Innholdsfortegnelse for #590 i Techlife News

Ford Motor Co. has suspended production and halted shipments of the F-150 Lightning electric pickup after a battery caught fire during a pre-delivery quality check. Production at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, has been stopped until at least the end of next week. The automaker said in a statement Wednesday night it has no reason to believe electric pickups already in use by customers are affected by the battery issue. “By the end of next week, we expect to conclude our investigation and apply what we learn to the truck’s battery production processes,” Ford spokeswoman Emma Berg said in the statement. “This could take a few weeks.” The fire happened at an outdoor lot nearby in Dearborn where vehicles are held for quality checks. The truck with…

China on Thursday imposed trade and investment sanctions on Lockheed Martin and a unit of Raytheon for supplying weapons to Taiwan, stepping up efforts to isolate the island democracy claimed by the ruling Communist Party as part of its territory. Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Technologies Corp.’s Raytheon Missiles and Defense are barred from importing goods into China or making new investments in the country, the Ministry of Commerce announced. It said they were added to the “unreliable entity” list of companies whose activities are restricted because they might endanger national sovereignty, security or development interests. It wasn’t clear what impact the penalties might have. The United States bars most sales of weapons-related technology to China, but some military contractors also have civilian businesses in aerospace and other markets. Taiwan…

Welcome to the AI battles, where companies compete to be the top provider of artificial intelligence technology. Microsoft and Bing have unexpectedly taken the lead in this race, but Google and Apple are just around the corner with their own AI-powered search tools. INTRODUCING BING WITH CHATGPT The AI wars have officially begun, and companies are competing to provide the most advanced artificial intelligence technology to users. In this race, Microsoft and Bing have taken the lead with their new chatbot-powered search engine. After trying it out, it’s hard to deny that Microsoft has won the first battle in the tech dominance struggle. Bing has finally arrived, and it’s time for users to start paying attention to this search engine that has been around for over a decade. Microsoft’s new…

If your image of nuclear power is giant, cylindrical concrete cooling towers pouring out steam on a site that takes up hundreds of acres of land, soon there will be an alternative: tiny nuclear reactors that produce only one-hundredth the electricity and can even be delivered on a truck. Small but meaningful amounts of electricity — nearly enough to run a small campus, a hospital or a military complex, for example — will pulse from a new generation of micronuclear reactors. Now, some universities are taking interest. “What we see is these advanced reactor technologies having a real future in decarbonizing the energy landscape in the U.S. and around the world,” said Caleb Brooks, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The tiny reactors carry some…

At a time when consumers are inundated with so-called social media influencers peddling the latest products online, a slew of TikTok users are leveraging their platforms to tell people what not to buy instead. The trend, called “de-influencing,” is a stark contrast to prior ones like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, when consumers were showing off products they purchased after seeing them on the social media app. These days, TikTokers are telling their followers which products aren’t worth the money, or urging them to resist indulging in trends. Some influencers are sounding off about blushes, mascaras or other beauty and skincare items that made big promises but don’t deliver. And others are telling their followers to avoid hair stylers and water bottles TikTok itself helped popularize. All told, clips with the hashtag #deinfluencing have…

Half of Americans in a recent survey indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting. The survey, released this week by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, goes beyond others that have shown a low level of trust in the media to the startling point where many believe there is an intent to deceive. Asked whether they agreed with the statement that national news organizations do not intend to mislead, 50% said they disagreed. Only 25% agreed, the study found. Similarly, 52% disagreed with a statement that disseminators of national news “care about the best interests of their readers, viewers and listeners,” the study found. It said 23% of respondents believed the journalists were acting…

The official emblem of King Charles III’s coronation, created by former Apple chief designer Jony Ive and his associates, honors the monarch’s love of nature by joining the flora that symbolize the four nations of the United Kingdom in a single image. The rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the daffodil of Wales and the shamrock of Northern Ireland form a picture of St. Edward’s Crown, which will be placed on the new king’s head when he is crowned May 6 at Westminster Abbey. The emblem revealed by Buckingham Palace is rendered in the colors of the Union flag, with the crown depicted in blue surrounded by further drawings of the four plants in red, all on a white background. “The design was inspired by King Charles’ love of…

Airbus is urging stepped-up European cooperation to ensure the continent’s security and future access to space after a year that saw the company suffer fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the crash of a European satellite launcher. The France-based plane maker reported a record overall 2022 profit of 4.25 billion euros ($4.55 billion), up from 4.21 billion euros the year before, despite inflation challenges and supply chain disruptions that slowed efforts to ramp up aircraft production. CEO Guillaume Faury said the company aims to deliver 720 planes this year, up from 661 last year, in an effort to keep up with growing demand by airlines as travel picks up worldwide following pandemic disruptions. This week, Air India unveiled an massive order that included 250 Airbus passenger jets. Airbus didn’t…

Under the fluorescent lights of a fifth grade classroom in Lexington, Kentucky, Donnie Piercey instructed his 23 students to try and outwit the “robot” that was churning out writing assignments. The robot was the new artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, which can generate everything from essays and haikus to term papers within seconds. The technology has panicked teachers and prompted school districts to block access to the site. But Piercey has taken another approach by embracing it as a teaching tool, saying his job is to prepare students for a world where knowledge of AI will be required. “This is the future,” said Piercey, who describes ChatGPT as just the latest technology in his 17 years of teaching that prompted concerns about the potential for cheating. The calculator, spellcheck, Google, Wikipedia,…

Zoox’s recent achievement of successfully transporting passengers on public roads marks a significant step forward for the development of autonomous driving technology. The company’s innovative four-person “robotaxi” has been designed without traditional vehicle controls, including steering wheels and pedals, and is intended to be a fully self-driving vehicle. The recent test of the vehicle took place between two buildings at Zoox’s headquarters in Foster City, California, where it completed a mile-long route. The carriage-style interior of the vehicle has two benches that face each other, providing ample space for passengers to sit back and relax while the vehicle takes care of the driving. According to Zoox, its vehicle has undergone rigorous testing on private roads, and the company has obtained the necessary approvals from the California Department of Motor Vehicles…

Billionaire Elon Musk said that he anticipates finding a CEO for Twitter “probably toward the end of this year.” Speaking via a video call to the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk said making sure the platform can function remained the most important thing for him. “I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financial healthy place,” Musk said when asked about when he’d name a CEO. “I’m guessing probably toward the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company.” It remains unclear how seriously Musk will take that timeline. His comment came only hours after he posted images of his shiba inu dog, Floki, on Twitter as the company’s “CEO.” “So much better than…

After seeing promising results in Eastern Europe, Google will initiate a new campaign in Germany that aims to make people more resilient to the corrosive effects of online misinformation. The tech giant plans to release a series of short videos highlighting the techniques common to many misleading claims. The videos will appear as advertisements on platforms like Facebook, YouTube or TikTok in Germany. A similar campaign in India is also in the works. It’s an approach called prebunking, which involves teaching people how to spot false claims before they encounter them. The strategy is gaining support among researchers and tech companies. “There’s a real appetite for solutions,” said Beth Goldberg, head of research and development at Jigsaw, an incubator division of Google that studies emerging social challenges. “Using ads as…

The Congressional Budget Office said this week that it expects the U.S. economy to stagnate this year with the unemployment rate jumping to 5.1% — a bleak outlook that was paired with a 10-year projection that publicly held U.S. debt would nearly double to $46.4 trillion in 2033. The office’s updated 10-year Budget and Economic Outlook outlined stark expectations for the decade ahead, where Social Security would be unable to pay full benefits to recipients in 2032 — with a roughly 20 percent reduction in benefits across the board — and the net interest costs on U.S. debt would eclipse what the nation spends on defense. “The debt trajectory is unsustainable,” CBO director Phillip Swagel told journalists at a press conference after the report’s afternoon release. The CBO can’t tell…

Dubai again is planning for the takeoff of flying taxis in this futuristic city-state on the Arabian Peninsula, offering its firmest details yet for a pledged launch by 2026. Since 2017, the commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates has offered promises to launch flying taxis in the city already home to the world’s tallest building and other architectural wonders. A series of d ifferent types and companies have cycled through those promises as well, most timed to be included at Dubai’s annual World Government Summit. Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced the relaunched flying taxi program on Twitter last weekend. This time, Dubai highlighted the six-rotor electric flying taxi made by Joby Aviation of Santa Cruz, California, in the promotional video. The inclusion of Joby Aviation,…

In a video from a Jan. 25 news report, President Joe Biden talks about tanks. But a doctored version of the video has amassed hundred of thousands of views this week on social media, making it appear he gave a speech that attacks transgender people. Digital forensics experts say the video was created using a new generation of artificial intelligence tools, which allow anyone to quickly generate audio simulating a person’s voice with a few clicks of a button. And while the Biden clip on social media may have failed to fool most users this time, the clip shows how easy it now is for people to generate hateful and disinformation-filled “deepfake” videos that could do real-world harm. “Tools like this are going to basically add more fuel to fire,”…

Electric car giant Tesla will, for the first time, make some of its charging stations available to all U.S. electric vehicles by the end of next year, under a new plan announced by the White House. The plan will make at least 7,500 chargers from Tesla’s Supercharger and Destination Charger network available to non-Tesla EVs by the end of 2024, the White House said. The plan to open the nation’s largest and most reliable charging network to all drivers is a potential game-changer in promoting EV use, a key component of President Joe Biden’s goal to fight climate change. “As President Biden said, the great American road trip will be electrified,’‘said Mitch Landrieu, a White House aide who oversees implementation of the 2021 infrastructure law signed by Biden. Soon, charging…

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s company added to its already substantial Apple investment at the end of last year while slashing a new investment in computer chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor and two longtime bank holdings. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. revealed several changes to its stock portfolio in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. Many investors follow the company’s moves closely because of Buffett’s remarkably successful investing record over the decades. Berkshire picked up nearly 21 million more shares in the iPhone maker during the final three months of last year to give it 915.6 million shares at the end of 2022. Buffett has called Apple one of the four giants that drive Berkshire’s results even though it is only a stock investment. Berkshire’s other main drivers are companies that…

The United States has blacklisted six Chinese entities it said were linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs as part of its retaliation over an alleged Chinese spy balloon that traversed U.S. airspace. The economic restrictions announced followed the Biden administration’s pledge to consider broader efforts to address Chinese surveillance activities and will make it more difficult for the five companies and one research institute to obtain American technology exports. The move is likely to further escalate the diplomatic row between the U.S. and China sparked by the balloon, which was shot down last weekend off the Carolina coast. The U.S. said the balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals, but Beijing insists it was a weather craft that had blown off course. The incident prompted Secretary of State Antony…