Innholdsfortegnelse for #526 i Techlife News

The Italian telecommunications company TIM is assessing a non-binding“indication of interest”by the U.S. investment fund KKR to acquire the entire capital share, a potential 11 billion-euro deal. Any agreement would need the OK of the Italian government. TIM in a statement issued this week says its board of directors met and “acknowledged” the fund’s interest in launching a possible public tender. The due diligence process is expected to take four weeks. Although TIM is a private company quoted on the stock exchange, because it is considered a strategic asset for Italy, the Italian government can exercise its so-called “golden power” option to oppose any acquisition it considers wouldn’t be in the public’s interest. TIM’s statement said its board “acknowledged the intention” of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P., to date…

When the U.S. government allowed so-called hero pay for frontline workers as a possible use of pandemic relief money, it suggested occupations that could be eligible from farm workers and childcare staff to janitors and truck drivers. State and local governments have struggled to determine who among the many workers who braved the raging coronavirus pandemic before vaccines became available should qualify: Only government workers, or private employees, too? Should it go to a small pool of essential workers like nurses or be spread around to others, including grocery store workers? “It’s a bad position for us to be in because you have your local government trying to pick winners and losers, if you would, or recipients and nonrecipients. And hence by default, you’re saying importance versus not important,” said…

If anyone has a good idea on how to put a nuclear fission power plant on the moon, the U.S. government wants to hear about it. NASA and the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab put out a request for proposals for a fission surface power system. NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the moon by the end of the decade. “Providing a reliable, high-power system on the moon is a vital next step in human space exploration, and achieving it is within our grasp,” Sebastian Corbisiero, the Fission Surface Power Project lead at the lab, said in a statement. If successful in supporting a sustained human presence on the moon, the next objective would…

Job candidates rarely know when hidden artificial intelligence tools are rejecting their resumes or analyzing their video interviews. But New York City residents could soon get more say over the computers making behind-the-scenes decisions about their careers. A bill passed by the city council in early November would ban employers from using automated hiring tools unless a yearly bias audit can show they won’t discriminate based on an applicant’s race or gender. It would also force makers of those AI tools to disclose more about their opaque workings and give candidates the option of choosing an alternative process — such as a human — to review their application. Proponents liken it to another pioneering New York City rule that became a national standard-bearer earlier this century — one that required…

Apple announced it is suing Israel’s NSO Group, seeking to block the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apple’s products, like the iPhone. Apple said in a complaint filed in federal court in California that NSO Group employees are “amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse.” Apple said NSO Group’s spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to attack a small number of Apple customers worldwide. “State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. NSO Group has broadly denied wrongdoing and said its products have been used by governments to save lives. “Pedophiles and terrorists can…

You can now manage most aspects of your money without ever consulting another human being. You can budget, borrow, save, invest, buy insurance, prepare your tax return and create a will — among many other tasks — by using apps, websites and software. But technology still has limitations, especially when you’re facing a money situation that’s complex or involves judgment calls. Consider consulting a human expert in the following situations: 1. YOU’RE CREATING AN ESTATE PLAN Insurers typically can’t cancel a policy after 60 days unless you fail to pay premiums, commit fraud or make serious misrepresentations on your application, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group. However, insurers can decide not to renew your policy when it expires. With auto insurance , you often have many options…

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” — the direct cinematic follow-up to the 1984 classic — is haunted, of course. But not in a good way. Director and co-writer Jason Reitman’s sequel leans so hard into his dad’s original that it sometimes seems like a checklist of the megahit’s touchstones, from the Ecto-1 tricked-out Cadillac, to Stay-Puft marshmallows, appearances from the surviving Ghostbusters and even the same Ray Parker Jr. theme song. It has taken Ivan Reitman’s original — which had the feel of an anarchic “Saturday Night Live” skit taken as far as it could go — too seriously. It fetishizes the ghost-trapping equipment and limps along until the original actors arrive — one cynically resurrected — to wring some sort of emotion it hasn’t earned. The film is set several decades after…

Italy’s antitrust watchdog has fined Apple and Amazon a total of more than 200 million euros ($225 million) for cooperating to restrict competition in the sale of Apple and Beats branded products in violation of European Union rules. An investigation found that provisions in a 2018 agreement between the U.S. tech giants limited access to Italy’s Amazon marketplace to selected resellers, the Italian Competition Authority said this week. The watchdog slapped Apple with a 134.5 million euro ($151.32 million) fine and Amazon with a 68.7 million euro ($77.29 million) penalty. It also ordered them to end the restrictions and give resellers access in a “non-discriminatory manner.” Both Apple and Amazon said they would appeal. “The proposed fine is disproportionate and unjustified,” Amazon said. “We reject the ICA’s suggestion that Amazon…

Democrats and climate activists generally supported President Joe Biden’s decision to release a record 50 million barrels of oil from America’s strategic reserve, even as the move appeared to contradict his long-term vision of combating climate change. The U.S. action, announced this week in coordination with countries such as India, the United Kingdom and China, is aimed at global energy markets and helping lower gasoline prices that have risen more than a dollar per gallon since January. But it could also undermine Biden’s climate goals, including a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Some leading climate hawks, however, said they were not concerned by the move because they see it as a short-term fix to meet a specific problem. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has focused on combating…

Hedge fund Alden Global Capital, one of the country’s largest newspaper owners with a reputation for intense cost cuts and layoffs, has offered to buy the local newspaper chain Lee Enterprises for about $141 million. In a news release, Alden said it sent Lee’s board a letter with the offer. It already owns 6% of Lee’s stock and is proposing to buy the rest for $24 a share this week. Alden says it does not foresee regulatory issues that could complicate a deal. Lee stock jumped 22% to $22.59. The Iowa company’s spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Lee’s papers include the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Buffalo News, along with dozens of smaller papers in more than two dozen states. The company had more than…

Japan and Vietnam signed a cybersecurity agreement as the two Asian nations rapidly step up their military ties amid concerns over China’s growing assertiveness. Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told reporters that the cyberspace agreement aimed to address a“strong sense of urgency”over activities in the Indo-Pacific region that challenge the existing international order, indicating China without identifying any country by name. Kishi said talks with his Vietnamese counterpart, Phan Van Giang, had taken“defense cooperation between the two countries to a new level.” Japan has in recent years stepped up cyber defense cooperation with the United States, Australia and other partners, and participated in a NATO cyberspace exercise in April. Japan has also held cybersecurity talks with Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia. Japanese Defense Ministry says cyberattacks are part of rising security…

NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth. The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million project with echoes of the Bruce Willis movie “Armageddon.” If all goes well, the boxy, 1,200-pound (540-kilogram) craft will slam head-on into Dimorphos, an asteroid 525 feet (160 meters) across, at 15,000 mph (24,139 kph) next September. “This isn’t going to destroy the asteroid. It’s just going to give it a small nudge,” said mission official Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the project.…

Susan Goodell needed help. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Goodell, CEO of the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank, would look out the window at the long line of clients picking up the food available that day, while she and others answered calls from others who couldn’t travel to a distribution point. “We were getting just horrible phone calls from our seniors, from people with disabilities, people who were COVID-positive and couldn’t leave their homes to get food,” Goodell said. “We were distributing food here at the site and other sites from about 6 a.m. till about 7 at night. Then, at the end of the day, the staff would pack up food and deliver it to people’s homes.” So, earlier this year, when the food delivery…

Samsung is planning to build a $17 billion semiconductor factory outside of Austin, Texas, amid a global shortage of chips used in phones, cars and other electronic devices. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has scheduled a press conference this week to make an economic announcement; he is expected to unveil the Samsung investment at that time, according to a person familiar with the plan who wasn’t authorized to speak about it publicly ahead of the official announcement. News of the Samsung announcement was reported earlier by the South Korean news agency Yonhap. The chip shortage has emerged as both a business obstacle and a serious national-security concern. Short supplies of semiconductors kicked off by COVID-era shutdowns have hampered production of new vehicles and electronic devices for more than a year. New…

Is travel safe during the pandemic this holiday season? It depends. It can be safe if you’re fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but officials say people who haven’t gotten the shots should delay travel. Regardless of vaccination status, all travelers should keep taking precautions like avoiding indoor, unmasked crowds, says Dr. Keith Armitage, an infectious disease expert at Case Western Reserve University. “The delta variant has really brought us back to an earlier time in the pandemic,”he says. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says not to travel if you’re sick, or if you tested positive for COVID-19 and your isolation period isn’t over yet — even if you’re fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated people who decide to travel should get a COVID-19 test one to three days before travel and…

Mirabel is extraordinary, in that when it comes to her family, she is totally normal. That’s the set-up for Disney’s absolutely charming new animated musical “Encanto,” which flips the typical children’s movie script. Instead of few magical people amid a sea of ordinary, here the ordinary is, well, weird. “I will stand on the side/When you shine,” Mirabel sings to her special brothers and sisters, though she confesses, “I’m not fine.” It’s only appropriate that “Encanto” — fueled by eight original songs by “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda — turns into that most special thing of all: A triumph in every category: art, songs and heart. It starts with Mirabel Madrigal, a saucer-eyed, sweet hearted youngster from a magical family in Colombia, where their vibrant house holds many generations. Every Madrigal…

Internet problems continue to slow down many students in the U.S. state of New Mexico, but a pilot project using TV signals to transmit computer files may help. State public education officials distributed devices to eight families in the city of Taos that allow schools to send them digital files via television. The boxes the size of a deck of cards allow digital television receivers to connect with computers using technology called datacasting. Many rural areas of New Mexico are too far from internet infrastructure like fiber cables and cell towers but do get TV reception. In October, local broadcasting affiliates of New Mexico PBS finished testing the technology to make sure they could set aside bandwidth not taken up by TV show broadcasts and dedicate it to broadcast downloadable…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has named his senior adviser on energy policy as the next president of the powerful state body that regulates utilities. Alice Reynolds is set to lead the five-member California Public Utilities Commission beginning Dec. 31, taking over a job that includes oversight of Pacific Gas & Electric and other electric utilities as they grapple with wildfire safety and the use of intentional power shutoffs to prevent blazes in the nation’s most populous state. Her appointment requires confirmation from the state Senate, but that’s often a formality that comes after the person is already in the job. The commission also has control over telecommunications, rail, water and transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft. Reynolds replaces Marybel Batjer, who is retiring after taking the job in 2019.…

Outsiders have long profited from Africa’s riches of gold, diamonds, and even people. Digital resources have proven no different. Millions of internet addresses assigned to Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including through insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent’s addresses. Instead of serving Africa’s internet development, many have benefited spammers and scammers, while others satiate Chinese appetites for pornography and gambling. New leadership at the nonprofit, AFRINIC, is working to reclaim the lost addresses. But a legal challenge by a deep-pocketed Chinese businessman is threatening the body’s very existence. The businessman is Lu Heng, a Hong Kong-based arbitrage specialist. Under contested circumstances, he obtained 6.2 million African addresses from 2013 to 2016. That’s about 5% of the continent’s total — more…

In the US alone, the cell phone repair sector is worth an estimated $4 billion with thousands of repair stores existing to help fix iPhones, iPads, and more. Apple’s Self Service Repair program could revolutionize the sector and put the power back into consumers’ hands. INTRODUCING SELF SERVICE REPAIR In recent years, Apple has made it clear that consumers should have their smartphones and tablets fixed by an Apple professional, for fear of having their device broken or tampered with. The company went one step further with iOS 15. If you had your screen repaired by a third-party service provider or a company that wasn’t part of Apple’s authorized repair scheme, Face ID was rendered useless. A number of high-profile organizations rightfully protested the move, and after some backlash the…

The European Space Agency says the launch of a new NASA telescope to replace the famed Hubble observatory is being postponed to allow experts to check the device for possible damage following an incident at its spaceport in French Guiana. The ESA said in a statement that technicians had been preparing to attach the James Webb Space Telescope to a launch vehicle adapter when a clamp band suddenly loosened, jolting the delicate observatory. “A NASA-led anomaly review board was immediately convened to investigate and instituted additional testing to determine with certainty (that) the incident did not damage any components,” ESA said. “NASA and its mission partners will provide an update when the testing is completed at the end of this week.” ESA said the telescope will now launch aboard an…

Wireless carrier T-Mobile agreed to pay $19.5 million in a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission over a 12-hour nationwide outage in June 2020 that resulted in thousands of failed 911 calls. The FCC said that as part of the settlement, T-Mobile will also commit to improving communications of outages to emergency call centers, among other measures. The agency said there was a “complete failure” of more than 23,000 911 calls because of the outage. There were also calls that did go through but without key information, like a callback number or location data. The FCC’s investigation said the outage began because of a failure in part of T-Mobile’s network, which was made worse by routing and software errors. The Bellevue, Washington, company said that the June 2020 episode was…

Major League Baseball and the players’ union have agreed to move the upcoming deadline for teams to offer contracts to certain players in order to keep them out of potential limbo in the event of a work stoppage next month. The tender deadline was moved from Dec. 2 to Nov. 30 at 8 p.m. The sport’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1 at 11:59 p.m., and it’s not expected that MLB and the union will agree on a new deal before then. A lockout and roster freeze could begin Dec. 2. Teams have until the deadline to decide whether to offer 2022 contracts to players with fewer than six years of major league service, including those eligible for salary arbitration. The labor dispute could take months to resolve, and if…

WhatsApp is adding more details to its privacy policy and flagging that information for European users, after Irish regulators slapped the chat service with a record fine for breaching strict EU data privacy rules. Starting Monday, WhatsApp’s privacy policy will be reorganized to provide more information on the data it collects and how it’s used. The company said it’s also explaining in more detail how it protects data shared across borders for its global service and the legal foundations for processing the data. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, now renamed Meta Platforms. With the update, users in Europe will see a banner notification at the top of their chat list that will take them to the new information. WhatsApp is taking the action after getting hit with a record 225…

In a rock concert-like atmosphere, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that his government will build an oceanside “Bitcoin City” at the base of a volcano. Bukele used a gathering of Bitcoin enthusiasts to launch his latest idea, much as he used a an earlier Bitcoin conference in Miami to announce in a video message that El Salvador would be the first country to make the cryptocurrency legal tender, A bond offering would happen in 2022 entirely in Bitcoin, Bukele said, wearing his signature backwards baseball cap. And 60 days after financing was ready, construction would begin. The city will be built near the Conchagua volcano to take advantage of geothermal energy to power both the city and Bitcoin mining — the energy-intensive solving of complex mathematical calculations day and…