Innholdsfortegnelse for #571 i Techlife News

The former chief security officer for Uber was convicted Wednesday of trying to cover up a 2016 data breach in which hackers accessed tens of millions of customer records from the ride-hailing service. A federal jury in San Francisco convicted Joseph Sullivan of obstructing justice and concealing knowledge that a federal felony had been committed, federal prosecutors said. Sullivan remains free on bond pending sentencing and could face a total of eight years in prison on the two charges when he is sentenced, prosecutors said. “Technology companies in the Northern District of California collect and store vast amounts of data from users,” U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds said in a statement. “We will not tolerate concealment of important information from the public by corporate executives more interested in protecting their…

Peloton is looking to trim hundreds of jobs as the company continues to reorganize its business which has stalled as the coronavirus-related surge fades. The maker of high-end exercise equipment plans to cut approximately 500 jobs, or about 12% of its workforce. “A key aspect of Peloton’s transformation journey is optimizing efficiencies and implementing cost savings to simplify our business and achieve break-even cash flow by the end of our fiscal year,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. Peloton Interactive Inc. said Thursday that it has completed the vast majority of a restructuring plan that it started in February. That plan included a new chief executive and a smaller store base. Peloton has been attempting to adjust its business to the current market after experiencing incredible sales growth during…

Apple Music crossed a huge milestone, offering its eye-and-ear-popping 100 millionth song on the streaming service. The music giant tells that internal data indicates Apple Music reached the heady mark this week. Every day, 20,000 singers and songwriters release music on the service. “It’s a huge, huge number,” Rachel Newman, Apple’s global head of editorial and content, told the AP. “It really is possible to create music and record it and release it more than ever before in the history of music, which we think is pretty incredible.” Apple Music says the milestone cements it as the world’s largest catalog of music, more than YouTube Music’s 80 million songs, Spotify’s 82 million tracks and podcasts, and Amazon Music’s 90 million songs. While the actual song that brings Apple Music across…

Micron, one of the world’s largest microchip manufacturers, announced it would open a semiconductor plant in upstate New York, promising a long-term investment of up to $100 billion and a plant that could bring 50,000 jobs to the state. The company was lured to the Syracuse area with help from a generous set of federal, state and local incentives, including up to $5.5 billion in state tax credits over 20 years. The announcement comes after Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-NY, had pushed for Idaho-based Micron and the company’s CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra, to consider upstate New York for its factory. It also comes months after Congress passed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, which set aside $52 billion to bolster the semiconductor industry. “An investment of this scale in…

New York City’s thousands of food delivery workers will get places to recharge electric bike batteries, cellphones and themselves, under a city plan announced to turn abandoned newsstands and other unused structures into facilities for the “deliveristas.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mayor Eric Adams called the “hubs” a national first. It’s not yet clear how many will be built or exactly where and when; officials say they’re working to identify suitable locations on city property. During the coronavirus pandemic, ordering-in surged in New York and nationwide. So did activism by the mostly immigrant New York workers, who formed an advocacy group called Los Deliveristas Unidos and began holding rallies to draw attention to the demands, dangers and indignities of a job in which they had been deemed…

The long list of celebrities promoting cryptocurrencies just got shorter. Kim Kardashian is being barred from doing so for three years — and will pay a $1 million fine -- to settle federal charges that she recommended a crypto security to her 330 million Instagram followers without making clear that she was paid to do so. The reality TV star also must give up the $250,000 she was paid for the Instagram post about Ethereum Max tokens, plus interest, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement announced this week. Kardashian is the latest celebrity to get ensnared in regulations that require full disclosure by people getting paid to promote financial products. In 2020, actor Steven Seagal agreed to pay more than $300,000 as part of a similar settlement with…

Amazon is implementing a hiring freeze on the corporate side of its retail business for the rest of the year, according to a New York Times report, becoming the latest company to pause hiring plans amid growing concerns about an economic downturn. Citing an internal announcement, The New York Times reported this week that the company informed recruiters all open job postings for such roles will close, and new openings will be available next year. The internal email also recommended phone interviews and other recruiting efforts be canceled, according to the report, which said some roles — such as field positions -- will be exempt. In an email, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said the company has a “significant number” of open roles. Glasser declined to say if Amazon was implementing…

Thrifters who flock to Goodwill stores will now be able to do more of their treasure hunting online. The 120-year-old nonprofit organization launched GoodwillFinds, a newly incorporated shopping venture that is making roughly 100,000 donated items available for purchase online and expanding Goodwill’s internet presence that until now had been limited to auction sites like ShopGoodwill.com or individual stores selling donations online via eBay and Amazon. GoodwillFinds’ goal is to have 1 million items on its site in a few years, said Matthew Kannes, newly appointed CEO of the online shopping arm, which features search tools that let shoppers browse by category. Eventually GoodwillFinds will be able to be personalized based on a customer’s past purchases. GoodwillFinds is a separate entity from Goodwill Industries International Inc. but it will support…

The Mexican government or army has allegedly continued to use spyware designed to hack into the cellphones of activists, despite a pledge by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to end such practices. Press freedom groups said this week they found evidence of recent attempts to use the Israeli spyware program Pegasus against activists investigating human rights abuses by the Mexican army. The Pegasus infection was confirmed through a forensic investigation by the University of Toronto group Citizen Lab. According to a report by the press freedom group Article 19, The Network for the Defense of Digital Rights and Mexican media organizations, the targets included rights activist Raymundo Ramos. Ramos has worked for years documenting military and police abuses, including multiple killings, in the drug cartel-dominated border city of Nuevo Laredo.…

“Missing Millions” is a 1922 silent film with a darkly prescient title — like the vast majority from that era, the movie all but vanished in the ensuing century, survived mostly by lobby cards. The cards, scarcely bigger than letter paper, promoted the cinematic romances, comedies and adventures of early Hollywood. More than 10,000 of the images once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between Chicago-based collector Dwight Cleveland and Dartmouth College that all started when he ran into a film professor at an academic conference in New York. “Ninety percent of all silent films have been lost because they were made on nitrate film, which is flammable and explodable,” Cleveland told. “What that means is that these lobby…

More Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, the largest number in four months, but the labor market remains strong in the face of persistent inflation and a slowing overall U.S. economy. Jobless claims for the week ending Oct. 1 rose by 29,000 to 219,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week’s number was revised down by 3,000 to 190,000. The four-week moving average inched up by 250 to 206,500. The total number of Americans collecting unemployment aid rose by 15,000 to 1.36 million for the week ending Sept. 24. Applications for jobless aid generally reflect layoffs, which have remained historically low since the initial purge of more than 20 million jobs at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020. Recent employment data has indicated…

After holding “Emancipation” in limbo following Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in March, Apple will release the actor’s next big project this December. In the fallout of Smith’s smack of the comedian, the fate of “Emancipation” — a $120 million runaway slave thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua — had been uncertain. One of Apple’s most high-profile productions yet, the film had once been expected to be an Oscar contender this year. But an awards-season rollout of a film headlined by Smith, whom the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years, has obvious complications. Nevertheless, Apple TV+ said that it will debut “Emancipation” on Dec. 2 in theaters and begin streaming it Dec. 9. Over the weekend, Apple…

The Biden administration unveiled a set of far-reaching goals aimed at averting harms caused by the rise of artificial intelligence systems, including guidelines for how to protect people’s personal data and limit surveillance. The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights notably does not set out specific enforcement actions, but instead is intended as a White House call to action for the U.S. government to safeguard digital and civil rights in an AI-fueled world, officials said. “This is the Biden-Harris administration really saying that we need to work together, not only just across government, but across all sectors, to really put equity at the center and civil rights at the center of the ways that we make and use and govern technologies,” said Alondra Nelson, deputy director for science and…

A major nonprofit health system with 140 hospitals in 21 states, CommonSpirit Health, is reporting an “IT security issue” that has disrupted operations in multiple states. A company spokesperson would not explain the nature of the apparent cyberattack, such as whether the organization’s IT network was hit by ransomware. The Des Moines Register said the incident occurred this week and forced the diversion of ambulances from the emergency department of the city’s Mercy One Medical Center to other medical facilities. The Chattanoogan reported that CHI Memorial Hospital was among facilities impacted. In a statement, CommonSpirit said it had taken “certain IT systems offline” including electronic health records as a precaution and rescheduled some patient appointments. It would not say whether patient records were accessed. Nor did it say when the…

The Tesla Model S has enjoyed a nearly 10-year head start on the premium electric sedan competition, but the gap is beginning to close. There’s a newcomer giving the Model S a run for its money, and it comes from a fellow startup. The 2022 Lucid Air is an all-electric luxury sedan that can compete with the Model S in some areas and surpass it in others. So, which is the better electric luxury flagship, the Tesla or the Lucid? Car experts compared these two long-distance EVs to find out. RANGE & CHARGING The Lucid Air’s biggest claim to fame is its exceptional driving range. The top-of-the-line Dream Edition boasts a bladder-busting 520-mile EPA range on a single charge. The most that the Tesla offers is 405 miles, which is…

Business travel used to mean sending employees from their home office to somewhere else — to meet with clients or coworkers at other offices. But for many remote-first companies, it now means the opposite: Bringing employees together from their far-flung homes to work and meet in person. These so-called “off-sites” — a holdover term from when these companies had actual sites — have the potential to change the face of business travel. While consumer travel has roared back in 2022, business travel has been slower to rebound. Company off-sites could make up a larger share of that budget than in years past. Doist, a software company with employees distributed around the globe, wanted something different for its companywide retreat in July. “We rented a small village in the Austrian Alps,”…

In her second-grade classroom outside Seattle, Fatima Nuñez Ardon often tells her students stories about everyday people realizing their dreams. One day, for example, she talked about Salvadoran American NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio and his journey to the International Space Station. Another day, she told them her own life story — how she, an El Salvadoran immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in middle school speaking very little English, came to be a teacher. Nuñez Ardon took an unusual path to the classroom: She earned her teaching degree through evening classes at a community college, while living at home and raising her four children. Community college-based teaching programs like this are rare, but growing. They can dramatically cut the cost and raise the convenience of earning a teaching degree, while…

Russia has devised yet another way to spread disinformation about its invasion of Ukraine, using digital tricks that allow its war propaganda videos to evade restrictions imposed by governments and tech companies. Accounts linked to Russian state-controlled media have used the new method to spread dozens of videos in 18 different languages, all without leaving telltale signs that would give away the source, researchers at Nisos, a U.S.-based intelligence firm that tracks disinformation and other cyber threats, said in a report released Wednesday. The videos push Kremlin conspiracy theories blaming Ukraine for civilian casualties as well as claims that residents of areas forcibly annexed by Russia have welcomed their occupiers. English-language versions of the Russian propaganda videos are now circulating on Twitter and lesser-known platforms popular with American conservatives, including…

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max take smartphone photography to a whole new level with the introduction of a 48-megapixel sensor, elevating photos and videos even further. It’s the best camera system ever on an iPhone, and both critics and consumers are united in their praise. INTRODUCING THE 48-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA There’s never been a better time to be a serious photographer with the iPhone: the company’s latest Pro and Pro Max models offer some serious photography improvements, so much so that you’d be forgiven for thinking shots were taken on a DSLR. Perhaps one of the most significant selling points for this year’s iPhone is the camera’s 48-megapixel resolution, but that’s not all: the new set-up offers better image quality on the main, and it features ultrawide angle cameras…

President Joe Biden, a self-described “car guy, often promises to lead by example on climate change by moving swiftly to convert the sprawling U.S. government fleet to zero-emission electric vehicles. But efforts to eliminate gas-powered vehicles from the fleet have lagged. Biden last year directed the U.S. government to purchase only American-made, zero-emission passenger cars by 2027 and electric versions of other vehicles by 2035. “We’re going to harness the purchasing power of the federal government to buy clean, zero-emission vehicles,” the president said soon after his January 2021 inauguration. He has since used photo ops — taking a spin in Ford Motor Co.’s electric F-150 pickup truck, or driving GM’s Cadillac Lyriq electric SUV at the Detroit auto show — to promote their potential. Cabinet officials have hawked a…

Top regulators recommended a series of new safeguards to ensure that a growing and unregulated cryptocurrency market doesn’t imperil U.S. financial stability. Among seven major recommendations, regulators called on Congress to pass legislation that would address the systemic risks caused by the growth of stablecoins, which are a form of cryptocurrency pegged to the price of another financial asset, like the U.S. dollar or gold. Recent volatility in the cryptocurrency market, especially in stablecoins, has made regulators particularly wary about the need for regulation as usage of the digital asset continues to grow. Members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council met this week to approve the recommendations of a 125-page report created in response to President Joe Biden’s March executive order on digital assets. The report also calls for giving…

The tumultuous saga of Elon Musk’s on-again off-again purchase of Twitter took a turn toward a conclusion Tuesday after the mercurial Tesla CEO proposed to buy the company at the originally agreed-on price of $44 billion. Musk made the surprising turnaround not on Twitter, as has been his custom, but in a letter to Twitter that the company disclosed in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It came less than two weeks before a trial between the two parties is scheduled to start in Delaware. In response, Twitter said it intends to close the transaction at $54.20 per share after receiving the letter from Musk. But the company stopped short of saying it’s dropping its lawsuit against the billionaire Tesla CEO. Experts said that makes sense…

Google has discontinued its Google Translate services in mainland China, removing one of the company’s few remaining services that it had provided in a country where most Western social media platforms are blocked. The Google Translate app and website now display a generic search bar and a link redirecting Chinese users to its page in Hong Kong, which is blocked on the mainland. Users reported not being able to access the service since last weekend, according to Chinese social media posts. The translation feature built into the Google Chrome browser also no longer functions for users in China. The Google Translate service was discontinued in China due to “low usage,” Google said in a statement. It is not clear how many users were using Google Translate in China. The U.S.…