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Electric car and solar panel maker Tesla said Friday it plans to cut its staff by about 7 percent.

“The road ahead is very difficult,” the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an email to employees posted on the company’s website.

He said Tesla Inc. hopes to post a “tiny profit” in the current quarter but that after expanding its workforce by 30 percent last year, it cannot support that size of staff.

Musk said in a tweet in October that Tesla had 45,000 employees. A 7 percent cut would involve laying off about 3,150 people.

Tesla’s shares tumbled earlier this month after it cut vehicle prices by $2,000 and announced fourth-quarter sales figures that fell short of Wall Street estimates.

“Our products are too expensive for most people,” Musk said in the memo to Tesla staff saying the company has to “work harder.”

“Tesla has only been producing cars for about a decade and we’re up against massive, entrenched competitors,” he said.

The company says it delivered over 245,000 electric cars and SUVs last year, nearly as many as all previous years combined. But its 2018 production fell far short of a goal set nearly three years ago of manufacturing 500,000 vehicles for the year. That goal was announced in May of 2016 based on advance orders for its mid-range Model 3, which sells for $44,000.

Musk said Tesla plans to ramp up production of the Model 3, “as we need to reach more customers who can afford our vehicles.”

“Attempting to build affordable clean energy products at scale necessarily requires extreme effort and relentless creativity,” he said in the memo, “but succeeding in our mission is essential to ensure that the future is good, so we must do everything we can to advance the cause.”
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A federal appeals court said Thursday it would not delay oral arguments set for Feb. 1 on the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules governing internet providers.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday asked the court to delay the arguments over its December 2017 repeal, citing the partial government shutdown. Without comment, the court denied the request.

The FCC had no immediate comment on the decision.

A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia have asked the court to reinstate the Obama-era internet rules and block the FCC’s effort to pre-empt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet.

Several internet companies are also part of the legal challenge, including Mozilla Corp, Vimeo Inc and Etsy Inc, as well as numerous media and technology advocacy groups and major cities, including New York and San Francisco.

The FCC voted to reverse the rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization.

The FCC said providers must disclose any changes in users’ internet access.

‘Misguided’ repeal

The net neutrality repeal was a win for providers like Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, but was opposed by internet companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc.

Major providers have not made any changes in how Americans access the internet since the repeal.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the lawsuits are aimed at overturning the agency’s “misguided” repeal of the Obama rules. “The fight for an open internet continues,” she wrote on Twitter.

The panel hearing the case is made up of Judges Robert Wilkins and Patricia Millett, two appointees of Barack Obama, and Stephen Williams, an appointee of Republican Ronald Reagan.

In October, California agreed not to enforce its own state net neutrality law until the appeals court’s decision on the 2017 repeal and any potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Take a minute and think about your heart. Can you hear it beating? Probably not, but you know it is. Now imagine your heartbeat “in color,” with rhythmic lighting to match. You can now see your unique beat pattern at a new interactive exhibit called “Pulse” at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. In this Log-on segment, VOA’s Carolyn Presutti shows us how your heartbeat joins others and becomes art.
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Facebook says it is investing $300 million over the next three years in local news programs, partnerships and other initiatives.

The money will go toward reporting grants for local newsrooms, expanding Facebook’s program to help local newsrooms with subscription business models and investing in nonprofits aimed at supporting local news.

The move comes at a difficult time for the news industry, which is facing falling profits and print readership. Facebook, like Google, has also been partly blamed for the ongoing decline in newspapers’ share of advertising dollars as people and advertisers have moved online.

Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of global news partnerships, acknowledges the company “can’t uninvent the internet,” but says it wants to work with publishers to help them succeed on and off the social network.

“The industry is going through a massive transition that has been underway for a long time,” she said. “None of us have quite figured out ultimately what the future of journalism is going to look like but we want to be part of helping find a solution.”

Facebook has increased its focus on local news in the past year after starting off 2018 with the announcement that it was generally de-emphasizing news stories and videos in people’s feeds on the social network in favor of posts from their friends.

At the same time, though, the company has been cautiously testing out ways to boost local news stories users are interested in and initiatives to support the broader industry. It launched a feature called “Today In” that shows people local news and information , including missing-person alerts, road closures, crime reports and school announcements, expanding it to hundreds of cities around the U.S. and a few in Australia.

The push to support local news comes as Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, California, tries to shake off its reputation as a hotbed for misinformation and elections-meddling. The company says users have been asking to see more local content that is relevant to them, including news stories as well as community information such as road closings during a snowstorm.

The $300 million investment includes a $5 million grant to the nonprofit Pulitzer Center to launch “Bringing Stories Home,” a fund that will provide local U.S. newsrooms with reporting grants to support coverage of local issues. There’s also a $2 million investment in Report for America as part of a partnership aiming to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms across the country over the next five years.

The idea behind the investments, Brown said, is to look “holistically at how a given publisher can define a business model. Facebook can’t be the only answer, the only solution — we don’t want the publisher to be dependent on Facebook.”

Fran Wills, CEO of the Local Media Consortium, which is receiving $1 million together with the Local Media Association to help their member newsrooms develop new revenue streams, said she is optimistic the investment will help.

“I think they are recognizing that trusted, credible content is of benefit not only to local publishers but to them,” she said.

 
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The founder of network gear and smart phone supplier Huawei Technologies says the tech giant would reject requests from the Chinese government to disclose confidential information about its customers. 

Meeting with foreign reporters at Huawei’s headquarters, Ren Zhengfei sought Tuesday to allay Western concerns the company is a security risk. Those fears have hampered Huawei’s access to global markets for next-generation telecom technology. 

Asked how Huawei would respond if Chinese authorities ask for confidential information about foreign customers or their networks, Ren said, “we would definitely say no to such a request.”

The United States, Australia, Japan and some other governments have imposed curbs on use of Huawei technology over concerns the company is a security risk.
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Nature finds a way, the old saying goes. We see it in how animals fly, crawl, slink, dig and otherwise make their way through the world. Scientists have long recognized the ways in which evolution has perfected movement in the natural world, and mimicked it in their robot designs. Here’s the latest, and it’s simple and incredibly complicated all at the same time. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Home to Apple, Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is an American economic powerhouse, producing technology companies with global influence. But behind these influential American brands are scores of foreign workers who play a critical role in the Valley’s tech workforce. Deana Mitchell reports.
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The latest gadgets want even greater access to your lives.

This week’s CES tech show in Las Vegas was a showcase for cameras that can livestream the living room, a bathroom mirror that captures your face to offer beauty tips and a gizmo that tracks the heartbeat of an unborn child.

These features can be useful — or at least fun — but they all open the door for companies and people working for them to peek into your private lives. Just this week, The Intercept reported that Ring, a security-camera company owned by Amazon, gave employees access to some customer video footage.

You’ll have to weigh whether the gadgets are useful enough to give up some privacy. First, you have to trust that companies making these devices are protecting your information and aren’t doing more than what they say they’re doing with data. Even if a company has your privacy in mind, things can go wrong: Hackers can break in and access sensitive data. Or an ex might retain access to a video feed long after a breakup.

“It’s not like all these technologies are inherently bad,” says Franziska Roesner, a University of Washington professor who researches computer security and privacy.

But she said the industry is still trying to figure out the right balance between providing useful services and protecting people’s privacy in the process

Amazon’s video feeds

As with other security cameras, Ring’s can be mounted outside the front door or inside the home to give you a peek, through an app, of who’s there. But the Intercept said the Amazon-owned company was also allowing some high-level engineers in the U.S. to view customers’ video feeds, while others in the Ukraine office could view and download any customer video file.

In a statement, Ring said some Amazon employees have access to videos that are publicly shared through the company’s Neighbors app, which aims to create a network of security cameras in an area. Ring also says employees get additional video from users who consent to such sharing.

At CES, Ring announced an internet-connected video doorbell that fits into peepholes for apartment dwellers or college students who can’t install one next to their doors. Though it doesn’t appear Ring uses facial recognition yet, records show that Amazon recently filed a patent application for a facial-recognition system involving home security cameras.

Living room livestream

It’s one thing to put cameras in our own homes, but Alarm.com wants us to also put them in other people’s houses.

Alarm’s Wellcam is for caretakers to watch from afar and is mostly designed to check in on aging relatives. Someone who lives elsewhere can use a smartphone to “peek in” anytime, says Steve Chazin, vice president of products. 

The notion of placing a camera in someone else’s living room might feel icky. 

Wellcam says video isn’t recorded until someone activates it from a phone and video is deleted as soon as the stream stops. Chazin says such cameras are “becoming more acceptable because loved ones want to know that the ones they care about are safe.”

Just be sure you trust whom you’re giving access to. You can’t turn off the camera, unless you unplug it or cover it up with something. 

Bathroom cameras 

French company CareOS showcased a smart mirror that lets you “try on” different hairstyles. Facial recognition helps the mirror’s camera know which person in a household is there, while augmented-reality technology overlays your actual image with animation on how you might look.

CareOS expects hotels and salons to buy the $20,000 Artemis mirror — making it more important that personal data is protected. 

“We know we don’t want the whole world to know about what’s going on in the bathroom,” co-founder Chloe Szulzinger said.

The mirror doesn’t need internet to work, she said. Even if it is connected, all data is stored on a local network. The company says it will abide by Europe’s stronger privacy rules, which took effect in May, regardless of where a customer lives. Customers can choose to share their information with CareOS, but only after they’ve explicitly agreed to how it will be used.

The same applies for the businesses that buy and install the mirror. Customers can choose to share some information — such as photos of the hair cut they got last time they visited a salon — but the businesses can’t access anything stored in user profiles unless users specifically allow them to.

Bodily data

Some gadgets, meanwhile, are gathering intimate information. 

Yo Sperm sells an iPhone attachment that tests and tracks sperm quality. To protect privacy, the company recommends that users turn their phones to airplane mode when using the test. The company says data stays on the phone, within the app, though there’s a button for sharing details with a doctor.

Owlet, meanwhile, plans to sell a wearable device that sits over a pregnant belly and tracks the heartbeat. The company’s privacy policy says personal data gets collected. And you can choose to share heartbeat information with researchers studying stillbirths.

Though such data can be useful, Forrester analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo warns that these devices aren’t regulated or governed by U.S. privacy law. She warns that companies could potentially sell data to insurance companies who could find, for instance, that someone was drinking caffeine during a pregnancy — potentially raising health risks and hence premiums.
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Proponents of Big Tech say the march of technology into our daily lives is designed to make our lives easier. For some, it’s arguable if a smart refrigerator can actually make life easier. But for the disabled community, technological advances can make a huge difference. Some of that new technology was on display this week at the Consumer Electronics’ show. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Robots that walk, talk, brew beer and play pingpong have taken over the CES gadget show in Las Vegas again. Just don’t expect to find one in your home any time soon.

Most home robot ventures have failed, in part because they’re so difficult and expensive to design to a level of intelligence that consumers will find useful, says Bilal Zuberi, a robotics-oriented venture capitalist at Lux Capital. But that doesn’t keep companies from trying.

“Roboticists, I guess, will never give up their dream to build Rosie,” says Zuberi, referring to the humanoid maid from “The Jetsons.”

But there’s some hope for others. Frank Gillett, a tech analyst at Forrester, says robots with more focused missions such as mowing the lawn or delivering cheeseburgers stand a better shot at finding a useful niche.

ROBOTS THAT DELIVER

There are so many delivery robots at CES that it’s easy to imagine that we’ll all be stumbling over them on the sidewalk — or in the elevator — before long. Zuberi says they’re among the new robot trends with the most promise because the field is drawing on some of the same advances that power self-driving cars.

But it’s hard to tell which — if any — will still be around in a few years.

Segway Robotics, part of the same company that makes electric rental scooters for Lime, Jump and Bird, is the latest to get into the delivery game with a new machine it calls Loomo. The wheeled office robot can avoid obstacles, board elevators and deliver documents to another floor.

A similar office courier called the Holabot was unveiled by Chinese startup Shenzhen Pudu Technology. CEO Felix Zhang says his company already has a track record in China, where its Pudubot robot — which looks like shelves on wheels — navigates busy restaurants as a kind of robotic waiter.

Nearly all of these robots use a technology called visual SLAM, short for simultaneous localization and mapping. Most are wheeled, though there are outliers — such as one from German automotive company Continental, which wants to deploy walking robotic dogs to carry packages from self-driving delivery vans to residential front doors.

A delivery robot will need both sophisticated autonomy and a focused mission to stand out from the pack, says Saumil Nanavati, head of business development for Robby Technology. His company’s namesake robot travels down sidewalks as a “store on wheels.” The company recently partnered with PepsiCo to deliver snacks around a California university campus.

ROBOTS FOR DOGS

Does man’s best friend need a robotic pal of its own? Some startups think so.

“There’s a big problem with separation anxiety, obesity and depression in pets,” says Bee-oh Kim, a marketing manager for robotics firm Varram.

The company’s $99 robot is essentially a moving treat dispenser that motivates pets to chase it around. A herd of the small, dumbbell-shaped robots zoomed around a pen at the show — though there were no canine or feline conference attendees to show how the machines really work.

Varram’s robot takes two hours to charge and can run for 10 hours — just enough time to allow a pet’s guilt-ridden human companion to get home from work.

ROBOTS ON GRANDPARENT WATCH

Samsung is coming out with a robot that can keep its eye on grandparents.

The rolling robot can talk and has two digital eyes on a black screen. It’s designed to track the medicines seniors take, measure blood pressure and call 911 if it detects a fall.

The company didn’t say when Samsung Bot Care would be available. Samsung says it’s also working on a robot for retail shops and another for testing and purifying the air in homes.

ROBOT FRIENDS

Lovot is a simple robot with just one aim — to make its owner happy.

It can’t carry on long conversations, but it’s still social — approaching people so they can interact, moving around a space to create a digital map, responding to being embraced.

Lovot’s horn-shaped antenna — featuring a 360-degree camera — recognizes its surroundings and detects the direction of sound and voices.

Lovot is the brainchild of Groove X CEO Kaname Hayashi, who previously worked on SoftBank’s Pepper, a humanoid robot that briefly appeared in a few U.S. shopping malls two years ago. Hayashi wanted to create a real connection between people and robots.

“This is just supporting your heart, our motivation,” he says.
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This week, visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas are getting a look at the latest technology in TVs, computers, smartwatches and drones. But they are also seeing examples of how tech can be used to help people around the world become more resilient. Michelle Quinn reports.
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The annual Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas. The massive exhibition highlights trends and new products that should change the way we live — in some cases as early as next week, and in others, years in the future. VOA’s Kevin Enochs looks at a few of the new technologies that will change the way we drive.
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It has GPS, lasers, computer vision, and uses machine learning and sensors to be more efficient. This is the new high-tech farm equipment from John Deere, which made its first Consumer Electronics Show appearance this week to highlight the importance of tech in farming. 

Deere brought its massive agricultural combine and GPS-guided tractor to the Las Vegas technology event, making the point that farming is more than sticking a finger up in the air to gauge the weather. 

The machines are guided by enhanced GPS data that, according to the company, is accurate to 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) — compared with 3 meters (10 feet) for conventional GPS. 

As they work the fields, the machines gather data about soil conditions and monitor how corn and other crops are being harvested to reduce waste and improve efficiency. 

“We want consumers to understand how food is grown,” said Deere marketing executive Deanna Kovar. “Not only is this machine harvesting the grain, it’s harvesting the data, which helps farmers make decisions for next year.” 

Kovar said the extra electronics add about $10,000 to the cost of the combine, which sells for close to $500,000, and that most buyers take the option. 

“You can get a savings of about one to three bushels per acre, so it pays for itself very quickly,” she said.
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People over 65 and ultraconservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on Facebook than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, a new study found. 

The first major study to look at who is sharing links from debunked sites found that not many people were doing it. On average, only 8.5 percent of those studied — about 1 person out of 12 — shared false information during the 2016 campaign, according to the study in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Science Advances. But those doing it tended to be older and more conservative.

“For something to be viral, you’ve got to know who shares it,” said study co-author Jonathan Nagler, a politics professor and co-director of the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University.  “Wow, old people are much more likely than young people to do this.” 

Battling back

Facebook and other social media companies were caught off guard in 2016 when Russian agents exploited their platforms to meddle with the U.S. presidential election by spreading fake news, impersonating Americans and running targeted advertisements to try to sway votes. Since then, the companies have thrown millions of dollars and thousands of people into fighting false information. 

Researchers at Princeton University and NYU in 2016 interviewed 2,711 people who used Facebook. Of those, nearly half agreed to share all their postings with the professors.  

The researchers used three different lists of false information sites — one compiled by BuzzFeed and two others from academic research teams — and counted how often people shared from those sites. Then to double check, they looked at 897 specific articles that had been found false by fact checkers and saw how often those were spread. 

All those lists showed similar trends. 

When other demographic factors and overall posting tendencies are factored in, the average person older than 65 shared seven times more false information than those between 18 and 29. The seniors shared more than twice as many fake stories as people between 45 and 64 and more than three times that of people in the 30-to-44-year-old range, said lead study author Andrew Guess, a politics professor at Princeton. 

The simplest theory for why older people share more false information is a lack of “digital literacy,” said study co-author Joshua Tucker, also co-director of the NYU social media political lab. Senior citizens may not tell truth from lies on social networks as easily as others, the researchers said. 

Signaling identity

Harvard public policy and communication professor Matthew Baum, who was not part of the study but praised it, said he thought sharing false information was “less about beliefs in the facts of a story than about signaling one’s partisan identity.” That’s why efforts to correct fakery don’t really change attitudes and one reason why few people share false information, he said. 

When other demographics and posting practices are factored in, people who called themselves very conservative shared the most false information, a bit more than those who identified themselves as conservative. The very conservatives shared misinformation 6.8 times more often than the very liberals and 6.7 times more than moderates. People who called themselves liberals essentially shared no fake stories, Guess said.  

Nagler said he was not surprised that conservatives in 2016 shared more fake information, but he and his colleagues said that did not necessarily mean that conservatives are by nature more gullible when it comes to false stories. It could simply reflect that there was much more pro-Donald Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton false information in circulation in 2016 that it drove the numbers for sharing, they said. 

However, Baum said in an email that conservatives post more false information because they tend to be more extreme, with less ideological variation than their liberal counterparts and they take their lead from Trump, who “advocates, supports, shares and produces fake news/misinformation on a regular basis.” 

The researchers looked at differences in gender, race and income but could not find any statistically significant differences in sharing of false information. 

Improvements

After much criticism, Facebook made changes to fight false information, including de-emphasizing proven false stories in people’s feeds so others were less likely to see them. It seems to be working, Guess said. Facebook officials declined to comment. 

“I think if we were to run this study again, we might not get the same results,” Guess said. 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Deb Roy, a former Twitter chief media scientist, said the problem is that the American news diet is “full of balkanized narratives” with people seeking information that they agree with and calling true news that they don’t agree with fake. 

“What a mess,” Roy said.
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Too often people die of an opioid overdose because no one is around to notice they’re in trouble. Now scientists are creating a smartphone app that beams sound waves to measure breathing — and summon help if it stops.

The app is still experimental. But in a novel test, the Second Chance app detected early signs of overdose in the critical minutes after people injected heroin or other illegal drugs, researchers reported Wednesday.

One question is whether most drug users would pull out their phone and switch on an app before shooting up. The University of Washington research team contends it could offer a much-needed tool for people who haven’t yet found addiction treatment.

“They’re not trying to kill themselves — they’re addicted to these drugs. They have an incentive to be safe,” said Shyamnath Gollakota, an engineering and computer science associate professor whose lab turns regular cellphones into temporary sonar devices.

But an emergency room physician who regularly cares for overdose patients wonders how many people would try such a device.

“This is an innovative way to attack the problem,” said Dr. Zachary Dezman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Still, “I don’t know if many folks who use substances are going to have the forethought to prepare,” he added.

More than 47,000 people in the U.S. died of opioid overdoses in 2017. The drugs suppress breathing but a medicine called naloxone can save victims — if it reaches them in time. Usually, that means someone has to witness the collapse. Dr. Jacob Sunshine, a University of Washington anesthesiologist, notes that people have died with a relative in the next room unaware they were in trouble.

How it works

The research team settled on cellphones as potential overdose monitors because just about everyone owns one. They designed an app that measures how someone’s chest rises and falls to see if they’re slipping into the slow, shallow breaths of an overdose or stop breathing completely.

How? The software converts the phone’s built-in speaker and microphone to send out inaudible sound waves and record how they bounce back. Analyzing the signals shows specific breathing patterns.

It won’t work inside a pocket, and people would have to stay within 3 feet. The researchers are in the process of making the app capable of dialing for help if a possible overdose is detected.

Testing the device

They put the experimental gadget to the test at North America’s first supervised injection site in Vancouver, British Columbia, where people are allowed to bring in illegal drugs and inject themselves under medical supervision in case of overdose. Study participants agreed to have doctoral student Rajalakshmi Nandakumar place the app-running cellphone nearby during their regularly monitored visit.

The software correctly identified breathing problems that could signal an overdose — seven or fewer breaths a minute, or pauses in breathing — 90 percent of the time, the researchers found. Most were near-misses; two of the 94 study participants had to be resuscitated.

For a bigger test, the researchers next turned to people who don’t abuse drugs but were about to receive anesthesia for elective surgery. Rendering someone unconscious for an operation mimics how an overdose shuts down breathing.

Measuring 30 seconds of slowed or absent breathing as those patients went under, the app correctly predicted 19 of 20 simulated overdoses, the researchers reported. The one missed case was a patient breathing slightly faster than the app’s cutoff.

The findings were reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The researchers have patented the invention and plan to seek Food and Drug Administration approval.
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The CES 2019 gadget show is revving up in Las Vegas. Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground.

THIS SHOW WON’T GO ON

The Trump administration has some ideas about the future of commercial drones and self-driving technology, but it won’t be sharing them at CES this week amid an ongoing partial government shutdown.

CES organizers say U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has canceled a planned Wednesday keynote address at the Las Vegas tech conference.

Her decision to skip the event came several days after Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and several other scheduled federal government speakers told CES they wouldn’t be coming because of the shutdown.

Chao had planned to speak about U.S. policies affecting drones and self-driving vehicles.

FRESH BREAD, NO BAKER

That smell wafting through the CES show? Freshly baked bread.

Wilkinson Baking Co. unveiled a 22-square-foot machine that can bake 10 loaves of bread every hour — no baker needed. But a human is needed to dump the ingredients into the machine, which then mixes them, forms the dough and starts baking. Someone also needs to slice the bread, although the company says it’s working on a way for the machines to do that, too.

The BreadBot, as it’s called, is being pitched to supermarkets as a way to deliver fresh bread to shoppers who are increasingly worried about the ingredients in their foods. The machine is covered in glass, so customers can watch bread get made. They then select the loaf they want on a touch screen, sort of like a vending machine.

Three local supermarkets are already testing it. The company says a couple of big chains have agreed to try it out soon, but it won’t say which.

SMART BRA

Is your bra dumb? An underwear company is pitching a solution to an age-old problem for women: finding a bra that actually fits.

In the past, women could get help from an expert human in finding their right size. A simple measuring tape wouldn’t do, as it doesn’t reflect other factors such as the shape of a woman’s breasts. But these old-school “bra fitters” are hard to find these days.

To address that, a company called Soma has added some circuits to a brassiere and connected it to an app.

The Soma Innofit has four lines of circuitry hooked up to a circuit board in the back, which then connects to an app via Bluetooth. The smart $59 bra then recommends a bra — from Soma’s line, of course.

The smart bra isn’t meant for regular wearing, though it could be used again if sizes change because of pregnancy or other factors. The company says people who don’t want to buy one can use it at a Soma store.

CASH FOR KIDS

How do you teach children the value of money when there is no cash around?

Pigzbe is offering an electronic cash device with a digital currency called Wollo. It connects to an app that explains how money is earned and spent. Parents can set tasks that children complete to receive Wollo currency.

Trouble comes when your kid tries to spend Wollo at a store. The currency needs to be connected to a card to spend as real money in the real world.

And to get Pigzbe, parents also have to fork out some real money — $99.
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Cyberattacks on elections, public infrastructure and national security are increasingly being seen as the new normal, according to a global survey on cybersecurity.

And in some of the world’s largest economies, people think their governments are not prepared.

The survey of more than 27,000 people across 26 countries conducted by the Pew Research Center found less than half of the respondents, 47 percent, believed their countries are ready to handle a major cyber incident.

A median of 74 percent thought it was likely national security information would be accessed.  Sixty-nine percent said they expected public infrastructure to be damaged. And 61 percent expected cyberattacks targeting their country’s elections.

Israel and Russia ranked as among the most confident populations, with more than two-thirds of survey-takers in those countries saying their governments are prepared for a major cyber incident.

The three sub-Saharan African countries in the survey — Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa — were generally optimistic, with more than half of those polled saying their nations were prepared for a cyber incident.

Brazil and Argentina were the least confident, with just nine percent of Argentineans responding their government was prepared.

In key economies such as Germany and Japan, more than half of the respondents expressed concern they were ill-prepared to deal with cyberattacks.

United States

The Pew survey found expectations for cyberattacks ran highest in the United States, where there have been more than 100 major cyber incidents since 2006.

Almost 80 percent of U.S. respondents expected damage to public infrastructure, breaches of national security information and elections tampering.

But while more Americans than not say the country is prepared for cyberattacks, 53 percent to 43 percent, feelings on cyber preparedness changed depending on political affiliation.

More than 60 percent of Republicans thought the United States is prepared for cyberattacks as opposed to 47 percent of Democrats.

Politics, age

The Pew survey detected similar trends in many of the other countries in the survey.

In Russia, for example, about 75 percent of those who support President Vladimir Putin are optimistic about handling a cyberattack, compared to 61 percent of non-Putin supporters.

The level of concern about cyberattacks also varied according to age.

In many of the Western countries surveyed, Pew found older people were likely to be more concerned than younger people.

In Sweden, for example, 82 percent of those aged 50 or older feared a cyberattack on infrastructure, compared with 53 percent of those aged 18 to 29.

The Pew survey was conducted in-person or via telephone between May 14 and August 12, 2018.

The 26 countries surveyed are: United States, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Britain, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Israel, Tunisia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
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The CES 2019 gadget show opened its doors Tuesday, with tech companies from giants to tiny startups showing off their latest products and services.

In recent years, CES’s influence has declined as Apple, Google and other major companies throw their own events to launch new wares. Still, more than 180,000 people from about 150 countries are expected to attend. The sprawling event spans 11 official venues, plus scores of unofficial ones throughout Las Vegas. The four-day show in Las Vegas opened after two days of media previews. 

Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground.

Cutting through the babel

Google has transformed CES into a Disney-like theme park – complete with singing animatronic macarons – to showcase new features of its voice-enabled digital assistant.

This includes an “interpreter mode” that enables some of Google’s smart home devices to work as a translator. It’s being piloted at a hotel concierge desk near the Las Vegas tech conference and rolls out to consumer devices in several weeks. 

Voice assistants are getting pretty good at translating speech into text, but it’s a thornier challenge in artificial intelligence to enable real-time translation across different languages. Google’s new feature expands upon real-time translation services it’s rolled out to Android phones and headphones over the past year.

This is the second year that Google Assistant had made a huge splash at CES in an effort to outbid Amazon’s Alexa as the voice assistant of choice. 

Google this year has an amusement park ride that resembles Disney’s “It’s a Small World,” though on a roller-coaster-like train at slow speeds. Talking and singing characters showcase Google’s various voice-assistant features as visitors ride along.

Google isn’t the only CES exhibitor promising the next generation of instant translation. Chinese AI firm iFlytek has been showing of its translation apps and devices that are already popular among Chinese travelers. And at least two startups, New York-based Waverly Labs and China-based TimeKettle, are promoting their earbuds that work as in-ear translation devices.

Bring that umbrella

IBM is expanding its side job as the world’s meteorologist.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty used a keynote address Tuesday to unveil a new global forecasting system that promises more accurate local weather reports in places that never had them before.

The computing giant owns The Weather Company, which runs popular weather services including weather.com and the Weather Channel and Weather Underground apps (though not the Weather Channel television network). Those apps provide precise and constantly updating forecasts in places like the U.S. and parts of Europe and Japan, but not in most of the world.

IBM says its new forecasting model relies in part on “crowd-sourced” data – barometric pressure readings from millions of smartphones and sensor readings from passing airplanes. 

Weather Company CEO Cameron Clayton says the new system is intended to aid IBM’s business providing critical weather data to airlines, energy firms and other industries. But he says it will also have societal benefits, such as helping small farmers in India or parts of Africa yield better crops. 

IBM may have trouble persuading some users to agree to transmit atmospheric data to IBM after the city of Los Angeles sued last week to stop the Weather Channel’s data-collection practices. The lawsuit alleges that the company uses location information not just to personalize weather but also to track users’ every step and profit off that information. The company has denied any impropriety with sharing location data collected from users, saying it does disclose what it does.

Samsung wants to bring robots home

Up next for Samsung: a robot that can keep its eye on grandma and grandpa.

The rolling robot, which talks and has two digital eyes on a black screen, can track medicines they take, measure blood pressure and call 911 if it detects a fall.

The company didn’t not say when Samsung Bot Care would be available, but brought the robot out on stage Monday at a presentation at CES. Samsung also said it is working on a robot for stores and another for testing and purifying the air in homes.

Samsung also unveiled TVs, appliances and other high-tech gizmos – but not a foldable phone it hinted at in November. But a startup called Royole did. The Royole FlexPai smartphone was first shown in November but the California-based company has more details. The phone will have a 7.8-inch display that can be folded like a wallet, priced at more than $1,300.

Star delight

Sony brought some star power to CES with a visit from musician Pharrell Williams, straight from trip to Anguilla.

The star of hit songs such as “Happy” came to talk about a mostly secret project that he and Sony are supposedly undertaking. But in the end, it was clearly an attempt by Sony to sprinkle some stardust on launches for TVs and other products.

“I was a little bit worried that he was still on holiday, but he is here,” Sony Music head Rob Stringer told the crowd.
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Facebook has violated Vietnam’s new cybersecurity law by allowing users to post anti-government comments on the platform, state media said on Wednesday, days after the controversial legislation took effect in the communist-ruled country.

Despite economic reforms and increasing openness to social change, Vietnam’s Communist Party retains tight media censorship and does not tolerate dissent.

“Facebook had reportedly not responded to a request to remove fan pages provoking activities against the state,” the official Vietnam News Agency said, citing the Ministry of Information and Communication.

In a statement, a Facebook spokeswoman said, “We have a clear process for governments to report illegal content to us, and we review all these requests against our terms of service and local law.”

She did not elaborate.

The ministry said Facebook also allowed personal accounts to upload posts containing “slanderous” content, anti-government sentiment and defamation of individuals and organizations, the agency added.

“This content had been found to seriously violate Vietnam’s Law on cybersecurity” and government regulations on the management, provision and use of internet services, it quoted the ministry as saying.

Global technology companies and rights groups have earlier said the cybersecurity law, which took effect on Jan. 1 and includes requirements for technology firms to set up local offices and store data locally, could undermine development and stifle innovation in Vietnam.

Company officials have privately expressed concerns that the new law could make it easier for the authorities to seize customer data and expose local employees to arrest.

Facebook had refused to provide information on “fraudulent accounts” to Vietnamese security agencies, the agency said in Wednesday’s report.

The information ministry is also considering taxing Facebook for advertising revenue from the platform.

The report cited a market research company as saying $235 million was spent on advertising on Facebook in Vietnam in 2018, but that Facebook was ignoring its tax obligations there.

In November, Vietnam said it wanted half of social media users on domestic social networks by 2020 and plans to prevent “toxic information” on Facebook and Google.
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The companies founded by blacksmith John Deere and candle-and-soap-making duo Procter & Gamble may not be the hip purveyors of new technology they were in 1837.

But they’re first-time exhibitors at this year’s CES gadget show, along with other unlikely newcomers such as missile-maker Raytheon, outdoorsy retailer The North Face and the 115-year-old motorcycling icon Harley-Davidson.

The four-day consumer-electronics show opens Tuesday with some 4,500 companies exhibiting products and services and more than 180,000 people expected to attend. It’s the place startups and established tech giants alike go to unveil everything from utilitarian apps to splashy devices.

So what are these legacy companies doing here?

“Every company today is a technology company,” said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes CES.

Shapiro said many companies already send executives to Las Vegas each January to gauge trends, so it’s not surprising that they eventually unveil their own new technology as well.

It’s also part of a more fundamental economic shift as consumers increasingly expect to buy not just goods and services, but a personal experience, which often skews digital, said Dipanjan Chatterjee, a brand analyst at Forrester Research.

“We’re still doing old-fashioned things: Ordering clothes, buying detergent, getting a cup of coffee, but there are new-fangled ways of doing it,” he said. “Brands have no choice but to play a role in this new technology space.”

That’s one reason Harley-Davidson is using the show to announce the commercial launch of its first electric motorcycle LiveWire. The motorcycle will have a cellular connection, as many cars do these days, so people can keep track of their motorcycle’s charge or check where they parked it through an app.

Consumer goods giant P&G, best known for Pampers diapers and Tide detergent, is showcasing heated razors, a toothbrush with artificial intelligence and a wand-like device that scans the skin and releases serum to cover up age spots and other discoloration.

P&G is also showing off an internet-connected scalp adviser: The Head & Shoulders-branded device uses ultraviolet light and other techniques to uncover scalp issues and recommend products. The device is available only in Europe and Asia for now.

Expect these gizmos to cost more than the plain-old “dumb” versions. P&G’s Oral-B toothbrush, for example, is expected to cost $279, while a regular Oral-B electric toothbrush can be had for less than $30.

And every new connected device means more data collection about people’s personal habits — a gold mine for advertisers and hackers alike.

The North Face is using virtual reality to provide a fine-grained look at its waterproof fabrics.

Raytheon is demonstrating the everyday applications of GPS anti-jam technology, which was originally designed to protect military forces.

And John Deere has hauled in self-driving tractors and a 20-ton combine harvester aided by artificial intelligence. The combine has cameras with computer-vision technology to track the quality of grain coming into the machine so that its kernel-separating settings can be adjusted automatically. Farmers can monitor it remotely using a smartphone app.

It’s hard to imagine what 19th century Illinois blacksmith John Deere might think if he were plopped into his company’s 2019 booth at the flashy Vegas convention center, but Deanna Kovar believes he’d be “amazed and astonished.”

“His innovation was making a self-powering steel plow that could cut through the heavy, rich soils of the Midwest,” said Kovar, the company’s director of production and precision agriculture marketing. “We’ve been a technology company since the start.”

Kovar said American farmers have been using self-driving tractors for decades — and CES is a chance to let everyone else know.

Chatterjee said such messages are directed not just at a company’s customers, but to investors, potential corporate partners, startup acquisition targets and the technically skilled employees these more traditional firms are hoping to attract.

“These are brands that are aggressively looking to work tech into their DNA,” Chatterjee said. “They want to be perceived all around as a tech-forward innovative brand.”
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More than 4,000 exhibitors from 155 countries are in Las Vegas this week for the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the year’s biggest conventions for companies to show off their latest technology. Michelle Quinn got a look at some of the products that are hoping to make a splash.
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One of China’s major cities has reached an environmental milestone: an almost entirely electric-powered taxi fleet.

The high-tech hub of Shenzhen in southern China announced at the start of this year that 99 percent of the 21,689 taxis operating in the city were electric. Last year, it still had 7,500 gasoline-powered taxis on the roads. A few can still be found, but electric ones far outnumber them.

The metropolis of 12.5 million is the second to achieve this feat in China and the largest. The northern China city of Taiyuan, with a population of 4.3 million, has had only electric taxis since 2016.

Shenzhen “has taken the lead among major Chinese cities,” said Cui Dongshu, the secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association.

Shenzhen’s bus fleet has been all-electric since 2017. It’s one of 13 pilot cities promoting alternative-energy public transport to cut smog and develop the alternative energy industry, the Shenzhen Municipality Transport Committee said. 

Beijing and other Chinese cities are served by legions of electric scooters, bicycles and three-wheeled delivery vehicles that help reduce emissions – and sometimes startle pedestrians with their near-silent operation. 

Shenzhen’s 20,000-plus electric taxis will reduce carbon emissions by about 850,000 tons a year, the city’s transport committee said. However, the all-electric initiative doesn’t include Uber-like ride-hailing and ride-sharing services, which are popular in China.

Providing places to recharge taxis has been a big hurdle since Shenzhen rolled out its first 100 electric cabs in 2010. Cui praised the city for its network of about 20,000 public charging stations, which he said should be enough to meet most of the demand.

The electric taxis are equipped with an on-board terminal that tells drivers where taxis are in short supply, such as the airport, train station or other locations. It also clearly displays the fare and the taxi’s route, which the Shenzhen transport committee said would help prevent drivers from overcharging or taking a roundabout route.

Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, is home to Huawei Technologies and a host of other Chinese technology companies.
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One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you change channels.

Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command.

With every additional smart device in your home, companies are able to gather more details about your daily life. Some of that can be used to help advertisers target you — more precisely than they could with just the smartphone you carry.

“It’s decentralized surveillance,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based digital privacy advocate. “We’re living in a world where we’re tethered to some online service stealthily gathering our information.”

Yet consumers seem to be welcoming these devices. The research firm IDC projects that 1.3 billion smart devices will ship worldwide in 2022, twice as many as 2018.

Companies say they are building these products not for snooping but for convenience, although Amazon, Google and other partners enabling the intelligence can use the details they collect to customize their services and ads.

‘Smart’ features

Whirlpool, for instance, is testing an oven whose window doubles as a display. You’ll still be able to see what’s roasting inside, but the glass can now display animation pointing to where to place the turkey for optimal cooking.

The oven can sync with your digital calendar and recommend recipes based on how much time you have. It can help coordinate multiple recipes, so that you’re not undercooking the side dishes in focusing too much on the entree. A camera inside lets you zoom in to see if the cheese on the lasagna has browned enough, without opening the oven door.

As for that smart toilet, Kohler’s Numi will respond to voice commands to raise or lower the lid — or to flush. You can do it from an app, too. The company says it’s all about offering hands-free options in a setting that’s very personal for people. The toilet is also heated and can play music and the news through its speakers.

Kohler also has a tub that adjusts water temperature to your liking and a kitchen faucet that dispenses just the right amount of water for a recipe.

For the most part, consumers aren’t asking for these specific features. After all, before cars were invented, people might have known only to ask for faster horses. “We try to be innovative in ways that customers don’t realize they need,” Samsung spokesman Louis Masses said.

Whirlpool said insights can come from something as simple as watching consumers open the oven door several times to check on the meal, losing heat in the process.

“They do not say to us, ‘Please tell me where to put [food] on the rack, or do algorithm-based cooking,”‘ said Doug Searles, general manager for Whirlpool’s research arm, WLabs. “They tell us the results that are most important to them.”

Samsung has several voice-enabled products, including a fridge that comes with an app that lets you check on its contents while you’re grocery shopping. New this year: Samsung’s washing machines can send alerts to its TVs — smart TVs, of course — so you know your laundry is ready while watching Netflix.

Other connected items at CES include:

• a fishing rod that tracks your location to build an online map of where you’ve made the most catches;

• a toothbrush that recommends where to brush more;

• a fragrance diffuser that lets you control how your home smells from a smartphone app.

These are poised to join internet-connected security cameras, door locks and thermostats that are already on the market. The latter can work with sensors to turn the heat down automatically when you leave home.

‘Being spied on’

Chester said consumers feel the need to keep up with their neighbors when they buy appliances with the smartest smarts. He said all the conveniences can be “a powerful drug to help people forget the fact that they are also being spied on.”

Gadgets with voice controls typically aren’t transmitting any data back to company servers until you activate them with a trigger word, such as “Alexa” or “OK Google.” But devices have sometimes misheard innocuous words as legitimate commands to record and send private conversations.

Even when devices work properly, commands are usually stored indefinitely. Companies can use the data to personalize experiences — including ads. Beyond that, background conversations may be stored with the voice recordings and can resurface with hacking or as part of lawsuits or investigations.

Knowing what you cook or stock in your fridge might seem innocuous. But if insurers get hold of the data, they might charge you more for unhealthy diets, warned Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. He also said it might be possible to infer ethnicity based on food consumed.

Manufacturers are instead emphasizing the benefits: Data collection from the smart faucet, for instance, allows Kohler’s app to display how much water is dispensed. (Water bills typically show water use for the whole home, not individual taps.)

The market for smart devices is small, but growing. Kohler estimates that in a few years, smart appliances will make up 10 percent of its revenue. Though the features are initially limited to premium models — such as the $7,000 toilet — they should eventually appear in entry-level products, too, as costs come down.

Ditching the ‘dumb’

Consider the TV. “Dumb” TVs are rare these days, as the vast majority of TVs ship with internet connections and apps, like it or not.

“It becomes a check-box item for the TV manufacturer,” said Paul Gagnon, an analyst with IHS Markit. For a dumb one, he said, you have to search for an off-brand, entry-level model with smaller screens — or go to places in the world where streaming services aren’t common.

“Dumb” cars are also headed to the scrapyard. The research firm BI Intelligence estimates that by 2020, three out of every four cars sold worldwide will be models with connectivity. No serious incidents have occurred in the United States, Europe and Japan, but a red flag has already been raised in China, where automakers have been sharing location details of connected cars with the government.

As for TVs, Consumer Reports says many TV makers collect and share users’ viewing habits. Vizio agreed to $2.5 million in penalties in 2017 to settle cases with the Federal Trade Commission and New Jersey officials.

Consumers can decide not to enable these connections. They can also vote with their wallets, Stephens said.

“I’m a firm believer that simple is better. If you don’t need to have these so-called enhancements, don’t buy them,” he said. “Does one really need a refrigerator that keeps track of everything in it and tells you you are running out of milk?”
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Tesla broke ground Monday on a new factory for its electric cars in China, the first of its factories to be located outside the United States.

Chief Executive Elon Musk appeared at a ceremony alongside local officials on the outskirts of Shanghai to mark the start of the project. He said the goal is to finish initial construction by summer and start production by the end of the year.

Tesla will build its Model 3 vehicles at the site and says it hopes to eventually have a production capacity of 500,000 vehicles per year. The factory is wholly owned by Tesla, a departure from usual Chinese policy for foreign businesses.

The new factory comes as the United States and China negotiate trade issues that have led each side to impose higher tariffs on the other’s goods, including the automotive sector.

By having a factory in China, Tesla will not have to worry about consumers there facing higher prices on cars imported from the United States.
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