Innholdsfortegnelse for #607 i Techlife News

Americans increased their spending at retailers last month despite pressure from still-high inflation and rising borrowing costs. Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that retail sales rose 0.3% from April to May, boosted by stronger sales of auto and parts dealers. Economists had been expecting a decline in sales for the month. Last month’s increase pointed to a still-resilient economy, though retail sales have been bumpy this year after surging nearly 3% in January. Sales tumbled in February and March before recovering in April. The latest retail sales data follow a government report this week that consumer inflation eased last month. Prices rose just 0.1% from April to May and are up just 4% over the previous 12 months — the lowest such figure in over two years. Americans…

Suspected state-backed Chinese hackers used a security hole in a popular email security appliance to break into the networks of hundreds of public and private sector organizations globally, nearly a third of them government agencies including foreign ministries, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Thursday. “This is the broadest cyber espionage campaign known to be conducted by a China-nexus threat actor since the mass exploitation of Microsoft Exchange in early 2021,” Charles Carmakal, Mandiant’s chief technical officer, said in a emailed statement. That hack compromised tens of thousands of computers globally. In a blog post Thursday, Google-owned Mandiant expressed “high confidence” that the group exploiting a software vulnerability in Barracuda Networks’ Email Security Gateway was engaged in “espionage activity in support of the People’s Republic of China.” It said the activivity…

Apple has again pushed the boundaries of technology by introducing the 15-inch MacBook Air. Boasting an expansive Liquid Retina display, M2 chip, up to 18 hours of battery life, and a six-speaker sound system, this thin and lightweight, fanless laptop is positioned as the world’s best 15-inch laptop and offers both consumers and professionals more choices. STUNNING LIQUID RETINA DISPLAY The standout feature of the 15-inch MacBook Air is its spacious 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display. With up to 500 nits of brightness and support for 1 billion colors, this high-resolution display brings content to life with remarkable richness and vibrancy. The display is twice the resolution and 25 percent brighter than comparable PC laptops, ensuring an immersive visual experience for users. Whether editing photos, watching videos, or working on creative…

The electric car market is speeding up as consumer interest in EVs grows and a steady stream of new models arrive to fill different niches. Speed is the operative word when it comes to describing the 2023 Kia EV6 GT and Tesla Model Y Performance. These vehicles blend the acceleration and agility of a sports car with the packaging of an electric SUV. They also maintain a practical side thanks to their roomy second rows and a long roster of tech features. The automotive experts put these performance-themed EVs to the test to determine which is the better buy. PERFORMANCE The Tesla Model Y Performance name provides an obvious hint that speed won’t be in short supply. The Performance trim sits above the base and Long Range versions of Tesla’s…

After three years, the pandemic-era freeze on student loan payments will end in late August. It might seem tempting to just keep not making payments, but the consequences can be severe, including a hit to your credit score and exclusion from future aid and benefits. More than 40 million Americans will have to start making federal student loan payments again at the end of the summer under the terms of a debt ceiling deal approved by Congress. Millions are also waiting to find out whether the Supreme Court will allow President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan to go ahead. But payments will resume regardless of what justices decide. That means tough decisions for many borrowers, especially those in already-difficult financial situations. Experts say that delinquency and bankruptcy should be…

“Avatar: The Way of Water” may have finally arrived in theaters in 2022, but that long parade of “Avatar” delays isn’t done, yet. The Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday pushed the release of “Avatar 3” a year, bumping it from December 2024 to December 2025. The timeline is stretched even further for the next planned installments. “Avatar 4” is now slated to hit theaters in December 2029; “Avatar 5” is set to arrive in December 2031. If those dates hold, the “Avatar” film series will have stretched across the first four decades of the century. Director James Cameron, who launched “Avatar” in 2009, has said he may not direct films 4 and 5. By December 2031, the 68-year-old Cameron would be 77. “Avatar” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” have…

Federal prosecutors want Elizabeth Holmes to pay $250 each month to victims of her failed blood testing startup after she leaves prison, but her attorneys are pushing back citing “limited financial resources” available to the disgraced founder of Theranos. The U.S. filed a motion last week asking the court to correct “clerical errors” which included, prosecutors said, the lack of a timeline for restitution from the one-time billionaire once she exits prison. Holmes’ legal team objected to those changes this week. Holmes, 39, began an 11-year sentence at a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas, late last month after she and her former partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were convicted of fraud for duping investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars while running Theranos, a Silicon Valley startup that promised to…

Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” decades after the band broke up, Paul McCartney said this week. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.”The “new” song is set to be released later this year, he said. Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney told BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar’.” “So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it…

Thousands of Reddit discussion forums have gone dark this week to protest a new policy that will charge some third-party apps to access data on the site, leading to worries about content moderation and accessibility. More than 8,000 subreddits were dark as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a tracker and live Twitch stream of the boycott. Participants ranged from small forums to large communities with tens of millions of subscribers — including the r/funny, r/music and r/todayilearned pages seen on the online discussion site. “Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself ),” other subreddits wrote in posts seen on the platform’s homepage. The new fees are part of broader changes to Reddit’s API, or application programming interface, that the company announced recently. Organizers of the blackout, which began Monday, say…

First came the crypto winter, then the alleged fraud wrought by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and now the lawsuits. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed lawsuits last week against the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, deepening tensions between the government and a volatile industry that has been marred by scandals and market meltdowns. Binance and Coinbase are both alleged to have violated the law by operating as securities exchanges without registering their businesses with the SEC. Binance faces additional charges, along with its CEO, of diverting customer funds to a separate business, among other accusations. Most recently, the SEC asked a federal judge to freeze the assets of Binance’s U.S. platform. The lawsuits are the latest in an ongoing tussle between government officials who describe the crypto…

One small step for an intrepid crew of 24th century space explorers could be a giant leap — or flop — for Microsoft when the Xbox-maker launches its long-awaited video game Starfield. Players must fend off pirates, navigate strange moons, build outposts and fix their own starships in a space epic that is due out on Xbox in September after years of development and delay. Microsoft gave its most detailed glimpse of the upcoming game at a Los Angeles event. The release could be one of the most important in Xbox’s history as it looks to attract gamers with a headliner on par with Nintendo’s latest Zelda game and PlayStation’s upcoming Spider-Man 2, said Mat Piscatella, a game industry analyst for market researcher Circana. After months of watching Nintendo’s Switch…

European Union regulators hit Google with fresh antitrust charges, saying the only way to satisfy competition concerns about its lucrative digital ad business is by selling off parts of the tech giant’s main moneymaker. The unprecedented decision to push for such a breakup marks a significant escalation by Brussels in its crackdown on Silicon Valley digital giants. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, said its preliminary view after an investigation is that “only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services” would satisfy the concerns. The 27-nation EU has led the global movement to crack down on Big Tech companies — including groundbreaking rules on artificial intelligence — but it has previously relied on issuing blockbuster fines, including three antitrust penalties for Google…

Inflation may be cooling — just not yet fast enough for the Federal Reserve. Chair Jerome Powell offered a nuanced view Wednesday of how the Fed intends to address its core challenge at a time when inflation is both way below its peak but still well above the central bank’s 2% target: Give it more time, and maybe some help from additional interest rate hikes. Yet on a hopeful note, Powell also suggested that the trends that are needed to further slow inflation, from lower apartment rents to slower-growing wages, are starting to click into place. As a result, the Fed decided Wednesday to forgo another increase in its benchmark interest rate, leaving it at about 5.1%. The pause followed 10 straight hikes in 15 months — the fastest series…

Advanced Micro Devices has revealed a new artificial intelligence chip in its race to compete with rival chipmaker Nvidia in supplying the foundation for a boom in AI-fueled business tools. The semiconductor company, based in Santa Clara, California, described its new MI300X chip as “the world’s most advanced accelerator for generative AI.” It’s expected to attract interest from big cloud providers such as Amazon or Microsoft, but AMD hasn’t specified which cloud provider might use it. CFRA senior equity analyst Angelo Zino predicted this month that that AMD’s MI300 processor “will see significant interest from cloud providers and vie with NVIDIA’s Grace Hopper Superchip.” “AMD’s stronger partnership with Microsoft should also drive upside, as it is reportedly cited to be developing a custom processor chip that Microsoft will use for…

The proliferation of hate and lies on digital platforms and the threat that artificial intelligence can become an uncontrolled “monster” demand coordinated global action — starting with a code of conduct for governments, tech companies and advertisers that promotes truth and protects human rights, the U.N. chief said this week. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he plans to appoint a scientific advisory board in a few days, and an advisory board on artificial intelligence in September to prepare initiatives that the U.N. can take. He said he would react favorably to a new U.N. agency on artificial intelligence and suggested as a model the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is knowledge-based and has some regulatory powers. Guterres told a news conference he plans to consult widely on the just released principles…

Lawmakers in Europe signed off this week on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, clearing a key hurdle as authorities across the globe race to rein in AI. The European Parliament vote is one of the last steps before the rules become law, which could act as a model for other places working on similar regulations. A yearslong effort by Brussels to draw up guardrails for AI has taken on more urgency as rapid advances in chatbots like ChatGPT show the benefits the emerging technology can bring — and the new perils it poses. Here’s a look at the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act: HOW DO THE RULES WORK? The measure, first proposed in 2021, will govern any product or service that uses an artificial intelligence system.…

South Korean prosecutors have arrested and indicted a former executive of Samsung Electronics suspected of stealing trade secrets while attempting to establish a copycat computer chip plant in China. The Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office said that the unnamed 65-year-old unlawfully obtained Samsung’s factory blueprints and clean-room designs from 2018 and 2019 while trying, unsuccessfully, to replicate a chip factory in the Chinese city of Xi’an, near where Samsung operates a plant. The technology allegedly stolen by the man’s China-based company would have been worth at least 300 billion won ($233 million) for Samsung, prosecutors said. They charged six people employed by the man with “active participation” in the tech theft. South Korea is highly sensitive to breaches of technologies related to semiconductors, which accounted for nearly 17% of its total…