Category: Technology

Pinterest, among the gaggle of tech companies hoping to go public this year, set a conservative price range Monday for its initial public offering. It hopes to raise as much as $1.5 billion in its initial offering of shares. The digital scrapbooking site said in a regulatory filing that it will put about 75 million shares up for sale at a price between $15 and $17 each. That, at the higher end, could put the value of the company at around $9 billion. But it falls below the estimated $12 billion value from earlier sales of shares to private investors, according to reports two years ago. Companies set their price range for an initial public offering with a tricky calculus set by investment banks and underwriters. They don’t want to…

Companies working with artificial intelligence need to install accountability mechanisms to prevent its being misused, the European Commission said on Monday, under new ethical guidelines for a technology open to abuse. AI projects should be transparent, have human oversight and secure and reliable algorithms, and they must be subject to privacy and data protection rules, the commission said, among other recommendations. The European Union initiative taps in to a global debate about when or whether companies should put ethical concerns before business interests, and how tough a line regulators can afford to take on new projects without risking killing off innovation. "The ethical dimension of AI is not a luxury feature or an add-on. It is only with trust that our society can fully benefit from technologies," the Commission digital…

Three years ago, a Dutchman climbed into his electric car and set out on a journey. Sunday, a motorcade of electric vehicles escorted him and his converted Volkswagen across an iconic bridge in Australia as he finished his record-setting adventure. VOA's Arash Arabasadi takes us for a ride. ...

Ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, the world has been fascinated with the idea of creating life in a lab. But it remained in the realm of fiction... until it became a bit closer to reality with genetic engineering work in a Swiss lab. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Emojis, those cute, vivid images that liven up emails and texts, seem to come in all shapes, colors and sizes. After all, there are more than 2,800 to choose from. Among the favorites: the smiley face, the thumbs up, the birthday cake. But it turns out, there is more people want to say with emojis than what is currently available, including showing two people with different skin tones, together. Since 2015, it has been possible to pick skin tones for many of the people emojis, such as the mermaid, firefighter and baby. But it began to frustrate some users that they couldn’t show two people of different races holding hands or families with different skin tones, says Jennifer Lee, co-founder of Emojination and vice chair of the Unicode Consortium’s emoji…

Emojis, those cute vivid images that liven up emails and texts, seem to come in all shapes, colors and sizes. The smiley face, the thumbs up, the birthday cake. Add one more to the list — interracial couples. Michelle Quinn looked into the story behind this new emoji, expected to be released later this year. ...

Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio are working on the next generation of batteries — a power supply that could theoretically almost never need to be recharged. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

Xu Ning from VOA Mandarin and reporter Rob Garver contributed to this report. STATE DEPARTMENT — The United States is acknowledging that many countries are not heeding warnings about the possible security risks in allowing Chinese tech giant Huawei to build the next generation of high-speech wireless networks known as 5G. The trend is particularly clear in Southeast Asia, where even U.S. allies are racing ahead to partner with Huawei and launch 5G networks in the coming years. In February, Thailand launched a Huawei 5G test network in Chonburi. Thai authorities indicated that the affordability of Huawei's 5G services offset potential concerns over cybersecurity. In the Philippines, its Globe Telecom is rolling out the nation's 5G network in partnership with Huawei. In Malaysia, the country's leading communications and digital services company…

Some of the nation's top research universities are cutting ties with Chinese tech giant Huawei as the company faces allegations of bank fraud and trade theft. Colleges including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, have said they will accept no new funding from the company, citing the recent federal charges against Huawei along with broader cybersecurity concerns previously raised by the U.S. government. The schools are among at least nine that have received funding from Huawei over the past six years, amounting a combined $10.5 million, according to data provided by the U.S. Education Department. The data, which is reported by schools, does not include gifts of less than $250,000. It's not uncommon for big companies to provide research dollars to schools in…

MacKenzie Bezos, ex-wife of Amazon.com Inc founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, will give 75 percent of their stake in the company and all voting rights to the billionaire entrepreneur. MacKenzie Bezos will also relinquish all her interests in the Washington Post newspaper and rocket company Blue Origin, she said in a tweet on Thursday. The announcement resolves questions about the direction of the world's largest online retailer that have abounded since the couple announced their divorce in January. Jeff Bezos, widely viewed as a management guru whose long-term focus has been essential to Amazon's meteoric stock rise, will retain company control. The settlement also suggests that Amazon will be spared the kind of boardroom battle that has plagued other companies whose owners are dealing with family rifts. "Happy…

Facebook Inc's messaging app WhatsApp on Thursday launched its WhatsApp Business app for Apple Inc's iOS operating system, allowing small businesses to communicate with customers through the platform. WhatsApp Business will be available for free download from the App Store in Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, India, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S. starting Thursday and will be rolled out around the world in the coming weeks, WhatsApp said. The service has been available on Android since last year and has over 5 million users.   ...

South Korea launched the world's first nationwide 5G mobile networks two days early, its top mobile carriers said Thursday, giving a handful of users access in a late-night scramble to be the first providers of the super-fast wireless technology. Three top telecom providers -- SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus -- began their 5G services at 11 pm local time Wednesday, despite previously announcing the launch date would be April 5. Hyper-wired South Korea has long had a reputation for technical prowess, and Seoul had made the 5G rollout a priority as it seeks to stimulate stuttering economic growth. Along with the US, China and Japan, South Korea had been racing to claim the title as the world's first provider of the ultra-fast network. But speculation that US mobile carrier…

South Korea on Friday launches the world's first nationwide 5G mobile networks, a transformational leap that has superpowers sparring for control of an innovation that could change the day-to-day lives of billions of people. The fast communications heralded by fifth-generation wireless technology will ultimately underpin everything from toasters to telephones, from electric cars to power grids.    But while Seoul has won the race to be first to provide the user experience, that is only one part of a wider battle that has pitted the United States against China and ensnared giants including Huawei.    Hyper-wired South Korea has long had a reputation for technical prowess, and Seoul has made the 5G rollout a priority as it seeks to stimulate stuttering economic growth.    The system will bring smartphones near-instantaneous connectivity…

Facebook Inc on Wednesday changed the privacy settings on its WhatsApp messaging platform, allowing users to decide who can add them to chat groups, as it tries to revamp its image after growing privacy concerns among users. WhatsApp, which has about 1.5 billion users, has been trying to find ways to stop misuse of the app, following global concerns that the platform was being used to spread fake news, manipulated photos, videos without context and audio hoaxes, with no way to monitor their origin or full reach. The messaging service said in January it would limit the number of times a user could forward a message to five in a bid to fight "misinformation and rumors." Concerns about Facebook's handling of personal information have grown since the world's largest social…

Boeing anti-stall software forced down the nose of a doomed Ethiopian jet even after pilots had turned it off, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, as investigators scrutinize the role played by technology and crew in the fatal March 10 crash. A preliminary Ethiopian report into the disaster is due to be published within days and may include evidence the software system kicked in as many as four times before the 737 MAX dived into the ground, two people with knowledge of the matter said. A third person familiar with the findings confirmed the software had fired up again after pilots had initially switched it off, but said there was only one significant episode in which the plane pointed itself lower in the moments before the crash. The so-called MCAS software…

Facebook is much better than it was in 2016 at tackling election interference but cannot guarantee the site will not be used to undermine European Parliament elections in May, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. Chastened since suspected Russian operatives used Facebook and other social media to influence an election that surprisingly brought Donald Trump to power in the United States, Facebook has said it has plowed resources and staff into safeguarding the May 26 EU vote. Zuckerberg said there had been a lot of important elections since 2016 that have been relatively clean and demonstrated the defenses it has built up to protect their integrity. "We've certainly made a lot of progress ... But no, I don't think anyone can guarantee in a world where you have…

The Dutch security service advised the government Tuesday not to use technology from countries with active cyber-hacking campaigns against the Netherlands, such as China and Russia. The recommendation came as the Dutch government is weighing options for a new 5G telecommunications network in the coming years and seeks to replace its domestic emergency services network, known as C2000. The AIVD security agency flagged Chinese and Russian attempts at digital espionage as a major security risk. "It is undesirable for the Netherlands to exchange sensitive information or for vital processes to depend on the hardware or software of companies from countries running active cyber programmes against Dutch interests," the AIVD said in its annual report. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has refused to rule out doing business with Chinese technology companies, even…

Hundreds of ads on Facebook promised U.S. homeowners that they were eligible for huge state tax breaks if they installed new solar-energy panels. There was just one catch: None of it was true.   The scam ads used photos of nearly every U.S. governor — and sometimes President Donald Trump — to claim that with new, lucrative tax incentives, people might actually make money by installing solar technology on their homes. Facebook users only needed to enter their addresses, email, utility information and phone number to find out more.   Those incentives don't exist.   While the ads didn't aim to bilk people of money directly — and it wasn't possible to buy solar panels through these ads — they led to websites that harvested personal information that could be…

Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legislation in parliament on Monday, stoking fears from internet firms and human rights groups that it may give the government too much power and hinder freedom of speech. The law would require social media sites like Facebook to carry warnings on posts the government deems false and remove comments against "public interest." The move came two days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said governments should play a more active role in regulating the online platform. But Simon Milner, who works on Facebook's public policy in Asia, said after the law was tabled, the firm was "concerned with aspects of the law that grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be false and proactively push a…

Networks like Bluetooth connect our devices easily and effortlessly. But the area that these portable networks cover is big enough to make them hackable. Now, a group of engineers from Purdue has solved that problem by turning your body into a network. Kevin Enochs explains. ...

Anjana Pasricha contributed to this report. ISLAMABAD - Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts and pages linked to Indian political parties or the Pakistani military for what the company described as "coordinated inauthentic behavior or spam." The Facebook or Instagram accounts, pages or groups were detected through internal investigations into account activity in the region before upcoming elections in India. "These Pages and accounts were engaging in behaviors that expressly violate our policies. This included using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names; impersonating someone else; posting links to malware; and posting massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages in order to drive traffic to websites they are affiliated with in order to make money," Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in…

Facebook is lifting the lid on the algorithm that decides which posts appear in its news feed, as part of a drive to be more transparent and offer greater control to users. The feature "Why am I seeing this post?", being rolled out from Monday, offers some insight into the tens of thousands of inputs used by the social network to rank stories, photos and video in the news feed, the foundation of the platform. "The basic thing that this tool does is let people see why they are seeing a particular post in their news feed, and it helps them access the actions they might want to take if they want to change that," Facebook's Head of News Feed John Hegeman told reporters on Monday. After a series of…

David Johnston stands over a table full of peculiar items confiscated at Dulles International Airport: a glittery clutch with brass knuckles as a clasp. A perfume bottle shaped like a grenade. A rusted circular saw blade. A pocket-sized pitchfork. None of those is quite right. Then Johnston sees it: a guitar shaped like a semi-automatic rifle. Bingo. It will do nicely for the Transportation Security Administration's social media accounts. Johnston, TSA's social media director, is following in the footsteps of Curtis "Bob" Burns, who created unlikely internet buzz for the not-always-beloved agency by showcasing the weirdest stuff travelers pack in their carry-ons. He died suddenly in October at age 48. Burns' work created a model for other federal agencies. The quirky photos combined with a hefty dose of dad humor…

For techies and phone geeks, Digital Cambodia 2019 was the place to be. More than a dozen high school students clustered at the booth for Cellcard, Cambodia’s leading mobile operator. Under the booth’s 5G sign, they played video games on their phones. Hak Kimheng, a ninth grade student in Phnom Penh, said his mom bought him a Samsung smartphone a few months ago, when he moved to the capital city from nearby Kandal province to live with his uncle while attending school. Like moms everywhere, she thought the smartphone would help her stay in touch with her son. But smartphones being smartphones and kids being kids, Hak Kimheng, 16, has used it to set up an account on Facebook, Cambodia’s favorite social media platform. He’s also downloaded Khmer Academy, a…

For decades, it was virtually unknown outside a small circle of investors, corporate lawyers and government officials.    But in recent years, the small interagency body known as the Committee for Investment in the United States has grown in prominence, propelled by a U.S. desire to use it as an instrument of national security and foreign policy.    This week, the panel made headlines after it reportedly directed Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech to divest itself of Grindr, a popular gay dating app, because of concern the user data it collects could be used to blackmail military and intelligence personnel.    Operating out of the Treasury Department, the nine-member CFIUS (pronounced Cy-fius) reviews foreign investments in U.S. businesses to determine whether they pose a national security threat.   Notification was voluntary…

Facebook said Friday it is further tightening requirements for European Union political advertising, in its latest efforts to prevent foreign interference and increase transparency ahead of the bloc's parliamentary elections. However, some EU politicians criticized the social media giant, saying the measures will make pan-European online campaigning harder. Under the new rules, people, parties and other groups buying political ads will have to confirm to Facebook that they are located in the same EU country as the Facebook users they are targeting. That's on top of a previously announced requirement for ad buyers to confirm their identities. It means advertisements aimed at voters across the EU's 28 countries will have to register a person in each of those nations. "It's a disgrace that Facebook doesn't see Europe as an entity…

Most of us don't give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks - like buttoning a shirt - can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. Tina Trinh reports. ...

At one atom thick, graphene is one of those miracle materials that many say is the stuff of the future. The future may be now as graphene's potential is being realized as the key to quick efficient 5G networks, and the future of telecommunications. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...