Technology category, Page 24
Google gets more multilingual, but will it get the nuance?
LIMA, Peru — About 10 million people speak Quechua, but trying to automatically translate emails and text messages into the most widely spoken Indigenous language family in the Americas was long all but impossible. That changed on Wednesday, when Google added Quechua and a variety of other languages to its...
Bitcoin’s unraveling tops 50% from peak with drop below $32,000
Bitcoin extended its losses, dropping below $32,000 for the first time since July 2021, putting its decline from a November record high to more than 50% amid a global flight from riskier investments. The world’s largest digital token fell as much as 7% on Monday and traded at around $31,924...
Face-scanner Clearview agrees to limits in court settlement
CHICAGO — Facial recognition startup Clearview AI has agreed to restrict the use of its massive collection of face images to settle allegations that it collected people’s photos without their consent. The company in a legal filing Monday agreed to permanently stop selling access to its face database to private...
CMU researchers create system enabling virtual kiss, sip of water
Is there a lovesick person among us who hasn’t imagined kissing someone they’re pining for? Or how about a thirsty individual imagining a cool sip of water? While not necessarily a good substitute for the real thing, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have figured out a way to exploit sensitivity...
Pittsburgh area experts have mixed reactions to Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase
It was Remington shaver spokesman Victor Kiam who famously said, “I like it so much, I bought the company.” For Elon Musk, the opposite is true. The world’s richest man, according to Forbes Magazine, Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion on Monday and then said he...
Will Musk’s hands-off ideal for Twitter have broad appeal?
Coming up with $44 billion to buy Twitter was the easy part for Elon Musk. Next comes the real challenge for the world’s richest person: fulfilling his promise to make Twitter “better than ever” as a lightly regulated haven for free speech. His vision for improving the 16-year-old company leans...
Amazon union could face tough road ahead after victory
NEW YORK — In the aftermath of their hard-won labor victory, Amazon workers in the New York City borough of Staten Island popped Champagne, cheered their victory and danced in celebration. But their jovial attitude will be tested by a company that seems likely to drag its feet to the...
Pittsburgh’s Girls of Steel competing at World Championship for robotics
They are Rosie the Riveters 2022 edition. A strong woman from the 1940s, Rosie was a pioneer who represented females in non-traditional jobs. She is the inspiration for the group Girls of Steel Robotics. They wear red bandanas with white polka dots — a recognizable pattern from classic photos of...
The Edsel, Quibi and CNN+? New addition to business failures
NEW YORK — The Edsel. Quibi. New Coke. The Segway. DeLorean sports cars. The pantheon of colossal business failures has a new member in the CNN+ streaming service. The news network’s subscription offering hadn’t even been operating for a month before Warner Bros. Discovery announced this week that it would...
Netflix aims to curtail password sharing, considers ads
SAN FRANCISCO — An unexpectedly sharp drop in subscribers has Netflix considering changes it has long resisted: Minimizing password sharing and creating a low-cost subscription supported by advertising. Looming changes announced late Tuesday are designed to help Netflix regain momentum lost over the past year. Pandemic-driven lockdowns that drove binge-watching...
Netflix shares drop 26% after it loses 200K subscribers
SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix suffered its first subscriber loss in more than a decade, causing its shares to plunge 25% in extended trading amid concerns that the pioneering streaming service may have already seen its best days. The company’s customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March period, according...
Latest apps promise fast service but can they deliver?
NEW YORK — When Mahlet Berhanemeskel gets back to her New York City home from her 90-minute commute, she doesn’t feel like cooking. So instead she orders food like BLTs, Cheez-Its and cookies from an app called Gorillas. It’s affordable and takes 10 minutes. “It’s instant gratification,” she said. Gorillas...
Twitter says poison pill makes ‘coercive’ takeover difficult
DETROIT — Twitter’s board of directors says it adopted a “poison pill” defense in order to protect the social media platform from “coercive or otherwise unfair” takeover tactics. The company announced the move Friday and provided more details in a regulatory filing early Monday. On Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk...
Find out and fix what Big Data says about you
I thought I knew all about the information that consumer reporting agencies were collecting on me. Then I discovered The Work Number — a database that reports every paycheck I’ve received from my company, with net and gross amounts, going back to my hire date six years ago. Another consumer...
Twitter adopts ‘poison pill’ defense in Musk takeover bid
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Twitter said Friday that its board of directors has unanimously adopted a “poison pill” defense in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the company and take it private. The move would allow existing Twitter shareholders to buy additional shares at a discount, thereby diluting...
Google says it will invest $15M in Pa. this year, including Bakery Square expansion in Pittsburgh
The tech giant Google said it will invest more than $15 million in Pennsylvania this year, including plans to add another floor at its Bakery Square campus in Pittsburgh’s East End. The company said it plans to invest $9.5 billion in offices and data centers across the country this year,...
War in real time: TikTok and Twitter stars document Russia’s war in Ukraine
A snowy sidewalk strewn with bloodied bodies. A beleaguered president roaming the streets of a country under attack. Missiles streaming. Sirens wailing. Teens making homemade bombs. And dead soldiers, so many of them, lying crumpled in fields and slumped in smoldering tanks. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spawned a constant...
Facebook resorts to old smear tactics against TikTok
WASHINGTON — Eleven years ago, Facebook was caught red-handed after it hired a prominent public relations firm to try to plant stories harshly criticizing Google’s privacy practices in leading news outlets. In 2018, it hired the PR firm Definers to do opposition research on the company’s critics, including billionaire philanthropist...
‘Kill more’: Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya
JAKARTA, Indonesia — A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority years after such behavior was found to have played a determining role in the genocide against them. The report shared exclusively with The Associated Press...
Netflix, TikTok block services in Russia to avoid crackdown
Netflix and TikTok suspended most of their services Sunday in Russia as the government cracks down on what people and media outlets can say about Russia’s war in Ukraine. TikTok said Russian users of the popular social media app would no longer be able to post new videos or livestreams...
Gov. Wolf tours Pittsburgh company working to send cargo to the moon
Gov. Tom Wolf on Wednesday toured Astrobotic, a company on Pittsburgh’s North Side that is working toward sending unmanned vessels to the moon. Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told reporters that the company is scheduled for a lunar launch this year and another in 2023. If Astrobotic is able to beat...
Subaru buyers caught in right-to-repair fight over its cars
Driving a rugged Subaru through snowy weather is a rite of passage for some New Englanders, whose region is a top market for the Japanese automaker. So it was a surprise to Subaru fans when Massachusetts dealerships started selling its line of 2022 vehicles without a key ingredient: the in-car...
Explainer: Will burglar alarms still work after 3G shutdown?
NEW YORK — As telecom companies rev up the newest generation of mobile service, called 5G, they’re shutting down old networks — a costly, years-in-the-works process that’s now prompting calls for a delay because many products out there still rely on the old standard, 3G. AT&T is scheduled to be...
Online harassment, real harm: Fixing the web’s biggest bug
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It should have been a time of celebration: Brittan Heller would soon graduate from college and head to one of the nation’s top law programs. But when a classmate with unrequited feelings for Heller wasn’t admitted to that same school, he turned his rage on her. He...
Explainer: A scarcity of chips feeds frustration, inflation
Even coming off its fastest annual growth in 37 years, the U.S. economy is still bogged down by a persistent shortage of the computer chips essential to the technology that connects, transports and entertains us. The problem has been building since pandemic-related lockdowns shut down major Asian chip factories more...
