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. …

South Korea launched the world’s first nationwide 5G mobile networks two days early, its top mobile carriers said Thursday, giving a handful of users access in a late-night scramble to be the first providers of the super-fast wireless technology. Three top telecom providers — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus — began their 5G services at 11 pm local time Wednesday, despite previously announcing the launch date would be April 5. Hyper-wired South Korea has long had a reputation for technical prowess, and Seoul had made the 5G rollout a priority as it seeks to stimulate stuttering economic growth. Along with the US, China and Japan, South Korea had been racing to claim the title as the world’s first provider of the ultra-fast network. But speculation that US mobile carrier Verizon might start its 5G services early forced South Korean providers to hastily organize a late-night launch, Yonhap news agency reported. In the event, Verizon began rolling out its 5G services in Chicago and Minneapolis on Wednesday in the US, a week ahead of schedule. But according to Yonhap, the South Korean launches came two hours earlier. “SK Telecom today announced that it has activated 5G services for six celebrities …

Facebook Inc’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is confident the world’s biggest social network will do better in 2020 at stopping “bad actors” from manipulating the U.S. presidential election. “We’ve learned a lot since 2016, where, obviously, we were behind where we needed to be on defenses for nation states trying to interfere,” he said in a “Good Morning America” interview released on Thursday. “These aren’t things that you ever fully solve, right? They’re ongoing arms races, where we need to make sure that our systems stay ahead of the sophisticated bad actors, who are just always going to try to game them.” U.S. intelligence agencies say there was an extensive Russian cyber-influence operation during the 2016 campaign aimed at helping Donald Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations. Zuckerberg said the social media giant had implemented a lot of different measures since 2016 to verify any advertiser who is running a political ad and create an archive so anyone could see what advertisers are running, who they are targeting and how much they are paying. Advertising practices at Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 2.7 billion users and $56 billion in annual …

In the U.S. economic battle with China, the Chinese government is often portrayed as a kingmaker, making large investments in research and paving the way for Chinese companies to thrive. China, it turns out, is a good foil for U.S. industries as they ask the U.S. government to do more to help them compete globally. Two new reports out this week, one from the U.S. wireless industry and the other from the U.S. semiconductor industry, show how U.S. companies are looking more to Washington to help them compete with their Chinese counterparts. CTIA, which represents the U.S. wireless industry, found in its report that the U.S. is now tied with China when it comes to “its 5G readiness.” 5G is the high-speed wireless network that is being built around the world. Last year, the U.S. was in third place, trailing China and South Korea, respectively, according to CTIA. ​US tied with China in 5G race What has propelled U.S. firms? Increased industry investment in 5G networks plus “government action to reform infrastructure policies and make more spectrum available to wireless operators,” according to CTIA. The stakes are said to be high in the global race to 5G. The first nation …

South Korea on Friday launches the world’s first nationwide 5G mobile networks, a transformational leap that has superpowers sparring for control of an innovation that could change the day-to-day lives of billions of people. The fast communications heralded by fifth-generation wireless technology will ultimately underpin everything from toasters to telephones, from electric cars to power grids.    But while Seoul has won the race to be first to provide the user experience, that is only one part of a wider battle that has pitted the United States against China and ensnared giants including Huawei.    Hyper-wired South Korea has long had a reputation for technical prowess, and Seoul has made the 5G rollout a priority as it seeks to stimulate stuttering economic growth.    The system will bring smartphones near-instantaneous connectivity — 20 times faster than existing 4G — allowing users to download entire movies in less than a second.    In the same way that 3G enabled widespread mobile web access and 4G made new applications work ranging from social media to Uber, 5G will herald a new level of connectivity, empowered by speed.    It is crucial for the future development of devices ranging from self-driving vehicles that send …

Facebook Inc on Wednesday changed the privacy settings on its WhatsApp messaging platform, allowing users to decide who can add them to chat groups, as it tries to revamp its image after growing privacy concerns among users. WhatsApp, which has about 1.5 billion users, has been trying to find ways to stop misuse of the app, following global concerns that the platform was being used to spread fake news, manipulated photos, videos without context and audio hoaxes, with no way to monitor their origin or full reach. The messaging service said in January it would limit the number of times a user could forward a message to five in a bid to fight “misinformation and rumors.” Concerns about Facebook’s handling of personal information have grown since the world’s largest social network admitted in March that data of millions of users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. In a blog post, WhatsApp said a user inviting another to a group will be prompted to send a private invite through an individual chat, giving the recipient the choice of joining the group. The request will expire in three days. The setting will be rolled out Wednesday for some users and …

Boeing anti-stall software forced down the nose of a doomed Ethiopian jet even after pilots had turned it off, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, as investigators scrutinize the role played by technology and crew in the fatal March 10 crash. A preliminary Ethiopian report into the disaster is due to be published within days and may include evidence the software system kicked in as many as four times before the 737 MAX dived into the ground, two people with knowledge of the matter said. A third person familiar with the findings confirmed the software had fired up again after pilots had initially switched it off, but said there was only one significant episode in which the plane pointed itself lower in the moments before the crash. The so-called MCAS software is at the center of accident probes in both the crash of Ethiopian flight 302 and a Lion Air accident in Indonesia five months earlier that together killed 346 people. It was not immediately clear whether the Ethiopian crew chose to re-deploy the system, which pushes the Boeing 737 MAX downwards to avoid stalling. But one of the sources said investigators were studying the possibility that the software started working …

Digital mapping technology has been around for awhile, but it’s only recently that it’s been applied to art history. University researchers are receiving grants from sources such as the Getty Foundation to build web applications for users to explore and research historic sites.  Historians increasingly are getting a new perspective on the past by connecting the worlds of art history with computer mapping technology. “It actually lets you think about how people lived in these spaces, moved through these spaces,” said Heather MacDonald, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation. “How art works interacted and would have been seen and understood in relationship to one another.” 3-D animation and digital mapping allow people to explore and research archeological sites and historic cities to better understand the environment where art objects were found. “Because of the developments in computer science and in regular standard computers even laptops have made this kind of work much easier for art historians,” said Duke University Art History Professor Paul Jaskot, who directs the Wired Lab for Digital Art History and visual culture. The data could include archival information that spans hundreds of years such as a map of the growth of Rio de Janeiro in …

Digital mapping technology has been around for awhile, but it’s only recently that it’s been applied to art history. University researchers are receiving grants from sources such as the Getty Foundation to build web applications for users to explore and research historic sites. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains how technology is allowing art historians to better understand the past. …

Facebook is much better than it was in 2016 at tackling election interference but cannot guarantee the site will not be used to undermine European Parliament elections in May, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. Chastened since suspected Russian operatives used Facebook and other social media to influence an election that surprisingly brought Donald Trump to power in the United States, Facebook has said it has plowed resources and staff into safeguarding the May 26 EU vote. Zuckerberg said there had been a lot of important elections since 2016 that have been relatively clean and demonstrated the defenses it has built up to protect their integrity. “We’ve certainly made a lot of progress … But no, I don’t think anyone can guarantee in a world where you have nation states that are trying to interfere in elections, there’s no single thing we can do and say okay we’ve now solved the issue,” Zuckerberg told Irish national broadcaster RTE in an interview. “This is an ongoing arms race where we’re constantly building up our defenses and these sophisticated governments are also evolving their tactics.” U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia ran a disinformation and hacking operation to undermine the …

The Dutch security service advised the government Tuesday not to use technology from countries with active cyber-hacking campaigns against the Netherlands, such as China and Russia. The recommendation came as the Dutch government is weighing options for a new 5G telecommunications network in the coming years and seeks to replace its domestic emergency services network, known as C2000. The AIVD security agency flagged Chinese and Russian attempts at digital espionage as a major security risk. “It is undesirable for the Netherlands to exchange sensitive information or for vital processes to depend on the hardware or software of companies from countries running active cyber programmes against Dutch interests,” the AIVD said in its annual report. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has refused to rule out doing business with Chinese technology companies, even as key allies the United States and Australia restricted Huawei Technologies from accessing its next-generation mobile networks on national security grounds. Washington has said that Huawei is at the beck and call of the Chinese state, warning that its network equipment may contain “back doors” that could open them up to cyberespionage. Huawei says such concerns are unfounded. …

Hundreds of ads on Facebook promised U.S. homeowners that they were eligible for huge state tax breaks if they installed new solar-energy panels. There was just one catch: None of it was true.   The scam ads used photos of nearly every U.S. governor — and sometimes President Donald Trump — to claim that with new, lucrative tax incentives, people might actually make money by installing solar technology on their homes. Facebook users only needed to enter their addresses, email, utility information and phone number to find out more.   Those incentives don’t exist.   While the ads didn’t aim to bilk people of money directly — and it wasn’t possible to buy solar panels through these ads — they led to websites that harvested personal information that could be used to expose respondents to future come-ons, both scammy and legitimate. It’s not clear that the data was actually used in such a manner.   Facebook apparently didn’t take action until notified by state-government officials who noticed the ads.   The fictitious notices reveal how easily scammers can pelt internet users with misinformation for months, undetected. They also raise further questions about whether big tech companies such as Facebook are …

Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legislation in parliament on Monday, stoking fears from internet firms and human rights groups that it may give the government too much power and hinder freedom of speech. The law would require social media sites like Facebook to carry warnings on posts the government deems false and remove comments against “public interest.” The move came two days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said governments should play a more active role in regulating the online platform. But Simon Milner, who works on Facebook’s public policy in Asia, said after the law was tabled, the firm was “concerned with aspects of the law that grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be false and proactively push a government notification to users.” “As the most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date, this level of overreach poses significant risks to freedom of expression and speech, and could have severe ramifications both in Singapore and around the world,” said Jeff Paine, managing director of the Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association of internet and technology companies in the region. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Singapore’s Law Minister K. Shanmugam …

Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts and pages linked to Indian political parties or the Pakistani military for what the company described as “coordinated inauthentic behavior or spam.” The Facebook or Instagram accounts, pages or groups were detected through internal investigations into account activity in the region before upcoming elections in India. “These Pages and accounts were engaging in behaviors that expressly violate our policies. This included using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names; impersonating someone else; posting links to malware; and posting massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages in order to drive traffic to websites they are affiliated with in order to make money,” Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in a statement. The social media giant has become much more conscious of user activity after a scandal in which data mining firm Cambridge Analytica used information from tens of millions of Facebook users to manipulate political campaigns in multiple countries, including the United States. Indian political parties are relying heavily on social media to push forward their agenda in a tough general election that begins April 11, and the issue of fake news remains a major concern. ​Facebook …

Facebook is lifting the lid on the algorithm that decides which posts appear in its news feed, as part of a drive to be more transparent and offer greater control to users. The feature “Why am I seeing this post?”, being rolled out from Monday, offers some insight into the tens of thousands of inputs used by the social network to rank stories, photos and video in the news feed, the foundation of the platform. “The basic thing that this tool does is let people see why they are seeing a particular post in their news feed, and it helps them access the actions they might want to take if they want to change that,” Facebook’s Head of News Feed John Hegeman told reporters on Monday. After a series of privacy scandals, Facebook needs to regain users’ trust as it prepares to roll out a single messaging service combining Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram that could make it even more central to users’ communications. The new news feed feature will show users the data that connect them to a particular type of post, Hegeman said, for example that they are friends with the poster and they’ve liked their posts more …

David Johnston stands over a table full of peculiar items confiscated at Dulles International Airport: a glittery clutch with brass knuckles as a clasp. A perfume bottle shaped like a grenade. A rusted circular saw blade. A pocket-sized pitchfork. None of those is quite right. Then Johnston sees it: a guitar shaped like a semi-automatic rifle. Bingo. It will do nicely for the Transportation Security Administration’s social media accounts. Johnston, TSA’s social media director, is following in the footsteps of Curtis “Bob” Burns, who created unlikely internet buzz for the not-always-beloved agency by showcasing the weirdest stuff travelers pack in their carry-ons. He died suddenly in October at age 48. Burns’ work created a model for other federal agencies. The quirky photos combined with a hefty dose of dad humor helped lure in more than a million followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, who would then see important messages about the do’s and don’ts of airline travel. “How are we going to replace Bob? The reality is we can’t,” said Johnston. “We had a unique situation with him, but we can still be entertaining and help people as we find our way forward without him.” On the blog, Burns shared …

For techies and phone geeks, Digital Cambodia 2019 was the place to be. More than a dozen high school students clustered at the booth for Cellcard, Cambodia’s leading mobile operator. Under the booth’s 5G sign, they played video games on their phones. Hak Kimheng, a ninth grade student in Phnom Penh, said his mom bought him a Samsung smartphone a few months ago, when he moved to the capital city from nearby Kandal province to live with his uncle while attending school. Like moms everywhere, she thought the smartphone would help her stay in touch with her son. But smartphones being smartphones and kids being kids, Hak Kimheng, 16, has used it to set up an account on Facebook, Cambodia’s favorite social media platform. He’s also downloaded Khmer Academy, a tutoring app filled with math, physics and chemistry lessons. And for one hour a day, Hak Kimheng watches soccer on the YouTube app he downloaded. While it’s better than nothing, the internet connection is “slow … and the video image is not clear,” he said.  “I want it to be faster. … It’ll be good to have 5G.” Not far from the Cellcard booth, Cambodian government officials, ASEAN telecom and …

For decades, it was virtually unknown outside a small circle of investors, corporate lawyers and government officials.    But in recent years, the small interagency body known as the Committee for Investment in the United States has grown in prominence, propelled by a U.S. desire to use it as an instrument of national security and foreign policy.    This week, the panel made headlines after it reportedly directed Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech to divest itself of Grindr, a popular gay dating app, because of concern the user data it collects could be used to blackmail military and intelligence personnel.    Operating out of the Treasury Department, the nine-member CFIUS (pronounced Cy-fius) reviews foreign investments in U.S. businesses to determine whether they pose a national security threat.   Notification was voluntary   Until last year, notifying the panel about such investments was voluntary, something Kunlun and California-based Grindr took advantage of when they closed a deal in 2016.     But given growing U.S. concern about Chinese companies with ties to Beijing buying businesses in sensitive U.S. industries, the committee’s rare intervention to undo the deal was hardly a surprise, said Harry Broadman, a former CFIUS member.      “I think anyone …

Facebook said Friday it is further tightening requirements for European Union political advertising, in its latest efforts to prevent foreign interference and increase transparency ahead of the bloc’s parliamentary elections. However, some EU politicians criticized the social media giant, saying the measures will make pan-European online campaigning harder. Under the new rules, people, parties and other groups buying political ads will have to confirm to Facebook that they are located in the same EU country as the Facebook users they are targeting. That’s on top of a previously announced requirement for ad buyers to confirm their identities. It means advertisements aimed at voters across the EU’s 28 countries will have to register a person in each of those nations. “It’s a disgrace that Facebook doesn’t see Europe as an entity and appears not to care about the consequences of undermining European democracy,” Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the parliament’s liberal ALDE group, said on Twitter. “Limiting political campaigns to one country is totally the opposite of what we want.” The response underscores the balancing act for Silicon Valley tech companies as they face pressure from EU authorities to do more to prevent their platforms being used by outside groups, including Russia, …

Most of us don’t give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks – like buttoning a shirt – can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. Tina Trinh reports. …

At one atom thick, graphene is one of those miracle materials that many say is the stuff of the future. The future may be now as graphene’s potential is being realized as the key to quick efficient 5G networks, and the future of telecommunications. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Facebook was charged with discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because of its ad-targeting system. HUD said Thursday Facebook is allowing advertisers to exclude people based on their neighborhood by drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map and giving advertisers the option of showing ads only to men or only to women. The agency also claims Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude people that the social media company classified as parents; non-American-born; non-Christian; interested in accessibility; interested in Hispanic culture or a wide variety of other interests that closely align with the Fair Housing Act’s protected classes. HUD, which is pursuing civil charges and potential monetary awards that could run into the millions, said Facebook’s ad platform is “encouraging, enabling, and causing housing discrimination” because it allows advertisers to exclude people who they don’t want to see their ads. The claim from HUD comes less than a week after Facebook said it would overhaul its ad-targeting systems to prevent discrimination in housing , credit and employment ads as part of a legal settlement with a group that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Fair Housing Alliance and others. The technology at the …

British cybersecurity inspectors have found significant technical issues in Chinese telecom supplier Huawei’s software that they say pose risks for the country’s telecom companies.   The annual report Thursday said there is only “limited assurance” that long-term national security risks from Huawei’s involvement in critical British telecom networks can be adequately managed.   The report adds pressure on Huawei, which is at the center of a geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China.   The U.S. government wants its European allies to ban the company from next-generation mobile networks set to roll out in coming years over fears Huawei gear could be used for cyberespionage.   The report noted that Britain’s cybersecurity authorities did not believe the defects were a result of “Chinese state interference.”     …

Most of us don’t give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks like buttoning a shirt can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports. …