Innholdsfortegnelse for #357 i Techlife News

The end of the summer traditionally means many things, including lower temperatures, less sun and formerly lush green trees turning brown – as well as, of course, speculation about what forms Apple’s next iPhones could take. Such has been the case over the past week, with several stories giving us a slightly more concrete sense of what the Cupertino giant’s next generation handsets might look and feel like. As our magazine went to press, Apple was yet to confirm an exact date for its next keynote; nonetheless, there are certain clues about the likely date that we can glean from past iPhone launch events. There certainly doesn’t seem to be much doubt about the likely month in which the next iPhones will be unveiled, with CNET explaining that it would…

While Tesla grapples with internal issues like production delays, a sometimes-erratic CEO and a recent about-face on whether to go private, its rivals are moving aggressively into the luxury electric vehicle space. In the next few days, German competitors Mercedes-Benz and Audi, the luxury arm of Volkswagen, are both showing off production-ready electric sport-utility vehicles aimed at Tesla’s Model X. Meanwhile Jaguar Land Rover offers the I-Pace electric SUV while further out, Porsche is taking on Tesla’s Model S high performance luxury car with the Taycan, expected to reach the market in late 2019. The established carmakers have multiple motives. They need zero driving emissions vehicles to meet tougher greenhouse gas limits coming into effect in Europe in 2021. Diesel is in the doghouse. And China, a major market, is…

Marking another phase in his education agenda, Bill Gates is now taking a more targeted approach to help struggling U.S. schools. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now funding groups working directly with clusters of public schools in some of the most impoverished regions of the country. Many of those third-party groups already had relationships with the world’s largest philanthropy, and some of the grants went straight to a school district and charter schools organization. The foundation announced the first round of nearly $100 million for 19 program initiatives for middle and high schools in poor communities across 13 states. Gates pledged $460 million over the next five years to fund networks of school programs that help low-income and minority students get to college. The grants will address the…

Google Maps wasn’t waiting for the Senate. While lawmakers debated a proposal to rename a building after the late Sen. John McCain, Google Maps displayed “McCain Senate Office Building” on its website for several hours Wednesday. A search for “Russell Senate Office Building” directed users to the same building. The error was fixed later Wednesday. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., proposed renaming the Russell building in McCain’s honor after the Arizona Republican died Saturday from brain cancer. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he’ll form a bipartisan panel to solicit ideas on ways to honor McCain. Google said in a statement Wednesday that it empowers people to contribute local knowledge to its maps, “but we recognize that there may be occasional inaccuracies or premature changes suggested by users.”…

It’s official: “Crazy Rich Asians” is a box-office sensation. The adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel, starring Constance Wu and Henry Golding, brought in almost as many moviegoers in its second weekend as it did over opening weekend. The Warner Bros. release grossed $24.8 million in ticket sales, according to final figures Monday, a tiny drop from its $26.5 million debut the previous weekend. Second-week drops are more commonly closer to 50 percent. Warner Bros. has said a sequel is already in development. The weekend’s new releases disappointed. STX Entertainment’s critically slammed R-rated puppet caper “The Happytime Murders” debuted with a mere $9.5 million, a career-low wide release for star Melissa McCarthy. The robot-dog fantasy “A.X.L.,” from the beleaguered Global Road Entertainment, flopped with $2.8 million. The top 20 movies…

Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is attempting to diversify its film critic pool after a recent study found the site’s reviews of top-grossing movies were heavily male-dominated. The company says this week it’s expanding criteria to be a “Tomatometer-approved critic” and giving $100,000 to non-profit organizations to help offset the cost of attending film festivals. The first $25,000 is going toward sending critics to the Toronto International Film Festival in September. An Annenberg Inclusion Initiative survey of Rotten Tomatoes-complied reviews for last year’s top box-office hits found that nearly 80 percent of critics were male. Rotten Tomatoes executives say the company is committed to advancing inclusion in criticism. The company will now look at an individual’s body of work, including on new media platforms, instead of a critic’s outlet or…

Research shows the University of New Mexico is responsible for nearly 25,000 jobs, $3.5 billion in annual employee compensation and another $3 billion in economic output. A study released this week looked at operations, student expenditures, alumni productivity and technology transfer during the past fiscal year. University officials say the study marked the first of its kind to quantify the economic contributions of the entire university system. The system is made up of the Albuquerque main campus and Health Sciences Center along with branch campuses in Taos, Valencia County, Los Alamos and Gallup. The report was commissioned by STC.UNM, the university’s technology-transfer and economic-development organization. University President Garnett Stokes says learning and discovery missions that are central to universities like UNM are also interconnected to the mission of driving economic…

One of the world’s largest semiconductor companies is making a $3 billion investment in northern Virginia to expand its manufacturing facility and add 1,100 jobs. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Wednesday that the decision by Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology to expand its Manassas facility is “one of the largest manufacturing investments in the history of this commonwealth” at a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday. Micron decided to expand its existing facility in Manassas after considering offers from competing domestic and international locations, including Singapore. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said the success of the existing facility as well as the economic incentives offered by the state and the city of Manassas helped tip the scales in Virginia’s favor. Micron’s decision comes as northern Virginia continues to court tech giant Amazon as it seeks…

Microsoft will begin requiring its contractors to offer their U.S. employees paid leave to care for a new child. It’s common for tech firms to offer generous family leave benefits for their own software engineers and other full-time staff, but paid leave advocates say it’s still rare to require similar benefits for contracted workers such as janitors, landscapers, cafeteria crews and software consultants. “Given its size and its reach, this is a unique and hopefully trailblazing offering,” said Vicki Shabo, vice president at the National Partnership for Women and Families. The new policy affects businesses with at least 50 U.S.-based employees that do substantial work with Microsoft that involves access to its buildings or its computing network. It doesn’t affect suppliers of goods. Contractors would have to offer at least…

Experts from scores of countries are meeting to discuss ways to define and deal with “killer robots” — futuristic weapons systems that could conduct war without human intervention. The weeklong gathering that opened Monday is the second at U.N. offices in Geneva this year to focus on such lethal autonomous weapons systems and to explore possibilities for regulating them, among other issues. In theory, fully autonomous, computer-controlled weapons don’t exist yet, U.N. officials say. The debate is still in its infancy, and the experts have at times grappled with basic definitions. The United States has argued that it’s premature to establish a definition of such systems, much less regulate them. Some top advocacy groups say governments and militaries should be prevented from developing such systems, which have sparked fears and…

A TRIPLE THREAT With Apple’s September event now just weeks away, the rumor mill is in overdrive, with analysts and enthusiasts all weighing in and sharing their expectations for the next iPhone lineup. 2018 has been a strong year for Apple, with continued growth in its Apple Music service, and record earnings quarters helping Apple to become the world’s first public companyworth more than one trillion dollars . But what’s next for Apple? Of course, the company is expected to venture out into new products and services, with a rumored Apple Car and a Netflix-style subscription service already in the works, but in the meantime, all eyes are on the hardware. Last year’s iPhone X revolutionized smartphones once more, what with the removal of the home button, the introduction of…

Uber is teaming up with Toyota to build self-driving cars for its ride-hailing service after its efforts to do it alone were derailed by a fatal collision and allegations of high-tech theft. Toyota, based in Japan, is also investing $500 million in Uber as part of the alliance announced this week. The deal aims to combine the best features from the two companies’ work on autonomous technology into cars that will be picking up Uber’s customers by 2021. By the time that happens, Uber hopes to have completed an initial public offering of stock that will enrich a list of early investors that now includes Toyota. Those investors have been pouring billions of dollars into Uber’s revolutionary ride-hailing service that still hasn’t proven it can make money since its inception…

President Donald Trump says Google and other tech companies are “treading on very, very troubled territory”. President Donald Trump is accusing Google and other U.S. tech companies of rigging search results about him “so that almost all stories & news is BAD” — and though he is offering no evidence, a top adviser says the White House is “taking a look” at whether Google should face federal regulation. Google is pushing back sharply, saying Trump’s claim simply wasn’t true: “We never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.” The president’s tweets Tuesday echoed his familiar attacks on the news media — and a conservative talking point that California-based tech companies run by CEOs with liberal leanings don’t give equal weight to opposing political viewpoints. They also revealed anew his deep-seated…

I Can Only Imagine The movie follows the adventures and misadventures of a sports star prodigy turned songwriter and singer, Bart Millard, and his band Mercy Me. The movie follows his beginnings and broken personal relationships until, with the help of a music industry veteran, they find the key to personal and professional success. FIVE FACTS: 1. The movie cost $7 million to make. 2. It grossed $85 million worldwide. 3. It is the third highest-grossing movie biopic in history. 4. MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine” is the best-selling Christian single of all time. 5. The movie stars Dennis Quaid, who starred in The Right Stuff, Frequency and Far From Heaven. Always at the Carlyle There are so many legends swirling around The Carlyle Hotel, which helps to make this…

If “Searching,” a mystery about a father looking for his missing teenage daughter told only with smartphone and computer screens, sounds like a gimmick, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Its star, John Cho, and director and co-writer Aneesh Chaganty thought so too initially. It wasn’t even a new concept. The producer for “Searching” was also behind the “screen thriller” “Unfriended,” and wanted a follow-up that used the same technique. But even with its inauspicious beginnings, the film has become a late summer must-see propelled by strong reviews from critics and a warm afterglow following the successful launch of “Crazy Rich Asians,” which has only bolstered enthusiasm around “Searching” and its Asian-American leads. In its first weekend in limited release, actress Karen Gillan hosted a free screening of the film.…

Leave it to Tony Hawk to mix a decades-old skateboarding trick with the latest in virtual reality technology. The 50-year-old skateboarding pioneer and entrepreneur is dragging his 360-degree loop ramp out of storage and giving a handful of young skaters the chance to try to nail the near-impossible trick on a live virtual reality broadcast Sunday from his San Diego County headquarters. There’s no prize money or trophy for any skater who successfully completes The Loop, which Hawk first did 20 years ago. “No, it’s more sort of a badge of honor in the skate world,” Hawk said. Hawk will be rampside to provide commentary and coaching while Corbin Harris does play-byplay for Tony Hawk’s Loop Challenge. The only way to watch will be in virtual reality. Fans can download…

West Virginia State University has honored NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson with a bronze statue and scholarship dedication on the eve of her 100th birthday. Six of Johnson’s grandchildren revealed the statue during a ceremony Saturday on the West Virginia State campus in Institute. The university also awarded a scholarship in Johnson’s name to two students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math. Johnson turned 100 on Sunday (26). She graduated from the school in 1937 at age 18 with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and French. Johnson and three other women crunched numbers at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They worked in the pre-computer age, calculating rocket trajectories and orbits for the earliest American space flights. Johnson was featured in the book and 2016 film “Hidden Figures.”…

A Connecticut man who hacked into more than 200 iCloud accounts of Hollywood stars and other people has been sentenced to eight months in prison. George Garofano was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Bridgeport. After prison, he must serve three years of supervised release and perform 60 hours of community service. The North Branford man was one of four men arrested in the 2014 hacking scandal that led to private photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton and others being made public. Authorities say the hackers used a phishing scheme that sent emails appearing to be from Apple security accounts that asked for usernames and passwords. Garofano pleaded guilty in April and asked for leniency, saying he faces a lifetime loss of rights because of the felony conviction.…

Foxconn Technology Group announced this week that it will invest $100 million in engineering and innovation research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, making it one of the largest gifts in the school’s history that comes as the Taiwan-based electronics giant builds a factory in southeastern Wisconsin that would be the company’s first of its kind in North America. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou and UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank signed an agreement that also calls for the creation of a science and technology institute on the UW-Madison campus that will collaborate closely with the display screen manufacturing plant, which is being built in Mount Pleasant, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Madison near the Illinois border. Foxconn, the world’s leading electronics manufacturer, chose Wisconsin for its first plant outside of Asia…

Behind a blue wall that seals a former highway tunnel stretches a massive indoor farm bathed in rose-tinted light. Fruits and vegetables grow hydroponically — with no soil — in vertically stacked layers inside, illuminated by neon-pink LEDs instead of sunlight. Operators of this high-tech facility in South Korea say it is the world’s first indoor vertical farm built in a tunnel. It’s also the largest such farm in the country and one of the biggest in the world, with a floor area of 2,300 square meters (25,000 square feet), nearly half the size of an American football field. Indoor vertical farming is seen as a potential solution to the havoc wreaked on crops by the extreme weather linked to climate change and to shortages of land and workers in…

For $1,000, the premium Galaxy Note 9 is a superb phone that showcases the best Samsung has to offer. It’s also the phone most of you won’t need. That’s because you can get many of the same features in Samsung’s Galaxy S9 for a few hundred dollars less. The Note 9, available last week, is the Android smartphone for those who want the latest and the greatest. There’s a larger battery, with a 21 percent boost over last year’s Note 8 model. The Note 9 gets 128 gigabytes of storage, double what’s in the S9 and Apple’s iPhones. And of course, a large screen. But there’s not much “wow” beyond that. Smartphone innovation has slowed down in recent years. It’s more noticeable with Samsung because the company spreads out those…

David Christopher, who runs AT&T’s wireless and entertainment businesses, has a bird’s eye view of how streaming media and video are evolving. AT&T recently completed its $85 billion purchase of Time Warner, a deal designed to help traditional media companies compete better with nimble tech services such as Netflix. Soon after the deal closed, AT&T launched WatchTV, a $15-a-month streaming service that offers more than 30 TV channels, including Time Warner channels TNT and TBS. We spoke with Christopher about how people are consuming media and what role wireless companies play. Remarks have been edited for clarity and length. Q: Why do you think customers will choose Watch TV over other TV packages? A:There’s no “one size fits all” anymore for video. Video is increasingly very personal and we think…

A new Google search tool will allow service members transitioning to civilian life to include their military occupational specialty code to find jobs that match their skills. The tool announced this week is part of the tech giant’s “Grow with Google” initiative aimed at helping Americans get jobs or grow their businesses. The program also is offering transitioning service members, and their spouses, computer training. In addition, when users are searching for a place on Android or iOS mobile device or in Google Maps and open a business listing, a “veteran-led” designation will let people know which businesses are owned and run by veterans. The initiatives are part of Google’s plans to spend $1 billion on nonprofit organizations helping to raise education levels around the world.…

Sweetener Arianna Grande Ariana Grande’s fourth album, Sweetener, is her most introspective and mature, which is hardly surprising given everything that has happened to her in the previous 12 months. She had just performed a triumphant concert in Manchester when a bomb was detonated, killing 22 people and injuring over 500, leaving her “permanently affected”. She returned to the city to play a charity concert a year later and says her album was a response. “I wanted to give people a hug, musically”. FIVE FACTS: 1. Ariana has won three American Music Awards, three MTV Europe Music Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards, and has been nominated for a Grammy Award four times. 2. Ariana is the first artist in music history to have the lead single from their…

John Krasinski comes across in conversation as a disarming match to his screen image, the sort of easy-going, decent guy he played on TV’s “The Office” and in the romantic comedy “Away We Go.” Make that his former image. In a burst of creative versatility, he’s fashioned himself into an acclaimed film director with “A Quiet Place” (in which he plays opposite wife Emily Blunt) and muscular heroes in the movie “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” and the new Amazon series “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” debuting Friday. In low-key style, Krasinski is proving that expectations are to be ignored. Who could have predicted that gangly, deskbound Jim of “The Office” would be hunting Middle Eastern terrorists as fledgling CIA analyst Ryan, or that the latest iteration of Clancy’s…

A U.S. judge in Seattle blocked the Trump administration this week from allowing a Texas company to post online plans for making untraceable 3D guns, agreeing with 19 states and the District of Columbia that such access to the plastic guns would pose a security risk. The states sued to stop an agreement that the government had reached with Austin, Texas-based Defense Distributed, saying guidelines on how to print undetectable plastic guns could be acquired by felons or terrorists. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik extended a temporary restraining order, and his new decision will last until the case is resolved. He said Cody Wilson, owner of Defense Distributed, wanted to post the plans online so that citizens can arm themselves without having to deal with licenses, serial numbers and registrations.…

A NASA spacecraft that explored Pluto has spotted its next target on the outskirts of our solar system. NASA this week revealed pictures taken by New Horizons earlier this month of a tiny icy world known as Ultima Thule (THOO-lee). New Horizons is aiming for a flyby on New Year’s Day. It will be humanity’s most distant exploration of a celestial body, 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) from Earth and 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto. New Horizons in 2015 became the first spacecraft to visit Pluto. Ultima Thule is minuscule by comparison, an estimated 20 miles (30 kilometers) across. Scientists were surprised New Horizons could detect it from 100 million miles (155 million kilometers) out. The pictures are the farthest ever taken, with more to come.…

Google is toeing the line between helping you save time and creeping you out as it turns to machines to suggest email replies on your behalf. The customized auto-responses come in the latest version of Gmail on the web and expand on a feature already available on Android devices and iPhones. They’re just one more example of how artificial intelligence is seeping into everyday online life, whether it’s to tailor product recommendations or correct spelling. So far the new feature has been drawing mixed responses from users. The new feature, called Smart Reply, offers three short responses, like “It was great seeing you too,” or “I’ll look into it.” Unlike standard auto-replies when on vacation, for instance, these are customized to an individual email based on its context. If you…

If you want a straw with your drink, you soon may have to ask for it at California restaurants. Lawmakers on Thursday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a measure that supporters say would make California the first state to bar full-service restaurants from giving out single-use plastic straws unless customers request them. It wouldn’t ban straws as some cities have in a bid to combat waste. San Francisco and Seattle passed plastic straw bans earlier this year, drawing ire from conservatives who see the restrictions as government overreach and liberals who say outlawing straws hurts disabled people. The California measure, which passed the Assembly 45-20, is part of a larger trend in cities across the United States that are banning plastic bags, plastic utensils and other plastic goods to reduce ocean…

More than a dozen human rights groups are urging Google not to offer censored internet search in China, amid reports it is planning to again provide the service in the giant market. A joint letter calls on CEO Sundar Pichai to explain what Google is doing to safeguard users from the Chinese government’s censorship and surveillance. It describes the company’s secretive plan to build a search engine that would comply with Chinese censorship as representing “an alarming capitulation by Google on human rights.” “The Chinese government extensively violates the rights to freedom of expression and privacy; by accommodating the Chinese authorities’ repression of dissent, Google would be actively participating in those violations for millions of internet users in China,” the letter says. In a statement, Google said it has “been…