Innholdsfortegnelse for #519 i Techlife News

Barry Diller’s IAC is buying Meredith, one of the country’s largest magazine companies and the publisher of People, Southern Living and InStyle, in hopes of accelerating a digital shift as print fades. IAC’s Dotdash, a collection of websites including Investopedia, Brides, Serious Eats and Simply Recipes, will join with Meredith, the companies announced Wednesday. Dotdash’s CEO Neil Vogel will lead the group, which the companies say will reach more than 175 million people online. The deal is expected to close by year’s end. IAC is paying $42.18 per share, funded by cash and debt, or about $2.1 billion. IAC values Meredith at $2.7 billion including debt. It’s a big turnaround for Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith, which only four years ago bought the Time Inc. magazines for $1.8 billion to bulk…

Australia’s prime minister described social media as a “coward’s palace” and warned that digital platforms including Facebook should be held liable for defamatory comments posted anonymously. Anonymous commentators who use social media to vilify and bully have become the latest battleground between Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government and U.S. tech giants. The government wants social media users to be required to identify themselves. Australia passed laws this year that oblige Google and Facebook to pay for journalism. Australia also defied the tech companies by creating a law that could imprison social media executives if their platforms stream violent images. Morrison said platforms that do not reveal the identities of people who post defamatory comments should be held liable for those comments. “Cowards who go anonymously on to social media and…

German officials unveiled what they said is the world’s first commercial plant for making synthetic kerosene, touted as a climate-friendly fuel of the future. Aviation currently accounts for about 2.5% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. While other forms of transportation are increasingly being electrified, the challenge to making large, battery-powered planes is formidable. Experts say e-fuels can help solve the problem by replacing fossil fuels without requiring major technical modifications to the aircraft. “The era of burning coal, oil and natural gas is drawing to a close,” Germany’s environment minister, Svenja Schulze, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new plant. “At the same time, no one should have to sacrifice the dream of flying. This is why we need alternatives…

The six-hour outage at Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp was a headache for many casual users but far more serious for the millions of people worldwide who rely on the social media sites to run their businesses or communicate with relatives, fellow parents, teachers or neighbors. When all three services went dark Monday, it was a stark reminder of the power and reach of Facebook, which owns the photo-sharing and messaging apps. Around the world, the breakdown at WhatsApp left many at a loss. In Brazil, the messaging service is by far the most widely used app in the country, installed on 99% of smartphones, according to tech pollster Mobile Time. WhatsApp has become essential in Brazil to communicate with friends and family, as well as for a variety of other…

It’s one of the downsides of apps that make things like ordering food or buying stocks and cryptocurrencies easier: What happens when something goes wrong? It’s often a frustrating chase, tapping through menu after menu in hopes of reaching a person to fix the problem. It’s also something that upstart companies upending the investment and trading industry are increasingly acknowledging. Robinhood, the app that helps more than 22 million people trade stocks and cryptocurrencies, announced that it’s offering 24/7 phone support for its customers to cover almost every issue. It follows up on an announcement by Coinbase, the cryptocurrency trading platform that said last month it would launch 24/7 phone service by the end of the year for many customers. Before its own stock started trading on the public market…

In a normal month before the pandemic, Con Paulos’ Chevy dealership in Jerome, Idaho, sold around 40 new vehicles. In September, it was only six. Now he’s got nothing new in stock, and every car, truck or SUV on order has been sold. Last month, what happened at his dealership about 115 miles (185 kilometers) southeast of Boise was repeated across the country as factory closures due to a worsening global shortage of computer chips crimped U.S. new vehicle shipments. U.S. new vehicle sales tumbled about 26% in September as chip shortages and other parts-supply disruptions cut into the selection on dealer lots and raised prices once again to record levels. That sent many frustrated consumers to the sidelines to wait out a shortage that has hobbled the industry since…

Welcome back, Mr. Bond. This is your most important mission yet. The fate of the movie business depends on your success. That’s how it feels, anyway, so high are industry expectations around “No Time to Die.” The 25th James Bond adventure is finally hitting screens a year and a half after its originally scheduled April 2020 release date, and is central to Hollywood’s hopes of luring pandemic-weary audiences back into movie theaters. Moviegoers certainly get a lot of Bond for their buck in Daniel Craig’s fifth and final adventure as the suave but by now battered secret agent. At 2 hours, 43 minutes, it’s the series’ longest film yet. Big, brash, explosive and occasionally even tender, the movie nods fondly to the spy series’ past while moving — somewhat —…

The machine Ted Bowman helped design can make water out of the air, and in parched California, some homeowners are already buying the pricey devices. The air-to-water systems work like air conditioners by using coils to chill air, then collect water drops in a basin. “Our motto is, water from air isn’t magic, it’s science, and that’s really what we’re doing with these machines,” said Ted Bowman, design engineer at Washington state-based Tsunami Products. The system is one of several that have been developed in recent years to extract water from humidity in the air. Other inventions include mesh nets, solar panels and shipping containers that harvest moisture from the air. Bowman said his company’s machines — made for use at homes, offices, ranches and elsewhere — dehumidify the air…

With three months until Christmas, the Basic Fun toy company has made an unprecedented decision: leave one-third of its iconic Tonka Mighty Dump Trucks destined for U.S. store shelves in China. Why? Given surging prices of shipping containers and clogs in the supply network, transportation costs to get the yellow bulky toy to U.S. soil is now 40% of the retail price, which is roughly $26. That’s dramatically up from 7% a year ago. And it doesn’t even include the cost of getting the product from U.S. ports to retailers. “We’ve never left product behind in this way,” says Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun. “We really had no choice.” Toy companies are racing to get their products to retailers as they grapple with a severe supply network crunch that…

For many parents, revelations this week from whistleblower Frances Haugen showing internal Facebook studies of the harms of Instagram for teenagers only intensified concerns about the popular photo sharing app. “The patterns that children establish as teenagers stay with them for the rest of their lives,” Haugen said in Senate testimony. “The kids who are bullied on Instagram, the bullying follows them home. It follows them into their bedrooms. The last thing they see before they go to bed at night is someone being cruel to them,” Haugen said. “Kids are learning that their own friends, people who they care about, are cruel to them.” So, what can you do to protect your kids? Experts say open lines of communication, age limits and if necessary, activity monitoring are some of…

The CIA said Thursday it will create a top-level working group on China as part of a broad U.S. government effort focused on countering Beijing’s influence. The group will become one of fewer than a dozen mission centers operated by the CIA, with weekly director-level meetings intended to drive the agency’s strategy toward China. The CIA also announced that it would ramp up efforts to recruit Chinese speakers and create another mission center focusing on emerging technologies and global issues such as climate change and global health. President Joe Biden’s administration has called out what it sees as Chinese aggression on a range of security and economic issues while also seeking common ground on issues like climate change and a nuclear-armed North Korea. Top administration officials have repeatedly signaled a…

Shareholders in Daimler AG, maker of Mercedes-Benz luxury cars, approved the spinoff of the company’s truck division, a move intended to let the world’s largest maker of trucks react faster to change and focus on the new low-emission technologies transforming the automotive industry. The voting at an online shareholder meeting also means that Stuttgart-based Daimler will rename itself as Mercedes-Benz Group AG as of Feb. 1, 2022. Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius said that “by unlocking the full potential of both companies, we are establishing two undisputed innovation leaders who will set the pace in the transformation of their industries.” One reason for the spinoff is that the luxury cars and trucks are pursuing different technological approaches to developing zero local emission vehicles, with Mercedes-Benz focusing on battery-powered cars while the…

While accusing the giant social network of pursuing profits over safety, a former Facebook data scientist told Congress Tuesday she believes stricter government oversight could alleviate the dangers the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence to fueling misinformation. Frances Haugen, testifying to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, presented a wide-ranging condemnation of Facebook. She accused the company of failing to make changes to Instagram after internal research showed apparent harm to some teens and being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation. Haugen’s accusations were buttressed by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit. But she also offered thoughtful ideas about how Facebook’s social media platforms could be…

Cryptocurrencies are inherently cryptic — it’s right there in the name. And if you follow Warren Buffett’s advice to never invest in businesses you can’t understand, it may be hard to justify investing in a currency made of math instead of gold. But it’s also hard to ignore some cryptocurrencies’ astounding performance: The price of one bitcoin jumped from just under $5,000 in March 2020 to over $60,000 as of this April. The excitement surrounding digital currency may leave some investors feeling like the lonely kid at the pool party, wanting to join their friends having fun in the deep end, but too nervous to jump in. For those investors who are cautiously curious, here are ways to gain exposure to cryptocurrency without buying it, and if you do decide…

Captain Kirk is rocketing into space next week — boldly going where no other sci-fi stars have gone. Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin, announced that “Star Trek” actor William Shatner will blast off from West Texas on Oct. 12. “Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!’” the 90-year-old tweeted. He added: “It’s never too late to experience new things.” Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is a huge fan of the sci-fi series and even had a cameo as a high-ranking alien in the 2016 film “Star Trek Beyond.” His rocket company invited Shatner to fly as its guest. Shatner will become the oldest person to go to space. He’ll join three others — two of them paying customers — aboard a Blue Origin capsule. He’ll…

The fans are back and the crowds are loud, but home-field advantage still isn’t a factor early in this NFL season. Road teams have won 33 of the 64 games over the first four weeks, extending a trend that began in 2019 and continued through the pandemic-impacted 2020 season when games were played in front of few, if any, fans. The .484 winning percentage for home teams is the sixth-worst since the merger through four weeks of game action. This is the third straight season that home teams failed to have a winning record through four weeks, something that hadn’t happened before that since 1983. Since the beginning of the 2019 season, road teams are 284-290-2 for a .495 winning percentage. There was some expectation that would change this season…

The United Arab Emirates announced plans to send a probe to land on an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to collect data on the origins of the universe, the latest project in the oil-rich federation’s ambitious space program. A successful landing would see the UAE join an elite club of the European Union, Japan and the United States, which have completed the feat on either an asteroid or a comet. The probe would remain behind on the asteroid, transmitting back to Earth information on the composition of the asteroid as long as its batteries remain charged. The project targets a 2028 launch with a landing in 2033, a five-year journey in which the spacecraft will travel some 3.6 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles). The spacecraft would need to slingshot first…

Russia accounted for most state-sponsored hacking detected by Microsoft over the past year, with a 58% share, mostly targeting government agencies and think tanks in the United States, followed by Ukraine, Britain and European NATO members, the company said. The devastating effectiveness of the long-undetected SolarWinds hack — it mainly breached information technology businesses including Microsoft — also boosted Russian state-backed hackers’success rate to 32% in the year ending June 30, compared with 21% in the preceding 12 months. China, meanwhile, accounted for fewer than 1 in 10 of the state-backed hacking attempts Microsoft detected but was successful 44% of the time in breaking into targeted networks, Microsoft said in its second annual Digital Defense Report, which covers July 2020 through June 2021. While Russia’s prolific state-sponsored hacking is well…

Searching for flights on Google just got “greener.” A new search feature rolled out this week tells users which flights have lower carbon emissions, giving them the ability to choose flights based on carbon emissions just as they would price or the number of layovers. A basic search for flights will give an estimate of how many kilograms of carbon dioxide the flight will spew from start to finish. Users can prioritize their search by emissions, much like they can by price, if desired. Flights with emissions below the median get highlighted in green. Google said the estimates are a combination of data from the European Environmental Agency and flight-specific information it gets from airlines and other providers. That data could include an aircraft’s age, model and configuration, the speed…

Though there’s no doubting Steve Jobs personified Apple and forged a way forward for the Cupertino company, the past decade has still been filled with incredible highs. Ten years on from the death of the founder, it’s time to consider what the technology giant might have done differently under an extended Jobs leadership, and what Apple can still learn. APPLE UNDER JOBS Steve Jobs’ impact on Apple and its success have been well documented over the past decade, and today the entrepreneur is rightly revered as something of an icon. Defined as one of the greatest inventors of the last century, Steve Jobs was the powerhouse behind the original Macintosh back in 1948, the first consumer computer with a graphical user interface. Although the idea didn’t originate with Jobs, he…

FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER TESTIFIES: FIVE HIGHLIGHTS A former Facebook employee told members of Congress Tuesday that the company knows that its platform spreads misinformation and content that harms children but refuses to make changes that could hurt its profits. Speaking before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen told lawmakers that new regulations are needed to force Facebook to improve its own platforms. But she stopped short of calling for a breakup of the company, saying it wouldn’t fix existing problems and would instead turn Facebook into a “Frankenstein” that continues to cause harm around the world while a separate Instagram rakes in most advertising dollars. Efforts to pass new regulations on social media have failed in the past, but senators said Tuesday that new…

Tesla says it delivered 241,300 electric vehicles in the third quarter even as it wrestled with a global shortage of computer chips that has hit the entire auto industry. The Palo Alto, California, company’s sales from July through September beat Wall Street estimates of 227,000 sales worldwide, according to data provider FactSet. Third-quarter sales rose 72% over the 140,000 deliveries Tesla made for the same period a year ago. So far this year, Tesla has sold around 627,300 vehicles. That puts it on pace to soundly beat last year’s total of 499,550. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a note to investors that the pace of electric vehicle deliveries in the U.S. and China has been strong for the past month or so. That means an“eye-popping growth trajectory heading into…

When “The Sopranos” is brought up these days, it’s usually for the nebulous way it ended: That now-famous cut-to-black in a crowded diner while Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” plays. Whether Tony Soprano lived or died is still hotly debated. The real death in 2013 of the great James Gandolfini ended hopes of putting that debate to bed, but David Chase, the creator and showrunner of “The Sopranos,” has intriguingly kept the show alive with the new prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark.” It’s intriguing mainly because the film conjures the greatest character ever created for TV back to life but doesn’t frame him in the middle. Tony Soprano is a cameo in his own origin film. Instead, the guy in the center is Tony’s so-called uncle, Dickie Moltisanti, played…

Eight days into the school year, all five of Amber Cessac’s daughters, ages 4 to 10, had tested positive for COVID-19. Having them all sick at once and worrying about long-term repercussions as other parents at their school, and even her own mother, downplayed the virus, “broke something inside of me,” Cessac said. “The anxiety and the stress has sort of been bottled up,” she said. “It just felt so, I don’t know, defeating and made me feel so helpless.” Like parents everywhere, Cessac has been dealing with pandemic stress for over 18 months now. There’s the exhaustion of worrying about the disease itself— made worse by the spread of the more infectious delta variant, particularly among people who refuse vaccinations, which has caused a big increase in infections in…

The ruling Communist Party is tightening political control over China’s internet giants and tapping their wealth to pay for its ambitions to reduce reliance on U.S. and European technology. Anti-monopoly and data security crackdowns starting in late 2020 have shaken the industry, which flourished for two decades with little regulation. Investor jitters have knocked more than $1.3 trillion off the total market value of e-commerce platform Alibaba, games and social media operator Tencent and other tech giants. The party says anti-monopoly enforcement will be a priority through 2025. It says competition will help create jobs and raise living standards. President Xi Jinping’s government seems likely to stay the course even if economic growth suffers, say businesspeople, lawyers and economists. “These companies are world leaders in their sectors in innovation, and…