Innholdsfortegnelse for #423 i Techlife News

Microsoft’s shareholders have defeated two proposals by activist investors calling for the company to add a rank-and-file employee on its board of directors and report on gender disparities in company salaries. The company said Wednesday that neither proposal got enough support, according to preliminary vote tallies. Boston-based investment firm NorthStar Asset Management pushed for getting a non-management employee on the board. It cited internal dissent over Microsoft’s immigration and military contracts as a reason for more employee representation. Microsoft asked investors to defeat the proposal, arguing that all board candidates should be evaluated using the same criteria. The company said preliminary vote results showed NorthStar’s proposal getting less than 5% support. A separate proposal to require the company to address pay disparity concerns received more votes but not enough to…

A new and distinct problem has been discovered in air bags made by the now bankrupt company Takata which has led to at least one death. The recently discovered malfunction is different than the defect that led to at least 24 deaths and hundreds of injuries worldwide, though the result, like the earlier issue, leads to air bags that can explode and hurl shrapnel, killing or injuring people. Takata is adding about 1.4 million front driver inflators to recalls in the U.S., according to government documents posted this week. BMW is warning owners of some older 3-series cars to stop driving them. A driver in Australia was killed by an airbag malfunction, while another Australian and a driver in Cyprus were injured, according to government documents. Included in the recall…

Britain is proving a lawless landscape for political mudslingers mining cyberspace for votes in an election that could determine the U.K.’s future relationship with the European Union. Two years after Britain found itself at the epicenter of a global scandal over the misuse of Facebook data by political campaigns and a year after lawmakers called for sweeping reforms to protect democracy in the digital age, the country’s biggest political parties are bombarding voters with misleading social media messages after the government failed to act. The ruling Conservative Party circulated a doctored video that made it look as if an opposition leader had been stumped when asked about his position on Brexit, then during a leaders’ debate the party’s press office temporarily rebranded its website as a fact-checking service. The Labour…

Billie Eilish will be the first recipient of the Apple Music Award for global artist of the year, one of three honors for the pop singer. Apple announced Monday that Eilish’s “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” has been named album of the year. Eilish and her brother Finneas will also receive songwriter of the year honors. Eilish performed a live-streamed concert from the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California, on Wednesday. Lizzo has been named the breakthrough artist of the year. Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” is the company’s pick for song of the year. The company says its album and song of the year honors are determined by streams on its Apple Music service. Other awards are determined by Apple Music’s…

The co-founders of Google are stepping down as executives of its parent company, Alphabet, ending a remarkable two decades during which Larry Page and Sergey Brin shaped a startup born in a Silicon Valley garage into one of the largest, most powerful — and, increasingly, most feared — companies in the world. Sundar Pichai, who has been leading Google as CEO for more than four years, will take on additional duties as Alphabet’s CEO, the position held by Page. The company isn’t filling Brin’s position as president. Page and Brin met as Stanford University graduate students in 1995 and started the company soon after. What started as a way to catalog the growing internet has now become one of the most powerful companies in the world. Google dominates online search…

The maker of popular video game League of Legends has agreed to pay $10 million to female employees to settle a broad gender discrimination case. Los Angeles-based Riot Games will pay about 1,000 current and former female employees who have worked at the company in the last five years. The case against Riot Games claimed the company paid women less than men, passed them over for promotions and fostered a “bro culture” that excluded them. The lawsuit claims that culture led to sexual harassment and misconduct. Allegations of misconduct against women have plagued the video game industry for years. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Ryan Saba, said the large settlement amount shows that Riot was serious about changing its culture. A Riot spokesman, Joe Hixson, said the company was pleased to have…

B. Don Russell wasn’t thinking about preventing a wildfire when he developed a tool to detect power line problems before they cause equipment failures, blackouts or even deadly accidents. The electrical engineering professor at Texas A&M University figured he might save a life if his creation could prevent someone from being electrocuted by a downed live wire. But fire prevention may be his product’s biggest selling point in California and other places that have experienced devastating wildland blazes blamed on electrical equipment. “If we can find things when they start to fail, if we can find things that are in the process of degrading before a catastrophic event occurs, such as a downed line that might electrocute someone or a fire starting or even an outage for their customers, that’s…

The 22 member states of the European Space agency pledged to boost their funding to support more missions and research projects, including a new generation of satellites to monitor climate change. The agency’s director-general, Jan Woerner, said at the conclusion two-day ministerial meeting in Seville, Spain, that member states pledged a record three-year budget of 12.5 billion euros ($13.7 million) plus an additional 1.9 billion euros to cover operational costs and basic research in years four and five. “14.4 billion euros. For me it is surprise. It is even more than I proposed,” said Woerner. “We have taken on some ambitious projects.” Woerner said that “climate change is a strong driver” in a bigger-than-expected funding boost for Europe’s Copernicus Earth-observation satellites. “Copernicus is now the world’s leading Earth-observation project,” he…

Britain’s competition watchdog says it’s investigating Google’s purchase of cloud data analytics company Looker Data Sciences, adding to the regulatory pressures the U.S. tech giant is facing. The Competition and Markets Authority said Monday that it has invited “any interested party” to comment on whether the transaction would “result in a substantial lessening of competition” in the U.K. market. Google said in June it planned to buy Looker, which helps customers “visualize data,” for $2.6 billion in cash to bolster its Google Cloud service. The deal was expected to close by the end of the year. Google did not immediately comment. It has come under tighter scrutiny on various fronts in the U.S., where authorities at both the state and federal level have opened investigations into tech giants.…

Airbnb is taking more steps to crack down on parties and nuisance guests in the wake of a Halloween shooting at an Airbnb rental in a San Francisco suburb. The company said Thursday it’s banning “open invite” parties at all of its accommodations. Those are parties open to anyone and advertised on social media, for example. Airbnb says boutique hotels and professional event venues will be exempt from the new rule. The San Francisco-based company is also banning large parties at apartment buildings and condos. “This policy does not impact parties that are authorized by hosts and convened respectfully by guests,” the company said in a news release. “Instead, our goal with this new policy is to address the small number of guests who act irresponsibly and those rare hosts…

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit that tried to halt the transfer of used nuclear fuel at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the judge dismissed the suit with prejudice on Tuesday, meaning the same complaint can’t be refiled. San Onofre closed in 2013 but it remains home to 3.5 million pounds of spent fuel and nuclear waste. The waste is being transferred from storage pools to concrete storage holes. The group Public Watchdogs sought an injunction to halt the transfers. Southern California Edison, which operates the plant, says it’s pleased with the judge’s decision. Public Watchdogs Executive Director Charles Langley says there is a “looming waste disaster” at the plant and the group will ask its attorneys to…

France, Germany and the United Kingdom say “Iran’s developments of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles” go against a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Tehran not to undertake any activity related to such missiles. Ambassadors from the three European nations urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a letter circulated this week to inform the council in his next report that Iran’s ballistic missile activity is “inconsistent” with the call in a council resolution endorsing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. The letter cites footage released on social media April 22, 2019, of a previously unseen flight test of a new Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile variant “equipped with a maneuverable re-entry vehicle.” It says: “The Shahab-3 booster used in the test is a Missile Technology Control Regime category-1 system and as such is…

There’s a powerful new player watching what you buy so it can tailor product offerings for you: the bank behind your credit or debit card. For years, Google and Facebook have been showing ads based on your online behavior. Retailers from Amazon to Walgreens also regularly suction up your transaction history to steer future spending and hold your loyalty. Now banks, too, want to turn data they already have on your spending habits into extra revenue by identifying likely customers for retailers. Banks are increasingly aware that they could be sitting on a gold mine of information that can be used to predict — or sway — where you spend. Historically, such data has been used mostly for fraud protection. Suppose you were to treat yourself to lunch on Cyber…

Facebook started testing a tool this week that lets users move their images more easily to other online services, as it faces pressure from regulators to loosen its grip on data. The social network’s new tool will allow people to transfer their photos and videos directly to competing platforms, starting with Google Photos. The company said it will first be available to people in Ireland and will be refined based on user feedback. The tool will then be rolled out worldwide in the first half of 2020. U.S. and European regulators have been examining Facebook’s control of personal data such as images as they look into whether the tech giant’s dominance is stifling competition and limiting choice for consumers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reacted by calling for new rules…

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is pushing legislation aimed at what he describes as “cyber Grinches.” The Connecticut Democrat said the goal of the bill — which he unveiled this week — is to try to block the use of so-called “bot technology” that he says allows individuals to bypass security measures to scoop up large batches of the hottest toys of the season and then resell them at inflated prices. Blumenthal said the practice is unfair and may contribute in part to the scarcity of some of the toys. Blumenthal compared the practice to ticket scalping. In 2016 Blumenthal pushed legislation to crack down on those who used the same technology to unfairly scoop up tickets.…

Federal officials are considering requiring that all travelers — including American citizens — be photographed as they enter or leave the country as part of an identification system using facial-recognition technology. The Department of Homeland Security says it expects to publish a proposed rule next July. Officials did not respond to requests for more details. Critics are already raising objections. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said he will introduce legislation to block the plan and prohibit American citizens from being forced to provide facial-recognition information. He said a recent data breach at Customs and Border Protection shows that Homeland Security can’t be trusted with the information. Facial recognition is being tested by several airlines at a handful of U.S. airports. American citizens are allowed to opt out of being photographed, although…

AIDS has no cure. HIV is still here. But some people are forgetting that. Those are some of the bold messages Uganda’s leader is emphasizing as health officials try to stem stubbornly high infection rates among young people in this East African country that years ago won praise as a global leader in fighting the epidemic. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the region most affected, fewer people are dying from AIDS as treatment is more widely available and patients live normally. Yet some officials and activists worry that success may be encouraging a sense of complacency. The head of HIV prevention at Uganda’s AIDS agency, Dr. Daniel Byamukama, recently asked leaders of a popular church that organizes a retreat for young people to give him 20 minutes to make…

The Navajo Nation announced this week it has signed a contract with renewable energy companies to convert methane vented from its oil producing operations in southeastern Utah into more eco-friendly hydrogen. The plan was announced at the Utah state Capitol and hailed by Laura Nelson, who heads the Utah Governor’s Office of Energy Development, as a strategy that will help with clean energy and lead to more tribal sovereignty, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. “We have a partnership and organization to deliver the mutual benefit of advancing new commodity production while managing emissions that have been associated with oil and gas production,” Nelson said. Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Co. technology officer Bill McCabe said they will work with two alternative energy companies named called H2GO and Big Navajo Energy.…

US companies added just 67,000 jobs in November, a private survey found, barely half the gain of the previous month. Payroll processor ADP said that manufacturers, construction firms and mining companies cut 18,000 jobs combined. Companies with fewer than 20 employees also slashed their payrolls. November’s job gain is the fewest in six months and suggests that hiring could be weakening, economists said. Yet job gains frequently fluctuate from month-to-month, so last month’s meager increase could also be a one-time blip. It typically takes roughly 100,000 or so new jobs a month to absorb population growth and keep the unemployment rate from rising. If November’s modest increase were to continue, the jobless rate could rise from its currently very low level of 3.6%. The ADP data aren’t affected by the…

A federal energy agency has announced plans to partner with the University of Wyoming for further research on how to trap carbon dioxide before it leaks into the atmosphere. The Casper Star-Tribune reported that the U.S. Department of Energy and university researchers plan to study the economics and technology behind carbon capturing at two of the state’s coal-fired power plants. Officials say research would begin at the Dave Johnston power plant in Glenrock and the Naughton power plant in Kemmerer. Republican state Gov. Mark Gordon says he has remained committed to the state’s coal assets as it produces about 40% of the nation’s coal despite declining demand nationwide and increasing interest in renewables and natural gas. Gorden says he encouraged the state Legislature in January to support advancements in post-combustion…

With Apple turning on its new Express Transit feature in London, we delve deeper into one of the most convenient additions to Apple Pay to date and consider the future possibilities as the company looks to streamline payments and make it easier for us all to pay our way… TAP AND GO Apple Pay has transformed the way we live. With 383 million users around the world and counting, the payment provider has a user base reach of 43% and more than 35% of all online merchants now support Apple Pay as a payment method, just behind PayPal. As a consumer, that’s great news: it means you can pay for your grocery shop, have a meal with friends and even order a new iMac on the go, without needing to…

Four workers fired from Google last week are planning to file a federal labor complaint against the company, claiming it unfairly retaliated against them for organizing workers around social causes. The former employees said they are preparing to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board this week. All four were fired Nov. 25 for what Google said were violations of its data security policy. Company officials wrote in a memo — without confirming the employees’ names — that the four were “searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs.” But the four workers — Laurence Berland, Sophie Waldman, Rebecca Rivers and Paul Duke — say they believe they did not violate company policies and claim that Google is using the alleged…

President Donald Trump’s campaign said it will no longer give credentials to Bloomberg News reporters to cover campaign events because of coverage “biases,” an accusation that the news organization rejects. The decision comes a week after the news service’s founder, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, announced he was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. In response, Bloomberg News said it would cover but not investigate its boss, the former New York mayor, and his Democratic rivals. But Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said reporters would continue to investigate the Trump administration, as the sitting government. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale called it a troubling decision to “formalize preferential reporting policies.” He said Bloomberg reporters would no longer be credentialed to cover campaign events until the policy is rescinded. “As President Trump’s campaign, we…

The founder of Huawei says the Chinese tech giant is moving its U.S. research center to Canada due to American sanctions on the company. In an interview with Toronto’s Global and Mail newspaper, Ren Zhengfei said the move was necessary because Huawei would be blocked from interacting with U.S. employees. Huawei Technologies Ltd. is the No. 2 global smartphone brand and the biggest maker of network gear for phone carriers. U.S. authorities say the company is a security risk, which Huawei denies, and announced curbs in May on its access to American components and technology. The Trump administration announced a 90-day reprieve on some sales to Huawei. The government said that would apply to components and technology needed to support wireless networks in rural areas. Ren gave no details but…

Spacewalking astronauts installed new pumps on a cosmic ray detector outside the International Space Station in a bid to extend its scientific life. It was the third spacewalk in nearly three weeks for Italy’s Luca Parmitano and NASA’s Andrew Morgan. One more spacewalk remains before NASA can declare the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer successfully repaired. The $2 billion spectrometer has been up there hunting for antimatter and dark matter for 8 ½ years, longer than anticipated. Without four new pumps for cooling, the device would be crippled and, ultimately, useless. NASA compared the series of four spacewalks — the most complex since the Hubble Space Telescope missions — with heart bypass surgery because they are designed to bypass the old, degraded pumps. The $2 billion spectrometer was never meant for hands-on…

The email looked legitimate, so Danielle Radin clicked on the link it contained, expecting to have her products included in a holiday gift guide. “I instantly regretted it,” says Radin, owner of Mantra Magnets, a website that sells wellness products. “It took me to some random website that looked like those pop-ups telling you that you’ve won the lottery.” Within days of that click three weeks ago, Radin began getting notifications that people in Ecuador, China and elsewhere were trying to access her email account. She wasn’t surprised; she knew her San Diego-based small business had been the target of a phishing scam. While cybercriminals strike at any time of the year, they’re particularly active during the holiday and income tax filing seasons when computer users expect to see more…

Federal prosecutors have charged a cryptocurrency expert with violating economic sanctions against North Korea by presenting at a conference there this year after the U.S. government denied his request to travel to Pyongyang. Virgil Griffith, 36, was awaiting a federal court appearance in Los Angeles, a day after he was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport. Griffith is an American citizen but lives in Singapore. Messages were sent to Griffith’s defense attorney seeking comment. Federal prosecutors said Griffith secured a visa through “a (North Korean) diplomatic mission facility” in Manhattan for 100 euros and then traveled to the country through China in April. A request for comment was sent to North Korea’s United Nations mission in New York. At the conference, Griffith talked about how North Korea could use cryptocurrency…