle fueling stations doesn’t include subsidies, tax incentives or minimum fuel standards,…
read moreAn original Apple computer, hand-built by company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, goes under the hammer in the United States on Tuesday. The functioning Apple-1, the great, great grandfather of today’s sleek chrome-and-glass Macbooks, is expected to fetch up to $600,000 at an auction in California. The so-called “Chaffey College” Apple-1,…
read moreConnecting everyone in the world to the web will not single-handedly bridge the digital divide, tech experts at the Web Summit said this week, citing other invisible barriers like high costs, low digital literacy and complicated user interfaces. The so-called “digital divide” refers to the gap between those who have access to computers and the…
read moreCybersecurity experts say Microsoft’s recent disclosure that alleged Russian hackers successfully attacked several IT service providers this year is a sign that many U.S. IT companies have underinvested in security measures needed to protect themselves and their customers from intrusions. But a U.S.-based association of IT professionals says the industry’s efforts to combat foreign hacking…
read moreChina now depends almost entirely on its own online content providers, as the number of big foreign companies in the market, such as Yahoo and LinkedIn, keeps dwindling, giving the government a boost in controlling the internet, analysts say. On Monday the Silicon Valley internet service provider Yahoo closed all of its services in China,…
read moreSocial media behemoth Facebook is facing public and regulatory scrutiny after the disclosure of thousands of pages of internal documents by a whistleblower who used to work for the company. What are the Facebook papers? After compiling the documents while working as a Facebook product manager, Frances Haugen distributed them to a group of 17…
read moreThe U.S. government has added four foreign technology companies to its restricted companies list, saying they “developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments” and that the spyware was used “to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.” The State Department accused the companies of “engaging in activities contrary to the national…
read moreFacebook says it is shutting down its facial recognition system. Citing “growing societal concerns” about the technology that can automatically identify people in photos and videos, the company says it will continue to work on the technology to try to address issues. “Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules…
read moreTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the world’s largest chipmakers, has announced plans to build a new plant in Japan, a move experts say may help revive Japan’s declining chipmaking sector and bolster its economic security. The new plant is slated to begin operation in 2024, said CEO C.C. Wei, who announced the expansion.…
read moreYahoo said it stopped providing services in mainland China because of what it described as a difficult operating environment. The U.S. web services provider said in a statement on its website the move took effect on November 1 “in recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment.” November 1 is the date on which…
read moreGreen energy is the new focus of China’s one-of-a-kind Belt and Road Initiative or BRI, that aims to build a series of infrastructure projects from Asia to Europe. The eco-friendlier version of BRI has caught the attention of some 70 other countries that are getting new infrastructure from the Asian economic powerhouse in exchange for expanding trade. The reset on China’s eight-year-old, $1.2 trillion effort comes…
read moreThe U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Thursday to approve legislation to prevent companies that are deemed security threats, such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. or ZTE Corp., from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S. regulators. The Secure Equipment Act, the latest effort by the U.S. government to crack down on Chinese telecom and tech companies,…
read moreFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is rebranding itself as Meta in an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future — what Zuckerberg calls the ” metaverse.” Skeptics point out that it also appears to be an attempt to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, a leaked document trove so dubbed by a…
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