YCLOAK

Uber Technologies said Tuesday that it would work with the U.S. Army to advance research on a novel, quiet aircraft rotor technology that could be used in future flying cars, or military aircraft.

The alliance highlights stepped-up efforts by Uber and other companies to transform flying cars from a science fiction concept to real hardware for residents of mega-cities where driving is a time-consuming bore.

Uber and the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering command said in a statement that they expected to spend $1 million to develop and test prototypes for a rotor system that would be used on a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle.

The system would have two rotors, one stacked atop the other, moving in the same direction under the command of sophisticated software. This approach, which Uber and the Army said had not been deployed in a production aircraft, could lead to quieter operation than conventional stacked rotor systems.

“Achieving ultra-low noise is one of the critical obstacles” to deploying aerial taxis in urban areas, Rob McDonald, head of vehicle engineering for Uber Elevate, the company’s flying car operation, said in an interview.

The Army wants to develop a new generation of unmanned drones that do not need runways and are quieter than current drones, said Dr. Jaret Riddick, director of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Vehicle Technology Directorate.

The Army is increasingly turning to partnerships with private companies to research advanced technology, Riddick said in an interview.

Uber is planning more alliances with government agencies as it aims to launch prototype airborne taxis by 2020, Mark Moore, Uber’s director of engineering and aircraft systems and a former NASA researcher, said in an interview.

Uber already has a partnership with NASA, the U.S. government space agency, to develop software for managing large numbers of aircraft over cities, Moore said.

Uber is one of several companies, including aircraft makers Boeing and Airbus SE and a venture backed by Alphabet co-founder Larry Page, that are investing in the concept of small, automated and electrified aircraft that could be used to ferry passengers or cargo across congested cities.

Uber said it would develop its low-noise rotor system in collaboration with Launchpoint Technologies Inc., a Goleta, California, engineering company focused on electric and hybrid aircraft technologies.

Uber will hold a conference on flying vehicles this week in Los Angeles.
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Major technology and aerospace companies including Amazon.com, Apple, Intel, Qualcomm and Airbus SE are vying to take part in a new slate of drone tests the United States is set to announce on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The wide interest in the U.S. initiative, launched by President Donald Trump last year, underscores the desire of a broad range of companies to have a say in how the fledgling industry is regulated and ultimately win authority to operate drones for everything from package delivery to crop inspection.

The pilot program will allow a much larger range of tests than are generally permitted by federal aviation regulators, including flying drones at night, over people and beyond an operator’s line of sight.

The U.S. Transportation Department said it will announce 10 winning state, local or tribal governments to host the experiments on Wednesday. The governments in turn have partnered with companies who will play a role in the tests.

Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who is up for re-election in November, said in a press release the city of Reno was named one of the winners. The city is partnered with Nevada-based Flirtey, a company that has worked on delivering defibrillators by drone, as well as pizza for Domino’s.

At least 200 companies spanning 149 applications are vying to be part of the program, a U.S. official said. Many major U.S. companies are part of the winning submissions.

Winners include projects focused on package delivery, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, pipeline oversight and integrating drones near airports, the U.S. official said.

Companies such as Boeing and Ford have also expressed interest in the program, sources said, though it was unclear whether they had joined applications and what they would be testing.

Amazon declined to comment.

Airbus, Intel and Qualcomm confirmed they on one or more applications, with Airbus noting it is interested in topics like risk analysis for airspace management. Qualcomm hopes to test network connectivity along with partners Verizon Communications and AT&T.

Raytheon Co said it had not applied but was in talks with partners who have. Other companies did not immediately answer requests for comment.

Changes to U.S. policy that result from the tests are not expected for some time. Package delivery, which can be particularly complex, might not take place until later on during the program.

Earl Lawrence, who directs the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s unmanned aircraft systems integration office, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that many of the other projects “could go forward under the FAA’s existing rules, including with waivers where appropriate.”

He said after “the 10 selections for the pilot program are announced, the FAA will be reaching out to other applicants, as well as interested state and local authorities, to provide additional information on how to operationalize their proposed projects.”

The FAA is also working on proposed regulations to ensure the safety of drones and their integration into U.S. airspace.

The initiative is significant for the United States, which has lagged other countries in drone operations for fear of air crashes. That had pushed companies like Amazon to experiment overseas.

In the United Kingdom, the world’s largest online retailer already sends some packages by drone. It completed its first such mission in late 2016, taking 13 minutes from click to delivery.
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The White House plans to convene a meeting on Thursday on the future of artificial intelligence in U.S. industry with major companies including Facebook, Amazon.com, Google parent Alphabet and Oracle as well as senior government officials.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and the chief technical officers of Ford and Boeing are also due to take part in the event, along with executives from Mastercard, Microsoft and Accenture, administration and industry officials said.

The Pentagon and the U.S. departments of agriculture, commerce, energy, health, labor and transportation are due to take part in the daylong meeting that will look at artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and research and development and removing barriers to its application.

“AI is quickly transforming every segment of American industry – from applications in precision agriculture and medical diagnostics to advanced manufacturing and autonomous transportation,” the White House said.

Other companies taking part include IBM, Bank of America, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Monsanto, Pfizer, Walmart, Whirlpool, CVS Health and United Airlines.

Facebook Vice President of AI Jerome Pesenti, Google senior research scientist Greg Corrado and the presidents of California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University also are set to participate.

Dean Garfield, president and chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, called the event “an important step to building collaboration between government and industry.”

“The tech sector is committed to ensuring that all Americans reap the benefits of this transformative technology, which has the potential to save lives, improve how we harvest food, transform education and more,” Garfield said.

Britain last month announced a 1 billion pound ($1.4 billion) joint investment in the AI industry, while the European Union announced it would boost AI investment by about 70 percent to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) by 2020.

Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, said in a Fox News opinion piece published on Tuesday that as AI accomplishes more complex tasks “it will transform economies, industries and our everyday lives. It will also raise questions about its impact on our economy and jobs.”

Professional services firm PwC forecast last year that aggregate worldwide gross domestic product will be 14 percent higher in 2030 as a result of AI and will impact retail, financial services and healthcare.
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Facebook announced Tuesday that it is banning foreign advertisements related to Ireland’s abortion referendum amid concerns that North American groups are trying to influence the campaign.

Irish voters will decide May 25 whether to repeal a constitutional ban on abortion, in a divisive referendum that has drawn international attention.

Ireland bars political donations from abroad, but the law does not apply to social media advertising. U.S.-based anti-abortion groups are among those who have bought online ads in Ireland during the campaign.

Facebook says starting Tuesday it will “begin rejecting ads related to the referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland.”

“We understand the sensitivity of this campaign and will be working hard to ensure neutrality at all stages,” Facebook said in a statement. “Our goal is simple: to help ensure a free, fair and transparent vote on this important issue.”

Facebook has tried to improve its transparency after revelations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested users’ data to micro-target political ads to select groups during the 2016 U.S. presidential race – meaning that only those most susceptible to the message would see the advertisements.

The social media company has launched a “view ads” tool in Ireland that allows users of the network to see all of the ads being run by an advertiser, not just the ones targeted at them.

Facebook also said it is testing a process that will help it ensure advertisers are resident in the country where an election is taking place.

 
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Think Super Mario Bros., but with an Afghan twist. This is how Afghanistan’s first generation of female coders explain their abilities as game-makers after uploading more than 20 games on digital app stores this year.

More than 20 young women in the western city of Heart have established themselves as computer experts, building apps and websites as well as tracking down bugs in computer code.

Like the team of Afghan schoolgirls who rose to fame last year when they competed in a robotics competition in the United States, the coders show what reserves of talent there are to be tapped when Afghan girls are given a chance.

“Coders can work from home and it is in this process women are building a new career path for themselves and for the next generation,” said Hasib Rasa, project manager of Code to Inspire, which teaches female students coding in Herat.

One of the games designed by the all-female team has caught the eye of developers and gamers as it illustrates the scourge of opium cultivation and the challenges the Afghan security forces face as they try to stamp it out.

The 2-D game “Fight Against Opium” is an animated interpretation of the missions that Afghan soldiers undertake to destroy opium fields, fight drug lords and help farmers switch to growing saffron.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest source of opium but it also grows saffron – the world’s most expensive spice – which has long been pushed as an alternative to wean farmers off a crop used to make heroin.

Despite a ban, opium production hit a record in 2017, up 87 percent over 2016, according to a U.N. study.  

Khatira Mohammadi, a student who helped develop the anti-opium game, said she wanted to show the complexities of the drug problem in the simplest way.

“We have illustrated our country’s main problem through a game,” said Mohammadi.

At the institute, more than 90 girls and young women, wearing headscarves and long black coats, are trained in coding and software development, a profession seen by some in conservative Afghanistan as unsuitable for women.

In Afghan society, it is unusual for women to work outside the home. Those who do, are mostly teachers, nurses, doctors, midwives and house helpers.

After the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, women regained freedom to work in offices with male colleagues – but many consider working as a software developer a step too far.

Hasib Rasa said girls are encouraged to design original player characters, goals, and obstacles that reflect Afghanistan’s ethos.

The course is exclusively aimed at females, aged 15-25, who are unable to pursue a four-year degree due to lack of funds or hail from families where they are prevented from enrolling in co-education schools.

“In Afghanistan the ability to work remotely is a key tool in the push for equality,” said Rasa.
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Anti-Semites are using Twitter as a “megaphone to harass and intimidate Jews,” the pro-Jewish civil rights group Anti-Defamation League says.

In a new report Monday, the ADL says Twitter users sent out at least 4.2 million anti-Semitic posts in 2017 — an average of 81,400 a week.

“This new data shows that even with the steps Twitter has taken to remove hate speech and to deal with those accounts disseminating it, users are still spreading a shocking amount of anti-Semitism,” ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt says.

Examples of the hate-filled tweets include Holocaust denial; claims that Jews killed Jesus Christ, a belief long disowned by the Vatican; and such propaganda as Jews control banking and the media.

The ADL is calling on Twitter to take such steps as a terms of service policy clearly banning hate speech, and effective filters that stop such messages from reaching users.

Twitter says it has made more than 30 changes to its operations in the last 16 months to combat hate speech.

“We are an open platform and hold a mirror up to human behaviors, both the good and the bad. Everyone has a part to play in building a more compassionate and empathetic society,” Twitter said in a statement. 
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Microsoft is launching a $25 million initiative to use artificial intelligence to build better technology for people with disabilities.

CEO Satya Nadella announced the new “AI for Accessibility” effort as he kicked off Microsoft’s annual conference for software developers. The Build conference in Seattle features sessions on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, internet-connected devices and virtual reality. It comes as Microsoft faces off with Amazon and Google to offer internet-connected services to businesses and organizations.

The conference and the new initiative offer Microsoft an opportunity to emphasize its philosophy of building AI for social good. The focus could help counter some of the ethical concerns that have risen over AI and other fast-developing technology, including the potential that software formulas can perpetuate or even amplify gender and racial biases.

The five-year accessibility initiative will include seed grants for startups, nonprofit organizations and academic researchers, as well as deeper investments and expertise from Microsoft researchers.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company hopes to empower people by accelerating the development of AI tools that provide them with more opportunities for independence and employment.

“It may be an accessibility need relating to vision or deafness or to something like autism or dyslexia,” Smith said in an interview. “There are about a billion people on the planet who have some kind of disability, either permanent or temporary.”

Those people already have “huge potential,” he said, but “technology can help them accomplish even more.”

Microsoft has already experimented with its own accessibility tools, such as a “Seeing AI” free smartphone app using computer vision and narration to help people navigate if they’re blind or have low vision. Nadella introduced the app at a previous Build conference. Microsoft’s translation tool also provides deaf users with real-time captioning of conversations.

“People with disabilities are often overlooked when it comes technology advances but Microsoft sees this as a key area to address concerns over the technology and compete against Google, Amazon and IBM,” said Nick McQuire, an analyst at CCS Insight.

Smith acknowledged that other firms, especially Apple and Google, have also spent years doing important work on accessibility. He said Microsoft’s accessibility fund builds on the model of the company’s AI for Earth initiative, which launched last year to jumpstart projects combating climate change and other environmental problems.

The idea, Smith said, is to get more startups excited about building tools for people with disabilities — both for the social good and for their large market potential.

Other announcements at the Build conference include partnerships with drone company DJI and chipmaker Qualcomm. More than 6,000 people are registered to attend, most of them developers who build apps for Microsoft’s products.

Facebook had its F8 developers’ gathering last week. Google’s I/O conference begins Tuesday. Apple’s takes place in early June.

This is the second consecutive year that Microsoft has held its conference in Seattle, not far from its Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
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A new phone app could be a “game-changer” in the fight against child marriage in Bangladesh, where more than half of all girls are married before they are 18, children’s charity Plan International said on Monday.

The impoverished South Asian nation has one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage, according to UNICEF, despite laws that ban girls under 18 and men under 21 from marrying.

The mobile app being rolled out by Plan and the Bangladesh government aims to prevent it by allowing matchmakers, priests and officers who register marriages to verify the bride and groom’s ages through a digital database.

“If we could get the people involved in the initial stages of marriage on side as well, then there would be no one to solemnize, no one to register and no one to arrange a marriage for a child,” said Soumya Guha, a director at Plan Bangladesh.

“The app could be the game-changer that we need,” he said, adding that it stopped 3,750 underage marriages during a six-month trial.

Campaigners say girls who marry young often drop out of school and face a greater risk of rape, domestic abuse and forced pregnancies, which may put their lives in danger.

The app, which has an offline text messaging version for rural areas, gives the user access to a database that stores a unique identification number linked to the three documents.

When one of the numbers is entered, it shows “proceed” if the person is of legal age and a red “warning!” if not.

All marriages in Bangladesh must be legally registered within 30 days of the ceremony, but many are not.

A hard copy of a birth certificate, school leaving document or national identity card works as age proof, but often parents who want to marry off their children often forge them.

The charity is training 100,000 officiants about the ill effects of child marriage and how to use the app, which it hopes to roll out nationally by August.

“I believe this app will help us achieve the commitment by our honorable prime minister to eliminate child marriage before 2041,” Muhammad Abdul Halim, a director general at the prime minister’s office, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

However, Supreme Court lawyer Sara Hossain said more needed to be done to educate girls about their right to consent and plug legal loopholes.

“People might just avoid the registration because it is not required for validity of marriage and there is only a minor penalty for not registering. It’s not a big thing,” Hossain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We would be mistaken to think that something like this will be a magic bullet solution.”
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A new invention is a result of a joint effort by artists and scientists. Computerized art robots can memorize artist’s strokes and effects and reproduce them as needed. They can perform at the artist’s direction, cover large surfaces and make precision painting easier and quicker. Old masters often used their students to help paint a large canvas and ease the tediousness of repetitive strokes. As VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, that work too can now be taken over by robots.
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The first railroad appeared in the United States back in 1828. Located entirely in the state of Maryland, it was only 25 kilometers long. Today, American trains look very different — modern, fast and comfortable. VOA’s Maxim Moskalkov follows the evolution of rail travel in the U.S.
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Digital civil rights groups are writing to Congress next week to ask for help persuading internet giants Google and Amazon to reverse decisions they made that will make it harder for people to get around censorship controls worldwide.

At issue is the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between governments, such as Russia, Iran and China, and internet and messaging communications technology like Telegram and Signal, which are used to communicate outside of censors’ oversight.

In this case, encrypted messaging apps, such as Telegram and Signal, have been using a digital disguise known as “domain fronting.”

​Disguising the final destination

As the 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.

Russia crackdown

Russia did just that in mid-April when it sought to crack down on Telegram.

But 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 press release announcing better domain protections. Neither Google or Amazon responded for a request to comment.

Companies vote against being a disguise

Matthew Rosenfield, a co-author of the Signal protocol, 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

The letter being sent to Congress will remind members of their stated support for encrypted communication tools and call on them to contact the technology giants to change their decision, according to sources.

Access Now, a digital-rights organization based in New York, identified about a dozen “human rights enabling technologies” that rely on domain fronting using Google.

Peter Micek, general counsel of Access Now, said in a statement that Google and Amazon have an obligation “to meet their human rights responsibilities and protect users at risk.”

“The market leaders that have the resources to fight for human rights must be just that — leaders,” he said.
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Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk acknowledged on Friday that it was “foolish” of him to snub analysts on a conference call earlier in the week, but further needled Wall Street with a series of accusatory tweets.

In a post-earnings call on Wednesday, Musk refused to answer questions from analysts on the electric vehicle maker’s capital requirements, saying “boring, bonehead questions are not cool,” before turning questions over to a little known investor who runs HyperChange, a YouTube investment channel.

The outspoken performance shocked many analysts, sparked a fall in Tesla’s share price and led some to question whether Musk’s behavior could risk the company’s ability to raise capital.

In early-morning tweets on Friday, Musk said the two analysts he cut off — RBC Capital Markets’ Joseph Spak and Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi — “were trying to justify their Tesla short thesis.”

‘Shorting’ means they were betting the stock would fall, but the two have ‘hold’ or ‘neutral’ ratings on the stock, according to Thomson Reuters data. “I should have answered their questions live. It was foolish of me to ignore them,” Musk tweeted.

The two analysts were not immediately available for a comment.

The spat comes at a crunch time for Tesla, when it is struggling to ramp up production of its Model 3 sedan, on which its profitability depends. It is trying to build 5,000 of the vehicles per week by the end of June and overcome manufacturing hurdles that have delayed its rollout.

Although Musk has insisted the company neither needs nor wants new funding, many believe the company will seek to raise more capital by the end of 2018.

Tesla’s stock recovered a little on Friday, up 2.4 percent at $291 in early afternoon trade. But short sellers, who shorted nearly 400,000 shares on Thursday, doubled that amount on Friday, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners.

“Musk’s meltdown will change Tesla’s ability to raise capital when he needs it with a sector of investors,” said Eric Schiffer, chief executive of the Patriarch Organization, a Los Angeles-based private-equity firm.

“At this critical point, he needs to reinforce confidence, not raise a narrative of him as unstable and whose rational side is lost in space,” said Schiffer, who does not hold Tesla shares.

Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois said the underlying business fundamentals were more important in any capital raise, although “management credibility” was also a factor.

“That has an impact but it’s not something that will prevent them from raising capital,” Houchois said.

Nord LB analyst Frank Schwope said that Musk’s refusal to answer questions or receive criticism was “not very clever” but added that his ability to find new money was still intact.

‘Dry’ questions

The questions Musk cut short on Wednesday related to Model 3 reservations and capital requirements.

“The ‘dry’ questions were not asked by investors, but rather by two sell-side analysts who were trying to justify their Tesla short thesis. They are actually on the opposite side of investors,” Musk tweeted on Friday.

“HyperChange represented actual investors, so I switched to them,” he wrote. On the call, he devoted 23 minutes to 25-year-old Tesla investor, Galileo Russell, who runs HyperChange TV.

At least three brokerages cut price targets on the stock following the call.

Sacconaghi, one of the rebuffed analysts, wrote: “We do worry that such theatrics will unnecessarily undermine investor confidence in Tesla’s outlook.”

Sacconaghi has a price target of $265 on Tesla’s stock and Spak lowered his target to $280 from $305 on Thursday. Tesla’s median Wall Street price target is $317.
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Google said Friday in a blog post that it would do a better job of verifying the identity of political ad buyers in the U.S. by requiring a government-issued ID and other key information.

Google will also require ad buyers to disclose who is paying for the ad. Google executive Kent Walker repeated a pledge he made in November to create a library of such ads that will be searchable by anyone. The goal is to have this ready this summer.

Google’s blog post comes short of declaring support for the Honest Ads Act, a bill that would impose disclosure requirements on online ads, similar to what’s required for television and other media. Facebook and Twitter support that bill.

Google didn’t immediately provide details on how the ID verification would work for online ad buys.
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Bombs. Destruction. Chaos. This is what it’s like to be in Syria.

It’s a part of the world many will never visit, but a virtual reality experience called “Hero,” puts viewers on the ground there. 

“Hero” was part of the Immersive program at the recent Tribeca Film Festival in New York, where it won an award for its innovative approach to storytelling. More than 30 virtual reality and augmented reality projects were on display at the event.

Not a ‘lean back’ experience

Virtual reality fans say they love the technology for its ability to transport and immerse them in new worlds. More and more, these experiences are becoming physical and interactive, not just a “lean back” experience where the viewer watches passively.

For “Hero,” viewers don a high resolution headset by StarVR and an HP Z VR backpack, a wearable computer that allows for an untethered, free-roaming VR experience.

In real life, users are instructed to close their eyes as a guide leads them by the hand into a room constructed with surfaces and objects that correspond to what they’ll see as the film starts.

When a bomb drops out of the sky, it’s not only the noise that’s unsettling, but the grit and gravel that they suddenly feel against their skin. As the dust settles, a young child’s voice faintly calls out for help. Participants can find and rescue her.

“That moment when a person realizes they can actually step around, they can actually lean on a thing, they can reach out and touch a wall, they can grab a piece of rebar, it’s a powerful moment,” said Brooks Brown, global director of Starbreeze Studios, one of the key collaborators behind “Hero.”

For a few unnerving minutes during the search for the child, disbelief is suspended. The combination of realistic graphics and participants’ ability to physically navigate the terrain makes it feel as if real lives might be in danger.

Different impact

When it comes to war-torn Syria, “We’ve seen movies about it and documentaries, and yet none of them have this same kind of impact” as a VR experience, said Navid Khonsari, founder of iNK Stories, which created “Hero.”

“When you’re fully encompassed in it, when everything is stripped away and you’re actually in that experience, then only can you acknowledge what’s actually taking place for others,” Khonsari said.

For Mathias Chelebourg, a virtual reality director, live VR experiences represent “the birth of a new format.” Chelebourg is the director of the VR experience “Jack: Part One,” which was also part of the virtual reality lineup at Tribeca.

Viewers are in the movie

In the retelling of the children’s fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk, viewers can pick up and move physical props and interact with live actors who are outfitted with motion capture markers. Cameras track the markers and movements are rendered simultaneously in virtual reality.

With a format that mixes reality and fantasy, it can take some getting used to, even for the actors.

“Some people don’t dare to move, to touch or just, respond,” said Maria McClurg, one of the actresses in Jack. “Some people give me a really hard time,” she added. “As a performer, it’s always interesting. And at the same time you’re like, ‘How am I going to get through this?’”
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Virtual reality experiences are becoming more physical and more interactive. No longer just a “lean back” experience, the immersive technology is taking viewers out of the living room and into entirely new worlds. At the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, VOA’s Tina Trinh met with creators who are pushing the boundaries of the digital and physical divide.
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The data firm at the center of Facebook’s privacy scandal is declaring bankruptcy and shutting down.

In a statement, Cambridge Analytica says it has been “vilified” for actions it says are both legal and widely accepted as part of online advertising. The firm says the media furor stripped it of its customers and suppliers, forcing it to close.

Cambridge Analytica has been linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The British firm suspended CEO Alexander Tayler in April amid investigations. 

Cambridge Analytica sought information on Facebook to build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate. The company was able to amass the database quickly with the help of an app that appeared to be a personality test. The app collected data on tens of millions of people and their Facebook friends, even those who did not download the app themselves.

Facebook has since tightened its privacy restrictions. Cambridge has denied wrongdoing, and Trump’s campaign has said it didn’t use Cambridge’s data.

The firm has said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation into Facebook and how it uses data. But U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in March the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.

Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.

 
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Facebook has enlisted two outside advisers to examine how it treats underrepresented communities and whether it has a liberal bias.

Civil rights leader Laura Murphy will examine civil rights issues, along with law firm Relman, Dane & Colfax. Former Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, will examine concerns about a liberal bias on Facebook.

The moves come as Facebook deals with a privacy scandal related to access of tens of millions of users’ data by a consulting firm affiliated with President Donald Trump. CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on the issue last month. Facebook also has faced criticisms over a deluge of fake news and Russian election interference.

The audits were reported earlier by Axios. Facebook says the feedback will help Facebook improve and serve users more effectively.

 
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If everything goes according to the plan, the European Space Agency, ESA, will launch its first robotic exploration vehicle to Mars in 2020. A prototype of the advanced 6-wheeled rover is now undergoing various tests in order to prove that it will be able to withstand the extreme environmental conditions on Mars. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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When Andrew Chamberlain started in his job four years ago in the research group at jobs website Glassdoor.com, he worked in a programming language called Stata.

Then it was R. Then Python. Then PySpark.

“My dad was a commercial printer and did the same thing for 30 years. I have to continually stay on stuff,” said Chamberlain, who is now the chief economist for the site. Chamberlain already has one of the jobs of the future — a perpetually changing, shifting universe of work that requires employees to be critical thinkers and fast on their feet. Even those training for a specific field, from plumbing to aerospace engineering, need to be nimble enough to constantly learn new technologies and apply their skills on the fly.

When companies recruit new workers, particularly for entry-level jobs, they are not necessarily looking for knowledge of certain software. They are looking for what most consider soft skills: problem solving, effective communication and leadership. They also want candidates who show a willingness to keep learning new skills.

“The human being’s role in the workplace is less to do repetitive things all the time and more to do the non-repetitive tasks that bring new kinds of value,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce in the United States.

So, while specializing in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field can seem like an easy path to a lucrative first job, employers are telling colleges: You are producing engineers, but they do not have the skills we need.

It is “algorithmic thinking” rather than the algorithm itself that is relevant, said Carnevale.

Finding gems

Out in the field, Marie Artim is looking for potential. As vice president of talent acquisition for car rental firm Enterprise Holdings Inc, she sets out to hire about 8,500 young people every year for a management training program, an enormous undertaking that has her searching college campuses across the country.

Artim started in the training program herself, 26 years ago, as did the Enterprise chief executive, and that is how she gets the attention of young adults and their parents who scoff at a future of renting cars.

According to Artim, the biggest deficit in the millennial generation is autonomous decision-making. They are used to being structured and “syllabused,” she said.

To get students ready, some colleges, and even high schools, are working on building critical thinking skills.

For three weeks in January at the private Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, students either get jobs or go on trips, which gives them a better sense of what they might do in the future.

At Texas State University in San Marcos, meanwhile, students can take a marketable-skills master class series.

Case studies

One key area zeroes in on case studies that companies are using increasingly to weed out prospects. This means being able to answer hypothetical questions based on a common scenario the employer faces, and showing leadership skills in those scenarios.

The career office at the university also focuses on interview skills. Today, that means teaching kids more than just writing an effective resume and showing up in smart clothes.

They have to learn how to perform best on video and phone interviews, and how to navigate gamification and artificial intelligence bots that many companies are now using in the recruiting process.

Norma Guerra Gaier, director of career services at Texas State, said her son just recently got a job and not until the final step did he even have a phone interview.

“He had to solve a couple of problems on a tech system, and was graded on that. He didn’t even interface with a human being,” Guerra Gaier said.

When companies hire at great volume, they try to balance the technology and face-to-face interactions, said Heidi Soltis-Berner, evolving workforce talent leader at financial services firm Deloitte.

Increasingly, Soltis-Berner does not know exactly what those new hires will be doing when they arrive, aside from what business division they will be serving.

“We build flexibility into that because we know each year there are new skills,” she said.
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With a smile that suggested the hard part of an “intense year” might be behind him, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed developers Tuesday and pledged the company would build its way out of its worst-ever privacy debacle.

It was a clear and deliberate turning point for a company that’s been hunkered down since mid-March. For first time in several weeks, Zuckerberg went before a public audience and didn’t apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political data-mining firm accessed data from as many as 87 million Facebook accounts for the purpose of influencing elections. Or for a deluge of fake news and Russian election interference.

Instead, Zuckerberg sought to project a “we’re all in this together” mood that was markedly different from his demeanor during 10 hours of congressional testimony just a few weeks ago. His presentation also marked a major change for the company, which seems relieved to be largely done with the damage control that has preoccupied it for the past six weeks.

On Tuesday, speaking in San Jose at the F8 gathering of software developers, Zuckerberg said to cheers that the company was reopening app reviews, the process that gets new and updated apps on its services, which Facebook had shut down in late March as a result of the privacy scandal.

Investing in security

Zuckerberg then vowed to “keep building,” and reiterated that Facebook was investing a lot in security and in strengthening its systems so they can’t be exploited to meddle with elections, including the U.S. midterms later this year. The company had previously announced almost all of those measures.

“The hardest decision I made wasn’t to invest in safety and security,” Zuckerberg said. “The hard part was figuring out how to move forward on everything else we need to do, too.”

He also unveiled a new feature that gives users the ability to clear their browsing history from the platform, much the same way people can do in web browsers. Then Zuckerberg returned to techno-enthusiasm mode.

Facebook executives trotted out fun features, most notably a new dating service aimed at building “meaningful, long-term relationships,” in a swipe at sites like Tinder. After Facebook announced its entry into the online dating game, shares of Tinder owner Match Group Inc. plummeted 22 percent.

Poking fun at himself, Zuckerberg unveiled a “Watch Party” feature that gives users the ability to watch video together — such as, he suggested, “your friend testifying before Congress.” Up flashed video of Zuckerberg’s own turn on Capitol Hill.

“Let’s not do that again soon,” he said.

Zuckerberg got big cheers when he announced that the thousands of people in attendance would get Facebook’s latest virtual reality headset — the portable $199 Oculus Go — for free. “Thank you!” he yelled.

Salute to WhatsApp CEO

Zuckerberg also went out of his way to thank Jan Koum, the co-founder and CEO of messaging platform WhatsApp, who announced his departure Tuesday. Facebook paid $19.3 billion for WhatsApp in 2014.

Despite reports that Koum left over concerns about how the company handles private data, Zuckerberg described him warmly as “a tireless advocate for privacy and encryption.”

Some analysts said Zuckerberg’s performance bolstered his chances of navigating the company out of its privacy scandal and overcoming concerns that it can’t handle its fake-news and election problems.

By leading off with Facebook’s security and privacy responsibilities, then continuing to extend Facebook’s ambitions to connect people in new ways, Zuckerberg successfully “walked the tightrope,” said Geoff Blaber, vice president of research and market analysis firm CCS Insight.

“F8 felt like the first time Facebook has been on the front foot since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke,” Blaber said.

Dan Goldstein, president of digital marketing agency Page 1 Solutions, said the company “is getting the message” about privacy.

“Time will tell, but this may help Facebook overcome the shadow of the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” he said. 
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Facebook will offer its first dating service, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, signaling the entry of the world’s largest social network into a growing market that sent shares of established dating site operators tumbling.

Zuckerberg told software developers at Facebook’s annual F8 conference that a dating service would be a natural fit for a company that specializes in connecting people online.

“There are 200 million people on Facebook that list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here,”

Zuckerberg said.

Facebook users have been able reveal on the network whether they are single or in a relationship since it first went live in February 2004.

Zuckerberg said Facebook was building the dating service with an emphasis on privacy, a sensitive subject for people who use online dating and for Facebook as the company reels from a scandal over its handling of personal information.

A dating service could increase the time people spend on Facebook and be a “big problem” for competitors such as Match Group, said James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Equities. Match, the owner of popular mobile dating app Tinder and OkCupid, calls itself the “global leader in dating” on its website.

“But the initial functionality looks relatively basic compared to those offered by Match’s services, so the impact Facebook has on the dating space will be down to how well it executes in this area,” Cordwell said.

Match Group shares fell more than 23 percent on the news of Facebook’s service. IAC, Match Group’s parent company, dropped more than 15 percent. Sparks Networks, owner of JDate and ChristianMingle, fell 7.3 percent.

A prototype displayed on screens at the F8 conference showed a heart shape at the top-right corner of the Facebook app.

Pressing on it will take people to their dating profile if they have set one up.

The prototype was built around local, in-person events, allowing people to browse other attendees and send them messages.

It did not appear to have a feature to “swipe” left or right on potential matches to signal interest, as Tinder and other established services have.

Dating service optional

The feature will be for finding long-term relationships, “not just hook-ups,” Zuckerberg said. It will be optional and will launch soon, he added, without giving a specific day.

Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said in a separate presentation that the company would share more over the next few months.

Cox said he had been thinking about a dating feature on Facebook since 2005, when he joined the company about a year after its founding.

The company began seriously considering adding a dating service in 2016, when Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page a photo of a couple who had met on the network, Cox said.

Thousands of people responded to Zuckerberg’s post with similar stories about meeting partners on Facebook, Cox said.

“That’s what got the gears turning,” he said.

People will be able to start a conversation with a potential match by commenting on one of their photos, but for safety reasons that Cox did not specify, the conversations will be text-only, he said.

Facebook executives were quick to highlight other features for safety and privacy, noting that dating activity would not show up in Facebook’s centerpiece News Feed.

Concerns about privacy on Facebook have grown since the social network’s admission in March that the data of millions of users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

A dating service “represents a potentially challenging situation if Facebook can’t fulfill its promise to offer dating services in a privacy-protected and safe way,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer.

However, “I’m sure it will make good use of the data Facebook has been able to collect about its users,” she added.

‘Clear history’

Zuckerberg also said on Tuesday that Facebook was building a new privacy control called “clear history” to allow users to delete browsing history, similar to the option of clearing cookies in a browser.
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Taiwan is becoming the next battleground for the world’s top offshore wind developers as they seek a foothold in Asia for a technology that has been expanding fast in Europe.

Taiwan announced results Monday of its first major offshore wind farm auction that aims to add 3.8 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to its existing network of just 8 megawatts (MW).

The island’s offshore wind market is expected to expand to 5.5 GW by 2025, and the government aims to invest $23 billion on onshore and offshore wind projects by 2025, law firm Jones Day says.

Taiwan is making a big push to attract investments in renewable technology as it phases out nuclear power by 2025, after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan highlighted the risks of using nuclear energy in a region prone to earthquakes.

For developers in Europe, where expanding offshore wind projects particularly in the North Sea has driven down costs, Taiwan is seen as a route into Asian markets, such as Japan and South Korea, where the technology is still barely used.

Denmark’s Orsted and Germany’s wpd were Monday’s biggest winners, securing contracts to install 900 MW and 1 GW of capacity, respectively.

“We see Taiwan as a stepping stone into Asia-Pacific,” said Matthias Bausenwein, the regional general manager for Orsted, the world’s largest owner of offshore wind power sites that was previously known as DONG Energy.

Taiwan’s auction drew bids from the world’s biggest international players, attracted by the island’s strong winds, a stable regulatory framework and the offer of 20-year power purchase agreements with a feed-in-tariff above European benchmarks.

“We have aggressive targets in Taiwan and, with things going on in China, South Korea and other markets, that amounts to it becoming the fastest-growing region globally,” said Bausenwein.

Falling costs

Offshore wind power is costlier than onshore projects or solar power, and still only accounts for about 3.5 percent of global wind energy capacity.

But Europe has been leading the way in using the technology, adding 3 GW last year and taking total offshore capacity to 19 GW, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.

Costs have plunged as a result. In last week’s auction in Germany, the world’s second-biggest offshore wind power market, some bids offered capacity with no subsidies. In Britain, the world’s biggest market, the cost of wind power fell below new nuclear generation for the first time last year.

This has been encouraged by an expanding regional grid, greater ability to manage variable wind power supplies and the growing scale of turbines, expected to have capacity of 10 to 15 MW each in two or three years, roughly twice as powerful as today.

Taiwan is not considering firms from China, the world’s third-biggest offshore market and which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory. Chung-Hsien Chen, director of the energy technology division at Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy, said Chinese bids were excluded “due to concerns of national security.”

Alongside Orsted and wpd, other bidders included Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Canada’s Northland Power, Yushan Energy, a subsidiary of Singapore based Enterprize Energy and Taiwanese firms China Steel Cooperation and Taipower.

After awarding 3.8 GW capacity Monday, a further 2 GW will be allocated through a competitive price tender this summer. Monday’s auction had included an assessment of factors such as the amount of local content included.

European firms want local suppliers to avoid the cost of shipping bulky equipment used in the turbines from Europe.

“The requirements for local content are increasing step by step,” said Andreas Nauen, offshore chief executive for Siemens Gamesa, adding some European equipment would initially be used.

Siemens Gamesa is working to develop the Port of Taichung as a regional hub and has signed non-binding agreements with some local partners that could provide gear locally.

MHI Vestas, a venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Danish turbine maker Vestas, is also considering developing local manufacturing.

“We want to produce locally because we want to be competitive,” the joint venture’s chief executive, Philippe Kavafyan, told Reuters.
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The head of popular messaging service WhatsApp is planning to leave the company because of a reported disagreement over how parent company Facebook is using customers’ personal data. 

WhatsApp billionaire chief executive Jan Koum wrote in a Facebook post Monday, “It’s been almost a decade since (co-founder) Brian (Acton) and I started WhatsApp, and it’s been an amazing journey with some of the best people. But it is time for me to move on,” he said.

Koum did not give a date for his departure.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Koum is stepping down because of disagreements over Facebook’s attempts to use the personal data of WhatsApp customers, as well as efforts to weaken the app’s encryption. 

Action left the company last fall and since then has become a vocal critic of Facebook, recently endorsing a #DeleteFacebook social media campaign.

The Post, citing people familiar with internal WhatsApp discussions, said Koum was worn down by the differences in approach to privacy and security between WhatsApp and Facebook.

When WhatsApp agreed to the company’s sale to Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion, it said WhatsApp would remain an independent service and would not share its data with Facebook. 

However, 18 months later, Facebook pushed WhatsApp to change its terms of service to give the social network access to the personal data of WhatsApp users. 

WhatsApp is the largest messaging service in the world with 1.5 billion monthly users. However, Facebook has been struggling to find ways to make enough money from the app to prove its investment was worth the cost. 

Facebook has faced intense criticism since March when news broke that the personal data of millions of Facebook users had been harvested without their knowledge by Cambridge Analytica, a British voter profiling company that U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign hired to target likely supporters in 2016.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress earlier this month and apologized for inadequately protecting the data of millions of social media platform users. 

Facebook also recently announced it would allow all its users to shut off third-party access to their apps and said it would set up “firewalls” to ensure users’ data was not unwittingly transmitted by others in their social network.

Some members of Congress said Facebook’s actions to rectify the situation did not go far enough and have called for greater regulation of the internet and social media.
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Thousands of people marched through Moscow, throwing paper planes and calling for authorities to unblock the popular Telegram instant messaging app on Monday.

Protesters chanted slogans against President Vladimir Putin as they launched the planes – a reference to the app’s logo.

“Putin’s regime has declared war on the internet, has declared war on free society… so we have to be here in support of Telegram,” one protester told Reuters.

Russia began blocking Telegram on April 16 after the app refused to comply with a court order to grant state security services access to its users’ encrypted messages.

Russia’s FSB Federal Security service has said it needs access to some of those messages for its work, that includes guarding against militant attacks.

In the process of blocking the app, state watchdog Roskomnadzor also cut off access to a slew of other websites.

Telegram’s founder, Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, called for “digital resistance” in response to the decision and promised to fund anyone developing proxies and VPNs to dodge the block.

More than 12,000 people joined the march on Monday, said White Counter, a volunteer group that counts people at protests.

“Thousands of young and progressive people are currently protesting in Moscow in defense of internet freedom,” Telegram’s Durov wrote on his social media page.

“This is unprecedented. I am proud to have been born in the same country as you. Your energy changes the world,” Durov wrote.

Telegram has more than 200 million global users and is ranked as the world’s ninth most popular mobile messaging service.

Iran’s judiciary has also banned the app to protect national security, Iranian state TV reported on Monday.
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