Digital Life

National

What Research Says About Video Games And Violence In Children

5:06pm March 08, 2018

President Trump held a roundtable at the White House Thursday to discuss violent video games and how they relate to school shootings. NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Douglas Gentile, psychology professor at Iowa State University, about what research tells us about video games and violence in children.

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Documents show the FBI paid technicians on Best Buy's Geek Squad for reporting suspected child pornography found during computer repairs.

National

FBI Used Paid Informants On Best Buy's Geek Squad To Flag Child Pornography

6:30pm March 07, 2018

by Laurel Wamsley

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says federal agents may be using the computer repair technicians to circumvent Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches.

National

A Phrase For Our Time: Merriam-Webster Adds 'Dumpster Fire' To Dictionary

4:54pm March 05, 2018

by Laurel Wamsley

Editor Peter Sokolowski predicts the phrase is here to stay. "It's been used so broadly in the last two to three years ... that people in the future will have to know what it meant."

"Flippy," a burger-grilling robot developed by Miso Robotics, is now operating at a Caliburger in Pasadena.

'Flippy' The Fast Food Robot (Sort Of) Mans The Grill At Caliburger

1:32pm March 05, 2018

by Scott Neuman

The international burger chain says Flippy, which is so-far operating at a single franchise restaurant in Pasadena, Calif., can grill 150 burgers per hour.

It's one thing to track your heart rate, pulse or other movements with a smart watch or other consumer electronics, researchers say, but quite another to rely on the device to diagnose a disease.

Like It Or Not, Personal Health Technology Is Getting Smarter

5:52am March 05, 2018

by Angus Chen

Tech evangelists say consumer electronics that sense, stream and interpret vital signs will lead to better health and lower costs. But skeptics say reliability and privacy issues still loom.

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National

Rural Communities Take Broadband Into Their Own Hands

8:11am March 03, 2018

by Benny Becker

Millions of people living in rural areas don't have access to broadband Internet. It's expensive to build networks from scratch so local communities are trying new ways to get people online.

Owura Kwadwo Hottish illustrates a window of Microsoft Word using colored chalk on a blackboard. He uses it to teach computer skills to students at the Betenase M/A Junior High School in Kumasi, Ghana.

Computer Teacher With No Computers Chalks Up Clever Classroom Plan

10:07am March 01, 2018

by Malaka Gharib

Owura Kwadwo Hottish, a middle school teacher in Ghana, has found a way around the problem. He literally draws the computer screen on the blackboard.

The entrance of the New Interior Ministry Headquarters seen in June 2015 in Berlin, Germany.

World News

Russia's 'Fancy Bear' Reportedly Hacks German Government Network

6:58am March 01, 2018

by Scott Neuman

German media report that the Kremlin-linked hacking group placed malware in a key government network that may have gone undetected for as long as a year.

At Davos, Yuval Harari suggests that we are in our third grand revolution — the control of data.

Science

Biometric Data And The Rise Of Digital Dictatorship

1:17pm February 28, 2018

by Marcelo Gleiser

As historian and author Yuval Harari suggests, market forces and investor greed will keep moving the data revolution forward. But there are balancing forces to this onslaught, says Marcelo Gleiser.

The Google sign is pictured at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.

Google Has Received 650,000 'Right To Be Forgotten' Requests Since 2014

11:11am February 28, 2018

by James Doubek

The search giant says in a new report that beginning in mid-2014, after a court ruling on the "right to be forgotten," it received 650,000 requests to delist 2.4 million URLs from search results.