Innholdsfortegnelse for #649 i Techlife News

An artificial intelligence-powered chatbot created by New York City to help small business owners is under criticism for dispensing bizarre advice that misstates local policies and advises companies to violate the law. But days after the issues were first reported last week by tech news outlet The Markup, the city has opted to leave the tool on its official government website. Mayor Eric Adams defended the decision this week even as he acknowledged the chatbot’s answers were “wrong in some areas.” Launched in October as a “one-stop shop” for business owners, the chatbot offers users algorithmically generated text responses to questions about navigating the city’s bureaucratic maze. It includes a disclaimer that it may “occasionally produce incorrect, harmful or biased” information and the caveat, since-strengthened, that its answers are not…

At home in the New York City suburbs, Oscar Sandoval has lots of friends and an active social life. But when it’s time for vacation, he prefers to keep it quiet. Like, literally. Sandoval began practicing Zen Buddhism a few years back, and has been on silent retreats to Buddhist monasteries around San Francisco and elsewhere. He’d stroll, sit, do some gardening and generally contemplate life for a week. More recently, he’s done solo backpacking trips across Spain. “The internal experience varies from times of very little thinking to periods of many thoughts or songs playing in my head,” he says. “The utter peace and stillness is impossible to put into words.” Travel journalist Chloe Berge bemoaned the buzzing interruption of a drone while she was hiking the Faroe Islands’…

The lines between science fiction and reality continue to blur, and new AI innovations bring the Machine Era closer to reality. The new term “Physical AI” encapsulates the transformative journey we are embarking upon, where artificial intelligence becomes not just a digital force but a physical one, reshaping our world in tangible ways, for better or worse. BEYOND SCIFI When we hear “robot,” the mind often leaps to dramatic sci-fi scenarios. Some may look to the Apple TV+ movie Finch, and others will consider Black Mirror as the strange but often realistic future from writer Charlie Brooker begins to play out. The reality is both more profound and more integrated into our daily lives. Robotics has evolved from the realms of science fiction to the factory floors and beyond. These…

Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has named a new head of safety nine months after the last executive to hold the position departed from the social media company. X said that company veteran Kylie McRoberts will oversee the global safety team. The platform also announced that Yale Cohen, who previously worked for media firm Publicis Media, would become head of brand safety and advertiser solutions. The last executive heading what was formerly called the trust and safety team, Ella Irwin, left the company in June 2023. While Irwin did not point to specific reasoning at the time, her resignation arrived just days after Musk publicly complained about the platform’s handling of posts about transgender topics. Since Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the platform in October 2022,…

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin loved pulling pranks, so much so they began rolling outlandish ideas every April Fools’ Day not long after starting their company more than a quarter century ago. One year, Google posted a job opening for a Copernicus research center on the moon. Another year, the company said it planned to roll out a “scratch and sniff” feature on its search engine. The jokes were so consistently over-the-top that people learned to laugh them off as another example of Google mischief. And that’s why Page and Brin decided to unveil something no one would believe was possible 20 years ago on April Fools’ Day. It was Gmail, a free service boasting 1 gigabyte of storage per account, an amount that sounds almost pedestrian in…

Chinese telecoms gear company Huawei Technologies has reported its profit more than doubled last year as its cloud and digital businesses thrived in spite of U.S. sanctions. The Shenzhen-based company reported a net profit of 87 billion yuan ($12 billion), helped by strong sales and an improved product portfolio. Revenue jumped nearly 10% from a year earlier, to 704.2 billion yuan ($97.4 billion). Huawei’s rotating chairman Ken Hu said the company’s figures were in line with forecasts. “We’ve been through a lot over the past few years. But through one challenge after another, we’ve managed to grow,” Hu said. Huawei also said it profited from “gains from the sales of some businesses.” It did not specify which businesses were sold. Huawei, one of China’s first global tech brands, has been…

Tax season can come with several headaches, from gathering documents to finding the time to sit down and file. But one pain that you want to avoid is falling for a tax scam. Year-round, scammers look for ways to trick people into giving them money or personal information. There are several common types of scams during tax season, so people should be on the lookout for red flags, said Amy Nofziger, director of victim support at the AARP Fraud Watch Network. One of the most common types of scams is related to identity theft. Taxpayers usually know their identity has been stolen when they try to file their tax returns and the IRS says they’ve already done so. This usually means someone else filed in their name in order to…

Amazon is removing Just Walk Out technology from its Amazon Fresh stores as part of an effort to revamp the grocery chain. The company’s well-known technology lets customers pay for items without standing in line and sends them receipts afterwards. Amazon says it will now be replaced by smart carts that allow customers to skip the checkout line but also see their spending in real time. While redesigning Fresh stores in the past year, Amazon spokesperson Carly Golden said the company heard from customers who enjoy skipping the checkout line but also wanted to view their receipts and savings as they shopped. Golden said the smart carts will give customers these benefits as well as the convenience of skipping the checkout line. Amazon’s decision was first reported by The Information.…

In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report this week saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior U.S. officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple U.S. agencies that deal with China. It concluded that “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul” given the company’s ubiquity and critical role in the global technology ecosystem. Microsoft products “underpin essential services that support national security, the foundations of our economy, and public health and…

Although a private browsing mode known as “Incognito” in Google’s widely used Chrome browser has been available for nearly a decade, a legal settlement involving the way it works has cast new attention on this commonly available setting. The settlement disclosed this week in a federal court is primarily designed to ensure that users who use Incognito mode in Chrome get more privacy while surfing the internet than they had been previously. Although Google isn’t paying any money to consumers, the lawyers who filed the case in June 2020 believe the stricter safeguards will be worth $4.75 billion to $7.8 billion, based on the estimated value of the personal information protected by the settlement. Nearly every major browser now has a private browsing mode. Here’s a look at what they…

With U.S. electric vehicle sales starting to slow, Ford Motor Co. says it will delay rolling out new electric pickup trucks and a new large electric SUV as it adds gas-electric hybrids to its model lineup. The Dearborn, Michigan, company said Thursday that a much ballyhooed new electric pickup to be built at a new factory in Tennessee will be delayed by a year until 2026. The big electric SUV, with three rows of seats, will be delayed by two years until 2027 at the company’s factory in Oakville, Ontario near Toronto. The retreat comes as U.S. electric vehicle sales growth slowed to 2.7% in the first quarter of the year, far below the 47% increase that fueled record sales and a 7.6% market share last year. Sales of new…

The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T’s current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said this weekend. In an announcement addressing the data breach, AT&T said that a dataset found on the “dark web” contains information including some Social Security numbers and passcodes for about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. Whether the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors” is still unknown, the Dallas-based company noted — adding that it had launched an investigation into the incident. AT&T has also begun notifying customers whose personal information was compromised. Here’s what you need to know. WHAT INFORMATION WAS COMPROMISED IN THIS BREACH? Although varying by each customer and account, AT&T says that information involved in…

Google has agreed to purge billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the U.S. surfing the internet through its Chrome web browser. The records purge comes as part of a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegal surveillance. The details of the deal emerged in a court filing this week, more than three months after Google and the attorneys handling the class-action case disclosed they had resolved a June 2020 lawsuit targeting Chrome’s privacy controls. Among other allegations, the lawsuit accused Google of tracking Chrome users’ internet activity even when they had switched the browser to the “Incognito” setting that is supposed to shield them from being shadowed by the Mountain View, California, company. Google vigorously fought the lawsuit until…

New vehicle sales in the U.S. rose nearly 5% from January through March, as buyers stayed in the market despite high interest rates. But electric vehicle sales growth slowed during the first three months of the year, with mainstream buyers wary of limited range and a lack of charging stations. Automakers, most of which reported U.S. sales numbers this week, sold nearly 3.8 million vehicles in the first quarter versus a year ago, for an annual rate of 15.4 million in sales. With inventory on dealer lots growing toward pre-pandemic levels, auto companies were forced to reduce prices. J.D. Power said the average sales price in March was $44,186, down 3.6% from a year ago and the largest recorded decline for the month of March. The company said automaker discounts…

The Belgian family of four was on their fourth trip to the United States. They had been dreading the long line at passport control when they entered the country but had heard about a new app they could use to ease their way and decided to give it a shot. Within minutes, they had bypassed the long line at Washington Dulles International Airport and were waiting for their luggage. “It was always a long row,” said Piet De Staercke of the line to go through passport screening. He, his wife and two sons were visiting Washington and Chicago. “We were a bit scared. But now with the app, it’s amazing.” As travel continues to boom following coronavirus pandemic-related slumps, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expanding the use of technology…