Innholdsfortegnelse for #616 i Techlife News

The U.S. Air Force will invest $235 million to help a start-up manufacturer build a jet with a blended-wing body that officials say could provide greater range and efficiency for military tankers and cargo planes and perhaps eventually be used to carry airline passengers. JetZero and the Air Force, which announced the award this week, say they hope that the full-size demonstrator plane will be ready to fly in 2027. Most large airplanes are tubes with wings and a tail section attached. Blended-wing planes are designed with the body and wings being one piece. The result is a sleek, futuristic-looking aircraft with less aerodynamic drag than a conventional plane of the same size. JetZero officials argue that traditional planes are running out of ways to improve fuel efficiency, and, with…

China’s yuan dipped briefly to a 16-year low against the dollar Thursday, raising questions about whether Beijing might weaken its currency to help struggling exporters and reverse a deepening economic slump. The yuan slid to 7.32 to the dollar before recovering to 7.26 following what financial analysts said appeared to be buying by Chinese banks to support the currency. That made one yuan worth about 13.8 cents. A weaker yuan helps exporters by making their goods cheaper abroad, but Beijing has promised to avoid “competitive devaluation.” Complaints that China gets an unfair trade advantage by keeping its yuan weak is an irritant in relations with Washington and other governments. “Will we just continue to see a sort of gradual weakening of the currency?” said Thomas Mathews of Capital Economics. “That…

The Apple Watch, a pioneer in smartwatch technology, is evolving at a rapid pace and this year’s Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra are set to be no exception. With the watch’s ten-year anniversary just around the corner, big things are coming to transform wearables once more. AN ITERATIVE UPDATE FOR APPLE WATCH SERIES 9 Apple is expected to announce the Apple Watch Series 9 at next month’s September Event, where it will also show off new iPhones and perhaps some MacBooks and iPads. This year’s update will see a major step forward in the processing technology of the wearable. After three generations of identical chip performance, the new S9 chip will reportedly be built on the same technology as the A15 chip. These improvements could provide significant speed and…

Amazon is rolling out a new generative AI feature that summarizes product reviews for customers. The feature, which the company began testing earlier this year, is designed to help shoppers determine at a glance what other customers said about a product before they spend time reading through individual reviews. It will pick out common themes and summarize them in a short paragraph on the product detail page. The company wrote in a blog post published this week that the AI-generated reviews are now available to a subset of mobile shoppers in the U.S. across a “broad” selection of products. And it may be expanded to more shoppers and additional categories of products in the “coming months” based on customer feedback, said Vaughn Schermerhorn, Amazon’s director of community shopping. The Seattle-based…

Coinbase said it’s received regulatory approval to bring federally regulated crypto futures trading to eligible customers in the U.S., sending shares sharply higher before the opening bell Wednesday. In June, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, saying that the companies were in violation of the the law because they were operating as securities exchanges without registering with the agency. Coinbase said Wednesday that it had secured regulatory approval from the National Futures Association to operate as a futures commission merchant. The cryptocurrency exchange said that it filed its application with the association in 2021. Now that it has received approval, Coinbase says eligible U.S. customers will be able to access regulated derivatives products through Coinbase Financial Markets, subject to the oversight of the Commodity…

HP has failed to shunt aside class-action legal claims that it disables the scanners on its multifunction printers when their ink runs low. Though not for lack of trying. On Aug. 10, a federal judge ruled that HP Inc. must face a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company designs its “all-in-one” inkjet printers to disable scanning and faxing functions whenever a single printer ink cartridge runs low. The company had sought — for the second time — to dismiss the lawsuit on technical legal grounds. “It is well-documented that ink is not required in order to scan or to fax a document, and it is certainly possible to manufacture an all-in-one printer that scans or faxes when the device is out of ink,” the plaintiffs wrote in their complaint. “Indeed,…

There is going to be a new way to get around downtown Orlando, Florida, and it’s not going to require any human drivers. Starting later this month, an electric, self-driving shuttle will whisk passengers around a 1-mile (1.6 km) loop in the downtown area for no charge, Orlando officials said this week. The eight-passenger shuttle service is part of a six-month trial for the central Florida city. Transportation planners hope to use data gathered from the pilot program to guide the city’s future transportation strategy. “With the expansion of autonomous vehicle shuttles into our neighborhoods, we can converge cutting-edge technology with new mobility solutions to further redefine the way our community moves,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. The autonomous shuttle service is operated by Beep Inc., an Orlando-based company that…

While technology experts sound the alarm on the pace of artificial-intelligence development, philanthropists — including long-established foundations and tech billionaires — have been responding with an uptick in grants. Much of the philanthropy is focused on what is known as technology for good or “ethical AI,” which explores how to solve or mitigate the harmful effects of artificial-intelligence systems. Some scientists believe AI can be used to predict climate disasters and discover new drugs to save lives. Others are warning that the large language models could soon upend white-collar professions, fuel misinformation, and threaten national security. What philanthropy can do to influence the trajectory of AI is starting to emerge. Billionaires who earned their fortunes in technology are more likely to support projects and institutions that emphasize the positive outcomes…

The Justice Department said Wednesday that two directors resigned from Nextdoor’s board in response to the department’s efforts to enforce an antitrust law aimed at barring executives from holding similar positions at rival companies. The Justice Department pointed to Section 8 of the federal Clayton Act — which, in most cases, prohibits company directors and officers from serving on the boards of competitors at the same time. An enforcement initiative from the department’s antitrust division has led to the resignations of 15 interlocking directors on 11 boards so far, it said. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to protect competition by preventing interlocking directorates that we believe violate Section 8 of the Clayton Act,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Andrew Forman of the department’s antitrust division said in a statement. The…

Ford has hired away a key Apple executive to run a new business unit that will sell software-related subscription services to vehicle owners. The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker said it hired Peter Stern, who was Apple’s vice president of services. He’ll be president of Ford Integrated Services, a unit that will combine software and hardware into services. At Apple, Stern oversaw Apple TV plus, iCloud storage, Apple Books, the arcade and fitness operations and other businesses, Ford said in a statement. Stern started this week and reports directly to CEO Jim Farley. Stern also will expand Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free partially automated driving system, as well as productivity and safety and security services, the statement said. Asked if people are getting tired of paying for subscription services, Stern said people will buy…

Intel will terminate a $5.4 billion deal to acquire Israeli chip manufacturer Tower Semiconductor after China failed to sign off on the deal amid rising tensions with the United States. It was a mutual decision between Intel and Tower, the companies said Wednesday. Intel said that the deal was terminated “due to the inability to obtain in a timely manner the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement.” Intel Corp. will pay Tower a termination fee of $353 million, the U.S. semiconductor giant said. The deal required regulatory approval from several regulators worldwide including China, but Chinese regulators did not greenlight the deal by the Aug. 15 transaction deadline, even after Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger traveled to China last month in a bid to win them over. The scuttled deal…

If you’re heading to college or starting to think about where you’d like to apply, you’re probably considering options for funding your education. If you need to borrow money to pursue your dreams, you are far from alone. According to the Federal Reserve, 30% of all U.S. adults said they incurred at least some debt for their education. Borrowers owe a collective $1.77 trillion in student loan debt, including federal and private loans. “Borrowing is almost at the point where it’s a requirement,” said Dana Kelly, from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. If you’re a high school senior or a college student, you’ll want to apply for federal student loans through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, also known as FAFSA, in December for the 2024-2025…

Social media is full of scammers promising guaranteed returns on investment, and consumers lost billions of dollars to them last year. Troy Gochenour, 50, of Columbus, Ohio, was conned out of $25,800, including $15,800 in borrowed money, in a crypto-mining scam that began with a WhatsApp message from a beautiful stranger. “I had just moved home to restart my life, after trying to make it in show business in New York, and I was lonely,” Gochenour said. “So I started online dating. Then I got a WhatsApp message that began, ‘Sorry to bother you.’” Financial scams, including cryptocurrency schemes, cost consumers $3.8 billion last year just in the U.S., according to the Federal Trade Commission, twice as much as in 2021. Such scams are also a problem globally. Those who…

White House officials concerned by AI chatbots’ potential for societal harm and the Silicon Valley powerhouses rushing them to market are heavily invested in a three-day competition ending last weekend at the DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Some 2,200 competitors tapped on laptops seeking to expose flaws in eight leading large-language models representative of technology’s next big thing. But don’t expect quick results from this first-ever independent “red-teaming” of multiple models. Findings won’t be made public until about February. And even then, fixing flaws in these digital constructs — whose inner workings are neither wholly trustworthy nor fully fathomed even by their creators — will take time and millions of dollars. Current AI models are simply too unwieldy, brittle and malleable, academic and corporate research shows. Security was an…

With the help of technology, scammers are tricking Americans out of more money than ever before. But there are steps you can take to keep your money and information safe. In 2022, reported consumer losses to fraud totaled $8.8 billion — a 30 percent increase from 2021, according to the most recent data from the Federal Trade Commission. The biggest losses were to investment scams, including cryptocurrency schemes, which cost people more than $3.8 billion, double the amount in 2021. Younger adults ages 20-29 reported losing money more often than older adults ages 70-79, the FTC found. But when older adults did lose money, they lost more. Many retirees have assets like savings, pensions, life insurance policies or property for scammers to target. With the rise of the digital economy,…

You’re probably familiar with previous technology format wars, whether it be VHS versus Betamax or Blu-ray versus HD DVD. Now another has quickly brewed in the way people plug in and charge their electric vehicles. It’s a battle of CCS versus NACS, and the winning format has a familiar backer: Tesla. Edmunds’ experts break down what EV owners need to know about the format changes. THE COMPETING FORMATS The majority of electric vehicles, or EVs, currently have one of two types of plug styles to connect to public fast-charging stations. The first is called the Combined Charging System, or CCS. It’s used on nearly all EVs except Tesla vehicles. The other is the North American Charging Standard, or NACS. All Tesla vehicles have this style plug. These two formats currently…

Threads, the simple, bare-bones text-based social network created by Facebook owner Meta, burst onto the scene during a particularly bad week for the rival then still known as Twitter. It quickly amassed 100 million signups — a huge feat for a newcomer in the space — and was dubbed as a “Twitter killer.” By week two, though, signups began to drop off. As of Aug. 7, the number of people who used Threads daily hovered around 10 million on Android phones, down from 49 million when it launched a month earlier, according to research firm SimilarWeb. Is Mark Zuckerberg’s latest venture just a flash in the pan? That depends on whether it can hold its own against its biggest rival. And no, that’s not X, the former Twitter. It’s TikTok.…