Innholdsfortegnelse for #609 i Techlife News

After a series of fires involving faulty e-bike batteries including a recent blaze that claimed four lives, New York City officials announced that they are receiving a $25 million emergency grant from the federal government to fund scores of charging stations citywide. Mayor Eric Adams hopes the stations will provide a safer way for delivery workers, who rely on e-bikes to efficiently do their jobs, to recharge lithium batteries used to power their bicycles. “This means that residents will no longer need to charge the e-bikes in their apartments — what we find to be extremely dangerous, particularly when you charge them overnight,” Adams said at a news conference. He was flanked by the state’s two U.S. senators who helped secure the funding from the US. Department of Transportation. The…

Apple’s macOS has long been the beating heart of its Mac computers, powering seamless user experiences and delivering innovative features. With the introduction of macOS Sonoma, Apple has enabled users to personalize with widgets, experience new levels of gaming performance, and gain powerful productivity for video conferencing and browsing. REDEFINING WIDGETS ON MACOS Widgets have become an integral part of the Mac experience, and macOS Sonoma takes them to the next level. Users can now place widgets directly on their desktops, providing easy access to the information and functionalities they need most. With the widget gallery, finding and adding widgets is a breeze. These widgets seamlessly blend with the wallpaper, ensuring users stay focused on their tasks while enjoying the benefits of real-time information updates. Continuity, a feature that enables…

Stellantis says it is pulling together a network of public electric vehicle chargers that could include Tesla and nearly all of the other chargers in the U.S., Canada and Europe. But executives wouldn’t say for certain if the company will follow Ford and General Motors and sign up with Tesla’s Supercharger network or adopt Tesla’s connecting plug. “We will be addressing that question soon,” said Ricardo Stamatti, senior vice president of the automaker’s charging and energy business unit. Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, is signing up charging companies now and says its network will include current Jeep chargers at trail heads as well as chargers that are part of dealer networks. It’ll be marketed under the “Free2move Charge,” brand. The networks on both continents are to start late this year and…

Environmentalists, tribal leaders and others have fought for years against lithium mining ventures in Nevada. Yet opposition to mining one particular desert tract for the silvery white metal used in electric car batteries is coming from unusual quarters: space. An ancient Nevada lakebed beckons as a vast source of the coveted element needed to produce cleaner electric energy and fight global warming. But NASA says the same site — flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the Western Hemisphere — is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead. At the space agency’s request, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (92 square kilometers) of the eastern Nevada terrain from its inventory of federal lands open to…

Diego Luna has mixed emotions about the looming end of his Star Wars series “Andor.” “I am very excited filming, all the time I feel that we are approaching the end and, therefore, the process is lived with a certain melancholy,” the Mexican actor said in a recent interview by video call during a break in shoots in Great Britain for the acclaimed series’ second season. Luna knew the series, about a Rebel spy introduced to fans in 2016’s “Rogue One,” was meant to last only two seasons. But he’s not looking forward to the end. “There is also an inevitable part of saying how sad it is to leave this team, to leave this dynamic, to leave this time living here,” he said. The show has taken a thriller…

Twitter needs to do more work to fall in line with the European Union’s tough new digital rulebook, a top EU official said after overseeing a “stress test” of the company’s systems in Silicon Valley. European Commissioner Thierry Breton said that he noted the “strong commitment of Twitter to comply” with the Digital Services Act, sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey in just two months. However, “work needs to continue,” he said in a statement after reviewing the results of the voluntary test at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with owner Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino. Breton, who oversees digital policy, is also meeting other tech bosses in California. He’s the EU’s point person working to get Big Tech ready for the new…

When producers of “Wheel of Fortune” named Ryan Seacrest — probably the most ubiquitous man on entertainment television — as its next host this week, it surprised virtually no one. The idea that Sony Pictures Television would appoint someone relatively unknown as the figurehead of one of its most valuable properties was far-fetched. But it wasn’t always that way for a genre of television that minted such celebrities like late “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, Bob Barker of “The Price is Right” and current “Wheel of Fortune” emcee Pat Sajak. With Sajak’s impending retirement, after the show’s next season, it’s the end of an era: Game shows are now the provenance of the already famous. WHY IS PAT SAJAK THE LAST OF HIS BREED? Back in 1984, a much younger Sajak…

Many small businesses have long relied on Amazon’s platform and delivery pipeline to boost their business. Now, Amazon wants to enlist them to help with deliveries, too. The e-commerce giant this week officially launched a program it has been piloting since 2020 that pays small business owners to deliver packages during the “last mile” of delivery to customers’ doorsteps. Axios first reported the launch. Amazon has long been working on finding new ways to deliver packages faster and more efficiently, including working with third-party delivery companies, increasing its warehouse space and making other moves. The program, called Amazon Hub Delivery, will operate in 23 states and focus on rural areas and large, dense cities including Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Hoboken, New Jersey. The small businesses do not…

For the thousands of workers who’d never experienced upheaval in the tech sector, the recent mass layoffs at companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta came as a shock. Now they are being courted by long-established employers whose names aren’t typically synonymous with tech work, including hotel chains, retailers, investment firms, railroad companies and even the Internal Revenue Service. All of those sectors have signaled on recruiting platforms that they are still hiring software engineers, data scientists and cybersecurity specialists despite the layoffs in Big Tech. It’s a chance for them to level the playing field against tech giants that have long had their pick of the top talent with lucrative compensation, alluring perks and sheer name recognition. No employer is making a more aggressive push than the country’s largest:…

Standing 6-foot-2-inches, Idris Elba’s size helps to sell his characters. As a detective in “ Luther,” he often averted protocol and went rogue. On “The Wire,” he played a shrewd, intimidating crime boss in the drug world. In the 2022 movie “ Beast,” he protected his daughters from a ferocious lion while on holiday in South Africa. But, in his new Apple TV+ series “ Hijack,” it’s his mental strength that helps him navigate a crisis, not his build. Elba plays Sam, a passenger on a flight from Dubai to London that turns into a hostage situation. The first two episodes of “Hijack” are now available on Apple TV+, with one new episode released weekly. “I’m used to being cast as a big man,” said Elba. “In this situation Sam…

The Supreme Court ruled this week to make it more difficult to convict a person of making a violent threat, including against the president or other elected officials. The Biden administration had warned that the internet and social media have expanded the number and kinds of threats in recent years, including online harassment, intimidation and stalking. And they warned the case could affect the ability to prosecute threats against public officials, which have increased in recent years. The high court was ruling in a case that involves a man who was sentenced to more than four years in prison in Colorado for sending threatening Facebook messages. The man’s lawyers had argued that he suffers from mental illness and never intended his messages to be threatening. The question for the court…

The BBC is more aggressively bringing “open source” reporting and efforts to expose disinformation to its day-to-day reporting, a move that signals a potential shift in journalism’s embrace of new technology. The just-announced creation of a new BBC Verify unit is also an attempt by the news organization to be more transparent in its reporting, said Deborah Turness, BBC News chief executive officer. Practitioners of open source reporting go beyond traditional methods of interviews and examining public records to tell stories by using tools such as satellite images, mobile phone recordings, advanced internet searches and the like. They have produced some compelling investigative reporting, but Turness is looking for more immediacy. For example, when Russia claimed a Ukrainian drone tried to attack the Kremlin, the BBC gathered multiple videos of…

President Joe Biden on Monday said that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but an “absolute necessity,” as he pledged that every household in the nation would have access by 2030 using cables made in the U.S. “These investments will help all Americans,” he said. “We’re not going to leave anyone behind.” Biden announced that more than $40 billion would be distributed across the country to deliver high-speed internet in places where there’s either no service, or service is too slow. “But it’s not enough to have access — you need affordability and access,” the president said, adding that his administration is working with service providers to bring down costs on what is now a household utility — like water or gas — but often remains priced at a…

On a recent afternoon in San Francisco, a DoorDash driver was circling the neighborhood — first in his car, then on foot — trying to find the restaurant where he needed to pick up two orders. Finally, he Googled the location and realized DoorDash’s app sent him to the wrong address. It’s an error he vowed to fix, and he probably will. Because that worker is Andy Fang, DoorDash’s chief technology officer and one of the company’s three co-founders. “If it happens with one restaurant, it might actually be happening with a lot of other restaurants as well,” Fang said after he retrieved the orders and settled back into his car. “If we can see why that happened, maybe we can fix other issues too.” Fang is one of a…

John Riccitiello, the CEO of video game software company Unity, has seen the video game industry evolve and shift during his more than two-decade-long career, beginning in 1997 when he became the head of games giant Electronic Arts. Unity Software Inc., was founded in Denmark and is now based in San Francisco. It’s working with Apple to help bring games to its upcoming virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro. Riccitiello recently spoke about how artificial intelligence is transforming how video games are created and played. WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST TRENDS COMING DOWN THE PIKE IN GAMING? Riccitiello: I think AI will change gaming in a couple of pretty profound ways. One of them is it’s going to make making games faster, cheaper and better. It’s already happening. I mean, you…

In a saner world, we would have already had a dozen Jennifer Lawrence comedies. When aliens arrive they will surely go directly to IMDB to survey her filmography and wonder why one of Hollywood’s funniest and most naturally charismatic stars spent the first decade of her career in dystopias, action movies and whatever it is you call “Mother!” As if to make up for lost time, Lawrence has in “No Hard Feelings” made the kind of R-rated teen comedy that has usually launched young actors. She plays a 32-year-old Montauk Uber driver who, desperate for money after her car is towed, is hired by the wealthy parents (Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti) of a timid and sheltered 19-year-old (newcomer Andrew Barth Feldman) to take his virginity before he heads off to…

Satellite-radio provider SiriusXM said it will shut down its Stitcher podcast app at the end of August in favor of its own SiriusXM app, part of a larger effort to emphasize its own brand. Many of the podcasts featured on Stitcher are already available on the SiriusXM app, and all podcasts on Stitcher “can also be found anywhere else podcasts are distributed,” the company said. SiriusXM Holdings Ltd. does not have exclusive podcasts. The company is sending existing Stitcher users an offer for a free six-month trial of its platinum SiriusXM service, which includes the company’s streaming services for music, sports and sports talk, other talk shows and news. No layoffs are planned as part of the change. Stitcher, which SiriusXM acquired in 2020 for $325 million, has emphasized the…