Innholdsfortegnelse for #279 i Techlife News

Samsung’s product showcase Sunday is notable for what’s missing: a new flagship phone. Instead, Samsung is spotlighting new Android and Windows tablets after delaying the Galaxy S8 smartphone - an indirect casualty of the unprecedented September recall of the fire-prone Note 7 phone . The new tablets will carry the Galaxy brand and come with many of the Note 7’s features, including the S Pen stylus and screens with rich colors. Consumers will have to wait at least a few weeks longer for details on Samsung’s next major smartphone. That’s partly so that Samsung wouldn’t have to share the stage with its smartphone rivals at the Mobile World Congress trade show, which begins Monday in Barcelona, Spain. The delay also gives Samsung more time to make sure it has done…

The arena has all the features that a professional sports venue needs: stands, warm-up areas for teams, massive screens for spectators and a broadcast platform for commentators. But what distinguishes this new Las Vegas arena is its dozens of video game consoles. The 15,000-square-foot e-sports venue slated to open last Friday will host competitive video game tournaments. It’s part of a trend that the casino industry hopes will attract the millennial crowd, the 15- to 34-year-olds who are becoming majority spenders in today’s economy but aren’t necessarily interested in traditional gambling. “Las Vegas needs to consistently reinvent itself to remain relevant to the up-and-coming generation,” said Seth Schorr, CEO of Fifth Street Gaming and a member of the board of directors of Millennial Esports, the company behind the arena. “We’ve…

SpaceX said it will fly two people to the moon next year, a feat not attempted since NASA’s Apollo heyday close to half a century ago. Tech billionaire Elon Musk - the company’s founder - announced the surprising news. Two people who know one another approached the company about sending them on a weeklong flight just beyond the moon, according to Musk. He won’t identify the pair or the price tag. They’ve already paid a “significant” deposit, he noted. Musk said SpaceX is on track to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA in mid-2018. This moon mission would follow about six months later, by the end of the year under the current schedule, using a Dragon crew capsule and a Falcon heavy rocket. The moon mission is…

Netflix employees were personally affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban people entering from seven Muslim countries, the company’s CEO said Tuesday. Reed Hastings has been a critic of the temporary travel ban, which Trump hopes to revive in a revised form this week, and told The Associated Press on Tuesday that some of his co-workers had gotten caught up in it. “We had Iranian and Iraqi employees who were unable to come to work,” he said on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry’s biggest annual gathering held in Barcelona, Spain. Netflix was among dozens of tech companies that publicly opposed the travel ban out of fear that it would stifle innovation. U.S. politics has become as gripping as a TV drama but Hastings…

Yahoo is punishing CEO Marissa Mayer and jettisoning its top lawyer for the mishandling of two security breaches that exposed the personal information of more than 1 billion users and already have cost the company $350 million. Mayer won’t be paid her annual bonus nor receive a potentially lucrative stock award because a Yahoo investigation concluded her management team reacted too slowly to one breach discovered in 2014. Yahoo’s general counsel, Ronald Bell, resigned without severance pay for his department’s lackadaisical response to the security lapses. The penalties disclosed Wednesday in Yahoo’s annual report represent the latest toll exacted by the biggest security breaches in internet history. Yahoo already lowered the sales price of its digital services to Verizon Communications by $350 million in the fallout.…

FUTURE The eponymous fifth studio album from rapper Future features production by DJ Khaled, The Beat Bully and Southside alongside others. Throughout the track list Future plays homage to his roots, experimenting with a mixture of 808 boom and warped synths over lyrics that give listeners a glimpse into what shaped him into Atlanta’s trap king. FIVE FACTS: 1. Future was born Nayvadius Wilburn in Atlanta, Georgia but has now legally changed his name to Nayvadius Cash. Other aliases he goes by are Future Hendrix, Astronaut Kid and Super Future. 2. The first artist to give Future (as Astronaut Kid) his big break was Ludacris, who took Future’s hook for Blueberry Yum Yum, a song on Ludacris’ Red Light District album. 3. Future’s favourite rappers are Kanye West and Lil…

The Apple of today hasn’t yet shown much indication of emulating its co-founder Steve Jobs and his streak of world-changing products, but it’s still proving to be a tough act to beat. The main reason: Before Jobs died in 2011, he left behind the iPhone - a product with such a devout following that it will likely spin off billions in profit for the foreseeable future. Even if Apple fails to come up with “the next iPhone,” whatever that might be. Apples shares already have climbed by nearly 20 percent during the first two months of the year, lifting its stock to record highs. The recent gains helped foster a mostly upbeat gathering of shareholders Tuesday during Apple’s annual meeting at its Cupertino, California, headquarters.…

A rocket carrying a classified U.S. satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office has been launched from California. The Atlas 5 rocket lifted off at 9:49 a.m. Wednesday and roared away into a clear sky over Vandenberg Air Force Base. All systems were going well when the launch webcast concluded about five minutes into the flight, as is customary during such missions. The satellite dubbed NROL-79 is described only as a national security payload for the NRO. The once-secret office operates an array of intelligence-gathering satellites. The launch was conducted by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and the Air Force’s 30th Space Wing.…

As WikiLeaks thrust itself into the heart of America’s electoral contest last year, the group’s chief spokesman tiptoed out of spotlight, stepping down from his job in a little-noticed move that leaves Julian Assange as the only public face of the radical transparency organization. So discreet was journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson’s departure as WikiLeaks’ official representative that even in his native Iceland some fellow reporters didn’t know his role had changed. Hrafnsson’s Wikipedia page still describes the 54-year-old as WikiLeaks’ spokesman, and some news outlets still try to reach him for comment when Assange is in the headlines. “I’m not the WikiLeaks spokesman anymore,” Hrafnsson confirmed in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Iceland on Tuesday. He said he was still doing work for WikiLeaks - and had chatted…

China, which tightly censors the internet, called on Thursday for a new model for governing the web based on rules and order rather than the unfettered access seen in democratic societies. Speaking in Beijing, foreign ministry and cyberspace affairs officials made China’s latest argument for being a global leader in managing the internet. Unveiling the country’s first cyber policy paper, they also stated that China would beef up its cyberwarfare capacities to defend against hacking and other foreign threats. “Cyberattacks, cyber espionage, surveillance have become major issues confronting all countries,” said the coordinator for the foreign ministry’s cyber affairs division, Long Zhou. China has long defended its right to impose own standards in cyber fields such as censorship, data privacy and business regulation in the name of national security. The…

Samsung’s fiasco with its fire-prone Note 7 phone has pushed its rival LG to take additional precautions with its next smartphone. Samsung recalled millions of Note 7 phones after dozens overheated and caught on fire . Samsung blamed numerous problems with its batteries and announced tighter quality controls and more rigorous testing. LG said it’s doubling the separation between the battery’s positive and negative chambers to reduce the risk of a short. Samsung’s investigators found that overly thin separators were partly to blame for the Note 7 problems. LG also redesigned the phone’s interior to separate the two main sources of heat - the main processor and the display driver - and turned other components into heat sinks to dissipate heat. “We started by placing these two (sources) as far…

Twitter is adding more tools to curb abuse on its service as part of its ongoing effort to protect users from hate and harassment. Among other things, the service will attempt to identify offenders on its own, even if no one has reported them first. It is the second time in three weeks the company has released new ways to root out abusive material on its service. It’s a sign Twitter is getting more serious about the issue; it’s faced criticism for not doing more in the decade since its founding. Twitter’s effort to automatically flag abusive accounts is a new twist. Previously, the company would take no action until users reported suspected abuse. Not that long ago, in fact, Twitter required the targets of abuse to make such reports…

Fed up with paying for cable the traditional way? You may soon be able to subscribe to it over the internet with ... YouTube. The Google-owned site, known for cat videos and do-it-yourself makeup tutorials, is the latest company to offer a version of cable that looks and feels more like Netflix. Dish, Sony and AT&T already have internet cable alternatives , and Hulu has one coming soon. None of these have yet been huge hits. YouTube is hoping its expertise in recommendations and search makes it stand out. Dubbed YouTube TV, the new service will cost $35 a month for access to about 40 channels when it launches in the next few months, similar to rivals. But it will be initially limited to a few cities where it has…

AT&T’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner may be getting an easier path to approval after the chief telecommunications regulator says it isn’t likely to review the deal. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is telling The Wall Street Journal that the agency likely won’t be involved because of changes in the deal’s structure. Last week, magazine publisher and TV station owner Meredith announced plans buy Time Warner’s lone TV station for $70 million. AT&T’s takeover of that station would have meant an FCC review. FCC spokesman Neil Grace confirmed Pai’s comments. The Justice Department still needs to approve the merger. But the FCC was considered the tougher cop. It must determine a deal is in the public interest, a broader criteria than antitrust. Pai has been taking more industry-friendly…

This year’s Academy Awards are behind us, but J.J. Abrams already has predicted Mark Hamill will be in the running for an Oscar next year for his turn as Luke Skywalker in the next Star Wars film. Abrams rebooted the franchise with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in 2015 and is producing the sequel, “The Last Jedi.” He tells the New York Daily News he and others will be upset if Hamill doesn’t win an Oscar. Hamill briefly appeared as Skywalker in “The Force Awakens,” but didn’t have any dialogue. “The Last Jedi” hits theaters in December.…

Comedian Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, “Get Out,” did even better in its first weekend in theaters than initially projected. The micro budget thriller pulled in $33.4 million - about $3 million higher than what was estimated on Sunday by the studios. It easily topped the box office and unseated “The Lego Batman Movie” from first place. The “Lego Movie” spinoff earned $19.2 million in its third week in theaters. Lionsgate’s “John Wick: Chapter Two” took the third-place spot with $9.4 million, bringing its total to $74.8 million after three weeks, while “The Great Wall” added $9.1 million in week two. In fifth place, “Fifty Shades Darker” grossed $7.8 million, bumping the picture past the $100 million mark domestically. The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday,…

Snapchat parent Snap Inc. started its official bid to go public last Halloween. Now investors get to learn whether they’re in for a trick or a treat. Snap passed its first major test on Wall Street on Wednesday, when the company priced its initial public offering of 200 million non-voting shares at $17 each. That’s above the expected range of $14 to $16. Snap is expected to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol “SNAP.” Snap’s IPO is one of the most anticipated for a technology company since Twitter’s stock market debut in 2013. That, in turn, had created the biggest stir since Facebook took its first bow on Wall Street in 2012. Twitter is now valued at $11 billion, while Facebook is $395…

Jeff Regan was born with underdeveloped optic nerves and had spent most of his life in a blur. Then four years ago, he donned an unwieldy headset made by a Toronto company called eSight. Suddenly, Regan could read a newspaper while eating breakfast and make out the faces of his co-workers from across the room. He’s been able to attend plays and watch what’s happening on stage, without having to guess why people around him were laughing. “These glasses have made my life so much better,” said Regan, 48, a Canadian engineer who lives in London, Ontario. The headsets from eSight transmit images from a forward-facing camera to small internal screens - one for each eye - in a way that beams the video into the wearer’s peripheral vision. That…

Uber’s CEO is known for battling with critics and local governments, but a video of an argument with one of his own drivers has him pledging to change his ways. In the dashcam video obtained by Bloomberg News, CEO Travis Kalanick is seen discussing Uber’s business model with driver Fawzi Kamel. The driver argues that Kalanick is lowering fares and claims he lost $97,000 because of it. “I’m bankrupt because of you.” Kalanick lashes back. “You know what? Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own s---. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck,” he says, then slams the door. After the video went public, Kalanick issued a statement to Uber employees. In it, he apologized to Kamel, as well as Uber’s drivers. “This…

Billionaire Warren Buffett, famously leery of technology companies, has loaded up on Apple shares after noticing how inseparable iPhone users are from the gadget once they get one in their pocket. Buffett said on CNBC that Berkshire Hathaway now holds about 133 million shares of Apple after buying yet more of the company’s stock this year. That’s more than double stake that Berkshire revealed earlier this month. Buffett spoke to CNBC at length after releasing his annual letter to shareholders over the weekend. Buffett’s aggressive buying spree caught many off guard because he has long said it’s too difficult to predict which tech companies will prevail. In this case, perceptions matter. Buffett sees Apple as more of a consumer products maker than a tech company, which brought the iPhone maker…

Twitter says a record 3 million tweets were sent about President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. The top tweeted moment of Trump’s speech was the Republican’s call to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. That was followed by Trump’s salute to Carryn Owens, the widow of Senior Chief William “Ryan” Owens, who was killed last month in Yemen. Google says the top trending question users asked Tuesday night was “who wrote Donald Trump’s speech?” People also wanted to know how tall the president is and whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican. The Twitter numbers make it the most tweeted speech by a president to Congress in the relatively short history of the platform. The previous mark was 2.6 million tweets for…

While smartphones get top billing at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, it’s the quirky, under-the-radar products that are getting a lot of the visitors’ attention. Here’s a glimpse of some of the gadgets and apps displayed by start-up companies this week at the fair, the world’s largest for wireless technology. CUTE ROBOT Living in Seoul, Jong-Gun Park looked around him one day and decided his fellow South Koreans needed some help expressing their emotions. “We are so busy these days, always running to and from work, taking our kids to school, studying, that we no longer find the necessary time to interact with each other,” said Park, CEO of the company Circulus. Enter Pibo, the friendly dinner table ice-breaker. Pibo is a charming little robot whose goal is…

Apple has begun to build upon the idea of creating its very own original, scripted TV shows and movies that are set to compare with the likes of streaming services such as Netflix. The recent announcement of Apple TV shows such as Carpool Karaoke, Vital Signs, and Planet of the Apps has led to further developments in making more content available via the music streaming service Apple Music by the end of 2017. Unlike these shows, however, the new content will not have any relation to music, and instead, Apple executives have compared potential new shows with the likes of HBO’s Westworld and Netflix’s Stranger Things, meaning that we could be in for something very special. These rumors began last year when it was claimed that Apple met with TV producers and Hollywood…

Remember all those crazed Pokemon Go seekers that roamed our city streets, crowded our public parks or ventured into rural areas in search of virtual-reality pocket monsters popping up on their smartphones? It seems like ages ago, but it was only last summer that the game developed by the San Francisco-based company Niantic turned into a global phenomenon, sending legions of players into a worldwide frantic hunt of popular Asian cartoon characters. Today? Not so much. Those stunning scenes of urban stampedes are basically over, and user numbers have reportedly plummeted, but that doesn’t mean that Pokemon Go was just a fad, according to Niantic CEO John Hanke. “I think you should go check your data. Look at the top grossing apps on Google Play and Apple and check the…

Hacksaw Ridge Based on the real-life story of WWII American Army medic Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield) who served during the Battle of Okinawa and refused to kill, becoming the first man in history to receive a Medal of Honor without firing a single shot. FIVE FACTS: 1. The battle scenes took nineteen days in total to shoot. 2. The film had a 14-year path from idea to production. 3. To make the battle scenes look more realistic, director Mel Gibson purchased two fifteen hundred dollar handheld cameras. 4. This is the first film directed by Mel Gibson since Apocalypto in 2006. 5. Desmond T. Doss’ son was moved to tears at the screening because of the accurate portrayal of his father. Moonlight Following the life of a young black…

When you’re deep in a video game, the last thing you want to do is leave home. If only you could take the game with you for your commute to work or your bus ride to school, or to liven up your lunch hour. Nintendo’s new Switch console tries to address that by letting you play it anywhere. You simply yank the Switch out of its docking station. It functions as a tablet with a built-in display, so you don’t have to worry about finding a TV. Games typically work without a persistent internet connection. Once you’re back home, just slide it back into the docking station to play games on a big-screen TV. The Switch works like a traditional game console when you want that; it offers portability when…

Maple syrup doesn’t get that rich flavor and color in an instant. It’s a long process from tree to bottle. But an improved technology could keep maple sugarers from working late into the night boiling sap into syrup. The new machine removes more water from sap, leaving it with higher sugar content. The concentrated sap takes half the time to boil into syrup. “For commercial maple producers, time is money and energy is money. It all comes down to how efficient you can be to make syrup, and this is just the next big step to save time,” said Timothy Perkins, director of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center. The center produced its first batch of syrup with a new machine last week. “It definitely processed syrup very,…

Squinting while texting? Always losing your reading glasses? An eye implant that takes about 10 minutes to put in place is the newest in a list of surgical repairs for the blurry close-up vision that is a bane of middle age. But who’s really a good candidate to toss their specs? “It’s not bringing anybody back to being 20 again,” cautioned Dr. Shilpa Rose, a Washington ophthalmologist who tests whether patients’ eyes are healthy enough to qualify. “But it decreases the need to rush to get that pair of reading glasses every time you want to send a text or read an email.” Nearly everybody will experience presbyopia at some point, usually starting in the mid-40s. At first you may notice yourself holding restaurant menus at arm’s length. Eventually, even…

Uber’s CEO says he needs leadership help after a video has emerged of him arguing heatedly with a driver about fares. In the latest embarrassment to beset the ride-hailing company, CEO Travis Kalanick is seen discussing Uber’s business model with the driver. In the dashcam video obtained by Bloomberg News , the driver argues that Kalanick is lowering fares and claims he lost $97,000 because of him. “I’m bankrupt because of you.” Kalanick lashes back. “You know what? Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own s---. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck,” he said, then slamming the door. After the video went public, Kalanick issued a statement to Uber employees. In it, he says he must “grow up” and apologizes to the…