Technology

Several companies are said to be considering bids for Twitter.

National

As Buyers Circle, Could Twitter Be Better Off As A Nonprofit?

1:54pm October 05, 2016

by Laura Sydell

Disney, Google and others are said to be considering buying Twitter. It's got baggage — lackluster ad sales, abusive trolling — but also millions of users. What if Twitter focused on a public mission?

National

Would Twitter Be Better Off As A Nonprofit?

12:24pm October 05, 2016

by Laura Sydell

Twitter is struggling to earn a profit and please investors. Companies including Disney and Alphabet are said to be considering bids for it. But would Twitter be better off as a nonprofit?

Asked whether Russia is trying to hack the U.S. election, CIA Director John Brennan told the Washington Ideas Forum on Sept. 28 that the CIA tries to look at a country's capabilities, its track record "and determine whether something that certainly looks

Amid Deteriorating U.S.-Russia Relations, Questions Grow About Cyberwar

7:42pm October 04, 2016

by Mary Louise Kelly

Might the recent collapse of U.S.-Russia cooperation on Syria open the door to a possible escalation in cyberwar? Both sides now have more to gain — and lose.

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National

Google Goes All-In On Hardware With 'Pixel' Phone, Home Assistant, VR Headset

4:30pm October 04, 2016

by Alina Selyukh

The tech giant has been outmaneuvered in consumer products, namely by Amazon's Echo and Apple's iPhone. Google is now betting on its artificial intelligence progress to stage a comeback.

Data Comm technology gives air traffic controllers and pilots the ability to transmit flight plans, clearances, instructions, advisories, flight crew requests and reports through a digital message service.

National

Air Traffic Controllers And Pilots Can Now Communicate Electronically

5:44pm October 03, 2016

by Brian Naylor

Texting has long become a common way for people to talk with each other. Now text-based messaging is becoming a way for air traffic controllers to communicate with aircraft pilots.

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National

Google Announces Improvements To Translation System

4:30pm October 03, 2016

by Aarti Shahani

Google says that with certain languages, its new system — dubbed Google Neural Machine Translation — reduces errors by 60 percent. For now, it only translates from Mandarin Chinese into English. But the company plans to roll it out for the more than 10,000 language pairs now handled by Google Translate.

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A Revolution That Didn't Happen: Personal Rapid Transit

4:30pm October 03, 2016

by Joe Palca

In 1975, the Personal Rapid Transit in Morgantown, W. Va., was expected to usher in a new age of public transit nationally. It didn't. Still, the aging system is getting a $100-million upgrade.

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Patrick Meier (center, in cap) flies a drone in Nepal after the earthquake in 2015. Meier and his team were able to to capture detailed images of damage around the capital, Kathmandu. He believes using this technology will make crisis mapping even more ef

World News

When Disaster Strikes, He Creates A 'Crisis Map' That Helps Save Lives

9:21am October 02, 2016

by Hannah Bloch

"You can't protect what you can't map," says Patrick Meier. He pioneered the field of crisis mapping during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and now focuses on the use of robotics for humanitarian purposes.

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We May Die, But Our Tweets Can Live Forever

5:16pm October 01, 2016

A new exhibit explores what people leave behind online after they die. BuzzFeed senior writer Doree Shafrir discusses what it was like to attend her own "digital funeral."

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After a drug bust earlier this month, police in Hartford, Conn., became ill because of the heroin and fentanyl that was seized.

#NPRreads: Two Looks At America — And One Look At America's Pastime

11:43am October 01, 2016

Correspondents, editors and producers from NPR's newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading.