Innholdsfortegnelse for #272 i Techlife News

Police have arrested a brother-and-sister team suspected of conducting an ambitious, years-long campaign of hacking that targeted thousands of accounts belonging to some of the leading political and business figures in Italy. The motive of the sprawling campaign, which carried Masonic overtones, remains a mystery. But those in the crosshairs included Matteo Renzi when he was Italian premier, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and much of the cream of Italy’s elite. “In the eight months we have been investigating, we haven’t registered any evidence of extortion activity, or attempts to (use hacked data) to obtain influence,” Roberto Di Legami, who directs the Italian national police division that specializes in combatting internet and other communications network crimes, told in a telephone interview Tuesday. Police said that it was an assist…

Cellphone and Wi-Fi coverage is now being provided for commuters at each of New York City’s many underground subway stations, one year ahead of schedule. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office has announced that service for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless customers will be available across the city’s subway system beginning Monday. Early delivery of the service was spurred by Cuomo’s call to accelerate the project and modernize the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the beginning of last year. MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast says he knows connectivity is a big issue for customers and the transit agency is “thrilled” to launch the vital services so far ahead of schedule. Transit Wireless invested more than $300 million in the project, which comes at no cost to commuters and taxpayers.…

The outgoing Obama administration on Monday blacklisted five Russians, including a senior law enforcement official close to President Vladimir Putin, as the two nations’ feud over U.S. election hacking escalated. The founder of WikiLeaks, publisher of the election-related emails, denounced last week’s U.S. intelligence report about the hacking as a “press release.” The economic sanctions against the five Russians are not related to the U.S. intelligence agencies findings, officials said, and instead are connected to a 2012 U.S. law punishing Russian human rights violators. Americans are now banned from doing business with the men and any assets they may have in the United States are now frozen. Britain blames the two others for the London murder of a former Russian spy. Forty-four Russians have now been subjected to U.S. sanctions…

The company behind messaging app Snapchat will place its European base in Britain in a vote of confidence in the economy following the vote to leave the European Union. Los Angeles-based Snap Inc.’s decision runs counter to that of tech giants like Apple and Google, who have chosen lower tax bases like Ireland. It also comes amid public frustration over alleged tax avoidance schemes of multinational corporations. Snap, which has 75 staff members in Britain, will pay U.K. corporation tax on its international profits. Claire Valoti, general manager of Snap Group in the U.K., says that the company believes in the U.K.’s creative industries. Snap has 150 million users a day worldwide and is planning a U.S. stock flotation with a reported valuation of up to $25 billion.…

With an ongoing taste for space, moviegoers propelled the NASA drama “Hidden Figures” past “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” at the box office. “Hidden Figures,” which tells the true story of three black female mathematicians integral to the early success of the American space program, sold $22.8 million in tickets over the weekend, enough to knock “Rogue One” from the top spot it held for three weeks. The “Star Wars” spinoff finished second with $22 million, according to studio tallies released Monday. “Hidden Figures” opened in limited release over Christmas, but it found its first big chance to reach audiences when it expanded by more than 2,400 locations Friday. The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater…

A foreign government may have been behind a cyber breach of health insurance company Anthem Inc. that compromised the records of more than 78 million consumers, investigators said. They declined to identify the hackers or the foreign government. Social Security numbers, birthdates and employment details of customers were accessed in the breach, officials said. Cybersecurity experts say the data could help a foreign government build a profile of people they’re targeting for espionage. “Intelligence has become a data-mining exercise,” said Avivah Litan, a vice president and security analyst for Gartner Research. “The intelligence officer of 2017 needs a lot of data to find targets and get to the targets that they’re interested in.” Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer, has agreed to make $260 million in improvements to its information…

They’re called “atmospheric rivers” and they can dump massive quantities of Pacific Ocean water on California, carrying it through the air from as far away as Hawaii. Here’s a look at the weather phenomenon that has swelled the state’s rivers, flooded vineyards, dumped snow and rain on the Sierra Nevada and raised the risk of mudslides on hills scorched by last summer’s wildfires. WHAT IS AN ATMOSPHERIC RIVER? Atmospheric rivers are long and narrow bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky. They occur globally but are especially significant on the West Coast of the United States, where they create 30 percent to 50 percent of annual precipitation and are linked to water supply and problems such as flooding and mudslides, according to the…

Few people realized it at the time, but the world shifted fundamentally a decade ago when Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from Apple’s bag of technological tricks. “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs declared as he paced across a San Francisco stage. It obviously wasn’t an empty boast. We all know now that Jobs’“magical product” has reshaped culture, shaken up industries, put computers in billions of pockets and made it possible to do just about anything with a few taps on a screen. Besides its then 3.5-inch touch screen, the first iPhone featured a browser for on-the-go web surfing and built-in apps to check email and get directions. GOING MOBILE Apple has sold more than 1 billion iPhones since its debut,…

Waymo, Google’s self-driving car division, will start testing its new fleet of minivans on public roads in California and Arizona later this month. The minivans, built in collaboration with Fiat Chrysler, are Chrysler Pacifica hybrids outfitted with Waymo’s own suite of sensors and radar. Waymo and FCA announced their partnership in May. In a speech at the Detroit auto show, CEO John Krafcik revealed that Waymo built the sensors, radar and software for the new minivans itself. Krafcik said the company felt the system would work better if it was developed specifically for self-driving instead of using off-the-shelf parts. “A single integrated system means that all the different parts of a self-driving car work together seamlessly,” Krafcik said. Waymo also was able to significantly lower the cost of the system,…

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says the country needs to be able to return fire during a cyberattack, including the ability to disable equipment that’s being used to target Germany. Hans-Georg Maassen told German news agency dpa in an interview published Tuesday that it’s necessary “for us not just to be purely defensive.” Maassen, who heads the BfV agency, said Germany “needs to be able to attack the enemy in order to stop him from attacking us further.” The BfV is responsible for counter-espionage and doesn’t operate outside Germany, so acquiring offensive electronic warfare capabilities would mark a departure for the agency. Maassen’s boss, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, recently proposed an overhaul of Germany’s security apparatus in response to the threat of terrorism and state-sponsored hacking.…

IMPRESSIVE TVS, LAPTOPS AND DRONES ALL FEATURED As classic sci-fi shows like The Jetsons have demonstrated, many of us have long been convinced of various technologically impressive ways in which people will be living their day-today lives in some distant future. Well, that future probably looked a little less distant at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which was held from January 5th to 8th in Las Vegas. Wall-sized TVs, self-driving cars, guard robots and voice-controlled home appliances were all shown off at this year’s event - and, of course, there was plenty for Apple fans to get excited about, too. Here is a good look at many of the highlights. THINNESS AND AFFORDABILITY WITH NEW PHONES AND LAPTOPS You’ve likely already garnered the impression that there was no shortage of…

Moonlight The story of a young man trying to find himself and grapple with his own sexuality over the course of three life-defining chapters. FIVE FACTS: 1. The director Barry Jenkins stated that the three actors who played Chiron never actually met during production. Despite the fact they were all playing the same character, he wanted them to develop their own individual personas. 2. This film is based on an unproduced play by MacArthur Fellow Tarell Alvin McCraney called In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. 3. The entire film was shot over just 25 days during October and November 2015. 4. Naomi Harris, who plays Paula, is the only actress who appears in all three chapters of the film. 5. Moonlight has been nominated for six Golden Globes, including Best…

Weekend warriors, take a victory lap. People who pack their workouts into one or two sessions a week lower their risk of dying over roughly the next decade nearly as much as people who exercise more often, new research suggests. Even people who get less exercise than recommended have less risk than folks who don’t break a sweat at all. “If someone is completely inactive, the best thing they can do is even getting out and taking a walk,” said Hannah Arem, a health researcher at George Washington University. For people who think they don’t have enough time for small amounts of exercise to matter, the results are “encouraging or perhaps motivating,” she said. She had no role in the study, but wrote a commentary published with the results in…

Vermont’s new Republican governor said Monday he would stick with his Democratic predecessor’s long-term goal of getting 90 percent of the energy needed in the state from renewable sources by 2050. But Gov. Phil Scott, highlighting the construction of a new solar power project in the parking lot of a Montpelier food cooperative, said he believed new technology would be needed to make it happen. “When you look at projects like this and the way we’ve changed over the last decade in that regard I think it can be accomplished, but we’re going to have to have some help in technology changes,” Scott said. While helping to inaugurate the “Solar Canopy” developed by the Waterbury-based SunCommon, Scott said the business fits in well with the top goal of his new…

Samsung Electronics Co. said last week that its profits in the last quarter of 2016 surged 50 percent to the highest level in more than three years, despite the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. Analysts had expected Samsung’s profits to surge thanks to its mainstay semiconductor business, but the result surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts. The semiconductor division cashed in on strong demand and a tight supply for microchips during the September-December period, likely contributing to more than half of its quarterly earnings. In its earnings preview, Samsung said it posted 9.2 trillion won ($7.8 billion) in operating profit, up from 6.1 trillion won a year earlier. It was the biggest quarterly income since the third quarter of 2013. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a figure of 8 trillion won.…

Fresh off a record year for U.S. auto sales, carmakers meet in Detroit next week to show buyers what’s coming next - and ponder their own future under a Trump administration. More than 40 new vehicles will debut at the North American International Auto Show, which is one of the largest shows in the U.S. After record sales of 17.55 million in 2016, U.S. sales of new cars and trucks are expected to cool off a little this year, but demand remains strong. Even if they can count on U.S. buyers, automakers aren’t sure what to make of President-elect Donald Trump. Trump has criticized Ford, General Motors and Toyota for making vehicles in Mexico and exporting them to the U.S. He is threatening a 35-percent border tax, which could throw…

Yahoo will adopt a new corporate identity and slash the size of its board if the proposed $4.8 billion sale of its digital services to Verizon Communications goes through. The company plans to change its name to Altaba Inc. after it turns over its email, websites, mobile apps and advertising tools to Verizon. The new name is meant to reflect Yahoo’s transformation into a holding company for investments in China’s e-commerce leader, Alibaba Group, and Yahoo Japan that are worth about more than $40 billion combined. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, co-founder David Filo and four other directors currently on the company’s 11-member board will resign after the planned sale to Verizon closes. Verizon is expected to retain Yahoo’s brand under its ownership. But the Verizon deal has been jeopardized by…

Two of Boston’s most venerable institutions are teaming up to create an online database of hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic Church documents to help people trace their family histories. The New England Historic Genealogical Society and the Archdiocese of Boston on Tuesday announced the project that was first talked about two years ago. It’s the first time a significant number of sacramental records from any U.S. diocese have been digitized on this scale, the organizations said. The plan is to digitize and index records from 1789 to 1900 from all the parishes in the archdiocese, even those that no longer exist. They are about 5,000 volumes to digitize, some as many as 500 pages, said Thomas Lester, the archivist and records manager for the archdiocese. Lester noticed when he…

Lemonade Beyonce Beyonce releases a new album with a more somber tone than her past work. As powerful and independent as she is, Beyonce is coming to her audience and showing them that she is not immune to pain. FIVE FACTS: 1. The movie iteration of Lemonade features several spoken-word segments, which are adaptations of poems written by Somali-English poet Warsan Shire. 2. Although Beyonce is credited as the writer and producer of every track, Wynter Gordon also helped with the creation of “Sorry”, “Hurt Yourself” and “Daddy Lessons”. 3. The song “Hold Up” has a total of 15 writers credited to it, including Diplo, Ezra Koenig and Father John Misty. This amount of writers is due to the fact the song uses parts of a Soulja Boy song. 4.…

Spacewalking astronauts hooked up fancy new batteries on the International Space Station’s sprawling power grid. NASA reported that all three lithium-ion batteries were up and running, a successful start to the space agency’s long-term effort to upgrade the aging solar power system. Before venturing out, Commander Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson got a hand from a robot that took care of most of the grunt work - Dextre, a hulking machine with 11-foot arms. Remotely operating Dextre outside the 250-mile-high lab, flight controllers in Houston spent the past week replacing decade-old, nickel-hydrogen batteries with the new ones. Handling all those batteries - each about half a refrigerator in size - was cumbersome and time-consuming. On Friday, it was up to Kimbrough and Whitson to wire up three of the six…

Officials in Beijing have announced a new environmental police squad to root out illegal burning in the city, the latest government response to the widespread public anger over China’s persistent problems with smog. Beijing’s acting mayor, Cai Qi, said at a meeting Saturday (07) that the force would target open-air barbecues, garbage incineration and the burning of wood and other biomass, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. Cai announced several other measures, including a target of cutting the use of coal by 30 percent in 2017, and shutting down 500 higher-polluting factories and upgrading 2,500 more. About 300,000 high-pollution vehicles will also be restricted from entering the capital starting next month, he said. Beijing and dozens of cities in China spend many winter days under a thick, gray haze,…