Innholdsfortegnelse for #546 i Techlife News

Multiple U.S. government agencies issued a joint alert this week warning of the discovery of a suite of malicious cyber tools created by unnamed advanced threat actors that are capable of sabotaging the energy sector and other critical industries. The public alert from the Energy and Homeland Security Departments, the FBI and National Security Agency did not name the actors or offer details on the find. But their private sector cybersecurity partners said the evidence suggests Russia is behind the industrial control system-disrupting tools — and that they were configured to initially target North American energy concerns. One of the cybersecurity firms involved, Mandiant, called the tools “exceptionally rare and dangerous.” In a report, it called the tools’ functionality was “consistent with the malware used in Russia’s prior physical attacks”…

Smaller airlines are looking to bulk up to take advantage of an expected recovery in air travel. Fleet size is a key motive for JetBlue’s recent bid to woo budget carrier Spirit Airlines and break up that company’s deal with rival Frontier. Both JetBlue and Frontier have small fleets relative to legacy carriers like American, United and Delta, which limits their ability to add flights and routes in an effort to compete for business. Adding Spirit’s current fleet would boost JetBlue’s by 60% to more than 450 planes. Growing a fleet through a buyout may turn out to be easier in 2022 than purchasing new planes from Boeing and Airbus, which saw a resurgence in orders in 2021 and are working through backlogs. “The way I think about it, it…

Despite its mostly forgettable plot, Ben Schwartz’s performance as the energetic hedgehog, coupled with Jim Carrey’s most enjoyable on-screen slapstick in years, made for mostly entertaining viewing for both fans and newcomers. It’s when Sonic and Robotnik weren’t on screen that the movie fell flat, as the rest of the human cast ultimately failed to carry the humor and excitement generated by the hero and villain. The movie’s premise, which saw Sonic transported to the planet Earth, also felt disappointingly disconnected from the beloved Sega video games and relied too much on the family movie tropes of an alien protagonist discovering mankind’s mundane world. Thankfully, it’s these issues that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 solves best. Sonic’s surrogate father, played by James Marsden, still occupies a mostly filler role in the…

Some vendors on Etsy say they are halting sales of their items on the site for a week to protest a hike in the fees the crafts e-commerce marketplace charges them. Now, Etsy sellers must pay a 6.5% commission on each transaction, up from the 5% in place since 2018. A protest organizer, Kristi Cassidy, said thousands of Etsy sellers — a fraction of the 5.3 million vendors on the site — have temporarily halted selling their items. Cassidy, who has been selling gothic and punk costumes on Etsy since 2007, also launched a petition that so far has garnered more than 50,000 signatures from buyers and sellers. Roughly 20,000 are sellers. Cassidy said it’s hard to estimate the exact number of sellers that have actually stopped selling on the…

Tesla will build a vehicle dedicated for use as a robotaxi, and it will start making three new vehicles next year, CEO Elon Musk told fans at a party celebrating the opening of a Texas factory. Musk didn’t give details of the robotaxi other than to say it will“look quite futuristic.”He also said Tesla will start building the Cybertruck pickup at its new factory near Austin, Texas, next year. After that, it will start building a new Roadster and an electric semi, he said. He made his remarks Thursday night (07) at the “Cyber Rodeo at Giga Texas,”an invitation-only party for thousands of guests at Tesla’s new billion-dollar-plus factory. As many as 15,000 people were expected to attend the private event hosted to mark the opening of the new factory…

Nissan is working with NASA on a new type of battery for electric vehicles that promises to charge quicker and be lighter yet safe, the Japanese automaker said. The all-solid-state battery will replace the lithium-ion battery now in use for a 2028 product launch and a pilot plant launch in 2024, according to Nissan. The all-solid-state battery is stable enough to be used in pacemakers. When finished, it will be about half the size of the current battery and fully charge in 15 minutes, instead of a few hours. The collaboration with the U.S. space program, as well as the University of California San Diego, involves the testing of various materials, Corporate Vice President Kazuhiro Doi told reporters. “Both NASA and Nissan need the same kind of battery,” he said.…

The Israeli spyware maker NSO Group is turning to the U.S. Supreme Court as it seeks to head off a high-profile lawsuit filed by the WhatsApp messaging service. In a filing to the Supreme Court, NSO said it should be recognized as a foreign government agent and therefore be entitled to immunity under U.S. law limiting lawsuits against foreign countries. The request appeals a pair of earlier federal court rulings that rejected similar arguments by the Israeli company. WhatsApp parent Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., sued NSO in 2019 for allegedly targeting some 1,400 users of its encrypted messaging service with highly sophisticated spyware. It is trying to block NSO from Facebook platforms and servers and seeks unspecified damages. Granting sovereign immunity to NSO would greatly hinder WhatsApp’s case.…

After two years of cancellations, deferments and marathon sessions with airline customer service, many travelers are hoping to book summer trips that actually pan out this year. “I had the month of May 2020 completely off work,” says Katharine Ng, an engineering program manager in Los Angeles . Ng planned to visit Europe and Morocco but had to cancel and rebook for the following year, 2021. Those new plans were eventually scuttled because she wasn’t yet fully vaccinated by May, and travel restrictions got in the way. “Thankfully, canceling the trips was easy because of the COVID cancellation policies,” Ng says. Yet while getting a refund was nice, it didn’t scratch the itch for taking an actual vacation. Many travelers, twice bitten by summer plans gone awry, remain shy of…

Polly Glover realized her son had asthma when he was nine months old. Now 26, he carries an inhaler in his pocket whenever he’s out and about in Prairieville, Louisiana, part of Ascension Parish. “He probably needs to leave Ascension quite frankly,” Glover says, but he hasn’t because “this is his home and this is our family and this is our community.” The parish is part of the 85-mile (137-kilometer) span between New Orleans and Baton Rouge officially called the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, more commonly known as Cancer Alley. The region’s air quality is some of the worst in the United States, and in several places along the corridor, cancer risks are much higher than levels considered acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Glover says the air is…

California wants electric vehicle sales to triple in the next four years to 35% of all new car purchases, an aggressive target set as part of the goal to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by the middle of next decade. The California Air Resources Board’s proposal would slowly raise the sale of new cars that are electric, hydrogen-powered or plug-in hybrids to 100% by 2035. About 11% of all new passenger car sales nationally happen in California, giving the state significant influence over the auto market. Californians would still be allowed to drive gas-powered cars and sell used ones, meaning planet-warming emissions will still spew from the state’s roadways. The hoped-for boost in electric vehicle sales will also require a major increase in charging stations. California has set…

Should Netflix and other streaming services have to pay local governments the same fees levied on cable operators? That was the question before the Ohio Supreme Court during a Wednesday hearing, as the court debates whether streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu are covered by a state law that would require them to pay to play. The argument is similar to one in several other states, where cities are trying to force streaming service companies to pay cable operator fees. At issue in Ohio is the state’s 2007 Video Service Authorization law, which directed the state Commerce Department to determine what entities must obtain permission to physically install cables and wires in a public right-of-way. Companies deemed video service providers must pay a fee to local governments under that…

Amazon announced its free streaming service IMDb TV will be renamed Amazon Freevee. The new name will take effect on April 27, the company said in a news release. The retailer said the streaming service will also expand its original programming by 70% in 2022, with spinoffs of shows such as “Bosh: Legacy” and other series. It will also add more original movies. Amazon.com Inc. said the ad-supported service has tripled its monthly active users in the past two years and is expected to launch in Germany later this year. “We’re looking forward to building on this momentum with an increasing slate of inventive and broadly appealing Originals, and are excited to establish Freevee as the premier AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) service with content audiences crave,” Jennifer Salke,…

The grand explanation physicists use to describe how the universe works may have some major new flaws to patch after a fundamental particle was found to have more mass than scientists thought. “It’s not just something is wrong,” said Dave Toback, a particle physicist at Texas A&M University and a spokesperson for the U.S. government’s Fermi National Accelerator Lab, which conducted the experiments. If replicated by other labs, “it literally means something fundamental in our understanding of nature is wrong.” The physicists at the lab crashed particles together over ten years and measured the mass of 4 million W bosons. These subatomic particles are responsible for a fundamental force at the center of atoms, and they exist for only a fraction of a second before they decay into other particles.…

Toyota, the top-selling automaker in the U.S., is rolling out its first fully electric vehicle in eight years. The company unveiled the battery-powered bZ4X small SUV, which starts at $42,000 and can go up to 252 miles (406 kilometers) per charge. The bZ4X, which will be sold globally, adds to the 38 electric vehicle models now on sale in the U.S., with more than 120 expected by 2025. While it doesn’t have ground-breaking range or performance for an electric vehicle, the bZ4X is an important entry because it’s from a trusted brand that will convince some buyers to make the switch from internal combustion engines, said Stephanie Brinley, principal analyst for S&P Global Mobility. “You’ve got buyers who are interested in checking this out but may not be willing to…

Western law enforcement agencies have dismantled an online marketplace used to buy and sell hacked and stolen personal data belonging to millions of people, and have brought criminal charges against the platform’s founder and chief administrator, officials announced this week. Authorities say the RaidForums website trafficked in hundreds of databases of sensitive data, including credit card and Social Security numbers and bank account information, that had been hacked or stolen from victims. In addition to seizing three domains that hosted the website, officials have also arrested 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho of Portugal, who prosecutors say controlled and administered the platform between 2015 and this past January, when he was taken into custody in the United Kingdom. The U.S. is seeking his extradition to federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on charges…

The nonprofit that distributed most of the $350 million in donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to election offices in 2020 said that it won’t disburse similar donations this year after backlash from conservatives suspicious that the contributions tilted the outcome of the presidential race toward Joe Biden. Instead, the Center for Technology and Civic Life is launching a different program. Dubbed the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the $80-million, five-year effort is intended to create a network for the nation’s thousands of local election officials, who can apply for aid to improve their technology and processes. “Unfortunately, years of underinvestment means many local election departments often have limited capacity and training. The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is bringing together world-class partners so that local election officials no longer…

Russian military hackers attempted to knock out power to millions of Ukrainians last week in a long-planned attack but were foiled, Ukrainian government officials said. At one targeted high-voltage power station, the hackers succeeded in penetrating and disrupting part of the industrial control system, but people defending the station were able to prevent electrical outages, the Ukrainians said. “The threat was serious, but it was prevented in a timely manner,” a top Ukrainian cybersecurity official, Victor Zhora, told reporters through an interpreter. “It looks that we were very lucky.” The hackers from Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency used an upgraded version of malware first seen in its successful 2016 attack that caused blackouts in Kyiv, officials said, that was customized to target multiple substations. They simultaneously seeded malware designed to…

Toyota is recalling about 460,000 vehicles in the U.S. to fix a software problem that can inadvertently disable the electronic stability control system. The automaker says that when the vehicles are restarted, in rare cases the software may not automatically switch the system into the “on” mode. That can disable the system, which uses a computer to individually brake wheels to help drivers keep control. The recall covers vehicles from the 2020 to 2022 model years including the Toyota brand’s Venza, Mirai, RAV4 Hybrid, RAV4 Prime, Sienna Hybrid, and Highlander Hybrid. Also included are the LS500h, LX600, NX350h, and NX450h-plus from the Lexus luxury brand. Dealers will update software on the skid control computer to fix the problem. Owners will be notified by mid-June.…

Amazon is taking a step to offset its rising costs, announcing this week it will add a 5% “fuel and inflation surcharge” to fees it charges third-party sellers who use the e-commerce giant’s fulfillment services. The Seattle-based company said on its website that the added fees, which take effect April 28, are “subject to change”and will apply to both apparel and non-apparel items. The latest fee hike follows one announced in November and went into effect in January. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for further details on the recent move. But in a notice sent to sellers Wednesday, the company said its costs had gone up since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic due to increases in hourly wages, the hiring of workers and construction of more warehouses.…

The Worldwide Developers Conference is one of the most hotly-anticipated events on any tech journalist’s calendar, offering Tim Cook and Co an opportunity to show the world what lies ahead for iOS, macOS, and more. This year’s WWDC kicks off on June 6 in Cupertino, and with long-rumored products expected to be unveiled, it could be the biggest event yet. LIFTING THE LID ON iOS 16 Unless Apple has made any last-minute changes to its naming system, the chances are that we’ll see iOS 16 unveiled at the June conference. Due to the sheer number of iPhones in existence, iOS is often the show-stopper at any WWDC, introducing new features, tools, and capabilities to make iPhones even more advanced. At this time of the year, we usually hear a whole…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s great Twitter turnabout — in which he disclosed his massive stake in the social media company, got a seat on its board, publicly floated drastic changes and then turned down the board role — all happened in a week. But its aftermath could linger if the mercurial billionaire who now holds a roughly 9% stake in Twitter continues to push forward his ideas for reshaping the business of social media. WHY DIDN’T MUSK JOIN THE BOARD? Musk said he informed Twitter on Saturday that he wouldn’t be joining its board of directors, after being invited five days earlier, according to a financial disclosure. He didn’t explain why but the Saturday decision coincided with a barrage of now-deleted tweets from Musk proposing major changes to the company,…

A Japanese electric vehicle battery technology company will build a factory in Kentucky, creating 2,000 jobs in a $2 billion investment that reinforces the state’s leadership in battery production, Gov. Andy Beshear said this week. The Envision AESC plant at Bowling Green in south-central Kentucky will produce battery cells and modules to power the next generation of electric vehicles, the Democratic governor said. The gigafactory’s products will be made for multiple auto manufacturers globally. The announcement represents Kentucky’s second-largest economic development investment, the governor said, following an even larger battery production plant announcement last year. “With today’s announcement, we solidify that the commonwealth of Kentucky is the undisputed electric battery production capital of the United States of America,” Beshear said as he gathered with other state leaders to celebrate the…

A shopping spree in Beverly Hills, a luxury vacation in Mexico, a bank account that jumped from $299.77 to $1.4 million overnight. From the outside, it looked like Moe and Kateryna Abourched had won the lottery. But this big payday didn’t come from lucky numbers. Rather, a public school district in Michigan was tricked into wiring its monthly health insurance payment to the bank account of a California nail salon the Abourcheds owned, according to a search warrant application filed by a Secret Service agent in federal court. The district — and taxpayers — fell victim to an online scam called Business Email Compromise, or BEC for short, police say. The couple deny any wrongdoing and have not been charged with any crimes. BEC scams are a type of crime…

FIFA is getting into the streaming platform business with a soccer version of Netflix and Amazon Prime. The service is free and largely featuring documentaries and some live games at the launch but it could eventually be a way for FIFA to broadcast World Cup matches itself at a cost. While increasingly positioning itself as a rival to existing media companies, FIFA+ will also be used by the governing body to promote its sponsors. “There is no plan to charge a subscription fee for the service, that doesn’t mean to say that we may not evolve over time should there be a value proposition that allows us to charge subscription if we step into premium rights or adopt other kind of models,” FIFA director of strategy Charlotte Burr said. “But…

A “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”TV star, a Paralympic swimmer and a self-described “brand king” were among the Instagram and TikTok influencers who were paid by Chinese officials for a discreet campaign that promoted the Beijing Winter Olympics, new Justice Department documents reveal. The social media posts fanned across a variety of popular Instagram and TikTok accounts that have a combined following of 5 million people who follow their videos, photos and content about travel destinations, sports, fashion and women’s issues. The Chinese Consulate in New York paid $300,000 to New Jersey-based firm Vippi Media to recruit the influencers. The posts were not properly labeled as ads in the way that TikTok and Instagram requires. “It allows them to boost the reach and the resonance of their messaging to make…