Innholdsfortegnelse for #451 i Techlife News

The Justice Department proposed that Congress roll back long-held legal protections for online platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, putting down a legislative marker in President Donald Trump’s drive against the social media giants. The proposed changes would strip some of the bedrock protections that have generally shielded the companies from legal responsibility for what people post on their platforms. “When it comes to issues of public safety, the government is the one who must act on behalf of society at large. Law enforcement cannot delegate our obligations to protect the safety of the American people purely to the judgment of profit-seeking private firms,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement. The legislative changes would ensure that the internet companies’ legal immunity becomes an incentive for them “to…

Is it safe to stay in hotels as reopenings get underway? It depends on the precautions both you and the hotel take. It’s best to call ahead to see how the place you’re considering is working to minimize the risk of COVID-19. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests asking if the staff is wearing face coverings, for example, and whether cleaning practices have been stepped up. To reassure potential guests, many hotels — from luxury resorts to budget brands — are sharing the changes they’re making on their websites. New practices may include adding hand sanitizer stations in lobbies, disinfecting surfaces like elevator buttons more frequently and removing extra items in rooms, such as pens and paper. Breakfast buffets may also be replaced with prepackaged meals. Once…

Britain is scrapping plans to launch its own coronavirus contact tracing smartphone app because of technical problems and will now work on building one using technology supplied by Apple and Google, health authorities said. The government’s app had been undergoing trials on the Isle of Wight, and was expected to be rolled out to the rest of the country later. But the program, previously hailed as a fundamental pillar of the U.K. response to the pandemic, has been delayed. Officials overseeing the app’s development said they couldn’t overcome a number of technical challenges they found during field tests with the app, such as reliably detecting other users on specific mobile operating systems. Governments around the world have been turning to smartphone technology to help battle fresh virus flare-ups as they…

It’s been almost seven years since Sony announced the PlayStation 4, and boy has a lot changed since then. More advanced technology, innovative gaming franchises, and the rise of PC gaming, with consumers favoring building their own gaming machines at home. So can the PlayStation 5 live up to the hype, and take the gaming industry in a new direction? INTRODUCING THE PLAYSTATION 5 Sony’s PlayStation 4 was, without doubt, one of the most universally-praised and popular games consoles ever made. Selling more than 102 million units around the world - the device reached the 100 million sales mark significantly faster than the Nintendo Wii and Xbox One. But Sony will re-enter the market later this year at a time when the world has changed - where gaming is now…

Several civil rights and other advocacy groups are calling on large advertisers to stop Facebook ad campaigns during July because they say the social network isn’t doing enough to curtail racist and violent content on its platform. The groups in the “#StopHateforProfit” campaign, launched Wednesday, include Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press and Common Sense. “It is clear that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are no longer simply negligent, but in fact, complacent in the spread of misinformation, despite the irreversible damage to our democracy. Such actions will upend the integrity of our elections as we head into 2020,” said NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson in a statement. The groups say that Facebook amplifies white supremacists, allows posts that incite violence and contain political propaganda…

The closely watched arrival of Christopher Nolan’s big-budget sci-fi espionage film “Tenet” will finally happen on July 31, Warner Bros. announced. The studio said it would delay the release by two weeks and instead re-issue Nolan’s 2010 sci-fi blockbuster “Inception” in mid-July. The release date for “Tenet” has been closely watched in all corners of the film industry, which has faced shuttered theaters due to the coronavirus since mid-March. Movie theaters plan to reopen in July for a vastly different summer season than the one the industry had planned. The Marvel film “Black Widow” and the ninth installment in the “Fast & Furious” franchise, both expected to arrive in the early summer, have delayed their releases. Warner Bros. also announced that “Wonder Woman 1984,” a sequel to its 2017 hit,…

Comic-Con may be canceled this year, but Warner Bros. will convene a 24-hour virtual gathering of the biggest names in the DC Comics universe. The studio announced that DC FanDome will be held on August 22 starting at 10 a.m. PDT. The event will feature talent announcements and reveal new content from WB games, comics, film and television. The announcement comes a couple months after Comic-Con, which attracts tens of thousands of comics fans to San Diego, was canceled due to the coronavirus-related restrictions around large gatherings. Organizers plan a virtual Comic-Con@Home event for July 22-26, but no details on panels have been released. FanDome virtual panels will feature cast and creators from DC films including “The Batman,” “Black Adam” and “Wonder Woman 1984.” The panels will also highlight casts…

A few days after buying a sweater at Macy’s, Erin Chisman returned to get the same one in a different color, only to realize it was 50% off. Upon seeing the new price tag, the Wisconsin-based business owner was determined to save. So she turned to the cards in her wallet. “I looked at my terms and I noticed that it did have price protection,” she says. “Within three days, I had a check in the mail” for the $30 difference. Price protection, a benefit that refunds the difference of a lower advertised price, has largely vanished from many credit cards in recent years — but plenty of other side perks remain, and your card may even have added some new ones. Here’s what to know about these benefits so…

North Carolina’s highest court made history on Monday by hearing oral arguments using video conferencing as the court system continues to attempt to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The state judicial system said the cases marked the first time oral arguments were heard using remote technology since the court convened in 1819. State Supreme Court justices listened online from their offices to lawyers representing plaintiffs and defendants in cases involving insurance companies and a hospital. Ten cases were to be heard using this method through Wednesday. Members of the public could watch the remote arguments online. The state Court of Appeals made similar history on April 30 when a three-judge panel of the court heard arguments through video conferencing. Other courts are using similar technology as in-person hearings have been…

When the coronavirus roared into New York, chef Anna Klinger wouldn’t let it put a fork in her restaurant. Al di La, the Brooklyn trattoria she runs with her husband, Emiliano Coppa, hadn’t done much takeout until then. Their northern Italian food simply didn’t travel well. Now it had to. Because tagliatelli has a tendency to glue itself together into a ball, Klinger cooked it less and added more sauce. She offered Negroni cocktails to go and pints of her ice cream. She slimmed down the menu (goodbye, liver.) Now the kitchen is waiting to pivot again — anticipating the day diners can return, in masks, of course, 6 feet apart. Klinger vows to do what it takes. “What choice do we have?” she asked. “There are so many lives…

The latest challenge for the autonomous vehicle industry: How to assure passengers that the car they are getting in is virus free, even if it doesn’t have a driver. Widespread use of autonomous vehicles already had been delayed by a March 2018 fatal crash involving an Uber test vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, forcing the industry to pause to make sure its vehicles are safe. Now it has to deal — just like other ride-hailing companies and traditional taxis — with passenger anxiety over getting into tight spaces with people who may have the virus, or after infected people who rode in the vehicles before them. An executive with self-driving car company Waymo said that the coronavirus pandemic forced it to put its limited ride service in the Phoenix area on…

Russia’s communications watchdog said it would lift a ban on the popular messaging app Telegram after two years of unsuccessful attempts to block it. “As agreed with the Prosecutor General’s office, Roskomnadzor withdraws the demand to restrict access to the Telegram messenger,” the agency said in a statement. In 2018, a court ordered the blocking of Telegram in Russia, siding with authorities who demanded that the app be kept out of the country until it hands over the keys to its data encryption. Officials alleged that Telegram, which was developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has been used by violent extremists. The company refused to hand over encryption keys, arguing that it would violate users’ rights to privacy and would not help weed out terrorists. After telecommunication providers were instructed…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has for the first time approved a video game for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. The FDA said Monday the game built by Boston-based Akili Interactive Labs can improve attention function. The game, called EndeavorRx, requires a prescription and is designed for children ages 8 to 12 with certain symptoms of ADHD. It’s the first time the FDA has cleared a digital therapy for improving ADHD symptoms, and the first time the agency has ever authorized marketing of a game-based therapy for any condition. The FDA says it looked at data from multiple studies in more than 600 children. A video of the game shows a character traveling a racecourse-like path in a hover board. Sensory and motor tasks are designed to…

After a knock on his door, third-grade student Jamie-Lee emerged to see his school principal smiling at him from his doorstep. She held out her arms, offering a socially distant “air hug,” and told the boy how much she’d missed him since the pandemic closed their school building. As they chatted, Principal Tayarisha Batchelor picked up on a clue to the question that brought her to the apartment. The boy was not looking up from a smartphone. Twice, she asked what he was doing on it before he confirmed her suspicions: He was playing video games. “I like playing games,” Batchelor told the boy as his parents looked on, before suggesting he spend more time first on his daily schoolwork. “I want to make sure you’re still learning, OK?” Nearly…

No movie that features Judi Dench as a fairy who says “Get the four-leaf clover out of here” can be all bad, but the big-budget adaptation of Eoin Colfer’s “Artemis Fowl” tests that truism. The movie debut of “Artemis Fowl,” which has grown into a best-selling series of eight young-adult novels over the last two decades, has been long in coming. First acquired in 2001, it’s gone through endless development, false-starts and release delays. Shot in 2018 and originally slated to open last year in theaters, “Artemis Fowl” finally arrives Friday on Disney Plus, the last detour in a long road to release for Kenneth Branagh’s $125 million fantasy adventure. There are plenty of hallmarks of that struggle on the screen: general incoherence, awkward narration, a black hole of a…

Turns out there’s only so much that can be done virtually. Six teams decided to end their offseason programs even with the NFL allowing two more weeks to keep working: the Bears, Titans, Rams, Texans, Cardinals and Redskins. With coaches and players scattered and team facilities shut by the NFL because of the COVID-19 pandemic, video meetings helped the league act as if business was continuing as usual. Some coaches decided their teams had done everything possible until players are allowed to join them inside team headquarters and on the practice fields. That won’t happen until July at the earliest when training camps are set to open, with coaching staffs trying to make up for lost time. Rookies face the biggest challenge having missed an estimated 400 repetitions on the…

The head of the U.S. communications regulator said T-Mobile’s nationwide, hours-long outage Monday was “unacceptable” and that the Federal Communications Commission will investigate. T-Mobile, one of the country’s three largest cellphone service providers, said it had a “voice and text wireless issue” that began around noon EDT Monday. The company said at 1 a.m. Tuesday that all problems had been resolved. The company blamed an internet-traffic issue that caused problems with its network for the outage. AT&T and Verizon both said their networks were operating normally. But calls between their customers and T-Mobile customers could have run into trouble because of T-Mobile’s issues, creating the impression of a widespread communications failure. The FCC has fined telecom companies in the past for network outages. T-Mobile paid a $17.5 million fine for…

European Union regulators opened two investigations into Apple’s mobile app store and payment platform over concerns its practices distort competition, opening a new front in the EU’s battle against the dominance of big tech companies. The EU’s executive Commission said it formally launched the investigations over concerns that Apple’s way of doing business hurts consumers by limiting choice and innovation and keeping prices high. Apple dismissed the complaints as “baseless.” The commission is examining whether Apple Pay’s rules require online shops to make it the preferred or default option, effectively shutting out rival payment systems. It’s also investigating concerns that it limits access for rival payment systems to the “tap and go” wireless function on iPhones. The Commission opened a second investigation into the App Store over concerns Apple forces…

When the coronavirus outbreak forced Sean Giovanni to shut down his recording studio in for two months, he dropped off mobile equipment at staffers’ and artists’ homes. He hoped remote recording would bring in some revenue. It did. Along with the income, Giovanni got an important lesson that will help his business long after the pandemic has subsided: The Record Shop doesn’t have to be limited to what it can produce onsite. “Moving to strictly remote work over the past two months has birthed some valuable new ideas for how we can serve our clients in new ways,” Giovanni says. From experienced owners such as Giovanni to others who just got started, the pandemic is testing their entrepreneurship and teaching valuable lessons about surviving and innovating, whether it’s doing more…

NASA’s next Mars rover is honoring all the medical workers on the front lines of the coronavirus battle around the world. With just another month until liftoff, the space agency on Wednesday revealed a commemorative plate attached to the rover, aptly named Perseverance. The rover team calls it the COVID-19 Perseverance plate, designed in the last couple months. The black and white aluminum plate — 3-by-5 inches (8-by-13 centimeters) — shows planet Earth atop a staff entwined with a serpent, a symbol of the medical community. The path of the spacecraft also is depicted, with its origin from Cape Canaveral. Health care workers were “on front lines keeping us safe” during launch preparations, said deputy project manager Matt Wallace of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “They really inspired…

Fitness junkies locked out of gyms, commuters fearful of public transit, and families going stir crazy inside their homes during the coronavirus pandemic have created a boom in bicycle sales unseen in decades. In the United States, bicycle aisles at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target have been swept clean, and independent shops are doing a brisk business and are selling out of affordable “family” bikes. Bicycle sales over the past two months saw their biggest spike in the U.S. since the oil crisis of the 1970s, said Jay Townley, who analyzes cycling industry trends at Human Powered Solutions. “People quite frankly have panicked, and they’re buying bikes like toilet paper,”Townley said, referring to the rush to buy essentials like toilet paper and hand sanitizer that stores saw at the…

Hundreds of protesters marched up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue last week, their signs and chants demanding police reform captured from within their ranks by dozens of camera phones. “This revolution won’t be televised!” shouted one protester. “It’s going to be streamed!” Citizen footage has played a role in previous protest movements: Rodney King’s violent arrest in Los Angeles in 1991 was filmed by a man on his nearby balcony with a camcorder, and images posted to social media were crucial to the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. But the Black Lives Matter movement has been different. Bystander video sparked it, with cellphone-bearing citizens capturing the killings of Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, George Floyd and others. While those high-profile clips showed the extremes of police brutality, the ubiquity of smart phones…

Yadeen Rashid was flying high in February. He’d just earned stellar grades in his latest semester at Virginia Tech university, where he’s in his third year double majoring in economics and political science. And he’d just landed a summer internship at a data analysis company. Then the pandemic hit, triggering lockdown restrictions and pushing the U.S. economy into recession. Many companies canceled their internships programs and rescinded job offers - including NTT Data, where Rashid was set to intern. “I was really upset, not just because finding an internship is hard, but because I actually was very excited to work with them very specifically,” said Rashid, 21. He said he bears no ill-will to the company and is looking for other internship opportunities. “But, you know, as time goes on,…

The Oscars are implementing some big changes, including a set number of best picture nominees and to-be-determined representation and inclusion standards for eligibility. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that there will be 10 best picture nominees beginning with the 94th Academy Awards in 2022. The organization is also planning to implement new eligibility requirements with an eye toward diversity in collaboration with the Producers Guild of America that will be finalized by the end of July. Neither change will impact the 93rd Academy Awards set to be held in Los Angeles on Feb. 28, 2021, because it is already deep into the eligibility calendar. The film academy has shifted the number of best picture nominees several times in its history. In 2009, it was expanded from…

You can now buy one of those unnerving animal-like robots you might have seen on YouTube — so long as you don’t plan to use it to harm or intimidate anyone. Boston Dynamics started selling its four-legged Spot robots online for just under $75,000 each. The agile robots can walk, climb stairs and observe their surroundings with cameras and other sensors. But people who buy them online must agree not to arm them or intentionally use them as weapons, among other conditions. “The key goal for us is to make sure people trust robots,” Michael Perry, the company’s vice president for business development, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Somebody wanted to use Spot for a haunted house and we said no to that. It frames the robot…

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is willing to testify to the congressional panel investigating the market dominance of Big Tech, but along with other tech industry CEOs, lawyers for the company say, according to a published report. Last month, leaders of the House Judiciary Committee from both parties asked Bezos to testify to address possible misleading statements by the company on its competition practices. They held out the threat of a subpoena if he didn’t agree voluntarily to appear. Amazon is willing to cooperate with the probe and to make “the appropriate executive” available to testify — including Bezos with other tech CEOs at a hearing this summer, an attorney for Amazon told the lawmakers in a letter, The Wall Street Journal reported. However, the letter also said Amazon would first…

Twitter has removed a vast network of accounts that it says is linked to the Chinese government and was pushing false information favorable to the country’s communist rulers. Beijing denied involvement and said the company should instead take down accounts smearing China. The U.S. social media company suspended 23,750 accounts that were posting pro-Beijing narratives, and another 150,000 accounts dedicated to retweeting and amplifying those messages. The network was engaged “in a range of coordinated and manipulated activities” in predominantly Chinese languages, including praise for China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and “deceptive narratives” about Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, the company said. The accounts also tweeted about two other topics: Taiwan and Guo Wengui, an exiled billionaire waging a campaign from New York against China’s president and party leader Xi…