U.S. President Joe Biden announced Friday he plans to nominate former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson to lead the U.S. space agency, NASA.In a statement, the White House says as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a three-term senator from Florida, Nelson, a Democrat, chaired committees on space, …
Twitter celebrates its 15th anniversary this month (March 21). With 330 million users around the world, the company that once called itself the free speech wing of the free speech party has been forced to contend with abuses of its platform. Tina Trinh reports. …
Twitter celebrates its 15th anniversary this month (March 21). With 330 million users around the world, the company that once called itself the free speech wing of the free speech party has been forced to contend with abuses of its platform. Tina Trinh reports. …
The FBI says it received a record number of complaints from the public last year about cybercrimes, including scams related to the COVID-19 pandemic, costing Americans a staggering $4.2 billion in losses.The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 791,790 complaints in 2020, an increase of 69% over 2019 and the …
A growing number of companies are making products with the environment in mind. VOA’s Julie Taboh learned about an item finder made from ocean trash. Producer: Julie Taboh/Adam Greenbaum …
South by Southwest, the annual event in Austin, Texas, that brings together technology, music, politics and Hollywood, is happening digitally this year after being canceled last year due to COVID-19. Michelle Quinn reports.Producer: Matt Dibble …
Facebook has reached an agreement with Australia’s News Corp under a new law that makes social media giants pay domestic news outlets for their content.The terms of the multi-year deal were not disclosed in Tuesday’s announcement. The deal comes nearly one month after Australia’s parliament approved a law that would …
U.S. automaker General Motors Corporation announced Monday it will build certain 2021 light-duty full-size pickup trucks without a fuel management module due to the global semiconductor chip shortage.In an email to the Reuters news agency, GM spokeswoman Michelle Malcho said the decision will lower the fuel economy slightly in those …
Facebook has scrapped plans to connect California, Taiwan and Hong Kong via a 12,000 kilometer underwater cable, citing tensions between the U.S. and China. The social media giant told the Wall St. Journal, which broke the story, it was halting the project due to political pressure from the U.S. government, …
Russia’s Internet regulatory body, Roskomnadzor, announced it had slowed down Twitter’s ability to function in Russia effective Wednesday — part of what authorities said was an initial penalty for the American social media platform’s failure to delete illegal content inside the country.According to a statement posted on Roskomnadzor’s website, 100 …
The nightly internet shutdowns in Myanmar are part of a strategy employed by many governments worldwide in times of crisis. But they come with costs. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports. …
The White House on Sunday urged computer network operators to take further steps to gauge whether their systems were targeted amid a hack of Microsoft Corp’s Outlook email program, saying a recent software patch still left serious vulnerabilities.”This is an active threat still developing and we urge network operators to …
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet at auction, with bidding Saturday reaching $2 million in a sign of the appetite for virtual objects authenticated through blockchain technology.”just setting up my twttr,” Dorsey tweeted on March 21, 2006.On Friday he posted a link to “Valuables @Cent,” an online …
U.S. President Joe Biden’s order to secure semiconductor supply chains for high-tech hardware production offers a commercial boost to Taiwan, one of the world’s biggest providers of chips, and gives Taipei new weight in any free-trade talks, analysts say.Biden signed an executive order Feb. 24 for the United States to …
This week a U.S.-government backed commission of technology experts completed a three-year review of the country’s artificial intelligence capabilities, urging the development of a new national technology strategy to stay competitive with China.The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) has been studying how artificial intelligence and machine learning can …
An international advocacy group’s claim that the Vietnamese government has tapped hackers to target activists shows that the communist Southeast Asian state is widening the use of technology to quash its biggest opponents, experts believe. Ocean Lotus, a shadowy group suspected of working with the Vietnamese government, is “behind a sustained …
From a smart dog collar that can tell you your pet’s emotional state to toys that automatically move, the pet tech industry is growing, especially during the pandemic when many people staying at home have been adopting dogs and cats. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the latest tech devices for …
There’s a new player in the social media webspace: it’s called Clubhouse. But unlike other social media platforms this one isn’t open to just anyone. Mariia Prus looked into why the platform got so popular so fast. Camera: Oleksii Osyka …
A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly …
With internet access increasing in many emerging democracies, use of social media is changing the ways that candidates and voters interact. It’s also changing how the non-profit U.S.-based Carter Center assesses elections. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, monitoring online disinformation and threats to prevent political violence is a new front …
U.S. lawmakers launched an investigation this week into the December 2020 SolarWinds hack that included a breach of many private and U.S. government computer systems. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, tech leaders are telling lawmakers the full scope of the breach is still not known. Camera: Adam Greenbaum …
ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million class-action settlement over data privacy claims from some U.S. TikTok users, according to documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Illinois. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the short video app that has more than 100 million U.S. users, agreed to the settlement …
Australia has become the world’s first nation to make digital companies such as Facebook and Google pay domestic news outlets for their content.Parliament approved the law Thursday that would allow a government arbitrator to decide the price a digital company should pay news outlets if the two sides fail to …
Facebook on Wednesday pledged to invest at least $1 billion to support journalism over the next three years as the social media giant defended its handling of a dispute with Australia over payments to media organizations.Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that the company was willing …
Facebook Inc.’s oversight board has received a “user statement” for the case it is deciding about whether the social media company was right to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, a board spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday. Facebook handed the case to its independent board in January after …
Nigeria’s reported rapes tripled during COVID-19 pandemic to a few thousand, but the U.N. Children’s fund says one in four girls have been victims of sexual violence – meaning countless thousands of rapes are going unreported due to stigma. A Nigerian programmer has created an application for rape survivors to …