Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Caltech’s Group’s “toilet of the future” uses solar power to turn human waste into clear, sterilized water. After testing it in India, the group decided to tackle maintenance issues, should the toilet break down. The unit was, therefore, equipped with sensors that gather information about any problems and alert an operator so they can be fixed.
According to New Scientist, Facebook has developed a new, experimental algorithm that is able to identify users in pictures without actually seeing their faces by using other features, such as hair, body shape, clothing, etc.
Software vulnerabilities and flaws are like an open invitation to hackers who are able to exploit them. Writer Laura Hautala argues this happens because the software code is not sufficiently vetted for security issues. While inspecting code in programs used by its clients in the past year, software security company Veracode found 6.9 million flaws in more than 200,000 code inspections.
If you are using the Internet, social media services or connected devices, chances are your personal information is already out there. Jan Dawson, Founder and Chief Analyst at Jackdaw argues that personal information falls into different categories and classifications that should be taken into consideration as the privacy conversation moves forward.
First, Microsoft said its new operating system, Windows 10, would be free. Then the company made public promises that later were retracted. Now, there’s more confusion than ever. If you are one of the confused, writer Pete Pachal tries to make some sense of the whole thing, ahead of the upcoming release of Windows 10 in July.
Have you ever regretted pressing that Gmail “send” icon to dispatch an angry email? Well, now you can retract it. A new feature from Google called “Undo Send” lets you do that. The catch is you can only do that within 10 seconds of pressing the send button.
Among other tasks, Google’s artificial neural network (ANN) has been taught to identify various objects, including works of art, to influence the way the system learns and extracts information. However, the result of feeding information and tweaking output has led to some interesting, almost hallucinogenic results.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Recently, someone posted an online video depicting human rights abuses and claimed it was from the Central African Republic, long a witness to the atrocities of war. The footage was actually from Nigeria.
In another instance, images that were posted on social media in relation to last year’s Gaza war in fact dated back to 2012.
“It doesn’t matter what conflict you’re looking at. You always find old footage,” said Amnesty International’s Christoph Koettl, Founder and Editor of Amnesty’s Citizen Evidence Lab.
In many cases, “the images or the videos are just recycled, meaning they are old or they come from a completely different country,” he told TECHtonics.
Koettl spends most of his time looking at videos and pictures that were shared on social media to verify their credibility for potential use as court evidence in war crimes cases – a meticulous and labor-intensive process that takes hours and sometimes days.
Now, a new Android app from the International Bar Association (IBA), a non-profit legal services group, could help make the verification process easier for human rights researchers.
A screenshot shows a selection of images on the eyeWitness app for Android mobile devices, courtesy the eyeWitness Project.
The app – eyeWitness to Atrocities – was designed “to help record footage of violations of international criminal law that … could be authenticated and used in investigations and trial,” said eyeWitness Project Director Wendy Betts in an interview.
“What we’re trying to do is provide the individuals who are courageous enough to capture this footage with the tools and help increase the impact of the images that they take and submit,” she said.
The app records and embeds the metadata needed to authenticate the footage and collects GPS coordinates, date and time information from satellites to verify when and where a video or picture was taken.
Koettl said the metadata the app collects makes its chain of custody very clear, allowing a lawyer or a court to determine very clearly who had access to the footage and whether it was tampered with.
“And that is different from any sort of footage that is shared on social media or is sent from one person to the other,” he said. “So it becomes a little bit easier in court proceedings.”
Footage and images submitted to the eyeWitness organization undergo a pixel count that is then run through an algorithm. The algorithm in turn assigns each item a unique identifying code.
“If the image were to be edited or altered in any way, it would change that identifying code so that we could identify that a change had been made,” said Betts.
When footage appears to show criminal conduct or conduct relevant to an atrocity, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or torture, then it is deferred to an appropriate legal authority or other accountability body for further investigation.
Betts said she would like to see the app in the hands of citizens who are often the first and sometimes the only witnesses to these types of violations.
“We really are focused on empowering them to be able to help bring to justice individuals who commit these types of atrocity crimes,” she said.
At the same time, she said safety is a high priority, given that citizens or journalists in conflict zones often run afoul of the perpetrators of war crimes or human rights abuses and sometimes pay with their lives.
The app comes with security features to hide its existence should the phone fall into the wrong hands. Captured pictures and videos are also securely stored within the app, with passcode access known only to the user. Once transmitted, the encrypted material is stored on an offline server.
Nevertheless, Betts urged users “to be very aware of the risks that they might be taking before they decide to film and if necessary to even forgo filming.”
Koettl echoed the warning, saying the eyeWitness app is not for everyone. He cautioned users to do a proper risk assessment before filming.
“Is it really safe in that specific moment maybe to pull out my camera – doesn’t matter if it’s a cell phone or any other sort of camera – and film in this moment?” he asked. “So that is something that whoever does the filming has to take into account.”
Once the risk factors are assessed, Koettl said eyeWitness to Atrocities would be “most impactful” if citizen journalists or activists who are already filming or taking pictures started using it because it also allows them to use their material as potential evidence in future court proceedings.
Those who already post material about atrocities and human rights abuses should double-check their sources, add proper context, date, time, location and other information that can aid with verification, and ensure that they do not put any pictured individuals at risk.
Used ethically, new digital technologies can “empower regular people to record what they’re seeing and share content,” said Koettl. ‘And sometimes it becomes evidence.”
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Cuba’s government announced Thursday that it is expanding Wi-Fi access in state-run Internet centers and slashing hourly online costs by more than half. Cuba’s state communications company said 35 computer centers around the country will have Wi-Fi access, beginning in July.
China’s local Want China Times reported this week that WeChat provider Tencent could be forced to leave Taiwan. The paper cited a regulator saying Tencent’s registration in Taiwan does not cover its popular chat service, currently used by more than 6 million people on the island.
Google, in conjunction with social news agency Storyful, is launching three new YouTube initiatives to help citizen journalists and professional users unearth genuine eyewitness footage from YouTube, verify user-generated content, and focus on human rights.
Following reports that Samsung Galaxy devices are open to hackers due to a vulnerability in keyboard software SwiftKey, both Samsung and SwiftKey assured users they are working on a solution. Meanwhile Tripwire security experts have a few recommendations to help users protect themselves until the patch arrives.
A team of researchers from Indiana University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Peking University have uncovered a very serious flaw in the Apple iPhone’s OS X operating system. The vulnerability allows hackers to steal passwords saved in Apple’s Keychain and its native apps, as well as third-party apps.
The reality is that tracking sophisticated hackers after they compromise a major network or business is a very difficult task, particularly if the attackers are based in another country, or work for a state government. But experts say even if the assailants are never arrested, unmasking their identities is a crucial part of creating a viable defense against them.
Ello started in 2014 as an invitation-based social service with no mobile option. But the company, which says it has several million loyal users, now is launching a mobile app and lifting the subscription requirement.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
The race to connect the world to the Internet is heating up with another company getting into the fray. OneWeb has a plan to bring satellite connectivity to billions of people around the globe in partnership with Airbus, which will build more than 900 satellites to offer full coverage. The first batch will launch in 2018.
If you have a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, you might have a problem. A new report from security firm NowSecure says a bug in the device’s Swift keyboard software lets hackers install malware on the phone, eavesdrop on calls, and potentially take control of the user’s network.
HTC users in the United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan, and China might soon see advertisements crawling into their BlinkFeeds. HTC just announced that it is rolling out “native promotions,” effective immediately, as part of a pilot program to assess the effectiveness of these types of ads.
A Taiwan court ruled to fine Apple $647,124 for engaging in anti-corruption practices. Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission previously fined another Silicon Valley company for violating the island’s laws by requiring telecom partners to receive approval for pricing its products ahead of release.
It’s not easy to build an empire; and Mark Zuckerberg has built the lucrative Facebook that has the loyalty of more than 1.4 billion people all over the world. Yet the Facebook CEO, an extravagant Harvard dropout now worth about $33.4 billion, remains a down-to-earth guy. Writer Jillian D’Onfro offers a snapshot of Zuckerberg’s charmed life.
With Elop’s departure from Microsoft, the former Executive Vice President of Operating Systems, Terry Myerson, will head a new department that combines Windows software and devices. Elop joined the company as part of Microsoft’s Nokia acquisition over a year ago.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
A large group of privacy advocates dropped out of talks with the U.S. government over disagreements on facial recognition safeguards. The group, backed by tech giants that include Google, Microsoft and Facebook, argues that users should have an opt-in feature for facial recognition so that user information is not automatically stored in the system. Once stored, retailers could share the information or use it to monitor customer behavior.
It is probably a bad idea to save all your passwords in one place on the Internet; and saving any passwords online is questionable, to begin with. That said, LastPass, a company that people use to store their passwords on the cloud and access them via a single master password just got hacked. While the attack is still under investigation, hackers stole encrypted passwords, email addresses and password reminders.
Sonatype, a firm that manages the largest repository of components for Open Source software, said that more than 15,000 Java components downloaded last year – or about 7.5 percent, had known vulnerabilities. A separate analysis showed that on average, companies used 27 different versions of each component.
Apple is hiring editors and journalists to work on a new mobile app called News that was unveiled earlier this month. The app will be installed automatically, but will allow users to define the features they want. But writer Mic Wright has reservations about Apple’s oversight of news content, given the company’s historical iron grip on its relationship with journalists.
Twitter just announced that Vine videos, GIFs and clips created through its video sharing tool will play automatically by default as of today. There’s an option to revert to earlier settings, but you’ll probably have to put that to the test. The move to autoplay follows in Facebook’s footsteps.
The city of Antwerp, Belgium, has joined Washington, DC and Chongqing in China in creating “text walking lanes” to help mitigate risks for smartphone addicts who text as they walk mindlessly, sometimes colliding with other pedestrians or running into trees or electric poles and even getting run over by cars..
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
A file picture shows a couple of children using Qread in Denmark. (Appi Dappi)
Reading apps might be helpful to kids and adults who struggle with reading. But the technology that could help dyslexics overcome reading and comprehension challenges and decode the words they read has yet to be developed.
Appi Dabbi‘s Qread, which stands for quick read, is an Android and iOS mobile app that helps people with dyslexia, who often have memory and organizational problems, make sense of what they read.
The app is also designed to help those looking to learn a new language.
Developer and CEO of Appi Dabbi, Precila Birungik, described the app as “a learning journey you as a parent step into with your child.”
The app has different levels that let parents keep track of their kids’ progress. Birungik said in an email interview that children who had difficulty reading showed improvement after being tested for the app.
According to Appi Dabbi, Qread is based on the direct method of reading, which lets children use both halves of their brain to learn that words are a visual representation of things they already recognize. Words, pictures and animation are employed to help children quickly learn the words.
But education professor Julian Elliott of Britain’s Durham University, co-writer of The Dyslexia Debate, argued that there is no specific program that “could actually make kids overcome their reading problems” and no scientific evidence to vouch for brain-based approaches.
“In the book, he said, “we make it quite clear that there is no intervention that we could find which is in a sense brain-based, which leads to improved performance with large samples of kids … It’s yet to be found.”
He said the existing scientific evidence of intervention relates to traditional, structured educational approaches to reading.
“At the current state of knowledge, we do not have sufficient evidence to be able to say with any confidence that we know of technology that will help children become better readers,” he said. “That may happen, but we’re waiting for the evidence to come through.”
Reading apps might be helpful, but they do not solve the problem. “You use technology to help people overcome,” said Elliott. “But putting someone in the wheelchair isn’t going to make them any better physically.”
What is needed, he added, is technological augmentation – the kind a blind woman he knows uses.
“She has an Apple iPhone,” he said. “And she photographs … a menu in a restaurant and then what the phone will do is it will play into her ear what it says.”
He said technology can try to help the “small proportion of people whom we don’t know what to do to make them better, how to help them. And these people need technology not to become better readers, but because the technology will do the reading for them.”
Dyslexia, he explained, concerns the ability to transfer written text into speech.
“Although this will obviously affect how much of the text can be understood, it is not directly concerned with primary difficulties of reading comprehension,” he said. “Often the very significant differences between these two very different problems – decoding and comprehension – can be misunderstood”
Elliott said technology can help dyslexic individuals both to become better at the reading process and to decode the words they read.
But not all people who struggle with reading are dyslectic. And some of them are able to read better than others.
And Appi Dabbi is committed to unlocking the awareness of children around the world. It hopes to empower children and educators to do that by introducing different games intended to teach reading, stimulate language or help adults looking to learn a new language.
Qread is currently available in the U.S., U.K., Denmark and Germany, but the company is looking to expand to other countries, including China.
Editor’s Note: This post has been updated with a clarification from Julian Elliott about how dyslexia affects the ability to transfer written text into speech.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Virtual Reality (VR) is great for gaming, but Jennifer Patterson, a University of Pittsburgh engineering student, used the Oculus prototype software to help treat soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And she hopes her effort might show doctors and therapists the benefits of technology for their own patients.
The hacking of the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) went undetected for nearly a year. Some of the compromised data includes forms for federal security clearances that typically have very detailed personal information. Authorities said they suspect the attack may have originated in China.
A security researcher discovered a proof-of-concept flaw within Apple’s iOS mail client that allows hackers to replace the contents of an email with remote HTML tags and content. When the email is sent, a form pops up that looks like the iCloud credentials prompt box. Victims who open the email or fill the credentials information are at risk of handing over their passwords to the hackers.
Kaspersky Lab ZAO said an updated version of Duqu, an espionage malware linked to Israel, targeted the hotels that hosted negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and was used to monitor closed-door talks. The researchers said the malware might have also allowed the eavesdroppers to steal some electronic files.
Indian government officials said Foxconn is in talks to manufacture Apple iPhones in the country. The move could lower smartphone prices and help Foxconn offset China’s wage inflation.
Google+ seems to work for some folks, but it has never gotten the mainstream traction it needed to thrive. Nevertheless, depending on your perspective, Google + could be a success as a niche social network for its fans, rather than a rival to Facebook.
On July 7, Microsoft will update users of Skype’s modern Windows app to the desktop application. Microsoft is working to push apps optimized for mouse, keyboard and touch ahead of the July 29 launch of its latest operating system, Windows 10.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
The European Union’s justice agency says it has arrested dozens of suspects in an international identity theft sting that involved millions of euros stolen; suspects allegedly stole victims’ usernames, passwords to steal money from bank accounts.
A report reveals evidence that fake cell towers are being used in London, with the ability to eavesdrop on calls and collect additional communications data. IMSI catchers, they are called, fool phones into connecting with them, and are apparently used by the police and governments to monitor crime.
Students figured out how they could make their revolutionary cane the most helpful for the visually impaired. The new “smart” cane, dubbed XploR, leverages smartphone technology to help the user detect and recognize familiar faces more than 30 feet away. It also has GPS to help the user navigate.
The engines of a Soyuz spacecraft which is docked at the International Space Station experienced a glitch when the engine unexpectedly started during testing of the system, which has caused its position in orbit to shift. The crew was not in danger.
Facebook’s chat application now has its first official game called Doodle Draw. The Draw Something-like game is easy: just pick a word, attempt to draw something that resembles that word and send it to a friend to have them guess what it is.
Apple announced it will offer new metrics for its expansive health-data monitoring system, Healthkit – a tracker designed to nudge users towards healthy behaviors. From a happy mood and focused mind, to hydration and ultra-violet light exposure.
In a case of the watchers watching the watchers who are watching them, researchers at Kaspersky Lab in Russia have discovered another new nation-state attack attributed to members of the infamous Stuxnet and Duqu gang. But this time the perpetrators were hiding inside the security firm’s own networks.
Instead of cable for TV programming, hotel chains like Marriott are boosting access to Netflix. Marriott rolls out their plan to provide their guests the ability to tap into their Netflix accounts directly from the televisions in their rooms. Nearly all of its 300 U.S. hotels should be on board by the end of 2016.
A South Korean team won this weekend’s DARPA Robotics Challenge to design robots for disaster aid, taking home two million dollars. The winning DRC-HUBO robot completed all tasks in 45 minutes and was able to transform into a wheeled position to move faster. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s competition was held in California.
More often than not, tech giants have their keynote addresses delivered by men at their various development conferences and other events – a reflection of a severe shortfall of women in the tech industry. Now, some of the leading companies are trying to change that picture and increase the number of minorities and women in their ranks.
EyeWitness to Atrocities is a new Android app that helps users document and report war crimes, including human rights abuses, genocide and torture. The app is the fruit of a partnership between the International Bar Association, which includes in its membership legal practitioners and law associations, and data hosting tech firm, LexisNexis Legal & Professional.
A new music streaming service and a new Mac OS X are just a couple of the announcements that came out of Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference. There’s more, including a move away from the iPhone home screen as a central activity hub.
Moving away from the iPhone’s home screen, typically the center of users’ activities, will let users move around to do various tasks using more direct alternatives Apple has provided over time.
New findings from Intel Corp’s McAfee Labs Threats Report show that ransomware spiked 165 percent in the first quarter of 2015, while attacks on streaming media and gaming sites that use Adobe Flash software quadrupled.
If you set up your home with all the tech bells and whistles to control all your favorite activities remotely, you might want to consider ways to protect your wireless paradise as well. Writer Robert Lemos has a few tips to help you secure your home.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
A man talks on his mobile phone as he drives an electric bike in Shanghai, China, Oct. 22, 2012. (Reuters)
Cell phones and mobile devices that use electromagnetic radio frequencies continue to invade nearly every aspect of modern life despite concerns that they might prove harmful. But extensive research into the health effects of these devices has only produced inconclusive evidence.
“The evidence is not certain that these devices are dangerous,” said Jonathan Samet, M.D., Director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Southern Californian’s Keck School of Medicine.
The wireless industry agreed with this assessment. While declining an interview with TECHtonics, a spokesperson for CTIA -The Wireless Association said in an emailed statement that “CTIA and the wireless industry defer to the scientific community when it comes to cell phones and health effects:”
… The scientific evidence shows no known health risk due to the RF energy emitted by cell phones. As the FDA states on its website, ‘[t]he weight of scientific evidence has not linked cell phones with any health problems.
The statement said that despite the extensive research that has been done in this area, CTIA supports ongoing studies:
If any person or organization has any information that is not currently available to the wide array of public health organizations and agencies with well-documented conclusions in this area, we encourage they make that information available to those groups for their expert review.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) website defers to the International Agency for Research on Cancer on this issue:
The electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones are classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
The U.N. agency said it will conduct a formal risk assessment of all studied health outcomes from radio-frequency fields exposure by 2016.
Some consumer and health advocates argue that cell phones could cause tissue heating or contribute to brain cancer if they are held near the head for extended periods of time.
Samet said some studies suggest there is evidence that exposure contributes to increased brain cancer risk, while others have turned out negative.
Representing the scientists in a related video, Dr. Martin Blank of Columbia University Medical Center said electromagnetic radiation is damaging living cells and killing people immaturely.
“People who are concerned about the health risks of electromagnetic radiation will say that there are short-term effects as well as longer-term disease risk,” said Samet. “So they’ll talk about effects on, for example, sleep or possible heart rhythm or other problems … But the scientific evidence is mostly focused on long-term and potential cancer risk.”
Cell phones produce low-level non-ionizing radiation. Non-ionizing radiation can range from low frequencies all the way to the ultraviolet end of the spectrum.
“When we use a microwave,” Samet said, “that’s a form of non-ionizing radiation that has enough energy to heat things. So with cellphones, there’s a possibility that there could be some heating, although most people who understand the physics of this type of radiation say there is not enough energy to really heat tissues that much.”
Unlike higher-frequency ionizing radiation, Samet said “we don’t think it directly damages DNA. And it is the direct damage to DNA by ionizing radiation that leads to cancer.”
Ultraviolet Ionizing radiation can generate enough energy to break chemical bonds, cause cancer and have other effects.
“Exposure to these types of radiation is roughly inescapable in our society,” said Samet. With so many wireless devices, cellphone towers and other systems coming into the daily lives of so many people, he said any potential exposure would be important, given the billions of phone users all over the world who use these devices throughout their lives.
“It’s important to make sure that we understand [if] there are any risks and then we track the exposures,” he said. “And this is one of the world’s largest industries; and hopefully we’ll find a way to make sure that these devices, which are incredibly useful for many purposes, don’t cause any harm.”
He said there is also room to find out how much electromagnetic energy these devices emit and how much exposure their users are getting. “That’s a picture not too well worked out,” he said.
Brain cancer registries can aid in tracking and understanding any actual increase in brain cancer, said Samet, although it would be too late to do anything about it then save to try and reduce exposure and hope for a decline similar to what happened with cigarette smoking.
“On the good side, the power output of the phone is less than it used to be,” he said. “And I think our use patterns have changed. So … this will always be a sort of changing landscape and it’s one that we should be keeping up with.”
Ongoing studies are trying to determine the long-term effects of this type of exposure. But some people are not taking chances. The city council of Berkley, California, recently passed a law that requires retailers to tell consumers how far their cell phone should be held away from their body.
If you are concerned about the level of exposure you might be getting, you should ask your wireless provider for details. Use hands-free devices to keep the cell phone at a distance and limit the time it is placed on the ear.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
