Stocks fell broadly in afternoon trading on Wall Street Tuesday, extending a slump for the major indexes as investors continue to worry about the state of the economy.

The S&P 500 fell 1.5% as of 12:01 p.m. Eastern. More than 85% of stocks in the benchmark index fell in the weak opening following a long weekend for the Independence Day holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 562 points, or 1.8%, to 30,532 and the Nasdaq fell 0.3%.

Small-company stocks also fell. The Russell 2000 shed 1.2%.

Energy companies had some of the biggest losses as U.S. oil prices fell 8.1%. Exxon Mobil shed 4%.

Banks also fell significantly, along with bond yields. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set mortgage rates, fell to 2.79% from 2.90% late Friday. JPMorgan Chase fell 2.3%.

European markets were also lower.

Stocks remain in a slump that pulled the S&P 500 into a bear market last month, meaning an extended decline of 20% or more from a recent peak. The market's performance in the first half of 2022 was the worst since the first six months of 1970.

Inflation has been squeezing businesses and consumers throughout the year, but tightened its grip after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The invasion sent oil prices higher globally and sent gasoline prices in the U.S. to record highs. That prompted a pullback in spending from consumers struggling with higher prices on everything from food to clothing.

Lockdowns in China from rising COVID-19 cases have also made supply chain problems worse.

Central banks have been raising interest rates in an attempt to temper inflation. The Federal Reserve has been aggressive in its shift from historically low-interest rates at the height of the pandemic to unusually big rate increases. But, that has raised concerns that the central bank could go too far in raising rates and hitting the brakes too hard on economic growth, which could bring on a recession.

Wall Street has been closely watching the latest economic updates for more clues on how inflation is impacting the economy and whether that could shift the Fed's position on rate hikes. Wall Street will get a closer look at the employment market on Friday when the government releases employment data for June.

Investors are also looking ahead to the next round of corporate earnings for a clearer picture of inflation's impact. Several big companies recently warned that their financial results are being squeezed by inflation, including spice and seasonings maker McCormick.

Newsy is the nation’s only free 24/7 national news network. You can find Newsy using your TV’s digital antenna or stream for free. See all the ways you can watch Newsy here.

A Maryland teenager wants to inspire more girls to study computer science.Grace Brehm, 17, has had a knack for technology and computer science from a young age. She even wrote a book that was released in early July to educate more teens about the field."I think it was just mostly my dad being an engineer, and he was always talking to us about, like, circuits and I was always wondering how things work," Brehm said.She took that interest with her to Notre Dame Preparatory School and joined the cybersecurity club in her freshman and sophomore years, but she was disappointed in the turnout."Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of interest in the club at my school even though there are, like, 600 students that can join the club — only about 10 or 15 students are actually in the club," Brehm said.Just down the road at the all-boys Loyola Blakefield, Brehm said the cybersecurity club is one of the biggest of its kind in the area."It has more than 100 students involved, which was really a big change from NDP's only 10 students," Brehm said.So, in junior year, Brehm joined Loyola's club and became the only girl on the team. She made it her mission to find out why more girls weren't interested in computer science."There just aren't a lot of resources that are aimed towards women. Like, textbooks usually use more stereotypical males, colors are black and red and black and blue, and there are just not a lot of female role models in the field, which is really unfortunate," Brehm said. So, she set out to change that. The teen wrote and published the book "An Introduction to Computer Science for Young People," which shares some basics about the field."On the cover of the book, I chose colors that are both stereotypically male and female -- so, red, blue, purple — and things to try to get everyone involved. I also chose to include the stories of some really important female leaders," Brehm said. "I hope it is definitely going to inspire a lot of people, and hopefully girls, to join the field, and hopefully, they will see me and think that they can do something and that they can make a change." Watch the video above for the full story.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon on Friday announced it has agreed to acquire the vacuum cleaner maker iRobot for approximately $1.7 billion, scooping up another company to add to its collection of smart home appliances amid broader concerns from anti-monopoly and privacy advocates about Amazon's market power and ability to gain deeper insights into consumers' lives.

iRobot sells its products worldwide and is most famous for the circular-shaped Roomba vacuum, which would join voice assistant Alexa, the Astro robot and Ring security cameras and others in the list of smart home features offered by the Seattle-based e-commerce and tech giant.

The move is part of Amazon's bid to own part of the home space through services and accelerate its growth beyond retail, said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. A slew of home-cleaning robots adds to the company's tech arsenal, making it more involved in consumers' lives beyond static things like voice control. The latest line of Roombas use sensors to map -- and remember -- a home's floor plan, offering a trove of data that Amazon could potentially integrate with its other products.

Amazon's Astro robot, which helps with tasks like setting an alarm, was unveiled last year at an introductory price of $1,000. But its rollout has been limited and has received a lackluster response.

Amazon hasn't had much success with household robots, but the iRobot acquisition and the company's strong market reputation provide a "massive foothold in the consumer robot market" that could help Amazon replicate the success of its Echo line of smart speakers, said Lian Jye Su, a robotics industry analyst for ABI Research.

Su said it also illustrates the shortcomings of consumer robotics vendors like iRobot, which struggled to expand beyond a niche product and was in a "race-to-the-bottom" competition with Korean and Chinese manufacturers offering cheaper versions of a robotic vacuum.

On Friday, iRobot reported its quarterly results. Revenue plunged 30% primarily on order reductions and delays, and the company announced it was laying off 10% of its workforce.

Amazon said it will acquire iRobot for $61 per share in an all-cash transaction that will include iRobot's net debt. The company has total current debt of approximately $332.1 million as of July 2. The deal is subject to approval by shareholders and regulators. Upon completion, iRobot's CEO, Colin Angle, will remain in his position.

Noting that iRobot has been running its robotics platform on Amazon's cloud service unit AWS for many years, Su said the acquisition could lead to more integration of Amazon speech recognition and other capabilities into vacuums.

In afternoon trading, iRobot shares rose 19%. Amazon's were down 1.7%.

The deal comes as anti-monopoly advocates continue to raise concerns about Amazon's increasing dominance. The purchase of iRobot is Amazon's fourth-largest acquisition, led by its $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods in 2017. Last month, the company said it would buy the primary care provider One Medical in a deal valued roughly at $3.9 billion, a move that expanded its reach further into health care.

On Friday, groups advocating for stricter antitrust regulations called on regulators to block the iRobot merger, arguing it gives Amazon more access into consumers' lives and furthers its dominance in the smart home market.

"The last thing American and the world needs is Amazon vacuuming up even more of our personal information," said Robert Weissman, president of the progressive consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen.

"This is not just about Amazon selling another device in its marketplace," Weissman said. "It's about the company gaining still more intimate details of our lives to gain unfair market advantage and sell us more stuff."

Landmark antitrust legislation targeting Amazon and other Big Tech companies has languished for months in Congress as prospects for votes by the full Senate or House have dimmed.

Last month, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who heads the Senate Judiciary antitrust panel, urged the the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the One Medical acquisition, in the mold of other critics who've called on regulators to block the purchase over concerns about Amazon's past conduct and potential implications for consumers' health data. Regulators also have discretion to challenge Amazon's $8.5 billion buyout of Hollywood studio MGM, which was completed earlier this year.

Founded in 1990 by a trio of Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticists, including Angle, iRobot's early ventures led to rovers that could perform military and disaster-relief tasks in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The profits from defense contracts allowed iRobot to experiment with a variety of other robots, producing some duds and one huge commercial success: the first Roomba, introduced in 2002, which pioneered the market for automated vacuum cleaners.

The company spun off its defense robotics division in 2016 to become almost exclusively a seller of vacuums and some other home robots, such as the Braava robotic mop. It planned to launch a robotic lawn mower in 2020 but backed off, citing problems tied to the pandemic.

______

AP technology writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island.

Dolly Parton isn't interested in living on through artificial intelligence. The "Jolene" singer was asked about AI technology during a press conference in London where she appeared to promote her upcoming album "Rockstar." "I think I've left a great body of work behind," Parton said, adding she doesn't know how "they'll keep me around." She went on to say that she hopes albums like "Rockstar" will preserve her everlasting legacy, and that she'll "have to decide on how much of that high-tech stuff I want to be involved in because I don't want to leave my soul here on this Earth." With a laugh, Parton said she feels like with that kind of technology she'd be "grounded here forever, so when I'm gone I want to fly with it." "But I'll be around, we'll find ways to keep me here," she said reassuringly, going on to thank the person who asked her the question and saying, "I'm glad to know you still want me around." For the time being, at least, Parton isn't going anywhere. The country music star is set to release her hotly-anticipated album "Rockstar," marking her first-ever rock and roll record featuring collaborations with music legends such as Sir Paul McCartney, Elton John and Stevie Nicks. The album also features collaborations with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus, Lizzo and Pink. Video below: Dolly Parton now holds 10 Guinness World RecordsParton's foray into the rock genre comes after she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 after initially opting to "respectfully bow out," saying in a statement on her Instagram at the time that she didn't feel she'd "earned that right.""Rockstar" will be released globally on Nov. 17.

MOSES LAKE, Wash. (AP) — A prototype, all-electric airplane took its first flight Tuesday morning in central Washington state.

The Seattle Times reports that if the Federal Aviation Administration eventually certifies the small airplane to carry passengers, it could become the first all-electric commercial airplane.

The plane, built by startup Eviation, was built to carry nine passengers and up two pilots. It took off from Moses Lake, Washington, at 7:10 a.m. Tuesday, and landed eight minutes later.

The company's goal is to show such electric planes are viable as commuter aircraft flying at an altitude of about 15,000 feet (4,572 meters).

The plane, designed by engineers in Washington state and Israel, is powered by 21,500 small Tesla-style battery cells.

New electric-vehicle automaker Rivian recalled nearly all of its vehicles, causing a Monday slip of its stock during trading on Wall Street, intensifying concerns from investors.

The company fears that it could have problems meeting production and sales targets for 2023, Reuters reported. And the specific details regarding the latest large recall are a source of concern for investors, with a fastener on the vehicles that might not have been tightened correctly in the factory, CNBC reported.

The company announced late on Friday that it needed to recall over 12,000 vehicles, which amounts to just about every electric vehicle the company has produced so far.

Included in the recall are Rivian's R1T pickup and R1S SUV manufactured through September. Some EDV delivery fans produced by Rivian are also included in the recall, which was produced for Amazon.

The company estimates that only about 1% of the 12,212 total vehicles included in the recall have the defect, but that didn't stop the company's stock from dropping over 10% during Monday trading.

The fastener defect is related to the front suspension, which the company says may not have been fully tightened in some vehicles. If the fastener isn't tight, it could affect front-end alignment causing vibrations and noise and influencing the steering feeling.

A science, technology, engineering and math program at a Maryland high school is helping a student pursue her dream of one day becoming an astronaut.

Freshman Sarah Gerst walks the hallways of Mercy High School, keeping her inspiration close for a career that might one day lead to her dream job.

"I would love to be an astronaut," Sarah said.

Sarah is already on her way. Since the summer before fifth grade, she has been going to space and aviation camps at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

"Honestly, everything just speaks to me about it. I love these camps with my whole heart. I've always been interested in space and space exploration since I was very young," Sarah said.

She hopes to get some flight hours soon as part of the Civil Air Patrol. Mercy is helping young women pursue careers in the STEM field with Project Lead the Way, a nationally recognized science and engineering program that focuses on biomedical sciences.

Freshmen students, like Sarah, are learning about forensics.

"Solving a crime, they've been doing DNA analysis, they've been working through it, they've been looking at hair follicles, fingerprints," said Rena Collector, coordinator of Project Lead the Way.

It's classwork that keeps her grounded now, but Sarah is looking ahead at NASA's next mission, thinking about the Artemis crew.

"I think it's really great that they are sending women and also people of color to the moon. At Mercy, we are all about empowering women, and that's a beautiful thing," Sarah said.

Watch the video above for the full story.

Electric vehicles are on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada this year, but it's not just about cars and trucks that we see on major roadways. The farming equipment industry is moving into the space.

John Deere is revealing multiple major pieces of farm equipment that will be powered by electricity, and the company's CEO says even though farmers make up a small percentage of the total population, advances in agriculture are essential to food production for everyone.

John May, the CEO of John Deere said to a crowd at CES 2023, “Why should you care about farmers when they represent less than 2% of the U.S. population?”

“You will not find two industries that have a larger impact on our world, and all of us, than agriculture, and construction,” May said.

As TechCrunch reported, John Deere's ExactShot sensor and robotics-based fertilizer application system would help increase the speed of repetitive tasks making the process more efficient, according to the company.

And the idea is also to have less waste while farming, leading to a more sustainable agriculture industry.

John Deere also presented a new excavator that is powered by a Kreisel battery and would reduce emissions and noise while farming.

May said at a keynote address, “You might want to think of them as robots that precisely execute jobs.”

“They’re real and are being used on farms today. If this sounds like a lot of technology, it is," he said.

On April 3, 1973, history was made when Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first ever cellphone call — to a rival.

Cooper was standing on New York's Sixth Avenue when he hoisted the 2.5-pound prototype to his ear and dialed up Joel Engel of AT&T-owned Bell Laboratories.

Cooper famously said, "I'm calling you from a cellular phone, a real cellular phone, a handheld, portable, real cellular phone."

“There was silence at the other end of the line,” Cooper told Bloomberg in 2015. “To this day, Joel doesn’t remember that call, and I’m not sure I blame him.”

At the time, mobile phones were a futuristic concept that had yet to be fully realized. The first commercially available mobile phone was still years away, and the technology was still in its infancy. But Cooper's call marked a significant leap forward in the development of mobile communication.

The call was made on a prototype that would eventually become the first commercially available mobile phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x. It was clunky, heavy, and about the size of a shoe box, measuring 10 inches long.

The DynaTAC was also incredibly expensive, costing nearly $3,995 (equivalent to roughly $28,000 today). But despite its size and cost, it paved the way for the modern smartphone, and its impact on the world of technology cannot be overstated.

In the years that followed Cooper's historic call, mobile phones continued to evolve and become more sophisticated. It wasn't until the 1990s that the modern cellphone emerged, as its size and price tag shrank.

Today, 100% of American adults ages 18-50 — and 97% of all American adults — say they own a cellphone of some kind, according to a 2021 study by Pew Research Center.

They're an essential part of our everyday lives, enabling us to stay connected with friends, family, and colleagues no matter where we are in the world.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first cellphone call, it's worth taking a moment to reflect on just how far we've come in just half a century.

From the bulky, expensive devices of the past to the sleek, touchscreen smartphones of today, the evolution of the mobile phone has been nothing short of remarkable.

And with new innovations and breakthroughs on the horizon, it's clear that the mobile phone will continue to play a critical role in shaping the way society communicates for many years to come.

SEE MORE: How to tell if someone has been snooping in your phone

---

Trending stories at Scrippsnews.com

Democrats have quickly pushed legislation through the House that they say positions the U.S. to better compete with China economically by strengthening the domestic semiconductor industry and shoring up strained supply chains.

The bill passed by a vote of 222-210. Criticizing China has become a bipartisan playbook in Washington. But, in this case, Republicans panned the measure as "toothless" and short of what is needed to hold China accountable for a range of actions.

The nearly 3,000-page bill includes massive investments designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., but Democrats have also tucked in other priorities that have raised GOP concerns.

As Reuters pointed out, a vote on the bill happened just hours after the Beijing Olympics' opening ceremony. Congress has been critical of the International Olympic Committee for awarding China the opportunity to host the Games.

The need to increase manufacturing for chips is high.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a group of reporters, "Every day we delay we fall farther behind and that increases our domestic national security risk."

The House has now taken the next step in authorizing nearly $300 billion for research and development, which would include $52 billion in semiconductor subsidies which are key to making automobiles and computers.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas highlights some of the year's innovations in technology, showcasing robots that have been developed to handle everyday tasks.

One robot that's already emerged in the South Korean market follows you around, hauling your luggage and even taking it to your room, and it doesn't even expect a tip.

All it needs is the guidance of a human being.

Bellhops may not be too impressed, and restaurant bussers may want to throw water at another new robot that wants to do their job for them.

That robot can navigate around restaurants, collecting plates, glasses, and other dirty dishes.

The model goes for around $18,000 and is already being put to use in restaurants in China. 

Another robotics company hopes you'll be so fed up with shoveling snow that you'd shell out $3,000 to $4,000 for the Snowbot — the world's first smart snow-clearing robot.

You use beacons to set a perimeter and let the snowblower do its thing. Eighty of them are being beta tested this winter.

A South Korean company has also created a prototype of a robot designed to autonomously move through a parking garage and charge electric vehicles.

However, this is the first prototype, so the company doesn't have a timeframe for when you might see one of them at a garage near you.

All of these are examples of how the next generation of robots — empowered by artificial intelligence — are offering potential solutions for tasks more consequential than fixing us a cup of coffee.

Jason Bellini at Newsy first reported this story.

How your food gets to you and where it comes from is shifting.

“It pretty much goes back to the 1950s and 60s. It was pizza companies and Chinese food companies that were trying to get an edge on other types of food delivery,” said Amanda Belarmino, an assistant professor at the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Tech has made that easier for restaurants of every kind.

“It’s actually one of the oldest businesses to not be impacted by technology, but that’s changing very quickly,” said Alex Canter, CEO and co-founder of Nextbite. “The way that e-commerce came in and changed retail and people shop online now and order products and services on Amazon or through Instagram, whatever is being targeted to them, the same thing is happening for food.”

Nextbite was one of the dozens of companies showcasing their business at the Food on Demand Conference, a space for cutting edge food delivery tech.

“This is the fourth year of the Food on Demand Conference. It’s actually been growing substantially year over year.”

“Online ordering has taken such a big place in the priority for restaurants when they’re looking at technology,” said Hadi Rashid, the co-founder of Lunchbox.

“People are having this desire for restaurant-quality food. There also sometimes comes this desire to not leave the house at the same time,” Belarmino said.

She has done research on the sharing economy and consumer behavior with meal delivery services.

“More and more restaurants feel that they need to be on the apps in order for their visibility, just like we saw that happen with social media,” she said.

The food delivery market has more than tripled since 2017, according to stats from management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The food delivery global market has a worth of more than $150 billion.

“We’ve seen a rapid marketplace acceptance,” Belarmino said.

It’s not just your favorite brick and mortar restaurant that’s having to adapt. The doors have opened to a whole new space for ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants.

“There’s a new type of restaurant called a virtual restaurant, which is essentially a restaurant that only exists online. Which means there's no physical storefront or building you can walk into and order or eat at a place under this name,” Canter explained.

Nextbite has a portfolio of these delivery-only restaurants. They partner with brick and mortar restaurants across the U.S. to use their kitchen space and staff to operate these virtual restaurants.

“The rent is fixed, the lights are already on, the staff is already in the kitchen, whether you're doing one brand or multiple brands,” he said.

There’s a growing share of ghost kitchens, too. A similar concept, but they operate out of industrial kitchen spaces that might host multiple virtual brands.

“Ghost kitchens in the 2020s are kind of what food trucks are 10 years ago,” Belarmino said.

She said the food delivery industry may still have some adjusting to do.

“We might see some changes in fees for the consumer. In a lot of places, there's no delivery fee or a dollar delivery fee, and that may start to increase so that restaurants can get a little more profit back for it,” she said.

All this change comes at a time when restaurants have been working to get back on their feet from the pandemic.

“This is a very exciting time for the restaurant industry because there's so much innovation happening, but it's also a very devastating time. Lots of restaurant owners are struggling,” Canter said.

“This is going to be the future of food delivery and restaurants,” Belarmino said.

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. — For U.S. Army veteran Laura Evans, the world of computers wasn’t one that she ever pictured herself in.

“I am Latina and my family is from Colombia. I'm a first-generation American,” she said. “No one in my family is a software engineer and no one in my family was in the military. So, I've always kind of felt like I’ve translated my life, throughout my life.”

After 15 years, having reached the rank of Staff Sergeant, Evans decided to try something new.

“I heard about Operation Level Up and it really piqued my interest,” she said.

Operation Level Up is run by Galvanize, a technology education company. They help train service members transitioning out of the military and into the world of high tech.

“One thing I try to do for my students is really highlight for them, like what their military experience has done for them and how to leverage that,” said Galvanize’s Caroline Virani.

Speaking with us at Galvanize’s New York City offices, Virani said the company is doing something else, too. They are specifically focusing on women veterans to get them into high-tech jobs.

“It's definitely a huge, huge need that we see and is part of the work that we're doing,” she said.

In the technology sector, women make up only about 28% of the workforce. In the U.S. military, enlisted men far outnumber women, who only make up about 16% of the Armed Forces.

“Women are underrepresented in the tech industry anyways. Women also are less represented in the military,” Virani said. “So, we're kind of dealing with both of those things at once.”

Both are also things Laura Evans has experienced firsthand.

“To me, it was more building up that confidence as a woman in tech and as a female veteran,” Evans said. “You know, veterans are capable of so many things in so many different industries, in so many different facets, that we can't even imagine.”

She graduated from Operation Level Up and went on to work as a software engineer and is now a program manager.

“I kind of did a very, very sharp right turn into a completely different industry,” Evans said, “and I haven't looked back since and I've been so happy honestly.”

It’s something she hopes other women veterans can experience, too.

For those who didn't learn what a perennial grain crop is as a kid, it's like the grass you see on the side of a road that comes back year after year, except it's capable of growing food humans can eat. 

The agriculture industry faces an immense challenge.

It needs to feed a growing population, but the process of providing that growing population tends to take an environmental toll on our planet. So scientists are using new technology and innovation to come up with solutions.

Kernza is essentially a cousin of wheat. It tastes sweet and nutty.

And its roots store carbon in the ground to help prevent soil erosion and water runoff. Unlike annual grain crops like wheat, oats, and corn, Kernza doesn't need to be tilled or replanted every year.

But Kernza wasn't born this way. Lee DeHaan and his team at The Land Institute in Kansas selectively bred it. And if there were an award for best plant parent, DeHaan would win gold.

"I grew up on a farm in Minnesota, and I heard about the idea of perennial crops when I was still a kid and wanted to develop a perennial grain crop," DeHaan said. "Every plant gets labeled and identified, and a couple of months ago, I took a small piece of leaf, and we essentially do '23andMe' for plants."

The process helps predict how each plant will perform, how tall it'll be, how much seed it'll grow, and how large its seeds will be.

"Wherever humans have gone and done agriculture, we've seen a massive loss of soil carbon and soil quality," DeHaan said. "That carbon is now in the atmosphere, and part of the solution to climate change is to get that carbon back in the soil."

DeHaan says it'll take decades to transform the developing crop from a specialty crop to a large-scale one, but for the plant parent whose devotion has sustained over 20 years, it's a dream DeHaan plans to see through.

Lauren Magarino at Newsy first reported this story.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Uber is utilizing selfie technology to make sure both its drivers and passengers wear face masks to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The ride-sharing company has been requiring drivers and riders to wear masks since May, but only required drivers to use its technology to verify their face coverings.

“Before starting to drive passengers or deliver food, they are asked to take a selfie showing their mouth and nose are covered,” Uber wrote in a press release.

Now, the requirement is being expanded to passengers as well. If a driver reports that a rider isn’t wearing a mask, the rider will be required to take a selfie with their face covered before they’re able to take another trip with Uber.

“With the addition of this new feature, one driver’s feedback can help ensure the safety of Uber for the next driver,” said Uber.

The mask verification feature will roll out to the U.S. and Canada by the end of September, and across Latin America and other countries after that.

Uber assured that the mask verification tool detects the mask as an object in the photo and does not process biometric information.

“As always, riders and drivers are free to cancel a trip, without penalty, if the other person isn’t wearing a mask,” Uber wrote. “As more and more riders and drivers take their ‘second first trip,’ we hope this increased accountability provides more peace of mind.”

The additional safety measures are part of Uber's efforts to rebuild a service that has seen ridership plunge by 56% in the company's most recent quarter, The Associated Press reports.

WASHINGTON —

Federal officials say they will allow operators to fly small drones over people and at night, potentially giving a boost to commercial use of the machines.

Most drones will need to be equipped so they can be identified remotely by law enforcement officials.

The final rules announced Monday by the Federal Aviation Administration “get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages,” said FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson.

Drones are the fastest-growing segment in all of transportation, with more than 1.7 million under registration, according to the Transportation Department.

However, the widespread commercial use of the machines has developed far more slowly than many advocates expected. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos once predicted that his company would use drones to deliver goods to customers’ doorsteps within five years, but that prediction is already off by two years.

There have been several tests and limited uses. United Parcel Service said last year that it received approval to operate a nationwide fleet of drones and has already made hundreds of deliveries on a hospital campus in North Carolina.

Also last year, Google sister company Wing Aviation won FAA approval for commercial drone flights in a corner of Virginia.

And this past August, Amazon got similar FAA approval to deliver packages by drones. The company is still testing the service and hasn’t said when shoppers will see deliveries.

For drone supporters impatient with the pace of adoption, regulatory hurdles are a leading complaint. Currently, operators who want to fly a drone over people or at night need a waiver from the FAA.

The new rules will require that drones used at night include flashing lights that can be seen up to three miles away. Operators will need special training. Small drones flying over people cannot have rotating parts capable of cutting skin.

The rules covering flights over people and at night will take effect in about two months. They finalize proposed rules issued last year.

Related video: 2 arrested after drone crashes into prison

All drones that must be registered with the FAA will be required to have equipment that broadcasts their identification, location and control station or be operated at FAA-recognized areas. So-called remote ID was a requirement impose by Congress at the urging of national security and law enforcement agencies.

Drone manufacturers will have 18 months to begin making drones with remote ID, and operators will have one year after that to start using drones with remote ID.

A nearly human-sized robot grabs a dish out of a crowded sink with its gripper arms and neatly adds it to the dishwasher. It then sets the table, placing a flower into a vase, and pours a glass of red wine.The robot, Samsung's Bot Handy, is the company's vision for "a better new normal," as more people work, cook, eat and drown in dishes at home than ever during the global pandemic. As seen in a video shown at the all virtual 2021 Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, Bot Handy is, well, handy around the house; not only to pick up some unfinished chores but to remind you of upcoming meetings and to stretch your legs if you've been sitting for too long.It's only in development for now — no pricing or release date has been announced — but Samsung said it's part of a greater effort to make technology to simplify your life at home. "The technologies in your home need to work harder to help you adjust to this new normal," the company said in its session description on the CES website.Companies big and small showed off their new innovations at the closely watched tech trade show, which kicked off on Monday, many with features tied to life during the pandemic. There's MaskFone, a face covering marketed as having a built-in N95 filter, earbuds and microphone to make calls, and a wearable for the ears called Cove that claims its gentle vibrations regulate anxiety and stress.For the kitchen, manufacturer Kohler showed off voice control features for its sinks and other fixtures, so homeowners can turn on faucets without ever touching them. UK startup Handsteco touted sinks with built-in artificial intelligence to guide people through hygiene techniques in hospitals, offices and public spaces.The pandemic tech theme took a step outside the home, too. Riding on the growth of online deliveries, lock manufacturer Yale announced it's now shipping its smart delivery box to keep packages safe from porch pirates when they arrive. A delivery person places a package in the storage box, which automatically locks, and homeowners receive a notification.Video: COVID-19 etiquette robot reminds shoppers to social distance and wear a maskWhile some of these products, like Bot Handy, may seem a bit gimmicky, ABI Research analyst Jonathan Collins said there's definitely money to be made from items that help automate household tasks. The market research firm found the smart home market in 2020 grew 6.7% over 2019 to $88 billion. However, that's $11 billion below pre-pandemic expectations.Even products that weren't specifically pandemic-related may still tap into the way we live now. Flashy new TVs, a mainstay of CES events, seemed all the more fitting this year as we're stuck at home, glued to the TV and ever-more conscious of our surroundings. LG, for example, drummed up excitement over its new 55-inch transparent TV, the latest company to show screens you can see through when off.Meanwhile, a Panasonic hair dryer that you don't need to move — a built-in oscillator does all the work for you — also generated some buzz, at a time when many people have not gotten a proper haircut or blowout in too long.People watch CES events to get a sense of where technology is going in the years ahead, but this year's event is arguably about the industry catching up to the ways the pandemic reshaped our lives in the past year.With vaccines on the horizon, it's unclear how much longer we'll be largely stuck at home, but these tech companies seem to be betting that even if the pandemic ends, our habits won't entirely change.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the lives of Americans forever.

In a recent poll by USA TODAY/Suffolk University, 60% of 1,000 people surveyed agreed.

Eighty-five percent polled said the terror attacks had a big impact on their generation, while nearly two-thirds said it had a big impact on their own lives.

From technological advances to changes in national security, exactly what has changed in the 20 years since America came under attack?

National Security

Just 11 days after terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the Department of Homeland Security was created.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was appointed as the first director of the department, which was tasked with overseeing and coordinating a national approach to protect the U.S. against terrorism and future attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security now consists of more than 240,000 employees who are responsible for aviation and border security, cybersecurity and other preparedness measures.

Technology

Technology has seen its fair share of changes in the last 20 years.

"Government agencies and private companies have beefed up their disaster preparedness and telecommunications providers have strengthened their digital infrastructure," wrote Darrell West, senior fellow at Brookings' Center for Technology Innovation and its director, Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, in an online article entitled "How technology and the world have changed since 9/11."

Since 9/11, "the United States realized the importance of mobile communications during terrorist attacks and natural disasters," the article says.

"Steps have been taken to safeguard vital networks, which is a huge advancement since 9/11 when thousands of people in New York, and in the area of the Pentagon bombing had to run and walk for miles to what appeared to be a safe space for shelter," the experts continued. "Back then, we didn’t even have voice-activated internet-enabled navigational tools that could advise pedestrians and drivers of road closures, or other potential road or walking hazards."

In October 2001, the U.S. Patriot Act was enacted, which gave the government more authority to investigate potential threats through surveillance of phone calls, emails and text messages.

"With the advent of smartphones and the prevalence of electronic communications, public authorities also developed new tools for monitoring particular individuals and tracking their physical whereabouts via geolocation data," West and Lee's article says. "Twenty years after the attack, the country continues to debate where to draw the line between promoting personal privacy and protecting national security."

It's easy to wonder if the world's technological advancements had happened sooner, whether 9/11 could have been prevented.

Travel

Remember the days when you could arrive at the airport 30 minutes before your flight and head straight to your gate?

In 2001, that's what travel looked like. Families could come through security to send off loved ones and, even if you didn't have photo ID in your carry-on bag, blades and liquids were allowed.

But on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 hijackers were able to board four different domestic flights and carry out the attacks that killed thousands. That's when air travel changed forever.

The attacks changed the nation "automatically, immediately, into one obsessed, in big ways and small, with protecting its security," historian James Mann wrote in 2018. "The way that 325 million Americans go through airports today started on Sept. 12 and has never gone back to what it was on Sept. 10."

Tougher security measures were introduced when air travel resumed on Sept. 14, 2001, but the comprehensive Aviation and Transportation Security Act was passed into law by Nov. 19, 2001.

Here are some of the changes to air travel in the U.S. since 2001:

• All passengers over 18 need valid government-issued identification to fly, even on domestic flights. Those identifications are checked against passengers' boarding passes.

• The No Fly List was born — a branch of the Terrorist Screening Database noting people banned from boarding commercial aircraft into, out of and inside the U.S.

• The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was introduced in November 2001 and took over all airport security functions.

• Potential weapons like blades, scissors and knitting needles are no longer allowed on board, and airport employees are now better trained to detect weapons or explosives. In 2006, a foiled plot to detonate liquid explosives on multiple transatlantic flights led to the restrictions of liquids, gels and aerosols in carry-on luggage that still exist today.

• Also in 2006, the TSA started requiring passengers to remove their shoes to screen for explosives.

• In March 2010, full-body scanners began to be installed in U.S. airports in addition to metal detectors.

• In July 2017, TSA began requiring all personal electronics larger than a cellphone to be placed in bins for X-ray screening.

In addition, bulletproof and locked cockpits became standard on commercial passenger aircraft within two years of the 9/11 attacks. The Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act became law in 2002 and, in 2003, weapon-carrying pilots started boarding U.S. commercial flights.

Journalism

Michelle Wright, a reporter for sister station WTAE in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, remembers dropping off her son for his first day of preschool on Sept. 11, 2001, and holding her 1-year-old baby at home as she watched the first plane hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

"I was stunned," she said.

By the time she got to work, two other planes had crashed — another at the second tower of the World Trade Center and a third at the Pentagon — and there were reports of a plane down in Shanksville, less than two hours away. She and reporter Mike Clark rushed there, but had limited information about whether all of the crashes were related.

Wright and Clark were some of the first media on the scene.

"We just started going live," she said. "That shift turned into a nonstop week of being there. We immediately knew the significance."

Wright said the WTAE crew stayed in hotels and had to go to local stores for clothes and toiletries. They worked from about 3 a.m. until 8 p.m. each day in a world that didn't have social media and in an area of very poor cell reception.

"The public was glued to the television," she said. "People were just really eager to figure out what was going on."

Wright said in her career as a journalist, she can't remember a time when the information she was reporting was more important. Many broadcast stations dropped commercials during that time to make sure that reporters could relay the latest details.

"People were just waiting to find out what was happening to our country," she said.

Wright acknowledged that many relied on cable networks, morning newspapers and radio for breaking news in 2001. Today, however, many people would turn to their phones for instant information.

And, while social media often houses opinion, speculation and misinformation, it allows the public more access to reporters in today's world.

If an attack of that size took place today, the public may not have found out when a plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, but from a tweet from a passenger saying their plane had been hijacked.

Instead of circulating stories about passengers rushing the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 to confront hijackers before the plane, video or photos of the actual encounter may have been posted online in today's world.

Camera footage would also show a clearer picture of the horror of the attacks, the victims and the aftermath.

In 2001, television news crews made editorial decisions not to show footage of people leaping or falling to their deaths, while networks eventually stopped showing reruns of planes striking the towers to prevent children from thinking the attacks were happening again.

Social media doesn't have that type of editorial censorship.

"As panic-inducing as it was and as tragic an experience it was historically in this country, had the current technology been around in 2001, I think you would have had something far more heart-wrenching," said David Friend, author of "Watching the World Changes: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11."

Wright said her experience covering the story of United Flight 93 taught her that passing along information to viewers allows them to make decisions, but also make a difference.

"Knowledge is power," she said. "And it's empowering."

She'll also never forget the moment the loved ones of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 were bussed to the crash site for the first time. Without cell phones capturing footage or even cameras rolling, members of the community lined roughly 30 miles of roadway from where the families were housed to the strip mine where the crash occurred to offer their condolences and support.

"Everyone at the site just froze," she said. "It was a powerful moment. All of our lives were changed."

The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.

The Senate recently passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will allocate $11 billion for transportation safety. One part of that relates to new technology added to vehicles to help prevent drunk driving deaths.

“The DADSS technology is novel technology, completely different than the conventional breathalyzer everyone is familiar with,” said Robert Strassburger, president and CEO of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety.

The Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety, or DADSS for short, is a different type of detection system than what you might be used to seeing.

“This technology is intended to be working in the background, installed in the vehicle at the time the vehicle is made,” Strassburger said.

He oversees the development of this tech.

“By breathing naturally or by touching the steering wheel or the starter button, the system would measure your blood alcohol concentration,” he said.

If your BAC, or blood alcohol concentration, was over a certain threshold, the car would respond in a number of possible ways: either give a warning, not start, or not change gears.

“This is very high-risk research,” he said.

And after 20 years of helping develop this technology, Strassburger said more work and research still needs to be done.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that about 28 people in the U.S. die each day in drunk driving crashes. In 2019, more than 10,142 people lost their lives.

“Prior to moving the vehicle, I can see that saving a lot of our young kids, or those one-time offenders,” Dr. Tricia Hudson-Matthew, associate professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, said on the different technologies being developed for drunk driving prevention.

Dr. Hudson-Matthew is a substance abuse expert and sees how technologies that can monitor a number of factors, from speed to lane changing to slurred speech, can help.

“They’re looking at the ways of picking up, detecting behavioral patterns in the car, which will be interesting,” she said.

This new technology could be in every car manufactured in just a few years. The Senate recently passed a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that includes language on automobile safety. The bill will go to the House next.

“It’s multisectoral, and by that I mean it deals with a number of infrastructure sectors at once in a sort of holistic way. That is in contrast to what Congress normally does,” said Rick Geddes, founding director at the Cornell University Program in Infrastructure Policy. “What we have is a mandate from the Senate for the National Highway and Safety Administration to develop the technology. And to look at the technologies that are out there and develop a standard within three years so that new cars would have to have some standard, which is to be determined.”

Economist Alan Gin said something like this does come at a cost.

“It’s been estimated this infrastructure package is going to add about $250 billion to the federal debt over a 10 year period,” said Gin, an economics professor at the University of San Diego.

So who will pay for this new technology in every car? Strassburger said while they don’t have an exact cost just yet, it will probably be up to the manufacturers what cost is implemented on consumers, if any.

“It will be their decision what to charge, how to charge it,” he said.

DADSS continues to develop the tech to quantify the amount of alcohol in a driver’s blood.

“Our quantification will be linkable to the gold standard, which is a hospital blood draw,” Strassburger said. “Our job ultimately is to produce the best, most accurate, most reliable, best-performing sensor as possible.”

And after decades of research, Strassburger is seeing the results.

“What is really rewarding is after being involved in this program for so long, I can see the finish line. I can see we’re going to finish and that is really great,” he said.

Imagine going to work, talking to your co-workers, and collaborating in an office space without actually leaving your dining room table.

“It literally just feels like you're in another world,” said Renji Bijoy, the founder of Immersed.

Bijoy and the rest of the team at Immersed are creating an office away from the office, so to speak.

“Say you have your laptop and your headset, you can go to your couch, your porch, on the road, and you'll have all the screens around you,” he explained.

It’s more than just a room. Inside this headset, you can customize your workspace -- coffee shop, conference room, you name it.

“This is called the space lounge. It’s just a really cool space lounge environment,” Gavin Menichini, another employee at Immersed, demonstrated.

And you have the flexibility to have multiple screens with the flick of a hand.

“Kind of like Jedi Star Wars with the force, I can click and grab these monitors and I can move them around left and right. I can pinch and expand them to make them bigger, make them smaller,” Menichini said.

So why VR for work? Beyond remote capabilities, Bijoy said it boils down to productivity and focus.

“We have sort of this, I guess, short attention span world that now all of us and our kids now live in, and we feel like Immersed is going to retrain the human brain so that we can get people to be more focused,” he said. “I feel like we don't have to look at technology as this negative connotation or this thing that's kind of screwing up and frying our brains. It’s something that can enhance humans.”

The virtual reality industry is gaining traction. Tech companies like Facebook are investing in research.

“Back in 2012 through 2014, there was a lot of hype around VR, but then there were a lot of technological obstacles. People were getting headaches and things like that, and a lot of people rushing that space,” Bijoy said.

The hardware, Bijoy said, is catching up.

“This is like in the next second-ish years as far as glasses being a thing. You can put them on to teleport to an office.”

In a way, the pandemic accelerated the possibilities.

“When the pandemic hit, more people were just exploring virtual office-type solutions,” Bijoy said.

For leaders like Aaron Miri, two-dimensional communication may not be enough.

“Tech, although it's a great augmenter, is not a replacement for that one to one communication, but VR can negate that and really eliminate that 2D screen in front of you because you really do feel like someone is sitting across from you talking to you,” said Aaron Miri, Chief Information Officer at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School.

He says VR is critical moving forward.

“These tools are critical for us because it allow us to experiment and talk to each other and give a different level of dynamic engagement just like we’re doing here, as opposed to sitting at home behind a two-dimensional screen,” he said.

Beyond productivity, Immersed has a way for you to collaborate with coworkers in real-time, too.

“If I wanted to join Caleb, all I have to do is hover over his name, and then I can press the ‘join room’ button if Caleb is in an open collaboration room. Simple as that. It's going to spawn me into his room with Caleb,” Menichini explained.

Bijoy said they do face some setbacks.

“There are a lot of barriers to entry for even just getting a user to get a headset, or just turning on the app and getting into the app together with their team,” he said.

However, he believes there are endless opportunities for VR as an added option for businesses to collaborate and have location flexibility.

“We 100% anticipate there being a hybrid approach moving forward. We don’t think things will snap back just like to the way it was before COVID, where employers don't allow people to work from home. I think this past year and a half has enabled people to see the freedom that's possible through working from home,” Bijoy said.

The packing and shipping of a third COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in the U.S. is underway. Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot will start going into Americans’ arms in a matter of days.

Nearly 4 million doses are going out just this week. That's all of the current supply.

The number of doses states are getting is proportional to population, like with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Johnson & Johnson’s CEO says he's confident the company will be able to deliver on its promise of 100 million doses by June, and up to 1 billion by the end of the year.

“Johnson &Johnson built its vaccine from a virus that causes the common cold, known as adenovirus,” said Dr. Leo Nissola, a COVID Act Now medical advisor.

The science behind Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine and the Moderna and Pfizer two-shot vaccines is different, but not new.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine takes a small amount of genetic material from the coronavirus and combines it with a weakened version of a common cold virus called adenovirus. That combination doesn't make us sick.

Adenovirus technology was also used to make Ebola and tuberculosis vaccines.

Pfizer and moderna use mRNA technology, which uses a genetic code to make the antigen protein specific to COVID-19. This code tells our body to make the antigen itself, prompting an immune response.

“The messenger RNA platform allows for scientists and drug makers to update the coding on these vaccines sooner, faster and at a different pace than adenovirus vectored vaccine, so in that sense, should we need a boost, our immune shot very likely will come from those mRNA based platforms,” said Dr. Nissola.

Pfizer and Moderna are already testing a third, booster shot to protect against COVID-19 variants.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson may have the advantage of one and done for now, since it only requires a single dose. It can be stored for months in a refrigerator.

All three were found to be highly effective in preventing severe disease and death.

“It makes me hopeful that by summer, we will be able to vaccinate millions and millions of people and have a little bit more normalcy back,” said Dr. Nissola.

The J&J vaccine is also expected to boost vaccination equity since it's only one dose and is easier to store.

As drought- and wind-driven wildfires have become more dangerous across the American West in recent years, firefighters have tried to become smarter in how they prepare.

They’re using new technology and better positioning of resources in a bid to keep small blazes from erupting into mega-fires like the ones that torched a record 4% of California last year, or the nation’s biggest wildfire this year that has charred a section of Oregon half the size of Rhode Island.

There have been 730 more wildfires in California so far this year than last, an increase of about 16%. But nearly triple the area has burned — 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers).

Catching fires more quickly gives firefighters a better chance of keeping them small.

That includes using new fire behavior computer modeling that can help assess risks before fires start, then project their path and growth.

When “critical weather” is predicted — hot, dry winds or lightning storms — the technology, on top of hard-earned experience, allows California planners to pre-position fire engines, bulldozers, aircraft and hand crews armed with shovels and chain saws in areas where they can respond more quickly.

With the computer modeling, “they can do a daily risk forecast across the state, so they use that for planning,” said Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for Cal Fire, California’s firefighting agency.

That’s helped Cal Fire hold an average 95% of blazes to 10 acres (4 hectares) or less even in poor conditions driven by drought or climate change, she said. So far this year it's held 96.5% of fires below 10 acres (4 hectares).

Federal firefighters similarly track how dry vegetation has become in certain areas, then station crews and equipment ahead of lightning storms or in areas where people gather during holidays, said Stanton Florea, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

In another effort to catch fires quickly, what once were fire lookout towers staffed by humans have largely been replaced with cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from morning fog. There are 800 such cameras scattered across California, Nevada and Oregon, and even casual viewers can remotely watch wildfires in real time.

Fire managers can then "start making tactical decisions based on what they can see,” even before firefighters reach the scene, Tolmachoff said.

Fire managers also routinely summon military drones from the National Guard or Air Force to fly over fires at night, using heat imaging to map their boundaries and hot spots. They can use satellite imagery to plot the course of smoke and ash.

“Your job is to manage the fire, and these are tools that will help you do so” with a degree of accuracy unheard of even five years ago, said Char Miller, a professor at Pomona College in California and a widely recognized wildfire policy expert.

In California, fire managers can overlay all that information on high-quality Light Detection and Ranging topography maps that can aid decisions on forest management, infrastructure planning and preparation for wildfires, floods, tsunamis and landslides. Then they add the fire behavior computer simulation based on weather and other variables.

Other mapping software can show active fires, fuel breaks designed to slow their spread, prescribed burns, defensible space cleared around homes, destroyed homes and other wildfire damage.

“It’s all still new, but we can see where it’s going to take us in the future when it comes to planning for people building homes on the wildland area, but also wildland firefighting,” Tolmachoff said.

Cal Fire and other fire agencies have been early adopters of remote imaging and other technologies that can be key in early wildfire detection, said John Bailey, a former firefighter and now professor at Oregon State University.

Some experts argue it’s a losing battle against wildfires worsened by global warming, a century of reflexive wildfire suppression and overgrown forests, and communities creeping into what once were sparsely populated areas. Climate change has made the West hotter and drier in the past 30 years, and scientists have long warned the weather will get more extreme as the world warms.

Yet, firefighters' goal is to replicate the outcome of a fire that started Monday in the canyon community of Topanga, between Los Angeles and Malibu.

It had the potential to swiftly spread through dry brush but was held to about 7 acres (3 hectares) after water-dropping aircraft were scrambled within minutes from LA and neighboring Ventura County.

What firefighters don’t want is another wildfire like the one that ravaged the Malibu area in 2018. It destroyed more than 1,600 structures, killed three people and forced thousands to flee.

In another bid to gain an early advantage, California is buying a dozen new Sikorsky Firehawk helicopters — at $24 million each — that can operate at night, fly faster, drop more water and carry more firefighters than the Vietnam War-era Bell UH-1H “Hueys” they will eventually replace.

It will also soon receive seven military surplus C-130 transport aircraft retrofitted to carry 4,000 gallons (15,140 liters) of fire retardant, more than three times as much as Cal Fire’s workhorse S-2 air tankers.

For all that, firefighters’ efforts to outsmart and suppress wildfires is counterproductive if all it does is postpone fires in areas that will eventually burn, argued Richard Minnich, a professor in Riverside who studies fire ecology.

“No matter how sophisticated the technology may be, the areas they can manage or physically impact things is small,” he said. “We’re in over our heads. You can have all the technology in the world — fire control is impossible.”

Working with wildfires is more realistic, he said, by taking advantage of patches that previously burned to channel the spread of new blazes.

Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter who now heads Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, also said firefighters need to adopt a new approach when confronting the most dangerous wind-driven wildfires that leapfrog containment lines by showering flaming embers a mile or more ahead of the main inferno.

It's better to build more fire-resistant homes and devote scarce resources to protecting threatened communities while letting the fires burn around them, he said.

“We have these amazing tools that allow us to map fire spread in real time and model it better than weather predictions," Ingalsbee said. “Using that technology, we can start being more strategic and working with fire to keep people safe, keep homes safe, but let fire do the work it needs to do — which is recycle all the dead stuff into soil.”

Associated Press writers Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

Google is taking a step back, recently announcing they won’t track users as they browse the internet after ending support for third-party cookies.

These cookies have been allowing digital advertising and ad tech to thrive.

”That ad is placing a third-party cookie in your browser, so what's happening is that Chrome and other browsers that are doing this, are taking that cookie and they are reselling it to someone else. So that’s what they're saying they are going to stop doing,” said Donald McLaughlin, a cybersecurity consultant.

He said while Google is not going to support third-party cookies, they are still keeping some of your information.

“They're not going to stop tracking you based on your searches or email,” McLaughlin said.

The more information of ours that’s out there, the bigger the push to keep it out of those companies’ hands.

“We see a movement towards more privacy,” he said.

“Surveillance capitalism has been growing over the last 20 years. The technological abilities to frankly spy on people and track their every movement are really profound,” said Dr. Jen Golbeck, Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland.

So what does this mean for your privacy?

“This move by Google suggests some of the big players are starting to think maybe we don't need to track every individual in every way we technically can,” Dr. Golbeck said. “There may be ways to make the money they want and not keep all that individual information”

One concept is to group people together, rather than targeting individuals.

“The idea here I think is to create groups of customers instead of individually identifiable tracking opportunities so they can pre-segment these customer groups for advertisers based on their buying behaviors,” said Melissa Akaka, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Denver.

For ad companies, it’s going to change the way they present those advertisements. For brands, it could change their customer relationships.

“Companies are going to have to really think through who their customers are and how they can build longer lasting relationships with them,” Akaka said.

Although Google is making this change, not many other big tech companies are following suit.

“Apple is really the only other big tech company we see pushing privacy in a really serious way, and frankly more seriously than Google is,” Dr. Golbeck said. “Facebook hasn't really shown an interest in reducing that kind of individual knowledge, that's really the cornerstone of their business at this point.”

She said Google is simply getting ahead of future policy.

“I don’t think the tech companies care what people want. They care about making money. But if people want their privacy protected and they're going to push for regulation that affects the company, they're going to respond in that way and I think they see that coming. There is this new public understanding and push for more privacy,” Dr. Golbeck said.

Search teams have been using drones, sonar, highly sensitive microphones and a range of other new and established technologies to help search for people in the oceanside condominium building near Miami that collapsed into a smoldering pile of rubble.

Will any of it help?

About 160 people were still unaccounted for Friday amid fears that the death toll of at least four could go much higher.

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES HAVE PROVEN USEFUL IN SUCH COLLAPSES?

The most common, time-tested technologies used to try to locate survivors in rubble are acoustic detection and sniffer dogs.

Aerial drones equipped with cameras and other sensors can be useful to get a close look at the collapse, especially in the earliest stages of a search to help rescuers know where it's safe to enter. Data from smartphones and telecommunications carriers can show if a missing person was in the area — and cellphone-detecting gadgets can pick up a phone’s signals, as long as it hasn’t been destroyed.

Joana Gaia, a professor of management science and systems at the University of Buffalo, said it's common for search teams to use radar and microwaves that bounce off objects and can identify people and objects. She said it's similar to the technology in cars that beeps when you're close to hitting something backing up.

That can be more useful than cell phone geolocation, especially when speed is of the essence. In a disaster situation, data is only useful if it can be interpreted quickly.

“Responders are operating on a speed rather than accuracy standpoint,” she said. “They think, ‘If I think a body is there I don’t care how accurate the signal is, I’m just going to try to go save the person.’”

WHAT ARE MIAMI RESCUERS USING NOW?

Search and rescue teams worked through the night hoping to detect any sounds coming from survivors.

The crews, which include some 130 firefighters working in teams, are approaching the pile from above and below as they search for any signs of life in what had been a wing of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida.

They've said they are using sonar, cameras and sensitive microphones. Microphones, though, won't pick up cries for help if a trapped, unseen victim is unconscious but alive, because there won't be any.

Neighboring communities have shared their drones, and at least one company is shipping a ground robot from California to help with the search as crews work to tunnel underneath the building.

“Once you get into that subterranean realm, ground robotics become incredibly useful,” said David Proulx, a vice president of unmanned systems at Teledyne FLIR, a defense contractor that specializes in thermal sensing. “It can safely go where humans can’t.”

DO THEY STILL USE DOGS TO SNIFF OUT SURVIVORS?

Search and rescue operations use two types of dogs on disaster scenes, both trained to detect human scent, said Mark Neveau, a former FEMA presidential appointee and disaster expert. First, there are dogs trained to pick up the scent of live bodies, but as the operation shifts to a recovery operation, cadaver-sniffing dogs take the field.

A drawback with dogs is that they tend to tire with time, and can get confused.

Chemical tracing devices are being developed that also pick up on scents that humans can’t detect, but these haven’t replaced dogs yet. These are portable labs that can analyze chemical traces and gas. They use sensors to detect moisture, carbon dioxide, or any chemicals emitted through breathing, like acetone or ammonia, said the University of Buffalo's Gaia.

“It’s almost like a mechanical sniffing dog, that can be trained to smell things we can’t,” she said.

WHAT OTHER TECHNOLOGIES COULD PROVE USEFUL IN THE FUTURE?

Drones and ground robots are already used in search operations, but the most sophisticated machines are still expensive, hard to come by and rarely as fast as the skilled human rescuers controlling them. That could change as they become smarter, more nimble and a standard part of search and rescue operations.

“It will be part of the kit that first responders have,” said Proulx, of Teledyne FLIR. “The operation of those drones and robots will be progressively more autonomous. They will be much more independent and operate as teammates rather than tools.”

One technology available to the responders — but not on the scene Friday — is a microwave radar device developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the Department of Homeland Security that “sees” through concrete slabs, detecting the signatures of human respiration and heartbeats.

A prototype saved four lives after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and it was used two years later in Mexico City. Its developers say it provides an edge over acoustics, the usual method for detecting people in rubble, because disaster sites tend to be noisy.

“Noise doesn’t affect us and we can see through smoke,” said Adrian Garulay, the CEO of SpecOps Group, a Sarasota, Florida company that sells the technology under license. Although it can penetrate up to eight inches of solid concrete it cannot see through metal, he said. It uses a low-powered microwave signal about one-thousandth the strength of a cellphone signal and evolved from NASA’s efforts to develop low-cost, small spacecraft radios.