Innholdsfortegnelse for #284 i Techlife News

YouTube TV, Google’s new streaming package of about 40 television channels, is the tech industry’s latest bid to get cable-shunning millennials to pay for live TV over the internet. It offers intriguing advantages over rivals, but it remains hobbled by a limited channel selection. Don’t confuse the YouTube service, which debuts Wednesday, with Netflix, Amazon Prime and other streaming offerings. Like similar efforts from Sony, Dish and AT&T’s DirecTV , YouTube TV primarily aims to let you channel surf over the internet, not to stream from an online library of shows and movies. So these internet-cable services can offer live programming, especially sports. But they also come with some serious drawbacks. While these services are typically cheaper than traditional cable or satellite services, people haven’t been signing up in droves.…

The New York Post app has been hacked on April Fools’ Day, sending out push alert notifications that included “Heil President Donald Trump.” The Post apologized Saturday night, shortly after its app sent out a series of alerts. The Post said in a follow-up alert: “Our push alert notification system was compromised this evening. We are working to resolve the issue. Please accept our apologies.” The messages appeared directed at Trump. One message said, “Open your heart to those you do not understand and listen to all those you fear and look down upon.” The alerts even included lyrics from Nirvana’s song “Come As You Are”: “Take your time, hurry up, the choice is yours, but dont be late...” The Post is owned by Trump-friendly media mogul Rupert Murdoch.…

Is Verizon planning to spy on its customers? You might conclude that it is after reading Verizon’s privacy policy on an upcoming AppFlash service, which promises easier access to search and apps on Android phones. The policy says Verizon may share data on features and services you use, along with the list of apps you have installed on your phone, with other Verizon businesses to target ads. The privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation described AppFlash as “spyware.” Not so fast, Verizon says. In a statement to clarify its intentions, Verizon says users must explicitly grant permission before using AppFlash. Verizon says customers will be able to easily disable the service, and no one will be required to use it. The statement, however, doesn’t say exactly what permission Verizon is seeking.…

HOW THE iPHONE 8 COULD BUILD UPON AND LEAPFROG THE S8 It’s always exciting when Samsung unveils new flagship phones. The South Korean electronics giant is, after all, considered Apple’s only major rival in the smartphone game. However, with the recently announced Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, Samsung has positioned itself as a likely frontrunner in what could be another paradigm shift in smartphone design and technology - and, so rumor and speculation suggest, Apple should soon be joining that revolution with the iPhone 8. IMPRESSIVE SMARTPHONES, BUT ARE SOME CRACKS SHOWING? For those smartphone users entrenched in the Samsung and Android ecosystems, there is a lot to like about the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The display, in particular, will make a big impression. The display sizes - 5.8-inch…

Most people who search on Google, share on Facebook and shop on Amazon have never heard of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. But they might not be doing any of those things had he not invented the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee, 61, is this year’s recipient of the A.M. Turing Award, computing’s version of the Nobel Prize. The award, announced Tuesday by the Association for Computing Machinery, marks another pinnacle for the British native, who has already been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th Century by Time magazine. “It’s a crowning achievement,” Berners-Lee said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I think the award is for the Web as a project, and the massive international collaborative spirit of…

Assassin’s Creed Based on the video game franchise of the same name, this action adventure follows the story of Cal Lynch (Michael Fassbender) who must travel back in time to 15-th century Spain through revolutionary technology that unlocks the genetic memories contained in his DNA. There he is his distant relative Aguilar de Nerha, a member of the secret society of Assassins who fight to protect free will from the Templar Order. FIVE FACTS: 1. 80% of the film, including stunts, extras, and location were shot on camera without any CGI. 2. Ubisoft gave the prop makers a detailed list of every weapon ever made for the games that they could use as a guide when creating the props. 3. While playing Aguilar de Nerha, Fassbender wore brown contact lenses…

David Letterman will replace an ailing Neil Young as the person inducting Pearl Jam into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Friday. According to a statement from the hall, Young “is regrettably no longer able to induct Pearl Jam” due to illness and is “thrilled” that former TV talk-show host Letterman will substitute. Pearl Jam made its “Late Show with David Letterman” debut in 1996 with a version of “Hail, Hail.” In addition to Pearl Jam, the new rock class incudes the late rapper Tupac Shakur, ELO, Journey, Nile Rodgers, Joan Baez and Yes. The ceremony will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The Hall of Fame is located in Cleveland.…

Over the past decade, scientists and photographers keep returning to the world’s glaciers, watching them shrink with each visit. Now they want others to see how a warming planet is melting masses of ice in a series of before-and-after photos. In the Geological Society of America’s GSA Today journal , a group of ice researchers and a photographer-filmmaker published pictures showing how much five of the world’s glaciers have thinned. “There is something fundamentally compelling about the approach they take. For all our emphasis on models and math, seeing is still believing,” said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who wasn’t part of the team. Under natural conditions, glaciers at times melt and retreat while others grow and advance. But measurements from Earth’s 5,200 glaciers show warming temperatures have…

Britain’s High Court ruled Wednesday that it can decide what mobile phone manufacturers should pay to use patented technology that is essential to make mobile networks function. In a case that helps clarify how patents are handled in the telecoms industry, Justice Colin Birss ruled that neither of the parties in the case had made a “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory” offer and he provided a formula for how to set such fees. The case involved a dispute between Unwired Planet, a U.S. company that has purchased patents developed by other firms, and China-based Huawei Technologies Co., which makes phones and other communications equipment, over the use of patented technologies that have become the standard on which mobile phone networks are based. “This is a ground-breaking judgment,” said Pat Treacy, a…

After his press secretary blasted it as an example of rampant government overreach, President Donald Trump signed a bill into law Monday that could eventually allow internet providers to sell information about their customers’ browsing habits. The bill scraps a Federal Communications Commission online privacy regulation issued in October to give consumers more control over how companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon share that information. Critics have argued that the rule would stifle innovation and pick winners and losers among internet companies. The regulation was scheduled to take effect later this year, but Congress used its authority under the obscure Congressional Review Act to wipe it from the books. With a Republican president in the White House, the GOP-controlled Congress has turned to the 20-year-old law to scrap numerous regulations…

The National Archives and Records Administration has told the White House to keep each of President Donald Trump’s tweets, even those he deletes or corrects, and the White House has agreed. The head of the archives, David S. Ferriero, told two Democratic senators in a letter last week that the White House has assured him it’s saving all Trump’s Twitter blasts. The archives contacted the White House about the matter because the Presidential Records Act requires such correspondence to be preserved for history. Ferriero did not say when the agency contacted White House officials to remind them about the records requirement, but officials briefed the White House counsel’s office about the law on Feb. 2, according to the archivist’s letter to Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tom Carper of…

The syringe slides in between the thumb and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected in the employee’s hand. Another “cyborg” is created. What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand. The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted. “The biggest benefit I think is convenience,” said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door by merely waving near it. “It basically replaces…

Shares in chipmaker Imagination Technologies plunged over 60 percent last Monday after the British company announced that Apple plans to stop using its products. The development highlights how, through its sheer size, Apple’s decisions can make or break the fortune of entire companies that work with it. Imagination, a multimedia, processor and communications technology company, said Apple Inc. “will no longer use the group’s intellectual property in its new products” within two years. That would mean the company wouldn’t be eligible for royalty payments under existing agreements. Imagination says Apple has for years used the company’s technology in the graphics processor units of its phones, tablets and watches but has asserted that it is working on a “separate, independent” design to control its products. Imagination said “it would be extremely…

Massachusetts officials say more than 10 percent of drivers for ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft have failed a required background check. More than 62,000 drivers passed, including some who drive for both companies. About 8,200 failed the checks, which are required under a 2016 state law officials have called the most stringent in the country. Of those who were denied, the figures released Wednesday show the largest number were turned away because their license had been suspended, they had been licensed to drive for less than three years, or they had multiple serious driving offenses. More than 300 applicants had felony convictions and 51 were registered sex offenders. Uber issued a statement faulting the background process as too strict. “Thousands of people in Massachusetts have lost access to economic opportunities…

Emperor of Sand Mastodon Emperor of Sand is the seventh studio album by American metal band Mastodon and is their most mainstream effort to date. The narrative-driven album last seen on Crack the Skye follows a darker tone than the last couple of albums but still features a versatility of sound with some of their most accessible lyrics to date. FIVE FACTS: 1. The lyrics include themes of death and survival, inspired by experiences that members of the band had when family and friends were recently diagnosed with cancer. 2. Scott Kelly of Neurosis and Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth appear as guest vocalists on “Scorpion Breath” and “Andromeda,” respectively. 3. Guitarist Brent Hinds learned to play music by playing the banjo, and his style of fast hybrid picking and…

It’s every traveler’s nightmare: You’re running late for a flight and the person in front of you in the security line has taken the only two available luggage bins and is slowly putting items in, one by one. A new system officially unveiled Monday at Newark Liberty International Airport aims to address the occasionally confusing, often frustrating experience of getting your personal items through security and out the other side. The Transportation Security Administration held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting to debut the 19-lane checkpoint in United Airlines’Terminal C. Seventeen of the lanes feature the new system. Bins are automatically retrieved after each use and sent back to the front of the line to reduce bottlenecks. Travelers pull the bins from underneath the conveyor belt and pack their items in a partitioned…

Germany has launched a new military unit dedicated to thwarting cyberattacks and responding if necessary. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday the unit, which will be fully operational by 2021, will bring together information technology experts from other branches of the military, and also include new specialists. In all, it’s envisioned to have some 13,500 soldiers and civilians by summer. The unit is being put under command of a lieutenant general with an initial 260 troops under his command. The Defense Ministry says the military experiences thousands of cyberattacks of varying degrees of severity on its servers every day. Von der Leyen told troops at the official launch in Bonn when “an attack endangers the functioning and operational capacity of the armed forces, we can defend ourselves offensively.”…

A Canadian man accused in a massive hack of Yahoo emails said Wednesday he’ll live with his parents and forgo access to phones and any electronic equipment if he’s allowed out on bail. Officials allege that Karim Baratov poses an “extremely high flight risk” because of his alleged ties to Russian agents. But his lawyer Amedeo DiCarlo said that Baratov has never been to Russia and he will not flee if freed on bail. Baratov arrived in court for his bail wearing a black shirt and sweat pants with his legs shackled. His parents provided him with a dress jacket. “Flight risk is the issue,” DiCarlo told reporters after arriving at the courthouse in a chauffeured Rolls Royce. “We are going to have measures put in place so that is…

A Harvard University professor who introduced Americans to the concept of designated drivers to deter drunken driving is now taking on the deadly problem of motorists distracted by cellphones and other electronics. Jay Winsten is consulting with federal and Massachusetts officials to develop a new generation of public awareness messages. “We wanted to find out why all efforts to date to tackle distracted driving have utterly failed,” Winsten said. Districted driving killed 3,477 people in 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Governors Highway Safety Association recently cited it as contributing to a surge in pedestrian fatalities last year. Just last week, after a crash killed 13 people in Texas, a witness said a pickup driver who collided with a minibus acknowledged he was texting; the crash…

Verizon Communications will create a new company called Oath after it completes its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo and melds the troubled internet company with its AOL operations. Oath will oversee Yahoo and AOL after the deal is completed. The Yahoo and AOL brands are expected to survive, although Verizon says it won’t provide any details about its plans for Oath until this summer. “You can bet we will be launching one of the most disruptive brand companies in digital,” AOL said in a Monday statement. Tim Armstrong, AOL’s top executive, posted a tweet indicating Oath will manage more than 20 different brands. Verizon is counting on the combination of Yahoo and AOL to help it sell more digital ads, even though the two internet pioneers had been struggling on…

Amazon’s new deal gives Prime Time football a whole new meaning. The e-commerce powerhouse will stream NFL Thursday Night games this season via its Amazon Prime video service, replacing Twitter. The live-streams of the games will be available to the estimated 65 million members of Amazon Prime, which costs $99 per year and also includes other perks like free videos, books and shipping. That means that technically, the games won’t be free to stream, but they will still be carried by broadcast networks CBS or NBC, as well as simultaneously on the NFL Network. A person with knowledge of the agreement told The Associated Press on Wednesday that it’s a one-year deal worth close to $50 million. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been…

More advertisers fled Bill O’Reilly’s show on Wednesday, with drugmaker Pfizer and real estate company Coldwell Banker among the latest to distance themselves. The snowball effect began Monday after a weekend report in The New York Times that O’Reilly and his employer paid five women $13 million to settle harassment or other allegations of inappropriate conduct by Fox’s top star. As of Wednesday, a total of about 20 advertisers - from Mercedes Benz to Allstate - had confirmed pulling out. But while the advertisers’ moves may send a strong signal to consumers, so far, it is unclear whether there will be any long-term negative impact on either Fox News or “The O’Reilly Factor.” RISKY BUSINESS “Advertisers are very risk averse,” said Larry Chiagouris, a Pace University marketing professor. “When advertisers…

Facebook has lost a legal fight against a New York City prosecutor who sought search warrants for hundreds of user accounts. The New York state Court of Appeals sided with lower courts by ruling that the social media giant didn’t have the right to challenge the warrants. Prosecutors in Manhattan sought search warrants in 2013 for the accounts of 381 people in connection with a disability benefits fraud case against New York City police and fire retirees. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook challenged the warrants, but the courts sided with prosecutors, citing legal procedure that says it is up to individual users to challenge warrants seeking their information. The case has been closely watched by social media companies, civil libertarians and prosecutors.…

It took Alec Baldwin in diapers to bring down “Beauty and the Beast.” The 20th Century Fox release and DreamWorks Animation production “The Boss Baby,” featuring the voice of Baldwin as the film’s pipsqueak protagonist, was the weekend’s no. 1 film. It opened with $50.2 million, according to final box-office figures Monday from comScore. The gap between it and “Beauty and the Beast” (the box-office leader the last two weeks) was a little greater than expected, too. “Beauty and the Beast” trailed in second with $45.4 million in its third weekend. Paramount Pictures’ controversy-plagued “Ghost in the Shell,” made for $110 million, flopped in its debut. It sold $18.7 million in tickets. The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number…

A settlement with a digital advertising company bars the firm from using a technology called geofencing to direct anti-abortion messages toward women entering reproductive health facilities in Massachusetts, the state attorney general said Tuesday. The agreement was reached after Attorney General Maura Healey investigated whether Copley Advertising or John Flynn, a Brookline man identified as the firm’s manager and sole employee, was violating the state’s consumer protection laws. Copley denied any wrongdoing. Geofencing allows ads to be directed to the mobile devices of certain people when they enter a designated location. The technology also allows those devices to be tagged so the messages can continue to be sent to the user through apps or web browsers for up to 30 days after they leave the location. Consumers often don’t realize…

States have started writing their own legislation to protect broadband privacy after Congress voted to repeal regulations that would have required internet providers to obtain their customers’ consent before collecting their personal information. The Montana Senate approved a budget provision that would bar internet providers like Charter and Comcast from being awarded state contracts if they collect data from their customers without consent. That legislation is similar to a measure that is moving through the Minnesota Legislature. Montana Sen. Ryan Osmundson, R-Buffalo, said he introduced the measure as a response to Congress’ vote to repeal the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules, which have not yet taken effect. “It has become apparent to us that they have the ability to use your information in ways to market to you, and, quite…