Innholdsfortegnelse for #645 i Techlife News

Once upon a time, there was a brief outage on some social media platforms. It got fixed. The end. On the face of it, kind of a boring story. But the widespread attention given to the blanking of Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger platforms on Tuesday suggests another, perhaps less obvious tale: the one that shows that social media platforms, like the books or newspapers or insert-medium-here of other times in history, matter more than just being entertaining pastimes. Wait, you mean those posts from that cousin you rarely see, sharing updates from her kids’ lives? That reel from the influencer, introducing you to a culture or bit of knowledge you never knew? That photo collage you put up as a memorial to a loved one whose loss you’re…

After a year of basking in global fame, the San Francisco company OpenAI is now confronting a multitude of challenges that could threaten its position at the vanguard of artificial intelligence research. Some of its conflicts stem from decisions made well before the debut of ChatGPT, particularly its unusual shift from an idealistic nonprofit to a big business backed by billions of dollars in investments. It’s too early to tell if OpenAI and its attorneys will beat back a barrage of lawsuits from Elon Musk, The New York Times and bestselling novelists such as John Grisham, not to mention escalating scrutiny from government regulators, or if any of it will stick. FEUD WITH ELON MUSK OpenAI isn’t waiting for the court process to unfold before publicly defending itself against legal…

In the Age of AI, one company has risen to prominence as a pivotal force in the artificial intelligence race: Nvidia. The American firm has reaped immense benefits from the AI boom, with its share price skyrocketing by almost 450% since January 2023. But what’s next? A RUNAWAY SUCCESS Following a boom in artificial intelligence, Nvidia’s market capitalization has topped the $2 trillion mark positioning it as the third most valuable company in the United States, trailing only behind tech giants Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia’s financial performance is a testament to its dominance in the AI industry. The company reported revenues of $22 billion in the most recent quarter, a substantial leap from $6 billion in the corresponding period the previous year. Given Nvidia’s commanding market share of over 95%…

America’s muscle car culture is adapting to the new world of electric vehicles, but the gasoline-powered high-performance road beasts will be around for at least a few more years. Dodge this week unveiled two battery-powered versions of the Charger muscle car that will still roar like a big V8 engine without pollution from the tailpipe. However, the Stellantis brand, which has carved out a market niche of selling high-performance vehicles, will keep selling a gas-powered Charger as well, sans the big Hemi V8. Both will be built on Stellantis’ global large vehicle underpinnings, and the Windsor, Ontario, factory that will manufacture them will be able to flex between gasoline and electric depending on consumer demand. The flexibility will let Stellantis hedge its bets if electric vehicle sales take off or…

New Yorkers place over 100 million food delivery orders each year via a very simple process: press a few buttons on an app and it’s in their hands in about 30 minutes. For the delivery workers, the process is anything but simple. And it has only become more complex since the city instituted a new wage formula designed to guarantee they make at least $18 an hour. Some of the biggest app platforms, who opposed the change, responded by limiting workers’ hours, making it more difficult for customers to tip, and changing how pay is calculated from week to week. That’s left workers like Greiber Pineda scrambling to navigate opaque changes. Pineda initially earned so much from Uber Eats under the new wage system that when a snowstorm hit New…

The European Union leveled its first antitrust penalty against Apple this week, fining the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service by forbidding rivals like Spotify from telling users how they could pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps. Apple muzzled streaming services from telling users about payment options available through their websites, which would avoid the 30% fee charged when people pay through apps downloaded with the iOS App Store, said the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer. “This is illegal. And it has impacted millions of European consumers who were not able to make a free choice as to where, how and at what price to buy music streaming subscriptions,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition…

Apple is opening small cracks in the iPhone’s digital fortress as part of a regulatory clampdown in Europe that is striving to give consumers more choices — at the risk of creating new avenues for hackers to steal personal and financial information stored on the devices. The overhaul rolling out Thursday only in the European Union represents the biggest changes to the iPhone’s App Store since Apple introduced the concept in 2008. Among other things, people in Europe can download iPhone apps from stores that aren’t operated by Apple and are getting alternative ways to pay for in-app transactions. European regulators are hoping the changes mandated by the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, will loosen the control that Big Tech’s “digital gatekeepers” have gained over the products and services that…

While artificial intelligence made headlines with ChatGPT, behind the scenes, the technology has quietly pervaded everyday life — screening job resumes, rental apartment applications, and even determining medical care in some cases. While a number of AI systems have been found to discriminate, tipping the scales in favor of certain races, genders or incomes, there’s scant government oversight. Lawmakers in at least seven states are taking big legislative swings to regulate bias in artificial intelligence, filling a void left by Congress’ inaction. These proposals are some of the first steps in a decades-long discussion over balancing the benefits of this nebulous new technology with the widely documented risks. “AI does in fact affect every part of your life whether you know it or not,” said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Brown University…

Whenever Madonna sings the 1980s hit “La Isla Bonita” on her concert tour, moving images of swirling, sunset-tinted clouds play on the giant arena screens behind her. To get that ethereal look, the pop legend embraced a still-uncharted branch of generative artificial intelligence – the text-to-video tool. Type some words — say, “surreal cloud sunset” or “waterfall in the jungle at dawn” — and an instant video is made. Following in the footsteps of AI chatbots and still image-generators, some AI video enthusiasts say the emerging technology could one day upend entertainment, enabling you to choose your own movie with customizable story lines and endings. But there’s a long way to go before they can do that, and plenty of ethical pitfalls on the way. For early adopters like Madonna,…

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is looking to fuse its artificial intelligence systems into the bodies of humanoid robots as part of a new deal with robotics startup Figure. Sunnyvale, California-based Figure announced the partnership along with $675 million in venture capital funding from a group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as well as Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia and the startup-funding divisions of Intel and OpenAI. Figure is less than two years old and doesn’t have a commercial product but is persuading influential tech industry backers to support its vision of shipping billions of human-like robots to the world’s workplaces and homes. “If we can just get humanoids to do work that humans are not wanting to do because there’s a shortfall of humans, we can sell millions of humanoids, billions maybe,” Figure…

Some doorbell cameras sold by Amazon and other online retailers have security flaws that could allow bad actors to view footage from the devices or control them completely, according to an investigation published by Consumer Reports. Researchers from the product-review organization said they found major vulnerabilities in cameras manufactured by the Chinese company Eken Group Ltd., which produces video doorbells under the brand names EKEN and Tuck, among others. The devices have been sold online by Walmart, Shein, Sears and Temu, which said it removed Eken-made doorbells from its platform after Consumer Reports reached out to the company. A Walmart spokesperson said the doorbell cameras Consumer Reports brought to its attention were listed on its marketplace by third-party sellers. The spokesperson said Walmart has removed those items and was offering…

David Bowie’s Major Tom, sitting in his tin can. Elton John’s Rocket Man, missing Earth and his wife. Matt Damon in “The Martian,” left behind to starve. Matthew McConaughey in “Interstellar,” weeping as he watches his kids age without him. Much art has been made of the infinite loneliness of space travel. And how could it not? Loneliness may be a universal human condition, but what could be lonelier than being removed from the human race entirely? And so when Adam Sandler, as moody Czech astronaut Jakub in Johan Renck’s “Spaceman,” is asked by a young girl during a broadcast to Earth if he’s lonely, he answers in platitudes but his eyes betray the truth. Yes, he is lonely. Very lonely. At one point in Sandler’s career, the idea of…

European Union regulators said they want to question Apple over accusations that it blocked video game company Epic Games from setting up its own app store, in a possible violation of digital rules that took effect in the 27-nation bloc Thursday. It’s a fresh escalation of the high-stakes battle between the two companies. Epic, maker of the popular game Fortnite, has spent years fighting Apple’s exclusive control over the distribution of iPhone apps. Epic asserted Wednesday that Apple thwarted its attempt to set up its own iOS app marketplace to compete with Apple’s App Store, calling it a breach of the EU’s new Digital Markets Act. The sweeping set of rules, designed to stop big tech companies from cornering digital markets, have forced Apple to allow people in Europe to…

Target, looking for ways to reverse a sales malaise, is getting into Amazon territory: the paid membership game. The Minneapolis discounter said this week the new paid program, called Target Circle 360, will offer unlimited free same-day delivery in as little as an hour for orders over $35 and free two-day shipping. It will launch with a special offer for new members for $49 per year from April 7 through May 18. After that, it will cost $99 per year. But Target Circle credit card holders can sign up for the lower price anytime. The discounter said its current Target Circle program has more than 100 million members who shop and spend more than five times more than non-members. The launch of a new paid membership program was one of…

In a significant update to its laptop lineup, Apple introduced the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models equipped with the advanced M3 chipsets in October 2023, signaling a major step forward in computing power. Following this, Apple has now expanded the M3 technology to its MacBook Air series, announcing the release of the updated 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models. These updated versions, now available for order, are set to bring considerable enhancements in performance, thanks to the inclusion of the M3 chip. Despite no external modifications to the MacBook Air’s design, which underwent a major redesign two years prior, the internal upgrades are where these new models shine. The M3 chip, developed on a cutting-edge 3-nanometer process, offers a notable increase in speed and energy efficiency by fitting…

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over what he says is a betrayal of the ChatGPT maker’s founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profits. In a lawsuit filed at San Francisco Superior Court, billionaire Musk said that when he bankrolled OpenAI’s creation, he secured an agreement with Altman and Greg Brockman, the president, to keep the AI company as a nonprofit that would develop technology for the benefit of the public. Under its founding agreement, OpenAI would also make its code open to the public instead of walling it off for any private company’s gains, the lawsuit says. However, by embracing a close relationship with Microsoft, OpenAI and its top executives have set that pact “aflame” and are “perverting” the company’s mission, Musk alleges…

Elon Musk’s social media platform X has made audio and video calling capabilities available to all users, not just those with paid accounts. But a privacy issue has emerged from the rollout. The changes have made it so anyone following you on the platform formerly known as Twitter can call and see your Internet Protocol address by default. An IP address lists where your phone or computer lives on the internet — it’s how you get messages and load websites. An exposed IP address can make you more vulnerable to dangers from spam to ID theft to revealing your location. It poses perhaps the most serious risk to people like human-rights activists who create online accounts under pseudonyms to avoid persecution. If you want to avoid random calls from people…

Europeans scrolling their phones and computers this week will get new choices for default browsers and search engines, where to download iPhone apps and how their personal online data is used. They’re part of changes required under the Digital Markets Act, a set of European Union regulations that six tech companies classed as “gatekeepers” — Amazon, Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok owner ByteDance. The DMA is the latest in a series of regulations that Europe has passed as a global leader in reining in the dominance of large tech companies. Tech giants have responded -sometimes reluctantly - by changing some of their long-held ways of doing business — such as Apple allowing people to install smartphone apps outside of its App Store. The new rules have broad…