Innholdsfortegnelse for #634 i Techlife News

When Jim Selgo moved to his home in Goodyear, Arizona in 2019, he quickly had rooftop solar installed, having had a positive experience with solar at his previous home. Less than a year later, motivated to take more action to address climate change, he said, Selgo bought his first electric vehicle, a Nissan Leaf. He hasn’t paid for electricity or gasoline since. With solar, “You take advantage of what you’re producing at your own house,” he said. “Adding an EV just increases your savings and adds to the value of the whole project.” Selgo, a retired public school principal who now drives an electric Volkswagen ID.4 SUV, is just one of many people using solar energy to power their EVs on clean electricity, effectively, on sunshine. And it also goes…

2023 will be remembered as the year of Taylor Swift, with the star reigning supreme and redefining the parameters of success in the music industry. Garnering the title of Apple Music’s Artist of the Year, Swift’s influence spanned across streaming services, concert stadiums, and the silver screen, marking an era that won’t be forgotten fast. THE YEAR OF SWIFT Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the chances are that you’ve heard Taylor Swift’s music this year. From January to October alone, the ‘Shake It Off’ star’s presence was omnipresent on Apple Music, with an astonishing 65 songs securing spots in the Global Daily Top 100, an achievement unprecedented in the platform’s history. Her influence was equally palpable in concert venues, where fans from diverse backgrounds assembled to witness her…

The court system in Kansas has started bringing its computer system for managing cases back online, two months after a foreign cyberattack forced officials to shut it down along with public access to documents and other systems, the judicial branch announced. The case management systems for district courts in 28 of the state’s 105 counties are expected to be fully back online by the end of the week. Online access to documents for the public will be restored after that, though counties that go back online will be able to offer access through terminals at their courthouses, the judicial branch said. The courts also have restored systems that allow people to apply for marriage licenses online and file electronic requests for orders to protect them from abuse, stalking and human…

For Nicole Plauché and her family, Christmas is the time of the year where they can use their preferred love language: gift giving. This year, however, Plauché is worried about how much she can afford to spend on gifts. Her main struggle? Student loan payments. “It just doesn’t leave much room for anything outside of just basic necessities,” said Plauché, a 23-year old tech sales manager from Dallas, Texas. Marisa Johnson, 26, has approximately $145,000 in student loan debt from both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Since the COVID-era payment pause ended in October, she’s been paying back $300 a month while she waits to see if she’ll be enrolled in a new income-driven repayment plan. Because all of her money is going to necessities and paying back her student…

Prince Harry’s victory against Mirror Group Newspapers over what a British judge called “habitual” illegal activity is a landmark moment in the long and twisting saga of lawbreaking by Britain’s tabloid press. Judge Timothy Fancourt ruled that Mirror newspapers had hired private investigators to snoop for personal information and engaged in illegal phone hacking for well over a decade. It’s the latest chapter in a tale of tabloid power and attempts to tame it stretching back years — but it’s unlikely to be the end of the story. WHAT IS PHONE HACKING? In the pre-digital era, Britain’s fiercely competitive tabloid newspapers sold millions of copies a day and would go to great lengths to get scoops, including by using underhanded techniques. One method was phone hacking — calling someone’s number…

The Netherlands and South Korea are stepping up cooperation in the field of semiconductor chips as part of a deepening “strategic partnership,” caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Wednesday. The Dutch leader spoke after a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during his two-day state visit. Their meeting came a day after Yoon visited the headquarters of semiconductor chip machine maker ASML. “Our countries are now going to step up our cooperation in this field. This is a promising initiative, and it is also, I believe, a real win-win situation,” Rutte said. As part of the visit, South Korean nuclear power company KHNP signed a contract to carry out a feasibility study into the construction of two new nuclear power plants in the southern Dutch town of Borselle.…

Artificial intelligence went mainstream in 2023 — it was a long time coming yet has a long way to go for the technology to match people’s science fiction fantasies of human-like machines. Catalyzing a year of AI fanfare was ChatGPT. The chatbot gave the world a glimpse of recent advances in computer science even if not everyone figured out quite how it works or what to do with it. “I would call this an inflection moment,” pioneering AI scientist Fei-Fei Li said. “2023 is, in history, hopefully going to be remembered for the profound changes of the technology as well as the public awakening. It also shows how messy this technology is.” It was a year for people to figure out “what this is, how to use it, what’s the…

The White House is lending its support to an auto industry effort to standardize Tesla’s electric vehicle charging plugs for all EVs in the United States, part of a broad effort to stimulate their sales to help combat climate change. More than 1 million EVs have been sold in the United States in 2023, a record, but that pace still lags behind sales in such countries as China and Germany. One key reason is that the limited availability of charging infrastructure across the country has been a widespread concern for many would-be buyers of EVs and has held back their sales in the United States. Tesla, the leader in the EV market, operates the largest network of fast-chargers. And many of its Supercharger stations are in prime locations along highly…

A trade group that represents TikTok and other major tech companies sued Utah this week over its first-in-the-nation laws requiring children and teens to obtain parental consent to use social media apps. Two laws signed in March by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox will prohibit minors from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. unless authorized by a parent — and require age verification to open and maintain a social media account in the state. The restrictions are designed to protect children from targeted advertisements and addictive features that could negatively impact their mental health. Both laws take effect March 1, 2024. The NetChoice trade group argues in its federal lawsuit that although Utah’s regulations are well-intentioned, they are unconstitutional because they restrict access to public…

The promise of self-checkout was alluring: Customers could avoid long lines by scanning and bagging their own items, workers could be freed of doing those monotonous tasks themselves and retailers could save on labor costs. All that has happened since the rollout of self-checkout but so has this: Customers griping about clunky technology that spits out mysterious error codes, workers having to stand around and monitor both humans and machines, and retailers contending with theft. “Going to the grocery store used to be simple, and now it’s frustrating,” said Cindy Whittington, 66, of Fairfax, Virginia. “You’re paying more. You’re working harder to pay for merchandise at their store. And it’s become an ordeal to check out. I should get a 5% discount.” In 2021, self-checkout usage represented 30% of transactions,…

Mark Wahlberg knows as well as any parent that it’s hard to find a movie everyone in the household wants to watch – especially with teenagers around. It’s part of the reason he latched on to “The Family Plan,” a charming action-comedy about a former assassin turned suburban dad whose past catches up with him. It’s streaming on Apple TV+. “You always have movies that parents can go to with the kids and they’ll tolerate them because the kids really want to see it or vice versa,” Wahlberg told the AP. “But this really felt like it was a movie that actually was for the whole family.” Early in “The Family Plan,” his character is attacked in a grocery store and he must fend off the assailant with his 10-month-old…

Amazon won’t have to pay about 250 million euros ($273 million) in back taxes after European Union judges ruled in favor of the U.S. e-commerce giant, dealing a defeat to the 27-nation bloc in its efforts to tackle corporate tax avoidance. The ruling by the EU’s top court is final, ending the long-running legal battle over tax arrangements between Amazon and Luxembourg’s government and marking a further setback for a crackdown by antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager. The Court of Justice backed a 2021 decision by judges in a lower court who sided with Amazon, saying the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, had not proved its case that Amazon received illegal state support. “The Court of Justice confirms that the Commission has not established that the tax ruling given to…

Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store — the same issue that went to trial in a another case that could result in even bigger changes. Although Google struck the deal with state attorneys general in September, the settlement’s terms weren’t revealed until late Monday in documents filed in San Francisco federal court. The disclosure came a week after a federal court jury rebuked Google for deploying anticompetitive tactics in its Play Store for Android apps. The settlement with the states includes $630 million to compensate U.S. consumers funneled into a payment processing system that state attorneys general alleged drove up the prices for digital transactions within apps downloaded from the…

The Biden administration released long-awaited guidance around tax credits for aviation fuel that reduces emissions of greenhouse gases compared with fuel made from crude oil. Some environmentalists expressed concern that the Treasury Department guidelines could allow credits for fuel made from corn and other crops that they consider poor choices because of the water and other resources needed to grow them. Midwest lawmakers and companies that produce corn-based ethanol praised the guidelines, although their enthusiasm could be short-lived. Congress approved the credits as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which included provisions designed to boost cleaner energy. The credits are designed to increase the supply and bring down the current high price of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. Producers will be eligible for tax credits ranging…

Haven’t ordered any of your holiday gifts yet? Well, you might find solace in discovering some of America’s biggest retailers are working to increase their shipping speeds to please shoppers expecting faster and faster deliveries. Walmart, Target and Amazon are all-in on the shipping wars, a move retail experts say will help them maintain a competitive edge against low-cost Chinese retailers Shein and Temu. For Walmart and Target, their investments are also aimed at narrowing the gap in delivery speed with Amazon, which has set the standard for fast shipping and remains the king of speed. Amazon packages have been arriving at the doors of Prime customers even faster this year under the company’s new distribution model, which divides the country into eight regions and predominantly ships items from warehouses…

The scene: A crowded shopping center in the weeks before Christmas. Or a warehouse store. Or maybe a packed airport terminal or a commuter train station or another place where large groups gather. There are people — lots of people. But look around, and it’s clear one thing is largely absent these days: face masks. Yes, there’s the odd one here and there, but nothing like it was three years ago at the dawn of the COVID pandemic’s first winter holidays — an American moment of contentiousness, accusation and scorn on both sides of the mask debate. As 2023 draws to an end, with promises of holiday parties and crowds and lots of inadvertent exchanges of shared air, mask-wearing is much more off than on around the country even as…

Adobe’s planned $20 billion acquisition of online design company Figma is being called off due to pushback in Europe over antitrust concerns, the companies said this week. The companies announced the cash-and-stock deal in September 2022, seeking a path with Figma’s web-based, multi-player capabilities to accelerate the delivery of Adobe’s creative cloud technologies on the web. “Although both companies continue to believe in the merits and procompetitive benefits of the combination, Adobe and Figma mutually agreed to terminate the transaction based on a joint assessment that there is no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority,” Adobe and Figma said in a prepared statement. The European Commission said that it was aware of the decision to terminate the deal…