Facebook Inc will add a feature to its Messenger app Monday to allow users to share their locations, the company said, ramping up competition with tools offered by Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google Maps.

The company has found that one of the most used phrases on Messenger as people talk to friends and family is “How far away are you?” or some variation, Stan Chudnovsky, head of product for Messenger, said in an interview.

“It happens to be what people are saying, what they’re interested in the most,” he said.

Sharing location information will be optional, he said, but it will also be live, so that once a user shares the information with a friend, the friend will be able to watch the user’s movement for up to 60 minutes.

Messenger was once part of the core Facebook smartphone app, but the company broke it out as a separate app in 2014 and has since invested in frequent changes to build a service distinct from the massive social network.

Google Maps said last week that it was adding a similar feature, an attempt to boost engagement on a product of increasing strategic importance to that company.

The close proximity of the announcements tells Facebook “that we’re working on the right things,” Chudnovsky said.

The Messages app on Apple’s iPhone has such a feature, too.

Facebook has been testing its change in Mexico, he said. It was ready as long ago as October, he added, but the company worked on it for five more months to minimize the impact on the battery life of phones.
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Driverless vehicles operated by Uber Technologies Inc. were back on the road in San Francisco on Monday after one of its self-driving cars crashed in Arizona, the ride-hailing company said.

Uber’s autonomous vehicles in Arizona and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, remained grounded but were expected to be operating again soon, according to a spokeswoman for the company, who refused to be identified.

“We are resuming our development operations in San Francisco this morning,” she said in an email.

Uber’s San Francisco program is currently in development mode. It has two cars registered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, but is not transporting passengers.

The spokeswoman said because of this, the company felt confident in putting the cars back on the road while it investigates the collision in Arizona.

On Friday, Uber suspended its pilot program in the three states. A human-driven vehicle “failed to yield” to an Uber vehicle while making a turn in Tempe, Arizona, said Josie Montenegro, a spokeswoman for the city’s police department.

“The vehicles collided, causing the autonomous vehicle to roll onto its side,” Montenegro said in an email. “There were no serious injuries.”

Two “safety” drivers were in the front seats of the Uber car, which was in self-driving mode at the time of the crash, Uber said on Friday, a standard requirement for its self-driving vehicles. The back seat was unoccupied.

Photos and a video posted on Twitter by Fresco News showed a Volvo SUV flipped on its side after an apparent collision involving two other, slightly damaged cars. Uber said the images appeared to be from the Tempe crash scene.

 
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Islamic State propagandists are seeking to capitalize on last week’s terror attack in London, which left five people dead and 40 injured, by flooding YouTube with hundreds of violent recruitment videos.

The online propaganda offensive comes as Britain demands social media companies scrub their sites of jihadist postings.

Amber Rudd, the country’s interior minister, has vowed to “call time” on internet firms allowing terrorists “a place to hide” and has summoned some of the leading social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, for what is being dubbed by British officials as “showdown talks” later this week.

Rudd says she is determined to stop extremists “using social media as their platform” for recruitment and for operational needs.

Britain’s security services are in a standoff with WhatsApp, which has refused to allow them access to the encrypted message the London attacker sent three minutes before he used an SUV to mow down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and stabbed to death a policeman outside the House of Commons.

British security services are powerless to read that final message, which might cast light on whether the attack was a “lone wolf” or one aided and directed by others. Police investigators believe the terrorist acted alone and have seen no evidence that he was associated with IS or al-Qaida.

WhatsApp, which has a billion users worldwide, employs “end to end encryption” for messages, which the company says prevents even its own technicians from reading people’s messages.

Officials want voluntary action

Rudd and other government ministers have launched a media onslaught, saying they are considering legislation to require online companies to take down extremist material. They argue this wouldn’t be necessary if the companies recognized their community responsibilities.

Rudd told the BBC that Facebook, Google and other companies should understand they are not just technology businesses, but also publishing platforms. “We have to have a situation where we can have our security services get into the terrorists’ communications,” she argued. “There should be no place for terrorists to hide.”

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson joined in the condemnation of social media and online companies. “I think it’s disgusting,” he told The Sunday Times. “They need to stop just making money out of prurient violent material.”

At a security conference last week in the United States, Johnson called for action.

“We are going to have to engage not just militarily, but also to stop the stuff on the internet that is corrupting and polluting so many people,” he said. “This is something that the internet companies and social media companies need to think about. They need to do more to take that stuff off their media — the incitements, the information about how to become a terrorist, the radicalizing sermons and messages. That needs to come down.”

Recruiting criminals

The furor over extremist use of the internet was fueled Monday by front-page articles in the Times and Daily Mail newspapers highlighting the IS propaganda videos posted on YouTube since last Wednesday’s slaughter in the British capital. The high-definition videos, some of which contained references to the London attack, include gory scenes of beheadings and “caliphate violence” carried out by child adherents of the terror group.

U.S. and European officials have long complained online companies are, in effect, aiding and abetting terrorism. A year ago in January, much of the U.S. national security leadership of the Obama administration sat down with Silicon Valley chiefs to discuss jihadist use of the internet to recruit and radicalize people and plot attacks.

Also last year, British spy chief, Robert Hannigan, singled out messaging apps as especially worrisome for the security services, saying they had become “the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals — precisely because they are highly encrypted.”

Some cooperation

After initial resistance to complaints from Western governments, Facebook, Google and Twitter have in recent months been more cooperative with authorities and have removed large amounts of extremist material. Twitter said in the second half of 2016 it suspended 376,890 accounts for violations related to promotion of terrorism.

But some services have resisted providing governments with encryption keys, or so-called back doors.

Apple has developed encryption keys that message users can use that are not possessed by the company. Apple’s chief executive, Timothy Cook, argued last year, “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too.”

Silicon Valley chiefs say they fear violations of privacy and their priority is their customers, not national security, an argument that has resonated since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of electronic surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Last year, WhatsApp was blocked several times in Brazil for failing to hand over information relating to criminal investigations. 

Messages sent on a rival service by Telegram are also encrypted, but after bad publicity and immense pressure from Western governments, the company does provide a backdoor for security and law-enforcement agencies.

Not that access to encrypted communications always helps.

Sunday, it emerged that German police knew the Christmas market attacker in Berlin who drove a truck into a crowd of shoppers was planning a suicide attack. Police had intercepted his Telegram messages nine months before the attack.

A police recommendation that he be deported was declined by state government prosecutors because they feared the courts would reject the request.
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The Qatar Investment Authority, the Gulf Arab state’s acquisitive sovereign wealth fund, is setting up an office in San Francisco to manage its growing portfolio in the United States, the CEO of QIA said in London on Monday.

“Soon we will be opening an office in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco,” Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed al-Thani told reporters at an investment conference.

The fund is one of the most active sovereign investors in the world, snapping up stakes in everything from real estate to luxury goods.

Much of its activity has traditionally been in Europe but the fund has said it is looking to diversify into Asia and the United States, announcing last year a plan to spend $20 billion in Asian investments over the next five years.
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President Donald Trump is set to announce a new White House office run by his son-in-law that will seek to overhaul government functions using ideas from the business sector.

A senior administration official said Trump on Monday will announce the White House Office of American Innovation. The official sought anonymity to discuss the office in advance of the formal rollout.

The plans for the office were first reported by The Washington Post.

The innovation office will be led by Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to Trump, and will report directly to the president.

Among those working on the effort are National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, senior counselor to the president for economic initiatives and deputy national security adviser, Chris Liddell, assistant to the president for strategic initiatives and Reed Cordish, assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives. All have extensive business experience.

Trump is readying to announce the new office at a low point in his young administration, days after the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” imploded in the House of Representatives, revealing deep divides within GOP and fraying tensions at the White House.

This effort has been developing since shortly after the inauguration, the official said. The group has been meeting since then and started talking to CEOs from various sectors about ways to make changes to federal programs. Areas they hope to tackle include overhauling Veterans’ Affairs, improving workforce development and targeting opioid addiction.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is married to Kushner and has a West Wing office but no official job, will get involved on issues she is focused on, such as workforce development.
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A Chinese court has ruled in favor of Apple in design patent disputes between the Cupertino, California company and a domestic phone-maker, overturning a ban on selling iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones in China, Xinhua news agency reported.

Last May, a Beijing patent regulator ordered Apple’s Chinese subsidiary and a local retailer Zoomflight to stop selling the iPhones after Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services lodged a complaint, claiming that the patent for the design of its mobile phone 100c was being infringed by the iPhone sales.

Apple and Zoomflight took the Beijing Intellectual Property Office’s ban to court.

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court on Friday revoked the ban, saying Apple and Zoomflight did not violate Shenzhen Baili’s design patent for 100c phones.

The court ruled that the regulator did not follow due procedures in ordering the ban while there was no sufficient proof to claim the designs constituted a violation of intellectual property rights.

Representatives of Beijing Intellectual Property Office and Shenzhen Baili said they would take time to decide whether to appeal the ruling, according to Xinhua.

In a related ruling, the same court denied a request by Apple to demand stripping Shenzhen Baili of its design patent for 100c phones.

Apple first filed the request to the Patent Reexamination Board of State Intellectual Property Office. The board rejected the request, but Apple lodged a lawsuit against the rejection.

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court on Friday ruled to maintain the board’s decision. It is unclear if Apple will appeal.
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As the internet continues to drive innovative ideas, some scientists envision a world where people can digitize their skills and do their jobs from anywhere in the world with the next generation of optical and wireless technology. How this idea is executed was demonstrated at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition in Los Angeles. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has technology capable of infecting “factory fresh” iPhones and has been bugging the devices since at least 2008, WikiLeaks claimed Thursday.

In a statement released on its website, the whistleblowing organization said the technology developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB) was designed to be physically installed onto new iPhones.

“It is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments [opening, infecting, and resending] leaving the United States or otherwise,” the statement read.

Another alleged CIA tool, exposed in the WikiLeaks release Thursday, has the ability to execute code from a USB stick while a Mac computer is still booting up, allowing a user to bypass firmware passwords and load the attack software.

Thursday’s release is the latest batch of documents published by WikiLeaks alleging to show espionage programs used by the U.S. spy agency.  A previous WikiLeaks release purported to expose a massive hacking program employed by the CIA.

Among the revelations in the previous release came accusations that the CIA possesses a library of hacking malware employed by other states, including Russia, that it can use to leave behind false “fingerprints” to cover up its exploits and mislead investigators.

A spokesman for the CIA said at the time the agency does not comment “on the authenticity of purported intelligence documents.”
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The cost for individual homes in the U.S. to “go solar” has dropped by more than 60 percent over the last decade.

Those low costs helped convince more than a million Americans to install solar panels on their roofs.

Now schools are beginning to get in on the benefits. One of them is the school system in Fremont, Indiana.

The residents of this small town in America’s upper Midwest have always relied on the sun to warm their fields and draw tourists to their lakes. Now school superintendent William Stitt said they’re counting on it to power their schools.

“The technology has advanced so much in the last couple of years that it’s become more energy efficient, more cost effective for schools to get solar energy,” Stitt said.

Start-up cost

Construction of the solar project will cost $3 million. But when finished, it will completely power the elementary, middle and high school buildings. It may generate so much electricity, that the school will be able to sell some back to the power company at a profit.

The system will work through several rows of 3,000-4,000 panels each. They will be located in a special 2.5 hectare solar field behind the middle school.

The district has to lease the equipment from the local power company for 20 years, at a fixed rate.

But Kim Quick, facility director, said that even with that added cost, the schools should save money because the panels should last 40 years.

“[It] is going to cost us approximately the same amount we’re paying for utilities today. So that cost is never going to increase for the next 20 years,” Quick said. “So if the power company comes in next year and says, ‘We want to increase utilities 6 percent,’ we’re going to pay the same we’re paying today 20 years from now.”

Free electricity, eventually

In 20 years, the school district will own the equipment outright, meaning it won’t pay anything for electricity.

Since the panels are always “on,” Quick said the district will save additional money by banking the unused electricity that’s generated when school is not in session.

“These work year-round. Even in a full moon they will produce electricity,” he said.

Just 3 percent of the nation’s 125,000 schools use some form of solar energy. While not all can use solar power cost-effectively, a recent report by the Solar Foundation found that 72,000 US schools could save money with solar.

Schools could install panels on their roofs or elevate a field of panels over a parking lot. Those innovations would save most schools an average of $1 million over 30 years.

Educational component

Going solar also offers schools an educational component. It provides teachers opportunities to incorporate lessons in science, technology, engineering, and math into the curriculum.

All three schools in the Fremont system will have a live display module that kids can visit daily to learn how much energy is being used and saved.

If all goes according to plan, Fremont School District’s new solar field will be up and running by mid-summer. Superintendent Stitt is already looking further ahead.

“I’d love the community and the kids in 40 years to go, ‘Man, they made a great decision 40 years ago by creating this solar project!’ ” he said.
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The cost for individual homes to go solar has dropped by more than 60 percent over the last decade. Those low costs helped convince more than a million private homes to install solar panels. Now schools are beginning to get in on the benefits. Erika Celeste reports from Fremont, Indiana.
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Google wants to make it easier for you to find answers and recommendations on smartphones without having to think about what to ask its search engine.

Its new feature, called “shortcuts,” will appear as a row of icons below the Google search box. Where now you’d have to ponder and then speak or type a request, the shortcuts will let you tap the icons to get the latest weather, movie times, sports scores, restaurant recommendations and other common requests.

The shortcuts will begin appearing Tuesday in updates to Google’s app for iPhones, Android phones and its mobile website. The Android app will also include various tools such as a currency converter, a language translator and an ATM locator, which you can also summon with a tap. Those tools may eventually make it to the iPhone as well, although Google says it doesn’t know when.

These shortcuts are the latest step in Google’s quest to turn its search engine into a secondary brain that anticipates people’s needs and desires. The search engine gleans these insights by analyzing your past requests and, when you allow it, tracking your location, a practice that periodically raises privacy concerns about Google’s power to create digital profiles of its users.

Based on the knowledge that Google already has accumulated, its shortcuts feature may already list your favorite sports teams or recommend nearby restaurants serving cuisines you prefer.

Adapting to audience

Shortcuts also show how Google’s search engine has been adapting to its audience, now that smartphones have become the primary way millions of people stay connected to the internet.

Since more than half of requests for Google’s search engine now come from smartphones, the Mountain View, California, company has adapted its services to smaller screens, touch keyboards and apps instead of websites.

Early in that process, Google tweaked its search engine to answer many requests with factual summaries at the top of its results page, a change from simply displaying a list of links to other websites. Voice-recognition technology also allows you to speak your request into a phone instead of typing it.

The transition is going well so far. Google’s revenue rose 20 percent last year to $89 billion, propelled by digital ads served up on its search engine, YouTube and Gmail. Although shortcuts won’t initially show ads after you tap them, Google typically sells marketing space if a feature or service becomes popular.
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The enemy drone whined in the distance. The Interceptor, a drone-hunting machine from Silicon Valley startup Airspace Systems, slinked off its launch pad and dashed away in hot pursuit.

The hunter twisted through the air to avoid trees, homed in on its target, fired a Kevlar net to capture it, and then carried the rogue drone back to its base like a bald eagle with a kill.

Airspace is among some 70 companies working on counter-drone systems as small consumer and commercial drones proliferate. But unlike others, it aims to catch drones instead of disabling them or shooting them down.

A demonstration at Airspace headquarters in San Leandro, California, showed a compact aircraft just a few feet wide, yet capable of sophisticated, autonomous navigation and accurate targeting of a drone in motion.

It is still early days in the drone-defense business.

Security professionals both public and private worry about dangerous drones at military sites, airports, data centers, and public venues like baseball stadiums. But counter-measures carry risk, too.

For example, the U.S. Air Force recently tested experimental shotgun shells for shooting down drones. But if the drone carries a payload like a bomb or chemical weapon, it could still fall on its target.

Jamming the radio signals to the drone does not always work, either. Drones differ from “remote-controlled” aircraft because they can fly to pre-set coordinates autonomously. The fastest drones can reach 150 miles per hour (240 km), too quick for human pilots flying another drone to catch.

The technical challenge of safely stopping a dangerous drone appealed to Guy Bar-Nahum, one of the inventors of the Apple iPod and the engineering brains behind Airspace Systems.

“We are creating a very primitive brain of an insect, a dragonfly,” Bar-Nahum said. “It wakes up, sees the world and doesn’t really know where it is. But it has goals to capture the other drone, and it’s planning a path in the world and knows how to move through the world.”

The Interceptor must pack computing power and sophisticated software into that tiny drone brain. Unlike the emerging driverless car, it has to understand its environment without the benefit of an internet connection to a massive mapping database.

“My background is in physics, and it’s all about modeling the world” with math, Bar-Nahum said. “What we do in this lowly startup that looks to be a normal, military ‘take ’em down’ kind of company is build machines that can model the world.”

The business model is challenging too. Currently, only law enforcement officials have the authority to interfere with another drone’s flight. Regulations also require a certified pilot to stand ready to intervene in any commercial drone flight and keep a line-of-sight view of the aircraft.

Thus, Airspace Systems will not be selling its aircraft, but rather leasing a system — complete with operators and a mobile command center — to customers.

The New York Mets have an interest in using the system to protect Citi Field in New York City, according to Sterling VC, the venture capital arm of Sterling Equities, which owns the stadium and also invested in Airspace.

Detection and destruction

The danger from hostile drones became more clear in the last few months when the U.S. military said Islamic State fighters were using them to attack Iraqi troops in the battle over Mosul.

The military news site Defense One reported IS was using an array of consumer-style drones, including an agile quadcopter version for dropping explosives.

At least 70 companies worldwide are working on various types of counter-drone systems, said Mike Blades, aerospace and defense analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

San Francisco-based Dedrone, for example, has raised $28 million in venture capital and is focused on detecting drone incursions. It now has about 200 customers, according to CEO and co-founder Joerg Lamprecht. Some are car companies looking to protect new designs from the automotive press and others are data center owners looking to keep drones from damaging critical rooftop cooling systems.

“Most of the market is going to be detection, something like a burglar alarm,” Lamprecht said.

DroneShield, an Australian company, also makes a detection system and has developed a prototype electronic jamming gun to ground a drone.

Airspace, backed by $5 million from Shasta Ventures and Sterling VC, hopes to bring its drone-capture system to market as early as this summer.

But Airspace’s approach has limitations. Chief among them: The Interceptor catches one drone at a time. To defend against multiple drones, Airspace must launch multiple machines.

“The swarm of drones is going to be the threat,” said Blades.

Beyond that, catching drones incurs expense and complication when simpler measures might do. Dedrone’s Lamprecht gives an example from a German customer that makes cars.

At its test track, the customer wanted to protect new car designs from drones’ prying eyes. When Dedrone detects an intrusion, the car’s driver hits a dashboard button to fire a fog bomb to obscure the car.

But James Bond-style diversions, or even forcing a drone down, may prove insufficient if a craft is hovering above a crowd with something dangerous, like an explosive or poison. In such a situation, capturing and carrying away the enemy drone may be the best option, even if it is complex and expensive.

For Airspace, perfecting a drone-hunting machine than can see — and chase — on its own is not as crazy as it may seem.

“This is an old ambition. You can read about it in Jules Verne or Aldous Huxley,” said Bar-Nahum. “That’s why autonomous movement is the next decade for me.”
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