Innholdsfortegnelse for #461 i Techlife News

Facebook is pushing back on new Apple privacy rules for its mobile devices — and putting app developers in the middle. Apple will soon require apps to ask users for permission to collect data on what devices they are using and to let ads follow them around on the internet. The social network said that those rules could reduce what apps can earn by advertising through Facebook’s audience network. Facebook said it expects “less impact” on its own advertising revenue than on the ad-supported businesses that rely on its audience network to promote their apps. The audience network allows Facebook and Instagram advertisers to place their ads elsewhere on the internet. Apple says the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 14, is designed to protect people’s privacy. It…

So after the coronavirus threat has passed, you head downtown for a baseball game. You get to the parking garage, and using an app on your phone, you link your SUV to the garage’s computers and sensors, and the SUV finds a spot on the fourth floor and parks itself while you catch batting practice. This isn’t some far-off technology anymore. German auto parts maker Bosch is testing it with Mercedes in Stuttgart. And this week it announced a collaboration with Ford at a garage near downtown Detroit. Although the backers won’t say when the technology could be in widespread use, they say it’s one benefit from autonomous-car research that is coming sooner rather than later. “The goal is as soon as practically possible to deliver a safe experience,”says Kevin…

Britain’s Supreme Court has dismissed two appeals by Chinese telecoms firms Huawei and ZTE over mobile data patent disputes. The disputes center on the licensing of patented technology considered essential to mobile telecoms. The patents are meant to ensure fair competition and access to technology like 4G. In the first case, Unwired Planet, an intellectual property company that licenses patents, had brought legal action against Huawei for infringement of five U.K. patents that Unwired acquired from Ericsson. The second appeal concerned legal action brought by another patent licensing company, Conversant Wireless, against Huawei and ZTE for infringement of four of its U.K. patents. The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld lower court rulings on the cases and dismissed appeals by Huawei and ZTE. In a statement, Conversant said the ruling was…

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles — typically abbreviated as PHEVs — make up a very small percentage of vehicle sales, but they can be a smart pick for a certain kind of shopper. Consider this scenario: You want to buy a significantly more fuel-efficient vehicle than what you have now but can’t fully commit to a pure electric vehicle such as a Tesla. Perhaps you’re worried about long battery charging times or have range anxiety. What should you do? A PHEV could be the solution. A PHEV is essentially a hybrid vehicle — think a Toyota Prius — with two key modifications: a larger-capacity battery pack and a charge port that allows you to recharge the battery with a power cord. A PHEV still has a gasoline engine but is able…

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was a tough act to follow. But Tim Cook seems to be doing so well at it that his eventual successor may also have big shoes to fill. Initially seen as a mere caretaker for the iconic franchise that Jobs built before his 2011 death, Cook has forged his own distinctive legacy. He will mark his ninth anniversary as Apple’s CEO Monday — the same day the company split its stock for the second time during his reign, setting up the shares to begin trading on a split-adjusted basis beginning Aug. 31. Grooming Cook as heir apparent was “one of Steve Jobs’ greatest accomplishments that is vastly underappreciated,” said long-time Apple analyst Gene Munster, who is now managing partner of Loup Ventures.…

For small retailers across the country, the coronavirus outbreak has turned an already challenging business environment into never-ending uncertainty. Amy Witt might have 20 customers on a good day in her Dallas women’s clothing store, and then none the next. “It’s a rollercoaster we ride every day,” says Witt, whose store, Velvet Window, reopened May 1 after being closed since March. “We’re doing everything we can to cover expenses and keep the store stocked with inventory.” Many of Witt’s older customers are still shy about going into stores, especially since the virus has resurged in Texas. As she reopened the store in May, Witt told The Associated Press she planned to use services like private shopping hours to encourage reluctant customers to come in. The strategy has helped but sales…

Teachers and parents got a brief glimpse of a new kind of pandemic-era nightmare Monday when Zoom — the video-conferencing service that powers everything from distance learning to business meetings to casual, socially distant get-togethers — abruptly went dead. For roughly two-and-a-half hours Monday morning, many users were unable to load the Zoom website; others could neither host nor join scheduled meetings. Zoom fixed the problem by 11:30 a.m. ET, the company reported on its status page. The timing was less than ideal, since many schools across the U.S. were just starting online instruction after a summer surge in the coronavirus pandemic scotched many plans to reopen classes with students present in the flesh. “Today was horrible,” said Jacqueline Donovan, a professor at Broward College in Broward County, Florida. Her…

Sales of new homes jumped again in July, rising 13.9% as the housing market continues to gain traction following a spring downturn caused by pandemic-related lockdowns. The Commerce Department reported that July’s gain propelled sales of new homes to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 901,000, the most since 2006. That’s a far bigger number than analysts had expected and follows big increases in May and June. The government report has a high margin of error, so the July figures could be revised in the coming months. The recent sales gains followed a steep dropoff in March and April as much of the country stayed home due to government restrictions intended to slow the spread of coronavirus. In a report last week, the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of…

Britain’s prime minister is asking parents to set aside their fears and send their children back to school next month when schools in Britain fully reopen for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic shut then down more than five months ago. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was the government’s “moral duty” to reopen the schools as he stressed that authorities now know more about COVID-19 than they did when the country went into lockdown on March 23. Johnson’s comments came hours after Britain’s top public health officials issued a joint statement saying that children were more likely be harmed by staying away from school than from being exposed to COVID-19. “This is why it’s vitally important that we get our children back into the classroom to learn and…

Does a face mask protect me, or just the people around me? It likely provides protection for both. Studies on the new coronavirus and other germs show wearing a mask helps stop infected people from spreading disease to others. Evidence also suggests that masks may offer some protection for the people wearing them. The virus spreads from droplets people spray when they cough, sneeze or talk. Surgical or cloth face masks can block most of those particles from spreading. While some droplets may still spread out, wearing a mask could reduce the amount, providing a benefit to others. Research shows people don’t get as sick when exposed to smaller amounts of virus, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, a virus expert at University of California, San Francisco. And masks may protect the…

Europe’s flight safety authority said it had scheduled the first flight tests for the Boeing 737 Max, which has been grounded worldwide after two deadly crashes revealed design issues with the jet. The European Aviation Safety Agency said in a statement that it has been working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which began its own recertification test flights in June, on scheduling its own tests. “While Boeing still has some final actions to close off, EASA judges the overall maturity of the re-design process is now sufficient to proceed to flight tests,” the agency said. “These are a prerequisite for the European agency to approve the aircraft’s new design.” EASA said the hope is to return the plane to service as soon as possible, but only once the agency…

After a turbulent year with the coronavirus pandemic putting a halt to the world’s travel plans, rental giant Airbnb is preparing to go public. Over the past decade, the Silicon Valley startup has transformed the way we sleep and explore, and its dominance will only continue to grow. CHANGING THE WAY WE TRAVEL When you need to get from A to B, you turn to Uber. Hungry? You open up UberEats or DoorDash and order from your favorite restaurant. The App Store has revolutionized the way we live, no more so than in the world of travel. And as iOS 14 has proven, Apple can still innovate, as it demonstrated with its new Translate app coming in October, making it easier than ever to have real-time conversations with locals and…

A sweet if sleepy adaptation of Katherine Applegate’s 2012 children’s book, Disney’s “The One and Only Ivan” is a talking-animal film that takes the lives of its characters a lot more seriously than, say, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua.” Directed by Thea Sharrock (“Me Before You”) and scripted with characteristic sensitivity by Mike White (“School of Rock,”“Enlightened”), the film initially seems like the expected stuff of snarky CGI animals. Ivan (Sam Rockwell) is a 400-pound silverback gorilla who lives in the corner of the Big Top Mall, a shopping center with a struggling circus act on the side. (Given that multiplexes have long similarly abutted malls, “The One and Only Ivan” — which premieres Friday on Disney+ — could serve as an unwitting metaphor for a fading brick-and-mortar reality for movie theaters.)…

U.S. consumer confidence fell for the second consecutive month, sinking to the lowest levels in more than six years as a resurgence of COVID-19 infections in many parts of the country heightened pessimism. The Conference Board, a New York research organization, reported this week that its Consumer Confidence Index declined to a reading of 84.8 in August, the lowest level since May 2014. The drop, which followed a July decline to 91.7, put the index 36% below its high point for the year reached in February, before the coronavirus began to seriously impact the United States. Because consumer spending accounts for 70% of economic activity in the U.S., a drop-off in confidence gets a lot of attention from economists. “Consumer spending has rebounded in recent months but increasing concerns among…

Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods jumped 11.2% in July, the third consecutive monthly gain. And the jump last month was even larger than the 7.7% increase in June, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The strong advance last month, however, was led by the volatile transportation sector, which spiked 35.6%. Excluding transportation, orders would have risen by a more modest 2.4%. A closely watched category that serves as a proxy for business investment plans rose a solid 1.9% in July after a 4.3% rebound in June. While the gains in orders for durable goods is welcome, economists caution that could falter if coronavirus infections surge in the fall, forcing more factory shutdowns and a return to the near economic stall the U.S. went through this past spring. “The…

Matt Stutzman was born without arms — just stumps at the shoulders. Ellie Cole’s right leg was amputated when she was 3, lost to cancer. Bebe Vio had parts of all four limbs amputated after she contacted meningitis as an adolescent. Doctors were able to save her life but not her arms and legs. If your mood is being dragged down by the pandemic, you’ll be uplifted by these three Paralympic athletes — and many others like them — who are profiled in the Nexflix documentary “Rising Phoenix,” which was released in 190 countries this week. “In the Paralympic sport, everybody has a story,” Xavi Gonzalez, the former CEO of the International Paralympic Committee, says in the film. “It comes from them breaking barriers to be able to achieve what…

Ant Group, the financial technology arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, filed for a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai, in what may be the largest share offering since the coronavirus pandemic began. The initial public offering will be the first dual listing on the Hong Kong exchange and Shanghai’s STAR Market. The company’s filing did not disclose the timetable for its public offering or how much money it hopes to raise. Ant Group operates Alipay, one of China’s two dominant online payments services. Over a billion users use Alipay to pay for purchases both online and in stores, to send money to friends and to pay bills. In the 12 months that ended in June, Ant Group tallied 118 trillion yuan ($17 trillion) in transaction volume. In…

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer resigned Thursday amid U.S. pressure for its Chinese owner to sell the popular video app, which the White House says is a security risk. In a letter to employees, Mayer said that his decision to leave comes after the “political environment has sharply changed.” His resignation follows President Donald Trump’s order to ban TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells its U.S. operations to an American company within 90 days. “I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for,” he said in the letter. “Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all…

Just over 1 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, a sign that the coronavirus outbreak continues to threaten jobs even as the housing market, auto sales and other segments of the economy rebound from a springtime collapse. The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of people seeking jobless aid last week dropped by 98,000 from 1.1 million the week before. The number of initial claims has exceeded 1 million every week but one since late March, an unprecedented streak. Before the coronavirus pandemic, they had never topped 700,000 in a week. “Layoffs are ongoing reflecting interruptions to activity from virus containment that are likely resulting in permanent closures and job losses,” Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research report. Farooqi added…

The U.S. military’s top cyber official is defending the government’s shift toward a more aggressive strategy in cyberspace, saying the mission has evolved over the last decade to become more proactive and offensive in order to keep pace with sophisticated threats. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, writes in a piece published in the magazine Foreign Affairs that the military’s cyber fighters have moved away from a “reactive, defensive posture” and are increasingly engaging in combat with foreign adversaries online. “We learned that we cannot afford to wait for cyber attacks to affect our military networks. We learned that defending our military networks requires executing operations outside our military networks. The threat evolved, and we evolved to meet it,”…

Video app TikTok is suing the Trump Administration over its efforts to ban the popular Chinese-owned service over national-security concerns. TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, insisted that it is not a national-security threat and that the government is acting to “further the president’s anti-China political campaign.”The company said the government is acting without evidence for its allegations or due process. It filed suit this week in federal court in California against the Commerce Department, President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, saying that it sought to prevent the government from “impermissibly banning” TikTok by overturning President Donald Trump’s executive order. Trump issued two orders in August. The first, on Aug. 6, imposed a sweeping but unspecified ban on any“transaction” with ByteDance, to take effect by Sept. 20.…

On Aug. 23, 1917, four months after the U.S. had entered World War I, the all-Black 3rd battalion of the U.S. Army’s 24th Infantry Regiment mutinied in Houston. That night’s two hours of violence left nine civilians, four policemen and two soldiers dead. It resulted in the largest murder trial in U.S. history in which 110 out of 118 soldiers were found guilty. Nineteen were hanged. The riot was incited by an incident between an African American woman and the police, and their subsequent beating of one of the soldiers. But it wasn’t just that day that sparked the violence. As is most often the case with major eruptions, tensions had been brewing and indignities accumulating for some time between the African American regiment and the white police force. The…

A dance studio in Florida. A martial arts center in Missouri. Libraries in San Francisco. These and other places are taking on a somewhat unlikely new role this fall — welcoming children for supervised distance learning while their parents go to work. With many schools still closed by the coronavirus pandemic, public and private alternatives are sprouting up across the nation to watch over children as they study. The sites provide a lifeline for families that struggled through virtual learning last spring, but organizers acknowledge they are a poor substitute for schools with professional educators. And by inviting students to congregate in new spaces, experts say, the programs risk subjecting caregivers to the same virus dangers that closed schools. “It’s creating the same situation as we would for having the…

The National Science Foundation has launched an informal outreach to Hawaii about possible funding efforts for the stalled Thirty Meter Telescope project. The effort by the nation’s top funder of basic research could lead to a huge influx of cash for the astronomy project on Mauna Kea with an estimated cost of $2.4 billion, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. Funding efforts could also trigger a regulatory process adding two years or more to a construction timeline that is far behind schedule. The project recently announced the start of construction was delayed until spring. The foundation said in a statement it plans to reach out to “stakeholders, including Native Hawaiians,” to understand their viewpoints. Protesters blocked the 6.27-mile (10-kilometer) access road to the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain, in a…

When the iconic T. Rex at the American Museum of Natural History again welcomes visitors, it will gaze down at humans acting a bit differently. They will still gape up at its massive skeleton, but there will be fewer of them. They’ll stand farther apart and wear masks. Other pandemic precautions will include hand sanitizer stations and one-way signs guiding guests through exhibits. The museum is like many cultural institutions in the city gingerly reopening their doors, weighing the safety of visitors and staff with the need to educate, inspire and support New York’s recovery. “We have to re-imagine and re-engineer the museum visit,” says museum President Ellen Futter. “We want to fulfill our civic mission. And we think that our mission has never been more important.” New York City…

If you want to build a fire, you need three things: Ignition, fuel and oxygen. But wildfire in California is a much more complex people-stoked witch’s brew. The state burns regularly because of fierce autumn winds, invasive grasses that act as kindling, fire-happy native shrubs and trees, frequent drought punctuated by spurts of downpours, a century of fire suppression, people moving closer to the wild, homes that burn easily, people starting fires accidentally or on purpose — and most of all climate change. “California has a really flammable ecosystem,” said University of Colorado fire scientist Jennifer Balch. “People are living in flammable places, providing ignition, starting the wildfires against a backdrop of a warming climate that is making wildfires worse.” Trying to manage California’s wildfires is like trying to hold…