Innholdsfortegnelse for #613 i Techlife News

The announcement Wednesday that seven major automakers are joining to build a large North American electric vehicle charging network should pull people off the sidelines to at least consider shifting away from gas-powered vehicles. That’s how auto industry analysts see the move by General Motors, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and Stellantis to build a network of fast-chargers that will rival Tesla’s and will nearly double the number of quick-charging plugs in the U.S. and Canada. “Anything that gets more — and especially more reliable chargers — out there will be a benefit to anybody considering EVs,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an e-mobility analyst for Guidehouse Insights. “It should help sway some people who were on the fence about buying an EV.” The companies said they will share in a multibillion-dollar…

The U.S. economy surprisingly accelerated to a 2.4% annual growth rate from April through June, showing continued resilience in the face of steadily higher interest rates resulting from the Federal Reserve’s 16-month-long fight to bring down inflation. Thursday’s estimate from the Commerce Department indicated that the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — picked up from the 2% growth rate in the January-March quarter. Last quarter’s expansion was well above the 1.5% annual rate that economists had forecast. Driving last quarter’s growth was a burst of business investment. Excluding housing, business spending surged at a 7.7% annual rate, the fastest such pace since early 2022. Companies plowed more money into factories and equipment. Increased spending by state and local governments also helped fuel the…

When it comes to technology and innovation, nobody does it better than Apple. The Apple Store is another example of this: perfectly marrying together the virtual and physical to offer consumers an unparalleled shopping experience and ultimately sell more merchandise. LET’S GO SHOPPING Apple has been revolutionizing the way we interact with devices for years, and as a testament to their commitment to customer satisfaction, Apple Stores have become more than just retail outlets; they are hubs of immersive experiences. Through the art of experimentation and the expertise of Apple professionals, the in-store experience has reached new heights, delighting new customers and those seeking upgrades. Walking into an Apple Store is akin to stepping into a technological wonderland. One of the key elements that set Apple Stores apart from traditional…

Samsung Electronics unveiled two foldable smartphones as it continues to bet on devices with bending screens, a budding market that has yet to fully take off because of high prices. The clamshell-designed Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5, a larger device that opens and folds like a book, will be available for pre-orders starting July 26 in certain markets including the United States and South Korea. Built with 6.7-inch and 7.6-inch main screens, the phones have bigger displays than Samsung’s previous folding devices and are equipped with more advanced cameras, providing crisper visuals and more features for work, text and video chats, movies and games, the company said. Designed to be compact and easy to carry, the Flip 5 is also built with a 3.4-inch cover screen…

Efforts to protect the nation’s election systems have grown exponentially since the 2016 presidential election, but more is needed to defend the integrity and resiliency of the election process ahead of next year’s vote, the head of the nation’s cybersecurity agency said this week. Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, announced plans to boost resources within the agency, hiring 10 additional election security specialists who will be across the country to interact directly with state and local officials. Easterly made the announcement at the summer conference of the National Association of State Election Directors in Charleston, South Carolina. “Our capabilities and posture in this area is simply night and day when you compare it to 2016,” Easterly told the officials gathered for…

In the massive movie weekend of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” there were many winners. Greta Gerwig, who made history for female directors. Christopher Nolan, who set a non-Batman career high. Movie theaters, more crowded than anytime post-pandemic. Lovers of unlikely double features. The color pink. Matchbox Twenty. But one of the most important triumphs in the moviegoing monsoon of “Barbenheimer” was originality. Here are two movies that are neither sequels nor reboots pushing the box office to highs not seen in years. “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” became a meme because of their worlds-apart differences but they’re each indelibly the work of those filmmakers. “Barbie,” based on the Mattel doll, had some extremely well-known intellectual property going for it. And the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb comes from no…

Saudi Arabia, the new home of some of soccer’s biggest stars and a co-owner of professional golf, is proving to be no less ambitious when it comes to another global pastime – the $180 billion-a-year video game industry. Last September, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund earmarked nearly $40 billion for a new conglomerate aimed at transforming the kingdom into the “ultimate global hub” for games and esports by 2030. In February, the Saudi fund became the biggest outside investor in Nintendo, and just this month the kingdom hosted a major gaming tournament with a record $45 million prize pool. That’s made Saudi Arabia an increasingly important player in the industry and contributed to its breakneck transformation from an insular kingdom best known for oil and ultraconservative Islam into an emerging…

Elon Musk may want to send “tweet” back to the birds, but the ubiquitous term for posting on the site he now calls X is here to stay — at least for now. For one, the word is still plastered all over the site formerly known as Twitter. Write a post, you still need to press a blue button that says “tweet” to publish it. To repost it, you still tap “retweet.” But it’s more than that. With “tweets,” Twitter accomplished in just a few years something few companies have done in a lifetime: It became a verb and implanted itself into the lexicon of America and the world. Upending that takes more than a top-down declaration, even if it is from the owner of Twitter-turned-X, who also happens to…

Elon Musk has unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the smartphone app. In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs. It’s yet another change that Musk has made since acquiring Twitter that has alienated users and turned off advertisers, leaving the microblogging site vulnerable to new threats, including rival Meta’s new text-based app Threads that directly targets Twitter users. Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one,…

President Joe Biden said that new commitments by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies that are leading the development of artificial intelligence technology to meet a set of AI safeguards brokered by his White House are an important step toward managing the “enormous” promise and risks posed by the technology. Biden announced that his administration has secured voluntary commitments from seven U.S. companies meant to ensure that their AI products are safe before they release them. Some of the commitments call for third-party oversight of the workings of the next generation of AI systems, though they don’t detail who will audit the technology or hold the companies accountable. “We must be clear eyed and vigilant about the threats emerging technologies can pose,” Biden said, adding that the companies have…

Stellantis says it will build a second U.S. electric vehicle battery factory in a joint venture with Samsung. The automaker didn’t disclose the location but said this week that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung SDI under its existing joint venture called StarPlus Energy. The new plant will open in early 2027, joining a joint-venture facility in Kokomo, Indiana, that’s already under construction and scheduled to start production in early 2025. CEO Carlos Tavares said in a prepared statement that the second plant will help the company offer at least 25 new battery-electric vehicles in North America by the end of the decade. Stellantis is planning for half its U.S. passenger car and light truck sales to be battery electric by 2030. The company wants 100% of its…

Advocates for the self-driving vehicle industry warned that years of regulatory inaction is putting American manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage and urged Congress to expand their ability to test and eventually sell autonomous cars and trucks. “I’m sure it’s rare for you that someone from the private sector comes before you to ask, to plead, for their business to be regulated,” said John Bozella, president for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents several major auto manufacturers. “We’re at a crossroads, and without a comprehensive AV framework, companies are not going to succeed.” While most Republicans, and some Democrats, on the House Energy and Commerce Committee seemed enthusiastic about speeding up the pace of AV research and testing in America, others warned about going too fast without addressing long-standing issues…

Google snapped out of an unprecedented advertising slump during its latest quarter, signaling a return to growth cycle needed to fuel investments in artificial intelligence technology that expected to reshape the competitive landscape. The results for the April-June period released Tuesday by Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., reversed a financial downswing that had raised fears Google was losing its financial steam at the same time advances in artificial intelligence, or AI, threatened to undercut the dominant search engine that powers its digital ad empire. But after Google’s ad revenue suffered year-over-year declines in consecutive quarters for the first time in its history, ad sales rose 3% from a year ago to $58.1 billion during the second quarter. That was better than analysts had been anticipating, according to FactSet Research. Those…

The explosion early on a June morning ignited a blaze that engulfed a New York City shop filled with motorized bicycles and their volatile lithium-ion batteries. Billowing smoke quickly killed four people asleep in apartments above the burning store. As the ubiquity of e-bikes has grown, so has the frequency of fires and deaths blamed on the batteries that power them, prompting a campaign to establish regulations on how the batteries are manufactured, sold, reconditioned, charged and stored. Consumer advocates and fire departments, particularly in New York City, are urging the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to establish mandatory safety standards and confiscate noncompliant imports when they arrive at the border or shipping ports, so that unsafe e-bikes and poorly manufactured batteries don’t reach streets and endanger homes. These aren’t…

The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted rules Wednesday to require public companies to disclose within four days all cybersecurity breaches that could affect their bottom lines. Delays will be permitted if immediate disclosure poses serious national security or public safety risks. The new rules, passed by a 3-2 vote, also require publicly traded companies to annually disclose information on their cybersecurity risk management and executive expertise in the field. The idea is to protect investors. Breach disclosures can be delayed if the U.S. Attorney General determines they would “pose a substantial risk to national security or public safety” and the company notifies the SEC in writing. Only under extraordinary circumstances could that delay be extended beyond 60 days. “Whether a company loses a factory in a fire — or millions…

Microsoft reported a 20% spike in quarterly profits this week, helping to fuel its battle to get ahead of rivals like Google, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta in selling the latest artificial intelligence technology. The software giant said its fiscal fourth-quarter profit was $20.1 billion, or $2.69 per share, beating analyst expectations for $2.55 per share. It posted revenue of $56.2 billion in the April-June period, up 8% from last year. Analysts polled by FactSet Research had been looking for revenue of $55.49 billion. CEO Satya Nadella said the company remains focused on “leading the new AI platform shift,” though its push to add AI features to its existing products — among them cloud computing services, workplace software and its Bing search engine — are not yet making an obvious…

Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has become something of a vanishing breed during the nearly quarter century he has been running the company that pioneered the concept of selling software as an online subscription. While Benioff remains in charge at Salesforce, other billionaire founder/CEOs such Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Larry Page and Netflix’s Reed Hastings have all stepped away from groundbreaking companies born during the 1990s. Benioff, 58, isn’t ready to leave Salesforce yet, even though he has amassed an $8 billion fortune and just went through a challenging stretch that might have caused many CEOs to head for the exit. In January, Benioff decided to lay off 8,000 Salesforce employees after overseeing a pandemic-driven expansion that included a nearly $28 billion acquisition of the popular workplace tool Slack…

For someone who’s 11.5 inches tall and weighs under 8 ounces, poor Barbie’s had to carry an awfully heavy load over the years on that slender, plastic back of hers. Welcomed as a trailblazer in 1959 — An adult doll! With actual breasts! — she was nonetheless branded an anti-feminist a decade later when women’s rights marchers chanted “I Am Not a Barbie Doll,” referring to her unrealistic body type (and perhaps ignoring the fact that she was single, a homeowner and a career woman). As years went by, Barbie had her hits (adopting a more inclusive body type, running for president) and misses (exclaiming “Math class is TOUGH!” — ouch). Through it all, this lightning rod in tiny pink heels remained uniquely talented at reinventing herself. Which is why…

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is threatening to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for failing to supply documents related to an investigation into supposed censorship by tech companies of conservatives. Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, said the panel plans to hold a hearing Thursday to vote on a contempt report detailing how Zuckerberg has “willfully refused” to comply with a February subpoena. The measure is likely to pass the GOP-controlled committee. It would then be up to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to hold a full House vote on the contempt resolution as early as this fall, after the August recess. If the House were to hold Zuckerberg in contempt, the Justice Department would decide whether to prosecute him. Andy Stone,…