Twitter on Tuesday hired Ned Segal, senior vice president of finance at Intuit and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs Group, as its chief financial officer beginning in late August.

Anthony Noto, who has been serving as Twitter’s CFO and chief operating officer since November, will remain at the company as COO, Twitter said in a statement.

The appointment of Segal, 43, comes as investors are demonstrating renewed optimism in Twitter, which still lags rival social network Facebook in terms of size and profitability.

Twitter shares rose 3 percent on Tuesday, before the announcement of Segal’s hiring after the market’s close. The stock is up 32 percent since April 17, when it hit the low of the year at $14.12.

In April, Twitter reported better-than-expected user growth in the first quarter of the year, partly related to heightened user interest in political news and comment.

Before joining Intuit, Segal was the CFO of RPX Corp , which helps companies manage patent risk, and earlier spent some 17 years at Goldman, according to a biography provided by Twitter.

From 2009 to 2013, Segal was a Goldman managing director and head of its global software investment banking unit, advising tech companies on mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings, Twitter said.

Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Segal was an ideal fit because of the range of his experience.

“He brings a principled, engaging and rigorous approach to the CFO role, with a track record of driving profitable growth,” Dorsey said in a statement.

Segal said in a statement he was committed to helping Twitter “continue toward its goal of GAAP profitability.”

Segal is entitled to receive a signing bonus of $300,000 and his annual salary will be $500,000, Twitter said in a securities filing. He will also be eligible to receive 1.2 million shares in the company, subject to conditions and vesting, according to the filing.

Twitter is scheduled to report earnings for the second quarter on July 27.
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Small satellites used for observing conditions on the earth are the fastest growing segment of the $260.5 billion global satellite industry, the Satellite Industries Association said in an annual report released on Tuesday.

Small satellites, some no bigger than a shoe box, generated an 11 percent jump in annual revenue for Earth imagery in 2016 and a growing share of the 1,459 operating spacecraft that circled the planet at the end of the year, the report said.

The orbital fleet includes 499 satellites that weigh up to 1,323 pounds (600 kg), many of them used for Earth observation and remote sensing, said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of Bryce Technology and Space, which wrote the report for the trade association.

Small satellite launchers

Satellite services, including home television, broadband and Earth observation services, collectively generated $127.7 billion of revenue in 2016, the biggest single piece of the industry, according to the report.

Satellites used for earth imagery accounted for just $2 billion of the total industry but accounted for 11 percent of the sector’s growth, according to the report.

“That’s expected to continue to grow, given the new companies coming into the industry,” association President Tom Stroup said in an interview.

The report found at least 33 dedicated small satellite launchers in development worldwide, including privately owned Rocket Lab, which debuted its Electron booster in May, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, which is expected to fly its LauncherOne rocket this year.

Revenue from Earth observation services would have been higher, but the launches of many small satellites were delayed after a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch pad accident in September 2016, the report said.

SpaceX, owned and operated by entrepreneur Elon Musk, returned its Falcon fleet to flight in January and has launched 10 times so far this year.

126 satellites launch in 2016

In all, 126 satellites were launched last year, including 55 shoe-box-sized spacecraft known as CubeSats. About twice as many CubeSats were launched in 2015, the report said.

The number of small satellite launched during the first half of 2017 already has surpassed last year’s flight rate, Christensen said.

In February, a single Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket put 103 small satellites into orbit, along with a larger Earth-imaging spacecraft called Cartosat.

 
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Microsoft wants to extend broadband services to rural America by using the buffer zones separating individual television channels in the airwaves.

Microsoft plans to partner with rural telecommunications providers in 12 states, from the Dakotas and Arizona to a far eastern edge of Maine. The strategy calls for a combination of private and public investments and regulatory cooperation from the Federal Communications Commission to get about 2 million rural Americans connected to high-speed internet in the next five years.

Microsoft’s initiative, unveiled Tuesday , comes as policy makers struggle to extend high-speed internet services to rural areas, which cable and phone companies have often shunned as cost prohibitive.

The National Association of Broadcasters dismissed the initiative as the “height of arrogance” for Microsoft to “demand free, unlicensed spectrum after refusing to bid on TV airwaves” in a recent FCC auction.

“Policymakers should not be misled by slick Microsoft promises that threaten millions of viewers with loss of lifeline broadcast TV programming,” spokesman Dennis Wharton said in a statement.

Although the buffer zones, known as white spaces, are currently unused, Wharton said they are important for preventing adjacent channels from interfering with each other.

Microsoft is already piloting its idea in a sparsely populated region of southern Virginia, where it’s providing $250,000 to the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corp. The South Boston, Virginia-based telecommunications provider will contribute another $250,000 and use a $500,000 grant from Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission.

Mid-Atlantic Broadband’s chief executive, Ted Deriso, said Tuesday that he reached out to Microsoft several years ago after seeing the Redmond, Washington, company deploy the technology in other parts of the world.

“We said, `Wow, the problems they’re trying to solve in rural parts of Africa are the same we have in rural Virginia, on the technology side,”‘ Deriso said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is planning to visit his southern Virginia office on Tuesday to talk about the project, Deriso said.

“When you think of rural, you have a lot of trees, hills,” Deriso said. “You need a type of technology that can go longer distances and has better penetration. You’ve trying to reach more customers without using a ton of equipment.”
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Forty-one percent of Americans say they’ve experienced online harassment, a new survey says.

According to the Pew Research Center, that number is up from 2014, the last time they did the survey, when 35 percent of Americans said they’d been harassed online.

Nearly two-thirds reported seeing online harassment happen to someone else, the survey found. That was down from 73 percent in 2014.

The most common type of abuse was “offensive name-calling,” according to Pew. Other forms of harassment include “purposeful embarrassment,” “stalking,” “physical threats” and sexual harassment.

“Some 22 percent of Americans – or roughly half of those who have experienced harassment at all – have encountered online harassment that went no further than [name-calling and embarrassment],” the report stated.

Men were more likely to be targeted than women, with 44 percent saying they’d been harassed compared to 37 percent of women. Women were more likely to be sexually harassed online, with 53 percent reporting they’d received unsolicited, sexually explicit photos.

Much of the harassment, the survey found, was based on political views, race, ethnicity or gender.

“I got into a political debate and the person did not agree with me,” said one survey respondent. “They threatened to find information about me and make it go viral. After I called them a troll they threatened to physically harm me.”

Another had a similar experience.

“I made a comment regarding the recent presidential election and was called many names and stereotypes regarding my race,” the respondent said.

Social media was the most common forum for adults to experience online harassment, the survey found, with 58 percent of victims reporting the harassment had happened on social media. More than half reported that the harassment came from a stranger.

While social media sites have tried to reduce levels of harassment, the survey found that 79 percent of respondents think social media sites should do more.

The survey also found “emergent” forms of online harassment such as “doxxing,” which means to post someone’s personal information without their permission; “trolling,” or trying to provoke someone; hacking, or accessing someone’s accounts; and even “swatting,” meaning to call the police, reporting a fake emergency at the house of the person targeted.

“While many Americans are not aware of these behaviors, they have all been used to escalate abuse online,” according to the report.
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Every now and then, it pays to revisit abandoned methods for using a waste product of an industrial process. Researchers in Scotland found a profitable way to use byproducts of whiskey production to power cars, without any modifications to the engines. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Investigators said Monday that targets of high-tech spying in Mexico included an international group of experts backed by the Organization of American States who had criticized the government’s probe into the disappearance of 43 students.

Previous investigations by the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab found that the spyware had been directed at journalists, activists and opposition politicians in Mexico. But targeting foreign experts operating under the aegis of an international body marks an escalation of the scandal, which so far involves 19 individuals or groups.

“This must be investigated to find out who sent these messages, because they could put at risk a lot of contacts and sources,” said former Colombian prosecutor Angela Buitrago, a member of the group of experts.

Buitrago said she and another expert, Carlos Beristain, received the messages.

“I didn’t open it because I am used to spying,” Buitrago said. “When you work in a prosecutors’ office, a government office, there are strange messages and you pass them on to the analysts.”

Beristain said the spying attempt “may be a more serious crime given the diplomatic protected status that we had in order to carry out our work.”

A report released by the University of Toronto-based cyber-sleuths found that someone sent emails with links to the spyware to the International Group of Independent Experts, named by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The experts had been critical of the government’s investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state — a politically sensitive incident that deeply embarrassed the government.

Jose Eguiguren Praeli, the president of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, called the revelations “extremely worrying.”

“There should be an investigation that is completely independent and impartial, to find out who carried out the supposed espionage and who ordered it,” he said.

Cellphone becomes eavesdropper

While the Mexican government bought such software, it’s not clear who used it. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last week dismissed allegations that his government was responsible and promised an investigation. Arely Gomez, who was attorney general at the time some of the hacking attempts occurred but now heads the country’s anti-corruption agency, said Thursday that her office had intelligence tools “like any other attorney general’s office in Mexico and anywhere else in the world.”

“During my term, they were always applied in accordance with the legal framework,” Gomez said.

The spyware, known as Pegasus, is made by the Israel-based NSO Group, which says it sells only to government agencies for use against criminals and terrorists. It turns a cellphone into an eavesdropper, giving snoopers the ability to remotely activate its microphone and camera and access its data.

The spyware is uploaded when users click on a link in email messages designed to pique their interest.

Citizen Lab said the spyware attempts against the international experts occurred in March 2016 as the group was preparing its final, critical report on the government investigation into the disappearances.

“In March 2016 a phone belonging to the GIEI group received two messages designed to trick the recipient into clicking. The two messages related to the purported death of a relative,” the group reported.

It was unclear if the link was opened or the phones were compromised.

The 43 students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state were detained by local police in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, and were turned over to a crime gang. After an initial investigation, the government said it had determined the “historical truth:” that all of the students were killed and that their bodies were incinerated at a dump and then tossed into a river.

But only one student’s remains have been identified, with a partial DNA match on another. The experts criticized the government’s conclusions, saying there was no evidence of a fire large enough to incinerate the bodies and that government investigators had not looked into other evidence.

‘Seemingly political ends’

Citizen Lab said it found similarities in the messages on the sender’s phone number with a previous spyware attack. In a June 19 report, the group said at least 76 spyware text messages were sent to 12 prominent journalists and rights activists in Mexico, all of whom were investigating or critical of the government. Some had uncovered corruption.

The conservative National Action Party was also a target.

The investigators said they had no conclusive proof of government involvement in the attacks, but John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab said National Action case “makes it crystal clear that NSO has been used widely and recklessly across a swath of Mexican civil society and politics. Once again we see ‘government-exclusive’ spyware being used for seemingly political ends.”

“As cases continue to emerge, it is clear that this is not an isolated case of misuse, but a sustained operation that lasted for more than a year and a half,” Scott-Railton said.

The Centro Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez, a human rights group that has investigated a number of high-profile human rights cases, has said its staff members were targeted. Other targets included well-known journalists Carmen Aristegui and Carlos Loret de Mola.

In February, Citizen Lab and its Mexican partners published a report detailing how Mexican food scientists and anti-obesity campaigners who backed Mexico’s soda tax were also targeted with Pegasus.
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A common assumption is that writing computer code is a highly technical skill for people who are good at math and logic, but software engineers say another quality is just as important: creativity.

A group of software developers in Palo Alto, California, has created a game called Osmo Coding Jam to unlock the creative side of children as they learn to code.

Nine-year-old Dylan Dodge and his 11-year-old sister, Meghan, look as though they are playing a game on a digital tablet, but they’re actually making music by creating simple computer code as they manipulate physical tiles with symbols. The tablet reads the tile symbols as commands it can execute.

“It’s an analytical skill that the kids are going to need to have as they grow up in this new era,” said Tanya Dodge, Dylan and Meghan’s mother.

But the developers of Osmo Coding Jam said writing code should be more than just an analytical skill.

“We want to explore the creative side of coding that I think is often not as explored,” said Osmo engineer, Felix Hu.

“It (the game) kind of actually looks to LEGO® as a great example of things that kids like to build with, and so in this case instead of building a house or a castle, they’re building lines of code,” said Coding Jam art director and visual artist Eric Uchalik.

And that code produces something artistic — music.

“A big part of the way that technology is changing and becoming more engaging is because, I think, we’re adding that artistic piece to it. That it’s not just code and pressing buttons but the experience of it, and you can’t successfully do that in my opinion without having a connection to that artistic piece,” Tanya Dodge said.

Developers said coding should be seen as a creative tool. Code was used to create Osmo’s Coding Jam, and children use the game’s coding tiles to create music.

“I think the coolest part is that we’re teaching kids how to be creative with code and that’s a really important thing that kids should get comfortable with because coding is creative,” Hu said. He sees a growing trend of parents considering software code as a second language that children need to learn to succeed in future jobs.

“I think in every aspect of at least the careers I see going forward, you’re going to have to understand at some point the concept of coding,” Tanya Dodge said.

Hu explained there is another reason computer code literacy is important.

“I think very often kids grow up not understanding how computers work or just thinking that it’s like some magical device, but by breaking it down to a lower level, kids can understand that devices aren’t as smart as they think they are.”

“We don’t want to create just workers, we want to create creators,” Uchalik added.
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A common assumption is that writing computer code is a highly technical skill for people who are good at math and logic. There is another quality in the tech world that is just as important: creativity.   VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports on a game that teaches children the creative side of coding.
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Hackers who penetrated the business networks of U.S. energy and nuclear companies in recent weeks were working for the Russian government according to a report in a prominent newspaper.

The Washington Post reported late Saturday that anonymous U.S. government officials confirmed the hackers were working for the Russian government.

The officials told The Post the Russians’ motive is not clear because the operations of the affected companies were not disrupted.

One U.S. official, however, said he viewed the cyberattack as “a reconnaissance effort,” to figure out points of entry into the companies. 

“That’s what all cyber bad guys do,” the official said.

The attacks on the business and administrative systems of the companies were confirmed last week when the U.S. Department of Energy said it was helping the firms defend against the intrusions.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI had alerted the energy companies in late June that unidentified hackers were targeting the nuclear, power and critical infrastructure sectors.

The agencies said that at no time was there any risk to public safety.

News of the Russian government hacking into U.S. energy and nuclear companies follows the information that Russia mounted a hacking campaign designed to interfere with the recent U.S. presidential election.
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The shortage of housing in California’s Silicon Valley has gotten so severe that Facebook Inc. on Friday proposed taking homebuilding into its own hands for the first time with a plan to construct 1,500 units near its headquarters.

The growth of Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other tech companies has strained neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay area that were not prepared for an influx of tens of thousands of workers during the past decade. Home prices and commute times have risen.

Tech companies have responded with measures such as internet-equipped buses for employees with long commutes.

Facebook has offered at least $10,000 in incentives to workers who move closer to its offices.

Those steps, though, have not reduced complaints that tech companies are making communities unaffordable, and they have mostly failed to address the area’s housing shortage.

“The problem with Silicon Valley is you don’t have enough supply to keep up with the demand,” said Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at real estate research firm CoreLogic.

With Facebook’s construction plan, the company said it wanted to invest in Menlo Park, the city some 45 miles (72 km) south of San Francisco where it moved in 2011.

The company said it wants to build a “village” that will also have 1.75 million square feet of office space and 125,000 square feet of retail space.

“Part of our vision is to create a neighborhood center that provides long-needed community services,” John Tenanes, Facebook’s vice president for global facilities, said in a statement.

The 1,500 Facebook housing units would be open to anyone, not just employees, and 15 percent of them would be offered at below market rates, the company said.

Facebook said it expects the review process to take two years.

Alphabet has taken a smaller step, buying 300 modular apartment units for short-term employee housing, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

Menlo Park Mayor Kirsten Keith said in an interview that there were concerns about whether the Facebook plan would increase traffic, a subject the city’s planning department would study.

She said, though, that Facebook’s plan fits with the city’s own long-term plan for development, and that the city was excited about the additional housing.

Facebook’s Tenanes said the density of the proposed development could also entice spending on transit projects.

“The region’s failure to continue to invest in our transportation infrastructure alongside growth has led to congestion and delay,” he said.
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The U.S. Department of Energy said on Friday it is helping U.S. firms defend against a hacking campaign that targeted power companies including at least one nuclear plant, saying the attacks have not impacted electricity generation or the grid.

News of the attacks surfaced a week ago when Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a June 28 alert to industrial firms, warning them of hacking targeting the nuclear, power and critical infrastructure sectors.

“DOE is working with our government and industry partners to mitigate any impact from a cyber intrusion affecting entities in the energy sector,” a Department of Energy representative said in an email to Reuters. “At this time, there has been no impact to systems controlling U.S. energy infrastructure. Any potential impact appears to be limited to administrative and business networks.”

It was not clear who was responsible for the hacks. The joint report by the DHS and the FBI did not identify the attackers, though it described the hacks as “an advanced persistent threat,” a term that U.S. officials typically but not always use to describe attacks by culprits.

Dozen U.S. power companies attacked

The DOE discussed its response to the attacks after Bloomberg News reported on Friday that the Wolf Creek nuclear facility in Kansas was among at least a dozen U.S. power firms breached in the attack, citing current and former U.S. officials who were not named.

A representative with the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp. declined to say if the plant was hacked, but said it continued to operate safely.

“There has been absolutely no operational impact to Wolf Creek. The reason that is true is because the operational computer systems are completely separate from the corporate network,” company spokeswoman Jenny Hageman said via email.

A separate Homeland Security technical bulletin issued on June 28 included details of code used in a hacking tool that suggest the hackers sought to use the password of a Wolf Creek employee to access the network.

Hageman declined to say if hackers had gained access to that employee’s account. The employee could not be reached for comment.

Tainted emails

The June 28 alert said that hackers have been observed using tainted emails to harvest credentials to gain access to networks of their targets.

“Historically, cyber actors have strategically targeted the energy sector with various goals ranging from cyber espionage to the ability to disrupt energy systems in the event of a hostile conflict,” the report said.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the nonprofit group Union of Concerned Scientists, said reactors have a certain amount of immunity from cyber attacks because their operation systems are separate from digital business networks. But over time it would not be impossible for hackers to potentially do harm.

“Perhaps the biggest vulnerability nuclear plants face from hackers would be their getting information on plant designs and work schedules with which to conduct a physical attack,” Lochbaum said.

DOE shares information

The DOE said it has shared information about this incident with industry, including technical details on the attack and mitigation suggestions.

“Security professionals from government and industry are working closely to share information so energy system operators can defend their systems,” the agency representative said. Earlier, the FBI and DHS issued a joint statement saying “There is no indication of a threat to public safety” because the impact appears limited to administrative and business networks.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not received any notifications of a cyber event that has affected critical systems at a nuclear plant, said spokesman Scott Burnell.

A nuclear industry spokesman told Reuters last Saturday that hackers have never gained access to a nuclear plant.
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A senior Facebook official met with Pakistan’s interior minister on Friday to discuss a demand the company prevent blasphemous content or be blocked.

The meeting comes after a Pakistani counter-terrorism court sentenced a 30-year-old man to death for making blasphemous comments on Facebook, part of a wider crack-down.

Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy, met Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, who offered to approve a Facebook office in Pakistan, which has 33 million users of the network.

Khan said Pakistan believes in freedom of expression, but that does not include insulting Islam or stoking religious tensions.

“We cannot allow anyone to misuse social media for hurting religious sentiments,” Khan said.

Facebook called the meeting “constructive.”

“Facebook met with Pakistan officials to express the company’s deep commitment to protecting the rights of the people who use its service, and to enabling people to express themselves freely and safely,” the company said in an email.

“It was an important and constructive meeting in which we raised our concerns over the recent court cases and made it clear we apply a strict legal process to any government request for data or content restrictions.”

Pakistan’s social media crack-down is officially aimed at weeding out blasphemy and shutting down accounts promoting terrorism, but civil rights activists say it has also swept up writers and bloggers who criticize the government or military.

One of five prominent writers and activists who disappeared for nearly three weeks this year later told a U.N. human rights event in March that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies had kidnapped him and tortured him in custody.

Others’ families said right-wing and Islamist parties had filed blasphemy accusations against them to punish them for critical writings.

Anything deemed insulting to Islam or the Prophet Muhammad carries a death penalty in Pakistan, and sometimes a mere allegation can lead to mob violence and lynchings. Right groups say the law is frequently abused to settle personal scores.

In April, a Pakistani university student, Mashal Khan, was beaten to death by a mob after being accused of blasphemous content on Facebook. Police arrested 57 people accused in the attack and said they had found no evidence Khan committed blasphemy.
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