Innholdsfortegnelse for #365 i Techlife News

Twitter’s stock is surging before the opening bell as investors overlook a huge drop in monthly user numbers, and focus instead on stronger-than-expected profit and revenue in the third quarter. The San Francisco company is purging malicious and spammy accounts, and blocking the creation of those accounts. In the third quarter, it had 326 million monthly users, 9 million, or 2 percent, less than it counted in the second quarter. It was the first consecutive decline since a much smaller, 1 million drop in the second quarter of 2017. But video advertising is very strong, accounting for more than half of total ad sales in the quarter. Twitter said it saw solid revenue across nearly all geographic locations and types of ads. In past quarters, investors had been more focused…

The Trump administration is announcing plans to come up with a strategy for supporting the development of next-generation wireless networks known as “5G.” The administration isn’t calling for any specific action other than reports from various agencies due in about six months, and the development of the strategy itself in about nine months. It released a presidential memo on the subject Thursday, days ahead of the highly contested midterm elections on Nov. 6. Big wireless telecoms such as AT&T and Verizon are spending billions creating their own 5G networks which are designed to support far more high-speed mobile video watching than current networks support, a growing number of smart devices in the home and even self-driving cars over the coming years.…

A Russian Soyuz rocket put a military satellite in orbit on Thursday, its first successful launch since a similar rocket failed earlier this month to deliver a crew to the International Space Station. The Russian military said a Soyuz-2 booster rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk launch facility in northwestern Russia. A Soyuz-FG rocket carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin failed two minutes into the flight on Oct. 11, sending their emergency capsule into a sharp fall back to Earth. The crew landed safely, but the Russian space agency Roscosmos had suspended all Soyuz launches until Thursday, pending a probe. The official panel is yet to produce its formal verdict, but investigators have reportedly linked the failure to an element jettisoning one of the rocket’s four side…

Instead of destroying jobs and leaving legions of people without work, the digital revolution can open doors to unseen opportunities and industries, but only if everyone has access to the internet and the ability to use it, Melinda Gates said in a recent interview. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has joined a global initiative working to ensure frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality will help, not hurt the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. The effort to build so-called “digital ecosystems” by the Gates Foundation-supported Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development was showcased at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank last week in Bali, Indonesia. Among the leaders in the Pathways initiative is Sri Mulyani Indrawati, finance minister…

AN AFFORDABLE iPHONE FLAGSHIP When Apple unveiled a trio of new iPhones last month, it was the XR that generated the biggest response. A brand new model with a stunning new design, the XR is considered as a “low cost” version of last year’s iPhone X, but with all of the biggest features we have come to know and love, including facial recognition and Face ID, a stunning all-glass display, and the fastest and most powerful smartphone chip ever included in an iPhone. As the new device gets ready to launch to the public, we take a closer look at the new iPhone XR and explore how the model may, unexpectedly, become one of the biggest selling smartphones in the history of the iPhone. A STUNNING NEW DEVICE Alongside the…

From the time he joined 20Fathoms, Paul Van Dyke was going through a job interview. He just didn’t know it. Van Dyke turned an individual membership at the Traverse City tech incubator into a position as a software developer at HealthBridge. The Grand Rapids-based start-up offers an employer-sponsored benefit that helps the employee manage the balance due after insurance with a consolidated statement and easy repayment terms. “It was fun to watch him interact,” said Tim Heger, chief technology officer at HealthBridge. “He didn’t realize I was watching him and kind of interviewing him from afar: How he interacted with people, how he handled problems, how he tackled them, what was his work ethic, was he here early, was he staying late. “We’re a start-up; you have to have people…

Netflix plans to borrow another $2 billion to help pay for the exclusive series and movies that its management credits for helping its video streaming service reel in millions of new subscribers during the past five years. The additional debt load announced Monday isn’t a surprise. Netflix needs more cash because it has been spending more money than its business generates since its expansion into original programming with the 2013 release of “House of Cards.” Netflix expects to burn through $3 billion this year. The $2 billion that Netflix plans to raise in a bond offering will be lopped onto it existing debt of $11.8 billion. That includes another $1.9 billion debt offering that Netflix completed earlier this year. The borrowing binge appears to be paying off.Netflix has gained nearly…

A co-founder of Facebook’s virtual-reality division is joining the exodus of executives to leave the company after striking it rich in lucrative sales of their startups. Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe disclosed his decision to leave Facebook in a tweet posted this week. His departure comes 2 1/2 years after Facebook parted ways with Oculus’ other co-founder, Palmer Luckey. Both Iribe and Luckey joined Facebook in 2014 after selling Oculus to the company for $2 billion. Iribe had been Oculus’ CEO until 2016 when he shifted to a lower-ranking job in the virtual reality division. Facebook issued a statement hailing Iribe for pushing virtual reality “far beyond the boundaries of what people thought possible and it’s because of his vision that we’re all here working on VR today. We’re thankful for…

U.S. auto companies such as General Motors, Tesla and Ford faltered this year in Consumer Reports’ reliability rankings as readers reported more mechanical trouble with their vehicles. The magazine and website said all U.S.-based brands fell to the bottom half of 29 brands in the rankings. Lexus and Toyota were once again at the top. Consumer Reports got more than 500,000 responses to the annual survey of its subscribers, and it uses the data from the 2000-2017 model years to predict reliability of 2019 vehicles. The survey released Wednesday found that readers are having more trouble with technology designed to increase fuel economy than they are with electronic infotainment systems, which long had been a bugaboo for automakers and vehicle owners. The mechanical problems with smaller turbocharged engines and transmissions…

It started out modestly enough: David Hertz, having learned that under the right conditions you really can make your own water out of thin air, put a little contraption on the roof of his office and began cranking out free bottles of H2O for anyone who wanted one. Soon he and his wife, Laura Doss-Hertz, were thinking bigger — so much so that this week the couple won the $1.5 million XPrize For Water Abundance. They prevailed by developing a system that uses shipping containers, wood chips and other detritus to produce as much as 528 gallons (2,000 liters) of water a day at a cost of no more than 2 cents a quart (1 liter). The XPrize competition, created by a group of philanthropists, entrepreneurs and others, has awarded…

As stocks hit record after record in the past decade, investors didn’t much care if a stock was cheap or expensive. What mattered most was: Is it growing quickly? If the answer was yes, the stock was in high demand, almost regardless of the price. Investors were ravenous for companies able to add customers and deliver fat growth. So they were willing to pay premium prices for an Amazon or a Netflix. Left behind were stocks in more staid industries, even if they looked like better bargains by several measures. Suddenly, though, the siren song of high growth has gone dissonant. As markets tumbled in recent weeks, the stocks that were soaring the highest have fallen the fastest. Worries about interest rates and global trade are raising concerns about the…

Google is abandoning plans to establish a campus for tech startups in Berlin after protests from residents worried about gentrification. The internet giant confirmed reports Thursday it will sublet the former electrical substation in the capital’s Kreuzberg district to two charitable organizations, Betterplace.org and Karuna. Google has more than a dozsen so-called campuses around the world. They are intended as hubs to bring together potential employees, startups and investors. Protesters had recently picketed the Umspannwerk site with placards such as “Google go home.” Karuna, which helps disadvantaged children, said Google will pay 14 million euros ($16 million) toward renovation and maintenance for the coming five years. Google said it will continue to work with startups in Berlin, which has become a magnet for tech companies in Germany in recent years.…

People seeking dubious, potentially harmful treatment for cancer and other ailments raised nearly $7 million over two years from crowdfunding sites, a study found. Echoing recent research on campaigns for stem cell therapies, the findings raise more questions about an increasingly popular way to help pay for costly, and sometimes unproven, medical care. Soliciting money on GoFundMe and other sites eliminates doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and other “gatekeepers” that can be a barrier to expensive treatment, said lead author Dr. Ford Vox, an ethicist and brain injury expert at Shepherd Center rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta. He calls it “the democratization of economic power through social media” but says it can pose an ethical dilemma. Online fundraising “has a big bright side” when it helps patients pay for legitimate care, he…

Apple’s new iPhone XR has most of the features found in the top-of-the-line iPhone XS Max, but not its $1,100 price tag. The XR offers the right trade-offs for just $750. For something cheaper, you’ll need to look in the iPhone history bin. Older models are still quite good. If you’re shopping for a new phone, it pays to think hard about what you really want and what you’re willing to pay for it. Improvements over the previous generation tend to be incremental, but can add up over time — and so do the sums you’ll pay for them. iPHONE 7 ($449) The big jump in iPhone cameras came a generation earlier with the iPhone 6S, when Apple went from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels in resolution. With the iPhone…

Elon Musk says he’s planning to offer the public free rides through a tunnel he bored under a Los Angeles suburb to test a new type of transportation system. In a series of tweets, Musk said the tunnel is almost complete and there will be an opening event on the night of Dec. 10 and free rides for the public the next day. The tunnel runs about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) under the streets of Hawthorne, where Musk’s SpaceX headquarters is located. Musk has described a system in which vehicles or people pods are moved on electrically powered platforms called skates at speeds up to 155 mph (250 kph). Musk wants to build a tunnel across western Los Angeles and another between a Metro subway line and Dodger Stadium.…

There are so many good movies in theaters right now — thoughtful, artistic, well-acted and well-told movies that studios preciously save for this time of year with the distant hope of Oscar gold in their future. The Gerard Butler submarine movie ”Hunter Killer ” is not one of those movies — it is bombastic and garish, ridden with clichés, preposterous politics and diplomacy, and frenetic, video game energy. And it so often so unintentionally silly that it’s actually kind of a fun watch. “Das Boot” this is not, nor is it “The Hunt for Red October,” but you probably already knew that from name at the top of the marquee. In Gerard Butler parlance, “Hunter Killer” is the “London Has Fallen” of submarine movies, genetically engineered in a lab to…

It probably felt like a cutting-edge caper at the time: The New York Giants, using an elaborate spyglass-and-buzzer system, would have the opposing team’s signs relayed from their center-field clubhouse at the Polo Grounds to the bullpen and then to the batter, passing along valuable information during the team’s pursuit of the 1951 pennant. The question nowadays is whether there’s an app for that. Stealing signs is as much a part of baseball tradition as stealing bases, but the technology available now could open a whole new frontier of competitive sleuthing. The latest flare-up came when a man associated with the Houston Astros was pointing his cellphone into opposing dugouts during playoff games against Cleveland and Boston. The Astros said they were just trying to defend themselves against any suspicious…

When Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, it seemed like a big gamble for an unproven little app. Six years later, that little app — along with Messenger and WhatsApp — are serving as Facebook’s safety net for a future that could find its flagship service on the sidelines. Sure, Facebook reigns in social media today, and this is not likely to change soon. Still, amid the company’s seemingly endless troubles over elections meddling, misinformation, privacy lapses, hacking and hate speech, the idea that Facebook may not always be on top has begun to take hold. “Facebook could collapse,” said David Kirkpatrick, who wrote a 2010 book on Facebook’s early history. In an interview, he said the elections manipulations issue “could get so terrifying that advertisers could start…

Two national laboratories based in New Mexico have been awarded $8 million by the U.S. Energy Department to study the fundamental physics of all matter. The award will fund two three-year projects focused on quantum research at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. Scientists from Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories will be able to build advanced tools for nanotechnology research and development. Officials say funding also will provide opportunities for researchers outside the labs to benefit from the new technologies. The center’s co-director, Sean Hearne, says the science community recognizes that quantum-enabled systems are a new frontier for electronic and optical devices. He says work at the center includes developing new techniques to place single atoms where scientists want them and control how they interact with the environment around them.…

Telecom networks provider Nokia reported lower third-quarter earnings and said it would start a new cost-cutting program as it waits for demand for the new 5G systems to pick up. The Finnish company said its net profit for the July-September period fell to 309 million euros ($352 million) from 516 million euros a year earlier. Sales were nearly flat at 5.5 billion euros. Nokia said it aims to make another annual savings of 700 million euros by the end of 2020. “Our industry is one where a constant focus on costs is essential,” Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said. The cost cuts will come on top of a current 1.2 billion-euro savings plan launched shortly after the 2016 acquisition of the French-U.S competitor Alcatel-Lucent. Nokia didn’t provide details on the expected…

THE CUPERTINO FIRM IS STILL A MAJOR FORCE As unthinkable as it may have been at one point, 2018 has seen chatter among observers both inside and outside the tech industry on the subject of whether Apple remains as exciting or as innovating a force as it once was. Is there, then, genuine room for concern, or could the Californian giant’s finest days still be ahead of it? Apple has, of course, released all manner of dynamic and often genre-defining products over the past decade or so, including the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro. But are the noises that have long been made in the era of current CEO Tim Cook about Apple’s supposedly waning pioneering verve become too loud to ignore? Yes, Apple’s track record of success in recent…

In 1964, the first public memorial to the Holocaust in the United States was unveiled in a solemn ceremony in Philadelphia. The bronze-on-black granite sculpture called “Six Million Jewish Martyrs” was the work of artist Nathan Rapoport, who fled his native Poland when the Nazis invaded Warsaw. It was commissioned by a group of Philadelphia-area Holocaust survivors and Jewish civic leaders. The sculpture, which depicts images of resistance, innocence and faith, has sat unchanged on its perch along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway ever since. Now, after more than half a century, the Holocaust Memorial Plaza has been expanded and enhanced to focus on both remembrance and education. With new displays and an interactive app, visitors can hear testimonies from survivors, liberators and witnesses associated with the Philadelphia community. The new…

The head of Apple on Wednesday endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant’s commitment to protecting personal data, which he warned was being “weaponized” against users. Speaking at an international conference on data privacy, Apple CEO Tim Cook applauded European Union authorities for bringing in a strict new data privacy law in May and said the iPhone maker supports a U.S. federal privacy law. Cook’s speech, along with video comments from Google and Facebook top bosses, in the European Union’s home base in Brussels, underscores how the U.S. tech giants are jostling to curry favor in the region as regulators tighten their scrutiny. Data protection has become a major political issue worldwide, and European regulators have led the charge in setting new…

Walmart says it will work with third-party sellers to make millions of items available for free two-day shipping on orders over $35. The company is also simplifying the returns process for eligible products bought from marketplace sellers. That includes allowing shoppers to return the items at any one of its 4,700 stores. Previously, only select items were eligible for free two-day shipping. Walmart will begin to roll out the improvements in mid-November as it seeks to better compete with online leader Amazon ahead of the holidays. Amazon already allows its sellers to offer free two-day shipping. Last year, more than half the items sold on Amazon were from third-party sellers. Walmart doesn’t break out how many third-party sellers it has, but its website sells 75 million items from them.…

There’s nothing really new or fresh or bold in “Johnny English Strikes Again,” the third installment of Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling-spy saga/James Bond spoof. And for some of us, maybe that’s not such a terrible thing. Sometimes you don’t want the hip new cocktail. Sometimes you just want the same beer at the same temperature at the same time in the same comfy chair. (Especially these days, perhaps, but we digress.) So when Atkinson’s Johnny, on the run in a Scottish castle, winds up in a room of decorative suits of armor, you start chuckling preemptively. Because of course you know he’s going to hide in one of those suits, and of course you know he’s going to have a massively difficult time staying upright, and, well ... it’ll be funny.…

Yahoo has agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide two years of free credit-monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen as part of the biggest security breach in history. The restitution hinges on federal court approval of a settlement filed in a 2-year-old lawsuit seeking to hold Yahoo accountable for digital burglaries that occurred in 2013 and 2014, but weren’t disclosed until 2016. It adds to the financial fallout from a security lapse that provided a mortifying end to Yahoo’s existence as an independent company and former CEO Marissa Mayer’s six-year reign. Yahoo revealed the problem after it had already negotiated a $4.83 billion deal to sell its digital services to Verizon Communications. It then had to discount that price…

A government computer system that interacts with HealthCare.gov was hacked earlier this month, compromising the sensitive personal data of some 75,000 people, officials said. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the announcement late in the afternoon ahead of a weekend, a time slot agencies often use to release unfavorable developments. Officials said the hacked system was shut down and technicians are working to restore it before sign-up season starts Nov. 1 for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. About 10 million people currently have private coverage under former President Barack Obama’s health care law. Consumers applying for subsidized coverage have to provide extensive personal information, including Social Security numbers, income, and citizenship or legal immigration status. The system that was hacked is used by insurance agents…