YCLOAK

Typewriter enthusiasts gather at an Albuquerque restaurant to experiment with vintage Smith Coronas. Fans in Boston kneel in a city square and type stories about their lives during a pro-immigration demonstration. A documentary on typewriters featuring Tom Hanks and musician John Mayer is set for release this summer.

In the age of smartphones, social media and hacking fears, vintage typewriters that once gathered dust in attics and basements are attracting a new generation of fans across the U.S.

From public “type-ins” at bars to street poets selling personalized, typewritten poems on the spot, typewriters have emerged as popular items with aficionados hunting for them in thrift stores, online auction sites and antique shops. Some buy antique Underwoods to add to a growing collection. Others search for a midcentury Royal Quiet De Luxe — like a model author Ernest Hemingway used — to work on that simmering novel.

The rescued machines often need servicing, leading fans to seek out the few remaining typewriter repair shops.

“I haven’t seen business like this in years,” said John Lewis, a typewriter repairman who has operated out of his Albuquerque shop for four decades. “There’s definitely a new interest, and it’s keeping me very busy.”

Renewed interest began around 10 years ago when small pockets of typewriter enthusiasts came together online, said Richard Polt, a philosophy professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati and author of The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century. Since then, the fan base has grown dramatically, and various public events have been organized around the typewriter.

“It’s beyond the phase where this is just a fad,” Polt said.

It’s almost impossible to gauge recent typewriter sales. Almost all of the original manufacturers are out of business or have been bought out and become different companies. Moonachie, New Jersey-based Swintec appears to be one of the last typewriter makers, selling translucent electronic machines largely to jails and prisons.

But operators of thrift stores and estate sales say typewriters are some of the quickest items to go.

“That’s part of the fun: the hunt,” said Joe Van Cleave, an Albuquerque resident who owns more than a dozen typewriters and runs a popular YouTube channel on restoring the machines. “Sometimes, like a little luck, you might find something from the 1920s in great condition.”

Link to the past

Doug Nichol, director of the upcoming documentary California Typewriter, said the interest stems from “digital burnout” and people wanting a connection to the past. That interest seems to transcend age, he said.

“Kids who grew up knowing only mobile phones and the computer are excited to see a letter typed with your own hand,” Nichol said. “It’s a one-on-one interaction that doesn’t get interrupted by Twitter alerts.”

In his film, set for release in August, Nichol interviews Hanks, who said he uses a typewriter almost every day to send memos and letters.

“I hate getting email thank-yous from folks,” Hanks says in the film. “Now, if they take 70 seconds to type me out something on a piece of paper and send to me, well, I’ll keep that forever. I’ll just delete that email.”

Hanks owns about 270 typewriters but often gives them to people who show an interest.

One way the typewriter craze is growing is through organized “type-ins” — meet-ups in public places where typewriter fans try different vintage machines. Such events have been held in Phoenix, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles and Cincinnati.

During a recent type-in at Albuquerque soul food restaurant Nexus Brewery, around three dozen fans took turns clicking the keys of an Italian-made 1964 Olivetti Lettera 32 and a 1947 Royal KMM, among others.

‘Real refreshing’

Rich Boucher spent most of his time on a 1960s-era Hermes 3000 crafting poetry.

“I haven’t used a typewriter in forever,” he said. “This is a real refreshing way to spend a summer afternoon.”

After finishing his work, Boucher grabbed his phone and sent a Facebook status update about the experience. He then started looking online for a Hermes 3000.

“That’s the typewriter I want,” he said. “I’m going to find one.”
…

Activists behind an app designed to assist doctors document evidence of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo aim to go beyond obtaining justice for rape victims and collect data that could help secure prosecutions for war crimes.

Developed by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), MediCapt allows clinicians to record medical examination results digitally and photograph victims’ injuries, store them online and send them directly to law enforcement officials and lawyers.

In a vast nation plagued by militant violence and poor roads that restrict access to remote areas, PHR hopes the mobile app will lead to more convictions for sexual violence and help Congo shake off its tag as “rape capital of the world.”

Looking for patterns of abuse

By recording data about both victims and assailants, the app — which is currently in field testing — could also be used to detect mass violence and crimes against humanity and provide evidence for war crimes investigators, according to PHR.

“It has the power to be used as an early-warning system or rapid response tool, as the data could show patterns of abuses and violence,” said Karen Naimer, director of the U.S.-based PHR’s program on sexual violence in conflict zones.

MediCapt could help prosecutors map trends or patterns of locations attacked, victims targeted and languages spoken and the uniform worn by assailants, Naimer told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“The app may also be used to push for war crime prosecutions with evidence of crimes that are widespread or systematic,” she said.

Ethnic violence in Congo, Africa’s second-largest nation, has worsened since December, when President Joseph Kabila refused to step down at the end of his mandate.

Recent acts of violence between local militia and Congolese forces in central Congo, including the killing of civilians and foreign U.N. experts, could constitute war crimes, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said in April.

Priority is aiding victims

Yet the priority for PHR with MediCapt — which will be rolled out for use by doctors in eastern Congo this summer — is to ensure that it gives victims of sexual violence the security and confidence to come forward and speak out, Naimer said.

Sexual violence is often seen as a byproduct of years of fighting in Congo, where atrocities were blamed on soldiers and armed groups, but rape is also rife beyond the conflict zones.

“While the app has the potential to highlight mass violence and human rights violations, protecting victims of sexual violence has to come first,” Naimer said.
…

Facebook said Wednesday that it would soon allow its U.S. users to raise and donate money using its “Safety Check” feature, to make it easier for people affected by natural disasters and violent attacks to receive help.

“Safety Check,” launched in 2014, allows Facebook users to notify friends that they are safe. The feature was used for the first time in the United States last year after a gunman massacred 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

The fundraising tool in “Safety Check” will roll out in the coming weeks in the United States, Facebook said in a blog post.

The social network, which has about 1.94 billion users worldwide, activated “Safety Check” for users in London on Wednesday following a fire in a housing block that killed at least six people and injured more than 70.

It also made the tool available earlier this month following deadly attacks on London Bridge.

Facebook also said its “Community Help” feature, which helps people affected by disasters find each other locally to provide and receive assistance, would soon expand to include desktop users.
…

Musicians tend to talk about their instruments in terms of tone and sound as often as the brand. Electric guitarists are no different, and they can expound on the ‘bright’ sound of the Fender or the bass heavy Gibsons. But now there is a 3D-printed electric guitar, and that could just be the beginning for 3D-printed musical instruments. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Musicians tend to talk about their instruments in terms of tone and sound as often as the brand. Electric guitarists are no different, and they can expound on the ‘bright’ sound of the Fender or the bass heavy Gibsons. But now there is a 3-D-printed electric guitar, and that could just be the beginning for 3-D-printed musical instruments. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron are joining forces in order to crack down on tech companies, ensuring they step up their efforts to combat terrorism online.

Britain and France face similar challenges in fighting homegrown Islamist extremism and share similar scars from deadly attacks that rocked London, Manchester, Paris and Nice.

May traveled to Paris on Tuesday to hold talks on counterterrorism measures and Britain’s departure from the European Union.

She said major internet companies had failed to live up to prior commitments to do more to prevent extremists from finding a “safe space” online. Macron urged other European countries, especially Germany, to join the effort to fight Islamist extremist propaganda on the Web.

The campaign includes exploring the possibility of legal penalties against tech companies if they fail to take the necessary action to remove unacceptable content, May said.

After the Islamic State group recruited hundreds of French fighters largely through online propaganda, France introduced legislation ordering French providers to block certain content, but it acknowledges that any such effort must reach well beyond its borders. Tech-savvy Macron has lobbied for tougher European rules, but details of his plans remain unclear.

Britain already has tough measures, including a law known informally as the Snooper’s Charter, which gives authorities the powers to look at the internet browsing records of everyone in the country.

Among other things, the law requires telecommunications companies to keep records of all users’ Web activity for a year, creating databases of personal information that the firms worry could be vulnerable to leaks and hackers.
…

Fake news, propaganda and disinformation has always existed. What sets today apart from years gone by is its rapid dissemination and global reach, experts say. 

Concerns raised by the instant propagation of fake news in the digital age and the harmful impact it has on the credibility and independence of journalism, democratic values and human rights were examined by a panel of experts Tuesday at a side event of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“It is interesting how the perception of the term fake news has evolved and been manipulated because it described fabricated, inflammatory content, which very often is distributed through social media,” said Thomas Hajnoczi, Austrian Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

He said this posed dangers because “in our digital age, every individual has access to the internet where fake stories can be read by millions around the globe, and for many it is always hard to know what is true and what is incorrect.”

Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Center for International Governance Innovation at Stanford University and former U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Council, called digital technology a force for good.

She said it has played “a very positive role in facilitating the free flow of information, access to information, blossoming of freedom of expression globally.

“It has also made possible the democratization of the means of distributing media and information.  And, it just generally has been a positive force for the human rights movement.”

However, Donahoe warned that there were many forces working in the opposite direction and there was no guarantee that digital technology “would be a net force for good.”

She singled out emerging dangers from the so-called weaponization of information in the post-Brexit, post-U.S. presidential election world.

“It can be a very potent force in undermining democratic discourse and disrupting democratic processes, and that fake news … itself destroys the quality of discourse in democracy and undermines the relationship between citizens and their government,” Donahoe said.

Speaking from personal experience, Rasha Abdulla, associate professor in the Journalism and Mass Communication department at the American University of Cairo, agreed.

She said that in the past few weeks, her government has been blocking websites, particularly news websites.

“Right now, we are estimating that between 53 and 57 websites, mostly news websites, independent websites, have been blocked.

“So, if you block sources to proper independent journalism, you are only left with fake news. I mean, where else are you going to get the news,” Abdulla said.

Social media groups such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have come under increasing criticism for producing and swiftly disseminating fake news on their sites.

Peter Cunliffe-Jones, chairman of the International Fact-Checking Network, an umbrella organization for independent nonpartisan fact-checking organizations, noted that tech companies have been coming under a lot of pressure — particularly in the U.S. election — to put the brakes on fake news.

“We have been seeing since then, Google, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms starting to work on strategy to tackle, themselves, the fake news problem at their level,” he said.

For example, he said that Facebook has agreed in several countries to work with independent nonpartisan fact-checking organizations to examine disputed claims of fake news signaled by Facebook users.

“We are living in what I think of as an age of information hysteria,” said David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. “The easiest way to deal with information we do not like is to censor it, to shut it down, to block a website.”

He called censorship a lazy way to deal with information we do not like.

“I think there is a growing dissatisfaction with freedom of expression and it is simply reflected by states. I am not saying that fake news, or whatever we want to call it — disinformation or propaganda — is not a problem,” said Kaye. “But what I am saying is that we should not be moving toward solutions … that are all about prohibition and censorship.”
…

Apple Inc. offered a $1 billion bond dedicated to financing clean energy and environmental projects on Tuesday, the first corporate green bond offered since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.

The offering comes over a year after Apple issued its first green bond of $1.5 billion — the largest issued by a U.S. corporation — as a response to the 2015 Paris agreement.

Apple said its second green bond is meant to show that businesses are still committed to the goals of the 194-nation accord.

“Leadership from the business community is essential to address the threat of climate change and protect our shared planet,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook was one of several CEOs who directly appealed to Trump to keep the United States in the pact before he made his decision.

The tech giant said proceeds from the green bond sales will be used to finance renewable energy, energy efficiency at Apple facilities and in its supply chain and procuring safer materials for its products.

The offering also includes a specific focus on helping Apple meet a goal of greening its supply chain and using only renewable resources or recycled material, reducing its need to mine rare earth materials.

Last year, Apple allocated $442 million to 16 different projects from renewable energy to recycling from its first bond offer.

One of the projects it funded was a robotic system called Liam to take apart junked iPhones and recover valuable materials that can be recycled, such as silver and tungsten — an attempt to address criticism that Apple’s products, while sleek and

seamless in design, are so tightly constructed that their components can be difficult to take apart.

Although green bonds comprise a small fraction of the overall bond market, demand has grown significantly as investors seek lower-carbon investments.

In 2016, $81 billion of green bonds were issued, double the number from 2015, according to the Climate Bonds Initiative, an organization that promotes the use of green bonds.

Governments are also embracing the use of green bonds as a way to meet a 2015 pledge by world leaders to limit global warming this century to below 2 degrees Celsius.

 
…

General Motors says it has built 130 self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric cars at a factory in suburban Detroit.

The cars are equipped with GM’s second-generation self-driving software and equipment. They will join 50 self-driving Bolts that are already being tested in San Francisco; Scottsdale, Arizona; and the Detroit area.

CEO Mary Barra says GM is the first automaker to assemble self-driving vehicles in a mass-production facility. GM has been building self-driving Bolts at its Orion Assembly Plant since January.

Barra says GM eventually plans to place the self-driving Bolts in ride-hailing fleets in major U.S. cities, but she gave no target date. She says the new vehicles will help GM accelerate its testing in urban environments.
…

Augmented reality is slowly entering everyday life, and Swiss researchers say it can be used to study children’s behavior. A new app for tablet computers helps them study whether playing computer games can lead to something called augmented creativity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

Two cybersecurity firms said they have uncovered malicious software that they believe caused a December 2016 Ukraine power outage, warning that the malware could be easily modified to harm critical infrastructure operations

around the globe.

ESET, a Slovakian anti-virus software maker, and Dragos Inc, a U.S. critical-infrastructure security firm, on Monday released detailed analyses of the malware, known as Industroyer or Crash Override. They said they had also issued private alerts to governments and infrastructure operators in a bid to help them defend against the threat.

They said they did not know who was behind the December Ukraine cyberattack. Ukraine has blamed Russia, though officials in Moscow have repeatedly denied blame.

Still, the security firms warned there could be more attacks using the same approach, either by the group that built the malware or copycats who modify the malicious software.

“The malware is really easy to re-purpose and use against other targets. That is definitely alarming,” said ESET malware researcher Robert Lipovsky. “This could cause wide-scale damage to infrastructure systems that are vital.”

Dragos founder Robert M. Lee said the malware is capable of attacking power systems across Europe and could be leveraged against the United States “with small modifications.”

It is capable of causing outages of up to a few days in portions of a nation’s grid, but is not potent enough to bring down a country’s entire grid, Lee said.

With modifications, the malware could attack other types of infrastructure including local transportation providers, water and gas providers, Lipovsky said.

Industroyer is only the second piece of malware uncovered to date that is capable of disrupting industrial processes without the need for hackers to manually intervene after gaining remote access to the infected system.

The first, Stuxnet, was discovered in 2010 and is widely believed by security researchers to have been used by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s state cyber police said it was not clear whether the malware was used in the December 2016 attack because the security firms had not provided authorities with the samples they had analyzed.

Representatives with Ukraine’s state-run Computer Emergency Response Team, which advises businesses on defending against cyberattacks, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Kremlin and Russia’s Federal Security Service did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Crash Override can be detected if a utility specifically monitors its network for abnormal traffic, including signs that the malware is searching for the location of substations or sending messages to switch breakers, according to Lee, a former U.S. Air Force cyber warfare operations officer.

Malware has been used in other disruptive attacks on industrial targets, including the 2015 Ukraine power outage, but in those cases human intervention was required to interfere with operations.

ESET said it had been analyzing the malware for several months and had held off on going public to preserve the integrity of investigations into the power system hack.

It said it last week shared samples with Dragos, which said it was able to independently verify that it was used in the Ukraine grid attack.
…

Researchers say they’ve discovered a worrying breed of power grid-wrecking software, saying the program was likely responsible for a brief blackout that hit Kyiv, Ukraine, late last year.

Slovakia-based computer security company ESET and Maryland-based Dragos, Inc. said in a report published Monday that the malicious software has the ability to control the switches and circuit breakers – a nightmare scenario for those charged with keeping the lights on.

Policymakers have long ranked malware that can remotely sabotage industrial computers among some of the world’s most dangerous threats because of its potential to deal immense damage across the internet.

The researchers stopped just short of blaming the malware for the Ukrainian power outage on December 17, 2016.

Ukrainian officials didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on the report.
…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Microsoft Corp in its bid to

fend off class action claims by Xbox 360 owners who said the popular video game console gouges discs because of a design defect.

The court, in a 8-0 ruling, overturned a 2015 decision by the San Francisco- based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed console owners to appeal the dismissal of their class action lawsuit by a federal judge in Seattle in 2012.

Typically parties cannot appeal a class certification ruling until the entire case has reached a conclusion. But the 9th Circuit allowed the console owners to voluntarily dismiss their lawsuit so they could immediately appeal the denial of a class certification.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing on behalf of the court, said such a move was not permitted because a voluntary dismissal of a lawsuit is not a final decision and thus cannot be appealed.

The Xbox console owners filed a proposed class action against Microsoft in federal court in 2011, saying the design of the console was defective and that its optical disc drive could not withstand even small vibrations.

The company said class certification was improper because just 0.4 percent of Xbox owners reported disc scratches, and that misuse was the cause.
…

Bangladesh has begun training thousands of school girls to protect them from being blackmailed or harassed online following an alarming rise in cybercrimes. 

Government officials recently finished conducting a pilot project in which female students from urban areas were taught how to keep themselves safe if faced with online threats.

“Most of the victims of cybercrime in our country are young girls. So, we decided to spread awareness among the girls first,” said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister of the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Division of Bangladesh’s Ministry of Post, Telecommunication & Information Technology. “In this pilot project, over 10,000 girls from 40 schools and colleges took part in our workshops and we got a massive response. Now we have our target to take this campaign across the whole country involving 40 million students in 170,000 schools and colleges.”

Internet growth

Bangladesh has experienced a double-digit growth in internet use every year in the past 15 years and almost half of the social media users in the country are women and teenage girls, but authorities say they make up about 70 percent of cybercrime victims.

Mishuk Chakma, a cybersecurity expert of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said the boyfriends of the Facebook-using girls often trick them into posing for intimate photographs or videos.

“Later, when their relationships are on the rocks, their former boyfriends post the photos and videos in the social media to emotionally blackmail the girls. Such photos and videos often trigger troubles in the lives of the girls after they get into new relationships or get married,” Chakma told VOA. “In such a situation many marital relationships are getting into troubles and even in a few cases the girls are taking extreme steps like attempting suicide.”

Sahana, a 15-year-old who took part in an ICT-organized workshop, said she feels she has benefitted from the training. 

“I shall verify one’s identity in many ways before I accept his or her Facebook ‘friend request’ now. Now I have also learned that I should not disclose much of my personal information on Facebook,” she said. “Also, I am quite confident now that none can harass or blackmail me on Facebook.”

Raising awareness

Sometimes the criminals are superimposing faces of the girls, who are known to them, onto the bodies of nude models or adult film stars to blackmail and defame the girls, Chakma said.

“Cyber harassment of girls and women can be effectively curbed if the spread of awareness among the social media users increases,” he said.

ICT hired cybersecurity consulting agency Four D Communications to conduct the recent training of the 10,000 girls.

Abdullah Al Imran, managing director of Four D Communications, said apart from learning how to defend themselves online, the girls also learned how to bring cyber criminals to justice. 

“Very surprisingly we found that as much as 93 percent of the girls who participated in the training did not know that Bangladesh already has an ICT Act to help cyber harassment victims. We also taught them where and how they would seek help in case they were harassed or blackmailed online,” Imran said. “Girls mostly from urban areas took part in our pilot project. I am sure, in smaller towns and rural areas the Internet literacy level among girls is even lower and they are more vulnerable there.”

But lawyer Tureen Afroz, an advocate in Dhaka’s Supreme Court, said the government should tighten or update laws to deal with the growing cybercrime.

“Indeed it’s a good initiative that the government is trying to educate the girls and raise awareness among them about the growing trend of cybercrimes.  But, the government also needs to revamp the judiciary to achieve higher rate of success in fight against such crimes,” she said. “We are still unable to make the best use of smarter electronic evidences to pin down the cyber criminals in the court of law.”

Expansion

Senior officials say the government is keen to spread cyber safety awareness across the whole country.

Abul Mansur Mohammad Sharf Uddin, who heads the government’s cyber safety awareness campaign, said his department is busy on a blueprint to expand the campaign. 

“For the students, the contents on Internet literacy, which will be included to the national curriculum, will be ready soon. We want to introduce the course not just in schools and colleges, but also in over 100 universities of the country. We will also raise teachers across academic institutions of the country who will conduct cyber safety training classes for students locally,” Sharf Uuddin said.    
…

Do you ever wonder what could be done with all of those street views and Instagram photos of your favorite city? Well, a group of technical experts has taken all that data and turned it into an amazingly detailed 3D city map. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Anyone who has waited on a long, snaking line to get into a fashion exhibit at a top museum knows just how popular they’ve become — and more broadly, how fashion is increasingly seen as a form of artistic and cultural expression.

Google is acknowledging this reality by expanding its Google Art Project — launched in 2011 to link users with art collections around the world, online — to include fashion.

The new initiative, “We Wear Culture,” which launched Thursday, uses Google’s technology to connect fashion lovers to collections and exhibits at museums and other institutions, giving them the ability to not only view a garment, but to zoom in on the hem of a dress, examine a sleeve or a bit of embroidery on a gown up close, wander around an atelier, or sit down with Metropolitan Museum of Art costume restorers.

The project partners with more 180 cultural institutions, including the Met’s Costume Institute, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Japan’s Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. It comprises over 30,000 garments.

The site also offers specially curated exhibits. You can click your way to, for example, a curated photo exhibit on Tokyo Street Style, or an exploration of women’s gowns in the 18th century. You can search by designer, or by their muse — examining, say, Marilyn Monroe’s love of Ferragamo stiletto heels, via the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence, Italy.

At a preview demonstration this week, Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute and designer of the Google Art Project (now called Google Arts & Culture) explained that he wasn’t initially clued into the possibilities for fashion, because at the tech giant, “we all wear hoodies.”

But, he said, collaborating with an institution like the Met showed him that

“art and fashion have a long history together.” The idea behind the new project, he said, is to tell the story — or rather, the multiple stories — behind fashion.

There are several virtual reality films included in the project. A 360-degree video displays the Met’s conservation studio, with conservators explaining how they keep delicate clothing strong enough for display — one of them explaining, for example, how the team uses needles designed for eye surgeons.

It is the ultimate fragility of clothes, though, that makes the project appealing to museum curators, explained Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s head curator — whereas many garments are too delicate to be permanently displayed, digitizing a collection makes it viewable forever. The Costume Institute has provided 500 of the objects on display, noted Loic Tallon, the Met’s chief digital officer.

Making a pitch to young users, the site also features YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen in short videos, in which she explains the evolution of the hoodie, the choker, or colorful Japanese “Sukajan” jackets.
…

Apple CEO Tim Cook has urged graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology not to forget humanity and compassion in scientific pursuits.

In his commencement address Friday, Cook told MIT graduates and their families that technology without basic human values is worthless.

Cook has been chief executive at Apple since 2011, overseeing the rollout of the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch. He previously served as chief operating officer and headed the Macintosh division.

Cook said Apple wants to make products that help people, such as iPhone technology that helps the blind run marathons or an iPad that helps an autistic child connect with the world around them.

“Whatever we do at Apple, we must infuse it with the humanity that we are born with,” he said.
…

Japanese internet, solar and technology company SoftBank Group Corp. is buying robotics pioneer Boston Dynamics from Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent.

Terms of the deal, announced Friday, including when it might close, were not disclosed.

Tokyo-based SoftBank, which offers the chatty childlike Pepper companion robot, said the purchase underlines how robotics is a key part of its business.

Boston Dynamics makes various robots, including Big Dog and Spot, which are complex machines that walk and trot on four legs. Another is Atlas, which walks on two legs like a human. Atlas has arms and can open doors and lift items. Some were designed for military purposes.

Under Friday’s deal, SoftBank is also buying from Alphabet a company called Schaft that develops biped robots. Schaft’s roots are in a research lab at the University of Tokyo.

Pepper has expressive arms but wheels for legs and does little more than sing songs and answer basic questions, and can’t do any heavy lifting. Often it fails to understand even simple speech and will keep asking you to repeat sentences.

Speculation had been growing recently that Google might want to sell Boston Dynamics. Alphabet said it remains committed to robotics, such as connecting human-like motor skills, including hand-eye coordination, to machines so they can process images, speech, text and draw pictures.

It is also interested in research on helping robots learn from what they “experience,'”Alphabet said in a statement.

“Robotics as a field has great potential, and we’re happy to see Boston Dynamics and Schaft join the SoftBank team to continue contributing to the next generation of robotics,'”it said.

SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said robots will help solve problems that have been beyond human capabilities.

“Smart robotics are going to be a key driver of the next stage of the Information Revolution,'”he said.

“I am thrilled to welcome them to the SoftBank family and look forward to supporting them as they continue to advance the field of robotics and explore applications that can help make life easier, safer and more fulfilling,'”Son said of Boston Dynamics and Schaft.

Japan, with its longtime culture of cartoons like “Astro Boy,'”has a soft spot for cute robots. Various companies, including automakers Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., have developed entertainment robots, designed to do nothing more than keep people company.

But interest around the world is growing in the potential of robotics and artificial intelligence for everyday products like safer cars and connected home appliances.

SoftBank bought British semiconductor company ARM Holdings, an innovator in the “internet of things,'”last year. The first carrier to offer the Apple iPhone in Japan, SoftBank includes U.S. carrier Sprint and Yahoo Japan in its group business.

Son drew attention for hobnobbing with U.S. President Donald Trump late last year and promising to create jobs and invest in the U.S.

Marc Raibert, CEO of Boston Dynamics, said he looked forward to working with SoftBank on creating technology for “a smarter and more connected world.”

“We share SoftBank’s belief that advances in technology should be for the benefit of humanity,'”he said.
…

The recent attack by the computer virus WannaCry infected more than 230,000 computers in more than 150 countries. It is not clear who is behind it, but the attack was hardly unexpected. Months earlier, award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney released his documentary “Zero Days,” in which he warned of massive cyberattacks and their devastating impact on our way of life. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
…

China’s open policy toward technology firms is rapidly transforming its society into a Western-style consumer environment, ever hungry for new gadgets. As a casual visitor at this year’s Shanghai Consumer Electronics Show could easily see, robots created the highest interest. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

Big automakers are rushing to launch self-driving cars as early as 2021, but the industry’s major players are moving slowly when it comes to widespread deployment of a less expensive crash prevention technology that regulators say could prevent thousands of deaths and injuries every year.

Nissan said on Thursday it would make automatic braking systems standard on an estimated 1 million 2018 model cars and light trucks sold in the United States,  compact sport utility vehicles, the Altima sedan, Murano and Pathfinder SUVs, Leaf electric car, Maxima sedan and Sentra small car.

Nissan sold about 1.6 million vehicles in the United States last year.

Rival Toyota has said it will make automatic emergency braking standard on nearly all its U.S. models by the end of this year.

No rush

Overall, however, most automakers are not rushing to make automatic brake systems part of the base cost of mainstream vehicles sold in the competitive U.S. market. The industry has come under pressure from regulators, lawmakers and safety advocates to adopt the technology, which can slow or stop a vehicle even if the driver fails to act.

So far, only about 17 percent of models tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety offered standard collision-avoiding braking. Many of the models with standard collision-avoiding brake systems are luxury vehicles made by European or Japanese manufacturers.

The systems require more sensors and software than conventional brakes, and automakers said they need time to engineer the systems into vehicles as part of more comprehensive makeovers.

Last year, 20 automakers reached a voluntary agreement with U.S. auto safety regulators to make collision-avoiding braking systems standard equipment by 2022.

Safety advocates have petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to begin a regulatory process to require the technologies, but the agency has said the voluntary agreement will result in faster deployment than a formal rule-making process. NHTSA says the technology could eliminate one-fifth of crashes.

Mark Rosekind, who then was NHTSA’s administrator, told Reuters last year that with 5 million crashes occurring per year, a “20 percent reduction means 1 million less. Those are big numbers.”

Investment possibilities

But customers would most likely experience the benefits of the technology infrequently. The technology to enable a car to drive itself is far more costly, but industry executives foresee autonomous vehicles driving revenue-generating transportation services that could be attractive to investors.

General Motors offers automatic braking as optional equipment on about two-thirds of its models. The company did not say Thursday how many vehicles have the technology as standard equipment. GM has not made public its plans to make the technology standard across its lineup.

“Any time you have a voluntary agreement you have a spectrum of implementation,” Jeff Boyer, GM’s vice president for safety, told Reuters this week. Asked when GM would roll out standard automatic braking, Boyer said, “Let’s just say we honor the voluntary commitment.”

Ford “has a plan to standardize over time,” the company said in a statement Thursday. Currently, automatic braking systems are optional on several 2017 Ford and Lincoln models, and will be offered on certain 2018 models, including the best-selling F-150 pickup truck.

Fiat Chrysler offers automatic braking as optional equipment in seven model lines, using cameras and radar to detect hazards ahead. The company has said it will meet the 2022 target for making the systems standard.

More expected

As 2018 models roll out during the second half of this year, more vehicles will offer automatic braking, said Dean McConnell, an executive with Continental AG’s North American business.

Continental’s automatic braking technology systems will be on certain Nissan models.

“We see it accelerating,” he said. “It varies. There are some [automakers] that are being aggressive” and others that are waiting.

Nissan did not disclose how much prices for vehicles would rise to offset the cost of standard automatic emergency braking.

Currently, Nissan, like most carmakers, offers automatic braking as part of a bundle of optional safety and technology features.

A 2017 Nissan Sentra compact sedan has a starting price of $17,875. To buy the car equipped with automatic braking requires spending another $6,820 for a Sentra SR with a premium technology package.

German auto technology suppliers Continental and Robert Bosch GmbH will supply the systems, Nissan said.
…

An Indian business has launched the country’s first solar satellite television service, bringing clean-energy-powered entertainment to households and businesses through a pay-as-you-go payment scheme.

Simpa Networks, which began operations in 2011, is one of thousands of enterprises in India tapping into the renewable-energy market in a country where one-fifth of the 1.3 billion population has no access to electricity.

With the majority of those without power from poor communities in the countryside, the company focuses on selling solar-powered products such as LED lights, phone-charging points and fans on financing to rural homes and shops in northern India.

“We see a tremendous opportunity in rural areas where demand for energy is growing even faster than supply,” Simpa Networks CEO Piyush Mathur said in a statement.

“Rooftop solar has a role to play in both off-grid and on-grid areas,” Mathur said. “In many cases it’s the fastest and least expensive way to get power into the homes and businesses in rural areas.”

“Simpa Magic TV” provides over 100 satellite channels with content that includes comedy, news, movies and music, and it costs 25,000 rupees ($390) — the same as a nonsolar equivalent.

Solar panel, TV, battery, controller

The system, which includes an 80-watt solar panel, 20-inch energy-efficient LED television, battery and solar charge controller, is available on a repayment plan of up to 36 months. Interest applies, but the company declined to provide approximate rates.

Customers make an initial payment to have the system installed then use a pay-as-you-go model for the electricity. The payments contribute to total cost and, once fully paid, the customer owns the system and the electricity is free.

The service, which was launched Wednesday, has about 350 customers so far in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Simpa uses its “SmartPanel” technology, which enables remote monitoring and control of the rooftop solar panel. Customers prepay for the energy; the SmartPanel delivers power until the prepaid credits expire, and the customer must then recharge.

The company said the payment plan is effective because such technology would be unaffordable for most rural families. With no credit history, most are considered “unbankable” and would not be able to access loans easily, it said.

Given solar television service is new and few know how to use and maintain it, the company said, Simpa has trained rural solar technicians who are responsible for installation, service and monthly collection of payments.
…

More than 50 companies are showcasing a new generation of robots at this week’s Shanghai CES electronics show, built to serve as companions at home, attendants at shopping malls or just provide entertainment. 

Chinese companies including Shenzhen-based startup Aelos Robotic Inc. are displaying robots with heightened dexterity and skills.

Beijing’s Canny Unisrobo Technology Co. Ltd. is a pioneer in the field, with its Canbot, produced in cooperation with Microsoft, having entered mass production almost a decade ago.

Costs of $130 to $483

Sales manager Zhang Jianting said Thursday that annual sales are about 150,000 units, with the home companion robots selling for $130 to $483 depending on size.

However, Zhang said the robot market is growing ever more crowded, with many more players entering this year alone.

“The robot market in China is increasingly diverse,” Zhang said. “However, there are still some rough edges in R&D and comprehensive abilities. Every company is at initial stage. We are still learning and making progress in terms of technology, R&D, and market.”

Artificial intelligence and virtual reality are also major features of the show, which features 400 exhibitors from 23 regions showing their innovations from June 7 to 9.

Innovation

For John T. Kelly, the senior director of CES Asia, the participation of more Chinese companies at global electronics shows illustrates how China is shifting from a manufacturing economy to one based on innovation.

“Chinese companies continue to grow more and more in importance. They are creating partnerships with Western partners to really further their technology. So we are seeing development of technology advancing rapidly,” Kelly said.

Among those leading the charge for artificial Intelligence, or AI, is Rokid Corp., maker of the Pebble home companion device that can help seniors perform household chores, provide entertainment and help children learn new skills. 

“AI makes our life simpler. AI is replacing human beings in more fields. It saves humans’ labor, so we can do more creative work,” said Li Yuanpeng, the company’s product manager.
…

New, lighter, cheaper, sustainable and recyclable building materials are entering the market every day as developers try to lower costs and shrink their carbon footprint. But how safe are those materials? Are they resistant to fire? VOA’s George Putic visited a new U.S. government facility that can provide scientific answers to such questions.
…