An innovative Czech company is changing the way we think of light, by capturing and transforming it in ways that save money and generally make the world a more beautiful place. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Lightweight, cheap to make and easier to send into outer space. Academics in the U.S. are developing an inflatable robot with money from the American space agency, NASA. NASA says the blow-up technology can handle the cosmos and existence back here on Earth. Arash Arabasadi has more.
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European and American investigators have broken up one of the world’s largest online criminal marketplaces for drugs, hacking tools and financial-theft wares in raids in the United States, Germany and Brazil.
Three German men, ages 31, 22 and 29, were arrested after the raids in three southern states on allegations they operated the so-called “Wall Street Market” darknet platform, which hosted about 5,400 sellers and more than 1 million customer accounts, Frankfurt prosecutor Georg Ungefuk told reporters in Wiesbaden on Friday.
A Brazilian man, the site’s alleged moderator, was also charged.
The three Germans, identified in U.S. court documents as Tibo Lousee, Jonathan Kalla and Klaus-Martin Frost, face drug charges in Germany on allegations they administrated the platform where cocaine, heroin and other drugs, as well as forged documents and other illegal material, were sold.
They have also been charged in the United States with conspiring to launder money and distribute illegal drugs, according to a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court.
“The charges filed in Germany and the United States will significantly disrupt the illegal sale of drugs on the darknet,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan White told reporters in Germany. “We believe that Wall Street Market recently became the world’s largest darknet marketplace for contraband including narcotics, hacking tools, illegal services and stolen financial data.”
Two-year operation
Ungefuk said Wall Street Market was at least the second biggest, refusing to name others for fear of jeopardizing other investigations.
In the nearly two-year operation involving European police agency Europol and authorities in the Netherlands as well as the U.S. and Germany, investigators pinpointed the three men as administrators of the platform on the darknet. It is part of the internet often used by criminals that is hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through anonymity-providing tools, such as the Tor browser.
Transactions were conducted using cryptocurrencies, and the suspects took commissions ranging from 2% to 6%, Ungefuk said.
The site trafficked documents such as identity papers and driver’s licenses. But an estimated 60% or more of the business was drug-related, he said.
Caught during ‘exit scam’
Authorities swept in quickly after the platform was switched into a “maintenance mode” April 23, and the suspects allegedly began transferring funds used on the platform to themselves in a so-called “exit scam,” Ungefuk said.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the administrators took about $11 million in the exit scam from escrow and user accounts.
The U.S. identified a fourth defendant as Marcos Paulo De Oliveira-Annibale, 29, of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was not clear if he had been arrested, and federal police in Brazil wouldn’t comment.
Annibale, who went by the moniker “MED3LIN” online, faces federal drug distribution and money laundering charges in the United States for allegedly acting as a moderator on the site in disputes between vendors and their customers. He also allegedly promoted Wall Street Market on prominent websites such as Reddit, the Justice Department said.
Brazilian authorities searched his home Thursday after investigators linked his online persona to pictures he posted of himself years ago, U.S. officials said.
Impact will be short-lived
A University of Manchester criminology researcher who follows activity on dark web markets, Patrick Shortis, said the takedown was widely anticipated after Annibale leaked his credentials and the market’s true internet address online.
Knocking out Wall Street Market is unlikely to have a lasting impact on online criminal markets, though law enforcement officials make it clear they are going after sellers and customers, Shortis said.
In Los Angeles, two drug suppliers were arrested, and authorities confiscated about $1 million cash, weapons and drugs in raids. They were only identified by their online monikers, “Platinum45” and “Ladyskywalker,” and characterized as “major drug traffickers” dealing methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Other darknet busts
After the first big takedown of such a marketplace, Silk Road in 2013, it took overall trade about four to five months to recuperate, Shortis said. And after law enforcement took out Hansa and AlphaBay in 2017, it took about a month, he said.
Shortis said one threat he does see to the market, in the short term at least, are so-called denial of service cyberattacks that effectively knock web servers offline by flooding them with traffic.
“An extortionist is currently targeting Empire and Nightmare, who are both in the running to replace Wall Street as the top market,” he said.
The raids in Germany culminated Thursday with the seizure of servers, while federal police confiscated 550,000 euros ($615,000) in cash, Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies, hard drives, and other evidence in multiple raids.
Because of the clandestine nature of the operation and the difficulty of tracing cryptocurrencies, Ungefuk said it was difficult to assess the overall volume of business conducted by the darknet group. But he said that “we’re talking about profits in the millions at least.”
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Cybersecurity officials from dozens of countries on Friday proposed a set of principles to ensure the safety of next generation mobile networks amid concerns over the use of gear made by China’s Huawei.
The non-binding proposals were published at the end of a two-day meeting in Prague to discuss the security of new 5G networks.
The U.S. has been lobbying allies to ban Huawei from 5G networks over concerns China’s government could force the company to give it access to data for cyberespionage. Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of telecom infrastructure equipment, has denied the allegations.
The proposals reflected security concerns, with some wording that also appeared to be aimed at raising the bar for Chinese suppliers. The document said “security and risk assessment of vendors and network technologies” should be taken into account, as well as “the overall risk of influence on a supplier by a third country,” especially its “model of governance.”
“Security and risk assessments of vendors and network technologies should take into account rule of law,” it said.
U.S. officials have urged their allies to take into account the laws and legal system of a country where a 5G supplier is based, saying that China’s lack of independent judiciary means companies have no legal options if they don’t want to comply with Beijing’s orders.
The European Commission has also recommended that EU countries factor in the legal systems of the countries where 5G suppliers are headquartered.
At the meeting in Prague, the cybersecurity officials came mainly from countries that are strategic allies, including European Union member states, the United States and its Asia-Pacific allies including Australia, Japan and South Korea and Singapore. NATO and European Union officials also participated but China and Russia were not present.
Europe has become a key battleground in the war over whether to ban Huawei, with countries gearing up to deploy the new networks, starting with the auction of radio frequencies this year.
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Vietnam is used to being an order taker. Companies such as Nokia and Samsung Electronics use the Southeast Asian country’s cheap labor to assemble consumer electronics for export. Those investments from abroad have slowly handed Vietnam the supplies, parts and know-how needed for local companies to make their own smartphones.
In a bellwether case, a unit of the Vingroup property and retail conglomerate began selling phones in December with plans to join a Spanish technology firm in escalating production over the next two years, according to domestic media reports.
Vingroup should expect a stronger than ever onshore supply chain plus abundant labor, analysts in Vietnam say, but must appeal better than its predecessors, mostly written off as failures, to the domestic market where shoppers tend to prefer foreign brands.
“I would say that there’s more and more bits and pieces that are being produced in Vietnam as the Taiwanese and Koreans and everybody else moves their parts supply here,” said Frederick Burke, partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City.
Brisk sales of a locally made phone would push Vietnam’s low-wage, contract-reliant economy up the value chain.
Qphones out, Bphones in
Vietnamese developers have launched a handful of mobile phones over the past decade under brands such as Qphone and Mobiistar. A lot have faded or folded because of poor marketing or lack of knowledge about what consumers want, said Thanh Vo, senior analyst with the market research firm IDC Indochina in Ho Chi Minh City.
In 2015, handset builder and software firm BKAV Corp. came out with what consumers and analysts describe as Vietnam’s first qualified success.
BKAV’s first devices, the Bphone and Bphone 2, got poor reviews, domestic news website VietNamNet Bridge said in a report in October. But its $314 Bphone 3 released last year won praise among experts for its processing speed and water resistance “contrary to all predictions,” the report said.
Vinsmart signed an agreement in July with BQ of Spain to launch four smartphones under the Vsmart brand in December, the Vietnam Investment Review reported. Vingroup, which is run by Vietnam’s richest person Pham Nhat Vuong, plans to make up to 5 million handsets a year by 2021, the Financial Times reported.
Vingroup did not answer a request for comment for this report.
Nation of factories
Foreign investment in Vietnamese manufacturing is fueling economic growth of 6% to 7% every year. The GDP rose nearly 7.1% in 2018, the highest in 11 years. Among the engines, Samsung, LG Electronics, Nokia and Intel are all making “multibillion-dollar investments” in Vietnam, business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates says. Exports of electronics had exceeded $40 billion by 2017.
Five years ago, just 2% of the value added to made-in-Vietnam electronics was local, Burke said. That percentage, he said, is higher now. The Vsmart phones will probably still use parts from offshore, he said, but find a solid local supply chain as well.
The Bphone 3s run on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors and use Gorilla Glass covers by Corning. Both suppliers are American.
Labor for domestic phones will be intensely local, Vo said.
“From my experience, Vingroup will pay the high salaries to recruit the human resources from other competitors,” he said.
Hesitant consumers
Economic growth will help expand the middle class to about one-third of Vietnam’s 96 million people by next year, the Boston Consulting Group estimates. Some of that new wealth in the country where just about everyone, including fishermen and garbage collectors, carries a smartphone has gone toward high-end phones by Apple and Samsung.
“I am not interested in Vietnamese phones, since the Bphone was unveiled a few years ago, and the quality is not good,” said Phuong Hong, a 10-year iPhone user in Ho Chi Minh City.
But consumers who normally buy relatively cheap handsets made by Chinese firms such as Oppo and Huawei might consider a local brand in the same price range, Burke said.
Because consumers normally pick smartphones for their design and price rather than country of origin, Vietnamese vendors must step up their marketing and figure out before production what domestic shoppers want, Vo said. Vietnamese are looking for phones as cheap as $200, he added.
“We’ve seen many people try and many people fail, so one has to take a view on whether Vietnamese really want to buy a Vinsmart phone rather than a Samsung phone or an Apple phone, for example,” said Kevin Snowball, chief executive officer with PXP Vietnam Asset Management in Ho Chi Minh City.
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Nearly two weeks after a fiery explosion during a ground test of its new crew capsule, SpaceX confirmed Thursday that the vehicle was destroyed, but neither the company nor NASA, its primary customer, have publicly acknowledged the nature of the mishap.
Instead, Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability for California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, continued to refer to the accident simply as an “anomaly,” jargon for when something goes wrong.
The April 20 accident occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as SpaceX was about to test eight emergency thrusters designed to propel the capsule, dubbed Crew Dragon, to safety from atop the rocket in the event of a launch failure.
“Just prior, before we wanted to fire the (thrusters), there was an anomaly and the vehicle was destroyed,” Koenigsmann told reporters Thursday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “There were no injuries. SpaceX had taken all safety measures prior to this test, as we always do.”
The news conference was called ahead of Friday’s scheduled launch of an unmanned resupply mission to the International Space Station using a cargo-only capsule built by SpaceX, the private rocket venture of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
When pressed about the accident, Koenigsmann declined to say whether an explosion or fire was involved. NASA has likewise declined to describe the mishap.
A leaked video of the accident, which a NASA contractor has acknowledged as authentic in an internal memo obtained by the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, showed the capsule blasting to smithereens. A pall of smoke was also widely observed from a distance at the time of the ill-fated test.
SpaceX’s reluctance to describe in plain terms what happened to the capsule was at odds with NASA’s long history of transparency surrounding accidents involving its human spaceflight program.
The Crew Dragon had been scheduled to carry U.S. astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station in a test mission in July, although April’s accident, as well as some vehicle design hitches, are likely to push that launch to later in the year or into 2020.
“It’s certainly not great news for the schedule overall, but I hope we can recover,” Koenigsmann said.
The destroyed vehicle was one of six such capsules built or in late production by SpaceX, and the first flown into space. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched it without crew to the space station in March for a six-day visit before returning to Earth, splashing down safely in the Atlantic for retrieval.
Koenigsmann said initial data from the accident showed the mishap occurred during activation of the emergency thrusters, which SpaceX calls the SuperDraco system.
“We have no reason to believe there is an issue with the SuperDracos themselves,” Koenigsmann said, adding that the engines have been tested nearly 600 times in the past.
NASA has been awarded $6.8 billion to SpaceX and rival Boeing Co to develop separate capsule systems to fly astronauts to space, but both companies have faced technical challenges and delays.
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The hugely popular social media site Facebook has banned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and several others for hate speech.
Facebook said Thursday that the individuals violated its policy against instigating violence.
“Individuals and organizations who spread hate or attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are have no place on Facebook … regardless of ideology,” a spokeswoman said.
They are also barred from Facebook’s photo-sharing site, Instagram.
Facebook did not say whether any specific posts from those named led to the ban.
Jones is best known for theories claiming the government was behind the 9/11 terror attacks and that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut in 2012 was a hoax.
He angrily responded to the ban, saying Facebook had “defamed” him.
Another far-right commentator banned, Paul Joseph Watson, has been accused of racism and intense hatred of Muslims.
He said he did not break any of Facebook’s rules and called on like-minded commentators to pressure the Trump administration to take action on their behalf.
Farrakhan, the veteran leader of the black nationalist group Nation of Islam, has long been accused of anti-Semitism and black separatism. He has not responded to the Facebook ban.
Other far-right personalities barred from Facebook are Paul Nehlen, Laura Loomer and Milo Yiannopoulos.
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Britain’s prime minister fired her defense minister Wednesday after finding ‘compelling evidence’ that he leaked information to journalists about a secret decision to allow China’s tech giant Huawei to participate in some parts of the country’s 5G network. State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports his dismissal comes as the U.S. is renewing warnings on Huawei.
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For 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.
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Far from being a Netflix killer, Apple envisions its forthcoming Apple TV+ streaming service as one that could sit alongside other services that viewers buy, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Tuesday.
Apple in March said it will launch a streaming service with original content from big names including Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. It plans to spend $2 billion on programming but has not said how much the service will cost.
Investors are keeping a close eye on Apple’s television efforts because subscription services are an increasingly important part of its financial results as iPhone sales decline.
Apple is entering a crowded field, including Walt Disney Co.’s $6.99 per month service launching this fall. At the other end of the price spectrum, Alphabet’s YouTube this month said that it was raising the price of its YouTube TV online service, a cable-like bundle of more than 70 channels, to $49.99 per month.
On a conference call with investors on Tuesday, Cook indicated that Apple will not try to give viewers everything they want.
“There’s a huge move from the cable bundle to over-the-top,” Cook told investors during a call on Tuesday, referring to streaming television services delivered over the internet rather than a traditional cable service. “We think that most users are going to get multiple over-the-top products, and we’re going to do our best to convince them that the Apple TV+ product should be one of them.”
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U.S. cyber spies last year unmasked the identities of nearly 17,000 U.S. citizens or residents who were in contact with foreign intelligence targets, a sharp increase from previous years attributed partly to hacking and other malicious cyber activity, according to a U.S. government report released on Tuesday.
The unmasking of American citizens’ identities swept up in U.S. electronic espionage became a sensitive issue after U.S. government spying on communications traffic expanded sharply following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and started sweeping up Americans’ data.
The report by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said that in 2018 cyber spies at the National Security Agency (NSA) unmasked the identities of 16,721 “U.S. persons,” compared to 9,529 unmaskings in 2017 and 9,217 between September 2015 and August 2016.
According to U.S. intelligence rules, when the NSA intercepts messages in which one or more participants are U.S. citizens or residents, the agency is supposed to black out American names. But the names can be unmasked upon request of intelligence officers and higher-ranking government officials, including presidential appointees.
Alex Joel, a DNI official, said it was likely that the higher number of U.S. persons unmasked last year was inflated by names of victims of malicious cyber activity.
Another official said the definition of U.S. person used by spy agencies includes actual individuals, email addresses and internet protocol (IP) addresses.
The expanded collection of data that affected Americans was exposed by whistleblowers like former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, prompting politicians and the public to demand greater accountability.
Annual reports on the extent of NSA and other government electronic surveillance were one notable reform. NSA’s operations historically were so secretive that agency employees joked its initials stood for “No Such Agency.”
Not long after President Donald Trump took office, Devin Nunes, the Republican who then chaired the House Intelligence Committee, touched off a political flap by claiming intercepted messages involving members of Trump’s transition team had been unmasked at the direction of top Obama administration officials.
The report says that the number of “non-US persons” targeted by the U.S. for foreign intelligence surveillance rose to 164,770 in calendar year 2018 compared to 129,080 the year before.
The report adds that not a single FBI investigation was opened on U.S. persons based on NSA surveillance in either 2017 or 2018.
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Facebook Inc on Tuesday debuted an overhaul of its core social network and new business-focused tools, the first concrete steps in its plan to refashion itself into a private messaging and e-commerce company.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a fresh design for the world’s biggest social network that de-emphasized its News Feed and showcased services like its messaging app, online marketplace and video-on-demand site.
The company also rolled out features aimed both at encouraging users to interact with their close social circle as well as with businesses, including appointment booking and a “Secret Crush” option for Facebook Dating.
Zuckerberg in March promised changes to the advertising-driven social media company as it was under regulatory scrutiny over propaganda on its platform and users’ data privacy. Facebook’s News Feed continues to draw ad dollars but user growth in its most lucrative markets has slowed.
“We believe that there is a community for everyone. So we’ve been working on a major evolution to make communities as central as friends,” said Zuckerberg on Tuesday, speaking at Facebook’s annual F8 conference, where the company gives developers a peek at new product releases.
Other Facebook executives introduced changes within the Messenger and Instagram apps aimed at helping businesses connect with customers, including appointment booking and enhanced shopping features as well as a tool to lure customers into direct conversations with companies via ads.
Zuckerberg identified private messaging, ephemeral stories and small groups as the fastest-growing areas of online communication. In last three years, the number of people using WhatsApp has almost doubled.
The social media company is now working on “LightSpeed” in order to make its Messenger app smaller in size and faster.
Facebook will also introduce Messenger for Mac and Windows and launch a new feature called “Product Catalog” for WhatsApp Business. The desktop version of Messenger will be available this fall.
“I know that we don’t exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now, to put it lightly,” Zuckerberg said.
The online ad market is largely dominated by Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google. But by focusing more on messaging, e-commerce, payment and enterprise-focused tools,
Facebook will also need to battle the likes of Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp as well as fast-growing Silicon Valley unicorns like workplace messaging app Slack.
“We’ve shown time and again as a company that we have what it takes to evolve,” Zuckerberg said.
Making money
Facebook pulled in nearly $56 billion in revenue last year, almost of all which came from showing ads to the 2.7 billion people who access its family of apps each month.
But Facebook is no longer adding many new users in the United States and Europe, its most lucrative markets, and it must find additional sources of revenue if it is to sustain growth.
The product releases at F8 indicate its answer involves efforts to keep users on its apps for longer, coupled with e-commerce tools Facebook is hoping businesses will pay to use.
Features that drive the most user engagement, like Stories and videos, are being decked out with new tools and given increased prominence across the platforms.
One new feature will allow users to watch videos together in Messenger, while also viewing each other’s reactions in simultaneous texts and video chats.
Facebook Dating will be expanded into 14 new markets, including places in Asia like the Philippines where Facebook has high user growth. A “Secret Crush” feature will allows users to explore potential romantic relationships within their friend circle.
The company is also courting businesses, giving them ways to chat with customers and conduct transactions, similar to how consumers in China are already shopping on services like WeChat. Instagram is expanding a sales system introduced last month, allowing public figures, known as influencers, to tag products in their posts so fans can buy them right away.
Sellers on Marketplace will likewise receive payments and arrange shipping directly within Facebook.
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One 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.
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A 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 Monroe Community College, taking classes to become a heating and air conditioning technician. On weekends, he spent hours in the driveway with his father, a Navy veteran, working on cars.
On social media, though, the teenager spoke in world-worn tones about the need to “reclaim our nation at any cost.” Eventually he subbed out the grinning selfie in his Twitter profile, replacing it with the image of a colonial militiaman shouldering an AR-15 rifle. And he traded his name for a handle: “Standing on the Edge.”
That edge became apparent in Vetromile’s posts, including many interactions over the last two years with accounts that praised the Confederacy, warned of looming gun confiscation and declared Muslims to be a threat.
In 2016, he sent the first of more than 70 replies to tweets from a fiery account with 140,000 followers, run by a man billing himself as Donald Trump’s biggest Canadian supporter. The final exchange came late last year.
“Islamic Take Over Has Begun: Muslim No-Go Zones Are Springing Up Across America. Lock and load America!” the Canadian tweeted on December 12, with a video and a map highlighting nine states with Muslim enclaves.
“The places listed are too vague,” Vetromile replied. “If there were specific locations like ‘north of X street in the town of Y, in the state of Z’ we could go there and do something about it.”
Weeks later, police arrested Vetromile and three friends, charging them with plotting to attack a Muslim settlement in rural New York. And with extremism on the rise across the U.S., this town of neatly kept Cape Cods confronted difficult questions about ideology and young people — and technology’s role in bringing them together.
The reality of the plot Vetromile and his friends are charged with hatching is, in some ways, both less and more than what was feared when they were arrested in January.
Prosecutors say there is no indication that the four — Vetromile, 19; Brian Colaneri, 20; Andrew Crysel, 18; and a 16-year-old The Associated Press isn’t naming because of his age — had set an imminent or specific date for an attack. Reports they had an arsenal of 23 guns are misleading; the weapons belonged to parents or other relatives.
Prosecutors allege the four discussed using those guns, along with explosive devices investigators say were made by the 16-year-old, in an attack on the community of Islamberg.
Residents of the settlement in Delaware County, New York — mostly African-American Muslims who relocated from Brooklyn in the 1980s — have been harassed for years by right-wing activists who have called it a terrorist training camp. A Tennessee man, Robert Doggart , was convicted in 2017 of plotting to burn down Islamberg’s mosque and other buildings.
But there are few clues so far to explain how four with little experience beyond their high school years might have come up with the idea to attack the community. All have pleaded not guilty, and several defense attorneys, back in court Friday, are arguing there was no plan to actually carry out any attack, chalking it up to talk among buddies. Lawyers for the four did not return calls, and parents or other relatives declined interviews.
“I don’t know where the exposure came from, if they were exposed to it from other kids at school, through social media,” said Matthew Schwartz, the Monroe County assistant district attorney prosecuting the case. “I have no idea if their parents subscribe to any of these ideologies.”
Well beyond upstate New York, the spread of extremist ideology online has sparked growing concern. Google and Facebook executives went before the House Judiciary Committee this month to answer questions about their platforms’ role in feeding hate crime and white nationalism. Twitter announced new rules last fall prohibiting the use of “dehumanizing language” that risks “normalizing serious violence.”
But experts said the problem goes beyond language, pointing to algorithms used by search engines and social media platforms to prioritize content and spotlight likeminded accounts.
“Once you indicate an inclination, the machine learns,” said Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at New York’s Hunter College who studies the online contagion of alt-right ideology. “That’s exactly what’s happening on all these platforms … and it just sends some people down a terrible rabbit hole.”
She and others point to Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. In writings found afterward, Roof recalled how his interest in the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin had prompted a Google search for the term “black on white crime.” The first site the search engine pointed him to was run by a racist group promoting the idea that such crime is common, and as he learned more, Roof wrote, that eventually drove his decision to attack the congregation.
In the Rochester-area case, electronic messages between two of those arrested, seen by the AP, along with papers filed in the case suggest doubts divided the group.
“I honestly see him being a terrorist,” one of those arrested, Crysel, told his friend Colaneri in an exchange last December on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers that has also gained notoriety for its embrace by some followers of the alt-right.
“He also has a very odd obsession with pipe bombs,” Colaneri replied. “Like it’s borderline creepy.”
It is not clear from the message fragment seen which of the others they were referencing. What is clear, though, is the long thread of frustration in Vetromile’s online posts — and the way those posts link him to an enduring conspiracy theory.
A few years ago, Vetromile’s posts on Twitter and Instagram touched on subjects like video games and English class.
He made the honor roll as an 11th-grader but sometime thereafter was suspended and never returned, according to former classmates and others. The school district, citing federal law on student records, declined to provide details.
Ron Gerth, who lives across the street from the family, recalled Vetromile as a boy roaming the neighborhood with a friend, pitching residents on a leaf-raking service: “Just a normal, everyday kid wanting to make some money, and he figured a way to do it.” More recently, Gerth said, Vetromile seemed shy and withdrawn, never uttering more than a word or two if greeted on the street.
Vetromile and suspect Andrew Crysel earned the rank of Eagle in Boy Scout Troop 240, where the 16-year-old was also a member. None ever warranted concern, said Steve Tyler, an adult leader.
“Every kid’s going to have their own sort of geekiness,” Tyler said, “but nothing that would ever be considered a trigger or a warning sign that would make us feel unsafe.”
Crysel and the fourth suspect, Colaneri, have been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a milder form of autism, their families have said. Friends described Colaneri as socially awkward and largely disinterested in politics. “He asked, if we’re going to build a wall around the Gulf of Mexico, how are people going to go to the beach?” said Rachael Lee, the aunt of Colaneri’s girlfriend.
Vetromile attended community college with Colaneri before dropping out in 2017. By then, he was fully engaged in online conversations about immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, gun rights and Trump. Over time, his statements became increasingly militant.
“We need a revolution now!” he tweeted in January, replying to a thread warning of a coming “war” over gun ownership.
Vetromile directed some of his strongest statements at Muslims. Tweets from the Canadian account, belonging to one Mike Allen, seemed to push that button.
In July 2017, Allen tweeted “Somali Muslims take over Tennessee town and force absolute HELL on terrified Christians.” Vetromile replied: ”@realDonaldTrump please do something about this!”
A few months later, Allen tweeted: “Czech politicians vote to let citizens carry guns, shoot Muslim terrorists on sight.” Vetromile’s response: “We need this here!”
Allen’s posts netted hundreds of replies a day, and there’s no sign he read Vetromile’s responses. But others did, including the young man’s reply to the December post about Muslim “no-go zones.”
That tweet included a video interview with Martin Mawyer, whose Christian Action Network made a 2009 documentary alleging that Islamberg and other settlements were terrorist training camps. Mawyer linked the settlements, which follow the teachings of a controversial Pakistani cleric, to a group called Jamaat al-Fuqra that drew scrutiny from law enforcement in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993, Colorado prosecutors won convictions of four al-Fuqra members in a racketeering case that included charges of fraud, arson and murder.
Police and analysts have repeatedly said Islamberg does not threaten violence. Nevertheless, the allegations of Mawyer’s group continue to circulate widely online and in conservative media.
Replying to questions by email, Mawyer said his organization has used only legal means to try to shut down the operator of the settlements.
“Vigilante violence is always the wrong way to solve social or personal problems,” he said. “Christian Action Network had no role, whatsoever, in inciting any plots.”
Online, though, Vetromile reacted with consternation to the video of Mawyer: “But this video just says ‘upstate NY and California’ and that’s too big of an area to search for terrorists,” he wrote.
Other followers replied with suggestions. “Doesn’t the video state Red House, Virginia as the place?” one asked. Virginia was too far, Vetromile replied, particularly since the map with the tweet showed an enclave in his own state.
When another follower offered a suggestion, Vetromile signed off: “Eh worth a look. Thanks.”
The exchange ended without a word from the Canadian account, whose tweet started it.
Three months before the December exchange on Twitter, the four suspects started using a Discord channel dubbed ”#leaders-only” to discuss weapons and how they would use them in an attack, prosecutors allege. Vetromile set up the channel, one of the defense attorneys contends, but prosecutors say they don’t consider any one of the four a leader.
In November, the conversation expanded to a second channel: ”#militia-soldiers-wanted.”
At some point last fall the 16-year-old made a grenade — “on a whim to satisfy his own curiosity,” his lawyer said in a court filing that claims the teen never told the other suspects. That filing also contends the boy told Vetromile that forming a militia was “stupid.”
But other court records contradict those assertions. Another teen, who is not among the accused, told prosecutors that the 16-year-old showed him what looked like a pipe bomb last fall and then said that Vetromile had asked for prototypes. “Let me show you what Vinnie gave me,” the young suspect allegedly said during another conversation, before leaving the room and returning with black explosive powder.
In January, the 16-year-old was in the school cafeteria when he showed a photo to a classmate of one of his fellow suspects, wearing some kind of tactical vest. He made a comment like, “He looks like the next school shooter, doesn’t he?” according to Greece Police Chief Patrick Phelan. The other student reported the incident, and questioning by police led to the arrests and charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism.
The allegations have jarred a region where political differences are the norm. Rochester, roughly half white and half black and other minorities, votes heavily Democratic. Neighboring Greece, which is 87 percent white, leans conservative. Town officials went to the Supreme Court to win a 2014 ruling allowing them to start public meetings with a chaplain’s prayer.
The arrests dismayed Bob Lonsberry, a conservative talk radio host in Rochester, who said he checked Twitter to confirm Vetromile didn’t follow his feed. But looking at the accounts Vetromile did follow convinced him that politics on social media had crossed a dangerous line.
“The people up here, even the hillbillies like me, we would go down with our guns and stand outside the front gate of Islamberg to protect them,” Lonsberry said. “It’s an aberration. But … aberrations, like a cancer, pop up for a reason.”
Online, it can be hard to know what is true and who is real. Mike Allen, though, is no bot.
“He seems addicted to getting followers,” said Allen’s adult son, Chris, when told about the arrest of one of the thousands attuned to his father’s Twitter feed. Allen himself called back a few days later, leaving a brief message with no return number.
But a few weeks ago, Allen welcomed in a reporter who knocked on the door of his home, located less than an hour from the Peace Bridge linking upstate New York to Ontario, Canada.
“I really don’t believe in regulation of the free marketplace of ideas,” said Allen, a retired real estate executive, explaining his approach to social media. “If somebody wants to put bulls— on Facebook or Twitter, it’s no worse than me selling a bad hamburger, you know what I mean? Buyer beware.”
Sinking back in a white leather armchair, Allen, 69, talked about his longtime passion for politics. After a liver transplant stole much of his stamina a few years ago, he filled downtime by tweeting about subjects like interest rates.
When Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, in a speech memorable for labeling many Mexican immigrants as criminals, Allen said he was determined to help get the billionaire elected. He began posting voraciously, usually finding material on conservative blogs and Facebook feeds and crafting posts to stir reaction.
Soon his account was gaining up to 4,000 followers a week.
Allen said he had hoped to monetize his feed somehow. But suspicions that Twitter “shadow-banning” was capping gains in followers made him consider closing the account. That was before he was shown some of his tweets and the replies they drew from Vetromile — and told the 19-year-old was among the suspects charged with plotting to attack Islamberg.
“And they got caught? Good,” Allen said. “We’re not supposed to go around shooting people we don’t like. That’s why we have video games.”
Allen’s own likes and dislikes are complicated. He said he strongly opposes taking in refugees for humanitarian reasons, arguing only immigrants with needed skills be admitted. He also recounted befriending a Muslim engineer in Pakistan through a physics blog and urging him to move to Canada.
Shown one of his tweets from last year — claiming Czech officials had urged people to shoot Muslims — Allen shook his head.
“That’s not a good tweet,” he said quietly. “It’s inciting.”
Allen said he rarely read replies to his posts — and never noticed Vetromile’s.
“If I’d have seen anybody talking violence, I would have banned them,” he said.
He turned to his wife, Kim, preparing dinner across the kitchen counter. Maybe he should stop tweeting, he told her. But couldn’t he continue until Trump was reelected?
“We have a saying, ‘Oh, it must be true, I read it on the internet,’” Allen said, before showing his visitor out. “The internet is phony. It’s not there. Only kids live in it and old guys, you know what I mean? People with time on their hands.”
The next day, Allen shut down his account, and the long narrative he spun all but vanished.
Local 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.
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Kenyan 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 available. Sarah Kimani reports for VOA from Kinoo, Kenya.
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While many people have office jobs, working inside an office is not for everybody. And these days in the U.S. more people are turning to gig work — temporary jobs that allow them to work from home, hold multiple jobs and have flexible hours. More gig workers are now using smartphone apps to find jobs that set them free of office work. VOA’s Mykhailo Komadovsky spent time with one gig worker in Washington.
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Microsoft said profits climbed in the past quarter on its cloud and business services as the U.S. technology giant saw its market value close in on the trillion-dollar mark.
Profits in the quarter to March 31 rose 19 percent to $8.8 billion on revenues of $30.8 billion, an increase of 14 percent from the same period a year earlier.
Microsoft shares gained some 3% in after-hours trade, pushing it closer to $1 trillion in value.
It ended the session Wednesday with a market valuation of some $960 million, just behind Apple but ahead of Amazon.
In the fiscal third quarter, Microsoft showed its reliance on cloud computing and other business services which now drive its earnings, in contrast to its earlier days when it focused on consumer PC software.
“Leading organizations of every size in every industry trust the Microsoft cloud,” chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.
Commercial cloud revenue rose 41% from a year ago to $9.6 billion, which now makes up nearly a third of sales, Microsoft said.
Some $10.2 billion in revenue came from the “productivity and business services” unit which includes its Office software suite for both consumers and enterprises, and the LinkedIn professional social network.
The “more personal computing” unit which includes its Windows software, Surface devices and gaming operations generated $10.6 billion in the quarter.
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Technology 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 Google to nudge phone users toward reducing their screen time.
Now they want companies and regulators to focus on reversing what they called “human downgrading,” which they see as at the root of a dozen worsening problems, by reconsidering the design and financial incentives of their systems.
Before a hand-picked crowd of about 300 technologists, philanthropists and others concerned with issues such as internet addiction, political polarization, and the spread of misinformation on the web, Harris said Silicon Valley was too focused on making computers surpass human strengths, rather than worrying about how they already exploit human weaknesses.
If that is not reversed, he said, “that could be the end of human agency,” or free will.
Problems include the spread of hate speech and conspiracy theories, propelled by financial incentives to keep users engaged alongside the use of powerful artificial intelligence on platforms like Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Harris said.
YouTube and other companies have said they are cracking down on extremist speech and have removed advertising revenue-sharing from some categories of content.
Active Facebook communities can be a force for good but they also aid the dissemination of false information, the campaigners said. For example, a vocal fringe that oppose vaccines, believing contrary to scientific evidence that they cause autism, has led to an uptick in diseases that were nearly eradicated.
Facebook said in March it would reduce the distribution of content from groups promoting vaccine hoaxes.
In an interview after his speech, Harris said that what he has called a race to the bottom of the brainstem – manipulation of human instincts and emotions – could be reversed.
For example, he said that Apple and Google could reward app developers who help users, or Facebook could suggest that someone showing signs of depression call a friend who had previously been supportive.
Tech personalities attending included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, early Facebook funder turned critic Roger McNamee and MoveOn founders Joan Blades and Wes Boyd. Tech money is also backing the Center, including charitable funds started by founders of Hewlett Packard, EBay, and Craigslist.
The big companies, Harris said, “can change the incentives.”
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Imagine 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 U.S. and eventually to other countries.
Once visitors step through these doors, they leave behind reality and embark on a journey to another world.
“We see Dreamscape as a travel agency that will take you on adventures that transcend time, space and dimension,” Bruce Vaughn, Dreamscape Immersive chief executive officer, said.
Vaughn used to work on Disney theme park attractions and special effects.
Imagine a trip to a zoo filled with alien creatures from outer space or going on a treasure hunt or an underwater adventure. That’s the world visitor Zach Green stepped into when he entered a Dreamscape room.
“I kind of forgot I was in Earth for a second and I was actually under the ocean,” Green expressed.
Dreamscape makes it possible by combining Hollywood storytelling with the expertise of building theme parks. These ingredients are brought to life through virtual reality says motion picture screenwriter and producer Walter Parkes who is also co-founder and chairman of the board of Dreamscape.
“Our technology allows us at Dreamscape to actually track your full body, all of your movements and render you in an avatar. We use the word registration where we’re actually registering you as a human presence inside a virtual world is very unique,” Parkes said.
Visitor Robin McMillan is wowed by the experience.
“I think it’s probably the future of entertainment in terms of a completely immersive experience. You kind of forget you’re in a room,” McMillan said.
Before stepping into the virtual world, travelers would first have to put on four sensors, one on each hand and one on each foot, have a backpack on and virtual reality goggles. Now they’re ready to step inside.
“We blur that line between the physical and the virtual by letting you actually reach out and pet an alien creature or have a torch that actually lights your way and it’s physically there,” Vaughn said.
That’s not all. Each person’s backpack computer and the sensors in the room trigger special effects such as wind, mist and ground vibrations. Six people at a time can take part in the 10 minute experience interact. The company is already planning new worlds for travelers to visit.
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In 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 on May 15 that will seek to have world leaders and CEOs of tech companies agree to a pledge, called the Christchurch Call, to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
A lone gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, while livestreaming the massacre on Facebook.
Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder for the mass shooting.
“It’s critical that technology platforms like Facebook are not perverted as a tool for terrorism, and instead become part of a global solution to countering extremism,” Ardern said in the statement.
“This meeting presents an opportunity for an act of unity between governments and the tech companies,” she added.
The meeting will be held alongside the Tech for Humanity meeting of G7 digital ministers, of which France is the chair, and France’s separate Tech for Good summit, both on 15 May, the statement said.
Ardern said at a press conference later on Wednesday that she has spoken with executives from a number of tech firms including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google and few other companies.
“The response I’ve received has been positive. No tech company, just like no government, would like to see violent extremism and terrorism online,” Ardern said at the media briefing, adding that she had also spoken with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg directly on the topic.
A Facebook spokesman said the company looks forward to collaborating with government, industry and safety experts on a clear framework of rules.
“We’re evaluating how we can best support this effort and who among top Facebook executives will attend,” the spokesman said in a statement sent by email.
Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 2.7 billion users, has faced criticism since the Christchurch attack that it failed to tackle extremism.
One of the main groups representing Muslims in France has said it was suing Facebook and YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s Google, accusing them of inciting violence by allowing the streaming of the Christchurch massacre on their platforms.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said last month that the company was looking to place restrictions on who can go live on its platform based on certain criteria.
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Google affiliate Wing Aviation has received federal approval allowing it to make commercial deliveries by drone.
It’s the first time a company has gotten a federal air carrier certification for drone deliveries.
The approval from the Federal Aviation Administration means that Wing can operate commercial drone flights in part of Virginia, which it plans to begin later this year.
The FAA said Tuesday that the company met the agency’s safety requirements by participating in a pilot program in Virginia with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership and Virginia Tech, and by conducting thousands of flights in Australia over the past several years.
“This is an important step forward for the safe testing and integration of drones into our economy,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.
Wing said the approval “means that we can begin a commercial service delivering goods from local businesses to homes in the United States.”
The company didn’t name any businesses that would take part in commercial deliveries. It said it plans to spend the next several months demonstrating its technology and answering questions from people and businesses in Blacksburg and Christiansburg, Virginia.
Wing said it will “solicit feedback with the goal of launching a delivery trial later this year.”
Wing said that to win FAA certification it had to show that one of its drone deliveries would pose less risk to pedestrians than the same trip made in a car. The company said its drones have flown more than 70,000 test flights and made more than 3,000 deliveries to customers in Australia.
The company is touting many benefits from deliveries by electric drones. It says medicine and food can be delivered faster, that drones will be especially helpful to consumers who need help getting around, and that they can reduce traffic and emissions.
Drone usage in the U.S. has grown rapidly in some industries such as utilities, pipelines and agriculture. But drones have faced more obstacles in delivering retail packages and food because of federal regulations that bar most flights over crowds of people and beyond sight of the operator without a waiver from the FAA.
The federal government recently estimated that about 110,000 commercial drones were operating in the U.S., and that number is expected to zoom to about 450,000 in 2022.
Amazon is working on drone delivery, a topic keen to CEO Jeff Bezos. Delivery companies including UPS and DHL have also conducted tests.
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Shares 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 are helping Twitter better compete for advertising dollars, executives said.
Social media companies have been under pressure over privacy concerns and political influence activity. Twitter has removed thousands of spam and suspicious accounts, which it blamed for sequential declines in monthly users in recent quarters.
Twitter executives said they saw opportunities for selling ads that earn revenue when users visit websites or download apps, citing success with major brands like Walt Disney Co. The company is looking to grow its sales team in 2019 to better serve big advertisers.
“Something where you see a blending of performance and brand is the Star Trek ad that Disney is running right now, where I click through to make sure that I’d be notified when more information was available about the next Star Wars,” Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal told analysts.
Twitter said pre-roll ads, or promotional messages that play before videos, are also growing.
The company said its monthly active users (MAU) rose 9 million to 330 million from the previous quarter, much better than Wall Street’s average estimate that it would lose 2.2 million users, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Still, MAUs were down 6 million from a year earlier.
It was Twitter’s last quarter of disclosing MAUs.
From now on it will only provide “monetizable” daily active users (mDAUs), created to measure people exposed to advertising and exclude those who access Twitter via text messages or aggregating sites like TweetDeck.
For the first quarter, Twitter said mDAUs rose to 134 million, up 12 percent from a year ago.
Analysts were encouraged by signs the company had found ways to sustainably grow users and revenue, but said the new way of measuring users could make comparisons with rivals like Facebook Inc more difficult.
“People are not impressed with a made up metric and their reluctance to give us actual users,” said analyst Michael Pachter at Wedbush Securities. “I don’t think the stock can get out of its own way until they come clean and report the same metrics everyone else does.”
Forecast largely below Wall Street
For the first quarter, Twitter’s revenue rose 18 percent to $787 million from the year-ago quarter, topping analyst estimates of $776.1 million.
But Twitter also forecast revenue for the second quarter largely below analyst estimates, and said that it would continue to spend heavily on cleaning up Twitter as well as new ad products.
Ad sales jumped 18 percent to $679 million. In the United States, ad revenue rose by 26 percent.
Total operating expense including cost of revenue rose by 18 percent from the first quarter a year ago. The company reiterated that operating expenses would grow about 20 percent in 2019.
Twitter reported quarterly profit of $191 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with $61 million, or 8 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding a $124.4 million tax benefit, the company earned 9 cents per share.
The results appeared to catch the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who called for the creation of “more, and fairer” social media companies, repeating his claim that Twitter is biased against Republicans, without presenting evidence.
“We enforce the Twitter Rules dispassionately and equally for all users, regardless of their background or political affiliation,” a Twitter representative said. “We are constantly working to improve our systems and will continue to be transparent in our efforts.”
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Samsung said Monday it was delaying the launch of its folding smartphone after trouble with handsets sent to reviewers.
Some reviewers who got their hands on the Galaxy Fold early reported problems with screens breaking.
Samsung said it decided to put off this week’s planned release of the Fold after some reviews “showed us how the device needs further improvements.”
The South Korean consumer electronics giant planned to announce a new release date for the Galaxy Fold in the coming weeks.
Initial analysis of reported problems with Galaxy Fold screens showed they could be “associated with impact on the top and bottom exposed areas of the hinge,” Samsung said.
There was also an instance where unspecified “substances” were found inside a Galaxy Fold smartphone with a troubled display, according to the company.
“We will take measures to strengthen the display protection,” Samsung said.
“We will also enhance the guidance on care and use of the display including the protective layer.”
A handful of U.S.-based reporters were given the flagship Galaxy Fold phones, priced at $1,980, ahead of the model’s official release, and they reported screen issues within days of using the devices.
Samsung spent nearly eight years developing the Galaxy Fold, which is part of the leading smartphone maker’s strategy to propel growth with groundbreaking gadgets.
The company essentially gave reviewers a “beta product” without enough information, such as not to peel off a protective coating meant to be permanent, according to independent technology analyst Rob Enderle.
“It was all avoidable for a company the size of Samsung,” Enderle said.
The failure of a “halo product” meant to showcase innovation and quality could tarnish the brand and send buyers to rivals.
“If a halo product fails, people don’t trust that you build quality stuff,” Enderle said.
“It can do incredible damage. And Huawei is moving up like a rocket, so this could be good for Huawei.”
Surviving life
Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi told AFP that a Galaxy Fold she reviewed worked fine, performing even in sometimes messy situations that arise in everyday life.
She wondered if some problems with smartphones reviewed were due to dust, moisture or other material getting into handsets through small openings at the tops and bottoms of hinges.
“If stuff gets in there, it can make its way under the screen,” Milanesi said.
“There seems to be a kind of real-life test that maybe didn’t occur.”
Testing folding phones in a lab is a much different scenario than challenging them “in the wild” where they need to endure pockets, handbags, greasy food, spilled coffee and more, the analyst noted.
Samsung may also need to do more to convey how folding screens warrant more careful handling than stiff displays that have been improved over generations of smartphones.
Milanesi did not expect a slight delay in the launch of the Galaxy Fold to be a major setback for Samsung, saying that the model was unlikely to be a big driver of sales given its price and that services or apps are still being adapted to the new type of smartphone.
Samsung smartphones tuned to work with super-speedy fifth-generation telecommunications networks are more important to the company’s bottom line on the near horizon, according to the analyst.
“It is still early days for 5G, but that is the product that is going to make a difference for Samsung this year,” Milanesi said.
Samsung is the world’s biggest smartphone maker, and earlier this month launched the 5G version of its top-end Galaxy S10 device.
Adding to Samsung woes
Despite the recent announcements about its new high-end devices, Samsung has warned of a more than 60 percent plunge in first-quarter operating profit in the face of weakening markets.
The firm is also no stranger to device issues.
Its reputation suffered a major blow after a damaging worldwide recall of its Galaxy Note 7 devices over exploding batteries in 2016, which cost the firm billions of dollars and shattered its global brand image.
Samsung originally planned to release the Galaxy Fold as scheduled on April 26.
While Samsung’s device was not the first folding handset, the smartphone giant was expected to help spark demand and potentially revive a sector that has been struggling for new innovations.
Other folding devices have been introduced by startup Royole and by Chinese-based Huawei.
Samsung Electronics is the flagship subsidiary of Samsung Group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate business in the world’s 11th-largest economy, and it is crucial to South Korea’s economic health.
The company has enjoyed record profits in recent years despite a series of setbacks, including the jailing of its de facto chief.
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