Innholdsfortegnelse for #537 i Techlife News

States are being given the go-ahead to build a nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations that would place new or upgraded stations every 50 miles (80 kilometers) along interstate highways, part of the Biden administration’s plan to spur widespread adoption of the zero-emission cars. The administration announced the availability of $5 billion in federal funds to states over five years under President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law, sketching out a vision of seamless climate-friendly car travel from coast to coast. Under new requirements issued by the Transportation Department, states must submit plans to the federal government and can begin construction by this fall if they focus first on highway routes, rather than neighborhoods and shopping centers, that can allow people to take their electric vehicles long distances. Each station would…

Twitter’s shares jumped in early trading Thursday after it posted strong revenue growth last year and announced a $4 billion share buyback program. That’s despite losing money in 2021 and falling short of Wall Street expectations for user growth in the last three months of the year. Revenue increased 37%, to $5.08 billion, compared with 2020. But the San Francisco company reported a net loss of $221 million for the year largely tied to the settlement of a shareholder lawsuit. In the October-to-December quarter, Twitter earned $182 million, or 21 cents per share. Adjusted for one-time gains and costs, per-share earnings were 33 cents, hitting Wall Street expectations. Revenue grew in the fourth quarter to $1.41 billion, up 22% from the same period a year ago. Twitter had an average…

Democrats muscled legislation through the House that they say positions the United States to better compete with China economically and on the global stage by strengthening the domestic semiconductor industry and shoring up strained supply chains. The bill passed by a vote of 222-210. It marks an important step for a top Biden administration priority, but the legislation is likely to be extensively revised as negotiators reconcile differences with what the Senate passed about eight months ago. President Joe Biden urged lawmakers to reach a deal quickly, saying, “America can’t afford to wait.” The nearly 3,000-page bill, not counting scores of amendments added, includes massive investments designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. The big-ticket items include about $52 billion in grants and subsidies to help the semiconductor industry…

The IRS said it will suspend the use of facial recognition technology to authenticate people who create online accounts after the practice was criticized by privacy advocates and lawmakers. The agency said it would no longer use a third-party service, called ID.me, for facial recognition. Critics of the software said the database could become a target for cyberthreats. They also expressed concern about how the information could be used by other government agencies, among other concerns. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on the agency to end its use of the ID.me software. After the IRS announced the practice would be suspended, Wyden said “the Treasury Department has made the smart decision to direct the IRS to transition away from using the controversial ID.me verification service.” “No one…

Cyber criminal gangs are getting increasingly adept at hacking and becoming more professional, even setting up an arbitration system to resolve payment disputes among themselves, according to a new report by the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom that paints a bleak picture of ransomware trends. Ransomware gangs, which hack targets and hold their data hostage through encryption, caused widespread havoc last year with high-profile attacks on the world’s largest meat-packing company, the biggest U.S. fuel pipeline and other targets. Western governments have pledged to crack down on the cyber criminals, who operate largely in and around Russia, but have little to show in the way of progress. The new report on 2021 ransomware trends highlights the growing maturity and specialization of the ransomware market, with independent operators filling…

Ford Motor Co. announced that Google is joining the automaker’s effort to transform a once-dilapidated Detroit train station into a research hub focused on electric and self-driving vehicles. Also, Detroit and the state of Michigan have agreed to provide infrastructure and other support for the Michigan Central Innovation District that will include the defunct train depot and other nearby buildings in the historic Corktown neighborhood just outside downtown, officials said. “Together, this is another sign that we are moving forward in a way that shows Michigan is in it to win, that we are going to lead in the mobility sector, that we are serious about developing high-tech and high-skilled jobs,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said during an event inside the old train station. Ford announced plans for the Michigan…

The Red Bull Formula One team has secured a new title sponsorship worth around $500 million with technology firm Oracle, placing it among the most lucrative commercial deals in sports. The five-year deal is a lift to the team ahead of the season beginning next month when Max Verstappen will be looking to defend his world title in a new Oracle Red Bull Racing car that was also revealed this week. Financial details were not disclosed but a person familiar with the deal told it was worth around $100 million a year. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential terms. “We’re all about speed and the speed of response,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said in an interview with The Associated Press at the team’s central…

When it comes to games, Ken McAllister and Judd Ruggill don’t play around. The two University of Arizona humanities professors have spent the past two decades quietly assembling what is probably the world’s largest archive devoted to the study of video games and game culture. The Learning Games Initiative Research Archive now contains more than a quarter of a million items, including at least 15,000 individual games, 200 game systems and thousands of documents, books, promotional materials and other artifacts from the game industry’s ever-expanding universe. The catalog runs the gamut, from a 1948 patent for the earliest “cathode ray tube amusement device” to the latest Playstation console. And unlike other university archives where you need “white gloves and a wand with an acid-free cotton ball at the end” to…

GlobalWafers Co., which supplies silicon wafers to semiconductor manufacturers, says it will invest $3.6 billion in facilities in Asia, the United States and Europe after its attempt to acquire Germany’s Siltronic AG failed. The announcement comes amid shortages of processor chips and other semiconductors that are disrupting auto manufacturing, smartphone and other industries. Producers are announcing plans to expand output, which will boost demand for wafers. GlobalWafers’ bid to buy Siltronic fell through after German regulators failed to complete a review of the offer by a Jan. 31 deadline. The Taiwanese company said the 100 billion New Taiwan dollars ($3.6 billion) earmarked for the purchase will go into expanding its production capacity instead. The company. headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, said production should increase in the second half of 2023 but…

Tesla Inc. posted record fourth-quarter and full-year earnings as deliveries of its electric vehicles soared despite a global shortage of computer chips that has slowed the entire auto industry. Although the company predicted it would be able to build 50% more vehicles than it made last year, CEO Elon Musk said the chip shortage would stop the company from rolling out any new models in 2022. That means another delay for the Cybertruck pickup, which was originally scheduled to go on sale last year. Musk also said Tesla isn’t yet working on a promised $25,000 small electric car, but it will. “We have enough on our plate right now, quite frankly,” he said. And Musk said the company is looking at building additional factories and will offer an update on…

A theme-park comeback continued to boost Disney’s results in the most recent quarter. The company also added more subscribers to its Disney+ streaming service than analysts expected. Disney had closed or limited capacity at its theme parks and suspended cruises earlier in the pandemic. Domestic parks have reopened, and revenue in that division doubled in the most recent quarter, to $7.23 billion, while profit came to $2.45 billion from a year-ago loss of $119 million, even as the omicron variant suppressed some people’s travel plans COVID-19 restrictions continued to affect some international operations. Burbank, California-based Disney reported net income of $1.15 billion in the three months through Jan. 1, compared with $17 million in the fiscal first quarter the year before. Earnings per share came to 60 cents, or $1.06…

The European Union announced a $48 billion plan to become a major semiconductor producer, seeking to curb its dependency on Asian markets for the component that powers everything from cars to hospital ventilators and game consoles. At a time when natural gas shortages and Europe’s reliance on Russia for energy shows the political risks of economic dependency, the 27-nation bloc is moving to boost its economic independence in the critical semiconductor sector with its Chips Act. “Chips are at the center of the global technological race. They are, of course, also the bedrock of our modern economies,”European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. The plan still needs the backing of the EU parliament and the member states. The EU move mirrors U.S. President Joe Biden’s $52 billion push to…

Apple is expanding the iPhone’s capabilities to accept contactless payments, making it easier for merchants to conduct tap-to-pay transactions without having to buy additional hardware. It will also give Apple a competitive edge in the growing world of contactless payments, in which the iPhone, as well as Apple Pay, play a dominant role by effectively turning the iPhone into a point-of-sale terminal. The iPhone has been used as a contactless way to pay for goods and services since Apple Pay launched in 2014. But it required merchants to have their own point-of-sale hardware in order to accept contactless payments. Shares of payment platform company Block, formerly known as Square Inc. with its well-known iPhone dongle used to accept payments, fell after Apple’s announcement. Those devices ranged in price from $50…

The Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of a new Cyber Safety Review Board that will have public and private sector experts examine significant hacking incidents and recommend improvements. The new board is modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which reviews plane crashes and other major accidents, and was mandated by an executive order President Joe Biden signed last May. Some supporters of the new board have criticized DHS for taking so long to get it up and running. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the board will have 15 members and will be a mix of public and private officials. Robert Silvers, a top DHS policy official, will be the new board’s chairman. And Heather Adkins, a senior director at Google, will be the deputy…

American Express launched a checking account that comes with a debit card that will allow its customers to accrue its popular Membership Rewards points the same way they do on its credit and charge cards. It’s a notable move for AmEx and the banking industry in general, since debit cards that offered airline miles or rewards went basically extinct after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act following the Great Recession. Currently only a handful of small banks and credit unions offer cash back or rewards for debit card purchases. AmEx’s checking account will come with a debit card and an annual interest yield of 0.5%. The debit card will give account holders one Membership Reward point for every $2 they spend on purchases. Those points can be pooled with the…

Some people might look up at the moon and admire its glowing and desolate beauty. Director Roland Emmerich apparently sees a constructed hollow orb that may have been built by aliens. Some of us will never gaze up at it the same after seeing his mind-blowing “Moonfall.” Emmerich’s latest is an absolutely bananas piece of big-budget filmmaking, a sci-fi-, action- and disaster-thriller that gets more crazy by the minute. It makes “Independence Day” look like “Little Women.”“My freaking brain just exploded,” says one character, and who can complain? “Moonfall” stars Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson as one-time astronauts who have to repair their strained friendship and save Earth when the moon gets unmoored from its orbit and starts coming frighteningly closer to us, wreaking havoc. The film adds to these…

Emily Taffel didn’t pull the password plug when she divorced her first husband, and she didn’t cut off the boyfriend who followed. Now remarried with four stepchildren, she continues as a model of civility when it comes to exes and logins. The 41-year-old in Coral Springs, Florida, and her first husband didn’t have kids, much money or own a house when they divorced. What they did have were subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu. “We each paid for one of them and share. That was literally our divorce agreement,”Taffel said. “It was written right in there. We’re still doing it.” When boyfriend Sam came along but the romance ended three years later, they maintained close ties and joint custody of additional services, sharing logins and the cost to this day among…

Entrepreneur Elon Musk is helping reconnect Tonga to the internet after a volcanic eruption and tsunami cut off the South Pacific nation more than three weeks ago, according to officials, while repairs on an undersea cable are proving more difficult than first thought. The tsunami severed the sole fiber-optic cable that connects Tonga to the rest of the world and most people remain without reliable connections. Three people were confirmed killed in the Jan. 15 eruption of the massive undersea volcano and the resulting tsunami, and several small settlements in outlying islands were wiped out and a thick layer of volcanic ash that blanketed the main island tainted much of the drinking water. Tonga had avoided the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years, but it is now in the…

A judge has tossed two of six fraud counts against a former Boeing pilot involved in evaluating the troubled Boeing 737 Max jetliner. A federal judge in Fort Worth on Tuesday dismissed, on technical grounds, counts that accused Mark A. Forkner of making and using “a materially false writing... concerning an aircraft part,” in violation of federal law. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied, however, Forker’s attorneys’ request for dismissal of four other wire fraud counts for not stating a case. Forkner, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, is scheduled to go on trial March 7. A federal indictment accuses Forkner, 50, of deceiving regulators about a critical system that played a role in two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets that killed 346 people. Prosecutors said that…

There’s no denying that SpaceX has revolutionized the space sector, transforming the way we think about interplanetary spaceflight and the future of humankind. With SpaceX Starship scheduled for its first full-stack flight in late February, it’s time to review the phenomenal progress it’s made so far, and see where it’s headed next. REUSABLE ROCKET TECHNOLOGY Perhaps one of the greatest concerns about space exploration raised in recent years is not only the vast quantities of money required to send humans into space but the natural resources, too. In 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, SpaceX sent humans to space for the third time in less than a year, with astronauts sailing into orbit on a reused Falcon 9 rocket booster—the same booster that was used to send the…

A small group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts has an offer that they’re hoping U.S. cities can’t refuse. The group City Coins is asking Miami and New York to accept the equivalent of millions of dollars in a new cryptocurrency, and at least some of the money is real: Last week, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced that City Coins had transferred $5.25 million to the city. The dizzying proposal has leaders in other cities, like Philadelphia and Dearborn, Michigan, clamoring to get in on a deal they hope might patch budgets, similar to how some cities and states had hoped lotteries or legalized gambling would be a solution to financial problems. That hype also benefits people who get in early on the new currencies, which is part of what fuels arguments that…

Late last year, autonomous vehicle startup Gatik announced a big step: it eliminated the safety operator from behind the wheel of two self-driving trucks as part of its partnership with discounter Walmart. Now, the Mountain View, California firm is looking to speed up the process of fully driverless truck operations in the next few years. The company stands apart from other autonomous delivery companies because it doesn’t haul goods directly to shoppers. Rather, its autonomous trucks deliver groceries and other goods from big distribution centers to retail locations on fixed, repetitive, short distances, a critical link to the delivery system. For example, Gatik’s two fully autonomous driving vehicles for Walmart haul goods on a fixed 7.1 mile (11.4 kilometers) route in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart’s headquarters is based. Gatik, which…

Samsung is trying to reclaim lost ground in the coveted high end of the smartphone market with a new lineup of Galaxy S models designed to appeal to consumers who are increasingly sharing videos of their antics on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and other popular apps. Although the Galaxy S22 phones unveiled Wednesday feature some improvements from last year’s models, the differences aren’t dramatic. Samsung is emphasizing new features on the phones that are supposed to produce more vibrant and more stable videos. One of most most noticeable changes is the addition of a built-in pen to take digital notes and draw on the screen of the Ultra model that will cost $1,200. That “S Pen” had to be purchased separately for $40 on last-year’s model, which didn’t include a slot…

US antitrust regulators have not challenged the $43 billion combination of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia during a key review period, according to corporate securities filings, easing the way for the deal to close in the next few months. In a big retreat for wireless giant AT&T, the company last year decided to separate WarnerMedia, which it bought in 2018 for $81 billion after a protracted antitrust battle with the Trump-era Justice Department. WarnerMedia, home to CNN, HBO and HBO Max, would then combine with Discovery, the parent of networks like HGTV and its own streaming service, Discovery+. Discovery Inc. said in a filing that it and AT&T Inc. have not gotten objections from the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission during a key review period that has ended.…

SoftBank’s planned sale of the British semiconductor and software design company Arm to U.S. chip maker Nvidia has fallen through, but the Japanese technology investor immediately turned bullish on taking it public. SoftBank Group Corp. said this week it plans an initial public offering of Arm after the intended sale to Nvidia failed due to regulatory problems. It said the IPO would come sometime in the fiscal year ending in March 2023. Chief Executive Masayoshi Son acknowledged he was disappointed but wasted no time in shifting to an aggressive sales pitch for Arm in its preparing to go public in the U.S., likely on the Nasdaq exchange. “Arm is back. Rather just being back, it’s really going to grow explosively,” Son told reporters. He said “a golden time” was coming…