Some new, tiny pacemakers are making headway around the world. One type is keeping 15,000 people’s hearts beating in 40 countries, according to the manufacturer. Studies show these small pacemakers are safe. And, as VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, doctors expect the technology will help more heart patients over time.
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Four automakers in Japan, including Mitsubishi and Isuzu, have road-tested a form of driverless technology. The big rigs are all equipped with a type of adaptive cruise-control system as a step toward removing the one feature you’d expect to see in the cab: a driver. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Delivery robots could one day be part of the landscape of cities around the world. Among the latest to be developed is an Italian-made model that drives itself around town to drop off packages. Since the machine runs on electricity, its developers say it is an environmentally friendly alternative to fuel powered delivery vehicles that cause pollution. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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A new exhibit showcases gadgets and inventions by designers striving to make disabled people’s lives easier — in style. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Facebook is forging ahead with its messaging app for kids, despite child experts who have pressed the company to shut it down and others who question Facebook’s financial support of some advisers who approved of the app.

Messenger Kids lets kids under 13 chat with friends and family. It displays no ads and lets parents approve who their children message. But critics say it serves to lure kids into harmful social media use and to hook young people on Facebook as it tries to compete with Snapchat or its own Instagram app. They say kids shouldn’t be on such apps at all — although they often are.

“It is disturbing that Facebook, in the face of widespread concern, is aggressively marketing Messenger Kids to even more children,” the Campaign For a Commercial-Free Childhood said in a statement this week.

Lukeward reception

Messenger Kids launched on iOS to lukewarm reception in December. It arrived on Amazon devices in January and on Android Wednesday. Throughout, Facebook has touted a team of advisers, academics and families who helped shape the app in the year before it launched.

But a Wired report this week pointed out that more than half of this safety advisory board had financial ties to the company. Facebook confirmed this and said it hasn’t hidden donations to these individuals and groups — although it hasn’t publicized them, either.

Facebook’s donations to groups like the National PTA (the official name for the Parent Teacher Association) typically covered logistics costs or sponsored activities like anti-bullying programs or events such as parent roundtables. One advisory group, the Family Online Safety Institute, has a Facebook executive on its board, along with execs from Disney, Comcast and Google.

“We sometimes provide funding to cover programmatic or logistics expenses, to make sure our work together can have the most impact,” Facebook said in a statement, adding that many of the organizations and people who advised on Messenger Kids do not receive financial support of any kind.

Common Sense a late addition

But for a company under pressure from many sides — Congress, regulators, advocates for online privacy and mental health — even the appearance of impropriety can hurt. Facebook didn’t invite prominent critics, such as the nonprofit Common Sense Media, to advise it on Messenger Kids until the process was nearly over. Facebook would not comment publicly on why it didn’t include Common Sense earlier in the process. 

“Because they know we opposed their position,” said James Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense. The group’s stance is that Facebook never should have released a product aimed at kids. “They know very well our positon with Messenger Kids.”

A few weeks after Messenger Kids launched, nearly 100 outside experts banded together to urge Facebook to shut down the app , which it has not done. The company says it is “committed to building better products for families, including Messenger Kids. That means listening to parents and experts, including our critics.”

Wired article unfair?

One of Facebook’s experts contested the notion that company advisers were in Facebook’s pocket. Lewis Bernstein, now a paid Facebook consultant who worked for Sesame Workshop (the nonprofit behind “Sesame Street”) in various capacities over three decades, said the Wired article “unfairly” accused him and his colleagues for accepting travel expenses to Facebook seminars. 

But the Wired story did not count Lewis as one of the seven out of 13 advisers who took funding for Messenger Kids, and the magazine did not include travel funding when it counted financial ties. Bernstein was not a Facebook consultant at the time he was advising it on Messenger Kids.

Bernstein, who doesn’t see technology as “inherently dangerous,” suggested that Facebook critics like Common Sense are also tainted by accepting $50 million in donated air time for a campaign warning about the dangers of technology addiction. Among those air-time donors are Comcast and AT&T’s DirecTV.

But Common Sense spokeswoman Corbie Kiernan called that figure a “misrepresentation” that got picked up by news outlets. She said Common Sense has public service announcement commitments “from partners such as Comcast and DirectTV” that has been valued at $50 million. The group has used that time in other campaigns in addition to its current “Truth About Tech” effort, which it’s launching with a group of ex-Google and Facebook employees and their newly formed Center for Humane Technology.
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In multiple online comments and posts, Nikolas Cruz, 19, the suspect in the Valentine’s Day high school shooting in Florida, apparently signaled his intent to hurt other people.

I want to “shoot people with my AR-15,” a person using the name Nikolas Cruz wrote in one place. “I wanna die Fighting killing…ton of people.”

As investigators try to piece together what led to the school shooting that left 17 people dead and many others wounded, they are closely examining the suspect’s social media activity, as well as other information about him.

The focus on Cruz’s digital footprint highlights a question that law enforcement, social scientists and society at large have been grappling with: If anyone had been paying attention to his postings, could these deaths have been prevented?

The FBI was contacted about a social media post in which the alleged gunman says he wants to be a “professional school shooter.”

However, though the commenter’s username was “Nikolas Cruz” — the same name as the shooting suspect — the FBI couldn’t identify the poster, according to the Associated Press.

But what if an algorithm could have sifted through all of Cruz’s posts and comments to bring him to the attention of authorities?

Data mining

In an era where data can be dissected and analyzed to predict where cold medicine will most likely be needed next week or which shoes will be most popular on Amazon tomorrow, some people wonder why there isn’t more use of artificial intelligence to sift through social media in an effort to prevent crime.

“We need all the tools we can get to prevent tragedies like this,” said Sean Young, executive director of the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology.

“The science exists on how to use social media to find and help people in psychological need,” he said. “I believe the benefits outweigh the risks, so I think it’s really important to use social media as a prevention tool.”

Despite the 2002 movie Minority Report, about police apprehending murderers before they act based on knowledge provided by psychics known as “precogs,” the idea of police successfully analyzing data to find a person preparing to harm others is still a far-off scenario, according to experts.

Predictive policing

Increasingly, police departments are turning to “predictive policing,” which involves taking large data sets and using algorithms to forecast potential crimes and then deploying police to the region. One potential treasure trove of data is social media, which is often public and can indicate what people are discussing in real time and by location.

Predictive policing, however, comes with ethical questions over whether data sets and algorithms have built-in biases, particularly toward minorities.

A study in Los Angeles aims to see if social media postings can help police figure out where to put resources to stop hate crimes. 

“With enough funds and unfettered data access and linkage, I can see how a system could be built where machine learning could identify patterns in text [threats, emotional states] and images [weapons] that would indicate an increased risk,” said Matthew Williams, director of the social data science lab and data innovation research institute at Cardiff University in Wales. He is one of the Los Angeles study researchers.

“But the ethics would preclude such a system, unless those being observed consented, but then the system could be subverted.”

Arjun Sethi, a Georgetown law professor, says it is impossible to divorce predictive policing from entrenched prejudice in the criminal justice system. “We found big data is used in racially discriminating ways,” he said.

Using Facebook posts

Still, the potential exists that, with the right program, it may be possible to separate someone signaling for help from all the noise on social media.

A new program at Facebook seeks to harness the field of machine learning to get help to people contemplating suicide. Among millions of posts each day, Facebook can find posts of those who may be suicidal or at risk of self-harm — even if no one in the person’s Facebook social circle reported the person’s posts to the company. In machine learning, computers and algorithms collect information without being programmed to do so.

The Facebook system relies on text, but Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has said that the firm may add photos and videos that come to the attention of the Facebook team to review.

Being able to figure out if someone is going to harm himself, herself or others is difficult and raises ethical dilemmas but, says Young of UCLA, a person’s troubling social media posts can be red flags that should be checked out.
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Belgian media say a Brussels court has ordered Facebook to stop collecting data about citizens in the country or face fines for every day it fails to comply.

The daily De Standaard reported Friday that the court upheld a Belgian privacy commission finding that Facebook is collecting data without users’ consent.

It said the court concluded that Facebook does not adequately inform users that it is collecting information, what kind of details it keeps and for how long, or what it does with the data.

It has ruled that Facebook must stop tracking and registering internet usage by Belgians online and destroy any data it has obtained illegally or face fines of 250,000 euros ($311,500) every day it delays.
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Most analysts and economists agree, robots are slowly replacing humans in many jobs. They weld and paint car bodies, sort merchandise in warehouses, explore underground pipes and inspect suspicious packages. Yet we still do not see robots as domestic help, except for robotic vacuum cleaners. Robotics experts say there is another barrier that robots need to cross in order to work alongside humans. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The White House on Thursday blamed Russia for the devastating “NotPetya” cyber attack last year, joining the British government in condemning

Moscow for unleashing a virus that crippled parts of Ukraine’s infrastructure and damaged computers in countries across the globe.

The attack in June of 2017 “spread worldwide, causing billions of dollars in damage across Europe, Asia and the Americas,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“It was part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine and demonstrates ever more clearly Russia’s involvement in the ongoing conflict,” Sanders added. “This was also a reckless and indiscriminate cyber attack that will be met with international consequences.”

The U.S. government is “reviewing a range of options,” a senior White House official said when asked about the consequences for Russia’s actions.

Earlier on Thursday, Russia denied an accusation by the British government that it was behind the attack, saying it was part of a “Russophobic” campaign that it said was being waged by some Western countries.

The so-called NotPetya attack in June started in Ukraine where it crippled government and business computers before spreading around Europe and the world, halting operations atports, factories and offices.

Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement released earlier in the day that the attack originated from the Russian military.

“The decision to publicly attribute this incident underlines the fact that the UK and its allies will not tolerate malicious cyber activity,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The attack masqueraded as a criminal enterprise but its purpose was principally to disrupt,” it said.

“Primary targets were Ukrainian financial, energy and government sectors. Its indiscriminate design caused it to spread further, affecting other European and Russian business.”
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The European Commission says social media giants Facebook and Twitter have only partially responded to its demands to bring their practices into line with EU consumer law.

The Commission asked the two companies a year ago to change their terms of service following complaints from people targeted by fraud or scams on social media websites.

The EU’s executive arm said Thursday that the firms only partly addressed “issues about their liability and about how users are informed of possible content removal or contract termination.”

It said changes proposed by Google+ appear to be in line with demands.

Europe’s consumer affairs commissioner, Vera Jourova, said “it is unacceptable that this is still not complete and it is taking so much time.” She called for those flouting consumer rules to face sanctions.

 
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Until recently, Javier, a 60-year-old line cook, couldn’t afford a smartphone.

Now, thanks to a Silicon Valley company, Javier has a Galaxy S8, one of Samsung’s high-end smartphones. Javier said he relies on it for everything.

Once a month, he walks into a mobile phone store near San Francisco and makes a cash payment. If he didn’t, the phone would be remotely locked. No YouTube, no Skype calls, no Facebook. He has never missed a payment.

WATCH: Pay-As-You-Go Smartphone Gives the Poor Access to Better Technology

Smartphones out of many people’s reach

Around the world, people rely more and more on their smartphones for connecting to the internet, and yet for many, the device is still cost prohibitive. For the roughly 1 in 10 American consumers without financial identities — no banking history or credit scores — it is difficult to get smartphones on one of the low-cost payment plans offered by the major carriers.

Javier, who declined to give his last name because he is an undocumented immigrant, is on his third phone from PayJoy, a company founded by former Google employees. PayJoy offers a pay-as-you-go model for the smartphone market aimed particularly at customers with little or bad credit histories.

“We work with immigrants from all over the world coming to the U.S., and we work with Americans who are just outside the financial system,” said Doug Ricket, PayJoy’s chief executive, who worked in the pay-as-you-go solar industry in Africa. “They can afford $10 a week, and they can get a great smartphone. And for PayJoy, we say, ‘Welcome to the 21st century and get all the modern apps.’”

A new way to figure out a person’s credit risk

PayJoy figures out a person’s risk differently than most companies. A customer provides a Facebook profile, a phone number and some sort of official government ID. PayJoy decides the person’s risk level before offering him or her credit for a phone. Then, a customer picks a payment plan and makes a down payment. PayJoy’s research has found that a Facebook profile can be useful in establishing a person’s identity.

“We’re starting from this pool of people who have no traditional credit score and we’re saying for most of them, we can actually find something that the credit agencies are not finding,” Ricket said.

No payment means no YouTube

If a customer doesn’t pay by 5 p.m. the day payment is due, PayJoy remotely locks the phone. A customer can only make emergency calls or call PayJoy’s customer service. The customer can see that friends are texting or messaging on Facebook, but cannot open the phone to read the messages.

“Now, when we look internationally, we see more people going from a flip phone to smartphones, and people upgrading from a really basic level to one that can handle Facebook, maps and Instagram,” Ricket said.

If customers stop paying, they can return the phone without penalty. But if they do pay off the phone, they can qualify for an even better one. PayJoy makes its money by charging monthly interest — as high as 50 percent in some cases — on the retail price of the phone.

Expanding into Africa, Asia and India

The company is operating in the United States and Mexico and has plans to expand into Kenya, Tanzania, southeast Asia and India. So far, PayJoy offers only smartphones running Android, the operating system created by Google, but Ricket hopes to offer iPhones one day.

PayJoy’s vision is to be not just a smartphone firm, but a financing company, offering customers a way to use their phones as collateral to pay off televisions and other household goods.

“Once the customer gets the smartphone, they can potentially use that smartphone either by buying the smartphone with PayJoy or just collateralize an existing smartphone to finance a TV or a sofa,” Ricket said.

If PayJoy takes off, people in emerging markets may be able to upgrade their phone choices, and have a new way to finance their purchases.
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In the U.S. and around the world, many poor people don’t have access to smartphones. But a Silicon Valley company is offering phones to customers in the U.S. and Mexico who pay in installments. If they don’t pay, the phone is turned off remotely. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
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