U.K. to test driverless trucks in convoy
LONDON -- Britain is set to conduct road trials of self-driving trucks, involving a "platoon" of vehicles controlled by a driver in the front.
The Department for Transport said Friday that up to three trucks will travel in convoy, connected by Wi-Fi and with braking and acceleration controlled by the lead vehicle.
Officials say the formation saves fuel and reduces carbon emissions, because the lead truck pushes air out of the way, making the others more efficient.
Similar trials have been conducted in Europe and the United States. But critics say driverless trucks are unsuited to Britain's often narrow and winding roads.
Automobile Association President Edmund King says "platooning may work on the miles of deserted freeways in Arizona or Nevada, but this is not America."
-- The Associated Press
Details of Facebook's policing sought
With more than 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook has been making tough calls when it comes to policing hate speech, harassment, nudity and violence online. Some digital-rights groups want it to provide more details about how it decides what to delete or keep.
"I think that because you have greater power, you have greater responsibility. And with that responsibility, sometimes you're going to have to bring out a little bit more transparency," Eva Galperin, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director of cybersecurity, told a Facebook executive at a panel discussion in San Francisco.
The foundation determined that Facebook's online rules are not enforced evenly, she said. When people get locked out of their accounts, it can interrupt their work or daily lives, especially because Facebook is linked to other apps.
Some activists have accused the company's content moderators before of punishing users from minority groups.
Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, said mistakes are bound to happen but are also rare. Some posts might mistakenly get flagged when a user speaks out against hate speech.
"If you turn up that dial of trying to prevent hate speech you will also turn up the dial of false positives," he said.
-- The Mercury News
Naspers' CEO defends stake in Tencent
Chairman Koos Bekker countered criticism that Naspers Ltd. relies too heavily on its $132 billion stake in Chinese media company Tencent Holdings Ltd. by reminding investors that they would have been a lot poorer if he'd given in to similar pressure to sell the holding years ago.
"Five years ago there was also a lot of unhappiness," Bekker told shareholders at the annual meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday. "If we had sold then, you would have gotten 45 Hong Kong dollars, now you get 325. We are not married to the share, but at this point in time it's paying shareholders."
Africa's biggest Internet company has ridden the coattails of the WeChat creator to be the best performer on Johannesburg's FTSE/JSE Africa Top 40 Index this year with a 50 percent rise. The catch is that the market values the 33 percent stake in the Shenzhen-based company at almost $32 billion more than Naspers as a whole, suggesting investors don't see value in the Cape Town-based company's many other businesses.
Naspers has for years scoured the world looking for another early stage technology company that will eventually replicate the success of Tencent, in which it invested $32 million 16 years ago. The company has since put money into a wide range of assets, including Russia's Mail.Ru Group Ltd. and Indian travel agency MakeMyTrip, yet last year's sale of Polish online auction site Allegro for $3.25 billion is one of its few profitable exits.
Bekker said the assumption that Tencent is making money and Naspers' other ventures are loss-making was "illiterate" as profitability doesn't accurately capture the value of the businesses. He said the biggest Internet companies grow faster in both China and the U.S. and that the argument for breaking up technology companies is flawed.
"Amazon, for instance, has made losses at times," Bekker said. "The link between short-term profitability and value is simply not there."
-- Bloomberg News
Drones to deliver medicine in Tanzania
KAMPALA, Uganda -- Drones soon will be used in Tanzania to deliver medicines to health facilities across the East African country, continuing a trend of African governments embracing drone networks to deliver critical services.
Tanzania's government is working with U.S. logistics company Zipline to launch what they call the world's largest drone delivery service for emergency medical supplies.
In the first quarter of 2018, Tanzania's government will begin using drones to make up to 2,000 deliveries per day to more than 1,000 health facilities, Zipline said in a statement Thursday.
The service will be crucial in times of unexpected demand or bad weather and for small but critical orders, said Laurean Bwanakunu, director-general of Tanzania's national medical stores.
Since October 2016, Zipline has been operating a similar drone delivery service in Rwanda for emergency blood deliveries to transfusion clinics.
With its harsh landscapes of desert and rain forest and extremes of rainy seasons and drought, Africa is burdened with what the World Bank has called "the worst infrastructure endowment of any developing region today."
-- The Associated Press
Drop in teen Facebook users forecast
Facebook Inc. is lucky it owns Instagram.
This year, the world's largest social network will see a decline among teen users in the U.S., according to a forecast by eMarketer. It's the first time the research company has predicted a fall in Facebook usage for any age group.
EMarketer predicts 14.5 million people from the ages of 12 to 17 will use Facebook in 2017, a drop of 3.4 percent from the prior year. Teens are migrating instead to Snap Inc.'s Snapchat and Instagram, the photo-sharing app that Facebook owns, the research company said recently in a statement.
Facebook has continued to grow around the world, with more than 2 billion users this year, but younger people are finding it less compelling, said Oscar Orozco, a forecasting analyst at eMarketer. The company needs to attract younger users so they build a Facebook habit that will carry into their adult years, when they become prime customers for Facebook advertising.
"Teens and tweens remaining on Facebook seem to be less engaged -- logging in less frequently and spending less time on the platform," Orozco said. "At the same time, we now have Facebook-nevers, many children aging into the tween demographic that appear to be overlooking Facebook altogether, yet still engaging with Facebook-owned Instagram."
-- The Associated Press
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