Innholdsfortegnelse for #371 i Techlife News

Apple Watch is now fulfilling its promise to let people take EKGs of their heart and notify them when they have an irregular heartbeat. Apple announced the heart features in September, but didn’t make them available until Thursday. The new features have been given clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are for U.S. customers only. The watch can intermittently check the wearer’s heart rhythm in the background and send a notification if it detects irregular heart rhythm. That can point to atrial fibrillation, a condition that can increase the risk of stroke and other complications. When symptoms appear, users can also take an EKG, or electrocardiogram, and share that with doctors. Apple is adding medical features to make the watch feel more useful to people.…

A West Virginia police department is using funds from seized assets to update record keeping and data access. Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston tells The Dominion Post that officers aren’t able to see driver’s license and registration information when in the field and are “working off 1980s technology.” The police department is using almost $150,000 for the upgrade, to purchase software that will bring the department in line with other agencies locally and across the state. The new system will allow officers to access the department’s server in the field and maintain access to geocoding and mapping data. Preston says a similar change in 2007 cost $1.2 million. He says it will probably take a year to get the system in place and everyone up to speed.…

Christmas turkey rocketed toward the International Space Station on Wednesday, along with cranberry sauce, candied yams and the obligatory fruitcake. The SpaceX booster rocket missed its landing zone on the ground, however, and fell into the sea, just offshore. Groans filled SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, as live video showed the first-stage booster spinning out of control, still high above Cape Canaveral. It was the company’s first missed ground landing, although it has overshot floating barges plenty of times in the past, a tougher feat to pull off. A SpaceX commentator called it a “bummer,” but noted it was secondary to the Falcon 9 rocket’s main mission of getting the Dragon capsule to orbit. SpaceX chief Elon Musk said the booster appeared to be undamaged. The hydraulic pump for…

Keep your friends close ... and your close friends closer? Instagram is adding a feature to make it easier to share photos and videos with fewer folks. Called Close Friends, the new feature lets users share Stories — photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours — with people they put on a special list. The idea is people may feel more comfortable sharing some things with just close friends, rather than all followers. Regular posts would still appear to everyone, though users have the option of pre-approving followers. Facebook already lets people narrow audiences for individual posts, but the Facebook-owned Instagram hasn’t. Social-media companies are quickly learning that bigger audience sizes for users can mean a reluctance to share more personal stuff. So, they are adding ways to communicate…

SOME SURPRISES, AND SOME LESS SO Apple has just announced its annual‘best of’ selection of the apps that have conquered its categories over the last 12 months. As always, it is a mixture of the renowned and the newly launched – the expected and the unanticipated – and some of them have the potential to be genuine game-changers for ordinary users. With so many incredible apps competing for the top spots this year, we thought it would be best to acknowledge their achievements as comprehensively as possible. Here is the first of our two-part written applause, commending the accomplishments of 2018’s most popular apps – and those that could particularly improve your life over the next 12 months. SIMPLER SELF-CARE Mindfulness, motivation and meditation became easier to manage from the…

Netflix will still be there for fans of the old TV series “Friends,” but maintaining the relationship will come at a steep price. The video streaming service paid $100 million to keep showing “Friends” in the U.S. through 2019, according to a report in the New York Times . That’s more than triple the $30 million a year Netflix had been paying for the long-running TV series about six 20-something friends in New York. The report cited two unidentified people with direct knowledge of Netflix’s deal with the series’ rights holder, AT&T. Netflix tweeted that it will continue showing “Friends,” but didn’t disclose financial details. The Los Gatos, California, company declined further comment. Netflix’s willingness to pay so much for a series that ended in 2004 is the latest sign…

Jeff Bezos boldly predicted five years ago that drones would be carrying Amazon packages to people’s doorsteps by now. Amazon customers are still waiting. And it’s unclear when, if ever, this particular order by the company’s founder and CEO will arrive. Bezos made billions of dollars by transforming the retail sector. But overcoming the regulatory hurdles and safety issues posed by drones appears to be a challenge even for the world’s wealthiest man. The result is a blown deadline on his claim to CBS’“60 Minutes” in December 2013 that drones would be making deliveries within five years. The day may not be far off when drones will carry medicine to people in rural or remote areas, but the marketing hype around instant delivery of consumer goods looks more and more…

After a two-year chase, a NASA spacecraft arrived Monday at the ancient asteroid Bennu, its first visitor in billions of years. The robotic explorer Osiris-Rex pulled within 12 miles (19 kilometers) of the diamond-shaped space rock. It will get even closer in the days ahead and go into orbit around Bennu on Dec. 31. No spacecraft has ever orbited such a small cosmic body. It is the first U.S. attempt to gather asteroid samples for return to Earth, something only Japan has accomplished so far. Flight controllers applauded and exchanged high-fives once confirmation came through that Osiris-Rex made it to Bennu — exactly one week after NASA landed a spacecraft on Mars. “Relieved, proud, and anxious to start exploring!” tweeted lead scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. “To…

European Union authorities want internet companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter to file monthly reports on their progress eradicating “fake news” campaigns from their platforms ahead of elections next year. Officials from the EU’s executive Commission unveiled the measures as part of an action plan to counter disinformation in the lead up to the continent-wide vote in the spring. The internet companies will have to submit their reports from January until May, when hundreds of millions of people in 27 EU member countries are scheduled to vote for 705 lawmakers in the bloc’s parliament. The Commission singled out Russia. “There is strong evidence pointing to Russia as a primary source of disinformation in Europe,” said Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip. Many EU member countries have already taken action to combat…

Buy more U.S. exports? Done. Tinker with technology tactics that irk Washington and other trading partners? Maybe. But scrap those plans, seen by Beijing as a path to prosperity and influence? Probably never. The agreement by President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on a cease fire on tariffs postpones the threat of more disruption for China’s exporters and their Asian suppliers. Some economists said Xi might be ready to negotiate in earnest. Still, Beijing gave no sign of a changed stance on technology ambitions that Washington says violate Chinese market-opening obligations and might threaten U.S. industrial leadership. Trump’s complaints strike at the heart of the ruling Communist Party’s state-led economic model and plans to restore China to its rightful place as a political and culture leader by…

Thousands of emails were stolen from aides to the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2018 midterm campaign, a major breach exposing vulnerabilities that have kept cybersecurity experts on edge since the 2016 presidential race. The email accounts were compromised during a series of intrusions that had been spread over several months and discovered in April, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. At least four party aides had their emails surveilled by hackers, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the details publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The committee said an “unknown entity” was behind the hack but provided few other details. A cybersecurity firm and the FBI have been investigating the matter, the committee said. The FBI declined to comment.…

A U.K. Parliament committee accused Facebook on Wednesday of cutting special deals with some advertisers to give them more access to data as it released 250 pages worth of documents on the tech giant’s internal discussions about the value of users’ personal information. Parliament’s media committee seized confidential Facebook documents from the developer of a now-defunct bikini photo searching app as part of its investigation into fake news. In a summary of key issues pertaining to the documents, the committee says Facebook “whitelisted” or gave preferential access to certain companies, such as Airbnb and Netflix, even after the tech giant announced changes in 2015 to end access to a user’s “friends.” “Facebook have clearly entered into whitelisting agreements with certain companies, which meant that after the platform changes in 2014/15…

China on Thursday demanded that Canada release an executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei who was arrested in a case that compounds tensions with the U.S. and threatens to complicate trade talks. Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Ltd., faces possible extradition to the United States, according to Canadian authorities. The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing law enforcement sources, said she is suspected of trying to evade U.S. trade curbs on Iran. Huawei, the biggest global supplier of network gear used by phone and internet companies, has been the target of deepening U.S. security concerns. Under Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, Washington has pressured European countries and other allies to limit use of its technology. The U.S. sees Huawei and smaller Chinese tech suppliers as possible fronts…

OUR APPLE 2019 WISHLIST There’s no denying that 2018 has been a stellar year for Apple. Releasing a trio of new iPhones, a new iPad Pro, Apple Watch, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini, virtually every product in the lineup has been refreshed, but we always want more. In this week’s issue, we lift the curtain on our 2019 wishlist, revealing which products we’d like to see given some love next. ALL-NEW iMAC Last year’s iMac Pro was a treat for power users, offering next-level performance and style in a gorgeous new Space Gray casing. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive, too, despite the Pro’s $4,999 price tag. Whilst the Pro will continue to serve its purpose at the higher end of the market, it’s the original iMac line-up we’d like to see…

“Mary, Queen of Scots ” is an ambitious re-imagining of the Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I saga with modern flourishes and bold performances from Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. But the film, for all its prestige and edginess, its lofty goals and contemporary messages, is not a particularly engrossing experience. It’s a shame too, because most of the elements are there. The gorgeous costumes and meticulous settings are breathtaking, and they couldn’t have chosen two leads better suited to playing these women, with Ronan as Mary and Robbie as Elizabeth. They just don’t come together very well, straddling an awkward line between wanting to be both a modern referendum on the real struggles of being a female leader in the 16th century and a “Game of Thrones”-style actioner. Director Josie…

Continuous Composites got its start with a stab wound. When a strand of fiberglass punctured Ken Tyler’s skin, the North Idaho inventor started thinking about the strength of the lightweight material. Tyler was working for a local boat manufacturer at the time, and he found himself brainstorming ways to fashion fiberglass composites without using molds. The result was Continuous Composites, a 3-year-old startup company that its owners say could revolutionize manufacturing, dramatically lowering the costs for fiberglass, Kevlar and carbon fiber composites. “It’s an amazing technology, and it’s going to change how things are built,”Tyler Alvarado, the company’s chief executive officer, told The Spokesman-Review . A carbon fiber bicycle, he said, costs thousands of dollars not because of the cost of the raw materials but because of the process to…

The chief of the World Health Organization says his agency is assembling experts to consider the health impacts of gene editing. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week that gene editing “cannot be just done without clear guidelines” and experts should “start from a clean sheet and check everything.” Tedros’ comments followed Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s announcement last week that he had helped alter the DNA of newborn twins in hopes of making them resistant to the AIDS virus. China ordered a halt to experiments by He’s team. Tedros told reporters WHO’s experts “should start from asking, ‘Should we even consider this?’” and noted: “We have a big part of our population who say, ‘Don’t touch.’” He said: “We have to be very, very careful, and the working group…

Faced with seesawing commodity prices and the pressure to be more efficient and environmentally friendly, farmer Jamie Butler is trying out a new worker on his 450-acre farm in England’s Hampshire countryside. Methodically inspecting Butler’s winter wheat crop for weeds and pests, the laborer doesn’t complain or even break a sweat. That’s because it’s a four-wheel robot dubbed “Tom” that uses GPS, artificial intelligence and smartphone technology to digitally map the field. Tom’s creator, the Small Robot Company, is part of a wave of “agri-tech” startups working to transform production in a sector that is under economic strain due to market pressures to keep food cheap, a rising global population and the uncertainties of climate change. Most robots are still only being tested, but they offer a glimpse of how…

Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service director used a rare public speech to outline threats facing Britain and the need for more diversity in secret agent ranks. MI6 chief Alex Younger, known by the code name “C”, told students at his alma mater, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, that Britain will fortify its intelligence ties to European counterparts even though Britain is leaving the European Union next year. “The implications of the Brexit debate have been set out by ministers,”Younger said in his second speech since taking the top job at Britain’s international intelligence service four years ago. “For our part as SIS, we will always work with our sister agencies to strengthen our indispensable security ties in Europe.” He said adversaries like Russia view themselves as being in a…

Rapper 2 Milly filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the makers of “Fortnite,” saying they are illegally using a dance he created in their wildly popular video game. The Brooklyn-based rapper, whose real name is Terrence Ferguson, alleges that North Carolina-based “Fortnite”-maker Epic Games misappropriated his moves without compensation or credit in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit states that the dance known on “Fortnite”as“Swipe It,”one of many that players can buy for their characters, is taken from the “Milly Rock,”a dance he came up with in 2011 that caught on as a craze in the summer of 2015 after the release of a song and video of the same name. Ferguson says that the game both steals his creation and as a result appropriates his…

Lyft is another step closer to becoming a publicly traded company. The San Francisco ride-sharing service said Thursday that it confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for an initial public offering of shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The company was valued at just over $15 billion earlier this year. Uber, Lyft’s fiercest competitor, is planning its own IPO next year. It’s well documented problems have left it vulnerable to challenger Lyft. Uber’s attempt to develop self-driving cars have also been bogged down during the past year amid allegations that it stole technology from a Google spinoff, as well as a fatal collision involving one of its robotic cars.…

“Black Panther” has, in a way, already been the Oscars. Much of the film’s cast was eagerly highlighted at March’s ceremony: a welcome splash of blockbuster luster at an Academy Awards that largely lacked it. “Black Panther” had at the time already been in theaters for a few weeks, leading host Jimmy Kimmel to note: “This is a night for positivity and our plan is to shine a light on a group of outstanding and inspiring films, each and every one of which got crushed by ‘Black Panther’ this weekend,” said Kimmel while much of the audience either laughed or winced. (On Oscar Sunday alone, “Black Panther” grossed $19.9 million.) As Hollywood’s awards season properly gets under way, “Black Panther” is poised to return to the Academy Awards, but this…

Hackers stole information on as many as 500 million guests of the Marriott hotel empire over four years, obtaining credit card and passport numbers and other personal data, the company said last week as it acknowledged one of the largest security breaches in history. The full scope of the failure was not immediately clear. Marriott was trying to determine if the records included duplicates, such as a single person staying multiple times. The affected hotel brands were operated by Starwood before it was acquired by Marriott in 2016. They include W Hotels, St. Regis, Sheraton, Westin, Element, Aloft, The Luxury Collection, Le Méridien and Four Points. Starwood-branded timeshare properties were also affected. None of the Marriott-branded chains were threatened. The crisis quickly emerged as one of the biggest data breaches…

Drake was a dominate force on Apple Music as the platform’s most-streamed artist of the year globally. Apple released its “Best of 2018” list Tuesday that Drake’s “Scorpion” was the top album, while his hit “God’s Plan” was the most popular single. The rapper’s song “Nice for What” came in second and “In My Feelings” at No. 4. Drake’s fifth studio album had four other songs in the top 100 including “Nonstop,”“I’m Upset,” “Mob Ties” and “Don’t Matter To Me,” featuring Michael Jackson. He was also featured on Lil Baby’s “Yes Indeed,” Migos’“Walk It Talk It” and BlockBoy JB’s “Look Alive.” Post Malone’s songs “Rockstar” and “Psycho” were in the top 5. His album “Beerbongs & Bentleys” was the second-most streamed followed by Cardi B’s, the late XXXTentacion and Travis…

Making money was never a mystery for Reyn Aubrey. The son of an entrepreneur and a freelance writer, he spent his high school years in Hawaii dabbling in several business ventures that brought in a nice income, at least for a 17-year-old, but also delivered a personal epiphany: Profit alone seemed like a boring pursuit. Aubrey decided to think bigger, and he came up with an idea that melded capitalism and altruism into PocketChange, a company he envisions changing the world — as little as 25 cents at a time. The concept began with his observation that the traditional fundraising model hasn’t kept pace with internet technology. It’s broken. Here’s how he proposes to fix it: Allow people to seize that online moment when they’re inspired to help address a…

A SpaceX rocket carrying 64 small satellites lifted off from California on Monday, marking the first time the same Falcon 9 rocket has been used in three space missions. The rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, arcing over the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles as it headed toward space. Minutes later, the rocket’s first stage performed a so-called boost back maneuver and landed on an unmanned ship in the Pacific. The landing marked the first time SpaceX had flown a first stage three times. The first stage was previously launched and recovered during missions in May and August as part of a program intended to make the equipment capable of being used 10 or more times without refurbishment. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has made reusability a major…

Google’s self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology. Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that will include a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction. The service debuting Wednesday marks a significant milestone for Waymo, a company that began as a secretive project within Google in 2009. Since then, its cars have robotically logged more 10 million miles on public roads in 25 cities in California, Arizona, Washington, Michigan and Georgia while getting into only a few accidents — mostly fender benders. The company is initially operating the new service cautiously, underscoring the challenges still facing its autonomous vehicles as they navigate around vehicles with human drivers that don’t always follow the same rules…

A U.N. agency says China has issued the most international patent applications for an eighth straight year, showing the country’s heft in intellectual property amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s accusation that the growing Asia power steals it. The World Intellectual Property Organization said Monday that innovators around the world filed a record 3.17 million patents last year, an annual increase of nearly 6 percent. China’s IP office took in a record 1.38 million patent applications in 2017. The United States, which led the rankings through 2011, was second with nearly 607,000. Japan was third at some 318,000. South Korea and the European Patent Office rounded out the top five. Overall, Asia received nearly two-thirds of all patent filings worldwide, up from just under half of filings a decade earlier.…