Ghanaian social media users were in a state of ecstasy earlier this month when the U.S. social networking service, Twitter, announced it was setting up its first African office in Ghana.   President Nana Akufo-Addo described the move as “excellent news.” A statement by Twitter said Ghana’s democratic credentials and support for free speech and online freedoms made it the company’s choice.   Twitter joins Google and other IT firms with offices in Ghana. But why are top IT firms like Twitter choosing the West African country instead of other African nations?   Ghana’s minister of communications and digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, says apart from good governance, the country has set high standards for doing business. “We’re the envy and the toast of many countries around the world. We hold ourselves to high standards,” she said. “The pull factor with Twitter here [is] if their business thrives, other global tec.h giants will also say Ghana is not such a bad place to locate your business on the continent after all.” According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 Report, there were 14.7 million internet users in Ghana in January 2020 while internet use in the country stood at 48 percent. Ghana also has six million social media users. For his part, the head of the international non-profit Hacklab Foundation, Foster Akugri, says Ghana’s attraction for tech giants is not simply about the numbers. He said the firms have taken note that the secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area is located in Accra.   “The gateway to Africa is Ghana. So, for Twitter to have chosen Ghana, I believe it’s very strategic. As a multinational I believe you want to be closer to where the decisions are made,” he said.Meanwhile, Twitter is looking to fill jobs in Ghana, including positions in engineering and marketing.   All this has spurred Ghanaians to look forward to scoring another first on the continent in hopes of bringing more opportunities and development to the country.      
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The European Union’s executive branch on Wednesday announced proposals designed to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI), banning its use in practices such as surveillance and facial scanning that threaten personal rights.At a news briefing in Brussels, European Commission Executive Vice President and Tech Commissioner Margrethe Vestager noted the benefits of AI in the medical field, agriculture and engineering.“I think those examples illustrate very well what we want AI in Europe to be: a force for progress,” she said.The proposed regulations address the human and societal risks associated with specific uses of AI, such as mass surveillance and biometric identification in public places.The draft EU regulations include rules for other uses of artificial intelligence in some risky categories such as choosing schools, jobs or loan applicants, while banning it outright in cases such as “social scoring” or systems used to manipulate human behavior.The proposals are the bloc’s latest move to maintain its role as the world’s standard-bearer for technology regulation, putting it ahead of the world’s two big tech superpowers, the U.S. and China. EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton told reporters that Europe would become the first continent to provide guidelines over the use of artificial intelligence.The commission is continuing to work out details of the proposals and how they will be enacted with EU member governments and the European Parliament before coming into force.
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Cameroon’s agricultural sector employs the majority of the country’s workers, but too many know too little about the soil, resulting in inefficient farming. To help Cameroon’s farmers, a computer engineer created an electronic analysis kit to test soil quality and suitability for crops. Moki Edwin Kindzeka has this report by Anne Nzouankeu in Edéa, Cameroon. Camera: Anne Nzouankeu   Produced by: Jason Godman 
 
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This week the Biden administration is promoting a plan to boost electric bus production, proposing $45 billion spending to reduce American-made bus emissions to zero by 2030. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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With America’s electrical infrastructure getting zapped daily by an unprecedented number of cyberattacks, the federal government is taking action to prevent a potentially crippling hack of the grid.  A 100-day plan was announced Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Department to harden security systems for the country’s electrical infrastructure and increase the ability to detect and neutralize cyber threats.  “The United States faces a well-documented and increasing cyber threat from malicious actors seeking to disrupt the electricity Americans rely on to power our homes and businesses,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “It’s up to both government and industry to prevent possible harms — that’s why we’re working together to take these decisive measures so Americans can rely on a resilient, secure, and clean energy system.”  The electric industry was among those hit by recent cyberattacks and data breaches targeting Solar Winds and Microsoft Exchange software, but officials stress the timing of Tuesday’s announcement is not directly tied to those events.In this Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, photo a Microsoft computer is among items displayed at a Microsoft store in suburban Boston. Microsoft reports financial results on Jan. 29, 2020.The U.S. government has blamed Russia’s spy agency for the Solar Winds attack. Microsoft said vulnerabilities in its mail and calendar software for corporate and government data centers were primarily exploited by the so-called Hafnium group in China.  The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a non-profit regulatory authority that oversees utilities in the United States and Canada, said about 25 percent of electric utilities on the North American power grid downloaded the SolarWinds backdoor. “Given the sophisticated and constantly changing threats posed by adversaries, America’s electric companies remain focused on securing the industrial control systems that operate the North American energy grid,” said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents all U.S. investor-owned electric companies.  Kuhn said the new initiative is appreciated and indicates “the Biden administration is making cybersecurity for operations a high priority.” Tuesday’s announcement comes after some industry criticism that funding for grid security was not included in the recent infrastructure package announced by President Joe Biden. The 100-day plan includes “aggressive but achievable milestones and will assist owners and operators as they modernize cybersecurity defenses, including enhancing detection, mitigation, and forensic capabilities,” said National Security Council Spokesperson Emily Horne in a statement.  Among the fears—that an enemy of the United States or a cybercriminal group could replicate what happened in Ukraine in 2015 when the information systems of the country’s three energy distribution companies were remotely accessed by Russia, causing 200,000 consumers to lose power. A year later in Ukraine, a power transmission station was knocked offline by Russian hackers who were able to trip circuit breakers after planting malware in the network of the national grid operator.  “The safety and security of the American people depend on the resilience of our nation’s critical infrastructure,” said Brandon Wales, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. Officials describe this effort to harden the power system against cyberattacks as a pilot project of the Biden administration before such measures are enacted for other vulnerable sectors of the country’s infrastructure.  A Government Accountability Office report issued last month warned that the U.S. grid’s distributions systems “are growing more vulnerable, in part because their industrial control systems increasingly allow remote access and connect to business networks.”  The Biden administration also is lifting a temporary ban on acquiring and installing bulk-power systems that serve critical defense systems, while the Energy Department receives industry input for a new executive order on guidelines for purchasing equipment.  Last May, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring “the unrestricted foreign supply of bulk-power system electric equipment” an “unusual and extraordinary threat to national security.” The order restricted purchases and use of such foreign equipment.   
The large, interconnected bulk electric system consists of facilities necessary for operating the power transmission network and maintaining a balance of generation and demand from second to second.  
 
Biden, in his first day in office, suspended Trump’s order for 90 days and directed the Energy Department and the Office of Management and Budget to “jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.” 
 
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San Francisco’s International Airport and United Airlines have become the first in the U.S. to test technology that enables domestic passengers to check in and board flights with minimal contact between travelers and agents. Those behind the trial say the technology could make traveling safer during the pandemic, as VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. 
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Apple will allow the self-proclaimed free speech social media app Parler back in the App Store.The news came from a letter from Apple to Colorado Republican Congressman Ken Buck and Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, who had pressed the company about its removal of Parler.Apple said it removed Parler in January because it had been used to plan the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Facebook was also used by protesters but was not removed from the App Store.In the letter, Apple said Parler had strengthened its content moderation, leading to its reinstatement. Parler had marketed itself as a social media platform with less moderation.“Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it,” Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director for government affairs, wrote in the letter.In a tweet, Buck called Apple’s decision a “huge win for free speech.” Google also removed Parler from its app store, and Amazon kicked the company off its web-hosting platform. There was no word if either company will reinstate Parler.The companies deny they worked together to remove Parler.
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A final ruling on whether to overturn Facebook’s ban on former U.S. president Donald Trump will take a bit longer than anticipated, an independent oversight board said Friday.Critics of the social media company and even strong advocates of unfettered political discourse called on Facebook’s oversight board to endorse the decision to boot Trump from the platform in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”The board’s commitment to carefully reviewing all comments has extended the case timeline,” a spokesperson told AFP.”The board will announce its decision on the case concerning former U.S. President Trump’s indefinite suspension from Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks.”The Facebook oversight board had originally expected to have its decision by this month.Calling Trump a “clear and present danger,” scholars and civil rights advocates have urged Facebook to permanently ban the former president from the platform.Conservatives on Capitol Hill and beyond have contended that moves by Facebook and Twitter to “deplatform” Trump demonstrate political bias and inhibit free speech.An extended public comment period ended in February with more than 9,000 submissions regarding the case, according to the board.The social network itself asked the independent body to review Trump’s eviction from the online community.The oversight board has the final say on what is removed or allowed to remain on the world’s biggest social network.Trump’s access to social media platforms that he used as a megaphone during his presidency has been largely cut off since a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.
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Advocates for children from around the world urged Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday to ditch plans for a version of Instagram geared toward preteens.Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Electronic Privacy Information Center were among nearly 100 groups and individuals from North America, Europe, Africa and Australia to make the plea in a letter to Zuckerberg.Instagram “exploits young people’s fear of missing out and desire for peer approval,” the letter contended.”The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and well-being,” it said, building on concerns about predators, bullies and inappropriate content.On Oct. 6, 2020, Images of instagram corporate logos are displayed online on a laptop computer.Instagram is exploring the launch of a version of the image-centric social network for children under 13, with parental controls.Facebook-owned Instagram, like its parent company, allows only those older than 13 to join, but verifying age on the internet makes it challenging to catch all rule breakers.”The reality is that kids are online,” Instagram spokeswoman Stephanie Otway said in response to an AFP inquiry.”They want to connect with their family and friends, have fun and learn, and we want to help them do that in a way that is safe and age-appropriate.”Facebook is working with child development and mental health experts to prioritize safety and privacy, according to Otway.Instagram, which has more than a billion users, recently unveiled technology aimed at preventing underage children from creating accounts and at blocking adults from contacting young users they don’t know.The platform is also looking at ways to make it more difficult for adults who have been exhibiting “potentially suspicious behavior” to interact with teens.The children’s advocates were dubious about the proposed youth version.”Facebook’s long track record of exploiting young people and putting them at risk makes the company particularly unsuitable as the custodian of a photo sharing and social messaging site for children,” their letter said.”In short, an Instagram site for kids will subject young children to a number of serious risks and will offer few benefits for families.” 
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Predicting whether an outbreak is likely to happen is now possible with the COVID-19 Outbreak Detection Tool, a map that shows the coming hotspots for the disease, if accurate data is available.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Producer: Elizabeth Lee
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South African mobile communications company Vodacom South Africa, with British parent company Vodafone and charity Hestia, has launched a free mobile phone application to support targets of gender-based violence, which has soared during the coronavirus pandemic.  The application, “Bright Sky,” provides information for people to identify gender-based violence and get counseling and emergency help. Franco Puglisi reports from Johannesburg.Producer: Rod James. Camera: Franco Puglisi. 
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The international Future City Competition recently announced its 2021 winners in the first ever all-virtual event. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Predicting whether an outbreak is likely to happen is now possible with the COVID-19 Outbreak Detection Tool, a map that shows the coming hotspots for the disease, if accurate data is available.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Producer: Elizabeth Lee
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The international Future City Competition recently announced its 2021 winners in the first ever all-virtual event. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Religious organizations in the U.S. are a key part of a community’s response to a disaster.  As Mike O’Sullivan reports, a new smartphone app is helping coordinate that response between relief workers and faith groups while making it more effective.
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Plans by the world’s largest contract chipmaker for a record $100 billion capacity expansion will just mildly dent a growing worldwide shortage of semiconductors for gear such as high-speed notebook computers, 5G smartphones and newer vehicles, tech experts believe.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said in an April 1 legal notice to the Taipei stock exchange that it would use the money over three years on “leading technology” for manufacturing and R&D to “answer demands from the market.” The notice specifically cites demand for chips used in 5G-enabled and high-performance devices.That amount would set a dollar-value record for the company, which is better known as TSMC, said Brady Wang, an analyst in Taipei with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research.TSMC’s investment will ease “anxiety” among clients worried about semiconductor supply-chain instability caused in part by Sino-U.S. trade tension, said Kent Chong, managing director of professional services firm PwC Legal in Taipei. Its clients include multiple American hardware developers including Apple.“Overall, it would indeed increase capacity, without any question,” Chong said. American clients hope to source chips in the United States, he added. The company headquartered southwest of Taipei is already planning to open a $12 billion plant in the U.S. state of Arizona. “TSMC is obviously the forefront runner in bringing the whole supply chain to the U.S.,” Chong said.TSMC said in its stock market filing it is “working closely with our customers to address their needs in a sustainable manner.”Years-long shortageAnalysts caution, though, that the ever-growing demand for chips paired with the lag time in building new production plants will extend the shortage for years, despite TSMC’s investment.“You can throw a lot of money at it, but it’s not going to solve the problem,” said Sean Su, an independent political and technology consultant in Taipei.He pointed to popularity of home-use devices during the pandemic and a possible long-term reliance on this technology in “hybrid” online-offline economy after COVID-19 subsides.“Demand is off the ceiling,” Su said. “People want smartphones. People want this and that more than ever. People want tablets all of a sudden. Every single child in the house now needs a computer instead of sharing it.”Remote study and telework, two trends that emerged during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, particularly raised demand last year for chips that run high-speed notebook PCs. That trend is piggybacking on prepandemic demand for 5G smartphones and new devices that run on artificial intelligence.Automakers joined the mix, too, last year as they placed orders for automated vehicles and electric cars. Because of the current chip shortage, they must wait until at least early 2022 as production capacity is now “fully loaded,” said Wen Liu, industry analyst with the Taipei-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute.Feeling an additional pinchWorld demand for chips should increase from $450 billion last year to about $600 billion in 2024, market research firm Gartner says. Industry revenue had already grown 5.4% from 2019 to 2020, according to fellow market research company IDC. TSMC and South Korean technology giant Samsung are the biggest chipmakers today and make the highest-grade chips.Chinese semiconductor clients will feel an additional pinch because of curbs introduced by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, Su said. The Trump administration barred companies, including those based offshore, from working with a list of Chinese firms considered national security risks.“They will be [affected in China] due to trade embargoes as is,” Su said. “Every year, companies fight over limited batches of top-end processors.”China-based chip buyers include developers of three of the world’s five biggest smartphone brands by market share in late 2020.Most of the world’s chipmakers, such as the growing China-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., lag in the equipment and knowhow to make chips that run fast on low power, tech analysts believe. TSMC’s investment will help it stay ahead of any up-and-coming peers, Wang said.“This is actually because [TSMC] saw a new opportunity, which would mainly be in 5G or high-performance PCs or demands for other digitization needs as that’s the demand following COVID-19,” Wang said. TSMC itself probably does not expect the planned $100 billion outlay to ease today’s chip shortage, he said.The company says in its stock exchange notice that “multiyear mega-trends…are expected to fuel strong demand for our semiconductor technologies in the next several years,” while the pandemic “accelerates digitalization in every aspect.”
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The Supreme Court sided Monday with Google in an $8 billion copyright dispute with Oracle over the internet company’s creation of the Android operating system used on most smartphones worldwide.To create Android, which was released in 2007, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.Google had argued that what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. And it said there is no copyright protection for the purely functional, noncreative computer code it used, something that couldn’t be written another way. But Oracle said Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism,” and it sued.The justices ruled 6-2 for Google Inc., based in Mountain View, California. Two conservative justices dissented.Justice Stephen Breyer wrote  that in reviewing a lower court’s decision, the justices assumed “for argument’s sake, that the material was copyrightable.””But we hold that the copying here at issue nonetheless constituted a fair use. Hence, Google’s copying did not violate the copyright law,” he wrote.Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito that he believed “Oracle’s code at issue here is copyrightable, and Google’s use of that copyrighted code was anything but fair.”Only eight justices heard the case because it was argued in October, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court.The case has been going on for a decade. Microsoft, IBM and major internet and tech industry lobbying groups had weighed in, in favor of Google. The Motion Picture Association and the Recording Industry Association of America were among those supporting Oracle.The case is Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., 18-956.
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Chinese tech giants are expanding in Singapore as they face a crackdown at home and growing pressure in other key markets — but they may struggle to find talent in the city-state. Messaging-and-gaming behemoth Tencent is opening a hub and TikTok owner ByteDance is on a hiring spree after establishing a regional headquarters, while e-commerce giant Alibaba is investing in property and recruiting. The tech firms are shifting their focus to booming Southeast Asian markets as authorities tighten the screws at home amid concerns about the platforms’ growing power. China’s regulators have launched a blitz on the sector, hitting several firms with heavy fines, and threatening to slice up massive companies whose reach now extends deep into the daily lives of ordinary Chinese.  Meanwhile, festering tensions between Washington and Beijing after an assault on Chinese tech titans during Donald Trump’s presidency make the United States an unattractive prospect, and problems abound elsewhere. “Chinese tech companies are facing regulatory pressures and sanctions from governments in other countries, notably the U.S. but also other nations such as India,” Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit, told AFP.   India has banned a swathe of Chinese apps since a border clash last year, while the European Union and other Western powers recently imposed sanctions over China’s treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority, prompting retaliatory sanctions.  But Singapore, a prosperous financial hub, maintains good ties with Beijing and the West, and tech firms have come to view it as a safe bet to expand their operations without upsetting either side.   In the current climate of geopolitical uncertainty “Singapore is considered as a more neutral country,” Chen Guoli, professor of strategy at the Singapore campus of business school INSEAD, told AFP. Hiring spree    In addition, long-running turmoil in traditional rival Hong Kong may have dimmed the territory’s appeal, although observers stress other factors are likely more important.   The influx of Chinese cash will be welcome in Singapore, whose economy has been hammered by the coronavirus and which is seeking to build itself up as a tech center. It is already home to major offices of U.S. tech titans Facebook, Google and Twitter, while ByteDance recently moved into bigger offices in the financial district and has launched a hiring drive. Between September and February, a third of ByteDance’s job postings were in Singapore, more than twice the ads it placed in China, with a focus on hiring specialized engineers, said Ajay Thalluri, an analyst with data and analytics firm GlobalData.   Meanwhile, Alibaba last year bought a 50 percent stake in an office tower, where its e-commerce unit Lazada is the main tenant, while its affiliate, fintech giant Ant Group, won a license to operate a wholesale digital bank in the city-state. Alibaba “is building teams in Singapore with significant key senior and mid-level job postings related to talent acquisition, product management, and legal compliance,” said Thalluri.   The e-commerce firm, co-founded by Jack Ma, has come under fierce pressure in China, with authorities pulling the plug on Ant’s record initial public offering in November.    Talent crunch    ByteDance and Tencent, which announced its Singapore expansion plans in September, say they are primarily focused on growing their businesses in Southeast Asia, a booming region of 650 million, rather than avoiding tensions elsewhere. By building up their Singapore presence, the tech giants are hedging their bets in case frictions with the West hit a new nadir, analysts say.   Chen of INSEAD said Chinese companies needed a “plan B” in case they had to separate their global and Chinese operations, in which case Singapore could become their international hub.  However, a major challenge in expanding in the city, with a population of just 5.7 million, is recruiting workers with the correct skills.  “Technology is developing and accelerating at a speed that far surpasses the supply of talent needed to scale,” said Daljit Sall, senior director for information technology at the Singapore office of global recruitment firm Randstad. Singapore is trying to attract overseas talent, although that may cause unease in a country where there are already concerns about the large foreign population, while schools are offering courses to prepare youngsters for tech jobs. Nevertheless, “there still remains an urgent need to fill these skills gaps now,” Sall said. 
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Professional social network LinkedIn is giving nearly all of its 15,900 full-time workers next week off as it seeks to avoid burnout and allow its employees to recharge, the company told AFP Friday.The Microsoft-owned firm said that the “RestUp!” week starting Monday is meant to give employees time for their own well-being.”There is something magical about the entire company taking a break at the same time,” LinkedIn said in reply to an AFP inquiry. “And the best part? Not coming back to an avalanche of unanswered internal emails.”During the week, LinkedIn will provide employees who may feel isolated the option of taking part in daily activities such as volunteering for worthy causes through “random acts of kindness,” according to the company.”A core team of employees will continue to work for the week, but they will be able to schedule time off later,” LinkedIn said.Major technology companies were among the first in the U.S. to adopt working from home last year to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, and most have yet to fully reopen their offices. Twitter has extended remote working indefinitely.LinkedIn does not expect employees to begin returning to its offices until September, and it plans to make it standard practice to let them work from home as much as half of the time.Microsoft in mid-2016 bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in cash, stepping into the world of social networking and adding a new tool for its efforts to boost services for business.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit accusing Facebook Inc. of violating a federal anti-robocall law.The justices, in a 9-0 decision authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, sided with Facebook in its argument that text messages the social media company sent did not violate a 1991 federal law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).The case highlighted the challenge for the justices in applying outdated laws to modern technologies. The ruling sparked calls for Congress to update the law, enacted three decades ago to curb telemarketing abuse by banning most unauthorized robocalls.”By narrowing the scope of the TCPA, the court is allowing companies the ability to assault the public with a nonstop wave of unwanted calls and texts, around the clock,” Democratic Senator Edward Markey and Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo said in a joint statement.The court ruled that Facebook’s actions — sending text messages without consent — did not fit within the technical definition of the type of conduct barred by the law, which was enacted before the rise of modern cellphone technology.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 in California federal court by Montana resident Noah Duguid, who said Facebook sent him many automatic text messages without his consent. The lawsuit accused Menlo Park, California-based Facebook of violating the TCPA’s restriction on using an automatic telephone dialing system.Facebook said the security-related messages, triggered when users try to log in to their accounts from a new device or internet browser, were tied to users’ cellphone numbers.”As the court recognized, the law’s provisions were never intended to prohibit companies from sending targeted security notifications, and the court’s decision will allow companies to continue working to keep the accounts of their users safe,” Facebook said in a statement.’A disappointing ruling’Sergei Lemberg, Duguid’s lawyer, said anyone could avoid liability under the law if they use technology like Facebook’s.”This is a disappointing ruling for anyone who owns a cellphone or values their privacy,” Lemberg added.In this instance, the lawsuit asserted that Facebook’s system that sent automated text messages was akin to a traditional automatic dialing system — known as an autodialer — used to send robocalls.”Duguid’s quarrel is with Congress, which did not define an autodialer as malleably as he would have liked,” Sotomayor wrote in the ruling.The law requires that the equipment used must use a “random or sequential number generator,” but the court concluded that Facebook’s system “does not use such technology,” Sotomayor added.Duguid said that Facebook repeatedly sent him account login notifications by text message to his cellphone, even though he was not a Facebook user and never had been. Despite numerous efforts, Duguid said he was unable to stop Facebook from “robotexting” him.Facebook responded that Duguid had most likely been assigned a phone number that was previously associated with a Facebook user who opted in to receive the notifications.A federal judge threw out the lawsuit, but in 2019, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it. The 9th Circuit took a broad view of the law, saying it bans devices that automatically dial not only randomly generated numbers but also stored numbers that are not randomly generated.The National Association of Federally Insured Credit Unions said the decision “to narrowly interpret autodialers is a win for the credit union industry.””We have long fought for this clarity to ensure credit unions can contact their members with important, time-sensitive financial information without fear of violating the TCPA and facing frivolous lawsuits,” the association said in a statement.  
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Microsoft won a nearly $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with its augmented reality headsets.  
 
Microsoft and the Army separately announced the deal Wednesday.
 
The technology is based on Microsoft’s HoloLens headsets, which were originally intended for the video game and entertainment industries.
 
Pentagon officials have described the futuristic technology — which the Army calls its Integrated Visual Augmentation System — as a way of boosting soldiers’ awareness of their surroundings and their ability to spot targets and dangers.
 
Microsoft’s head-mounted HoloLens displays let people see virtual imagery superimposed over the physical world in front of them — anything from holograms in virtual game worlds to repair instructions floating over a broken gadget. Users can control what they see using hand gestures or voice commands.
 
The Army’s website says soldiers tested the gadgets last year at Fort Pickett in Virginia. It said the system could help troops gain an advantage “on battlefields that are increasingly urban, congested, dark and unpredictable.”
 
The Army first began testing Microsoft’s system with a $480 million contract in 2018 and said the headsets could be used for both training and in actual battle. The new contract will enable Microsoft to mass produce units for more than 120,000 soldiers in the Army’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force. Microsoft said the contract will amount to up to $21.88 billion over the next decade, with a five-year base agreement that can be extended for another five years.  
 
Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that the system could integrate thermal night vision and facial recognition to provide soldiers with “real-time analytics” on remote battlefields. He also described how it could help in planning a hostage rescue operation by creating a “digital twin” of the building.
 
A group of Microsoft workers in 2019 petitioned the company to cancel its initial Army deal, arguing it would turn real-world battlefields into a video game.
 
Microsoft is among several tech companies that have sought to wow the gaming world with glitzy new virtual reality goggles over the past decade, though the efforts have largely fizzled. Microsoft pivoted away from consumer applications for its second-generation HoloLens 2, introduced in 2019, which is the basis for the Army’s new gadgets.
 
Although Microsoft recently demonstrated a way to use the goggles to play the hit game Pokemon Go, it mostly pitches the devices as work tools to help surgeons, factory crews and others.  
 
The headset deal is part of Microsoft’s broader work as a defense contractor. The Pentagon in September reaffirmed Microsoft as winner of a cloud computing contract potentially worth $10 billion, although the work has been delayed by a legal battle over rival Amazon’s claim that the bidding process was flawed.
 
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Four Republican U.S. lawmakers requested on Tuesday that Facebook Inc., Twitter, and Alphabet Inc.’s Google turn over any studies they have done on how their services affect children’s mental health.The request follows a joint hearing last week of two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees at which the companies’ chief executives discussed their content moderation practices in the wake of the siege on the Capitol in January.Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s ranking Republican, asked the CEOs at the hearing whether their companies had conducted internal research concerning children’s mental health.Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said he believed the company had, while Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said he did not believe so. Google’s Sundar Pichai said the company consulted with outside experts and invested “a lot of time and effort in these areas.”In letters to the companies on Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers asked for copies of any relevant research or internal communications, as well as information on any contractors and partners involved. They also requested any research the companies had done about how competitors’ products affect mental wellness of people under 18 years old.The requests also cover Google’s YouTube Kids service and Facebook’s Instagram, which is developing a version for people under 13 years old.The other lawmakers who signed the letter were ranking Republicans on various subcommittees, including Robert Latta, Gus Bilirakis and Morgan Griffith.They asked for the companies to respond by April 16. 
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX suffered another setback Tuesday when one of its experimental rockets malfunctioned during a test flight at the company’s Texas facility.
 
The incident occurred as the Starship SN11 prototype was attempting to land after what the company called a normal ascent to roughly 12 kilometers in altitude.
 
Heavy fog obscured observers from seeing exactly what happened, but an explosion seems most likely, as there were reports of fire and debris.
 
“At least the crater is in the right place!” Musk tweeted.
 
This is the third time the experimental rocket has crash-landed or exploded.
 
John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer, said all was going well when data feeds and the on-board cameras stopped working as the vehicle entered a thick layer of fog while trying to land.  
 
The company said it will provide more information as it gets it but added it does not expect to be able to recover video footage.
 
Starship SN11 is the vehicle Musk hopes will carry the first humans to Mars.  
 
The company wants to send it into orbit by the end of the year. NASA has also awarded SpaceX a $135 million contract to potentially use the Starship SN11 to take astronauts to the moon.
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A robot conceived to roll on planets is being used by firefighters in the U.S. to give them “situational awareness” before going into dangerous situations. It’s called Squishy, and Michelle Quinn found out more.Camera: Michelle Quinn
Producer: Michelle Quinn  
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