YCLOAK

Facebook opens its new London office on Monday and said it would add 800 more jobs in the capital next year, underlining its commitment to Britain as the country prepares for Brexit.

The social network said more than half of the people working at the site in central London will focus on engineering, making it Facebook’s biggest engineering hub outside the United States.

It will also house Facebook’s first in-house start-up incubator, called LDN_LAB, designed to help kick start fledgling British digital businesses.

EMEA vice president Nicola Mendelsohn said Facebook was more committed than ever to the U.K. and supporting the growth of the country’s innovative start-ups.

“The U.K.’s flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places in the world to build a tech company,” she said.

“And we’ve built our company here – this country has been a huge part of Facebook’s story over the past decade, and I look forward to continuing our work to achieve our mission of bringing the world closer together.”

The new jobs, which come 10 years after the company set up its first London office, will take Facebook’s total British workforce to more than 2,300 by the end of 2018, it said.

Facebook, along with other U.S. digital giants including Google and Amazon, has not been deterred from expanding in London by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

It announced the new headquarters last year, shortly after Google said it was building a new hub in the city that will be able to accommodate more than 7,000 employees in total.

Facebook’s new office in the capital’s West End, designed by architect Frank Gehry, will house engineers, developers, marketing and sales teams working on products like Workplace, its business product which was built in London, it said.
…

Fracking, at least in the U.S., has changed the country’s energy outlook. It has cut the cost of fossil fuels and turned the U.S. into a net exporter of fuel. But fracking hasn’t had the same effect in Britain, and geologists say the island nation’s unique geology means fracking will never solve their energy problems. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Toyota Motor Corporation recently unveiled a high-tech personal assistant at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo. It mimics the moves of the user, which Toyota says may turn this machine into a caregiver for the elderly. Arash Arabasadi reports.
…

Britain’s cybersecurity agency has told government departments not to use antivirus software from Moscow-based firm Kaspersky Lab amid concerns about Russian snooping.

Ciaran Martin, head of the National Cyber Security Centre, said “Russia is acting against the U.K.’s national interest in cyberspace.”

In a letter dated Friday to civil service chiefs, he said Russia seeks “to target U.K. central government and the U.K.’s critical national infrastructure.” He advised that “a Russia-based provider should never be used” for systems that deal with issues related to national security.

The agency said it’s not advising the public at large against using Kaspersky’s popular antivirus products.

Martin says British authorities are holding talks with Kaspersky about developing checks to prevent the “transfer of U.K. data to the Russian state.”

Kaspersky has denied wrongdoing and says it doesn’t assist Russian cyberespionage efforts.

In September, the U.S. government barred federal agencies from using Kaspersky products because of concerns about the company’s ties to the Kremlin and Russian spy operations.

News reports have since linked Kaspersky software to an alleged theft of cybersecurity information from the U.S. National Security Agency.

Britain has issued increasingly strong warnings about Russia’s online activity. Martin said last month that Russian hackers had targeted the U.K.’s media, telecommunications and energy sectors in the past year.

U.S. authorities are investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and some British lawmakers have called for a similar probe into the U.K.’s European Union membership referendum.

Prime Minister Theresa May said last month that Russia was “weaponizing information” and meddling in elections to undermine the international order.
…

The world’s largest lithium ion battery has begun providing electricity into the power grid in South Australia.  The project is a collaboration between the state government, American firm Tesla, and Neoen, a French energy company. 

Tesla boss Elon Musk, who was not in attendance at the switch-on, had boldly promised to build the battery in South Australia within 100 days – a pledge that has been fulfilled.  The 100-megawatt battery was officially activated Friday.  Musk has said it was three times more powerful than the world’s next biggest battery, and promised to deliver it for free had it not been built on schedule.

The South Australian state government hopes the project can prevent power outages because it can rapidly deploy electricity when it is most needed and reduce prices.

Last September, South Australia suffered a state-wide power outage when storms damaged the electricity network.

State premier Jay Weatherill believes the new battery will guarantee energy supplies.

“People were making fun of South Australia for its leadership in renewable energy and blaming it for the black-out,” said Weatherill. “That, of course, has now been debunked as a myth.  We now know that our leadership in renewable energy is not only leading the nation but leading the world, and we are more than happy to supply our beautiful renewable energy stored in a battery to help out the national electricity market.”

Located near Jamestown, about 200 kilometers north of Adelaide, the Tesla-built 100 megawatt lithium ion battery is connected to a wind farm run by French energy company Neoen.

The farm has 99 wind turbines and generates electricity that can be stored in the battery to serve 30,000 people for about an hour.  In a statement, the California-based firm said the project in South Australia showed “that a sustainable, effective energy solution is possible”.

Critics of the battery have said the technology’s potential has been exaggerated.

The bulk of Australia’s electricity is still generated by coal, and the nation is one of the world’s worst per capita emitters of greenhouses gases.

 
…

More than a century after being unearthed in Egypt, a nearly 2000-year-old mummy is giving scientists, museum curators and medical researchers a unique look at the ancient world. Faith Lapidus reports.
…

From cellphones and cars, to televisions and refrigerators, more devices are being connected to the Internet.

This network of connected devices is called the “Internet of Things” (IoT). Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States, is planning to use the prevalence of these IoT devices as a testing ground for becoming a city of the future.

“By putting computers in parking meters, you already have computers in your car, and you have computers in the street lights. The ability to connect them to the Internet of Things allows a better way for your car to know where parking spots are available, allows better for it to communicate when street lights should turn green to maximize traffic flow,” said Ted Ross, chief information officer for the city of Los Angeles.

WATCH: Los Angeles About to Embark on a Smart City Experiment

What is I3? 

Los Angeles is a part of a consortium called “I3” that includes the University of Southern California (USC) and tech companies. This partnership is developing and will soon test an Internet of Things system. It aims to connect sensors placed around the city with other connected devices to make L.A. a smart city.

It is an endeavor that will also rely on residents’ participation, said Raman Abrol of Tech Mahindra. It is one of the I3 tech companies and will provide a platform for an online marketplace called Community Action Platform for Engagement or CAPE.

“Communities can collaborate with businesses and cities and share data in a manner where privacy’s enforced,” Abrol said.

In the online marketplace, neighborhoods could be shopping for a cheaper source of renewable energy or water filtration system. Companies can then compete for their business.

CAPE is just one of the many elements in the I3 system that will make up the Internet of Things network in Los Angeles.

“The I3 is an Internet of Things integrator. Through I3, we’re (Los Angeles) working with the University of Southern California and vendor partners to aggregate the data and give us a better ability to make decisions, decisions to maximize traffic flow, decisions to help reduce crime, decisions to help improve business prosperity,” Ross said.

Privacy, security concerns

As connected devices become more ubiquitous and the flow of personal data increases, privacy and security concerns will be more scrutinized.

“I think that this is one piece of a huge emerging problem, of figuring out how we protect privacy and limit government power in an era of rapidly expanding information availability and rapidly expanding data processing abilities. So it’s not just that there are more and more data points that are available for the government to look at. It is also that we are rapidly expanding our ability to analyze data,” said Stanford University Law School professor, David Alan Sklansky.

Sklansky has been closely following a U.S. Supreme Court case, Carpenter v. the United States, which examines whether police need a warrant to obtain cellphone location information. Sklansky said the decision from the case will impact other applications of technology and data in the modern age.

“The more powerful the technology, the more powerful the unintended consequences,” said Yannis Yortsos, dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

“How do you make sure to possibly regulate this because there has to be regulation so that they have legal and ethical issues taken into consideration as well,” Yortsos added.

Choose to connect

In Los Angeles, people will largely choose whether they want to provide data to the city.

“For someone who’s going to be able to let’s say, connect through their smart phone or through their vehicle, it’s extremely important that they agree and they consent to such matters,” Ross said.

While there was an initial forecast of a big demand in the Internet of Things, over time, the demand dropped, said Jerry Power, executive director of the USC Institute for Communication Technology Management.

“So we started looking at it and trying to understand why and what the problems were,” he said. “We looked at it from a perspective of privacy from the users’ standpoint. We realized privacy was an important issue. We realized that trust was an important issue, and we realized that incentives (was) an issue in the process as well.” 

Power continued, “what incentive has to go back to the users to get them to opt-in? The level of incentive depends on how much the user of the data, who wants the data, how much they disclose about what they’re going to do with the information and how well-trusted that person is.” 

“The exchange of data.” Power added, “if you think about it, it almost becomes like a form of currency, and it’s part of a transaction.”

The smart city experiment will begin at the University of Southern California and expand to the city of Los Angeles.

Some of what works from the program will be be made available for other cities to use.
…

Most of us would be shocked and afraid if a doctor told us we needed brain surgery. But imagine how much calmer you’d be if you could get inside your skull to navigate the path the surgeon will take? Technology can now make that happen. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us to the Stanford Medical Center in Silicon Valley to see how virtual reality can get patients into their own heads.
…

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case about privacy and technology, Los Angeles, California, is becoming a city that is ever more connected. From cell phones to televisions to refrigerators, more devices are being connected to the Internet. L.A. wants to use the prevalence of these “smart” devices to help the city run more efficiently, turning it into a city of the future. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details of the project and the security and privacy implications of a more connected city.
…

The world’s biggest lithium-ion battery has plugged into an Australian state grid, delivering on a promise by Tesla Inc. chief executive Elon Musk.

Musk said he would build the 100-megawatt battery within 100 days of contracts for the project being signed at the end of September or hand it over to the South Australia state government for free.

South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said Friday the battery had begun dispatching power to the state grid Thursday, providing 70 megawatts as temperatures rose above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

The official launch came a little more than 60 days after the deal was signed. But crucially, it came on the first day of the Australian summer, the season when power usage soars because of the use of air conditioning.
…

Facebook Inc. said on Wednesday it was temporarily disabling the ability of advertisers on its social network to exclude racial groups from the intended audience of ads while it studies how the feature could be used to discriminate.

Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, told African-American U.S. lawmakers in a letter that the company was determined to do better after a news report said Facebook had failed to block discriminatory ads.

The U.S.-based news organization ProPublica reported last week that, as part of an investigation, it had purchased discriminatory housing ads on Facebook and slipped them past the company’s review process, despite claims by Facebook months earlier that it was able to detect and block such ads.

“Until we can better ensure that our tools will not be used inappropriately, we are disabling the option that permits advertisers to exclude multicultural affinity segments from the audience for their ads,” Sandberg wrote in the letter to the Congressional Black Caucus, according to a copy posted online by ProPublica.

It is unlawful under U.S. law to publish certain types of ads if they indicate a preference based on race, religion, sex or certain classifications.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 2.1 billion users and $36 billion in annual revenue, has been on the defensive for its advertising practices.

In September, it disclosed the existence of Russia-linked ads that ran during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. The same month it turned off a tool, also reported by ProPublica, that had inadvertently let advertisers target based on people’s self-reported jobs, even if the job was “Jew hater.”

Sandberg said in the letter that advertisers who use Facebook’s targeting options to include certain races for ads about housing, employment or credit will have to certify to Facebook that they are complying with Facebook’s anti-discrimination policy and with applicable law.

Sandberg defended race- and culture-based marketing in general, saying it was a common and legitimate practice in the ad industry to try to reach specific communities.

U.S. Representative Robin Kelly of Illinois, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Facebook’s action was appropriate.

“When I first raised this issue with Facebook, I was disappointed,” Kelly, a Democrat, said in a statement. “When it became necessary to raise the issue again, I was irritated. Thankfully, we’ve been able to establish a constructive pipeline of communication that’s resulted in a positive step forward.”
…

Snapchat is separating what friends share and what media organizations publish in an attempt to appeal to a broader range of users.

The photo messaging app has not been gaining enough users, especially beyond its core of younger people. Parent company Snap Inc.’s stock is down sharply since its initial public offering earlier this year.

Users will now see two separate feeds — one from friends and one from publishers and non-friend accounts they follow. Before, Snapchat was mixing those posts, much the way Twitter, Facebook and other rivals continue to do. Snap hinted at changes three weeks ago, but didn’t provide details then.

CEO Evan Spiegel took a jab at rivals, writing that social media “fueled ‘fake news’” because of this content mixing.

 
…

The U.S. Supreme Court signaled Wednesday it may be open to new limits on the government’s ability to track someone’s movements by accessing data on that person’s cellphone.

A case before the high court could result in a landmark decision in the ongoing debate over civil liberties protections in an era of rapid technological change.

At issue is whether law enforcement will be able to access cellphone data that can reveal a person’s whereabouts without having to first obtain a court-issued search warrant.

The case stems from the conviction of Timothy Carpenter for a series of robberies back in 2010 and 2011. Prosecutors were able to obtain cellphone records that indicated his location over a period of months, information that proved crucial to his conviction.

Get a warrant

On Wednesday, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union argued that law enforcement should be required to obtain a court-ordered search warrant before obtaining such information.

They also argued that allowing law enforcement to access the cellphone data without a warrant would violate the prohibition on unreasonable search and seizures contained in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“It is impossible to go about our daily lives without leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs that reveal where we have been over time, what we have done, who we spent time with,” said ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, who spoke to reporters outside the Supreme Court following oral arguments. “It is time for the court, we think, to update Fourth Amendment doctrine to provide reasonable protections today.”

Some of the justices also raised concerns about privacy in the digital age.

“Most Americans, I think, still want to avoid Big Brother,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who often sides with the liberal wing of the court, said.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who often sides with conservatives on the court, said the central question was whether the cellphone information should be accessible to the government “without a warrant.”

Privacy versus security

Justice Department lawyers defended the process of obtaining the data without a court warrant, arguing that even though the technology has changed, the need to rapidly obtain such information for law enforcement has not. The government also argued that privacy rights are not at issue because law enforcement agencies can obtain information from telecommunications companies that record transactions with their customers.

Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy indicated they were open to the government’s position in the case.

Legal experts say whichever way the court eventually rules could have an enormous impact on privacy rights in the digital age.

“I don’t think that this is a world that anybody anticipated a couple of decades ago,” Stanford University law professor David Alan Sklansky said via Skype. “These new data capabilities are rapidly increasing the things that government can do for good and for evil. And figuring out how we allow the government to make full use of these new capabilities, without endangering political liberties and endangering the privacy that is necessary for us to have the kind of flourishing democratic social life we want, is a huge ongoing challenge.”

Sklansky added that the United States “has historically been a leader in thinking about privacy rights, particularly with regard to privacy from the government.”

And he predicted that other countries will be closely following the high court case as they wrestle with similar conflicts. “This is a global problem. Countries around the world are trying to figure out how to deal with it. I think that people in all democratic countries should care about how the United States winds up resolving this question,” he said.

Past rulings

Twice in recent years the Supreme Court has ruled in major cases related to privacy and technology and both times ruled against law enforcement.

The court ruled in 2012 that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a vehicle. And in 2014, the high court ruled that a warrant is required to search a cellphone seized during an arrest.

A decision in the current case, known as Carpenter v. U.S., is expected sometime before the end of June.
…

Bitcoin blasted past $11,000 to hit a record high for the sixth day in a row on Wednesday after gaining more than $1,000 in just 12 hours, stoking concerns that a rapidly swelling bubble could be set to burst in spectacular

fashion.

Here are some facts that you might not know about the largest and best-known cryptocurrency.

HOW MANY ARE THERE?

Bitcoin’s supply is limited to 21 million — a number that is expected to be reached around the year 2140. So far, around 16.7 million bitcoins have been released into the system, with 12.5 new ones released roughly every 10 minutes via a process called “mining,” in which a global network of computers competes to solve complex algorithms in reward for the new bitcoins.

ENERGY DRAIN

These mining computers require a vast amount of energy to run. A recent estimate by tech news site Motherboard put the energy cost of a single bitcoin transaction at 215 kilowatt-hours, assuming that there are around 300,000 bitcoin transactions per day. That’s almost enough energy as the average American household consumes in a whole week.

BITS OF BITCOIN

Bitcoin’s smallest unit is a Satoshi, named after the elusive creator of the cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto. One Satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin, making it worth around $0.0001 at current exchange rates.

BITCOIN BILLIONAIRES

Bitcoin has performed better than every central-bank-issued currency in every year since 2011 except for 2014, when it performed worse than any traditional currency. So far in 2017, it is up around 1000 percent. If you had bought $1,000 of bitcoin at the start of 2013 and had never sold any of it, you

would now be sitting on $80 million. Many people consider bitcoin to be more of a speculative instrument than a currency, because of its volatility, increasingly high transaction fees, and the fact that relatively few merchants accept it.

EXCHANGE HEISTS

More than 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, either by hackers or insiders. That’s a total of more than $10 billion at current exchange rates. Few have been recovered.

MYSTERY CREATOR

Despite many attempts to find the creator of bitcoin, and a number of claims, we still do not know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, or was. Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright convinced some prominent members of the bitcoin community that he was Nakamoto in May 2016, but he then refused to provide the evidence that most of the community said was necessary. It is not clear whether Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym, was a name used by a group of developers or by one individual. Nor is it clear that Nakamoto is still alive — the late computer scientist Hal Finney’s name is sometimes put forward. Developer Nick Szabo has denied claims that he is Nakamoto, as has tech entrepreneur Elon Musk more recently.

INFLATED CHINESE TRADING

Until earlier this year, it was thought that Chinese exchanges accounted for around 90 percent of trading volume. But it has become clear that some exchanges inflated their volumes through so-called wash trades, repeatedly trading nominal amounts of bitcoin back and forth between accounts. Since the Chinese authorities imposed transaction fees, Chinese trading volumes have fallen sharply, and now represent less than 20 percent, according to data from website Bitcoinity.

“MARKET CAP”

The total value of all bitcoins released into the system so far has now reached as high as $190 billion. That makes its total value — sometimes dubbed its “market cap” — greater than that of Disney, and bigger than the market cap of BlackRock and Goldman Sachs combined.

CRYPTO-RIVALS

Bitcoin is far from the only cryptocurrency. There are now well over 1,000 rivals, according to trade website Coinmarketcap. 

“SHORTING”

It is already possible to short bitcoin on a number of retail platforms and exchanges, via contracts for difference (CFDs), leveraged-up margin trading or by borrowing bitcoin from exchanges without leverage. But a number of big financial institutions — including CME Group, CBOE and Nasdaq — have

recently announced that they will offer bitcoin futures, which will open up the possibility of shorting the cryptocurrency to the mainstream professional investment universe.

Reporting by Jemima Kelly.
…

Facebook is giving disaster-relief organizations such as the Red Cross access to data on what users need and where they are as part of an expansion of tools available for relief and charitable giving.

While Facebook users can already see individual pleas and offers for help during a crisis, relief groups will get a broader set of data similar to what Facebook sees. That includes real-time maps showing where people need help.

Facebook is also expanding its fundraising tools beyond the U.S. and eliminating the fees it had been charging for people using its service to raise money for various causes.

The company announced the new features Wednesday during its Social Good Forum in New York, a gathering for nonprofits and others using the site.

 
…

India has strongly backed a free and open Internet, with its telecom regulator recommending stringent regulations on net neutrality – the concept of ensuring equal access to the web — saying it is important the Internet is not “cannibalized.”

India’s push for net neutrality comes at a time when the United States has unveiled plans to roll back regulations on it.

 “The core principles of net neutrality, non-discriminatory treatment of all content, we’ve upheld them,” R.S. Sharma, Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, TRAI, told reporters as he unveiled recommendations following a year-long debate.

These proposals seek to prohibit any service provider from blocking or offering preferential data speeds which essentially means that telecom providers cannot create “fast lanes” for higher paying customers or speed up or slow down websites and apps.

Equal access

Advocates of net neutrality, who have led an impassioned battle to ensure equal web access, welcomed the latest recommendations, saying that these would ensure that India is among countries with the strictest net neutrality rules in the world. Last year India put in place rules that prohibited telecoms from differential pricing.

India’s IT industry lobby, NASSCOM, in a statement, said the reaffirmation of net neutrality would be a “shot in the arm” for the country’s digital economy.

Nikhil Pahwa, one of the founders of Internet Freedom Foundation, which has campaigned for strict net neutrality, says open access to the Internet is critical for India.

“This is really, really essential. It is important for India because we are at the cusp of great Internet growth and innovation with lots of start-ups coming up and students and people developing things online,” he said.

India’s stand on net neutrality had last year effectively blocked efforts by Facebook to offer free but limited access to the web in the country’s fast growing Internet market.

The company said it wanted to expand access to the net in poor, rural areas but digital rights activists had slammed the plan as “poor Internet for poor people” and said it would create a “walled garden” in which Facebook would control the content it offered users. A Facebook spokesperson at the time said the company was disappointed by the outcome but would continue its efforts to “eliminate barriers.”

80 million users

Supporters of an open Internet point out that India’s experience demonstrates that net neutrality rules are not hampering access to the Internet in a country where many people are still not connected to the web.

“In the last year alone we have added about 80 million Internet users. There has been a substantial increase in Internet access in the country and it is increasing rapidly despite net neutrality. So this notion that net neutrality is adversarial to growth of Internet access or to sustainability of mobile operators is incorrect,” said Pahwa.

India’s position on ensuring an open Internet is in contrast to the U.S., where last week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled plans to repeal net neutrality rules, saying they discourage Internet service providers from making investments in their network to provide better and faster online access.

India’s strict net neutrality rules have disappointed private telecom providers, who had hoped for some leeway in the latest recommendations.

In an oblique reference to the U.S. position, a statement from the telecom industry’s main lobby group, the Cellular Operators Association of India, said that at a time when, globally, countries are adopting a more “market oriented, and market driven approach to net neutrality in order to not stifle development, innovation, proliferation and growth of the Internet, we believe TRAI should have adopted a light touch approach to net neutrality.”
…

Buildings could soon be able to convert the sun’s energy into electricity without the need for solar panels, thanks to innovative new technology. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
…

“Terzo Millennio”, or Third Millennium, is a new brand name in auto design from Italian carmaker Lamborghini. Company representatives introduced the design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Evgeny Maslov reports from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
…

Facebook said on Wednesday that it was removing 99 percent of content related to militant groups Islamic State and al-Qaida before being told of it, as it prepared for a meeting with European authorities on tackling extremist content online.

Eighty-three percent of “terror content” is removed within one hour of being uploaded, Monika Bickert, head of global policy management, and Brian Fishman, head of counterterrorism policy at Facebook, wrote in a blog post.

The world’s largest social media network, with 2.1 billion users, has faced pressure both in the United States and Europe to tackle extremist content on its platform more effectively.

In June, Facebook said it had ramped up use of artificial intelligence, such as image matching and language understanding, to identify and remove content quickly.

“It is still early, but the results are promising, and we are hopeful that AI (artificial intelligence) will become a more important tool in the arsenal of protection and safety on the internet and on Facebook,” Bickert and Fishman wrote.

“Today, 99 percent of the ISIS and al Qaeda-related terror content we remove from Facebook is content we detect before anyone in our community has flagged it to us, and in some cases, before it goes live on the site.”

ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

The blog post comes a week before Facebook and other social media companies such as Alphabet’s Google and Twitter meet with European Union governments and the EU executive to discuss how to remove extremist content and hate speech online.

“Deploying AI for counterterrorism is not as simple as flipping a switch. … A system designed to find content from one terrorist group may not work for another because of language and stylistic differences in their propaganda,” Facebook said.

The European Commission in September told social media firms to find ways to remove the content faster, including through automatic detection technologies, or face possible legislation forcing them to do so.
…

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, accused social media company Twitter of being politically biased  Tuesday as he defended his plan to roll back rules intended to ensure a free and open internet.

Pai, a Republican named by President Donald Trump to head up the FCC, unveiled plans last week to scrap the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access.

“When it comes to an open internet, Twitter is part of the problem,” Pai said. “The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”

He pointed to Twitter’s refusal to let Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, advertise a campaign video with an anti-abortion message.

“To say the least, the company appears to have a double standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users,” Pai said.

A spokesperson for Twitter said that at no time was Blackburn’s video censored and that her followers would have been able to still see it.

“Because advertisements are served to users who do not necessarily follow an account, we therefore have higher standards for their content,” the Twitter spokesperson said.

Twitter in October declined a campaign video advertisement by Blackburn, who announced she was running for the U.S. Senate, saying that a remark by Blackburn about opposing abortion was inflammatory. Twitter later reversed its decision.

Internet-based firms’ letter

Pai’s criticism came a day after Twitter and a number of other internet-based companies — including AirBnb, Reddit, Shutterstock, Tumblr and Etsy — sent a letter urging the FCC to maintain the net neutrality rules.

Trump is a prolific user of Twitter, often posting his thoughts on the news of the day. He used Twitter throughout his presidential campaign to circumvent traditional media and talk directly to voters.

Pai has also been a frequent user of the website — acknowledging during the speech, “I love Twitter” — to push his case in favor of the rule changes. On Tuesday afternoon, he even posted a link to his remarks critical of Twitter on his own Twitter account.

Following Pai’s remarks on Tuesday, at an event organized by the libertarian-leaning R Street Institute, two other FCC commissioners said they would support his proposal when they vote on December 14.

Big internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon Communications have favored a repeal of net neutrality. On the other side, websites such as Facebook and Alphabet’s Google have favored the rules.

The rules prohibit broadband providers from giving or selling access to speedy internet, essentially a “fast lane,” to certain internet services over others.

“So when you get past the wild accusations, fearmongering and hysteria, here’s the boring bottom line,” Pai said. “The plan to restore internet freedom would return us to the light touch, market-based approach under which the internet thrived.”
…

Inspired by the folding technique of origami, U.S. researchers said Monday they have crafted cheap, artificial muscles for robots that give them the power to lift up to 1,000 times their own weight.

The advance offers a leap forward in the field of soft robotics, which is fast replacing an older generation of robots that were jerky and rigid in their movements, researchers say.

“It’s like giving these robots superpowers,” said senior author Daniela Rus, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The muscles, known as actuators, are built on a framework of metal coils or plastic sheets, and each muscle costs around $1 to make, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed U.S. journal.

Their origami inspiration derives from a zig-zag structure that some of the muscles employ, allowing them to contract and expand as commanded, using vacuum-powered air or water pressure.

“The skeleton can be a spring, an origami-like folded structure, or any solid structure with hinged or elastic voids,” said the report.

Possible uses include expandable space habitats on Mars, miniature surgical devices, wearable robotic exoskeletons, deep-sea exploration devices or even transformable architecture.

“Artificial muscle-like actuators are one of the most important grand challenges in all of engineering,” said co-author Rob Wood, professor of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard University.

“Now that we have created actuators with properties similar to natural muscle, we can imagine building almost any robot for almost any task.”

Researchers built dozens of muscles, using metal springs, packing foam or plastic in a range of shapes and sizes.

They created “muscles that can contract down to 10 percent of their original size, lift a delicate flower off the ground, and twist into a coil, all simply by sucking the air out of them,” said the report.

The artificial muscles “can generate about six times more force per unit area than mammalian skeletal muscle can, and are also incredibly lightweight,” it added.

A .09-ounce (2.6-gram) muscle can lift an object weighing 6.6 pounds (three kilograms) “which is the equivalent of a mallard duck lifting a car.”

According to co-author Daniel Vogt, research engineer at the Wyss Institute, the vacuum-based muscles “have a lower risk of rupture, failure, and damage, and they don’t expand when they’re operating, so you can integrate them into closer-fitting robots on the human body.”

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
…

Startup founders, investors and tech leaders from around the world are heading to Hyderabad, India for the 8th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit, co-hosted by the U.S. and Indian governments.

Ivanka Trump, adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump and his daughter, will join host Prime Minister Narendra Modi in kicking off the three-day event, which will focus on women in business. More than 1,500 participants from 150 countries are expected at the event, which runs from November 28 through 30.

It had not been clear whether the Trump administration would continue the annual summit that was launched at the White House by the Obama administration in 2010. Trump has focused on domestic growth and U.S. job creation with an “America first” message.

But in June, Prime Minister Modi, while visiting the White House, announced that the two countries would co-host the summit.

America first, global partners

The gathering comes as the U.S. and India appear to be working to strengthen ties.

Having an “America first” economic policy is “not exclusive of collaboration, partnership and strong economic security and social relationships around the world,” said a senior administration official, speaking anonymously.

The summit is “a testament to the strong friendship between our two people and the growing economic and security partnership between our two nations,” said Ivanka Trump during a news conference this week.

Participants at this year’s summit will represent four industry sectors — energy and infrastructure, health care and life sciences, financial technology and digital economy, and media and entertainment.

Women in majority

In a first for the event, women will represent 52 percent of the attendees. Ten countries, including Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, are sending all female delegations.

In advance of the summit, the Indian state of Telangana, where Hyderabad is located, has been working to clean up the city, and there have been reports of beggars being relocated.

“We know that the Indian government is really firmly committed to raising individuals out of poverty and to create economic opportunity for its large and diverse population and we think they are making great progress,” said another U.S. official.
…

Rickey pushes himself up slowly, grabs the leash tethered to the side of his walker and takes a few steps. His dog, a terrier named Madman, perks his ears up and follows him. Rickey pauses and looks across the street at a rundown building.

“That was a Blues Club,” he says. “The police station was a jazz club. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, we had all them,” says the 69-year-old. 

But the far-off look in his eyes isn’t reality. The nightlife that once electrified the Tenderloin District of San Francisco is no more.

Illicit drugs are dealt openly on the streets of the Tenderloin, a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. The Tenderloin has become a corrupt, high-crime neighborhood with homeless people lining the sidewalks.

High crime rates

The Tenderloin Housing Clinic and San Francisco police statistics show violent crime in just one block of the Tenderloin “is 35 times higher than the rest of the city.” In addition, one aggravated assault occurs every day and robbery statistics are even higher.

But several years ago, trendy businesses priced out of an adjacent area, brought property in Tenderloin. The gentrification of the area is starting, but it’s created another problem. More homeless filter onto the streets as real estate gets more expensive.

“Oh, hey, there you are.” A guy wearing black-rimmed glasses and a deep purple T-shirt and purple vest greets Rickey.

Jacob Savage is a community activist who founded the group Concrn.

Savage, who describes himself as a “privileged white guy,” found common ground with Rickey — and other Tenderloin residents — by playing a trumpet. He’s never without the instrument.

The two men — who couldn’t look more different — harmonize together in a duet. Rickey’s fingers snap to the beat of Savage’s horn, then he starts belting out, “Stand by Me,” a popular ballad by Ben E. King. It’s a calm, fun moment in Savage’s otherwise serious day.

Building trust

As a 15-year-old growing up in wealthy, tech-savvy Palo Alto, California, Savage became a police cadet, and spent six years riding along on calls. But he says the criminal arrests and prison sentences didn’t satisfy his passion to help others.

A few years ago, Savage brought Concrn to the Tenderloin, through a mobile app and a team of responders.

Through the app, witnesses report incidents of mental crises with descriptions of the person, location and other notes.

“When you submit that,” says Savage, “it goes into our dispatching platform” where responders are assigned to the incident. 

They arrive on the scene and offer mental health or drug abuse assistance before police arrive to make arrests. Often that first meeting includes only a conversation if the Tenderloin resident refuses treatment. Savage is fine with that.

“It’s building trust and having a trusting relationship so when they are actually ready to get better, we’re there,” he says.

Each Concrn responder completes 20 hours of classroom instruction and 80 hours on the street. Fifty people have completed the training.

In the past few years, they’ve responded to 2,000 crises. The ultimate goal is to train residents as responders, so the community is self-sufficient and doesn’t need Concrn. But that intention is years away.

Carrying a trumpet

Savage gets a call for a crisis several blocks away and he walks there with his trumpet at his side.

When he arrives, police are still there, but no disturbance. He approaches some men and mentions Concrn.”What kind of music do you play?”they ask. He starts a jazz number and they smile. 

Then a police officer taps Savage on his shoulder. There’s a guy police can’t handle right now – could he see what he can do?

Savage walks over to a thin young man dressed in black wearing a magenta scarf around his head. He’s bopping and weaving and talking to no one in particular. Jacob interrupts the constant gibberish.”Hey brother, what’s your name buddy?”

“Eddie” is the only word Jacob can understand in the restless man’s ongoing monologue.

Savage thinks he’s on crystal meth and asks if him if he would like to go to a clinic.

Eddie keeps blabbering but doesn’t answer. Savage sees the cigarette lighter he’s holding and asks if he would like a cigarette. Savage contacts another Concrn responder and starts playing his trumpet as a beacon.

Savage explains, “Cigarettes are a last resort to use when people are going so fast we can’t understand them or they are panicking.”

David, the other responder, finds their location from the trumpet blast and hands Eddie the cigarette, which he half eats. 

Savage and David spend several hours with Eddie. They learn he’s a composer.

Eddie offers to sell Savage his black leather outfit. They part, hoping to meet on the street again. Maybe by then Eddie will be ready to accept Concrn’s intervention.
…

More than 18 percent of American adults experience mental illness in a given year. It is among the top three causes of homelessness in the US as about 25 percent of America’s homeless suffers from mental illness. In San Francisco, one man is trying to make a difference using technology and a trumpet. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has his story.
…