Innholdsfortegnelse for #364 i Techlife News

Automated alerts from the fledgling West Coast earthquake early warning system are ready to be used broadly by businesses, utilities, schools and other entities but not for mass public notification, officials said Wednesday. “We’re making a large change from a production prototype in pilot mode to an open-for-business operational mode,” Doug Given, earthquake early warning coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, told a press conference at the California Institute of Technology. The system being built for California, Oregon and Washington detects that an earthquake is occurring, quickly analyzes the data and sends out alerts that may give warnings of several seconds to a minute before strong shaking arrives at locations away from the epicenter. That can be enough time to automatically slow trains, stop industrial processes, start backup generators, pause…

A California-based startup has announced big plans to go small as it reaches into space, rocketing satellites the size of loaves of bread into orbit from Virginia. The endeavor reflects increasing demand from companies and governments alike to monitor ships, crops and the weather from space. Rocket Lab, a California-based startup, says it will launch small satellites into orbit from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Rocket Lab said Wednesday it will build its launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the Eastern Shore. It’s located at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility where unmanned cargo missions already are dispatched to the International Space Station. Rocket Lab, which recently built its first launch pad in New Zealand, is setting up in Virginia at a time of unprecedented growth in the use…

After failing to reach a breakthrough on Britain’s divorce terms from the European Union, weary EU leaders rolled straight into another summit Thursday, this one aimed at forging closer links with Asia. The Asia-Europe meeting brings together 30 European leaders with their counterparts from 21 Asian nations, a membership that accounts for 55 percent of global trade. Rights group Amnesty International and some European lawmakers called on EU leaders to call out their Asian counterparts on abuses including the persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and China’s internment camps for an estimated 1 million Muslims in the region of Xinjiang. In a speech Monday, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the Chinese government “is engaged in the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities that is straight out…

If Instagram is the dream vacation you’ll never go on and Facebook is Thanksgiving with too many relatives arguing over politics, Pinterest is sitting on the couch by yourself, watching a home-improvement show and absent-mindedly flipping through an old issue of Gourmet magazine. Pinterest has long shunned being labeled a social network. Because of that, it doesn’t push users to add friends or build connections the way rivals have done to grow quickly. But while this has meant that Pinterest is smaller than, say, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the service has also avoided much of its peers’ troubles around misinformation, hate and abuse. “Social media is about sharing what you are doing with other people,” Evan Sharp, Pinterest’s co-founder and chief product officer said in an interview. “Pinterest isn’t about…

Do you game on an Apple platform? Statistics suggest that you likely do, and perhaps regularly - even if you have to snatch occasional minutes here and there, such as on the morning train, to squeeze in your bouts of gaming. This year, one analyst branded Apple “one of the biggestgaming companies in the world” on account of the huge revenue Apple brings in from iOS games it doesn’t even make. Still, overall, the media has painted a more nuanced picture of Apple’s clout in gaming. Neil Campling, co-head of global thematic group at Mirabaud Securities, has pegged the gaming-related proportion of Apple’s App Store revenue at 82%. That’s due to Apple’s 30% cut of revenue from third-party apps on iOS. However, gaming hasn’t flourished - financially or otherwise -…

With hollow eyes and sagging cheeks, the flabby white mask of Michael Myers is horror’s great blank slate. Project your fears here, it says. Myers doesn’t speak. His movements never rise beyond a deliberate gait (well, aside from all the stabbing and strangling). Even his name is purposefully bland. Decades after John Carpenter’s slasher landmark, David Gordon Green has resurrected the faceless Boogeyman of “Halloween” and set him loose on another Halloween night, 40 years later. Time has done little for Michael’s personality. He is still a poor conversationalist. (He hasn’t uttered a word in the intervening decades, says a doctor at the sanatorium that holds him.) He is still handy with a knife. There are no roman numerals in the title of Green’s film, nor any of those dopey…

YouTube’s video streaming service went out for more than an hour on Tuesday, apparently affecting locations around the world. YouTube acknowledged the outage in a tweet at 9:41 p.m. EDT, noting that it affected YouTube, YouTube Music and YouTube TV. The company said it was working on the issue and apologized for the inconvenience. Reporters for the AP found that YouTube’s main service was working again around 10:50 p.m. EDT. Ten minutes later, YouTube tweeted again to note that service was restored, but offered no details. In reply to a query, an unsigned message from Google’s press team stated, “We don’t have anything to add beyond the tweet.”…

A former Equifax manager was sentenced this week to serve eight months home confinement for engaging in insider trading in the wake of the company’s massive data breach last year. Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, who worked as a software product development manager for the Atlanta-based credit-reporting agency, had pleaded guilty in July. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg also ordered Bonthu to pay a $50,000 fine, to serve 50 hours of community service and to forfeit the proceeds he gained from insider trading. Born in Andhra Pradesh, India, Bonthu, 44, has lived in the United States since 2000. But he is not a U.S. citizen and faces possible deportation as a result of his felony conviction. Hackers who haven’t been identified accessed Equifax databases without authorization from mid-May through July in 2017…

Another NASA space telescope has shut down and halted science observations. Less than a week after the Hubble Space Telescope went offline, the Chandra X-ray Observatory did the same thing. NASA said that Chandra’s automatically went into so-called safe mode, possibly because of a gyroscope problem. Hubble went into hibernation last week due to a gyroscope failure. Both orbiting observatories are old and in well-extended missions: Hubble is 28, while Chandra is 19. Flight controllers are working to resume operations with both. NASA said it’s coincidental both went “asleep” within a week of one another. An astronomer who works on Chandra, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted Friday that “Chandra decided that if Hubble could have a little vacation, it wanted one, too.” Launched by space shuttles…

It’s now possible to check in automatically at Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport using facial recognition technology, part of an ambitious rollout of facial recognition systems in China that has raised privacy concerns as Beijing pushes to become a global leader in the field. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport unveiled self-service kiosks for flight and baggage check-in, security clearance and boarding powered by facial recognition technology, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Similar efforts are underway at airports in Beijing and Nanyang city, in central China’s Henan province. Many airports in China already use facial recognition to help speed security checks, but Shanghai’s system, which debuted Monday, is being billed as the first to be fully automated. “It is the first time in China to achieve self-service for the whole check-in…

Michael Buble is shutting down rumors that he’s going to retire from music, saying he was misquoted in a recent interview. Buble told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he is not planning on retiring anytime soon. He disputes an Oct. 13 interview published in the Daily Mail that said he would quit music after the release of his upcoming album “Love,” due Nov. 16. The report suggested the Grammy-winning singer was stepping away from music for good following his son Noah’s cancer battle, but Buble said the story is false. Michael Buble says rumors of his retirement from music are false. The singer is releasing a new album titled “Love” next month. “I’ll keep going until the news of my death comes out, which will probably be fake too,”…

A popular language-learning app is adding Navajo to its portfolio. KOB-TV reports that Duolingo has begun offering Navajo, or Dine (dih-NEH’), as a language option for learning on the mobile app. Clayton Long, who is the head of the bilingual education for San Juan School District in Utah, tells the station that he and his students collaborated to develop the language lessons on the app. The first of the courses were unveiled last week. Long says a total of nine lessons he and others developed will be released in the coming months as part of the ongoing Duolingo project.…

European Union leaders have commissioned work on a new system for slapping sanctions on the perpetrators of cyberattacks, in the wake of the attack on the world chemical weapons watchdog. EU Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday that the leaders want EU “ministers to work on a sanctions regime that will be specific to cyberattacks.” Tusk said the system “should help to protect our citizens, companies and institutions from all kinds of cybersecurity threats.” Dutch officials alleged two weeks ago that four agents from Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency tried and failed to hack into the Wi-Fi system at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The leaders’ demand comes amid concerns over possible election interference during the European Parliament vote in May.…

Data is pored over by coaches and staff of the Orlando Magic on a regular basis. They’ll dissect how far a player runs during practice, how quickly that player accelerates and decelerates, how his performance changes as the workout goes along, biometric measurements like his heartbeat or when his workload is particularly heavy. The charts and graphs are detailed and precise. But how it’ll help the Magic win, that’s still an unknown. Wearable technology — chips worn during practice to collect information that analysts churn into reports — has been around the NBA for the past several seasons. It’s not permitted on game nights, and anything specific about processes the 30 teams are using falls into the category of closely guarded secrets. And when it comes to coaches deciding what…

Paul G. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates before becoming a billionaire philanthropist who invested in conservation, space travel and professional sports, died Monday. He was 65. He died in Seattle from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his company Vulcan Inc. announced. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called Allen’s contributions to the company, community and industry “indispensable.” “As co-founder of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Nadella wrote on Twitter. Two weeks ago, Allen announced that the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that he was treated for in 2009 had returned and he planned to fight it aggressively. “My brother was a remarkable individual on every level,” Allen’s sister Jody Allen said in a…

Netflix regained its stride with surprisingly strong subscriber growth in the third quarter, after an unexpected springtime stumble triggered fears that it was losing its allure. The video-streaming service added 7 million subscribers worldwide from July through September, far above the company’s target of 5 million and exceeding analyst projections. Netflix fell well shy of its subscriber goals for the April-to-June period, raising fears that fiercer competition from Amazon, Hulu, HBO and other streaming services was siphoning away viewers. In a show of confidence, Netflix predicted it will pick up another 9.4 million subscribers during the current quarter ending in December — traditionally one of the company’s busiest times because of all the subscriptions given as holiday gifts. Even so, the forecast calls for 1.1 million more subscribers than Netflix…

Could hackers have been able to see the last person you cyberstalked, or that party photo you were tagged in? According to Facebook, the unfortunate answer is “yes.” The social network said fewer users were affected in a security breach it disclosed two weeks ago than originally estimated — nearly 30 million, down from 50 million. In additional good news, the company said hackers weren’t able to access more sensitive information like your password or financial information. And third-party apps weren’t affected. Still, for users already uneasy about the privacy and security of their Facebook accounts after a year of tumult , the details that hackers did gain access to — gender, relationship status, hometown and other info — might be even more unsettling. Facebook has been quick to let…

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced a $1 billion investment to study computing and artificial intelligence in an effort to make the U.S. a world leader in the field. The university said the work will take place in the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, made possible by a $350 million gift from Schwarzman, the chairman, CEO and co-founder of investment firm Blackstone. The center is scheduled to open next September and will move into a new building since 2022, marking what the university is calling the most significant structural change to MIT since the 1950s. President L. Rafael Reif in a statement said as computing and AI reshape the world the new center at MIT “intends to help make sure it does so for the good of all.”…

Google plans to start charging smartphone makers to pre-install apps like Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps on Android handsets sold in Europe, a response to a record $5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the European Union. The U.S. tech company’s announcement Tuesday is a change from its previous business model of letting manufacturers install Google’s suite of popular mobile apps for free on phones running its Android operating system. Device makers will also now be able to install rival modified, or “forked,” versions of Android, the most widely used mobile operating system. The company is taking the measures to comply with the July ruling by EU authorities that found Google allegedly abused the dominance of Android to stifle competitors. Google is introducing the changes at the end of October to…

Atlantic City’s new Call Of Duty is this: To become the East Coast center of competitive video game tournaments, also known as esports. The activity is rapidly growing in popularity across the country and around the world, and the New Jersey gambling resort wants to become a major player in the nearly $1 billion global market. Proponents see it as a way for Atlantic City’s nine casinos to add revenue and help endure the slow winter months. And in the hyper-competitive East Coast casino market, they also believe it can attract tourists whose interest in gambling is marginal or non-existent. Isle of Man-based Continent 8 is building a $5 million data center at the Atlantic City Convention Center to serve not only the data-intensive esports industry, but internet gambling and…

Electric auto brand Tesla Inc. said it signed an agreement this week to secure land in Shanghai for its first factory outside the United States, pushing ahead with development despite mounting U.S.-Chinese trade tensions. Tesla, based on Palo Alto, California, announced plans for the Shanghai factory in July after the Chinese government said it would end restrictions on full foreign ownership of electric vehicle makers to speed up industry development. Those plans have gone ahead despite tariff hikes by Washington and Beijing on billions of dollars of each other’s goods in a dispute over Chinese technology policy. U.S. imports targeted by Beijing’s penalties include electric cars. China is the biggest global electric vehicle market and Tesla’s second-largest after the United States. Tesla joins global automakers including General Motors Co., Volkswagen…

YOUR DATA IS IN SAFE HANDS Data has never been so important. Every time you search for a business on Google, message a friend on Instagram or add an item to your basket on Amazon, companies around the world trade your data, building up a profile of who you are as a consumer to sell more of their products and services, and deliver relevant adverts to you across the web. Without data, Facebook and Google would not be the multi-billion-dollar businesses they are today, and many of our most beloved online services, like YouTube, Gmail, and WhatsApp, would not be free for us to use. However, as consumers become more digitally savvy and brands have an increasing influence on the way we live our lives, it’s never been more important…

The internet is riddled with long-forgotten accounts on social media, dating apps and various shopping sites used once or twice. Sure, you should delete all those unused logins and passwords. And eat your vegetables. And go to the gym. But is it even possible to delete your zombie online footprints — or worth your time to do so? Earlier this month, a little-used social network notified its few users that it will soon shut down. No, not Google Plus; that came five days later, following the disclosure of a bug that exposed data on a half-million people. The earlier shutdown involved Path, created by a former Facebook employee in 2010 as an alternative to Facebook. Then there’s Ello sending you monthly emails to remind you that this plucky but little-known…

There’s not much about the physical details of Google’s new Pixel 3 phone that you can’t find elsewhere. That bigger display and curved design? Apple and Samsung phones already have that. But the Pixel doesn’t intend to wow people with its hardware anyway. It’s really a showcase for Google’s latest advances in software, particularly in artificial intelligence. Google wants to help you manage daily life, from screening unwanted phone calls to predicting what you’ll type. The software underscores how Google is tapping its strengths in personalization — and perhaps make money through ads in the process. You get free services in exchange for letting Google deeper into your life. The Pixel isn’t likely to work for anyone uncomfortable with that trade-off. As impressive as Google’s ambitions are, though, AI is…

Like a lot of parents, Mike Herrick occasionally sees his 13-year-old daughter getting lost in her smartphone and wonders: Is technology messing with children’s brains, even as it enlightens and empowers them in ways that weren’t possible when his generation grew up? What sets Herrick apart is his job. He is a product and engineering executive at Urban Airship, a company in Portland, Oregon, that makes online tools that send the kind of relentless notifications that can make people act like bears near a honey pot. The tensions between the pride Herrick takes in his profession and his parental qualms about technology tug particularly hard when he sees his daughter, Lauren, and her friends texting each other instead of talking — when they’re sitting 5 feet apart. Or when he…

San Francisco has come to be known around the world as a place for aggressive panhandling, open-air drug use and sprawling tent camps, the dirt and despair all the more remarkable for the city’s immense wealth. Some streets are so filthy that officials launched a special “poop patrol.” A young tech worker created “Snapcrap” — an app to report the filth. Morning commuters walk briskly past homeless people huddled against subway walls. In the city’s squalid downtown area, the frail and sick shuffle along in wheelchairs or stumble around, sometimes half-clothed. The situation has become so dire that a coalition of activists collected enough signatures to put a measure on the city’s Nov. 6 ballot that would tax hundreds of San Francisco’s wealthiest companies to help thousands of homeless and…

The NASA astronaut who survived last week’s failed launch and emergency landing knew he needed to stay calm. Air Force Col. Nick Hague described the closest call of his career: His space capsule violently ripped from his damaged rocket shortly after liftoff, then with lights flashing and alarms sounding, plunged steeply back to Earth with punishing force. Hague said he and his commander, Russian Alexei Ovchinin, were flung from side to side and shoved back hard into their seats, as the drama unfolded 50 kilometers (31 miles) above Kazakhstan last Thursday. One of the four strap-on boosters failed to separate properly two minutes into the flight to the International Space Station and apparently struck the core rocket stage, resulting instantaneously in a rare launch abort. It was the first aborted…

A Milan sushi bar has come up with a new electronic payment method that is based on a currency more valuable than cash in some quarters. “This Is Not A Sushi Bar”is offering free meals to people with 100,000 or more Instagram followers. In return, users of the social media service must present an Instagram post that includes a restaurant hashtag and a photo. Owner Matteo Pittarello said he hoped the offer would attract millennials as patrons and create “2.0 word-of-mouth that could make our brand strong and viral.” Italian fashion blogger Clizia Incorvaia had a free sushi lunch on Tuesday courtesy of her 200,000 Instagram followers. Incorvaia said: “We tasted everything from gunkan to tartare, and I have to say it is all really good.”…