Facebook, trudging through its awkward teenage years, is turning 15 on Monday.   Launched in 2004 as “TheFacebook,” the service was originally intended only for Harvard students. It’s now a massive global business that connects some 2.3 billion users. It was born in an era of desktop computers, years before the iPhone, and ran no ads.   At the time it was impossible to imagine that someday countries like Russia and Iran would try to use it for sophisticated information operations in order to influence elections around the world. In 2004, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest problem may have been almost getting kicked out of Harvard. Zuckerberg’s 2019 worries include the threat of government regulation of the empire he has built and the gnawing possibility that despite its stated lofty goals around connecting people and building community, Facebook may not be good for the world.   Today, it’s hard to take a subway in New York or a tram in Budapest, Hungary without overhearing the word “Facebook” or “Instagram” in conversation or seeing their apps open on passenger phones. The social network has transformed the world, for better and for worse, and its effect will be debated for years.   Here …

Pushpa Ithal may not fit the stereotype of the typical Silicon Valley CEO — she’s female, foreign-born, and a mother. Nevertheless, Ithal is an entrepreneur, living the Silicon Valley dream of running her own startup. Like her, many foreign-born tech women are finding a place in the Valley — as tech companies have become more and more dependent on foreign-born workers to create their products and services. Silicon Valley, the global center for high-tech innovation, could be renamed “Immigrant Valley.” When it comes to technical talent, the engine of Silicon Valley is fueled by foreign-born workers, many of whom are from humble roots. And having worked hard to get here, many have ambitions beyond their day jobs. One of them is Ithal. On Sundays, she and her two children, ages 5 and 10, pick out the clothes the kids will wear the coming week. Each outfit is placed on a labeled hanger. Then she does the same with the week’s snacks. “So there are no surprises for the kids,” Ithal said. Being organized is one of Ithal’s strategies for juggling parenting and running her own startup. And while that juggle is commonplace in Silicon Valley, Ithal is part of a …

“She had so much to offer.” Ian Russell is speaking of his 14-year-old daughter Molly, the youngest of three sisters, who committed suicide in 2017, leaving a note that read, “I am sorry. I did this because of me.” After Molly’s suicide, her parents examined the teenager’s social media use and discovered she was interacting with other teenage users caught in the grip of depression and who were suicidal and self-harming. The users were almost grooming themselves and goading each other to take drastic action. “I have no doubt that Instagram helped kill my daughter,” Molly’s father told the BBC in an explosive interview that drew a public apology from U.S. social media giant Facebook, owner of the photo sharing site Instagram, as well as a promise to do more to tackle suicide and self-harming posts. “We’re going to look at this from top to bottom and change everything we’re doing, if necessary, to get this right,” Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister and now Facebook’s head of global affairs, said in a statement. The promise, though, has done little to tamp down criticism. In the past eight years, the suicide rate among British teenagers has nearly doubled. …

A new report says the world produces at least 50 million tons of electronic waste each year, and that number is expected to double 30 years from now. The impact of all that electronic junk is especially felt in Africa. Mobile phones are increasingly common gadgets across Africa. You can get a phone for as little as $10 in the streets of Nairobi. Most Kenyans, however, don’t know how to safely dispose of their old phones when they get a new one.  “I have a spoiled phone. I have kept at home maybe for future use or dispose it one day…mostly if it’s not working, I can decide to throw it away. It depends on how it has spoiled. I throw it away,” Winnie says. It’s this kind of behavior that has environmentalists concerned, as many phones, once thrown away, end up in rivers and oceans. The U.N. Environmental Program estimates that 50 million tons of electronic waste was produced in 2018. It says that number could climb to 120 million tons by the year 2050. One half of so-called e-waste comprises personal devices like computers, smartphones and tablets.  Simon Omengo uses unorthodox means to dispose of his electronic gadgets. …

The growing use of mobile phones, computers, and televisions in Africa has left the continent with huge amounts of electronic waste. According to the United Nations Environment Program, 40 percent of the world’s electronic dumpsites are found in Africa. To reduce the growing problem, a group in Kenya is helping manage E-waste through local and exported recycling. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Nairobi. …

Owners of a new café in the Hungarian capital Budapest are using robotics as a way of giving their customers a new experience. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports. …

In December 2018, Apple announced its plans to build a new campus in Austin. Texas is rapidly becoming more and more attractive for tech companies and is often called a second Silicon Valley, thanks to affordable housing, highly qualified workers and the abundance of universities that train IT professionals. Mariia Prus traveled to Dallas to see how universities help their students become entrepreneurs. Joy Wagner has her report. …

Researchers and doctors are using incredibly tiny particles — fluorescent nanoparticles — in a quest for new ways to fight cancer. Some nanoparticles, just billionths of a meter across, are engineered to carry special dye that glows when it hits cancer cells. Oregon State University scientists say this makes it easier for surgeons to find and remove tumors. Iryna Matviichuk visited Portland and learned the new procedure is closer to testing in human patients. Anna Rice narrates her report. …

The trade dispute between the U.S. and China is disrupting Silicon Valley. What had been a steady flow of Chinese money into tech firms appears to be slowing. Investors are concerned about the “headline risk” of doing business with Chinese investors. And in some cases, U.S. startups are shunning Chinese investment. These changes come after years of investment and collaboration between China and Silicon Valley. But the trade dispute, coupled with U.S. policymakers’ concerns about Chinese investments in sensitive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, have increased scrutiny of cross border deals on all sides. A drop in investment In 2018, Chinese firms invested more than $2 billion in U.S. technology firms, but that was a drop of nearly 80 percent from the year before, according to a Forbes report citing S&P Global Market Intelligence. While Chinese investors took stakes in roughly the same number of U.S. tech deals — 80 compared to 89 in 2017 — that was off from the peak in 2016 when Chinese investors were part of 107 deals. Among the biggest recipients of Chinese investment in 2018 were Farasis Energy, a battery maker, and Epic Games, a gaming company, according to the Rhodium Group. While deals …

Tech companies and nearly two dozen U.S. states clashed with the government in federal court Friday over the repeal of net neutrality, a set of Obama-era rules aimed at preventing big internet providers from discriminating against certain technology and services.    Judges challenged arguments made by both sides in the face-off in an appeals court in Washington.      Lawyers for the states and the companies tried to persuade the three-judge panel to restore the net neutrality regime, set in 2015 but repealed in December 2017 at the direction of a regulator appointed by President Donald Trump. The companies challenging the FCC action include Mozilla, developer of the Firefox web browser, and Vimeo, a video-sharing site.    The net neutrality rules had banned cable, wireless and other broadband providers from blocking or slowing down websites and apps of their choosing, or charging Netflix and other video services extra to reach viewers faster.    The practice of slowing down transmission is known as “throttling.”    The action by the Federal Communications Commission rolling back the neutrality rules “is a stab in the heart of the Communications Act,” said attorney Pantelis Michalopoulos, referring to the Depression-era law that established the FCC.  Information vs. telecom service   …

A United Arab Emirates senior diplomat denied Thursday the country had targeted “friendly countries” or American citizens in a cyberspying program that a Reuters report said involved a hacking team of U.S. mercenaries. The Reuters investigation published Wednesday found that the UAE used a group of American intelligence contractors to help hack rival governments, dissidents and human rights activists. The contractors, former U.S. intelligence operatives, formed a core part of UAE’s cyber hacking program called Project Raven. Project Raven also targeted Americans, and the Apple Inc iPhones of embassy staff for France, Australia and the United Kingdom, according to former operatives and program documents reviewed by Reuters. Apple has declined to comment and did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. When asked about Project Raven by reporters at a briefing in New York, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash acknowledged the country has a “cyber capability,” but denied targeting U.S. citizens or countries with which it has good relations. “We live in a very difficult part of the world. We have to protect ourselves,” Gargash said. “We don’t target friendly countries and we don’t target American citizens.” The French and U.K. embassies in Washington …

Facebook said Thursday it took down hundreds of “inauthentic” accounts from Iran that were part of a vast manipulation campaign operating in more than 20 countries. The world’s biggest social network said it removed 783 pages, groups and accounts “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior tied to Iran.” The pages were part of a campaign to promote Iranian interests in various countries by creating fake identities as residents of those nations, according to a statement by Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook. The announcement was the latest by Facebook as it seeks to stamp out efforts by state actors and others to manipulate the social network using fraudulent accounts. “We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Gleicher said. “We’re taking down these pages, groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they post. In this case, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.” The operators “typically represented themselves as locals, often using fake accounts, and posted news stories on current events,” including …

Apple says Facebook can no longer distribute an app that paid users, including teenagers, to extensively track their phone and web use. In doing so, Apple closed off Facebook’s efforts to sidestep Apple’s app store and its tighter rules on privacy. The tech blog TechCrunch reported late Tuesday that Facebook paid people about $20 a month to install and use the Facebook Research app. While Facebook says this was done with permission, the company has a history of defining “permission” loosely and obscuring what data it collects. “I don’t think they make it very clear to users precisely what level of access they were granting when they gave permission,” mobile app security researcher Will Strafach said Wednesday. “There is simply no way the users understood this.” He said Facebook’s claim that users understood the scope of data collection was “muddying the waters.” Facebook says fewer than 5 percent of the app’s users were teens and they had parental permission. Nonetheless, the revelation is yet another blemish on Facebook’s track record on privacy and could invite further regulatory scrutiny. And it comes less than a week after court documents revealed that Facebook allowed children to rack up huge bills on digital …

Global smartphone sales saw their worst contraction ever in 2018, and the outlook for 2019 isn’t much better, new surveys show. Worldwide handset volumes declined 4.1 percent in 2018 to a total of 1.4 billion units shipped for the full year, according to research firm IDC, which sees a potential for further declines this year. “Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith. “Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, (South) Korea and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018.” Reith said the market has been hit by consumers waiting longer to replace their phones, frustration around the high cost of premium devices, and political and economic uncertainty. The Chinese market, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of smartphone sales, was especially hard hit with a 10 percent drop, according to IDC’s survey, which was released Wednesday. IDC said the top five smartphone makers have become stronger and now account for 69 percent of worldwide sales, up from 63 percent a year ago. Samsung remained the number one handset maker with a 20.8 percent share despite an eight percent sales slump for the year, IDC said. …

Whether it’s haggling for a better price or negotiating for a higher salary, there is a skill to getting the most of what you want. Researchers at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are conducting research on how a virtual negotiator may be able to teach you the art of making a good deal. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. …

Apple hoped to offset slowing demand for iPhones by raising the prices of its most important product, but that strategy seems to have backfired after sales sagged during the holiday shopping season. Results released Tuesday revealed the magnitude of the iPhone slump – a 15 percent drop in revenue from the previous year. That decline in Apple’s most profitable product caused Apple’s total earnings for the October-December quarter to dip slightly to $20 billion. Now, CEO Tim Cook is grappling with his toughest challenge since replacing co-founder Steve Jobs 7 years ago. Even as he tries to boost iPhone sales, Cook also must prove that Apple can still thrive even if demand doesn’t rebound.  It figures to be an uphill battle, given Apple’s stock has lost one-third of its value in less than four months, erasing about $370 billion in shareholder wealth.  Cook rattled Wall Street in early January by disclosing the company had missed its own revenue projections for the first time in 15 years. The last time that happened, the iPod was just beginning to transform Apple. ​”This is the defining moment for Cook,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives. “He has lost some credibility on Wall Street, …

If Twitter is the town square for journalists, some are ready to step away. That’s happening this week at the online news site Insider — by order of the boss. Reporters have been told to take a week off from tweeting at work and to keep TweetDeck off their computer screens. The idea of disengaging is to kick away a crutch for the journalists and escape from the echo chamber, said Julie Zeveloff West, Insider’s editor-in-chief for the U.S. Addiction to always-rolling Twitter feeds and the temptation to join in has led to soul-searching in newsrooms. Some of it is inspired by the reaction to the Jan. 19 demonstration in Washington involving students from a Covington, Kentucky, high school, which gained traction as a story primarily because of social media outrage only to become more complicated as different details and perspectives emerged. Planning for Insider’s ban predated the Covington story, West said. She often walks through her newsrooms to find reporters staring at TweetDeck. Her goal is to encourage reporters to find news in other ways, by picking up the telephone or meeting sources. An editor will make sure no news is being missed. Twitter “isn’t the place where most …

Senior U.S. officials and experts say the United States needs to rally allies to pressure China stealing advanced technology through cyber espionage. At the same time, key American lawmakers are questioning the readiness and capacity of the U.S. to counter such threats. The renewed push comes after U.S. federal prosecutors pressed criminal charges against the world’s largest telecommunications company — China’s Huawei Technologies — its chief financial officer and several subsidiaries for alleged financial fraud and theft of U.S. intellectual property. Huawei denies the charges. Beijing denies its government and military engage in cyber-espionage, saying the U.S. allegations are fabricated. “The Huawei incident seems like an action against an individual corporation, but it is actually bigger than this,” said Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar. “This is about one state’s technology war against another state, about which one will occupy the technology high ground in the future.” The Trump administration, however, said Washington is deeply concerned about the potential of Beijing using Chinese technology firms to spy on the U.S. and its allies.  “China’s pursuit of intellectual property, sensitive research and development plans, and the U.S. person data remains a significant threat to the United States government and the private sector,” …

Apple has made the group chat function in FaceTime unavailable after users said there was a bug that could allow callers to activate another user’s microphone remotely.   The bug was demonstrated through videos online and reported on this week by tech blogs. Reports said the bug in the video chat app could allow an iPhone user calling another iPhone through Group Facetime to hear the audio from the other handset — even if the receiver did not accept the call.   “We’re aware of this issue and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week,” Apple said in a statement Tuesday.   Its online support page noted there was a technical issue with the application and that Group Facetime “is temporarily unavailable.”   The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, issued a statement warning people about the bug and urging people to disable the app until Apple fixes the issue.   …

From hackers exposing private information online to the handling of users’ data by internet giants, online privacy has become a matter of growing concern for countries, companies and people alike. On Monday, countries around the world marked Data Privacy Day, also known as Data Protection Day — an initiative to raise awareness of internet safety issues. Here are 10 facts about online privacy: * Less than 60 percent of countries have laws to secure the protection of data and privacy. * Europe’s data protection regulators have received more than 95,000 complaints about possible data breaches since the adoption of a landmark EU privacy law in May. * More than one in two respondents to a 2018 global survey by pollster CIGI-Ipsos said they had grown more concerned about their online privacy compared to the previous year. * Almost 40 percent of respondents to another survey by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said they did not know how to protect themselves from cybercrime. * A survey of tech professionals by security key maker Yubico suggested experts might not live up to safety standards. It found almost 70 percent of respondents shared passwords with colleagues. * More than half reused an average of …

When Danny Reagan was 13, he began exhibiting signs of what doctors usually associate with drug addiction. He became agitated, secretive and withdrew from friends. He had quit baseball and Boy Scouts, and he stopped doing homework and showering. But he was not using drugs. He was hooked on YouTube and video games, to the point where he could do nothing else. As doctors would confirm, he was addicted to his electronics. “After I got my console, I kind of fell in love with it,” Danny, now 16 and a junior in a Cincinnati high school, said. “I liked being able to kind of shut everything out and just relax.” Danny was different from typical plugged-in American teenagers. Psychiatrists say internet addiction, characterized by a loss of control over internet use and disregard for the consequences of it, affects up to 8 percent of Americans and is becoming more common around the world. “We’re all mildly addicted. I think that’s obvious to see in our behavior,” said psychiatrist Kimberly Young, who has led the field of research since founding the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995. “It becomes a public health concern obviously as health is influenced by the behavior.” …

Iran is likely to expand its cyberespionage activities as its relations with Western powers worsen, the European Union digital security agency said Monday. Iranian hackers are behind several cyberattacks and online disinformation campaigns in recent years as the country tries to strengthen its clout in the Middle East and beyond, a Reuters Special Report published in November found. This month the European Union imposed its first sanctions on Iran since world powers agreed to a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, in a reaction to Iran’s ballistic missile tests and assassination plots on European soil. “Newly imposed sanctions on Iran are likely to push the country to intensify state-sponsored cyber threat activities in pursuit of its geopolitical and strategic objectives at a regional level,” the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) said in a report. A senior Iranian official rejected the report, saying “these are all part of a psychological war launched by the United States and its allies against Iran.” ENISA lists state-sponsored hackers as among the highest threats to the bloc’s digital security. It said that China, Russia and Iran are “the three most capable and active cyber actors tied to economic espionage.” Iran, Russia and …

Facebook said on Monday it will beef up its rules and safeguards around political ads to prevent foreign interference in elections, including those in Europe this year. The world’s largest social network has faced pressure from regulators and the public after last year’s revelation that British consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly acquired data on millions of U.S. users to target election advertising. “We will require those wanting to run political and issue ads to be authorized, and we will display a ‘paid for by’ disclaimer on those ads,” Facebook’s recently-appointed head of global affairs Nick Clegg told a news conference. Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister hired by Facebook in October last year, said the new tools to be launched in late March aim to help protect the integrity of European Union elections due to be held this spring. Facebook said that the transparency tools for electoral ads would be expanded globally before the end of June, while the tools would be in launched in India in February before its elections and in Ukraine and Israel before polls in both. The tools are similar to those adopted for the U.S. mid-term elections, Clegg said, adding that all political ads …

Blockchain technology – a high-tech way to securely manage and protect data – is best-known as the driver of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Now, a U.S. coffee importer is using it to improve the lives of coffee farmers and some of the poorest communities in Central America. Faith Lapidus reports. …