The founder of network gear and smart phone supplier Huawei Technologies says the tech giant would reject requests from the Chinese government to disclose confidential information about its customers. 

Meeting with foreign reporters at Huawei’s headquarters, Ren Zhengfei sought Tuesday to allay Western concerns the company is a security risk. Those fears have hampered Huawei’s access to global markets for next-generation telecom technology. 

Asked how Huawei would respond if Chinese authorities ask for confidential information about foreign customers or their networks, Ren said, “we would definitely say no to such a request.”

The United States, Australia, Japan and some other governments have imposed curbs on use of Huawei technology over concerns the company is a security risk.
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Nature finds a way, the old saying goes. We see it in how animals fly, crawl, slink, dig and otherwise make their way through the world. Scientists have long recognized the ways in which evolution has perfected movement in the natural world, and mimicked it in their robot designs. Here’s the latest, and it’s simple and incredibly complicated all at the same time. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A new form of social therapy is powering-on in the U.S. A group of former toy company employees bought a brand from their ex-employer and started developing robotic household animals that serve as friends and therapy aids to America’s growing elderly population. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Home to Apple, Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is an American economic powerhouse, producing technology companies with global influence. But behind these influential American brands are scores of foreign workers who play a critical role in the Valley’s tech workforce. Deana Mitchell reports.
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The latest gadgets want even greater access to your lives.

This week’s CES tech show in Las Vegas was a showcase for cameras that can livestream the living room, a bathroom mirror that captures your face to offer beauty tips and a gizmo that tracks the heartbeat of an unborn child.

These features can be useful — or at least fun — but they all open the door for companies and people working for them to peek into your private lives. Just this week, The Intercept reported that Ring, a security-camera company owned by Amazon, gave employees access to some customer video footage.

You’ll have to weigh whether the gadgets are useful enough to give up some privacy. First, you have to trust that companies making these devices are protecting your information and aren’t doing more than what they say they’re doing with data. Even if a company has your privacy in mind, things can go wrong: Hackers can break in and access sensitive data. Or an ex might retain access to a video feed long after a breakup.

“It’s not like all these technologies are inherently bad,” says Franziska Roesner, a University of Washington professor who researches computer security and privacy.

But she said the industry is still trying to figure out the right balance between providing useful services and protecting people’s privacy in the process

Amazon’s video feeds

As with other security cameras, Ring’s can be mounted outside the front door or inside the home to give you a peek, through an app, of who’s there. But the Intercept said the Amazon-owned company was also allowing some high-level engineers in the U.S. to view customers’ video feeds, while others in the Ukraine office could view and download any customer video file.

In a statement, Ring said some Amazon employees have access to videos that are publicly shared through the company’s Neighbors app, which aims to create a network of security cameras in an area. Ring also says employees get additional video from users who consent to such sharing.

At CES, Ring announced an internet-connected video doorbell that fits into peepholes for apartment dwellers or college students who can’t install one next to their doors. Though it doesn’t appear Ring uses facial recognition yet, records show that Amazon recently filed a patent application for a facial-recognition system involving home security cameras.

Living room livestream

It’s one thing to put cameras in our own homes, but Alarm.com wants us to also put them in other people’s houses.

Alarm’s Wellcam is for caretakers to watch from afar and is mostly designed to check in on aging relatives. Someone who lives elsewhere can use a smartphone to “peek in” anytime, says Steve Chazin, vice president of products. 

The notion of placing a camera in someone else’s living room might feel icky. 

Wellcam says video isn’t recorded until someone activates it from a phone and video is deleted as soon as the stream stops. Chazin says such cameras are “becoming more acceptable because loved ones want to know that the ones they care about are safe.”

Just be sure you trust whom you’re giving access to. You can’t turn off the camera, unless you unplug it or cover it up with something. 

Bathroom cameras 

French company CareOS showcased a smart mirror that lets you “try on” different hairstyles. Facial recognition helps the mirror’s camera know which person in a household is there, while augmented-reality technology overlays your actual image with animation on how you might look.

CareOS expects hotels and salons to buy the $20,000 Artemis mirror — making it more important that personal data is protected. 

“We know we don’t want the whole world to know about what’s going on in the bathroom,” co-founder Chloe Szulzinger said.

The mirror doesn’t need internet to work, she said. Even if it is connected, all data is stored on a local network. The company says it will abide by Europe’s stronger privacy rules, which took effect in May, regardless of where a customer lives. Customers can choose to share their information with CareOS, but only after they’ve explicitly agreed to how it will be used.

The same applies for the businesses that buy and install the mirror. Customers can choose to share some information — such as photos of the hair cut they got last time they visited a salon — but the businesses can’t access anything stored in user profiles unless users specifically allow them to.

Bodily data

Some gadgets, meanwhile, are gathering intimate information. 

Yo Sperm sells an iPhone attachment that tests and tracks sperm quality. To protect privacy, the company recommends that users turn their phones to airplane mode when using the test. The company says data stays on the phone, within the app, though there’s a button for sharing details with a doctor.

Owlet, meanwhile, plans to sell a wearable device that sits over a pregnant belly and tracks the heartbeat. The company’s privacy policy says personal data gets collected. And you can choose to share heartbeat information with researchers studying stillbirths.

Though such data can be useful, Forrester analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo warns that these devices aren’t regulated or governed by U.S. privacy law. She warns that companies could potentially sell data to insurance companies who could find, for instance, that someone was drinking caffeine during a pregnancy — potentially raising health risks and hence premiums.
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Proponents of Big Tech say the march of technology into our daily lives is designed to make our lives easier. For some, it’s arguable if a smart refrigerator can actually make life easier. But for the disabled community, technological advances can make a huge difference. Some of that new technology was on display this week at the Consumer Electronics’ show. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Robots that walk, talk, brew beer and play pingpong have taken over the CES gadget show in Las Vegas again. Just don’t expect to find one in your home any time soon.

Most home robot ventures have failed, in part because they’re so difficult and expensive to design to a level of intelligence that consumers will find useful, says Bilal Zuberi, a robotics-oriented venture capitalist at Lux Capital. But that doesn’t keep companies from trying.

“Roboticists, I guess, will never give up their dream to build Rosie,” says Zuberi, referring to the humanoid maid from “The Jetsons.”

But there’s some hope for others. Frank Gillett, a tech analyst at Forrester, says robots with more focused missions such as mowing the lawn or delivering cheeseburgers stand a better shot at finding a useful niche.

ROBOTS THAT DELIVER

There are so many delivery robots at CES that it’s easy to imagine that we’ll all be stumbling over them on the sidewalk — or in the elevator — before long. Zuberi says they’re among the new robot trends with the most promise because the field is drawing on some of the same advances that power self-driving cars.

But it’s hard to tell which — if any — will still be around in a few years.

Segway Robotics, part of the same company that makes electric rental scooters for Lime, Jump and Bird, is the latest to get into the delivery game with a new machine it calls Loomo. The wheeled office robot can avoid obstacles, board elevators and deliver documents to another floor.

A similar office courier called the Holabot was unveiled by Chinese startup Shenzhen Pudu Technology. CEO Felix Zhang says his company already has a track record in China, where its Pudubot robot — which looks like shelves on wheels — navigates busy restaurants as a kind of robotic waiter.

Nearly all of these robots use a technology called visual SLAM, short for simultaneous localization and mapping. Most are wheeled, though there are outliers — such as one from German automotive company Continental, which wants to deploy walking robotic dogs to carry packages from self-driving delivery vans to residential front doors.

A delivery robot will need both sophisticated autonomy and a focused mission to stand out from the pack, says Saumil Nanavati, head of business development for Robby Technology. His company’s namesake robot travels down sidewalks as a “store on wheels.” The company recently partnered with PepsiCo to deliver snacks around a California university campus.

ROBOTS FOR DOGS

Does man’s best friend need a robotic pal of its own? Some startups think so.

“There’s a big problem with separation anxiety, obesity and depression in pets,” says Bee-oh Kim, a marketing manager for robotics firm Varram.

The company’s $99 robot is essentially a moving treat dispenser that motivates pets to chase it around. A herd of the small, dumbbell-shaped robots zoomed around a pen at the show — though there were no canine or feline conference attendees to show how the machines really work.

Varram’s robot takes two hours to charge and can run for 10 hours — just enough time to allow a pet’s guilt-ridden human companion to get home from work.

ROBOTS ON GRANDPARENT WATCH

Samsung is coming out with a robot that can keep its eye on grandparents.

The rolling robot can talk and has two digital eyes on a black screen. It’s designed to track the medicines seniors take, measure blood pressure and call 911 if it detects a fall.

The company didn’t say when Samsung Bot Care would be available. Samsung says it’s also working on a robot for retail shops and another for testing and purifying the air in homes.

ROBOT FRIENDS

Lovot is a simple robot with just one aim — to make its owner happy.

It can’t carry on long conversations, but it’s still social — approaching people so they can interact, moving around a space to create a digital map, responding to being embraced.

Lovot’s horn-shaped antenna — featuring a 360-degree camera — recognizes its surroundings and detects the direction of sound and voices.

Lovot is the brainchild of Groove X CEO Kaname Hayashi, who previously worked on SoftBank’s Pepper, a humanoid robot that briefly appeared in a few U.S. shopping malls two years ago. Hayashi wanted to create a real connection between people and robots.

“This is just supporting your heart, our motivation,” he says.
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This week, visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas are getting a look at the latest technology in TVs, computers, smartwatches and drones. But they are also seeing examples of how tech can be used to help people around the world become more resilient. Michelle Quinn reports.
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The annual Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas. The massive exhibition highlights trends and new products that should change the way we live — in some cases as early as next week, and in others, years in the future. VOA’s Kevin Enochs looks at a few of the new technologies that will change the way we drive.
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It has GPS, lasers, computer vision, and uses machine learning and sensors to be more efficient. This is the new high-tech farm equipment from John Deere, which made its first Consumer Electronics Show appearance this week to highlight the importance of tech in farming. 

Deere brought its massive agricultural combine and GPS-guided tractor to the Las Vegas technology event, making the point that farming is more than sticking a finger up in the air to gauge the weather. 

The machines are guided by enhanced GPS data that, according to the company, is accurate to 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) — compared with 3 meters (10 feet) for conventional GPS. 

As they work the fields, the machines gather data about soil conditions and monitor how corn and other crops are being harvested to reduce waste and improve efficiency. 

“We want consumers to understand how food is grown,” said Deere marketing executive Deanna Kovar. “Not only is this machine harvesting the grain, it’s harvesting the data, which helps farmers make decisions for next year.” 

Kovar said the extra electronics add about $10,000 to the cost of the combine, which sells for close to $500,000, and that most buyers take the option. 

“You can get a savings of about one to three bushels per acre, so it pays for itself very quickly,” she said.
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The CES 2019 gadget show is revving up in Las Vegas. Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground.

THIS SHOW WON’T GO ON

The Trump administration has some ideas about the future of commercial drones and self-driving technology, but it won’t be sharing them at CES this week amid an ongoing partial government shutdown.

CES organizers say U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has canceled a planned Wednesday keynote address at the Las Vegas tech conference.

Her decision to skip the event came several days after Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and several other scheduled federal government speakers told CES they wouldn’t be coming because of the shutdown.

Chao had planned to speak about U.S. policies affecting drones and self-driving vehicles.

FRESH BREAD, NO BAKER

That smell wafting through the CES show? Freshly baked bread.

Wilkinson Baking Co. unveiled a 22-square-foot machine that can bake 10 loaves of bread every hour — no baker needed. But a human is needed to dump the ingredients into the machine, which then mixes them, forms the dough and starts baking. Someone also needs to slice the bread, although the company says it’s working on a way for the machines to do that, too.

The BreadBot, as it’s called, is being pitched to supermarkets as a way to deliver fresh bread to shoppers who are increasingly worried about the ingredients in their foods. The machine is covered in glass, so customers can watch bread get made. They then select the loaf they want on a touch screen, sort of like a vending machine.

Three local supermarkets are already testing it. The company says a couple of big chains have agreed to try it out soon, but it won’t say which.

SMART BRA

Is your bra dumb? An underwear company is pitching a solution to an age-old problem for women: finding a bra that actually fits.

In the past, women could get help from an expert human in finding their right size. A simple measuring tape wouldn’t do, as it doesn’t reflect other factors such as the shape of a woman’s breasts. But these old-school “bra fitters” are hard to find these days.

To address that, a company called Soma has added some circuits to a brassiere and connected it to an app.

The Soma Innofit has four lines of circuitry hooked up to a circuit board in the back, which then connects to an app via Bluetooth. The smart $59 bra then recommends a bra — from Soma’s line, of course.

The smart bra isn’t meant for regular wearing, though it could be used again if sizes change because of pregnancy or other factors. The company says people who don’t want to buy one can use it at a Soma store.

CASH FOR KIDS

How do you teach children the value of money when there is no cash around?

Pigzbe is offering an electronic cash device with a digital currency called Wollo. It connects to an app that explains how money is earned and spent. Parents can set tasks that children complete to receive Wollo currency.

Trouble comes when your kid tries to spend Wollo at a store. The currency needs to be connected to a card to spend as real money in the real world.

And to get Pigzbe, parents also have to fork out some real money — $99.
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Norway is considering whether to join other western nations in excluding China’s Huawei Technologies from building part of the Nordic country’s new 5G telecommunications infrastructure, its justice minister said on Wednesday.

The Norwegian government is currently discussing measures to reduce potential vulnerabilities in its telecoms industry ahead of the upgrade.

State-controlled operator Telenor, which has 173 million subscribers across eight countries in Europe and Asia, signed its first major contract with Huawei in 2009, a deal that helped pave way for the Chinese firm’s global expansion.

Telenor and competitor Telia currently use 4G Huawei equipment in Norway and are testing equipment from the Chinese company in their experimental 5G networks.

“We share the same concerns as the United States and Britain and that is espionage on private and state actors in Norway,” Justice Minister Tor Mikkel Wara told Reuters on the sidelines of a business conference.

“This question is high priority … we want to have this in place before we build the next round of the telecom network.”

Asked whether there could be actions taken against Huawei specifically, Wara said: “Yes, we are considering the steps taken in other countries, that is part of it – the steps taken in the United States and Britain.”

Huawei said its equipment was secure.

“Our customers in Norway have strong security requirements of us and they manage the risk in their operations in a good way,” said Tore Orderloekken, Cyber Security Officer at Huawei Norway.

“We will continue to be open and transparent and offer extended testing and verification of our equipment to prove that we can deliver secure products in the 5G network in Norway,” he told Reuters.

In August, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill that barred the U.S. government from using Huawei equipment and is mulling an executive order that would also bar U.S. companies from doing so.

It is also calling on its allies not to use Huawei equipment when building 5G networks. In Britain, telecoms operator BT is removing Huawei equipment from the core of its existing 3G and 4G mobile operations and will not use the

Chinese company for central parts of the next network.

Telenor said it was taking security seriously. “Norway has had full control over critical infrastructure for many, many years and we in Telenor take it very seriously,” Telenor CEO Sigve Brekke told Reuters.
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Cyberattacks on elections, public infrastructure and national security are increasingly being seen as the new normal, according to a global survey on cybersecurity.

And in some of the world’s largest economies, people think their governments are not prepared.

The survey of more than 27,000 people across 26 countries conducted by the Pew Research Center found less than half of the respondents, 47 percent, believed their countries are ready to handle a major cyber incident.

A median of 74 percent thought it was likely national security information would be accessed.  Sixty-nine percent said they expected public infrastructure to be damaged. And 61 percent expected cyberattacks targeting their country’s elections.

Israel and Russia ranked as among the most confident populations, with more than two-thirds of survey-takers in those countries saying their governments are prepared for a major cyber incident.

The three sub-Saharan African countries in the survey — Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa — were generally optimistic, with more than half of those polled saying their nations were prepared for a cyber incident.

Brazil and Argentina were the least confident, with just nine percent of Argentineans responding their government was prepared.

In key economies such as Germany and Japan, more than half of the respondents expressed concern they were ill-prepared to deal with cyberattacks.

United States

The Pew survey found expectations for cyberattacks ran highest in the United States, where there have been more than 100 major cyber incidents since 2006.

Almost 80 percent of U.S. respondents expected damage to public infrastructure, breaches of national security information and elections tampering.

But while more Americans than not say the country is prepared for cyberattacks, 53 percent to 43 percent, feelings on cyber preparedness changed depending on political affiliation.

More than 60 percent of Republicans thought the United States is prepared for cyberattacks as opposed to 47 percent of Democrats.

Politics, age

The Pew survey detected similar trends in many of the other countries in the survey.

In Russia, for example, about 75 percent of those who support President Vladimir Putin are optimistic about handling a cyberattack, compared to 61 percent of non-Putin supporters.

The level of concern about cyberattacks also varied according to age.

In many of the Western countries surveyed, Pew found older people were likely to be more concerned than younger people.

In Sweden, for example, 82 percent of those aged 50 or older feared a cyberattack on infrastructure, compared with 53 percent of those aged 18 to 29.

The Pew survey was conducted in-person or via telephone between May 14 and August 12, 2018.

The 26 countries surveyed are: United States, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Britain, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Israel, Tunisia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
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The companies founded by blacksmith John Deere and candle-and-soap-making duo Procter & Gamble may not be the hip purveyors of new technology they were in 1837.

But they’re first-time exhibitors at this year’s CES gadget show, along with other unlikely newcomers such as missile-maker Raytheon, outdoorsy retailer The North Face and the 115-year-old motorcycling icon Harley-Davidson.

The four-day consumer-electronics show opens Tuesday with some 4,500 companies exhibiting products and services and more than 180,000 people expected to attend. It’s the place startups and established tech giants alike go to unveil everything from utilitarian apps to splashy devices.

So what are these legacy companies doing here?

“Every company today is a technology company,” said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes CES.

Shapiro said many companies already send executives to Las Vegas each January to gauge trends, so it’s not surprising that they eventually unveil their own new technology as well.

It’s also part of a more fundamental economic shift as consumers increasingly expect to buy not just goods and services, but a personal experience, which often skews digital, said Dipanjan Chatterjee, a brand analyst at Forrester Research.

“We’re still doing old-fashioned things: Ordering clothes, buying detergent, getting a cup of coffee, but there are new-fangled ways of doing it,” he said. “Brands have no choice but to play a role in this new technology space.”

That’s one reason Harley-Davidson is using the show to announce the commercial launch of its first electric motorcycle LiveWire. The motorcycle will have a cellular connection, as many cars do these days, so people can keep track of their motorcycle’s charge or check where they parked it through an app.

Consumer goods giant P&G, best known for Pampers diapers and Tide detergent, is showcasing heated razors, a toothbrush with artificial intelligence and a wand-like device that scans the skin and releases serum to cover up age spots and other discoloration.

P&G is also showing off an internet-connected scalp adviser: The Head & Shoulders-branded device uses ultraviolet light and other techniques to uncover scalp issues and recommend products. The device is available only in Europe and Asia for now.

Expect these gizmos to cost more than the plain-old “dumb” versions. P&G’s Oral-B toothbrush, for example, is expected to cost $279, while a regular Oral-B electric toothbrush can be had for less than $30.

And every new connected device means more data collection about people’s personal habits — a gold mine for advertisers and hackers alike.

The North Face is using virtual reality to provide a fine-grained look at its waterproof fabrics.

Raytheon is demonstrating the everyday applications of GPS anti-jam technology, which was originally designed to protect military forces.

And John Deere has hauled in self-driving tractors and a 20-ton combine harvester aided by artificial intelligence. The combine has cameras with computer-vision technology to track the quality of grain coming into the machine so that its kernel-separating settings can be adjusted automatically. Farmers can monitor it remotely using a smartphone app.

It’s hard to imagine what 19th century Illinois blacksmith John Deere might think if he were plopped into his company’s 2019 booth at the flashy Vegas convention center, but Deanna Kovar believes he’d be “amazed and astonished.”

“His innovation was making a self-powering steel plow that could cut through the heavy, rich soils of the Midwest,” said Kovar, the company’s director of production and precision agriculture marketing. “We’ve been a technology company since the start.”

Kovar said American farmers have been using self-driving tractors for decades — and CES is a chance to let everyone else know.

Chatterjee said such messages are directed not just at a company’s customers, but to investors, potential corporate partners, startup acquisition targets and the technically skilled employees these more traditional firms are hoping to attract.

“These are brands that are aggressively looking to work tech into their DNA,” Chatterjee said. “They want to be perceived all around as a tech-forward innovative brand.”
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More than 4,000 exhibitors from 155 countries are in Las Vegas this week for the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the year’s biggest conventions for companies to show off their latest technology. Michelle Quinn got a look at some of the products that are hoping to make a splash.
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Tesla broke ground Monday on a new factory for its electric cars in China, the first of its factories to be located outside the United States.

Chief Executive Elon Musk appeared at a ceremony alongside local officials on the outskirts of Shanghai to mark the start of the project. He said the goal is to finish initial construction by summer and start production by the end of the year.

Tesla will build its Model 3 vehicles at the site and says it hopes to eventually have a production capacity of 500,000 vehicles per year. The factory is wholly owned by Tesla, a departure from usual Chinese policy for foreign businesses.

The new factory comes as the United States and China negotiate trade issues that have led each side to impose higher tariffs on the other’s goods, including the automotive sector.

By having a factory in China, Tesla will not have to worry about consumers there facing higher prices on cars imported from the United States.
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The trade group behind the Consumer Electronics Show set to start the Tuesday forecast that US gadget love will grow despite trust and privacy issues hammering the tech world.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) predicted that US retail revenue in the sector would climb to a record high $398 billion this year.

“There are so many cool things happening in the consumer electronics industry right now,” said CTA vice president of market research Steve Koenig.

“We are fast approaching a new era of consumer technology.”

Trends gaining momentum, and expected to be on display on the CES show floor, included super high resolution 8K televisions; blazingly-fast 5G wireless internet, and virtual aides such as Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa woven into devices of all kinds.

The CTA forecast revenue growth in the US for smart phones, speakers, homes and watches along with televisions, drones, ‘in-vehicle tech,’ and streaming services.

Amid trade wars, geopolitical tensions and a decline in public trust, the technology sector is seeking to put its problems aside with CES, the annual extravaganza showcasing futuristic innovations.

The January 8-11 Las Vegas trade event offers a glimpse into new products and services designed to make people’s lives easier, fun and more productive, reaching across diverse sectors such as entertainment, health, transportation, agriculture and sports.

But the celebration of innovation will be mixed with concerns about public trust in new technology and other factors that could cool the growth of a sizzling economic sector.

“I think 2019 will be a year of trust-related challenges for the tech industry,” said Bob O’Donnell of Technalysis Research.

CES features 4,500 exhibitors across 2.75 million square feet (250,000 square meters) of exhibit space showcasing artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, smart homes, smart cities, sports gadgets and other cutting-edge devices. Some 182,000 trade professionals are expected.

 
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Every January, tech insiders head to Las Vegas, Nevada where the biggest tech companies show off their latest devices at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Smaller start-ups also vie for attention at one of the largest tech gatherings of the year. Tina Trinh meets with a Brooklyn startup as they prepare to head west.
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Thousands of Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, now have safe drinking water thanks to a combination of green technology and sunlight.

Cox’s Bazar has plenty of refugees. More than 900,000. Most have arrived in Bangladesh since August 2017, when violence and persecution by the Myanmar military triggered a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees.  

The refugees are living in squalid conditions across 36 different locations in Cox’s Bazar. Water is scarce in most locations. But sunshine is plentiful. Over the past six months, the U.N. refugee agency and partners have been putting into operation solar-powered safe water systems.

The UNHCR reports the first five systems are now running at full capacity. It says the new safe water systems run entirely on electricity generated through solar panels. UNHCR spokesman, Andrej Mahecic, says this new network is providing safe water to more than 40,000 refugees. 

“Using the solar energy has allowed the humanitarian community to reduce the energy costs and emissions,” said Mahecic. “So, there is a clear environmental impact of this. Chlorination is also a life-saver in refugee sites of this scale. The recent tests revealed that most contamination of drinking water occurs during collection, transport and storage at the household level.”

Mahecic notes chlorinated water is safe for drinking and also eliminates the risk of the spread of disease.  

The UNHCR along with its partner agencies are hoping to install nine more solar-powered water networks across the refugee camp in the coming year. The project, which is funded by the agency, will cost $10 million. It will benefit an additional 55,000 Rohingya refugees.

The UNHCR says its ultimate aim is to provide 20 liters of safe water to every single refugee on a daily basis. It says this will be done by piping in the solar powered water to collective taps strategically installed throughout the Kutupalog-Balukhali refugee site.
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People relied on the most popular mobile weather app to track forecasts that determined whether they chose jeans over shorts and packed a parka or umbrella, but its owners used it to track their every step and profit off that information, Los Angeles prosecutors said Friday. 

The operator of The Weather Channel mobile app misled users who agreed to share their location information in exchange for personalized forecasts and alerts, and they instead unwittingly surrendered personal privacy when the company sold their data to third parties, City Attorney Michael Feuer said.

Feuer sued the app’s operator in Los Angeles County Superior Court to stop the practice. He said 80 percent of users agreed to allow access to their locations because disclosures on how the app uses geolocation data were buried within a 10,000-word privacy policy and not revealed when they downloaded the app.

“Think how Orwellian it feels to live in a world where a private company is tracking potentially every place you go, every minute of every day,” Feuer said. “If you want to sacrifice to that company that information, you sure ought to be doing it with clear advanced notice of what’s at stake.” 

App defends practices

A spokesman for IBM Corp., which owns the app, said it has always been clear about the use of location data collected from users and will vigorously defend its “fully appropriate” disclosures.

Feuer said the app’s operators, TWC Product and Technology LLC, sold data to at least a dozen websites for targeted ads and to hedge funds that used the information to analyze consumer behavior. 

The lawsuit seeks to stop the company from the practice it calls “unfair and fraudulent” and seeks penalties of up to $2,500 for each violation. Any court decision would only apply to California.

Marketed as the “world’s most downloaded weather app,” The Weather Channel app claims approximately 45 million users a month, the lawsuit said. 

Users who download the free app are asked whether to allow access to their location to “get personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts.” It does not say how the company benefits from the information.

While disclosures may be included in the privacy policy, state law says “fine print alone can’t make good what otherwise has been made obscure,” Feuer said.

He said he learned about the sale of the private data from an article in The New York Times.

Personal data

The lawsuit comes as companies, most notably Facebook and Google, are increasingly under fire for how they use people’s personal data. Both companies faced congressional hearings last year on privacy issues, which are likely to remain on lawmakers and regulators’ minds both nationally and in California. 

In June, California lawmakers approved what experts are calling the country’s most far-reaching law to give people more control over their personal data online. That law doesn’t take effect until next year.

Feuer said he hopes the case inspires other lawsuits and legislation to curb data-sharing practices.

IBM bought the app along with the digital assets of The Weather Company in 2015 for $2 billion but did not acquire The Weather Channel seen on TV, which is owned by another company.
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The Chinese Jade Rabbit 2 rover is making tracks on the soft, snowlike surface of the far side of the moon.

The rover drove off its lander’s ramp and onto the lunar surface late Thursday, about 12 hours after the Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first-ever landing on the moon’s far side.

China’s space agency posted a photo online, showing tracks the rover left as it departed from the spacecraft.

“It’s a small step for the rover, but one giant leap for the Chinese nation,’’ Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Lunar Exploration Project, said on state broadcaster CCTV, adapting American astronaut Neil Alden Armstrong’s famous message “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” when he stepped onto the lunar surface July 20, 1969.

“This giant leap is a decisive move for our exploration of space and the conquering of the universe,” Wu Weiren said.

First to the far side

The Jade Rabbit 2 rover has six individually powered wheels, so it can continue to operate even if one wheel fails. It can climb a 20-degree hill or an obstacle up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) tall. Its maximum speed is 200 meters per hour.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and more recently China have sent spacecraft to the near side of the moon, but the latest Chinese landing is the first on the far side.

The probe will conduct astronomical studies and surveys of the surface’s mineral composition and radiation tests of the surrounding environment.

Satellite for communication

Shortly after landing, the Chang’e-4 sent a photo of the lunar surface to the Queqiao (“Magpie Bridge”) satellite, which was launched last May in the first phase of the historic mission.

The Queqiao satellite is deployed about 455,000 kilometers from Earth, where it will relay communications between ground controllers and the Chang’e-4.

This is China’s second probe to make a soft-landing on the moon, following 2013’s Jade Rabbit lunar rover mission.

Beijing plans to launch a third lunar rover, the Chang’e-5, later this year, which is expected to collect samples from the moon’s surface and bring them back to Earth.

The unmanned lunar missions are part of China’s ambitions to join the United States and Russia as a major space power. Its plans include establishing a permanent manned space station, a manned lunar landing, and eventually probes to Mars.
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Behind Apple’s disconcerting news of weak iPhone sales lies a more sobering truth: The tech industry has hit Peak Smartphone, a tipping point when everyone who can afford one already owns one and no breakthroughs are compelling them to upgrade as frequently as they once did.

Some manufacturers have boosted prices to keep up profit, but Apple’s shortfall highlights the limits of that strategy. The company said demand for iPhones is waning and revenue for the last quarter of 2018 will fall well below projections, a decrease traced mainly to China.

Apple’s shares dropped 10 percent Thursday on the news — its worst loss since 2013. The company shed $74.6 billion in market value, amid a broader sell-off among technology companies, which suffered their worst loss in seven years.

Apple’s news is a “wake-up call for the industry,” said analyst Dan Ives of research firm Wedbush Securities.

And it’s not just Apple. Demand has been lackluster across the board, Ives said. Samsung, long the leading seller of smartphones, has been hit even harder, as its phone shipments dropped 8 percent during the 12 months ending in September.

“The smartphone industry is going through significant headwinds,” Ives said. “Smartphone makers used to be like teenagers, and the industry was on fire. Now it feels like they’re more like senior citizens in terms of maturity.”

Victim of its own success

Tech innovations in phones grew in leaps and bounds earlier in the 2010s, with dramatic improvements in screen size, screen resolution, battery life, cameras and processor speed every year.

But the industry is a victim of its own success. Innovation began to slow down around 2014, once Apple boosted the screen size with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models. While phones kept improving, new features tended to be incremental, such as a new flash technique to already excellent phone cameras. It’s the stuff consumers won’t typically notice — or want to shell out for.

“Since the iPhone 6 you’ve seen it has been tough to innovate to continue to raise the bar,” Ives said.

Apple customers now upgrade every 33 months on average, longer than the 24 or 25 months three years ago, he said.

Apple’s diminished growth projections, fueled by plummeting sales in China, have reinforced fears the world’s second-largest economy is losing steam. Its $1,000 iPhone is a tough sell to Chinese consumers unnerved by an economic slump and the trade war with the U.S. They also have a slew of cheaper smartphones from homegrown competitors such as Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo to choose from.

The fact that even Apple’s iPhone juggernaut is suffering cements a larger trend for all major smartphone makers. After a steady rise for a decade, worldwide smartphone shipments fell 3 percent to 1.42 billion in 2018, the first annual drop, according to International Data Corp., which tracks such movements. IDC estimates that shipments will rebound 3 percent in 2019 to 1.46 billion, but that still falls short of 2017 levels.

No ‘silver bullet’

It doesn’t help that top phones come with four-digit price tags — $1,100 for the iPhone XS Max and $1,000 for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9. The top-end Max model sells for $1,450 in the U.S.

“They’re getting more and more expensive while offering fewer and fewer new, innovative features that I’ll actually use,” said Zachary Pardes, a tech-savvy 31-year-old in Fairfield, Connecticut. “I’ll upgrade when the battery stops working. When I’m forced to buy a new phone, I’ll buy a new phone.”

Vivian Yang, a manager at a Beijing technology company, also balked at the price. “Nobody needs such a phone,” she said.

IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said the cycle might bottom out and start growing again in 2021 or 2022, when people’s current phones start reaching the end of their useful life. “People will still replace their phones. It’s going to happen eventually,” he said.

But there’s no “silver bullet” that will spur growth to levels seen in the past when the industry was less mature.

Foldable smartphones, with screens that unfold like a wallet to increase display size, are one thing that could spur excitement, but they’re expensive and not due out until at least the end of the year.

Another thing that might spur growth: 5G, the next-generation that telecom companies are currently in the process of building, expected to be faster and more reliable than the current 4G network. The first 5G compatible phones are due out this year.

“There’s more pressure on 5G as the next-wave smartphone,” since sales are so lackluster, said Ives. “There will be a battle royale for 5G phones.”

But 5G will take years for broad, nationwide deployment, so the new 5G smartphones coming out this year are not likely to make much of a splash immediately either.

Analysts say smartphone makers need to push into under-saturated areas like Africa and elsewhere, and also sell more services like cloud storage, streaming music and phone software. But the glory days of untrammeled growth appear to be over.

“It’s going to be a slow slog,” Llamas said. “By no means is this the end of the smartphone market. But this is an indication that the smartphone market can be a victim of its own success.”
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Forget vending machines, PepsiCo is testing a way to bring snacks directly to college students.

The chip and beverage maker says it will start making deliveries with self-driving robots on Thursday at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Students will be able to order Baked Lay’s, SunChips or Bubly sparkling water on an app, and then meet the six-wheeled robot at more than 50 locations on campus.

Other companies have been using self-driving vehicles to deliver food. Last month, supermarket operator Kroger announced it would start delivering groceries in a driverless vehicle from a store in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The robots used at the University of the Pacific will move at speeds of up to 6 miles per hour, according to Robby Technologies, which makes the robots. Three workers on the campus will be refilling the robots with food and drinks and replacing the batteries with recharged ones when they go dead.

At first three robots will be used, but then grow to a fleet of five over time. The robots, which weigh 80 pounds and are less than 3 feet tall, drive on their own and stop when someone is in front of it, Robby says.

PepsiCo says it’s testing this way to deliver its snacks because more of its customers want a convenient way to buy them on their phones.
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A Chinese spacecraft Thursday made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon in the latest achievement for the country’s growing space program.

The relatively unexplored far side of the moon faces away from Earth and is also known as the dark side.

A photo taken by the lunar explorer Chang’e 4 at 11:40 a.m. and published online by the official Xinhua News Agency shows a small crater and a barren surface that appears to be illuminated by a light from the probe.

Chang’e 4 touched down on the surface at 10:26 a.m., the China National Space Administration said. The landing was announced by state broadcaster China Central Television at the top of its noon news broadcast.

Growing ambitions in space

The landing highlights China’s growing ambitions as a space power. In 2013, Chang’e 3, the predecessor craft to the current mission, made the first moon landing since the then-Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976. The United States is the only other country that has carried out moon landings.

The work of Chang’e 4, which is carrying a rover, includes carrying out astronomical observations and probing the structure and mineral composition of the terrain.

“The far side of the moon is a rare quiet place that is free from interference of radio signals from Earth,” mission spokesman Yu Guobin said, according to Xinhua. “This probe can fill the gap of low-frequency observation in radio astronomy and will provide important information for studying the origin of stars and nebula evolution.”

Communicating

One challenge of operating on the far side of the moon is communicating with Earth. China launched a relay satellite in May so that Chang’e 4 can send back information.

China plans to send its Chang’e 5 probe to the moon next year and have it return to Earth with samples, the first time that will have been done since the Soviet mission in 1976.

A Long March 3B rocket carrying Chang’e 4 blasted off Dec. 8 from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southern China. Chang’e is the name of a Chinese goddess who, according to legend, has lived on the moon for millennia.
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