A U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut made an emergency return to earth Thursday shortly after launching on what was supposed to be a mission to the International Space Station. Rescuers reached American Nick Hague and Russian Alexei Ovchinin after their emergency landing in Kazakhstan. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb recently sat down with Hague to talk about his future in space, a future now up in the air after his unexpected fall to Earth.
…

A characteristic twinkle in his eye, Ronald Reagan waves to a crowd from aboard a rail car in a hologram revealed Wednesday at the late president’s namesake library in Southern California.

“We think we made a good beginning, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” the digital resurrection of the nation’s 40th president says in his steady voice as a flurry of balloons falls in front of him.

Reagan, who died in 2004 at age 93, was speaking about the nation’s future during a 1984 campaign stop but easily could have been referencing the technology that brought him back to life in 2018. The audio used is edited from his real remarks.

​’A stunning experience’

“We wanted to make President Reagan as lifelike as possible,” said John Heubusch, executive director of the Reagan Foundation. “It’s a stunning experience.”

In two other holograms, Reagan appears in a suit and tie inside the Oval Office and in horseback riding pants, carrying a lasso alongside his dog, Victory, at his beloved ranch. All three holograms will be on display to visitors of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, west of Los Angeles, starting Thursday.

They will be shown in a specially designed room that will be the first stop for guests. Seats are set up in front of a stage, and a curtain opens up to thunderous applause at Reagan’s campaign stop more than three decades ago.

How it was done

The computer-generated imagery for the holograms was created starting with a silicone cast of Reagan’s head that was photographed from various angles with 300 cameras. His head was then digitally “placed” on the body of an actor portraying the president with full costumes and backdrops for the three scenarios.

Reagan’s face comes to life via specific movements of the mouth, nose, eyes, cheeks and hairline, all manipulated by computers.

The library worked with the same special-effects technicians who helped bring singers like Michael Jackson, Billie Holiday and Roy Orbison back to life on stage.

The Hollywood firm Hologram USA helped create the holograms and the stage on which they’re projected.

A lover of technology

As a radio host, television star and movie actor, Reagan understood and appreciated new technologies, company senior vice president David Nussbaum said.

“He always thought many steps ahead,” he said. “If he was looking down right now on this project, I think he would give us his seal of approval. I think he would totally get this and support it.”

Seeing her former boss “almost in the flesh” was “a little eerie, but at the same time, very comforting,” said Joanne Drake, who served as Reagan’s chief of staff after the Republican left office following his two terms from 1981 to 1989.

“It’s fun to think that he’s standing in front of us,” said Drake, who’s now chief administration officer for the foundation. “Intellectually, you know it’s not him standing there, but you see his facial movements and his arm movements and his body and that twinkle in his eye and that little grin that he always got, and it makes you remember really what he brought to the office.”

Drake said future plans could include bringing the holograms on the road.

“I do think we’re going to see Ronald Reagan back in Washington, D.C.,” she said.
…

A characteristic twinkle in his eye, Ronald Reagan waves to a crowd from aboard a rail car in a hologram revealed Wednesday at the late president’s namesake library in Southern California.

“We think we made a good beginning, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” the digital resurrection of the nation’s 40th president says in his steady voice as a flurry of balloons falls in front of him.

Reagan, who died in 2004 at age 93, was speaking about the nation’s future during a 1984 campaign stop but easily could have been referencing the technology that brought him back to life in 2018. The audio used is edited from his real remarks.

​’A stunning experience’

“We wanted to make President Reagan as lifelike as possible,” said John Heubusch, executive director of the Reagan Foundation. “It’s a stunning experience.”

In two other holograms, Reagan appears in a suit and tie inside the Oval Office and in horseback riding pants, carrying a lasso alongside his dog, Victory, at his beloved ranch. All three holograms will be on display to visitors of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, west of Los Angeles, starting Thursday.

They will be shown in a specially designed room that will be the first stop for guests. Seats are set up in front of a stage, and a curtain opens up to thunderous applause at Reagan’s campaign stop more than three decades ago.

How it was done

The computer-generated imagery for the holograms was created starting with a silicone cast of Reagan’s head that was photographed from various angles with 300 cameras. His head was then digitally “placed” on the body of an actor portraying the president with full costumes and backdrops for the three scenarios.

Reagan’s face comes to life via specific movements of the mouth, nose, eyes, cheeks and hairline, all manipulated by computers.

The library worked with the same special-effects technicians who helped bring singers like Michael Jackson, Billie Holiday and Roy Orbison back to life on stage.

The Hollywood firm Hologram USA helped create the holograms and the stage on which they’re projected.

A lover of technology

As a radio host, television star and movie actor, Reagan understood and appreciated new technologies, company senior vice president David Nussbaum said.

“He always thought many steps ahead,” he said. “If he was looking down right now on this project, I think he would give us his seal of approval. I think he would totally get this and support it.”

Seeing her former boss “almost in the flesh” was “a little eerie, but at the same time, very comforting,” said Joanne Drake, who served as Reagan’s chief of staff after the Republican left office following his two terms from 1981 to 1989.

“It’s fun to think that he’s standing in front of us,” said Drake, who’s now chief administration officer for the foundation. “Intellectually, you know it’s not him standing there, but you see his facial movements and his arm movements and his body and that twinkle in his eye and that little grin that he always got, and it makes you remember really what he brought to the office.”

Drake said future plans could include bringing the holograms on the road.

“I do think we’re going to see Ronald Reagan back in Washington, D.C.,” she said.
…

The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday said that it had awarded a total of $2.3 billion in contracts to develop rocket launch systems for national security missions.

The awards go to Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin; United Launch Services, part of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp; and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.

The three contracts are part of a Department of Defense initiative to assure constant military access to space and curb reliance on foreign-made rocket engines, like ULA’s flagship Atlas V rocket that uses Russian-made RD-180 boosters. The contracts are to develop rockets and carry defense payloads into space.

Centennial, Colorado-based United Launch Services received $967 million to develop its Vulcan rocket; Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin was awarded $500 million to build its New Glenn booster, and Northrop Grumman of Arizona received $791.6 million for its OmegA rocket.

Blue Origin’s and Northrop’s prototype vehicles for military launches are expected to be ready to fly by late 2024 and ULA’s Vulcan rocket development should be completed by March 2025.

Blue Origin said in a statement following Wednesday’s announcement that it will build a launch site at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, although it did not say what rockets would launch from the site. ULA announced in September that its Vulcan rocket will be powered by Blue’s BE-4 liquid rocket engines.
…

Google will begin offering its pay-to-carpool service throughout the U.S., an effort to reduce the commute-time congestion that its popular Waze navigation app is designed to avoid.

The expansion announced Wednesday builds upon a carpooling system that Waze began testing two years ago in northern California and Israel before gradually extending it into Brazil and parts of 12 other states.

Now it will be available to anyone in the U.S.

Drivers willing to give someone a ride for a small fee to cover some of their costs for gas and other expenses need only Waze’s app on their phone. Anyone willing to pay a few bucks to hitch a ride will need to install a different Waze app focused on carpooling.

About 1.3 million drivers and passengers have signed up for Waze’s carpooling service, the company says. About 30 million people in the U.S. currently rely on the Waze app for directions; it has 110 million users worldwide.

Waze’s carpooling effort has been viewed as a potential first step for Google to mount a challenge to the two top ride-hailing services, Uber and Lyft.

But Waze founder and CEO Noam Bardin rejected that notion in an interview with The Associated Press, insisting that the carpooling service is purely an attempt to ease traffic congestion.

“We don’t want to be a professional driving network,” Bardin said. “We see ride sharing as something that needs to become part of the daily commute. If we can’t get people out of their cars, it won’t be solving anything.”

Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey also sees Waze’s service as a bigger threat to other carpooling apps such as Scoop and Carpool Buddy than to Uber and Lyft. “Carpooling is a much different animal,” he said.

It’s a form of transportation that Bardin said Waze had difficulty figuring out. Early on, Waze tried to get more drivers to sign up by emphasizing the economic benefits of having someone help cover gas costs for a trip that they were going to make anyway.

But earlier this year, Waze realized it needed a better formula for connecting strangers willing to ride together in a car. Many women, for instance, only want to ride with other women, Bardin said, while other people enjoy commuting with others who work for the same employer or live in the same neighborhood.

“Carpooling is a more social experience,” Bardin said. “A lot of time those of us working in the digital world forget that social connections are often the most important thing in the real world.”

Waze’s app still sets a price for each carpooling trip and transfers payments without charging a commission. That’s something Waze can afford to do because Google makes so much money from selling digital ads on Waze and its many other services.

The carpooling fees are supposed to be similar to what it would cost to take a train or type of public transportation to work, Bardin said. Drivers and riders can agree to adjust the price upward or downward, but the fees can never exceed the rate the Internal Revenue Service allows for business-related mileage — currently 54.5 cents per mile.

Even though Waze’s carpooling service doesn’t appear to be driven by profit motive, Ramsey isn’t convinced that will always be the case. “I do think Google is realizing that it can’t just keep making all its money from selling ads,” he said.
…

Companies race to make self driving automobiles, but there’s another race going on to create robots that can roam through neighborhoods, to deliver food and other purchases. Michelle Quinn reports on one robotic fleet in Berkeley, California.
…

Companies race to make self driving automobiles, but there’s another race going on to create robots that can roam through neighborhoods, to deliver food and other purchases. Michelle Quinn reports on one robotic fleet in Berkeley, California.
…

Wasteless, an Israeli firm seeking to reduce food waste and save consumers money, won $2 million in funding Tuesday, as more businesses seek to cut food losses amid rising global hunger.

The two-year-old firm sells software to supermarkets so that they can manage their stocks and reduce food prices as shelf life dwindles, reducing waste and boosting profits.

“We inspire customers to be better citizens of the world and to take part in the war against food waste, while at the same time enjoying better prices,” Ben Biron, one of the founders of Wasteless, said in a statement.

Food waste is increasingly viewed as unethical, as well as environmentally destructive, dumped in landfills where it rots, releasing greenhouse gases, while fuel, water and energy needed to grow, store and carry it is wasted.

A growing number of impact investors — who aim to bring social or environmental change as well as making a profit — are putting their money into businesses responding to political and consumer pressures to address climate change and waste.

Globally, one third of all food produced — worth $1 trillion — is binned every year, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, and researchers fear annual food waste could rise by a third to 2.1 billion tons by 2030.

World leaders pledged to halve food waste by then under the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in 2015.

Wasteless said it will use the investment from Slingshot Ventures, a Dutch venture capital firm, to focus on West European food retailers.

In a trial with a Spanish food retailer earlier this year, Wasteless said its algorithm, which allows customers to choose between older or fresher food at different prices, cut food waste by a third and increased revenue by 6 percent.

Many experts say changing business practices and consumer behavior, rather than giving away excess food, is key to reducing waste.

“There isn’t any more land or any more water. One of the things that has to happen is the food that is grown has to get eaten,” Oliver Wyncoll, a partner at Bridges Fund Management, a U.K.-based impact investor, told Reuters.

“In the next few years, you will see an increasing level of investment in food waste. … The difficulty of the philanthropic charity type model is it’s not scalable unless you have a bottomless pit of donations.”
…

Facebook on Tuesday hosted its first global summit spotlighting a growing Workplace platform launched two years ago as a private social network for businesses.

While Facebook would not disclose exact figures, it said Workplace – a rival to collaboration services like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft – has been a hit and that ranks of users have doubled in the past eight to 10 months.

The list of companies using Workplace included Walmart, Starbucks, Spotify, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic.

“It is growing very fast,” Workplace by Facebook vice president Julien Codorniou told AFP.

“We started with big companies, because that is where we found traction. It is a very good niche.”

Workplace is a separate operation from Facebook’s main social network and is intended as a platform to connect everyone in a company, from counter or warehouse workers to chief executives, according to Codorniou.

Workplace claimed that a differentiator from its competitors is that it connects all employees in businesses no matter their roles, even if their only computing device is a smartphone.

“That really resonates with a new generation,” Codorniou said of Workplace’s “democratic” nature.

“Millennials want to know who they work for and understand the culture of the company.”

He cited cases of top company executives using Workplace to get feedback from workers at all levels, bringing a small company feel to big operations.

Workplace is rolled out to everyone in companies, which then pay $3 monthly for each active user.

No ‘Candy Crush’

The software-as-a-service business began as an internal collaboration platform used at Facebook and was launched as its own business in 2016.

Workplace is used by 30,000 companies and has its main office in London, according to Codorniou.

Interaction with the platform plays off how people use Facebook, and Workplace adopts innovations from the leading social network. But, it is billed as a completely separate product.

“This is coming from Facebook Inc., but has nothing to do with Facebook,” he said.

“You cannot play ‘Candy Crush’ on Workplace, but people ask. We just take what makes sense.”

The conference was used to announce new Workplace features including a version of Facebook safety check designed as a way for companies to quickly determine the status and well-being of workers in event of disaster or tragedy.

Workplace also introduced the ability to have group voice or video chats with people routinely worked with outside a company.
…

Facebook on Tuesday hosted its first global summit spotlighting a growing Workplace platform launched two years ago as a private social network for businesses.

While Facebook would not disclose exact figures, it said Workplace – a rival to collaboration services like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft – has been a hit and that ranks of users have doubled in the past eight to 10 months.

The list of companies using Workplace included Walmart, Starbucks, Spotify, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic.

“It is growing very fast,” Workplace by Facebook vice president Julien Codorniou told AFP.

“We started with big companies, because that is where we found traction. It is a very good niche.”

Workplace is a separate operation from Facebook’s main social network and is intended as a platform to connect everyone in a company, from counter or warehouse workers to chief executives, according to Codorniou.

Workplace claimed that a differentiator from its competitors is that it connects all employees in businesses no matter their roles, even if their only computing device is a smartphone.

“That really resonates with a new generation,” Codorniou said of Workplace’s “democratic” nature.

“Millennials want to know who they work for and understand the culture of the company.”

He cited cases of top company executives using Workplace to get feedback from workers at all levels, bringing a small company feel to big operations.

Workplace is rolled out to everyone in companies, which then pay $3 monthly for each active user.

No ‘Candy Crush’

The software-as-a-service business began as an internal collaboration platform used at Facebook and was launched as its own business in 2016.

Workplace is used by 30,000 companies and has its main office in London, according to Codorniou.

Interaction with the platform plays off how people use Facebook, and Workplace adopts innovations from the leading social network. But, it is billed as a completely separate product.

“This is coming from Facebook Inc., but has nothing to do with Facebook,” he said.

“You cannot play ‘Candy Crush’ on Workplace, but people ask. We just take what makes sense.”

The conference was used to announce new Workplace features including a version of Facebook safety check designed as a way for companies to quickly determine the status and well-being of workers in event of disaster or tragedy.

Workplace also introduced the ability to have group voice or video chats with people routinely worked with outside a company.
…

If you are listening to music, chances are you’re on YouTube.

A music consumer report by the industry’s global body IFPI published Tuesday found that 86 percent of us listen to music through on-demand streaming.

And nearly half that time, 47 percent is spent on YouTube.

Video as a whole accounted for 52 percent of the time we spent streaming music, posing challenges to such subscription services as Spotify and SoundCloud.

But while Spotify’s estimated annual revenue per user was $20 (17.5 euros), YouTube’s was less than a dollar.

The London-based IFPI issued a broader overview in April that found digital sales for the first time making up the majority of global revenues thanks to streaming.

The report published Tuesday looked into where and when we listen to music.

It found that three in four people globally use smartphones, with the rate among 16- to 24-year-olds reaching 94 percent.

The highest levels were recorded in India, where 96 percent of consumers used smartphones for music, including 99 percent of young adults.

But music does not end when we put away our phones, with 86 percent globally also listening to the radio.

Copyright infringement was still a big issue, with unlicensed music accounting for 38 percent of what was consumed around the world.

“This report also shows the challenges the music community continues to face — both in the form of the evolving threat of digital copyright infringement as well as in the failure to achieve fair compensation from some user-upload services,” said IFPI chief Frances Moore.

The report noted that “96% of consumers in China and 96% in India listen to licensed music.”

It did not, however, say how many of those consumers also listened to music that infringed copyrights.

Overall, the average consumer spent 2.5 hours a day listening to music, with the largest share of it consumed while driving, the industry report said.
…

If you are listening to music, chances are you’re on YouTube.

A music consumer report by the industry’s global body IFPI published Tuesday found that 86 percent of us listen to music through on-demand streaming.

And nearly half that time, 47 percent is spent on YouTube.

Video as a whole accounted for 52 percent of the time we spent streaming music, posing challenges to such subscription services as Spotify and SoundCloud.

But while Spotify’s estimated annual revenue per user was $20 (17.5 euros), YouTube’s was less than a dollar.

The London-based IFPI issued a broader overview in April that found digital sales for the first time making up the majority of global revenues thanks to streaming.

The report published Tuesday looked into where and when we listen to music.

It found that three in four people globally use smartphones, with the rate among 16- to 24-year-olds reaching 94 percent.

The highest levels were recorded in India, where 96 percent of consumers used smartphones for music, including 99 percent of young adults.

But music does not end when we put away our phones, with 86 percent globally also listening to the radio.

Copyright infringement was still a big issue, with unlicensed music accounting for 38 percent of what was consumed around the world.

“This report also shows the challenges the music community continues to face — both in the form of the evolving threat of digital copyright infringement as well as in the failure to achieve fair compensation from some user-upload services,” said IFPI chief Frances Moore.

The report noted that “96% of consumers in China and 96% in India listen to licensed music.”

It did not, however, say how many of those consumers also listened to music that infringed copyrights.

Overall, the average consumer spent 2.5 hours a day listening to music, with the largest share of it consumed while driving, the industry report said.
…

You see them everywhere in U.S. cities — young and old riding rented electric-powered scooters. When they are done, they can leave the scooters anywhere. 

Someone has to find and charge the scooters, then return them to designated hot spots where customers can use them the next day. And that has given rise to a new line of work — scooter juicers. 

Shivali Sharma is a stay-at-home mom in San Jose, California, and a Marine staff sergeant on medical leave. She works as a juicer to earn money while her boys sleep. 

“The hunt is fun,” she said.

It’s a new kind of piece work, made possible by GPS and phone apps. 

Sharma and her family noticed the scooters being left on their streets. It intrigued them.

“We were like, ‘What is this scooter doing? Who does it belong to?’” she said.

Then they heard about juicing and signed up. The company sent them charging stations. 

For the past several months, Sharma’s routine is set. Each night, this single mom leaves her twins with her parents and checks her phone app for Lime scooters scattered around the city, sending out GPS locator signals, all needing to be charged. She earns $6 per scooter, more if the scooter is harder to reach.

Charging scooters at home

For the scooter companies, juicers solve two problems — finding the scooters and then using their own electricity to charge them before putting them back on the streets. 

The competition among the juicers is part of the appeal, something Lime, one of the scooter companies, didn’t expect.

“The fact that juicers compare it to Pokemon Go is a happy accident,” said Will Lee, project manager at Lime, a San Francisco-based electric bike and scooter company. “Now that we’ve hit on this motivation, this gamification motivation among the juicers, we have done things to maybe amplify it or try to feed into folks’ natural desire to play the game.”

Gamification of work

To increase juicers’ engagement as the night progresses, Lime raises the dollar amount a juicer can get per scooter. A scooter in the middle of a homeless encampment may go for $10. The company plans to create levels of juicers, like a video game. 

Sharma, who has harvested more than 1,000 scooters, may be considered a super juicer. She can get 29 scooters in her truck. The work can be tiring. Each scooter weighs 15 kilos. Dealing with the competition is part of the gig. 

“There’s been many instances where I’ve been standing right next to a scooter just waiting for my app to kick in so I can collect the scooter,” she said. “Somebody’s come up from behind me just taking it, like, don’t you see me standing here?”

Sharma’s nightly hunt takes a lot of stamina. She works six nights a week, and wakes up at 3:30 a.m. to put all the scooters around the city before 7 a.m. She gets paid by 7:30 a.m. each day. 

As the gig economy grows, and more jobs like juicers are created, people like Sharma, who are willing to hustle, are finding new kinds of work. 
…

You see them everywhere in U.S. cities — young and old riding rented electric-powered scooters. When they are done, they can leave the scooters anywhere. 

Someone has to find and charge the scooters, then return them to designated hot spots where customers can use them the next day. And that has given rise to a new line of work — scooter juicers. 

Shivali Sharma is a stay-at-home mom in San Jose, California, and a Marine staff sergeant on medical leave. She works as a juicer to earn money while her boys sleep. 

“The hunt is fun,” she said.

It’s a new kind of piece work, made possible by GPS and phone apps. 

Sharma and her family noticed the scooters being left on their streets. It intrigued them.

“We were like, ‘What is this scooter doing? Who does it belong to?’” she said.

Then they heard about juicing and signed up. The company sent them charging stations. 

For the past several months, Sharma’s routine is set. Each night, this single mom leaves her twins with her parents and checks her phone app for Lime scooters scattered around the city, sending out GPS locator signals, all needing to be charged. She earns $6 per scooter, more if the scooter is harder to reach.

Charging scooters at home

For the scooter companies, juicers solve two problems — finding the scooters and then using their own electricity to charge them before putting them back on the streets. 

The competition among the juicers is part of the appeal, something Lime, one of the scooter companies, didn’t expect.

“The fact that juicers compare it to Pokemon Go is a happy accident,” said Will Lee, project manager at Lime, a San Francisco-based electric bike and scooter company. “Now that we’ve hit on this motivation, this gamification motivation among the juicers, we have done things to maybe amplify it or try to feed into folks’ natural desire to play the game.”

Gamification of work

To increase juicers’ engagement as the night progresses, Lime raises the dollar amount a juicer can get per scooter. A scooter in the middle of a homeless encampment may go for $10. The company plans to create levels of juicers, like a video game. 

Sharma, who has harvested more than 1,000 scooters, may be considered a super juicer. She can get 29 scooters in her truck. The work can be tiring. Each scooter weighs 15 kilos. Dealing with the competition is part of the gig. 

“There’s been many instances where I’ve been standing right next to a scooter just waiting for my app to kick in so I can collect the scooter,” she said. “Somebody’s come up from behind me just taking it, like, don’t you see me standing here?”

Sharma’s nightly hunt takes a lot of stamina. She works six nights a week, and wakes up at 3:30 a.m. to put all the scooters around the city before 7 a.m. She gets paid by 7:30 a.m. each day. 

As the gig economy grows, and more jobs like juicers are created, people like Sharma, who are willing to hustle, are finding new kinds of work. 
…

Google exposed the personal data of about 500,000 Google+ users to potential misuse by outside developers for years through a bug, then concealed the error to avoid consequences, according to an investigation published by The Wall Street Journal Monday.

Parent company Alphabet Inc responded by announcing it would shut down Google+, a largely defunct social network launched in 2011 to compete with Facebook. Shares of Alphabet Inc fell by about 1 percent in response to the story.  

“Our Privacy & Data Protection Office reviewed this issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether we could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response,” Google said of the error in a statement to VOA News. “None of these thresholds were met in this instance.”

The report alleges that the bug became active in 2015, only being discovered by Google and shut down in March of this year. Google confirmed that it had discovered the bug in March, but would not say when it became active.

The Wall Street Journal says it reviewed an internal memo circulated among Google’s legal staff and senior executives that warned of “immediate regulatory interest” and public comparisons to Facebook’s user information leak to Cambridge Analytica should the mistake become public.

According to the paper, the memo said that while Google could not find evidence that the exposed data had been misused, it also could not prove that misuse did not happen.

CEO Sundar Pichai was reportedly informed of the decision to not tell users after it had already been made by an internal committee.

The data exposed included full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile pictures, places lived, occupations and relationship status. It did not include phone numbers, the content of emails or messages, or other kinds of communication data.

Google also said it would begin restricting the data it provides to outside developers. Hours after the story broke, “Google+” was a top trending term on Twitter.
…

Google exposed the personal data of about 500,000 Google+ users to potential misuse by outside developers for years through a bug, then concealed the error to avoid consequences, according to an investigation published by The Wall Street Journal Monday.

Parent company Alphabet Inc responded by announcing it would shut down Google+, a largely defunct social network launched in 2011 to compete with Facebook. Shares of Alphabet Inc fell by about 1 percent in response to the story.  

“Our Privacy & Data Protection Office reviewed this issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether we could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response,” Google said of the error in a statement to VOA News. “None of these thresholds were met in this instance.”

The report alleges that the bug became active in 2015, only being discovered by Google and shut down in March of this year. Google confirmed that it had discovered the bug in March, but would not say when it became active.

The Wall Street Journal says it reviewed an internal memo circulated among Google’s legal staff and senior executives that warned of “immediate regulatory interest” and public comparisons to Facebook’s user information leak to Cambridge Analytica should the mistake become public.

According to the paper, the memo said that while Google could not find evidence that the exposed data had been misused, it also could not prove that misuse did not happen.

CEO Sundar Pichai was reportedly informed of the decision to not tell users after it had already been made by an internal committee.

The data exposed included full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile pictures, places lived, occupations and relationship status. It did not include phone numbers, the content of emails or messages, or other kinds of communication data.

Google also said it would begin restricting the data it provides to outside developers. Hours after the story broke, “Google+” was a top trending term on Twitter.
…

Twitter will strengthen rules rules to prevent sexual harassment and abuse on its platform, the social media company said Monday in an email to the collection of safety advocates, researchers and academics it uses help set its policies. There will also be harsher penalties for misconduct.

The new guidelines include immediately and permanently suspending the accounts of anyone who posts or is the source of non-consensual nudity. Twitter’s definition of non-consensual nudity will be expanded to include photos that are taken covertly.

Third parties will now be able to report unwanted sexual advances from one user to another. Previously, only those directly involved in the matter could do so.

Twitter also promised to publish new rules adding hate symbols and imagery to its definition of sensitive media.

The changes come on the heels of a series of tweets from CEO Jack Dorsey Friday pledging to limit the number of bullies and harassers using Twitter.

The micro-blogging platform faced intense criticism last year after it temporarily banned actress Rose McGowan last year for a tweeting out contact information for person she said was connected with Harvey Weinstein, who has faced accusations of sexual assault from McGowan and others.
…

Twitter will strengthen rules rules to prevent sexual harassment and abuse on its platform, the social media company said Monday in an email to the collection of safety advocates, researchers and academics it uses help set its policies. There will also be harsher penalties for misconduct.

The new guidelines include immediately and permanently suspending the accounts of anyone who posts or is the source of non-consensual nudity. Twitter’s definition of non-consensual nudity will be expanded to include photos that are taken covertly.

Third parties will now be able to report unwanted sexual advances from one user to another. Previously, only those directly involved in the matter could do so.

Twitter also promised to publish new rules adding hate symbols and imagery to its definition of sensitive media.

The changes come on the heels of a series of tweets from CEO Jack Dorsey Friday pledging to limit the number of bullies and harassers using Twitter.

The micro-blogging platform faced intense criticism last year after it temporarily banned actress Rose McGowan last year for a tweeting out contact information for person she said was connected with Harvey Weinstein, who has faced accusations of sexual assault from McGowan and others.
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Facebook is launching the first electronic device to bear its brand, a screen and camera-equipped gadget intended to make video calls easier and more intuitive.

But it’s unclear if people will open their homes to an internet-connected camera sold by a company with a shoddy track record on protecting user privacy.

Facebook is marketing the device, called Portal, as a way for its more than 2 billion users to chat with one another without having to fuss with positioning and other controls. The device features a camera that uses artificial intelligence to automatically pan and zoom as people move around during calls.

The Portal will feature two different screen sizes. It will go on sale in early November for roughly $200 to $350.
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Facebook is launching the first electronic device to bear its brand, a screen and camera-equipped gadget intended to make video calls easier and more intuitive.

But it’s unclear if people will open their homes to an internet-connected camera sold by a company with a shoddy track record on protecting user privacy.

Facebook is marketing the device, called Portal, as a way for its more than 2 billion users to chat with one another without having to fuss with positioning and other controls. The device features a camera that uses artificial intelligence to automatically pan and zoom as people move around during calls.

The Portal will feature two different screen sizes. It will go on sale in early November for roughly $200 to $350.
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The massive breach of Facebook and the exposure of the information of an estimated 50 million users last week has highlighted one of the problems with all the data we are putting out into the world. City planners share those concerns, but they’re looking also looking at how “Big Data” may be a big boost in helping their own cities develop. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Saturday it currently had no reason to doubt statements from companies that have denied a Bloomberg report that their supply chains were compromised by malicious computer chips inserted by Chinese intelligence services.

“The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise,” DHS said in a statement.

“Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story,” it said.

Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday cited 17 unidentified intelligence and company sources as saying that Chinese spies had placed computer chips inside equipment used by around 30 companies, as well as multiple U.S. government agencies, which would give Beijing secret access to internal networks.

Apple and Amazon

Britain’s national cyber security agency said Friday it had no reason to doubt the assessments made by Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc challenging the report.

Apple contested the Bloomberg report Thursday, saying its own internal investigations found no evidence to support the story’s claims and that neither the company, nor its contacts in law enforcement, were aware of any investigation by the FBI on the matter.

Apple’s recently retired general counsel, Bruce Sewell, told Reuters he called the FBI’s then-general counsel, James Baker, last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation of Super Micro Computer Inc, a hardware maker whose products Bloomberg said were implanted with malicious Chinese chips.

“I got on the phone with him personally and said, ‘Do you know anything about this?” Sewell said of his conversation with Baker. “He said, ‘I’ve never heard of this, but give me 24 hours to make sure.’ He called me back 24 hours later and said ‘Nobody here knows what this story is about.” Baker and the FBI declined to comment Friday.
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Saturday it currently had no reason to doubt statements from companies that have denied a Bloomberg report that their supply chains were compromised by malicious computer chips inserted by Chinese intelligence services.

“The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise,” DHS said in a statement.

“Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story,” it said.

Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday cited 17 unidentified intelligence and company sources as saying that Chinese spies had placed computer chips inside equipment used by around 30 companies, as well as multiple U.S. government agencies, which would give Beijing secret access to internal networks.

Apple and Amazon

Britain’s national cyber security agency said Friday it had no reason to doubt the assessments made by Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc challenging the report.

Apple contested the Bloomberg report Thursday, saying its own internal investigations found no evidence to support the story’s claims and that neither the company, nor its contacts in law enforcement, were aware of any investigation by the FBI on the matter.

Apple’s recently retired general counsel, Bruce Sewell, told Reuters he called the FBI’s then-general counsel, James Baker, last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation of Super Micro Computer Inc, a hardware maker whose products Bloomberg said were implanted with malicious Chinese chips.

“I got on the phone with him personally and said, ‘Do you know anything about this?” Sewell said of his conversation with Baker. “He said, ‘I’ve never heard of this, but give me 24 hours to make sure.’ He called me back 24 hours later and said ‘Nobody here knows what this story is about.” Baker and the FBI declined to comment Friday.
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The U.S. farm-to-table trend is definitely one of the latest. Americans are hungry for fresh, organic produce in their homes, and in many cases they are willing to pay more for it. But in an urban setting, residents don’t have a farm next door. The company Iron Ox is looking to change that, with the help of robust robotics. VOA’s Kevin Enochs has the story.
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