Innholdsfortegnelse for #551 i Techlife News

Investors on Wall Street need a place to hide. The stock market’s skid this year has pulled the S&P 500 close to what’s known as a bear market. Rising interest rates, high inflation, the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in China’s economy have caused investors to reconsider the prices they’re willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. The last bear market happened just two years ago, but this would still be a first for those investors that got their start trading on their phones during the pandemic. For years, thanks in large part to extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve, stocks often seemed to go in only one direction: up. Now, the familiar rallying cry to “buy the dip” after…

Single father Billy Price was already struggling to make ends meet before someone broke into his Michigan storage unit, stole his identity and ruined his credit. Price filed a police report, and then tweeted about it to Bill Pulte, a multimillionaire who he’d heard uses Twitter to give money to those in need. “They took nearly everything, including everything that my grandpa gave me before he passed,”Price tweeted last month, only to be met with silence.“On top of that we’re about to be homeless, it’s like the weight of the world. Please help us.” Price, 35, recently moved from Illinois to Michigan to maintain joint custody of his 5-year-old son Maddox. Price is living at an extended stay Kalamazoo hotel while he searches for a place to live, but he’s…

Congress held its first hearing in half a century on unidentified flying objects. And no, there is still no government confirmation of extraterrestrial life. Testifying before a House Intelligence subcommittee, Pentagon officials did not disclose additional information from their ongoing investigation of hundreds of unexplained sightings in the sky. But they said they had picked a director for a new task force to coordinate data collection efforts on what the government has officially labeled “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said the Pentagon was also trying to destigmatize the issue and encourage pilots and other military personnel to report anything unusual they see. “We want to know what’s out there as much as you want to know what’s out there,” Moultrie told lawmakers, adding that…

When Chandler Jones realized she was pregnant during her junior year of college, she turned to a trusted source for information and advice. Her cellphone. “I couldn’t imagine before the Internet, trying to navigate this,” said Jones, 26, who graduates Tuesday from the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I didn’t know if hospitals did abortions. I knew Planned Parenthood did abortions, but there were none near me. So I kind of just Googled.” But with each search, Jones was being surreptitiously followed — by the phone apps and browsers that track us as we click away, capturing even our most sensitive health data. Web searches. Period apps. Fitness trackers. Advice helplines. GPS. The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than…

An autonomous vehicle technology company that partners with Ford and Volkswagen says it has started driverless operations in two of eight cities where it is developing its technology. Pittsburgh-based Argo AI has pulled drivers from its autonomous cars in Miami and Austin, Texas, though it is still in the testing phase. Its commercial partnerships with Walmart and Lyft still have backup drivers in both cities. The company is partnering with Lyft to use its autonomous test vehicles for their ride-sharing network in Miami Beach and grocery delivery for Walmart in Miami and Austin. Argo says it is the first company to go driverless in two American cities, but Argo isn’t the first company to go driverless. Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been running a…

Elon Musk’s ties to China through his role as electric car brand Tesla’s biggest shareholder could add complexity to his bid to buy Twitter. Other companies that want access to China give in to pressure to follow Beijing’s positions on Taiwan and other issues. But Twitter is shut out by internet barriers that block most Chinese users from seeing global social media, which gives Beijing no leverage over the company, though the ruling Communist Party uses it to spread propaganda abroad. Tesla Inc.’s ambitions in China might give Beijing that leverage to pressure Twitter to silence human rights activists and other critics or ease its rules on propaganda if Musk’s $44 billion purchase goes ahead, some experts suggest. Chinese customers bought half the Teslas sold last year. Its busiest factory…

The pandemic vastly changed the way Americans spend money and now as they return to pre-pandemic behavior, they’re tripping up retailers again. That dynamic has only been intensified in recent months as inflation jumps sharply, and the latest financial report from Target underscore the challenges. Target reported Wednesday that its profit tumbled 52% compared with the same period last year in an environment of rising costs for things like fuel, and also a lightening quick return by consumers to more normalized spending. Purchases of big TVs and appliances that Americans loaded up on during the pandemic have faded, leaving Target with a bloated inventory that must be marked down to sell. Target’s quarterly financial report comes a day after shares of rival Walmart tumbled about 17% for similar reasons after…

A state agency in New York has filed an administrative complaint against Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant discriminated against pregnant and disabled workers by denying them “reasonable accommodations” and forcing them to take unpaid leave, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced this week. Amazon has more than 39,000 workers across New York in nearly two dozen worksites, which employ in-house consultants who evaluate accommodation requests, according to a statement from the governor’s office. But the New York State Division of Human Rights, the agency that filed the complaint, alleges the retailer has a policy that allows onsite managers to override recommendations from the consultants, which has led to denials in the worker requests. State law requires all employers to provide reasonable accommodation for pregnant and disabled workers. The governor’s office lists three…

Public schools were closed and evacuation bags packed this week as a stubborn wildfire crept within a few miles of the city of Los Alamos and its companion U.S. national security lab — where assessing apocalyptic threats is a specialty and wildland fire is a beguiling equation. Lighter winds last Friday (13) allowed for the most intense aerial attack on those flames west of Santa Fe as well as the biggest U.S. wildfire burning farther east, south of Taos. “We had all kinds of aviation flying today,” fire operations chief Todd Abel said at a Santa Fe National Forest briefing Friday evening. “We haven’t had that opportunity in a long time.” In Southern California, where a fire has destroyed at least 20 homes south of Los Angeles in the coastal…

Harley-Davidson announced a two-week suspension of vehicle assembly and most shipments, citing a regulatory compliance issue with one of its suppliers. Shares tumbled almost 8% after the announcement. The decision was made Wednesday “out of an abundance of caution” after the company received information from a supplier of one of its component parts, Harley-Davidson said. The company did not name the supplier or provide details on the part in question and said the assembly and shipping suspension would not affect its LiveWire electric motorcycle. The company, like most global manufacturers, was already struggling with supply issues. It reported in April that its profit was trimmed by rising costs and chip shortages, which hurt sales in North America. Harley-Davidson shares have lost nearly one-third of their value in the past year…

McDonald’s is selling all of its restaurants in Russia 30 years after the burger chain became a powerful symbol of easing Cold War tensions between the United States and Soviet Union. The company shuttered hundreds of locations in March after Russia invaded Ukraine, which has cost McDonald’s about $55 million per month. On Monday, McDonald’s announced it would sell those stores and leave Russia. An existing McDonald’s licensee, Alexander Govor, who operates 25 restaurants in Siberia, has agreed to buy McDonald’s 850 Russian restaurants and operate them under a new name, the Chicago burger giant said Thursday. McDonald’s did not disclose the terms of the sale. Last year, McDonald’s Russian operations contributed 9% of the company’s total annual sales, or around $2 billion. McDonald’s was among the first Western consumer…

A NASA spacecraft on Mars is headed for a dusty demise. The Insight lander is losing power because of all the dust on its solar panels. NASA said it will keep using the spacecraft’s seismometer to register marsquakes until the power peters out, likely in July. Then flight controllers will monitor InSight until the end of this year, before calling everything off. “There really hasn’t been too much doom and gloom on the team. We’re really still focused on operating the spacecraft,” said Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Bruce Banerdt, the principal scientist. Since landing on Mars in 2018, InSight has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes; the biggest one, a magnitude 5, occurred two weeks ago. It will be NASA’s second Mars lander lost to dust: A global dust storm took out…

The Biden administration is taking the first steps to release $45 billion to ensure that every U.S. resident has access to high-speed internet by roughly 2028, inviting governors and other leaders to start the application process. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is overseeing the distribution and said that universal access to broadband internet would be akin to the electrification of rural America during the 1930s, a recognition that the internet is a utility needed for U.S. residents to function in today’s economy. “There’s more than 30 million Americans who don’t have internet,” Raimondo said. “And in this day and age without high-speed internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to the doctor, can’t do simple things. Think of how many times in a day you Google something or go online.”…

Hawaiian Airlines is exploring electric aircraft technology with a company based in Boston. The airline is interested in using the vehicles for travel between Hawaii’s islands, Hawaii News Now reported. The company called REGENT is designing“seagliders” that would each carry up to 100 people. Hawaiian hasn’t committed to purchasing any of the aircraft but is exploring the possibility. A news release from REGENT said Hawaiian agreed to strategically invest to support the initial design of the company’s next-generation seaglider. Hawaiian is the first airline to partner with the company, which hopes to have its Monarch seagliders in the air by 2028. “We look forward to working with REGENT to explore the technology and infrastructure needed to fulfill our vision for convenient, comfortable and environmentally sustainable interisland transportation,” said Avi Mannis,…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised that taking over Twitter would enable him to rid the social media platform of its annoying“spam bots.”Now he’s arguing — without presenting any evidence — that there might be just too many of those automated accounts for the $44 billion deal to move ahead. The sharp turnaround by the world’s richest man makes little sense except as a method to scuttle or renegotiate a deal that’s becoming increasingly costly for him, experts said. And while such hardball tactics aren’t uncommon in corporate mergers, the way this is playing out — in a highly public, seemingly erratic conversation on the very platform Musk wants to buy — has little precedent. Which means that Musk is negotiating the future of Twitter ... on Twitter. It’s increasingly clear…

Early on in “Top Gun: Maverick,” Tom Cruise hops on his sleek motorcycle, wearing Aviator sunglasses and a leather jacket with patches, and speeds into a time machine. No, that’s not right. It’s actually us who take a trip back. More than 30 years after Cruise smirked his way to the cocky heights of the ’80s as the maverick Navy pilot codenamed Maverick, he effortlessly picks up the character in a new chapter of “Top Gun” that is an absolutely, thoroughly enjoyable ride — a textbook example of how to make a sequel. “Top Gun: Maverick” satisfies with one foot in the past by hitting all the touchstones of the first film — fast motorcycles, the song “Danger Zone,” military fetishisms, humorless Navy bosses, shirtless bonding sports, “the hard deck,”…

The hotel name Zoetry (in Zoetry Montego Bay Jamaica) has an umlaut mark over the letter “e.” For some travelers, all-inclusive hotels conjure up images of flavorless food served under a heat lamp in lush and vibrant destinations where guests never actually leave the resort grounds. Lower-tier liquor flows freely (the good stuff will cost you more), as the few overindulgers put a damper on the trip. That image is changing, as hotel companies expand their offerings, while redefining what all-inclusive means. HOTELS ARE GROWING THEIR ALL-INCLUSIVE BRANDS Many hotel companies are rapidly adding all-inclusive resorts to their portfolio. Hyatt’s acquisition of Apple Leisure Group in November 2021 made it one of the largest owners of luxury all-inclusive resorts in the world. That acquisition included the luxury-focused AMR Collection, which…

Ford is asking the owners of 350,000 vehicles in to take them to dealers for repairs in three recalls, including about 39,000 that should be parked outdoors because the engines can catch fire. Ford says in U.S. government documents posted Thursday that it doesn’t know what’s causing fires in some 2021 Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs. But the company says fires can happen even while the engines are off. Ford has reports of 16 fires under the hood, 14 in rental company vehicles. One person was burned. It’s recommending that the SUVs be parked outdoors and away from buildings. So far it hasn’t developed a repair for the fires, which appear to start at the back of the engine compartment on the passenger side. Of the 16 fires, 12…

Google says its Russian subsidiary is planning to file for bankruptcy because it can’t pay staff and suppliers. Russian state media reported Wednesday that the U.S. tech company’s Russian subsidiary, Google LLC, submitted notice of its intention to declare bankruptcy to a national registry, Fedresurs. The company said in a press statement that it filed for bankruptcy because the “Russian authorities’ seizure of Google Russia’s bank account has made it untenable for our Russia office to function, including employing and paying Russia-based employees, paying suppliers and vendors, and meeting other financial obligations.” Google, which had previously suspended its business operations in Russia, said it would continue to provide its free services there, including Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, its Android operating system and its Play app store.…

With an overhauled MacBook Air reportedly just around the corner, experts are gearing themselves up for a new generation of computing. Likely to sport the M2 chip and an all-new design, the upcoming MacBook Air refresh could be one of the most significant to date. THE UPCOMING MACBOOK AIR Over the past couple of years, Apple has made something very clear: it means business when it comes to the Mac. Professionals and everyday users had grown frustrated with the Cupertino company’s approach to the Mac prior to 2020, with some calling the line-up scale and lagging behind competitors, especially in regards to price. But as Apple enters a new age with its own silicon chips, namely the M1 series and its Pro, Max, and Ultra counterparts, the company is once…

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses have quickly adopted remote working and transitioned to new technologies, such as contactless payments and online ordering. Unfortunately, these adjustments have come with increased risks. According to a 2022 report from Barracuda, a cloud and networks security company, small businesses with fewer than 100 employees receive 350% more social engineering attacks — like phishing, scamming or email compromise — than larger businesses. Compared with larger companies, many small businesses have fewer resources to dedicate to cybersecurity, leaving them vulnerable to the ever-evolving tactics of cybercriminals. And dealing with the consequences of a cyberattack can be seriously detrimental to a business’s bottom line, costing approximately $25,000 per year. Learn how to protect your small business from cyberattacks with these four tips. EVALUATE…

Nissan is considering adding a new auto plant in the U.S. to keep up with growing demand for electric vehicles, a top executive at the Japanese automaker said. “It may not be a surprise that we go for a third plant,” Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta told reporters at Yokohama headquarters. Nissan Motor Co. now has two auto plants in the U.S. One in Canton, Mississippi makes the Titan pickup truck and Altima sedan, among other models. The other in Smyrna, Tennessee makes the Leaf electric car, Pathfinder sport utility vehicle and other models. Each of the plants employs thousands of workers and has produced millions of Nissan vehicles. The third plant would not just be an added assembly line to an existing plant but a totally new facility, although…

Jeff Bezos this weekend became the latest centibillionaire to launch a political fight on Twitter by denouncing a tweet from President Joe Biden about corporate taxes as “disinformation” and “misdirection.” The White House quickly retorted Monday that Bezos “opposes an economic agenda for the middle class.” And then Bezos fired back, arguing that the Biden administration would have made inflation worse if its $3.5 trillion economic and social spending bill, known as “Build Back Better,” had made it into law. “They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high,” Bezos tweeted. The dispute marks an unusually high-profile one for Bezos, who has generally sought to avoid political fights in public. Bezos is the second-wealthiest…

Something was missing when Fox announced its plans for the fall television season: a schedule. It was one of several signs of how the business has changed since networks resumed their annual glitzy presentations for advertisers, which had been suspended because of the pandemic. Both NBC and Fox, which kicked off the week Monday, emphasized how the flagship networks were now part of larger media companies. Networks still can boast star power. Susan Sarandon, George Lopez, Raymond Lee, Camila Cabello and Trace Adkins will be featured in new contexts. Kelly Clarkson sang to open NBC’s show, and Miley Cyrus performed to end it. The traditional presentations usually reveal what new shows are coming, what old shows are departing and when they will air during the week and year. While fixed…

My mom died at age 61, when I was 31. Seeing her headstone in a field of others smacked me with a brutal, if obvious fact: Everyone, including everyone’s parents, will die. I promise I’m not trying to depress you. I want to prepare you, as this loss can happen sooner than you’d expect. And when parents die, it’s often up to their children to manage not just grief but also financial tasks. Planning for those to-do’s now could help later, when you experience what may be some of your hardest days. “We surely ought to have some idea of what we’re facing,” says Melanie Cullen, San Francisco Bay Area-based author of “Get It Together: Organize Your Records So Your Family Won’t Have To.” She adds: “On the other side…