The United States is a land of opportunity for many immigrants. But some who come to the US often face big hurdles. The challenges can be especially great for immigrant women trying to succeed in male dominated careers in STEM fields: for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. VOA spoke with three Afghan women, all of whom prove that where there is a will, there’s usually a way. Zheela Noori went to Silicon Valley to find out what drives them. Freshta Azizi narrates.
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The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI are investigating Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political data firm embroiled in a scandal over its handling of Facebook Inc user information, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have sought to question former Cambridge Analytica employees and banks that handled its business, the newspaper said, citing an American official and others familiar with the inquiry.
Cambridge Analytica said earlier this month it was shutting down after losing clients and facing mounting legal fees resulting from reports the company harvested personal data about millions of Facebook users beginning in 2014.
Allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. election campaign, have prompted multiple investigations in the United States and Europe.
The investigation by the Justice Department and FBI appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, the Times said.
Investigators have contacted Facebook, according to the newspaper.
The FBI, the Justice Department and Facebook declined to comment to Reuters. Former officials with Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available to comment.
Cambridge Analytica was created around 2013, initially with a focus on U.S. elections, with $15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and a name chosen by future Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, the New York Times has reported. Bannon left the White House on August 2017.
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Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth — err, game.
Henry David Thoreau wrote those words — most of them — in his seminal book, “Walden.” They make up the objective of a video game that seeks to translate his exploits in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, into a playable digital reality.
“Walden, a Game” is adapted from the book and launches Tuesday on PlayStation 4. It has been available on computers for almost a year.
“Obviously it’s an odd or unique idea for a game,” said Tracy Fullerton, who conceived the idea and led the team that created it at the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab.
Fullerton told The Associated Press that “Walden” is one of her favorite books, and she thinks its meaning — a tale of escaping technology to appreciate nature — is topical today.
“It seemed to be a kind of game that he was playing,” Fullerton said. So she created one to mimic it.
Fullerton acknowledges the irony of trumpeting nature in a video game but said she hopes the game will be more contemplative than others.
Players drop in with a half-built cabin on the shores of Walden Pond. From there, they can essentially decide everything they do over eight seasons (Thoreau thought a year was better divided into eight parts than four), which takes six hours of real time.
They can finish building the house and toil in the fields, or they can venture out into 70 acres of virtual nature.
The objective is to find the right balance between survival — players can’t die, but they can faint — and fulfillment. As players seek more inspiration from nature, interacting with animals and trees, the actual game world becomes more colorful and more physically beautiful, Fullerton said.
The team at USC spent more than a decade creating the game, she said. Team members consulted literature and history experts to ensure the accuracy of its portrayals, and the game’s sound designer recorded all of its audible elements in the real Walden woods.
It’s available for free for teachers, and a curriculum is available online, but Fullerton said the game’s primary purpose is entertainment.
Joseph Simpson, a software developer from Ohio, said he reads Walden every year and discovered the game while reading about Fullerton.
“I immediately, without hesitation, bought it and started playing it,” he said. Simpson said the essence of the book has been implemented into the game in a way that doesn’t corrupt it with too many objectives or missions.
“I may not have to read Walden this year because I can play the game,” he said.
Experts on the textual version of “Walden” also were intrigued.
Robert Hudspeth, a former president of the Thoreau Society and an English professor at the Claremont Graduate University in California, said he has heard of the game but hasn’t played it.
“I will say, however, that anything that might spark an interest in Thoreau’s writing is welcome,” Hudspeth said. “If playing a game stimulates the players to go to the books, then I’m all for it!”
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Senate Democrats are mounting a last-ditch campaign to preserve so-called “net neutrality” that has prevented certain content or users from being slowed on the internet in the United States — an effort most Republicans say is misguided and counterproductive.
On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on whether to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s December decision to repeal Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from favoring certain users or material. All 49 Democrats and one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, back the resolution in the 100-member chamber.
“All [net neutrality] does is protect the openness of the internet to competitors across the country,” said Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats. “I believe this resolution will restore us to a place where small businesses will be able to compete and blossom and prosper.”
Added Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts: “Net neutrality is our 21st century right, and we will fight to protect it. Eighty-three percent of Americans, in polling, say they want to protect net neutrality.”
Republicans insist they, too, believe in net neutrality, but want to safeguard it by crafting forward-looking legislation rather than re-imposing an outdated regulatory structure.
“Democrats have decided to take the issue of net neutrality and make it partisan,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota said. “Instead of working with Republicans to develop permanent net neutrality legislation, they’ve decided to try to score political points with a partisan resolution that would do nothing to permanently secure net neutrality.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Trump appointee, defended the commission’s decision at a recent telecommunications conference in Washington, saying antiquated and heavy-handed federal internet regulation slows innovation and discourages investment in cyberinfrastructure.
“If you want something to operate like a slow-moving utility [company], there is no better way to ensure that than by regulating it as such,” Pai said. “[The American people] want more access, they want competition. They want the internet to be better and faster and cheaper.”
The FCC chairman added that federal regulators retain the ability to crack down on any unfair practices regarding internet access, and that service providers are required to disclose whether they slow any content or offer paid so-called “fast lanes.”
Such assurances have not satisfied more than 20 U.S. states that sued to prevent the FCC’s decision from going into effect June 11. In Washington, Democrats say small-business owners are worried they will be at a disadvantage in reaching new customers if net neutrality disappears.
“It’s all about having equal access to the internet,” King said, pointing to Certify, a small Web-based company in Portland, Maine, as an example of what is at stake. “One hundred fifty employees. It has two million users around the globe — that’s because of the power of the internet. We don’t want that business to be choked off by a large competitor who can pay preferential rates [for internet access].”
America’s largest internet service providers have said they will not engage in “throttling” — dramatically slowing down certain content — once the new FCC rules go into effect next month.
The net neutrality resolution could pass in the Senate 50-49, given the absence of Arizona Republican John McCain. From there, it faces significant hurdles. Passage is seen as less likely in the Republican-led House of Representatives, and President Donald Trump is unlikely to sign a bill overriding a decision backed by the FCC chairman he selected.
Even so, Democrats see an opportunity to highlight an issue of concern to many Americans ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
“This vote will allow senators to show once and for all where everyone stands on #NetNeutrality,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York tweeted.
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Twitter Inc on Tuesday revised its strategy for fighting abusive internet trolls,” saying it would use behavioral signals to identify harassers on the social network and then limit the visibility of their tweets.
San Francisco-based Twitter, known for freewheeling discussions since it was founded in 2006, has been trying to rid itself of harassment out of concern that personal attacks were driving people away.
Twitter’s rules already prohibit abuse, and it can suspend or block offenders once someone reports them. Users can also mute people they find offensive.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Twitter now would try to find problematic accounts by examining behavior such as how frequently people tweet about accounts that do not follow them or whether they have confirmed their email address.
Tweets from those accounts will appear lower in certain areas of the service, such as search results or replies to tweets, even if the tweets themselves have not been found to violate any rules.
“We want to take the burden of the work off the people receiving the abuse or the harassment,” Dorsey said in a briefing with reporters. Past efforts to fight abuse “felt like Whac-A-Mole,” he added.
Tweets will not be removed entirely based on behavioral signals, Dorsey said.
In tests the new approach resulted in a 4 percent decrease in abuse reports originating from search results and an 8 percent decrease in abuse reports from the conversations that take place as replies to tweets, according to the company.
Most abuse comes from a small number of accounts that have an outsized impact, said Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president for trust and safety.
Social media firms including Twitter and Facebook are under pressure to remove bullies, many of whom target women and minorities. Many women cannot express themselves freely on Twitter without fear of violence, Amnesty International said in a report in March.
Reducing abuse could also help Twitter’s business. If more people sign up and spend time on the service, marketers may buy more ads on it.
Dorsey said that Twitter’s 336 million monthly active users should expect a series of other changes over the next several months as the company explores ways to encourage tweets that are more civil.
In March, Twitter sought proposals from academics and others to help gauge the “health of public conversations.” Dorsey said the company is reviewing 230 submissions it received.
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The Dutch government is phasing out the use of anti-virus software made by Russian firm Kaspersky Lab amid fears of possible spying, despite vehement denials by the Moscow-based cybersecurity company.
The Dutch Justice and Security ministry said in a statement late Monday the decision had been taken as a “precautionary measure” in order “to guarantee national security.”
But Kaspersky Lab, whose anti-virus software is installed on some 400 million computers worldwide, said Tuesday it was “very disappointed” by the move.
The firm, which is suspected by US authorities of helping the Kremlin’s espionage efforts, also announced Tuesday that it was moving its core infrastructure and operations to Switzerland.
“Our new center in Switzerland will strengthen the proven integrity of Kaspersky Lab’s products, [and] significantly improve the resilience of our IT infrastructure to any trust risk — even theoretical ones,” the Russian company said in a statement.
Last year, the US federal government removed Kaspersky from its list of approved vendors, weeks after senior US intelligence agency and law enforcement officials expressed concerns about the safety of its software.
The Netherlands fears Kaspersky’s anti-virus software is “deep in systems” and any abuse could “pose a major security risk.”
Dutch officials also voiced concern that under Russian law companies such as Kaspersky are “required to cooperate with the Russian government.”
But the company hit back saying “Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage or offensive cyber efforts” and adding it was “being treated as guilty merely due to geopolitical issues.”
It said it would try to arrange a meeting soon with the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism to discuss the situation.
Dutch intelligence officials have increasingly warned however that they fear the Kremlin is trying to hack into Dutch companies and manipulate elections here.
“Russia has an active offensive cyber program focusing on the Netherlands and vital Dutch interests,” the ministry warned, adding it had therefore concluded there was a risk of “digital espionage and sabotage.”
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Kenya took its first step into space with the launch Friday of a nano-satellite made at the University of Nairobi. Engineers involved in creating the cube-shaped space capsule described it as Kenya’s joining the space club, although much remains to be done to get the Kenya space program off the ground. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Nairobi.
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According to the University of California, in 1950 the world produced about two million tons of plastic products. By 2015 the production increased to 380 million tons. If it continues at this pace by 2050 the weight of plastic waste in the world’s oceans may equal that of all fish. Researchers in the Netherlands say they have found an efficient and environmentally safe way for stopping plastic trash floating in rivers from entering our oceans: Bubbles. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Tesla’s chief executive officer told employees on Monday the company is undergoing a “thorough reorganization,” as it contends with questions over its production schedule and two crashes last week involving its electric, self-driving cars.
CEO Elon Musk said in an email that as part of the reorganization it was “flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission” in an email that was confirmed by Tesla after being disclosed earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Senior Tesla executives have departed or cut back work
Waymo, Alphabet Inc’s self-driving unit, said on Sunday that Matthew Schwall had joined the company from Tesla, where he was the electric carmaker’s main technical contact with U.S. safety investigators. Last week, Tesla said Doug Field, senior vice president of engineering, was taking time off to recharge.
Tesla is at a critical juncture as it tries to fix production problems that have slowed the rollout of its Model 3 sedan, a mid-market car seen as key to the company’s success, and as it expands on other fronts.
The company has registered a new car firm in Shanghai, China, in a likely step toward production in China.
Musk said on a May 2 earnings call that the company was “going to conduct sort of a reorganization restructuring of the company … this month and make sure we’re well set up to achieve that goal.”
He added that “the number of sort of third-party contracting companies that we’re using has really gotten out of control, so we’re going to scrub the barnacles on that front. It’s pretty crazy. You’ve got barnacles on barnacles. So there’s going to be a lot of barnacle removal.”
Tesla will still rapidly hire critical positions “to support the Model 3 production ramp and future product development,” Musk said in the email.
Tesla faces a variety of issues
Investors gave a rare rebuke to Musk after he cut off analysts on the earnings call asking about profit potential, sending shares down 5 percent despite promises that production of the troubled Model 3 was on track.
In the latest of two reported crashes last week that have drawn attention, a Tesla Model S sedan was traveling at 60 miles per hour (97 km per hour) when it smashed into a fire truck stopped at a red light in South Jordan, Utah, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City on Friday night, police said on Monday.
National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said on Monday “at this point it doesn’t appear that NTSB is investigating” the Utah crash.
The Tesla driver suffered a broken ankle and was taken to a hospital while the firefighter was not injured, the police said.
Witnesses said the Tesla sedan did not brake prior to impact, police said in a statement, adding it was unknown if the Autopilot feature in the Model S was engaged at the time.
“Tesla has not yet received any data from the car and thus does not know the facts of what occurred, including whether Autopilot was engaged,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
The NTSB said last week it was investigating a Tesla accident in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 8 that killed two teenagers and injured another — the agency’s fourth active probe into crashes of the company’s electric vehicles.
Autopilot, a form of advanced cruise control, handles some driving tasks and warns those behind the wheel they are always responsible for the vehicle’s safe operation, Tesla has said.
A U.S. traffic safety regulator on May 2 contradicted Tesla’s claim that the agency had found that its Autopilot technology significantly reduced crashes.
Tesla shares dipped 0.5 percent to $299.45 on Monday.
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Thousands of people are using their smartphones to experience the devastation of urban conflict through an augmented reality app which aims to raise awareness of the suffering faced by millions trapped by war, the app’s developer said on Monday.
Launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in March, “Enter the room” provides a visceral, first-person experience of war through the eyes of child from their bedroom.
While there are numerous apps being designed by aid groups, this is the first known use of augmented reality (AR) by the humanitarian sector to simulate civilian life at war. The app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times since its launch.
Entering through a portal on the screen of their device, users experience the impact of years of fighting in accelerated time as the virtual child’s bedroom room transforms from a place of light and laughter to one of darkness and suffering.
“It (AR) makes war real in a powerful and new way and pushes the audience to really think about this question: What if this happened to your childhood bedroom, or your son or daughter’s?” said the ICRC’s Digital Content Manager Ariel Rubin.
“We spend our lives on our smartphones, walking around with our eyes glued to them. There is something incredibly moving about mapping this virtual reality onto our actual reality “and within that creating a narrative that tells a real story.”
Around 65 million people are fleeing conflict in countries like Syria and Yemen today – 75 percent of whom live in cities, where battles are increasingly taking place, says the ICRC.
Yet many of urban conflicts are being waged using weaponry designed for open battlefields, say aid workers, resulting in greater destruction in these highly populated towns and cities.
As a result, vital infrastructure from medical facilities to basic services such as electricity and water are being hit.
In Yemen, for example, there has been a total collapse of the healthcare system, water and sewage network, the food chain, and the most basic building blocks for a healthy and functioning society – all because of the war, said Rubin.
“It is easy to get lost in the numbers and forget that each and every number represents a human being. Many of them are children who see their bedrooms, homes, their childhoods be totally destroyed by war,” he said.
“Our hope is that the AR app will help connect people to this reality that millions of people are facing every day in their cities.”
Augmented reality apps for gaming such as Pokémon GO have become increasingly popular in recent years, but they are also being developed as online shopping and education tools.
Preliminary reviews of ‘Enter the room’ have been largely positive.
“The chance to use augmented reality to generate empathy towards the victims of these ignored conflicts is an exciting application of this new technology,” said one user’s review on Apple’s App Store.
“Hopefully, it can lead to meaningful change in the world’s response to the continuing slaughter of innocents in places like Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan and Yemen.”
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Imagine storing digital data in DNA, wearing a device that makes you smarter, or creating new materials by manipulating the genes of microbes. They may sound like science fiction, but scientists are working on these technologies that combine what they know about biology and altering it with the help of artificial intelligence. Their work was presented at the Milken Institute Global Conference at a panel called “Things That Will Blow Your Mind.” VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Los Angeles.
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Some of the biggest automakers in Europe are joining forces to build a highway network of fast-charging stations they hope will boost sales of electric vehicles.
The idea is to let drivers plug in, charge in minutes instead of hours, and speed off again — from Norway to southern Italy, and Portugal to Poland.
Much is at stake for the automakers, which include Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and Ford. Their joint venture, Munich-based Ionity, is pushing to roll out its network in time to service the next generation of battery-only cars coming on the market starting next year from Volkswagen’s Porsche and Audi, BMW and Daimler.
They’re aiming to win back some of the market share for electric luxury car sales lost to Tesla, which has its own, proprietary fast-charging network.
When Facebook recently said it would allow outside reviewers inside its platform to look for signs of racial or political bias, civil liberties and human rights activists politely applauded.
For years, activists have called on tech companies to undergo assessments of how their policies affect people, both in the U.S. and globally. The companies have long rejected those audits as unnecessary.
But now Facebook is inviting outsiders in to look at allegations of racial and political bias.
“It’s better than nothing,” Rebecca MacKinnon said of the Facebook audits. She is director of Ranking Digital Rights a project that evaluates 22 tech and telecommunications firms annually in areas such as privacy, expression and governance.
“There’s increasing pressure on them to do this kind of thing,” MacKinnon added.
Facebook has faced criticism that it has allowed advertisers to use racial and ethnic profiles to target job and housing ads. American political conservatives have complained that Facebook has removed or taken down legitimate content because of its liberal bias, something the company has denied.
Both issues came under scrutiny following the 2016 U.S. election, but activists say the company’s focus on issues mainly concerning American users is overshadowing Facebook’s bigger problems with the platform abroad.
“The audits that Facebook is doing in the U.S., while welcomed, are very U.S.-centered,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of Human Rights Watch’s business and human rights division. “That’s really a response to domestic pressure.”
Call for global assessments
Critics say Facebook’s bias problems do not stop at the U.S. border. They point to the role that the platform is alleged to have played in incidents of mass violence, such as the persecution of ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar in recent years or sectarian violence in Sri Lanka.
The United Nations reported that in the case of violence in Myanmar, Facebook “substantively” contributed to the level of conflict.
Facebook’s News Feed, which highlights content of interest to a user based on the person’s friends and preferences, has also been accused of reinforcing false or inflammatory stories that go viral. That can help extreme viewpoints get in front of a mainstream audience.
Critics say the company is only starting to come to grips with the issue.
“There needs to be an honest, candid, comprehensive assessment,” said HRW’s Ganesan. “What is the panoply of Facebook’s impact?”
Transparency as industry trend
Self-assessments are nothing new for tech firms. Starting with Google in 2010, tech companies began publishing transparency reports that provide snapshots of how governments have turned to firms for user data or issued takedown notices because of copyright infringement or other reasons.
More than 60 companies regularly file transparency reports, according to Access Now, a digital rights group in New York.
Eleven companies, including Google and Facebook, undergo outside assessments every two years by the Global Network Initiative, a nongovernmental organization that looks at how companies are responding to government requests.
In its recent assessment, Ranking Digital Rights, which is a nonprofit research initiative affiliated with the nonpartisan New America Foundation think tank, gave low marks to Facebook for disclosing less information than other tech firms about how it handles data that can be used to identify, profile or track users.
Apple earned the greatest year-over-year score improvement of any company because it “strengthened its public commitment to protecting users’ privacy as a human right,” the report said.
How effective these assessments are in spurring companies to change is unclear. But company-run reports and outside audits can help find and measure problems, human rights advocates say.
“We call on Facebook to engage with stakeholders wherever it impacts human rights — the burden extends globally,” said Peter Micek with Access Now.” It doesn’t make sense from a human rights perspective to treat the U.S. exceptionally.”
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The Trump administration will not stand in the way of the development of artificial intelligence in the United States, a top official said on Thursday, while acknowledging that the burgeoning technology will displace some jobs.
At a White House summit that included companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., technology policy adviser Michael Kratsios said the administration of President Donald Trump did not want to dictate “what is researched and developed.”
“To the greatest degree possible, we will allow scientists and technologists to freely develop their next great inventions right here in the United States,” he said, according to a copy of his remarks provided by the White House.
AI and deep machine learning raise ethical concerns about control, privacy, cybersecurity, and the future of work, companies and experts say.
Kratsios acknowledged that “to a certain degree, job displacement is inevitable.”
He added: “But we can’t sit idle, hoping eventually the market will sort it out. We must do what Americans have always done: adapt.”
The White House, which has previously clashed with scientists over issues such as climate change, conservation and budget cuts, said it would create a new committee on AI. It will be comprised of the most senior research and development officials across the U.S government, tasked with looking at research and development (R&D) priorities and better coordinating federal investments.
“We cannot be passive. To realize the full potential of AI for the American people, it will require the combined efforts of industry, academia, and government,” Kratsios said.
“In the private sector, we will not dictate what is researched and developed. Instead we will offer resources and the freedom to explore,” he added.
Intel Corp.chief executive Brian Krzanich, who attended the summit, said in a blog post that “without an AI strategy of its own, the world’s technology leader risks falling behind.”
AI is already being used in a number of fields. For instance, the National Institute of Health is exploring ways machine learning can improve cancer detections and treatment, while the General Services Administration is using AI to reduce the need for federal auditors, the White House said.
Among more than 30 major companies attending included officials from Ford Motor Co., Boeing Co., Mastercard Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
The Pentagon and various U.S. departments took part, along with senior White House officials including Jared Kushner and Andrew Bremberg, who heads the Domestic Policy Council.
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Italian researchers on Thursday unveiled a new robotic hand they say allows users to grip objects more naturally and featuring a design that will lower the price significantly.
The Hennes robotic hand has a simpler mechanical design compared with other such myoelectric prosthetics, characterized by sensors that react to electrical signals from the brain to the muscles, said researcher Lorenzo De Michieli. He helped develop the hand in a lab backed by the Italian Institute of Technology and the INAIL state workers’ compensation prosthetic center.
The Hennes has only one motor that controls all five fingers, making it lighter, cheaper and more able to adapt to the shape of objects.
“This can be considered low-cost because we reduce to the minimum the mechanical complexity to achieve, at the same time, a very effective grasp, and a very effective behavior of the prosthesis,” De Michieli said. “We maximized the effectiveness of the prosthetics and we minimized the mechanical complexity.”
They plan to bring it to market in Europe next year with a target price of around 10,000 euros ($11,900), about 30 percent below current market prices.
Arun Jayaraman,a robotic prosthetic researcher at the Shirley Ryan Ability lab in Chicago, said the lighter design could help overcome some resistance in users to the myoelectric hands, which to date have been too heavy for some. Italian researchers say the Hennes weighs about the same as a human hand.
In the United States, many amputees prefer the much simpler hook prosthetic, which attaches by a shoulder harness, because it allows them to continue to operate heavy equipment, Jayaraman said.
Italian retiree Marco Zambelli has been testing the Hennes hand for the last three years. He lost his hand in a work accident while still a teenager, and has used a variety of prosthetics over the years. A video presentation shows him doing a variety of tasks, including removing bills from an automated teller machine, grasping a pencil and driving a stick-shift car.
“Driving, for example, is not a problem,” Zambelli, 64, said, who has also learned to use a table knife. “Now I have gotten very good at it. I think anyone who’s not looking with an expert eye would find it difficult to spot that it’s an artificial hand.”
About a dozen labs worldwide are working on improvements to the myoelectric prosthetic, with some focusing on touch, others on improving how the nervous system communicates with the prosthetic.
“Each group is giving baby steps to help the field move forward,” Jayaraman said.
Cost remains a barrier for advanced prosthetic limbs, as well as the fact that the more complex motorized systems tend to be “heavy and fragile. They also get hard to control,” said Robert Gaunt, an assistant professor of rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Hennes design “could make a difference. I think it is a clever approach and one that could see significant benefits for people with missing hands,” he said.
Limitations remain the inability to control individual fingers for tasks like playing the piano or typing on a computer.
“But the vast majority of what many of us do with our hands every day is simply grasp objects,” Gaunt said.
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Kavitha Kamalbabu needed a break. She had raised her two children and the youngest was now in kindergarten. It was time to turn attention to her career. The 36-year-old wanted to code. The mecca of high tech — Silicon Valley — wasn’t an option because she needed to stay close to home and family in Indianapolis, Indiana.
“I chose Kenzie Academy because of its life project-based learning,” she said.
Kamalbabu is now at the top of her class, getting a two-year degree as a software developer. Kenzie, based in Indianapolis, was established to keep talent in Middle America and to create a mini tech capital.
“Our point is to bring people from Indianapolis to stay in Indianapolis,” said founder Courtney Spence. To do that, they place students in local companies as quickly as possible after their enrollment.
For one class, Kamalbabu, originally from India, found herself asking questions about measuring beer and learning how data increases profit. The class was taking a tour of Steady Serve — a local beer management system that invented a device to measure the content of kegs to reduce waste and fraud.
In the past, CEO Steve Hershberger hired from big universities near Silicon Valley. Now, he needs coders to work on the connection between beer kegs to his iKeg app, and he is choosing interns from Kenzie because of the quality he sees in the candidates.
“It’s like they folded the country and brought San Jose [the heart of Silicon Valley] into Indianapolis.”
By the numbers
Indianapolis is Middle America. Located in the Corn Belt, Indiana is known for its farms — the state’s model is “The Crossroads of America.” City leaders said that perception is changing. Indianapolis deputy mayor of economic development Angela Smith Jones calls Indianapolis “Western Silicon Valley” with a “great startup culture.”
Last year, technology companies in Indianapolis contributed $7.7 billion into the city’s economy and employed 75,000 people.
Job postings for emerging tech are up 40 percent over last year, and the city’s unemployment rate is currently 3 percent, which is lower than the national average.
The average tech industry wage in Indiana is $76,860.
“It’s on the cusp of what we are seeing as being a tech boom,” Spence said.
Not so fast
But students majoring in tech at Stanford University — a research school located in the heart of Silicon Valley — were unimpressed. Freshman Max Comolli said he wouldn’t be enticed to leave California for Indianapolis because of the opportunities and “such a great tech scene already established.”
Masters candidate Diego Garcia said when he thinks of high tech, he thinks of “California or New York, not Indianapolis.” But freshman Alexa White from Detroit, Michigan, thinks a tech capital in the Midwest would “benefit the field” and create diversity.
The gender diversity hasn’t reached Kenzie, although school officials said they actively recruit females. The next class of 18 students starting later this year will have three women. Of the current class, only Kamalbabu and an African American are female.
Statistically, women — and especially women of color — make up a small percentage of the tech field. But 24-year-old Mya Williams called it a “pleasant surprise” when she saw Kamalbabu on the first day of class because she thought she would be the only female. Williams said young girls aren’t encouraged to concentrate in math and science. “They get looked over when it comes to software,” she said.
To Asia and beyond
Kenzie officials plan to duplicate the academy model, starting in Malaysia. Spence goes a step further. “We have a commitment to replicate it around the world,” she said.
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No matter where they live, young people are capable of coming up with fresh ideas about how to improve life in their communities. At a recent exhibition, held in the sprawling Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan, teenage Syrians showcased inventions geared toward making refugee camps more livable. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Google is suspending all advertising connected to Ireland’s abortion referendum as part of moves to protect “election integrity,” the company announced Wednesday.
The move came a day after Facebook banned foreign-backed ads in the Irish campaign, amid global concerns about online election meddling and the role of internet ads in swaying voters.
Google said that starting Thursday, it would no longer display ads related to the May 25 vote on whether to repeal Ireland’s constitutional ban on most abortions.
The prohibition on ads connected to the Irish vote applies to both Google and YouTube, which the company owns.
The online search leader, which is based in Mountain View, California, declined to say how much advertising revenue it was giving up because of the decision.
Russian role
The role of online ads in elections is under scrutiny following revelations that Russian groups bought ads on leading services such as Google and Facebook to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Many of the ads were designed to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics.
Karin von Abrams, a London-based analyst with the research firm eMarketer, said banning ads represented a short-term safeguard from potential backlash and reputational damage.
“They won’t want to forgo election-related revenues in the longer term, but they do need to get their houses in order, rather than risk further troubles at this stage,” von Abrams said in an email Wednesday.
Google’s statement followed Facebook’s decision Tuesday to ban foreign advertisements around the abortion referendum, which has drawn worries about the influence of North American groups.
Both Google and Facebook are working on measures to improve transparency before November’s U.S. midterm elections, including tools to show the home country of advertisers.
Ireland bars political donations from abroad, but the law has not been applied to social media advertising. Anti-abortion groups based in the United States are among the organizations that have bought online ads in Ireland during the referendum campaign.
’11th hour’ effort
Irish lawmaker James Lawless, technology spokesman for the opposition Fianna Fail party, welcomed the moves by Google and Facebook, but said “they are rushed and they are coming at the 11th hour,” with just two weeks until voting day.
“It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s an awful pity we couldn’t have done this six months ago,” said Lawless, who has introduced a bill to Ireland’s parliament that would require all online advertisers to disclose the publishers and sponsors behind ads.
Largely Catholic Ireland has Europe’s strictest restrictions on abortion, which is legal only when a woman’s life is in danger. Several thousand Irish women travel each year to get abortions in neighboring Britain.
Voters are being asked whether they want to retain the constitutional ban or repeal it and make parliament responsible for creating abortion laws.
Lawless said he had concerns about some of the online advertising from both sides in the referendum campaign.
“Some quite disingenuous ads have been going around in recent weeks targeting people who are in the middle that aren’t always from who they seem to be from,” he said.
“What we really need is legislation and we need a proper, robust, thought-out approach” to the problem, he said.
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Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said it has set up model “smart” homes across the United States for shoppers to experience what it’s like for voice aide Alexa to dim the lights, turn on the TV or order more laundry detergent.
The rollout underscores how Amazon aims to make Alexa and the company’s growing list of services, from shopping and entertainment to home security, an everyday part of consumers’ lives. It also steps up competition with retailers such as Best Buy Co Inc that focus on showcasing technology and advising shoppers.
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, said it has partnered with Lennar Corp to convert some of the home construction company’s model homes into showrooms for Alexa. The so-called “Amazon Experience Centers” are now open near 15 cities including Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington, with more to come.
“Today, the choices open to customers are, you can go to a brick-and-mortar store and you can see devices on demo tables. You go online and do your research. But you fundamentally are left to imagine what an integrated home would look like,” said Nish Lathia, general manager of Amazon Services, in the company’s Vallejo, California, experience center outside San Francisco.
The centers are “intended to educate and inspire. On the secondary benefit, yes, if it drives sales, we’re not complaining,” he said.
David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures, said the centers should increase traffic to Lennar’s model homes and spark ideas for potential home buyers. Lennar will get a standard commission for Amazon sales to customers it helped acquire, too.
The global smart home market is expected to reach an estimated $107.4 billion by 2023, according to market research firm ReportLinker.
Best Buy is betting big on this trend. It has expanded its In-Home Advisor program to all major U.S. markets and employs more than 350 advisers under the initiative, its most recent annual report said.
Experts visit customers’ homes and consult on issues from increasing appliance efficiency to setting up connected gadgets — similar in nature to Amazon’s 1.5-year-old “Smart Home Services,” which is poised to gain from the new experience centers.
“We’re excited about Best Buy’s program,” said Amazon’s Lathia. “The more customers that get educated about smart home, the better it is for everybody.”
Philippe Ferrey, an Amazon Expert present at the Vallejo center, previously worked five years for Best Buy as a Geek Squad agent, he said.
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Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said it has set up model “smart” homes across the United States for shoppers to experience what it’s like for voice aide Alexa to dim the lights, turn on the TV or order more laundry detergent.
The rollout underscores how Amazon aims to make Alexa and the company’s growing list of services, from shopping and entertainment to home security, an everyday part of consumers’ lives. It also steps up competition with retailers such as Best Buy Co Inc that focus on showcasing technology and advising shoppers.
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, said it has partnered with Lennar Corp to convert some of the home construction company’s model homes into showrooms for Alexa. The so-called “Amazon Experience Centers” are now open near 15 cities including Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington, with more to come.
“Today, the choices open to customers are, you can go to a brick-and-mortar store and you can see devices on demo tables. You go online and do your research. But you fundamentally are left to imagine what an integrated home would look like,” said Nish Lathia, general manager of Amazon Services, in the company’s Vallejo, California, experience center outside San Francisco.
The centers are “intended to educate and inspire. On the secondary benefit, yes, if it drives sales, we’re not complaining,” he said.
David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures, said the centers should increase traffic to Lennar’s model homes and spark ideas for potential home buyers. Lennar will get a standard commission for Amazon sales to customers it helped acquire, too.
The global smart home market is expected to reach an estimated $107.4 billion by 2023, according to market research firm ReportLinker.
Best Buy is betting big on this trend. It has expanded its In-Home Advisor program to all major U.S. markets and employs more than 350 advisers under the initiative, its most recent annual report said.
Experts visit customers’ homes and consult on issues from increasing appliance efficiency to setting up connected gadgets — similar in nature to Amazon’s 1.5-year-old “Smart Home Services,” which is poised to gain from the new experience centers.
“We’re excited about Best Buy’s program,” said Amazon’s Lathia. “The more customers that get educated about smart home, the better it is for everybody.”
Philippe Ferrey, an Amazon Expert present at the Vallejo center, previously worked five years for Best Buy as a Geek Squad agent, he said.
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Silicon Valley — the U.S. hub of technology– is getting so expensive that tech workers are struggling to get by, and start up companies are questioning whether to locate there. One city thousands of kilometers away is ready to welcome tech companies with an experienced workforce in hopes of becoming the next Silicon Valley. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us to the city and shows us a new tech university that could be replicated anywhere in the world.
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Silicon Valley — the U.S. hub of technology– is getting so expensive that tech workers are struggling to get by, and start up companies are questioning whether to locate there. One city thousands of kilometers away is ready to welcome tech companies with an experienced workforce in hopes of becoming the next Silicon Valley. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us to the city and shows us a new tech university that could be replicated anywhere in the world.
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A digital rights organization has asked congressional leaders for help in persuading Google and Amazon to support a technology that people in authoritarian countries use to get around censorship controls worldwide.
In a letter sent this week, Access Now, which is based in New York, sought to put pressure on Google and Amazon, which decided recently to close a loophole that allowed some encrypted-communication apps to assume a disguise as messages moved through the internet.
Access Now asked for help from leaders of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, the House and Senate commerce committees and the Congressional Executive Committee on China.
At issue is the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between governments, such as Russia, Iran and China, and those who use internet and messaging technologies, like Telegram and Signal, to communicate outside censors’ oversight.
In this case, encrypted-messaging apps have been using a digital disguise known as “domain fronting.” Some of these technologies have received financial support from the Open Technology Fund, a U.S. government program funded by Radio Free Asia and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the agency that oversees Voice of America.
Disguising final destination
As an encrypted message moves through networks, it appears to be going to an innocuous destination, such as google.com, by routing through a Google server, rather than its true destination.
If a government acts against the domain google.com, it conceivably shuts down access to all services offered by the internet giant for everyone in the country. The gamble is that governments wouldn’t want to cut off residents’ access to large swaths of the internet just to block a specific communication.
Russia did just that in mid-April when it sought to crack down on Telegram.
But it’s not just dissidents and religious or human rights activists who are using these apps. Hackers can also use this disguise to mask malware, according to ZDNet.
In recent weeks, first Google and then Amazon Web Services said they would close the loopholes that allowed apps to use the disguise.
“No customer ever wants to find that someone else is masquerading as their innocent, ordinary domain,” said Amazon in a news release announcing better domain protections.
“Domain fronting has never been a supported feature at Google,” a Google representative said. “But until recently it worked because of a quirk of our software stack. We’re constantly evolving our network, and as part of a planned software update, domain fronting no longer works. We don’t have any plans to offer it as a feature.”
Matthew Rosenfield, who helped develop the Signal technology, said that “the idea behind domain fronting was that to block a single site, you’d have to block the rest of the internet as well. In the end, the rest of the internet didn’t like that plan.”
Amazon sent Signal an email telling it that its use of circumvention was against Amazon’s terms of service. In Middle East countries, such as Egypt, Oman and Qatar, Signal disguised itself as Souq.com, Amazon’s Arabic e-commerce platform.
Letter to Congress
In its letter to Congress, Access Now wrote that “until this change by Amazon and Google, domain fronting was the most effective and most widely used method of enabling free speech, free association and freedom online in countries that aggressively filter and monitor internet access.”
“The end of domain fronting will not permanently impede progress toward our shared goal of global internet freedom, but it will set it back, and the adverse effects will be felt most direly by those already experiencing repressive censorship and surveillance,” the letter said.
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GoDaddy has pulled the plug on another online peddler of violence.
The popular internet registration service last week shut down altright.com, a website created by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer and popular with many in the so-called alt-right movement.
The takedown is the latest example of how companies like GoDaddy are increasingly responding to growing public pressure to clamp down on violent sites in the wake of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer.
GoDaddy, which registers domains for more than 75 million websites around the world, said it generally does not delist sites that promote hate, racism and bigotry on the ground that such content is protected as free speech.
But it said altright.com had “crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence in a direct and threatening manner.”
“In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging or otherwise engaging in specific acts of violence against any person, we will take action,” GoDaddy said in a statement emailed to VOA.
The company would not say whether it canceled altright.com’s domain registration in response to pressure but it stressed that “we take all complaints about content on websites very seriously, and have a team dedicated to investigate each complaint.”
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a Washington-based civil rights organization, said it filed such a complaint with GoDaddy last month, citing several instances in which altright.com carried content that advocated violence.
In one example, a January 26, 2018, article encouraged “use of live ammunition at the border, in order to create a substantial chance that they [immigrants crossing the border] lose their life in the process,” according to the organization’s complaint.
Kristen Clarke, the group’s president and executive director, said the shutdown of altright.com was part of her organization’s campaign to combat a recent “hate crime crisis” in the United States.
“We know that so much hate that we see today originates online,” Clarke said. “It originates in dangerous platforms and online hubs that provide a space to people to essentially coordinate violence and incite people to violence.”
There is no tally of sites that promote violence on the internet. But Clarke said there are “too many” and that her organization is in talks with domain and web hosting companies to shut down close to a dozen of them. She declined to name the websites.
“We’re focused on some of the biggest platforms and places where we’re seeing some of the most dangerous and violent activity,” she said. “We’ll see if those efforts bear fruit.”
Spencer denounced the closure of his website.
“The Left will not stop their censorship crusade with the Alt-Right,” Spencer tweeted on Thursday. “They’re going to come for every right-wing website. Free speech will cease to exist if the GOP fails to enact legislation.”
Altright.com’s takedown comes as public scrutiny of hate sites has grown and internet intermediaries have started to strictly enforce their terms of service and acceptable use policies in the wake of the Charlottesville rally.
Prior to the rally, tech companies had largely left it to users to police online content. But after the march, social media and payment processing companies took steps to close the accounts of several white nationalist leaders, and hosting companies shut down websites associated with the movement such as The Daily Stormer and Stormfront.
“They did know that they had very hateful groups using their services but there didn’t seem to be either political or public pressure to get rid of them,” said Natasha Tusikov, a criminology professor at York University in Toronto.
After Charlottesville, “we saw a number of them suddenly become more pressured publicly and politically.”
Amid growing public pressure, she said, “I think we’re going to see more of these cases.”
But shuttering entire websites is not likely to eliminate violence-mongering online. For one, there is no dearth of small services that would host sites banished by others. Indeed, while The Daily Stormer and Stormfront were forced by their closure to hop from host to host for several months, they eventually found a home. Altright.com is likely to similarly resurface.
The crackdown can also push some websites underground into the dark web — content on networks that use the internet but require specific authorization to access — making it difficult to track them and find out “who their members are and what they’re doing,” Tusikov said.
Tusikov said that what she finds even more problematic is the way in which these sites are shut down. Internet intermediaries such as GoDaddy give themselves “considerable” latitude to close websites for any number of reasons.
“A lot of us would agree that any kind of hateful violent speech should be removed,” she said. “The question is in murkier areas, when it gets to other types of perhaps controversial speech but lawful speech.”
In the U.S. and other countries with a strong free-speech tradition, governments have largely shied away from regulating online content, leaving it to internet intermediaries to assume the role. But Tusikov said internet intermediaries are ill-equipped to distinguish between legal and illegal content.
Instead, she said, policymakers should institute regulations such as the Manila Principles, a set of standards adopted by civil society groups and digital rights advocates in 2015. Among other things, the Manila Principles require that content restriction policies must “follow due process” and “comply with the tests of necessity and proportionality.”
“So if you have one problem with one element of copyright infringement, you shouldn’t take the entire site down,” Tusikov said. “You should deal with that one problem.”
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