Category Archives: Technology

Silicon valley & technology news. Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools such as utensils or machines, and intangible ones such as software. Technology plays a critical role in science, engineering, and everyday life

Snapchat Outage Prompts Complaints on Twitter

Snapchat faced a worldwide outage for at least four hours on Monday, prompting a flood of complaints on rival mobile application Twitter a day before posting its third quarterly earnings as a public company.

“We’re aware of the issue and working on a fix,” Snapchat said on its support Twitter account, recommending that users stay logged on. 

Many users tweeted about being unable to sign on after logging off the app, which is popular among people under 30 for posting pictures that are automatically deleted within 24 hours.

Twitter user @bradleykeegan11 wrote, “(Snapchat)Won’t let me log in and keeps saying ‘could not connect’.”

A spokesman for the Snap Inc unit did not immediately respond to a query about the size and cause of the outage.

Snapchat had at least a couple of technical issues in October, according to its Twitter support page.

Snap, which went public in May, is scheduled to report third quarter earnings on Tuesday. Its stock closed down 2.8 percent at $14.83 on Monday, below its initial public offering price of $17.

Stephen Hawking Says Technology Could End Poverty But Urges Caution

Technology can hopefully reverse some of the harm caused to the planet by  industrialisation and help end disease and poverty, but artificial intelligence (AI) needs to be controlled, physicist Stephen Hawking said on Monday.

Hawking, a British cosmologist who was diagnosed with motor neuron disease aged 21, said technology could transform every aspect of life but cautioned that artificial intelligence poses new challenges.

He said artificial intelligence and robots are already threatening millions of jobs — but this new revolution could be used to help society and for the good of the world such as alleviating poverty and disease.

“The rise of AI could be the worst or the best thing that has happened for humanity,” Hawking said via telepresence at opening night of the 2017 Web Summit in Lisbon that is attended by about 60,000 people.

“We simply need to be aware of the dangers, identify them, employ the best possible practice and management and prepare for its consequences well in advance.”

Hawking’s comments come during an escalating debate about the pro and cons of artificial intelligence, a term used to describe machines with a computer code that learns as it goes.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk, who is chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc and rocket company SpaceX, has warned that AI is a threat to humankind’s existence.

But Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, in a rare interview recently, told the WSJ Magazine that there was nothing to panic about.

Hawking said everyone has a role to play in making sure that this generation and the next are fully engaged with the study of science at an early level to create “a better world for the whole human race.”

“We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be, and take action to make sure we plan for how it can be,” said Hawking, who communicates via a cheek muscle linked to a sensor and computerized voice system.

“You all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting — if precarious — place to be and you are the pioneers,” he said.

 

 

Supreme Court Rejects Samsung Appeal in Apple Patents Case

The Supreme Court has rejected Samsung’s appeal of court rulings that it impermissibly copied features of Apple’s iPhone.

The justices on Monday left in place rulings in favor of Apple involving its patents for smartphone features that include auto-correct and a slide that unlocks the device.

In 2014, a jury awarded Apple $120 million in damages for Samsung’s infringement of the patents.

The case is part of a series of disputes between the technology rivals that began in 2011. Last year, the high court ruled in favor of Samsung in a legal fight over the similar appearances of the two companies’ smartphones.

Deterring Sheep Rustlers with High Tech

Rustlers, the villains in countless Wild West movies, are a very real threat to ranchers and farmers today. In Britain, sheep farmers are resorting to technology to protect their flocks. Faiza Elmasry reports on some high tech ways farmers are tracing their animals. Faith Lapidus narrates.

Will Formula Racing Switch to Electric Cars?

As private and public transportation slowly shifts to electric propulsion, fans of Formula One car racing wonder whether the thrill of roaring turbocharged engines and the smell of burning car tires will someday be replaced by the subdued sleep-inducing whine of electric motors. But Formula E cars keep gathering fans and creating support for alternative power sources. VOA’s George Putic reports.

Old Tech Increasingly Causing Health, Environmental Troubles

A growing amount of the waste in the world is out-of-date electronics. And inside all of our devices are a lot of valuable metals, and also some dangerously toxic ones. All that stuff needs to be handled with care, and Indonesia is working to make sure it doesn’t end up in landfills. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.

Afghanistan Blocks Social Media Services

Authorities in Afghanistan are temporarily blocking WhatsApp and Telegram social media services in the country, citing security concerns, officials confirmed Friday.

An official at the Afghan Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, ATRA, told VOA the social media tools will be suspended for 20 days. The decision follows a request from state security institutions.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a formal announcement is expected Saturday.

ATRA has ordered telecom companies to shut down the services November 1, according to a copy of official instructions appearing in Afghan media.

Social media users have complained of technical problems while using the two services in recent days.

The controversial move has sparked criticism of the Afghan government, and it is being slammed as an illegal act and an attack on freedom of expression.

The outage prompted the telecom regulator to issue a statement Friday, saying the ban is meant to test “a new kind of technology” in the wake of users’ complaints.

It went on to defend the restriction, saying WhatsApp and Telegram are merely voice and messaging services and their temporary suspension does not violate the civil rights of Afghans. The government is committed to freedom of expression, the ministry added.

Afghan journalists and activists on Twitter dismissed the statement.

“This seems to be the beginning of government censorship. If it’s not resisted soon the gov’t will block FB & twitter,” wrote Habib Khan Totakhil on Twitter.

“Gov’t fails to deliver security, now it seeks to hide its incompetence by imposing ban on messaging platforms. Totalitarianism?,” said the Afghan journalist.

“#Censorship is against what freedom we stood for in #Afghanistan post 2001. Gains shouldn’t go to waste,” tweeted activist Nasrat Khalid.

An estimated 6 million people in war-torn Afghanistan can access internet-based services. The growth of media and social media activism have been among the few success stories Afghanistan has seen in the post-Taliban era.

Classifying numbers

The restrictions on social media come as the Taliban intensifies attacks on Afghan security forces, inflicting heavy casualties.

The insurgent group also relies heavily on WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter and Facebook to publicize its battlefield gains.

The Afghan government has lately barred the United States military from releasing casualty numbers, force strength, operation readiness, attrition figures and performance assessments of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John Sopko, while briefing members of Congress on Wednesday, severely criticized the classification move. He maintained American taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent.

“The Taliban know this [Afghan casualties], they know who was killed. They know all about that. The Afghans know about it, the U.S. military knows about it. The only people who wouldn’t know are the [American] people who are paying for it,” Sopko noted.

The United States has spent nearly $120 billion on reconstruction programs in Afghanistan since 2002. More than 60 percent of the money has been used to build Afghan security forces.

Researchers Working for the End of the Internal Combustion Automobile

Hybrid cars are slowly working their way into car markets, and there are waiting lists for Elon Musk’s new all-electric Tesla Model 3. But as popular as these cars are, they have the natural limitations of their batteries. But an answer may be in sight. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.

Twitter Employee, on Last Day, Deactivates Trump Account

U.S. President Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was deactivated by a Twitter Inc employee whose last day at the company was Thursday, and the account was down for 11 minutes before it was restored, the social media company said.

“We have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer-support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review,” Twitter said in a tweet.

“We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” the company said in an earlier tweet.

A Twitter representative declined to comment further.

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Trump has made extensive use of messages on Twitter to attack his opponents and promote his policies both during the 2016 presidential campaign and since taking office in January.

He has 41.7 million followers on Twitter.

His first tweet after Thursday’s outage:

In a similar incident last November, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey’s account was briefly suspended as a result of what he said was an internal mistake.

Malaysia Investigating Reported Leak of 46 Million Mobile Users Data

Malaysia is investigating an alleged attempt to sell the data of more than 46 million mobile phone subscribers online after a major data breach, Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak said on Wednesday.

The massive data breach was first reported last month by Lowyat.net, a local technology news website, which said it had received a tip-off that someone was trying to sell huge databases of personal information on its forums.

Salleh said the country’s internet regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), was looking into the matter with the police.

“We have identified several potential sources of the leak and we should be able to complete the probe soon,” Salleh told reporters at parliament.

The leaked data was being sold for an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin, a digital currency, Lowyat.net said on Monday.

It included lists of mobile phone numbers, identification card numbers, home addresses, and SIM card data of 46.2 million customers from at least 12 Malaysian mobile phone operators.

Malaysia’s population is just around 32 million, but many have several mobile numbers. The lists are also believed to include inactive numbers and temporary ones bought by visiting foreigners, local daily The Star reported.

MCMC’s chief operating officer Mazlan Ismail said on Tuesday the regulator had met with local telecommunications companies to seek their cooperation in the probe, according to state news agency Bernama.

The data also includes private information of more than 80,000 individuals leaked from the records of the Malaysian Medical Council, the Malaysian Medical Association, and the Malaysian Dental Association, Lowyat.net said.

New Fingerprint Technology Solves Mysteries, Brings Closure to Families of Deceased

Modern forensics have come a long way with the use of DNA evidence and fingerprint databases. But it’s not always easy to match a full set of prints, especially if a corpse is stranded in the desert and scavenging animals have picked it apart. But a new FBI database aims to share as much information despite the few clues available. Arash Arabasadi reports.

US Social Media Giants Pledge to Combat Foreign Disinformation

Attorneys for Twitter, Facebook and Google on Tuesday told U.S. lawmakers that Russian entities used their platforms to sow discord and disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, but downplayed the magnitude of those efforts.

“Foreign actors used fake accounts to place ads in Facebook and Instagram that reached millions of Americans over a two-year period,” Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said, testifying before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. “Many of these ads and posts are inflammatory. Some are downright offensive.”

Sean Edgett, Twitter’s acting general counsel, said the company studied all tweets posted from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15, 2016, and found that election-related content posted by automated Russian troll accounts “was comparatively small.” He said the Russian troll accounts made up “around 1/100th of a percent of total Twitter accounts” during the time studied.

“Twitter believes that any activity of that kind — regardless of magnitude — is unacceptable and we agree we must do better to prevent it,” he said.

Twitter has taken action against the suspected Russian trolls, suspending 2,752 accounts and implementing new dedicated teams “to enhance the quality of the information our users see,” Edgett said.

Facebook, meanwhile, said it would hire more people to vet and, when necessary, remove content, and verify and publish the identities of election advertisers.

Watch: Social media companies to fight disinformation

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the Senate requiring some of the very steps technology giants say they are implementing on their own.

“These platforms are being used by people who wish us harm and wish to undercut our way of life,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“It shouldn’t be news to anyone that Russia interfered in the election,” said California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. “What is really staggering and hard to fully comprehend is how easily and successfully they turned modern technologies to their advantage.”

The social media attorneys said Russian trolling campaigns consistently sought to rile up Americans, first in a way damaging to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. After the election, they said, Russian efforts appeared aimed at sowing doubts about the legitimacy of Republican Donald Trump’s victory at the polls — a point seized upon by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

“Russia does not have loyalty to a political party in the United States; their goal is to divide us and discredit our democracy,” Grassley said.

Representatives from the same social media companies testify Wednesday before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. 

VOA’s Joshua Fatzick contributed to this report.

Vietnam Tech Startups Seek Next Phase

There’s a short but not-so-simple question facing Vietnam’s technology startup fans: Now, what?

The communist country was not immune to the startup craze that swept the globe, but much of the early period was spent talking about tech and all the local potential. In what could be called the next phase of the craze, Vietnam now hopes to go beyond just talking. The focus now is on getting entrepreneurs to deliver on their pitches and meet concrete benchmarks, whether that’s to turn a profit, expand overseas, or find “exits” for their businesses, such as through acquisitions.

At a basic level, Vietnam has what’s needed to be a place prime for startups. Citizens have high literacy rates and math proficiency, which eases the path to creating an army of programmers for the economy. The country also has a balance that combines, on the one hand, a large consumer market on par with those of Thailand and the Philippines, and on the other hand, a lower level of development with high growth rates on par with those of Laos and Cambodia. And the low cost of things like wages and Internet plans allows people to establish companies at minimal expense.

But these are only ingredients, not, so far, action toward a modern culture of enterprise.

“Vietnam usually does copy-paste,” said Lam Tran, CEO of the startup WisePass, adding that locals should move past the model of copying a business idea from a foreign country and pasting it into the domestic market. “We don’t know how to internationalize.”

WisePass, an app that connects monthly subscribers to bar and restaurant deals, launched in Ho Chi Minh City with plans to cover seven countries in the near future.

Taking advantage of cross-border ties is one effective, increasingly popular strategy, startup aficionados say. For one thing, Vietnam has a huge postwar diaspora, known as Viet Kieu, who help connect the Southeast Asian country to investors, advisers, and developers abroad. For another, the tech scene inside the border is more cosmopolitan than ever.

To give one example, the Vietnam Innovative Startup Accelerator (VIISA) has invested in 11 companies for the second batch of what it calls “graduates.” All have domestic links, but have partners operating in locales as disparate as Ukraine, South Korea and France.

Sangyeop Kang, investment officer at VIISA partner Hanwha Investment, said he’s “delighted about the diversity” of this sophomore batch.

“The foreign teams were able to expand their business in Vietnam, while helping Vietnamese companies with global insights,” Kang said. “This is a step forward for the ecosystem.”

In a sign of official interest, the government has a carve-out for startups in its Law on Supporting Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, which will take effect Jan. 1. The law offers young companies support with co-working spaces, technical equipment, intellectual property training, and low interest rates, among other things.

To do more than copy and paste, new businesses are contemplating how to outfit themselves for Vietnam. The startup But Chi Mau, for instance, makes games that tap into the unquenchable thirst for education, while MarketOi deploys motorbike drivers to let customers customize their food deliveries.

“The question is how to differentiate ourselves,” MarketOi founder Germain Blanchet said, before proceeding to answer that question: “This is with flexibility.”

 

Robotic Eel Seeks Water Pollution, Aids Researchers

Trash and tires floating in a river are easy to see. But there’s a lot of harmful water pollution that isn’t visible to the naked eye. Researchers in Switzerland are testing a robotic version of a sea monster that’s helping them get a better look at what’s floating in the water. Arash Arabasadi reports.

DNA Lab in Netherlands to Help Find Missing People Worldwide

An organization that has been helping find people missing from the 1990s Balkan conflict has now expanded to tackle the cases of millions of missing people around the world. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), based in the Netherlands, will use the latest DNA technology to identify bodies and provide closure to family members of the missing people. The laboratory findings also will be used to serve justice and support demands for reparations. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.

U. of Michigan Expert Puts Bird-like Robot Through Its Paces

A rare bird has landed at the University of Michigan: a two-legged robot named “Cassie” that researchers hope could be the forerunner of a machine that one day will aid search-and-rescue efforts.

 

Cassie — whose name is derived from the cassowary, a flightless bird similar to an ostrich — stands upright on legs with backward-facing knees. The biped that weighs about 66 pounds (29.94 kilograms) may not have feathers or a head, but she is attached to a short torso that holds motors, computers and batteries and is able to walk unassisted on rough and uneven terrain.

 

Cassie, which stands a bit over 3.25 feet (1 meter) at full leg extension, was built by Albany, Oregon-based Agility Robotics and purchased by Michigan researchers using grant money from the National Science Foundation and Toyota Research Institute. Although other institutions have acquired similar models, Michigan’s team is excited to use its version to put Michigan Robotics’ cutting-edge programming to the test, said Jessy Grizzle, director of Michigan Robotics.

“This stuff makes our old math look like child’s play,” Grizzle said.

 

Although there is considerable excitement about Cassie and the potential she represents, certain real-world applications are still a bit out of reach.

 

Search-and-rescue “is a hard problem and serves as a template for ‘unsolved problems in robotics,’ which is one of the reasons you see it pop up so much when robotics companies talk about applications,” said Agility Robotics CEO Damion Shelton, who added that it is “difficult to even speculate” when a robot could be used for such a purpose.

 

Other applications will be launched sooner, according to Shelton, who said a robot capable of walking around the perimeter of an industrial site taking 3-D scans is no more than two years away from becoming reality.

 

For now, Grizzle and some of his students are putting Cassie through her paces on and around Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus. During a recent a stroll on a pedestrian walkway, Cassie ambled on a grassy, sloped surface, then took a serious tumble and did a face-plant on the concrete.

 

“Well, I think that’s the end” of the test, Grizzle said, as Cassie lay in a heap on the ground, slightly nicked and scratched but no worse for wear.

 

The programs Grizzle and his students tested “are version 1.0,” he said.

 

“They are simple algorithms to make sure that we understand the robot. We will now focus on implementing our super-cool latest stuff,” Grizzle said.

World Economic Forum: Silicon Valley Must Stem IS Violent Content

The World Economic Forum’s human rights council report issued on Monday, warns that tech companies might risk tougher regulations by governments to limit freedom of speech if they do not stem the publishing of violent content by Islamic State and the spread of misinformation.

The report urged tech companies to employ thorough monitoring on their services, and “assume a more active self-governance rule,” recommending that tech firms must apply more rigorous rules.

This report comes before the three tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google, testify before a U.S. congressional committee in November about using their platforms for spreading political misinformation during the 2016 presidential elections.

The use of tech platforms and tools has helped the Islamic State spread its agenda and attract recruits. Digital propaganda motivated more than 30,000 people to journey thousands of miles to join IS, according to a report published by Wired, a magazine published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics.

“ISIS’s supporters embraced new social media platforms and encrypted communications tools to compensate for law enforcement and platform owner actions against ISIS since June 2014,” the Institute for the Study of War said in its report “The Virtual  Caliphate.”

Silicon Valley tech companies convened last August with representatives from the tech industry, government and non-governmental organizations in the first Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. The forum was formed by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube.

The meeting focused on how participating parties can cooperate to block the spread of terrorism and violent extremism using tech platforms and services.

In the past year, social media companies edited and updated their user guidelines to address such sensitive topics as extremism and terrorism, death, war and sexual abuse.

In August 2016, Twitter announced that it suspended 360,000 accounts for violating the company’s prohibition on violent threats and the promotion of terrorism. Twitter added that although there is no “one magic algorithm for identifying terrorist content on the internet, they will continue to utilize other forms of technology and expanded its partnerships with organizations working to counter violent extremism (CVE) online.”

Last August, Google’s YouTube announced joining efforts with more than 15 additional expert NGOs and institutions to help the company better identify content that is being used to radicalize and recruit extremists.

“We’ll soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism,” YouTube said.

In a speech for the Global Coalition on March 22 in Washington D.C., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: “We must break ISIS’s ability to spread its message and recruit new followers online. A digital caliphate must not flourish in the place of a physical one.”

“We must fight ISIS online as aggressively as we would on the ground,” Tillerson said.

Brazilian Crime Apps Help Citizens Stay Out of the Cross Fire

More than 50,000 people were killed in Brazil in 2015, which puts it on the list of the most murder-prone countries in the world. To protect themselves, Brazilians are crowd sourcing their safety, using cell phones to alert each other when violence breaks out. VOA’s Kevin Enochs.

Rural US Areas Look at Innovative Ways to Connect to the Internet

More than 19 million Americans are still without home internet access…that according to the Federal Communication Commission. In Garrett County, Maryland, local leaders came up with an innovative plan to provide access to their community…VOA’s Lesya Bakalets reports on a creative approach to getting hard to reach customers on line.

Radio Pollution Creates Space Shield for Satellites

People are big polluters, on the land, in the sea and even in outer space, that can include anything from a hammer that floats away from the space station, to radiation from a nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere.

“This can range from little chips of paint all the way up to spent rocket bodies and things like that,” said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory of Atmosphere and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We’ve been trying to figure out how can we most effectively eliminate this debris without causing more of a problem.”

Space debris travels so fast, even an orbiting chip of paint can poke a hole in a satellite. But Baker says something tinier, and natural, is a bigger hazard: It’s the highly charged “killer electrons” of the magnetized zone above the earth called The Van Allen Belts.

“We’ve observed them to cause very significant problems for spacecraft,” Baker said.

Electro-magnetic planetary blanket

The doughnut-shaped Van Allen Belts around our planet protect life on earth from solar winds and cosmic rays. But their highly energetic charged particles can damage the circuitry in space stations, weather satellites and other machines that travel through that region of space.

Baker notes that “killer electrons” can also come from some human activities, like the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

“Back in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, there were nuclear explosions that put huge amounts of radiation into space that caused many satellites to ‘die’ because of radiation damage,” he said. “And if that were to happen today, we know that there are over 1,400 satellites operating in space around the earth and all of those could be subject to very severe consequences.”

Most nations adhere to treaties that prohibit atmospheric weapon testing. But Baker says that’s no guarantee.

“What is worrisome to us from a political standpoint today is that there are nations, for example, North Korea and others, that may be thinking once again, and who may not be adherent to such treaties, that this might be an interesting way to mess with modern technology,” Baker said.

Mysterious space shield

Radiation particles in the Van Allen Belts already “mess” with modern technology. So when satellites must spend time in that region, they are built with thicker materials. That armor makes them heavier, and more expensive. Fortunately, spacecraft and satellites that orbit just under the Van Allen Belts don’t need this heavy shielding. Baker says that’s because, at the lower edge of the Van Allen Belts, the killer electrons abruptly stop.

He compares it to the shields that protected Captain Kirk’s ship, the Enterprise, from phasers and asteroids on Star Trek.

Scientists have known for years that something here on the earth creates an invisible bubble that clears killer electrons from the lower edge of the Van Allen Belts. Just what makes that shield has been a mystery.

But recently, Baker’s teams figured out its source. The “bubble maker” is very low frequency radio transmissions, also known as VLF. Militaries use VLF to communicate with submarines underwater. It turns out those radio waves also travel up, through the atmosphere, to the Van Allen Belts.

“So the VLF bubble is made up of these intense waves. These waves act to sort of scatter and scrub the inner part of the Van Allen Belts,” Baker said, admitting, “I would prefer that we not be messing with nature. However, in this particular case I would say that there is some evidence that this is beneficial.”

John Bonnell, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab, agrees that VLF “pollution” is probably benign, and he points to the high-energy radiation emitted by lightning bolts as evidence.

“We’ve had natural clearing of the radiation Belts with lightning, for as long as we’ve had lightning. So in essence, you’ve had a long-running experiment that you can look at and say, ‘Well, if we’re going to do things on sort of a sporadic basis, whereas lightning’s been doing it daily for hundreds of millions of years, the likelihood of there being a bad side effect is pretty minimal,'” he said.

Bonnell says that discovering a man-made way to clear killer electrons from the Van Allen Belt does not mean we will soon create “shields up” devices that use magnetics or radio transmissions. At least, he says, we’re not making them yet.

“It’s a fascinating possibility and it’s a fascinating technology that could enable us in the future, to explore more of the solar system with people, with robots. And so it’s definitely something that people pick away at slowly over time,” he said.

Bonnell says scientists, engineers and astronomers have teamed up to make amazing discoveries about how to study, and travel through, outer space. And while the future shape of space exploration is a mystery, our new understanding about the man-made “pollution” that shields satellites may be an important part of it.

Retailers Offer New Tools to Help Shoppers Find Clothes That Fit

Stores watching Amazon take a larger share of clothing sales are trying to solve one of the most vexing issues for online shoppers: finding items that fit properly.

The retailers are unleashing tools that use artificial intelligence to replicate the help a salesperson at a store might offer, calculate a shopper’s most likely body shape, or use 3-D models for a virtual fitting room experience. Amazon, which some analysts say will surpass Macy’s this year as the largest U.S. clothing seller, is offering some customers an Alexa-powered device that doubles as a selfie-stick machine and a stylist.

Retailers want to reduce the rate of online returns, which can be up to 40 percent, and thus make customers happier — and more likely to be repeat shoppers. And the more interaction shoppers have with a brand, the more the technology will learn about shoppers’ preferences, said Vicky Zadeh, chief executive of Rakuten Fits Me, a tech company that works with QVC and clothing startup brands.

 

“It’s all about confidence,” she said. “If they have the confidence to buy, they will come back to the retailer time and time again.”

The push is coming from big names like Levi’s and The Gap and startups like Rhone and Taylrd.

Levi’s new Virtual Stylist texts back and forth with online customers to offer recommendations, based on their preferences. Marc Rosen, Levi’s president of global e-commerce, said early tests show the chatbot is driving more browsers to become buyers.

Reliance on body shape

Rakuten Fits Me, which works with QVC and other companies, fine-tuned its fitting technology this summer and said its retail partners now offer garments that should fit shoppers’ body shapes when the customer first does the initial search. Shoppers provide three measurements — height, weight and age — and then it calculates a person’s most likely body shape, not size, to determine the fit for any garment and offer more accurate recommendations.

And Gap Inc. has an augmented reality app in collaboration with Google and startup Avametric that allows shoppers to virtually try on clothes. Shoppers enter information like height and weight and then the app puts a 3-D model in front of them. However, the tool only works on Google Tango smartphones.

Sebastian DiGrande, executive vice president and strategy and chief customer officer at Gap, said the augmented reality app had produced good feedback, but the company is still determining whether shoppers really want a virtual 3-D model.

Clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger similarly has built its mobile app around the camera and image recognition. It has an augmented reality feature enabling shoppers to see what the clothes look like on a virtual runway model — but not their own body type.

And men’s online clothier Bonobos, now owned by Wal-Mart, launched an app that offers customers a virtual closet to see items they bought and saved. The app is converting browsers to buyers at a faster rate, said Andy Dunn, founder of Bonobos.

Companies are smart to offer new tools, but many are too “gimmicky,” said Sapna Shah, principal at Red Giraffe Advisors, which makes early-stage investments in fashion tech.

“If it’s not Amazon, will brand-specific apps be the way for people to shop in the future?” she said. “How many apps are people going to have on their phone?”

And all the companies need to win over customers who prefer to touch and see things in person.

“It’s great that they’re busting their tail with all these apps, but I am skeptical,” said Doug Garnett of Portland, Oregon. Garnett said he buys some clothes online when he knows and understands the brands, but otherwise, “I really need to see them on my body before I act, and really prefer that to be in a store.”

Personalized offers

As Amazon dives further into fashion, it could use its base of data to spur trends and personalize offers for its customers. Its Echo Look features a built-in camera that photographs and records shoppers trying on clothes and offers recommendations on outfits. It works with its Style Check app, using machine learning and advice from experts. The potential: Learn shoppers’ styles and recommend outfits to buy. Amazon reportedly is exploring the idea of quickly fulfilling online orders for custom-fit clothing.

The company also reportedly acquired Body Labs, which creates true-to-life 3-D body models.

“We’re always listening to our customers, learning and innovating on their behalf and bringing them products we think they will love,” said Amazon spokeswoman Molly Wade. She wouldn’t comment on the prospect of custom-fit or the reports about Body Labs.

Steve Barr, the U.S. retail and consumer sector leader at consultants PwC, said that Amazon was trying for a curated experience based on massive data analytics. But he said he thought such an approach had limitations.

“No matter how great Amazon is with artificial intelligence and predictive behaviors,” Barr said, “they can’t put a red tab on a pair of a jeans or a swoosh on a pair of shoes.”

Facebook Moves to Increase Transparency in Political Ads

Under pressure in advance of hearings on Russian election interference, Facebook is moving to increase transparency for everyone who sees and buys political advertising on its site.

Executives for the social media company said Friday they will verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations. The site will also create new graphics where users can click on the ads and find out more about who’s behind them.

More broadly, Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president in charge of ad products, said the company is building new transparency tools in which all advertisers, even those that aren’t political, are associated with a page, and users can click on a link to see all of the ads any advertiser is running.

Users also will be able to see all of the ads paid for by the advertisers, whether those ads were originally targeted toward them.

3,000 Russia-linked ads

The move comes after the company acknowledged it had found more than 3,000 ads linked to Russia that focused on divisive U.S. social issues and were seen by an estimated 10 million people before and after the 2016 U.S. elections.

Facebook, Twitter and Google will testify in Congress Tuesday and Wednesday on how their platforms were used by Russia or other foreign actors in the election campaign. The Senate and House intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee are all holding hearings as part of their investigations into Russian election interference.

Facebook’s announcement comes a day after Twitter said it will ban ads from RT and Sputnik, two state-sponsored Russian news outlets. Twitter also has said it will require election-related ads for candidates to disclose who is paying for them and how they are targeted.

Federal election ad archive

Facebook’s Goldman said the company also will build a new archive of federal election ads on Facebook, including the total amount spent and the number of times an ad is displayed, he said. The archive, which will be public for anyone to search, would also have data on the audience that saw the ads, including gender and location information. The archive would eventually hold up to four years of data.

Goldman said the company is still building the new features. They plan to test them in Canada and roll them out in the United States by next summer ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

“This is a good first step but it’s not at all the last step, there’s a lot to learn once we start testing,” Goldman said in an interview.

Facebook already had announced in September that the platform would require an advertiser to disclose who paid for the ads and what other ads it was running at the same time. But it was unclear exactly how the company would do that.

​Heading off legislation

The moves are meant to bring Facebook more in line with what is now required of print and broadcast advertisers. Federal regulations require television and radio stations to make publicly available the details of political ads they air. That includes who runs the ad, when it runs and how much it costs.

It is also likely meant to head off bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would require social media companies to keep public files of election ads and try to ensure they are not purchased by foreigners. Though Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democratic co-sponsor of the legislation, has said his bill would be “the lightest touch possible,” social media companies would rather set their own guidelines than face new regulation.

Facebook has responded swiftly to the attention it has received in recent months on Capitol Hill, boosting staff and lobbying efforts. The company has spent more than $8.4 million in lobbying Congress and the rest of the government through the third quarter of this year, according to federal records.

Some analysts have warned that policing such online election ads can be difficult. It’s one thing to enforce advertising rules for a print newspaper or a TV station, where real humans can vet each ad before it is printed or aired. But that is much more complicated when automated advertising platforms allow millions of advertisers, basically anyone with a credit card and internet access, to place an ad.

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