YCLOAK

Google’s workforce needs to “represent the world in totality,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, at an international girls coding competition held on the company’s campus here Thursday night.

His comments come as the search engine giant grapples with a high profile internal debate over the number and influence of its female employees. Last year, the company reported that women represent just 31 percent of Google’s workforce and held 24 percent of leadership roles. Several initiatives are underway to boost those numbers, but those efforts are now a focus of some criticism.

On Monday, the company fired James Damore, a male engineer, who wrote about the role of women in tech and criticized the company’s efforts to bring more women into its workforce.  

This week, the author of the memo filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. The company canceled an employee town hall meeting because of online harassment prior to the meeting, according to reports.

But the coding competition, Technovation, provided an apt backdrop for Pichai’s comments.

With girls waving their country flags and pitching their products, Pichai appeared to address the controversy without speaking about it directly.

“I want you to know there’s a place for you in this industry,” Pichai said. “There’s a place for you at Google. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You belong here, and we need you.”

The girls had competed for months – often teaching themselves to code – to make it to the final round in Mountain View, Calif. They learned how to test their products in the market and make their pitches in English.

Winners

A team from Kazakhstan won the senior round for their mobile app QamCare, which helps users keep track of each other in case of an emergency. They will receive $15,000.

Five runner-up senior teams from Kenya, Armenia, India and Kazakhstan will receive $10,000 each.

In the junior division, a team from Hong Kong won for Dementia Care Companion app. It uses games and cues to help people with dementia and their families stay connected. They will receive $10,000.

Runner-up teams from Cambodia, India, Canada and the U.S. will receive $5,000 each.

In the eight years of the competition, 15,000 girls from more than 100 nations have completed the program, said Tara Chklovski, founder and chief executive of Iridescent, the non-profit organization behind the event.

“The growing scale is exciting,” she said. “Many of these girls go on to win startup competitions, go to major in computer science. They get featured in national press. They get invited by heads of state.”
…

Researchers in the United States have unveiled a prototype of a battery-free mobile phone using technology they hope will eventually be integrated into mass-market products. The phone is the work of a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and operates by harvesting tiny amounts of power from radio signals, known as radio frequency or RF waves. VOA’s George Putic has details in this report by Kevin Enochs.
…

Artificial intelligence robots are turbocharging the race to find new drugs for the crippling nerve disorder ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The condition attacks and kills nerve cells controlling muscles, leading to weakness, paralysis and, ultimately, respiratory failure.

There are only two drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to slow the progression of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), one available since 1995 and the other approved just this year. About 140,000 new cases are diagnosed a year globally, and there is no cure.

“Many doctors call it the worst disease in medicine, and the unmet need is huge,” said Richard Mead of the Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience, who has found artificial intelligence (AI) is already speeding up his work.

Such robots — complex software run through powerful computers — work as tireless and unbiased super-researchers.

They analyze huge chemical, biological and medical databases, alongside reams of scientific papers, far quicker than humanly possible, throwing up new biological targets and potential drugs.

Cell deaths prevented

One candidate proposed by AI machines recently produced promising results in preventing the death of motor neurone cells and delaying disease onset in preclinical tests in Sheffield.

Mead, who aims to present the work at a medical meeting in December, is now assessing plans for clinical trials.

He and his team in northern England are not the only ones waking up to the ability of AI to elucidate the complexities of ALS.

In Arizona, the Barrow Neurological Institute last December found five new genes linked to ALS by using IBM’s Watson supercomputer. Without the machine, researchers estimate the discovery would have taken years rather than only a few months.

Mead believes ALS is ripe for AI and machine-learning because of the rapid expansion in genetic information about the condition and the fact there are good test-tube and animal models with which to evaluate drug candidates.

That is good news for ALS patients seeking better treatment options. Famous sufferers include Gehrig, the 1923-39 New York Yankees baseball player; actor and playwright Sam Shepard, who died last month; and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, a rare example of someone living for decades with the condition.

If the research goes on to deliver new medicines, it would mark a notable victory for AI in drug discovery, bolstering the prospects of a growing batch of startup companies focused on the technology.

Those firms are based on the premise that while AI robots won’t replace scientists and clinicians, they should save time and money by finding drug leads several times faster than conventional processes.

British ‘unicorn’

Mead from Sheffield is working with BenevolentAI, one of a handful of British “unicorns” — private companies with a market value above $1 billion, in this case $1.7 billion — which is rapidly expanding operations at its offices in central London.

Others in the field include Scotland’s Exscientia and U.S.-based firms Berg, Numerate, twoXAR, Atomwise and InSilico Medicine — the last of which recently launched a drug discovery platform geared specifically to ALS.

“What we are trying to do is find relationships that will give us new targets in disease,” said Jackie Hunter, a former drug hunter at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) who now heads Benevolent’s pharma business. “We can do things so much more dynamically and be really responsive to what essentially the information is telling us.”

Unlike humans, who may have pet theories, AI scans through data and generates hypotheses in an unbiased way.

Conventional drug discovery remains a hit-and-miss affair, and Hunter believes the 50 percent failure rates seen for experimental compounds in mid- and late-stage clinical trials due to lack of efficacy is unsustainable, forcing a shift to AI.

A key test will come with a study by Benevolent to assess a previously unsuccessful compound from Johnson & Johnson in a new disease area — this time for treating Parkinson’s disease patients with excessive daytime sleepiness.

Big pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Sanofi and Merck are now exploring the potential of AI through deals with startups.

Being careful

They are treading cautiously, given the failure of “high throughput screening” in the early 2000s to improve efficiency by using robots to test millions of compounds. Yet AI’s ability to learn on the job means things may be different this time.

CPR Asset Management fund manager Vafa Ahmadi, for one, believes it is a potential game-changer.

“Using artificial intelligence is going to really accelerate the way we produce much better targeted molecules. It could have a dramatic impact on productivity, which in turn could have a major impact on the valuation of pharmaceutical stocks,” he said.

Drugmakers and startups are not the only ones chasing that value. Technology giants including Microsoft, IBM and Google’s parent Alphabet are also setting up life sciences units to explore drug R&D.

For Benevolent’s Hunter, today’s attempts to find new drugs for ALS and other difficult diseases amount to an important test vehicle for the future of AI, which is already being deployed in other high-tech areas such as autonomous cars.

“The aim is to show that we can deliver in a very difficult and complex area, ” Hunter said. “I believe if you can do it in drug discovery and development, you can show the power of AI anywhere.”
…

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis kicked off his first official visit to the U.S. technology industry on Thursday with a tour of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, the first stop on a two-day outreach campaign intended to highlight the Pentagon’s commitment to tech innovation.

Mattis was scheduled to visit Mountain View, California, later in the day to tour the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Experimental Unit, or DIUx, a Silicon Valley outpost set up in 2015 by his predecessor, Ash Carter.

He was also expected to visit Alphabet’s Google headquarters in Palo Alto on Friday.

“A pleasure to host #SecDef James Mattis at Amazon HQ in Seattle today,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wrote on Twitter.

The visit comes as the Trump administration has sparred with the technology industry on a host of issues, including immigration, privacy and net neutrality.

 
…

A hundred teenage girls from seven countries are gathered in Malawi for a ‘Women in Science’ camp. Lameck Masina has the story from the Malawi University of Science and Technology in the Thyolo district of southern Malawi.
…

China has sent an unbreakable code from a satellite to the Earth, marking the first time space-to-ground quantum key distribution technology has been realized, state media said Thursday.

China launched the world’s first quantum satellite last August, to help establish “hack proof” communications, a development the Pentagon has called a “notable advance.”

The official Xinhua news agency said the latest experiment was published in the journal Nature Thursday, where reviewers called it a “milestone.”

Quantum key technology

The satellite sent quantum keys to ground stations in China between 645 km (400 miles) and 1,200 km (745 miles) away at a transmission rate up to 20 orders of magnitude more efficient than an optical fiber, Xinhua cited Pan Jianwei, lead scientist on the experiment from the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences, as saying.

“That, for instance, can meet the demand of making an absolute safe phone call or transmitting a large amount of bank data,” Pan said.

Any attempt to eavesdrop on the quantum channel would introduce detectable disturbances to the system, Pan said.

“Once intercepted or measured, the quantum state of the key will change, and the information being intercepted will self-destruct,” Xinhua said.

The news agency said there were “enormous prospects” for applying this new generation of communications in defense and finance.

China lags in space

China still lags behind the United States and Russia in space technology, although President Xi Jinping has prioritized advancing its space program, citing national security and defense.

China insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted its increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.
…

The planet has a bit of a waste problem. Every year, at least 200 million tons of raw sewage goes untreated. This is an environmental and health crisis. But one enterprising startup in Kenya is turning all that waste into fuel. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

More than 20 million people are working as modern slaves, and a technology developer is hoping artificial intelligence can help clean up the world’s supply chains and root out worker abuse.

Developer Padmini Ranganathan said mobile phones, media reports and surveillance cameras can all be mined for real-time data, which can in turn be fed into machines to create artificial intelligence (AI) that helps companies see more clearly what is happening down the line.

“The time to do this now is better than ever before, with so many countries and companies focusing on modern slavery,” she said. “At the start of the decade, the driving force for compliance was fear of being penalized. Now companies are looking at social impact and saying they want to do this.”

​More scrutiny of modern-day slavery

Modern-day slavery has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, putting regulatory and consumer pressure on companies to ensure their supply chains are free from forced labor, child workers and other forms of slavery.

Almost 21 million people are victims of forced labor, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), with migrant workers and indigenous people particularly vulnerable.

But Ranganathan said there are new digital ways to stamp out exploitation, given humans have failed to end modern slavery.

“The technology can filter over 1 million articles a day using forced labor specific key words and highlight potential areas of risk in a supply chain,” she said.

Ranganathan works for information technology services company SAP Ariba, which helps companies better manage their procurement processes.

She said a new program could map weak links in corporate supply chains by culling data from a host of sources, from surveillance cameras to non-profits and other agencies.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning can use these huge volumes of data and extract meaningful information,” she said.

Forced labor worth $150 billion

Forced labor in the private economy generates $150 billion in illegal profits per year, according to the ILO.

Ranganathan hopes her new program will curb that market and help create “supply chains with a conscience.”

For instance, she said it could help detect if child labor was used to pollinate cotton, which in turn was used to produce a branded shirt. Or it could help monitor labor conditions on cocoa plantations, giving companies “real-time exposure” so they can purge their supply chains of abuse right away.

“The convergence of technology will make things more transparent and real-time exposure can be created,” she said.

“In the AI world, techniques are being piloted where we could arm the lowest level supplier with a mobile app, ensure hotlines in factories, use of surveillance cameras and make this all a part of the contract.”

Ranganathan conceded that mapping the “last mile” of any supply chain was the hardest part, with many outsourcing work to homeworkers and small units, where data was harder to gather.
…

Researchers in the United States have unveiled a prototype of a battery-free mobile phone, using

technology they hope will eventually come to be integrated into mass-market products.

The phone is the work of a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and works by harvesting tiny amounts of power from radio signals, known as radio frequency or ‘RF’ waves.

“Ambient RF waves are all around us so, as an example, your FM station broadcasts radio waves, your AM stations do that, your TV stations, your cellphone towers. They all are transmitting RF waves,” team member Vamsi Talla told Reuters.

The phone is a first prototype and its operation is basic — at first glance it looks little more than a circuit board with a few parts attached and the caller must wear headphones and press a button to switch between talking and listening.

But researchers said there are plans to develop further prototypes, featuring a low-power screen for texting and even a basic camera. They also plan a version of the battery-free phone that uses a tiny solar cell to provide power.

The researchers plan to release a product in eight to nine months time, thought they would not give further details. One team member however, was prepared to give a glimpse of how their work will impact the future of cellphone technology.

“In the future every smartphone will come with a battery-free mode where you can at least make a voice call when your battery’s dead,” said the researcher.

The initiative is not the only one seeking to improve the way that mobile technology is powered. Researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Surrey in Britain, are developing supercapacitors, which they believe will eventually allow devices to charge in a period of a few minutes.
…

Facebook on Wednesday made its biggest move to date to compete in the television market by expanding its video offerings with programming ranging from professional women’s basketball to a safari show and a parenting program.

The redesigned product, called “Watch,” will be available initially to a limited group in the United States on Facebook’s mobile app, website and television apps, the company said.

The world’s largest social network added a video tab last year, and it has been dropping hints for months that it wanted to become a source of original and well-produced videos, rather than just shows made by users.

Reuters reported in May that Facebook had signed deals with millennial-focused news and entertainment creators Vox Media, BuzzFeed, ATTN, Group Nine Media and others to produce shows, both scripted and unscripted.

Daniel Danker, Facebook’s product director, said in a statement Wednesday: “We’ve learned that people like the serendipity of discovering videos in News Feed, but they also want a dedicated place they can go to watch videos.”

Facebook said the shows would include videos of the Women’s National Basketball Association, a parenting show from Time Inc and a safari show from National Geographic. Facebook is broadcasting some Major League Baseball games and that would continue, the company said.

Eventually, the platform would be open to any show creator as a place to distribute video, the company said.

The company, based in Menlo Park, California, faces a crowded market with not only traditional television networks but newer producers such as Netflix and Alphabet’s YouTube as well as Twitter and Snap.
…

A former Google software engineer, who wrote an internal memo criticizing the company’s diversity policies, has filed a labor complaint, saying he was wrongfully fired.

In a statement emailed to news agencies, James Damore said he filed the complaint with the National Labor Relations Board prior to his termination and that, “It’s illegal to retaliate against the NLRB charge.”

Damore said he was subjected to “coercive statements” while working at Google. According to the Associated Press, a Google spokesperson said the company could not have retaliated against Damore because it was not aware of the complaint until hearing about it in the news media after he was dismissed.

Damore caused an uproar after the website Gizmodo published a leaked copy of the memo he wrote, encouraging Google to “treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group,” and questioning the effectiveness of diversity programs at the company.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive officer, criticized Damore’s memo in an email for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

In the 10-page internal memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” Damore asserted that fewer women are employed in the technology field because they “prefer jobs in social and artistic areas,” while men are more inclined to become computer programmers — a fact he said was due to “biological causes.”

Danielle Brown, Google’s new vice president for diversity, integrity and governance, said the memo “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender” and promotes a viewpoint not encouraged by the company.

“Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions,” she said. “But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.”

The controversy comes as Silicon Valley faces accusations of sexism and discrimination. Google is in the midst of a Department of Labor investigation over allegations women there are paid less than men.
…

The male Google engineer fired for circulating a memo decrying the company’s diversity hiring program became the center of a heated debate on sexism, drawing scorn, cheers and even a job offer on Tuesday from WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

James Damore, 28, confirmed his dismissal from Alphabet Inc’s Google on Monday, after he wrote a 10-page memo that the company was hostile to conservative viewpoints shaped by a flawed left-wing ideology.

The manifesto was quickly embraced by some, particularly on the political right, branding him a brave truth-teller. Others found his views, which argued that men in general may be biologically more suited to coding jobs than women, offensive.

Assange, who is praised in some circles for exposing government secrets and castigated by others as an underminer of some nations’ security, offered Damore a job.

“Censorship is for losers,” Assange wrote on Twitter. “Women & men deserve respect. That includes not firing them for politely expressing ideas but rather arguing back.”

Legal and employment experts noted, however, that companies have broad latitude to restrict the speech of employees. Some argued that Damore’s views left Google little to no choice but to terminate his employment, since he had effectively created a hostile work environment for women.

Damore said in an email on Monday that he was exploring a possible legal challenge to his dismissal. His title at Google was software engineer and he had worked at the company since December 2013, according to a profile on LinkedIn.

The LinkedIn page also says Damore received a Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard University in 2013. Harvard said on Tuesday he completed a master’s degree in the subject, not a Ph.D. He could not immediately be reached on Tuesday.

Gender equality in Silicon Valley

The world’s tech capital, Silicon Valley has long been criticized for not doing enough to encourage gender equality.

Most headlines have centered on powerful female executives hitting the glass ceiling or on sexual harassment lawsuits.

Many women in the industry say that less visible day-to-day bias often impedes their careers.

Industry experts note that in the early days of tech, it was mostly women who held the then-unglamorous jobs of coding. But as the value of top-notch programming became clear, it became a mostly male domain and the vast majority of programmers in the tech industry are now men.

Google’s response controversial

Some argued that although they may not agree with Damore, the company had gone too far in firing him.

“Dear @Google, Stop teaching my girl that her path to financial freedom lies not in coding but in complaining to HR. Thx in advance, A dad,” Eric Weinstein, managing director at California investment firm Thiel Capital, wrote on Twitter.

Bernice Ledbetter, who teaches leadership to business students at Pepperdine University, praised Google for taking decisive action. She said it would be a different matter if Damore were writing on a personal blog rather than in a memo.

“He’s walking dangerously between who he is personally and who he is professionally,” Ledbetter said in an interview.

Others raised concerns that Damore would discriminate against his female colleagues in peer review.

Damore wrote in an email to Reuters on Monday that he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” His memo had said that he sought the opposite.

“I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles,” Damore wrote in his memo. “I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).”

His arguments were praised by those who view so-called “political correctness” as a left-wing device to suppress conservative speech.

John Hawkins, the owner of the Right Wing News website, summed up his take in a Twitter post: “James Damore: Writes memo respectfully saying Google suppresses conservative views. Google: You’re fired for having conservative views.”

Damore and Kaepernick

Others compared Damore with Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who last year chose not to stand for the U.S. national anthem before games, in protest over police violence.

None of the NFL’s 32 teams were willing to sign Kaepernick during the recent off-season.

“Kaepernick and Damore should’ve been aware that expressing controversial opinions at work has consequences,” Twitter user Greg Lekich wrote from his account, @Xeynon.

Damore said he would fight the dismissal, noting that he had filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board before the firing.

Google, owner of the world’s most used search engine, is based in Mountain View, California. The company said it could not talk about individual employee cases.
…

A German-Israeli artist who accuses Twitter of failing to delete hate speech tweets has taken matters into his own hands – by stenciling the offending messages on the road in front of the company’s Hamburg headquarters.

A post on video-sharing site YouTube showed Shahak Shapira and fellow activists stencilling tweets saying “Germany needs a final solution to Islam” and “Let’s gas the Jews” – clear references to the Nazi regime’s World War II genocide of Europe’s Jews.  

Shapira said he had reported some 300 incidents of hate speech on Twitter but had received just nine responses from the company.

“If Twitter forces me to see these things, then they should have to see it as well,” he said in the video, posted on Monday, describing the comments as violations of the social network’s community guidelines.

Hate speech is especially sensitive in Germany, whose history has been shaped by the struggle to atone for the crimes of the Nazis.

A spokesman for Twitter told Reuters the company would not comment on the specifics of individual accounts for reasons of privacy, but said it strictly enforced its rules and had stepped up its policing of abuse on its network.

Twitter is now taking action on 10 times as many abusive accounts now compared to the same time last year, he added.

Shapira said Facebook had been more vigorous than Twitter in replying to his requests, removing 80 percent of some 150 hate speech comments he had reported.

On the handful of occasions when Twitter removed offensive tweets, Shapira said he never received a report of their having done so.

“I selected some of the tweets they didn’t delete, and then came to Hamburg to put them in front of Twitter’s office,” he said. “Tomorrow they will have to see the Tweets they were so happy to ignore.”
…

U.S. technology giant Google has fired a male engineer who wrote a memo questioning the need for gender diversity programs in the industry.

In a 10-page internal memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” James Damore asserted that so few women were employed in the technology field because they “prefer jobs in social and artistic areas,” while men are more inclined to become computer programmers — a fact he said was due to “biological causes.”

The memo created a firestorm after it was leaked on social media, reviving the debate over the lack of racial and gender diversity in the tech world.  Google is under investigation by the U.S. Labor Department over whether it pays women less than men, while claims of sexual harassment at the ride-sharing firm Uber Technologies has triggered a change in management.  

Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive officer, blasted Damore’s memo in an email for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”  

Damore revealed he had been dismissed in an email sent to various news outlets.  He says he has filed a complaint with the federal National Labor Relations Board accusing Google of trying to shame him into silence.

 
…

The Pentagon has given more than 130 U.S. military bases across the United States the green light to shoot down private and commercial drones that could endanger aviation safety or pose other threats.

The number of uncrewed aircraft in U.S. skies has zoomed in recent years and continues to increase rapidly – along with concern among U.S. and private-sector officials that dangerous or even hostile drones could get too close to places like military bases, airports and sports stadiums.

While the specific actions that the U.S. military can take against drones are classified, they include destroying or seizing private and commercial drones that pose a threat, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis told reporters on Monday.

The classified guidelines were distributed early last month.

The Pentagon sent out unclassified guidance on how to communicate the policy to communities on Friday.

“The increase of commercial and private drones in the United States has raised our concerns with regards to the safety and security of our installations, aviation safety and the safety of people,” Davis said.

In April, flights of nearly all drones over 133 U.S. military facilities were banned due to security concerns.

Drones have become popular as toys and with hobbyists, and have commercial uses such as aerial photography. Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google unit have been exploring the use of drones to deliver goods ordered online.

The FAA estimated the commercial drone fleet would grow from 42,000 at the end of 2016 to about 442,000 aircraft by 2021. The FAA said there could be as many as 1.6 million commercial drones in use by 2021.
…

Silicon Valley’s efforts to promote workforce diversity haven’t yielded many results — unless you count a backlash at Google, where a male engineer blamed biological differences for the paucity of female programmers.

His widely shared memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” also criticizes Google for pushing mentoring and diversity programs and for “alienating conservatives.”

Google’s just-hired head of diversity, Danielle Brown, responded with her own memo, saying Google is “unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success.” She said change is hard and “often uncomfortable.”

The dueling memos come as Silicon Valley grapples with accusations of sexism and discrimination. Google is also in the midst of a Department of Labor investigation into whether it pays women less than men, while Uber’s CEO recently lost his job amid accusations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination.

Leading tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, have said they are trying to improve hiring and working conditions for women. But diversity numbers are barely changing .

The Google employee memo, which gained attention online over the weekend, begins by saying that only honest discussion will address a lack of equity. But it also asserts that women “prefer jobs in social and artistic areas” while more men “may like coding because it requires systemizing.”

The memo, which was shared on the tech blog Gizmodo, attributes biological differences between men and women to the reason why “we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.”

The employee, whose identity hasn’t been released, was described in news reports as a software engineer.

While his views were broadly and publicly criticized online, they echo the 2005 statements by then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who said the reason there are fewer female scientists at top universities is in part due to “innate” gender differences.

Brande Stellings, senior vice president of advisory services for Catalyst, a nonprofit advocacy group for women in the workplace, said the engineer’s viewpoints show “how ingrained, entrenched and harmful gender-based stereotypes truly are.”

“It’s much easier for some to point to `innate biological differences’ than to confront the unconscious biases and obstacles that get in the way of a level playing field,” Stellings wrote in an email.

Google, like other tech companies, has far fewer women than men in technology and leadership positions. Fifty-six percent of its workers are white and 35 percent are Asian, while Hispanic and Black employees make up 4 percent and 2 percent of its workforce, respectively, according to the company’s latest diversity report .

Tech companies say they are trying, by reaching out to and interviewing a broader range of job candidates, by offering coding classes, internships and mentorship programs and by holding mandatory “unconscious bias” training sessions for existing employees.

But, as the employee memo shows, not everyone at Google is happy with this.
…

At the recent Games for Change festival in New York City, the video games on display were a far cry from Mario Brothers and Call of Duty. Instead, game developers showed off titles that tackled civic and social issues. VOA reporter Tina Trinh explores.
 
((mandatory CG: GamBridzy))
…

You’re in Nepal.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake has just struck your village and you must rescue the survivors.

This is “After Days,” a video game based on the real-life Nepal earthquake that killed almost 9,000 people in 2015.

Minseok Do was showing the game at the recent Games for Change festival in New York City. The games on display were a far cry from “Mario Brothers” and “Call of Duty.” These developers featured titles that tackled civic and social issues.

Public consciousness about civic and social issues has long been raised by the news and entertainment industries in the United States and other parts of the world, and now video game creators are making their own statements and hoping to reach the younger digital generation in the process.

In “After Days,” players take on the role of Ahsha, a young Nepalese woman who attempts to rescue her neighbors in the aftermath of the massive earthquake.

“Other media, such as novels and movies, require consumers to use their imagination to understand characters’ emotions,” said Do, CEO of GamBridzy. “Games have players be in characters’ shoes by letting them command and control. It is in my opinion the most powerful platform.”

In the game, players carry out various missions like transporting injured victims in stretchers and coordinating with rescue teams to restore critical infrastructure.

The first episode is set in Sindhupalchok, one of the hardest-hit districts of the earthquake in Nepal.

“Some say it will take about 10 years to complete all the restoration, but international attention is not focused on this, and it is important that we show our interest and support,” said Do. Twenty percent of proceeds from game sales will go toward rebuilding efforts.

Elin Festøy, a producer from Norway, also was in New York to promote her game.

“We really wanted to create attention and awareness around children born of war … children being born of the most hated soldiers in the world,” said Festøy.

She and her team created “My Child Lebensborn,” a mobile game in which players are the caretakers of World War Two-era children from the Lebensborn project, an attempt by the Nazi regime to create an Aryan “master race.”

Lebensborn involved child kidnappings as well as anonymous births by unwed mothers in and outside of Germany, with their offspring adopted by German families.  After the war, many Lebensborn children faced prejudice and discrimination, even from their own mothers.

“It’s about being able to see children as children and not as symbols of [the] enemy,” said Festøy.

“My Child Lebensborn” is targeted at players aged 13 and up. Recognizing that 13-year-olds might not exactly run to play the game, one of the team’s goals includes creating a bundle for schools that includes both the game and an accompanying film on the Lebensborn project.

Video games at the Games for Change festival didn’t shy away from difficult or touchy topics. Indeed, they were a vehicle for discussion and dialogue.

“The problem in a lot of developing countries is that people do not talk about issues. People do not want to share their problems out of embarrassment,” said Dr. Ilmana Fasih, a director at ZMQ.

The New Delhi-based consulting company developed “YourStoryTeller,” a mobile app that is less video game than a digital narrative.

User-contributed stories are transformed into comic strips. Each week, a new story addresses women’s issues in India, a country where patriarchal attitudes are common.

In one example, a young woman’s studies are disrupted for an arranged marriage that takes her from India to Canada, where she is physically abused by her new husband.

Fasih acknowledged the stories are definitely not of the Disney fairytale variety, and they definitely have a point of view.  

“Kids grow up watching those stories. We want kids to grow up watching these stories where there are struggles,” said Fasih. “A young boy is able to understand what are the struggles that his mom, his sisters go through. That is probably one of the best ways to defeat patriarchy.”

 
…

A voice in your ear at the touch of a hand?

The Orii ring allows people to take phone calls, handle text messages and interact with a phone’s digital assistant, all by transferring sound to a user’s ear through bone conduction.

The ring, designed by Hong Kong-based start-up Origami Labs, was inspired by Peter Wong, the visually impaired father of the firm’s co-founder Kevin Wong.

“As a visual-impaired person, I rely on the software on the smartphone to read the icons, the texts to me,” said Peter Wong, who is a technical adviser for the ring.

A key feature ensures that only the user can hear the information conveyed by the ring.

“Can you imagine it reading out your password? That’s inconvenient and inappropriate,” Peter Wong said.

What began as a Kickstarter project has become the latest example of wearable, screen-free technology.

“We want to keep our heads up, we want to be able to stay more in the moment,” said Kevin Wong, 29, who set up Origami Labs in November 2015 with three friends from university.

The tech wearable market grew 51 percent in Asia last year, according to consumer research firm GfK. The overall industry is expected to be worth $34 billion globally by 2020, research provider CCS Insight has said.

The Orii ring is expected to reach the commercial market by February.
…

There are smart phones, smart light bulbs, and now smart shoes. A Japanese engineer has created LED footwear that become glowing computer displays. And even though there are other shoes on the market that glow, these shoes step it up a notch, as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block.
…

Kenya’s Elections Observation Group (ELOG) plans to deploy about 5,000 observers to monitor Tuesday’s vote. ELOG also will use Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) to monitor the presidential election.

The Elections Observations Group, (ELOG) which is made up of civil society and faith-based organizations, met Saturday in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and said it will deploy about 5,700 election observers. Of those, approximately 1,700 observers also will monitor the elections using Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT).

Simon Wanjiru, the PVT Manager at ELOG, says the group is non-partisan, so its election observers will give independent and authentic results. ELOG began monitoring elections in Kenya in 2010.

​Wanjiru adds that the system will be used as a monitoring mechanism to flag irregularities.

“We want to increase the confidence of the public in the elections and also we want to remove any uncertainties on the people, and they need to believe that now the systems have been done right and we will be able to show if they have been done correctly by the commission,” he said.

ELOG officials say PVT works in five steps. In the first stage, observers go to polling stations and verify whether they have network coverage. Once this is verified the second step entails the observer filling out a simulation form and sending it to the data center. This ensures the observer understands the process of reporting via text message or SMS.

The third step involves the message check, where the data base receives the texts and checks for any errors in answering. The fourth step involves the data reporters contacting observers who have not yet reported, and troubleshoots. The fifth and final step includes a data-quality check where errors and inconsistencies are flagged by the database automatically.

Wanjiru says the monitoring group will abide by constitutional mechanisms in a scenario where results are withheld.

“It’s only the IEBC, [Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission], which is mandated to release the results, but for ELOG we only do the verification so we cannot verify before they have released,” he said. “Remember the constitution says the IEBC has to release the results in seven days. In case it goes beyond seven days, we don’t just say we are going to release but we will compel, we have a court. And we can use the other CSOs [Civil Society Organizations], who can now help beef up and compel the IEBC to have the results out then we can verify.”

Joyce Majiwa, of the Institute for Education in Democracy, (IED) spoke to VOA on the sidelines of the press conference.

According to Majiwa the IED seeks to nurture democracy and good governance in Kenya and Africa. She further notes that the key areas in Tuesday’s polls include electoral rules violations, among others. Majiwa adds that the monitoring will improve systems for future elections.

“We will make recommendations for future preparedness, we can make recommendations if there are violent areas especially women and girls. We can make recommendations for prosecution. We will have to follow up whether prosecutions are happening, and we will make recommendations to political parties as well.”

In 2013, ELOG monitored the elections in Kenya and projected President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory at 49.7 percent, while the official figures from IEBC stood at 50.07 percent.

Kenya is scheduled to vote August 8.

 
…

The U.S. Army has ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.

An Aug. 2 Army memo posted online and verified by Reuters applies to all DJI drones and systems that use DJI components or software. It requires service members to “cease all use, uninstall all DJI applications, remove all batteries/storage media and secure equipment for follow-on direction.”

The memo says DJI drones are the most widely used by the Army among off-the-shelf equipment of that type.

DJI said in a statement that it was “surprised and disappointed” at the Army’s “unprompted restriction on DJI drones as we were not consulted during their decision.”

The privately held company said it would contact the Army to determine what it means by “cyber vulnerabilities” and was willing to work with the Pentagon to address concerns.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Oppenheimer estimated in 2016 that DJI had about 70 percent share of the global commercial and consumer drone market. Goldman analysts estimated the market, including military, to be worth more than $100 billion over the next five years.

The Army was considering issuing a statement about the policy, said Army spokesman Dov Schwartz.

The move appears to follow studies conducted by the Army Research Laboratory and the Navy that said there were risks and vulnerabilities in DJI products.

The memo cites a classified Army Research Laboratory report and a Navy memo, both from May as references for the order to cease use of DJI drones and related equipment.
…

Finding underground gas leaks is now as easy as finding a McDonalds, thanks to a combination of Google Street View cars, mobile methane detectors, some major computing power and a lot of ingenuity.

When a city’s underground gas lines leak, they waste fuel and release invisible plumes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.  To find and measure leaks, Colorado State University biologist Joe von Fischer decided to create “methane maps,” to make it easier for utilities to identify the biggest leaks, and repair them.

“That’s where you get the greatest bang for the buck,” he pointed out, “the greatest pollution reductions per repair.”

Knowing that Google Maps start with Google Street View cars recording everything they drive by, along with their GPS locations, von Fischer’s team thought they would just add methane detectors to a Street View car. It turned out, it was not that simple.

“Squirrelly objects”

The world’s best methane detectors are accurate in an area the size of a teacup, but methane leaks can be wider than a street. Also, no one had ever measured the size of a methane leak from a moving car.

“If you’ve ever seen a plume of smoke, it’s sort of a lumpy, irregular object,” von Fischer said. “Methane plumes as they come out of the ground are the same, they’re lumpy squirrelly objects.”

The team had to develop a way to capture data about those plumes, one that would be accurate in the real world. They set up a test site in an abandoned airfield near campus, and brought in what looked like a large scuba tank filled with methane and some air hoses. Then they released carefully measured methane through the hose as von Fischer drove a specially equipped SUV past it, again and again.

They compared readings from the methane detectors in the SUV to readings from the tank.

“We spend a lot of time driving through the plumes to sort of calibrate the way that those cars see methane plumes that form as methane’s being emitted from the ground,” von Fischer explained.

With that understanding, the methane detectors hit the road.  

Turning data into maps

But the results created pages of data, “more than 30 million points,” said CSU computer scientist Johnson Kathkikiaran. He knew that all those data points alone would never help people find the biggest leaks on any map.  So he and his advisor, Sanmi Peracara, turned the data into pictures using tools from Google.

Their visual summaries made it easy for utility experts to analyze the methane maps, but von Fischer wanted anyone to be able to identify the worst leaks. His teammates at the Environmental Defense Fund met that challenge by incorporating the data into their online maps. Yellow dots indicate a small methane leak. Orange is a medium-size one.  Red means a big leak – as much pollution as one car driving 14,000 kilometers in a single day.

Von Fischer says that if a city focuses on these biggest leaks, repairing just 8 percent of them can reduce methane pollution by a third.

“That becomes a win-win type scenario,” he said, “because we’re not asking polluters to fix everything, but we’re looking for a reduction in overall emissions, and I think we can achieve that in a more cost effective way.”

After analyzing a methane map for the state of New Jersey, for example, the utility PSE&G has prioritized fixing its leakiest pipes there first, to speed the reduction of their overall pollution.

“To me that was a real victory, to be able to help the utility find which parts were leakiest, and to make a cost effective reduction in their overall emissions,” von Fishcher said.

Von Fischer envisions even more innovation ahead for mapping many kinds of pollution… to clean the air and save energy.
…

U.S. security agents have arrested the British hacker known for discovering a “kill switch” that nullified a widespread ransomware attack earlier this year.

Marcus Hutchins, a 23-year-old malware researcher who uses the name Malware Tech, was detained by the FBI on Wednesday at the Las Vegas airport, where he was preparing to return to Britain after attending two hacking conferences in the city.

Court documents unsealed on Thursday indicated Hutchins was arrested on hacking charges unrelated to the ransomware attack known as WannaCry.

Reuters news agency reports Hutchins is accused of advertising, distributing and profiting from malware code known as Kronos that stole online banking credentials and credit card data between July 2014 and July 2015.

Hutchins has not made a public statement, but his mother told London’s Telegraph newspaper that she expected to be “rather busy tonight,” trying to find out where her son is being held.

Hutchins became an overnight hero in May after disabling the WannaCry worm, which infiltrated software in hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, factories and shops in more than 150 countries. Parts of Britain’s National Health Service were infected, as well as the FedEx delivery company, German rail Deutsche Bahn and Spain’s Telefonica.

The attack first became evident May 12, 2017, and continued over the weekend. By May 15, Hutchins had discovered a so-called “kill switch” that disabled the worm.

The malware operators demanded the owners of the computers pay a fee of $300 to $600 to regain control of their computers.
…