Innholdsfortegnelse for #454 i Techlife News

Is it safe to visit the dentist during the COVID-19 pandemic? Dentists can’t eliminate all risk, but they are taking steps to minimize the chances of spreading the coronavirus. You’ll likely notice changes as soon as you enter the office. Many dentists have removed magazines from waiting rooms, for example, as well as some chairs to encourage social distancing. They also are spacing out appointments to avoid crowding their offices. You may be asked to arrive for your appointment with a facial covering and to wait in your car until equipment is cleaned and the dentist is ready. Before receiving care, you can also expect staff to take your temperature and ask about COVID-19 symptoms. Procedures are changing, too. Coronavirus is spread mainly through droplets people spray when they talk,…

Like that last roll of ultra-thin toilet paper left on the shelves or the latest Star Wars movies, it’s tough to be disappointed in something when expectations were low to begin with. That’s how Wall Street is approaching the upcoming earnings season for companies. CEOs across the country are preparing to tell their investors in upcoming weeks how they fared from April through June, and the forecast is uniformly dismal. The quarter coincided with the height of lockdowns ordered by governments to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which bludgeoned the economy into a sudden recession. As job losses mounted, analysts repeatedly cut their forecasts for corporate profits. Now, they say profits for big U.S. companies in the S&P 500 plummeted about 44% from a year earlier. If they’re…

The European Union’s highest court ruled Thursday that online platforms don’t have to disclose the full personal data including email addresses, telephone numbers or IP addresses of users who illegally upload movies and copyright material. The case stems from a German film distributor’s request that YouTube provide details about users who had uploaded the films “Parker” and “Scary Movie 5” onto the platform. YouTube and its parent company Google refused to provide their email addresses and telephone numbers, as well as the IP addresses they used. The German Federal Court of Justice referred the case to the European Court of Justice, which said online platforms like YouTube just need to provide the user’s postal address under European rules on intellectual property rights. “When a film is unlawfully uploaded onto an…

Gov. John Bel Edwards is using much of the $50 million in discretionary education aid awarded to Louisiana to help with the coronavirus response to buy computers and expand internet access for public school students. The Democratic governor has agreed to spend $32 million for the effort to bridge the digital divide at K-12 schools. Another $15 million will go to higher education, with two-thirds of that money paying to accelerate training for students to get them to work. Louisiana’s governor received $50 million from the federal CARES Act to divvy up among K-12 schools, colleges and universities. That money is on top of $287 million directly sent to public schools and $147 million sent to colleges and universities earlier this year. The Advocate reports the governor said as he…

Acts of kindness may not be that random after all. Science says being kind pays off. Research shows that acts of kindness make us feel better and healthier. Kindness is also key to how we evolved and survived as a species, scientists say. We are hard-wired to be kind. Kindness “is as bred in our bones as our anger or our lust or our grief or as our desire for revenge,” said University of California San Diego psychologist Michael McCullough, author of the forthcoming book “Kindness of Strangers.” It’s also, he said, “the main feature we take for granted.” Scientific research is booming into human kindness and what scientists have found so far speaks well of us. “Kindness is much older than religion. It does seem to be universal,” said…

Samsung Electronics Co. said this week its operating profit for the last quarter likely rose 23% from the same period last year. The growth was apparently driven by increasing demands for memory chips used in personal computers and servers as the COVID-19 pandemic forces more people to work from home. The South Korean technology giant, which will release more detailed information when it announces its finalized earnings later this month, projected its operating profit during the April-June period to come in at 8.1 trillion won ($6.8 billion). The company’s revenue for the quarter was expected to fall 7% to 52 trillion won ($43.6 billion). After reporting a 3.4% increase in operating profit for the first three months of the year, Samsung had said in April it expected its second-quarter profit…

Getting into “good trouble” is a guiding principle for John Lewis. It’s not only OK, but necessary to enact and inspire meaningful change. And it’s not just rhetoric, either. The 80-year-old congressman has the receipts to prove it. He has been arrested 45 times, five of which happened while he was a sitting representative. In the new documentary “ John Lewis: Good Trouble,” he couldn’t be prouder of that fact because it’s all been in service of his lifelong fight for civil rights. He even predicts that he’ll add to that tally. It’s a principle that the country seems to have taken to heart in the past month in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. People have taken to the streets and to Twitter to call attention to injustices. They…

After becoming homeless, Connie Wade realized she’d be missing something critical to care for her daughter. She and 12-year-old Emilyanne couldn’t camp in a car or on the streets because they need to plug in a machine that helps the girl breathe easier. Emilyanne has Down syndrome and her breathing is interrupted every six minutes without a CPAP device. A typical open-space homeless shelter promised them a spot by an electrical outlet, but Wade felt they’d be too vulnerable. Then they got an offer from Mary’s Place, a family homeless shelter that recently opened a facility inside a gleaming new building on Amazon’s Seattle campus. Believed to be the first homeless shelter built inside a corporate building in the U.S., the nonprofit’s Popsicle Place shelter program helps homeless children with…

The Supreme Court upheld a 1991 law that bars robocalls to cellphones. The case, argued by telephone in May because of the coronavirus pandemic, only arose after Congress in 2015 created an exception in the law that allowed the automated calls for collection of government debt. Political consultants and pollsters were among those who asked the Supreme Court to strike down the entire 1991 law that bars them from making robocalls to cellphones as a violation of their free speech rights under the Constitution. The issue was whether, by allowing one kind of speech but not others, the exception made the whole law unconstitutional. Six justices agreed that by allowing debt collection calls to cellphones Congress “impermissibly favored debt-collection speech over political and other speech, in violation of the First…

Missouri school districts will be allowed to have students attend every other day and learn remotely on alternating days, helping schools avoid fund penalties related to attendance. The State Board of Education passed two emergency rules establishing hybrid instructions models for districts that want them, paving the way for districts to reopen schools, according to KCUR-FM. Deputy Education Commissioner Kari Monsees said the new rules will allow schools to build on the contingency plans they already have for snow days and other short-term school closures. School districts can either have students attend class every other day or have one group of students attend in the morning and another in the afternoon. By dividing students into two groups to attend class on alternating days and times, it will also help schools…

Brooks Brothers, the 200-year-old company that dressed nearly every U.S. president, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, the latest major clothing seller to be toppled by the coronavirus pandemic. Founded in New York in 1818, Brooks Brothers survived two world wars, the Great Depression and even managed to stay afloat as dress standards eased in the office. But the pandemic pushed it into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with so many stores closed and, with millions working from home, a crisp suit pushed to the very bottom of shopping lists. Brooks Brothers will permanently close more than a quarter of its 200 stores. The retail sector was under severe pressure even before the pandemic. Rival Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy protection late last year. Since COVID-19 began to spread in the…

The world could see annual global temperatures pass a key threshold for the first time in the coming five years, the U.N. weather agency said Thursday. The World Meteorological Organization said forecasts suggest there’s a 20% chance that global temperatures will be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) higher than the pre-industrial average in at least one year between 2020 and 2024. The 1.5 C mark is the level countries agreed to cap global warming at in the 2015 Paris accord. While a new annual high might be followed by several years with lower average temperatures, breaking that threshold would be seen as further evidence that international efforts to curb climate change aren’t working. “It shows how close we’re getting to what the Paris Agreement is trying to prevent,” said Maxx…

Despite the coronavirus pandemic causing the world’s biggest tech events to be canceled, Apple powered through with a virtual alternative, with Craig Federighi taking to the stage to lift the lid on an all-new macOS. To the surprise of developers and consumers, this year’s release is one of the biggest in macOS history, introducing an all-new look, a bunch of new features, and, of course, signaling the start of a new era for Macs with custom Apple chips. STUNNING NEW DESIGN Though Apple has had some subtle design tweaks to its operating systems over the years, macOS Big Sur represents the first major redesign since Mac OS X. With a design language that’s modern yet familiar, Apple has placed greater emphasis on your content, with all-new translucent toolbars and sidebars,…

Walgreens will squeeze primary care clinics into as many as 700 of its U.S. stores over the next few years in a major expansion of the care it offers customers. The drugstore chain said that it will partner with VillageMD to set up doctor-led clinics that also use nurses, social workers and therapists to provide regular treatment for patients. The retailer will redesign stores that get the clinics, narrow their shelves and pull products like tobacco and other grocery items to make room. Drugstores like Walgreens and rival CVS Health Corp. typically tuck small clinics in the back of their stores to dole out flu shots or treat minor ailments like sinus infections or poison ivy. But Walgreens said last fall it was going to close nearly 40% of those…

One county in Utah beat back a spike of pandemic virus infections in the spring, and another saw its rate jump. Both trends showed up in their sewage. Yes, sewage. Across the U.S. and in Europe, researchers and health officials say they can track the course of a community outbreak of the new coronavirus by studying the waste flushed from its bathrooms. And that can provide a valuable addition to public health tools, they say. In Utah, wastewater from communities near a Cache County meatpacking plant that discovered 287 infected workers indicated an outbreak several days before it was officially reported. In contrast, sewage from Summit County showed a decline after officials imposed anti-virus measures, including asking tourists to stay away from its popular Park City ski area. The monitoring…

Since contracting COVID-19 in March, Tom Hanks has been, by most measures, busy. He and his wife, Rita Wilson, flew home after recuperating in Australia, where he had been shooting Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley film. He hosted a from-home episode of “Saturday Night Live,” an already distant enough memory that it takes a beat for him to remember it. And he saw his new World War II naval drama “Greyhound” steered from theatrical release by Sony Pictures to Apple TV+ — the streaming service’s biggest movie yet. But he’s mostly been taking it day by day. “There’s sort of an ongoing physiological maintenance for your brain and for your body that we’ve been following through,” Hanks says, speaking by video conference from his home in California. “What can you do…

It’s time to do your taxes — no more delays. As the coronavirus pandemic took hold this spring, the federal government postponed the traditional April 15 filing deadline until July 15. The move provided some economic and logistical relief for taxpayers dealing with the disruptions and uncertainty brought on by lockdowns, school closures and shuttered businesses. But now that new deadline is rapidly approaching. Taxpayers must file or seek an extension by the new deadline or face a penalty. The IRS is expecting about 150 million returns from individuals and as of last count, it had received almost 139 million. So for those of you still waiting to file, make a payment or with other questions, a few answers: DO I HAVE TO? Yes. In most cases, you must file…

TikTok said it will stop operations in Hong Kong, joining other social media companies in warily eyeing ramifications of a sweeping national security law that took effect last week. The short-form video app’s planned departure from Hong Kong comes as various social media platforms and messaging apps including Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Google and Twitter balk at the possibility of providing user data to Hong Kong authorities. The social media companies say they are assessing implications of the security law, which prohibits what Beijing views as secessionist, subversive or terrorist activities or as foreign intervention in the city’s internal affairs. In the communist-ruled mainland, the foreign social media platforms are blocked by China’s “Great Firewall.” Critics see the law as Beijing’s boldest step yet to erase the legal divide between the…

President Donald Trump insists that schools reopen this fall. Many parents, educators, doctors and economists want the same thing. But getting children back to school safely could mean keeping high-risk spots like bars and gyms closed. A growing chorus of public health experts is urging federal, state and local officials to reconsider how they are reopening the broader economy, and to prioritize K-12 schools — an effort that will likely require closing some other establishments to help curb the virus spread and give children the best shot at returning to classrooms. “We need to think about what our priorities are as a society, and some other things may just have to wait,” said Helen Jenkins, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University. “I think there are hard choices having to…

The wind blowing out at Wrigley Field. The tricky breeze in San Francisco. The heat in Los Angeles. The weather is important business in baseball. But what kind of business is still being decided. Weather Applied Metrics has a contract with Marquee Sports Network to develop graphics that show the effect of the weather on the flight of balls for home games for the Chicago Cubs this summer — assuming there is a season amid the coronavirus pandemic. It is planning to install weather stations at Wrigley Field by the end of next week. It had a pilot program for Red Sox broadcasts last year. But it’s also heading into the third season of a deal with another major league team it declined to identify that decided to keep the…

Uber has widened its reach in the fiercely competitive delivery market by acquiring Postmates in a $2.65 billion all-stock deal, the company said. The acquisition enables the ride-hailing giant to increase its delivery offerings at a time when the global pandemic has suppressed customers’ desire for rides while boosting home delivery needs. While Uber’s meal delivery business, Uber Eats, has mostly focused on restaurants, Postmates delivers a wider array of goods including groceries, pharmacy items, alcoholic drinks and party supplies. “The vision for us is to become an everyday service,”said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, in a conference call with investors Monday. “Postmates is a great step along that vision. Anyplace you want to go, anything you want delivered to your home, Uber is going to be there with you,…

A two-year audit of Facebook’s civil rights record found “serious setbacks” that have marred the social network’s progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias. Facebook hired the audit’s leader, former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. Its 100-page report released Wednesday outlines a “seesaw of progress and setbacks” at the company on everything from bias in Facebook’s algorithms to its content moderation, advertising practices and treatment of voter suppression. The audit recommends that Facebook build a “civil rights infrastructure” into every aspect of the company, as well as a “stronger interpretation” of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias. Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in…

The Silicon Valley data-mining firm Palantir Technologies confidentially filed to go public, setting up what could be the biggest stock offering from a technology company since Uber’s debut last year. Founded in 2004 by investors including Peter Thiel, the company works with governments, law enforcement agencies and the defense establishment to organize and analyze huge volumes of data. The technology can be used to disrupt terrorist networks or battle human trafficking. Most recently, it was used by the White House to track coronavirus infections. Last year, Palantir won army contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Palantir’s clients include major banks and the U.N.’s World Food Program. The company has stirred controversy for upgrading Immigration and Customs Enforcement software that has been used in the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown,…

For two weeks, Rachael Jones has stayed home, going without a paycheck while waiting and waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test from a pharmacy near Philadelphia. “I’m just so disappointed. I just don’t know how -- with the resources and the people we have and the money we have -- we can’t get this right,” she said. Four months, 3 million confirmed infections and over 130,000 deaths into the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, Americans confronted with an alarming resurgence of the scourge are facing long lines at testing sites and going a week or more without receiving a diagnosis. Some sites are running out of kits even as testing is ramped up. Labs are reporting shortages of materials and don’t have enough workers to process the tests, leading to…

NASA has added more safety fixes for Boeing’s space capsule before it can fly astronauts following a pair of close calls during last year’s test flight. In closing out the seven-month investigation, NASA officials said they have now identified 80 corrective actions, mostly involving software and testing, that must be done before the Starliner capsule launches again. The previous count was 61. “It’s a bit of a wake-up call for NASA and its contractors” across the board, said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program. During its space debut last December with no one on board, the Starliner ended up in the wrong orbit and could not reach the International Space Station. Ground controllers barely had time to solve another software problem that could have destroyed the capsule at…

Jennifer Stile was apprehensive when she found out that training classes for her puppy Josie would be moving online because of the pandemic. “Initially I said I’d wait till it’s over,” says Stile, who was taking a class at My Fantastic Friend in Ellicott City, Maryland. “But then I realized that it wasn’t going to be over fast enough, and I knew I needed to train my dog and I didn’t have the tools to do that without help.” So she took the plunge — and she’s glad she did. “I’d been trying to watch YouTube videos and do it on my own, but I wasn’t getting that instant feedback, knowing if I was doing it correctly,” she says. “Having that feedback from a trainer who was invested in me…

Indian TikTok users awoke Tuesday (30) to a notice from the popular short-video app saying the company was working to comply with an India government ban on dozens of Chinese apps amid a military standoff between the two countries. While service in India was suspended, the ban was largely symbolic since the apps can’t be automatically erased from devices where they’ve already been downloaded. The move was a response to a border clash with China where 20 Indian soldiers died earlier this month, digital experts said. “They want to send a message. This is a decision based on a geopolitical situation,” said digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa. Indian protesters have been calling for a boycott of Chinese goods since the June 15 confrontation in the remote Karakoram mountain border region.…