France welcomed Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Friday with a threat of sweeping new regulation. With Facebook under fire on multiple fronts, Zuckerberg is in Paris to show that his social media giant is working hard to limit violent extremism and hate speech shared online. But a group of French regulators and experts who spent weeks inside Facebook facilities in Paris, Dublin and Barcelona say the company isn’t working hard enough. Just before Zuckerberg met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, the 10 officials released a report calling for laws allowing the government to investigate and fine social networks that don’t take responsibility for the content that makes them money. The French government wants the legislation to serve as a model for Europe-wide management of social networks. Several countries have introduced similar legislation, some tougher than what France is proposing. To an average user, it seems like the problem is intractable. Mass shootings are live-streamed, and online mobs are spreading rumors that lead to deadly violence. Facebook is even inadvertently creating celebratory videos using extremist content and auto-generating business pages for the likes of the Islamic State group and al Qaida. The company says it is working on solutions, and the …

Nike wants to meet your feet. The sneaker seller will launch a foot-scanning tool on its app this summer that will measure and remember the length, width and other dimensions of customers’ feet after they point a smartphone camera to their toes. The app will then tell shoppers what size to buy each of its shoes in, which Nike hopes will cut down on costly online returns as it seeks to sell more of its goods through its websites and apps.    But Nike will also get something it has never had before: a flood of data on the feet of regular people, a potential goldmine for the shoemaker, which says it will use the information to improve the design of its shoes. Nike mainly relies on the feet of star athletes to build its kicks. “Nikes will become better and better fitting shoes for you and everyone else,” said Michael Martin, who oversees Nike’s websites and apps.    Nike won’t sell or share the data to other companies, Martin says. And he says shoppers don’t have to save the foot scans to their Nike accounts. But if they do, they’ll only have to scan their feet once and Nike’s …

U.S. communications regulators are rejecting a Chinese telecom company’s application to provide service in the U.S. due to national-security risks amid an escalation in tensions between the two countries.   The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted unanimously, 5-0 across party lines, to reject China Mobile International USA Inc.’s long-ago filed application. The Commerce Department had recommended that denial last year.   The company, which the FCC says is ultimately owned by the Chinese government, applied in 2011 to provide international phone service in the U.S.   The Trump administration has been pushing against China in several ways. It has been pressuring allies to reject Chinese telecom equipment for their networks, citing security risks from Chinese telecom giant Huawei.   The U.S. and China are also in the middle of high-stakes trade talks.     …

Google’s self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, is teaming up with Lyft in Arizona to attempt to lure passengers away from ride-hailing market leader Uber. The alliance announced Tuesday will allow anyone with the Lyft app in the Phoenix area to summon one of the 10 self-driving Waymo cars that will join the ride-hailing service by end of September. Waymo’s robotic vehicles will still have a human behind the wheel to take control in case something goes awry with the technology. But their use in Lyft’s service could make more people feel comfortable about riding in self-driving cars. Self-driving to a profit Both Lyft and Uber consider self-driving cars to be one of the keys to turning a profit, something neither company has done so far. Meanwhile, Waymo has been slowly expanding its own ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that so far has been confined to passengers who previously participated in free tests of its self-driving technology. “We’re committed to continuously improving our customer experience, and our partnership with Lyft will also give our teams the opportunity to collect valuable feedback,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik wrote in a blog post. Lyft President John Zimmer described the Waymo partnership as “phenomenal” in …

When Google launched its now distinctive digital assistant in 2016, it was already in danger of being an also-ran. At the time, Amazon had been selling its Echo smart speaker, powered by its Alexa voice assistant, for more than a year. Apple’s Siri was already five years old and familiar to most iPhone users. Google’s main entry in the field up to that point was Google Now, a phone-bound app that took voice commands but didn’t answer back. Now the Google Assistant – known primarily as the voice of the Google Home smart speaker – is increasingly central to Google’s new products. And even though it remains commercially overshadowed by Alexa, it keeps pushing the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can accomplish in everyday settings. For instance, Google last year announced an Assistant service called Duplex, which it said can actually call up restaurants and make reservations for you. Duplex isn’t yet widely available yet outside of Google’s own Pixel phones in the U.S. Alexa and Siri so far offer nothing similar. Google is expected to announce updates and expansions to its AI Assistant at its annual developer conference Tuesday. Although voice assistants have spread across smartphones and into cars …

Alphabet’s Google is set to roll out a dashboard-like function in its Chrome browser to offer users more control in fending off tracking cookies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Cookies are small text files that follow internet users and are used by advertisers to target consumers on the specific interests they have displayed while browsing. While Google’s new tools are not expected to significantly curtail its ability to collect data, it would help the company press its sizable advantage over online-advertising rivals, the newspaper said. Google’s 3 billion users help make it the world’s largest seller of internet ads, capturing nearly a third of all revenue, ahead of rival Facebook’s 20%, according to research firm eMarketer. Total digital ad spending in the United States will grow 19%  to nearly $130 billion in 2019, according to eMarketer. Google has been working on the cookies plan for at least six years, in stops and starts, but accelerated the work after news broke last year that personal data of Facebook users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. The company is mostly targeting cookies installed by profit-seeking third parties, separate from the owner of the website …

Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems.   The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, DARPA.   Dubbed “ElectionGuard,” the Microsoft kit will be available this summer, the company says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year’s general elections. CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer’s conference in Seattle.   Nadella said the project’s software, provided free of charge as part of Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program, would help “modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world.” Microsoft also announced a cut-rate Office 365 application suite for political parties and campaigns for what it charges nonprofits. Both Microsoft and Google provide anti-phishing email support for campaigns.   Three little-known U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box voting systems. Open-source software is …

Virtual Reality had a fantastic year in 2016, with the release of several anticipated VR glasses, including the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Gaming and technology fairs presented the new toys proudly, but the boom quickly declined, leaving the technology to only niche applications. Now, a southeastern Chinese city has opened an entertainment park that intends to show VR’s potential as a future technology. Markus Meyer-Gehlen reports. …

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to showcase much-anticipated updates to the company’s hardware lines and artificial intelligence. Google will also likely address privacy updates as concerns about data sharing continue to plague the tech industry. Facebook dedicated much of its own conference last week to addressing privacy. Rumors suggest that Google may unveil a mid-range Pixel phone as a cheaper option to the flagship model currently on sale for $800. Pichai has a keynote scheduled Tuesday at the company’s annual I/O conference for software developers in Mountain View, California. Google says more than 7,000 developers will attend. The conference is focused on updates for the computer engineers that build apps and services on top of Google technology. I/O has also become a stage to announce new consumer products. …