Can tech help solve the Los Angeles homeless crisis? Finding shelter may someday be a click away

On

LOS ANGELES — Billions of dollars have been spent on efforts to get homeless people off the streets in California, but outdated computer systems with error-filled data are all too often unable to provide even basic information like where a shelter bed is open on any given night, inefficiencies that can lead to dire consequences. The problem is especially acute in Los Angeles, where more than 45,000 people — many suffering from serious mental illness, substance addictions or both — live in litter-strewn encampments that have spread into virtually every neighborhood, and where rows of rusting RVs line entire blocks. Evenmore

Leave a comment

US claims TikTok collected user views on issues like abortion, gun control

On

WASHINGTON — In a fresh broadside against one of the world’s most popular technology companies, the Justice Department late Friday accused TikTok of harnessing the capability to gather bulk information on users based on views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion and religion. Government lawyers wrote in a brief filed to the federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to enable TikTok employees to speak directly with ByteDance engineers in China. TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, information that has woundmore

Leave a comment

US, Taiwan, China race to improve military drone technology  

On

washington — This week, as Taiwan was preparing for the start of its Han Kuang military exercises, its air defense system detected a Chinese drone circling the island. This was the sixth time that China had sent a drone to operate around Taiwan since 2023. Drones like the one that flew around Taiwan, which are tasked with dual-pronged missions of reconnaissance and intimidation, are just a small part of a broader trend that is making headlines from Ukraine to the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait and is changing the face of warfare.  The increasing role that unmanned aerial vehicles, ormore

Leave a comment

Video game performers to strike over artificial intelligence concerns

On

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood’s video game performers voted Thursday to go on strike, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.  The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.  SAG-AFTRA negotiatorsmore

Leave a comment

CrowdStrike: More machines fixed as customers, regulators await details on what caused meltdown 

On

AUSTIN, Tex. — Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says a “significant number” of the millions of computers that crashed on Friday, causing global disruptions, are back in operation as its customers and regulators await a more detailed explanation of what went wrong.  A defective software update sent by CrowdStrike to its customers disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals and other critical services Friday, affecting about 8.5 million machines running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The painstaking work of fixing it has often required a company’s IT crew to manually delete files on affected machines.  CrowdStrike said late Sunday in a blog post that it was startingmore

Leave a comment

India ed-tech firm Byju’s founder faces reckoning as startup implodes

On

NEW DELHI — Byju Raveendran, an Indian mathematics whiz who soared from teacher to startup billionaire before his education-technology company imploded this year, now faces his biggest test. The future of Raveendran’s eponymous Byju’s online coaching firm rests with India’s courts after the country’s biggest startup, once loved by global investors who valued it at $22 billion, crashed below $2 billion in valuation. The 44-year-old founder last week lost control of the company as a tribunal kick-started an insolvency process. Accused of “financial mismanagement and compliance issues,” the son of a family of teachers from a small village in south Indiamore

Leave a comment

India’s battery storage industry grows

On

BENGALURU, India — At a Coca-Cola factory on the outskirts of Chennai in southern India, a giant battery powers machinery day and night, replacing a diesel-spewing generator. It’s one of just a handful of sites in India powered by electricity stored in batteries, a key component to fast-tracking India’s energy transition away from dirty fuels.    The country’s lithium ion battery storage industry — which can store electricity generated by wind turbines or solar panels for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing — makes up just 0.1% of global battery storage systems. But battery storage is growing fast,more

Leave a comment

Australia warns of ‘malicious websites’ after cyber outage

On

sydney — Australia’s cyber intelligence agency said on Saturday that “malicious websites and unofficial code” were being released online claiming to aid recovery from Friday’s global digital outage, which hit media, retailers, banks and airlines.  Australia was one of many countries affected by the outage that caused havoc worldwide after a botched software update from CrowdStrike.  On Saturday, the Australian Signals Directorate — the country’s cyber intelligence agency — said “a number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident.”  On its website, the agency said its cyber security center “strongly encourages all consumers tomore

Leave a comment

Airlines resume services after global IT crash wreaks havoc

On

Paris — Airlines were gradually coming back online Saturday after global carriers, banks and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program. Passenger crowds had swelled at airports Friday to wait for news as dozens of flights were canceled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide. Multiple U.S. airlines and airports across Asia said they were now resuming operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, andmore

Leave a comment

Widespread technology outage disrupts flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world

On

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows. But hours after the problem was first detected, the disarraymore

Leave a comment

Recent outages highlight need for stronger African internet

On

Nairobi, Kenya — Experts say Africa needs to invest in robust infrastructure if the continent is to have reliable internet after recent outages due to underwater cable failures highlighted the continent’s reliance on single-path connectivity. Disruptions in March and May caused online banking problems and communication delays. Businesses experienced interruptions in many countries. In March, on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, four submarine cables that deliver the internet to at least 17 countries went offline. Less than two months later, Eastern and Southern Africa experienced outages after two undersea cables were damaged. In Tanzania, the U.S. Embassy in Dar esmore

Leave a comment

From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia

On

Northern Ukraine — Struggling with manpower shortages, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse or a factory basement. An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians. Defense startups across Ukraine — about 250 according to industry estimates — are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops. Employees at a startup run by entrepreneur Andrii Denysenko can putmore

Leave a comment

Demand for rare elements used in clean energy could help clean up abandoned coal mines in US

On

MOUNT STORM, West Virginia — Down a long gravel road, tucked into the hills in West Virginia, is a low-slung building where researchers are extracting essential elements from an old coal mine that they hope will strengthen the nation’s energy future. They aren’t mining the coal that powered the steel mills and locomotives that helped industrialize America — and that is blamed for contributing to global warming. Rather, researchers are finding that groundwater pouring out of this and other abandoned coal mines contains the rare earth elements and other valuable metals that are vital to making everything from electric vehicle motorsmore

Leave a comment

EU accepts Apple plan to open iPhone tap-to-pay to rivals

On

Brussels — The EU on Thursday approved Apple’s offer to allow rivals access to the iPhone’s ability to tap-to-pay within the bloc, ending a lengthy probe and sparing it a heavy fine. The case dates back to 2022 when Brussels first accused Apple of blocking rivals from its popular iPhone tap payment system in a breach of EU competition law. “Apple has committed to allow rivals to access the ‘tap and go’ technology of iPhones. Today’s decision makes Apple’s commitments binding,” EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. “From now on, competitors will be able to effectively compete withmore

Leave a comment