Today’s Tech Sightings:

FILE – A man holds a prototype of a smart gun by Armatix in Nuremberg, Germany, March 13, 2009. The smart gun, the first of its kind, has a fingerprint recognition security system and can only be unblocked if its owner is recognized by a compatible security watch. (Reuters)

Smart Tech Offers Ways to Reduce Gun Violence

Writer Preston Gralla argues that technology might hold the key to helping save some lives from the vicious cycle of gun violence in the United States, so long as gun fanatics can be reigned in. He suggests introducing smart-gun technology with fingerprint readers that would prevent anyone but legitimate owners from firing the gun. Coupled with RFID or Radio Frequency Identification technology, fingerprint readers are only fitted on guns whose owners wear a specific identifying object.

Swiftkey Launches Symbols to Help People With Non-verbal Autism Communicate

Swiftkey’s newly-released Symbols Android app, geared for young users, allows people with non-verbal autism to communicate. Its predictive language keyboard, machine-learning capabilities and hand-drawn symbols all combine to help users begin to form sentences.

Election Rules Facebook in 2015, and Not Just for Americans

The topic the world talked about most on Facebook during 2015 was the U.S. presidential election, despite the fact that it is still almost a year away. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump had a lot to do with that. Right now, the second-most searched term related to Trump is a petition signed by thousands of people in the UK to ban him from visiting their country.

More:

• Apple CEO Tim Cook: We Need More Computer, Coding Education

• Six-year-old Kentucky Boy Gets 3-D-printed ‘Bionic’ Hand

• Zuckerberg: ‘Muslims Always Welcome on Facebook’

• Baidu Says It’s Developed China’s First Fully Autonomous Self-driving Car

• Google’s Biggest Hits and Misses of 2015

• The Evolution of the Selfie Century