Month: August 2018

Microsoft will begin requiring its contractors to offer their U.S. employees paid leave to care for a new child. It’s common for tech firms to offer generous family leave benefits for their own software engineers and other full-time staff, but paid leave advocates say it’s still rare to require similar benefits for contracted workers such as janitors, landscapers, cafeteria crews and software consultants. “Given its size and its reach, this is a unique and hopefully trailblazing offering,” said Vicki Shabo, vice president at the National Partnership for Women and Families. The details The new policy affects businesses with at least 50 U.S.-based employees that do substantial work with Microsoft that involves access to its buildings or its computing network. It doesn’t affect suppliers of goods. Contractors would have to offer…

U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch on Thursday added to the growing push in Washington to have the Federal Trade Commission rekindle an antitrust investigation of Alphabet Inc's Google. Hatch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons recounting several news reports that identified complaints about Google's anti-competitive conduct and privacy practices. Alphabet shares were little changed after the release of the letter. The company declined to comment. Lawmakers from both major parties and Google's rivals have said this year they see an opening for increased regulation of large technology companies under the FTC's new slate of commissioners. Google's critics say that ongoing European antitrust action against the web search leader and this year's data privacy scandal involving Facebook Inc and political consulting firm…

Germany announced a new agency on Wednesday to fund research on cybersecurity and to end its reliance on digital technologies from the United States, China and other countries. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told reporters that Germany needed new tools to become a top player in cybersecurity and shore up European security and independence. "It is our joint goal for Germany to take a leading role in cybersecurity on an international level," Seehofer told a news conference with Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. "We have to acknowledge we're lagging behind, and when one is lagging, one needs completely new approaches." The agency is a joint interior and defense ministry project. Germany, like many other countries, faces a daily barrage of cyberattacks on its government and industry computer networks. However, the…

More than 100 hospitals across the United States are using virtual reality or VR, as a form of therapy for patients to help manage symptoms such as pain and anxiety. An increasing number of countries worldwide are taking an interest in VR and doctors are starting to develop international guidelines on how to apply and validate VR in healthcare. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Los Angeles, where one hospital is leading the effort in using VR as digital medicine. ...

More than a dozen human rights groups are urging Google not to offer censored internet search in China, amid reports it is planning to again provide the service in the giant market. A joint letter Tuesday calls on CEO Sundar Pichai to explain what Google is doing to safeguard users from the Chinese government’s censorship and surveillance. It describes the company’s secretive plan to build a search engine that would comply with Chinese censorship as representing “an alarming capitulation by Google on human rights.” “The Chinese government extensively violates the rights to freedom of expression and privacy; by accommodating the Chinese authorities’ repression of dissent, Google would be actively participating in those violations for millions of internet users in China,” the letter says. In a statement, Google said it has…

A small Swiss company won $31 million in new investment on Tuesday to suck carbon dioxide from thin air as part of a fledgling, costly technology that may gain wider acceptance from governments in 2018 as a way to slow climate change. Climeworks AG, which uses high-tech filters and fans to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a cost of about $600 a ton, raised the money from investors including Zurich Cantonal Bank. "It's all about cost reductions," Jan Wurzbacher, a co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks, told Reuters of how the company would use the funds. Extracting vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could help to limit global warming, blamed for causing more heatwaves, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels. The company says it has a long-term…

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Google, Twitter and Facebook were "treading on very, very troubled territory" and warned them to "be careful." Trump made the comments just hours after igniting controversy with a series of early-morning tweets claiming Google search results are "rigged" to turn up news unfavorable to the president's administration. The president asserted that people were complaining about biased results from social media searches. "We have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in," the president said. "You just can't do that." In response to a reporter's question in the Oval Office, Trump singled out Google, Facebook and Twitter for criticism and said, "You can't do that to people."  "Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people," the president said. "They better be careful." Google…

Alphabet's Google said Tuesday that it was partnering with a handful of Indian banks to bring quick loans to the masses, as it aims to woo tens of millions of new internet users in the country to its digital payments services. At an annual Google event in New Delhi, Caesar Sengupta, vice president of Google's Next Billion Users initiative, said the move would make banking services accessible to tens of millions of Indians. Google launched payments app Tez, meaning fast in Hindi, in India last year, integrating it with the state-backed unified payments interface (UPI), as it sought to gain a foothold in the South Asian nation's digital payments space — which, according to Credit Suisse, will grow fivefold to $1 trillion by 2023. On Tuesday, Google rebranded the app as Google Pay and said it was partnering with four Indian…

Toyota will invest half a billion dollars into ride-sharing giant Uber as part of a deal for the two companies to work together on developing self-driving vehicles.  Toyota, one of the world's largest car makers, is seen as lagging behind other companies, including General Motors and Google's Waymo, in the autonomous-vehicle race.  Uber has already begun testing self-driving vehicles, but was forced to remove hundreds of autonomous cars from the road in March after one of its test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian on a street in Tempe, Arizona.  The deal between Uber and Toyota is an indication that Uber does not want to go it alone in creating the complex, autonomous driving systems.  Self-driving cars have always been important to Uber, which sees them as a way to…

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is urging the United Nations to begin talks on a legally binding treaty to ban the use and development of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Representatives from more than 70 countries are attending a weeklong meeting of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, or CCW, to recommend future work on this issue. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a global coalition of 76 organizations in 32 countries. Members include Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Mines Action Canada and the Nobel Women's Initiative. It began in April 2013 to pre-emptively ban lethal autonomous weapons systems, better known as killer robots. Activists say momentum is building for states to negotiate a ban on the devices when the CCW holds its annual meeting in late November; however, the…

A Russian artist is going back to the roots of photography, rejecting the digital trappings and the assembly-line convenience of the modern age, by designing and creating wooden cameras the way they were built a hundred years ago. Combining craftsmanship with the principles of old school photography, some consider his creations art forms in themselves. And as VOA's Julie Taboh reports, his wooden cameras, and the unique photographs he takes with them, are attracting buyers from around the world. ...