A senior U.S. State Department official said there is no need for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to explicitly ban Chinese telecommunication company Huawei from taking part in the buildout of the U.S. 5G networks. The four largest U.S. telecom carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — have agreed not to…
read moreU.S. law enforcement officials announced on Wednesday the indictment of two Israeli operators of a website that referred hundreds of thousands of users to underground internet marketplaces to purchase drugs, weapons and other illegal products. Tal Prihar, 37, an Israeli citizen living in Brazil, and Michael Phan, 34, who lives in Israel, were…
read moreFor years, Facebook said it wanted to be the world’s digital town square. Now Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has a more intimate vision, the digital living room, enabling private conversations between people and groups. The company spelled out how it is changing at its annual developer event in San Jose, California. Michelle Quinn reports. …
read moreOne big concern about autonomous vehicles is that logical computers sometimes have trouble dealing with a messy world. To the point, a pedestrian was struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle in Arizona last year. But new algorithms are trying to solve that potentially deadly problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …
read moreA few months after he turned 17 — and more than two years before he was arrested — Vincent Vetromile recast himself as an online revolutionary. Offline, in this suburb of Rochester, New York, Vetromile was finishing requirements for promotion to Eagle Scout in a troop that met at a local church. He enrolled at…
read moreLocal governments often try to solve problems using old technology. A U.S. Senate bill aims to fund small tech teams to help state and municipal governments update and rebuild government systems. Deana Mitchell takes a look at the impact on one program that is serving the needy. …
read moreKenyan innovators are betting on digital technologies to attract young people to agriculture currently dominated by an aging population. With 98 percent mobile phone penetration, according to the latest data from the Communications Authority of Kenya, the cellphone is proving to be an important source of extension services in areas where such services are not…
read moreAll too often what looks like haze is actually tiny particles in the air that are so small you can breathe them in, and they can be dangerous. Now a group of citizen scientists with help from the National Science Foundation is creating a network of sensors that could warn people when the air they…
read moreAs Notre Dame Cathedral burned, a posting on Facebook circulated – a grainy video of what appeared to be a man in traditional Muslim garb up in the cathedral. Fact-checkers worldwide jumped into action and pointed out the video and postings were fake and the posts never went viral. But this week, the Sri Lanka…
read moreSocial media companies such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are not legally responsible for the content that users upload to their sites. That legal protection has been key to their explosive growth, but there is a growing consensus that companies must do more to root out misleading content. Michelle Quinn reports, the companies may be…
read moreFacebook Inc on Thursday barred a New Mexico-based paramilitary group that has stopped undocumented migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border from using its fundraising tools and said it would remove any of its posts that violated company policies. Facebook made the statement after a civil rights organization asked it to block videos posted by the United…
read moreFacebook Inc broke Canadian privacy laws when it collected the information of some 600,000 citizens, a top watchdog said on Thursday, pledging to seek a court order to force the social media giant to change its practices. Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien made his comments while releasing the results of an investigation, opened a year ago,…
read moreFacebook’s lead regulator in the European Union, Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, on Thursday said it had launched an inquiry into whether the company violated EU data rules by saving user passwords in plain text format on internal servers. The probe is the latest to be launched out of Dublin into the social network giant. The…
read moreTechnology firms should do more to connect people in positive ways and steer away from trends that have tended to exploit human weaknesses, ethicists told a meeting of Silicon Valley leaders on Tuesday. Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin are the co-founders of the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology and the ones who prompted Apple and…
read moreImagine stepping into a movie or virtual world and being able to interact with what’s there. That’s now possible through the magic of Hollywood combined with virtual reality technology. For $20, the company Dreamscape takes visitors through a multi-sensory journey. Currently in Los Angeles, creators say they plan on opening more virtual reality venues across the…
read moreIn the wake of the Christchurch attack, New Zealand said on Wednesday that it would work with France in an effort to stop social media from being used to promote terrorism and violent extremism. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement that she will co-chair a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris…
read moreShares in Twitter Inc jumped 13 percent Tuesday after the social media company reported quarterly revenue above analyst estimates, which executives said was the result of weeding out spam and abusive posts and targeting ads better. New ad formats, partnerships with content providers like the U.S. National Basketball Association and efforts to patrol abusive content…
read moreActor Will Smith, NASA, Fortnite and Disney are among the 2019 Webby Award winners for internet excellence. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences announced the winners Tuesday. Smith’s The Jump won a Webby for events and live stream video while Disney was chosen the WebbyMedia Company of the Year for earning the most…
read moreThe European Union is praising Facebook, Google and Twitter for tackling disinformation while urging the social media giants to do more in clamping down on fake accounts. Under an EU code of conduct, the three companies report routinely on their efforts to stop election interference. Facebook, for one, has been criticized for being a tool…
read morePeople in Sri Lanka are experiencing a second day without access to some of the most popular social media sites within the country, after the government shut down the services in the wake of a terror attack that killed nearly 300 people and injured hundreds on Easter Sunday. Facebook and its properties — Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — were…
read moreLooking back at her time as an early Microsoft employee, Melinda Gates said the brash culture at the famously tough, revolutionary tech company made her want to quit, but that she didn’t discuss it with her boyfriend, and later her husband, Bill Gates, the company CEO who embodied that culture. “That wasn’t my job to…
read moreFord is showing off its new fleet of electric vehicles. Some of the standouts include a new hybrid plug-in and the promise of a new, all-electric model by 2022. The U.S. automaker plans to have a fleet of 40 different electric vehicles on the roads in the next three years. VOA’S Kevin Enochs reports. …
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