Innholdsfortegnelse for #443 i Techlife News

The biggest and most profitable U.S. airline just posted its first quarterly loss in more than five years. Now things are going to get really bad. Delta Air Lines Inc. reported Wednesday that it lost $534 million in the first three months of the year, when it suffered a glancing blow from the coronavirus pandemic during March. For most of the first quarter, the virus seemed like an abstraction to many Americans. Sure, it sounded dire, but it was an ocean away. Life in the U.S. unfolded normally. The economy was humming, people took business trips and leisure flights, planes were nearly full. Since then, the virus brought restrictions on travel and stoked fear of being trapped in a flying aluminum tube while sharing recycled air with people who might…

Tyson Foods suspended operations at an Iowa plant that is critical to the nation’s pork supply but was blamed for fueling a massive coronavirus outbreak in the region. The Arkansas-based company said the closure of the plant in Waterloo would deny a vital market to hog farmers and further disrupt U.S. meat supply. Tyson had kept the facility, its largest pork plant, open in recent days over the objections of alarmed local officials. The plant can process 19,500 hogs per day, accounting for 3.9% of U.S. pork processing capacity, according to the National Pork Board. More than 180 infections have been linked to the plant and officials expect that number to dramatically rise. Testing of its 2,800 workers is expected to begin Friday. Cases and hospitalizations in Black Hawk County…

The CCTV footage from a Dutch business park shows a man in a black cap pouring the contents of a white container at the base of a cellular radio tower. Flames burst out as the man jogs back to his Toyota to flee into the evening. It’s a scene that’s been repeated dozens of times in recent weeks in Europe, where conspiracy theories linking new 5G mobile networks and the coronavirus pandemic are fueling arson attacks on cell towers. Popular beliefs and conspiracy theories that wireless communications pose a threat have long been around, but the global spread of the virus at the same time that countries were rolling out fifth generation wireless technology has seen some of those false narratives amplified. Officials in Europe and the U.S. are watching…

The streaming service HBO Max will launch May 27, AT&T’s WarnerMedia announced this week, signalling that the so-called streaming wars won’t subside because of the coronavirus pandemic. WarnerMedia had earlier said HBO Max would debut sometime in May, and it stuck to those plans even if some of its planned programming has already been postponed due to the outbreak. HBO Max will be among the most expensive streaming services, at a price of $14.99 a month. But WarnerMedia is hoping a deep library of HBO hits, including “Game of Thrones” and “Succession”; DC Comics blockbuster movies like “Wonder Woman” and “The Dark Knight”; and hit TV shows including “Friends” and “South Park” will be enough to lure viewers who face a blizzard of streaming options. New original programming will also…

As state and federal leaders tussle over when and how fast to “reopen” the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, some corporations are taking the first steps toward bringing their employees back to work. Which in many cases is easier said than done. Detroit-area automakers, which suspended production roughly a month ago, are pushing to restart factories as states like Michigan prepare to relax their stay-at-home orders. Fiat Chrysler has already announced a May 4 gradual restart date; General Motors and Ford don’t want to be left behind. In negotiations with the United Auto Workers union, automakers are offering to provide protective gear, frequently sanitize equipment, and to take worker temperatures to prevent anyone with a fever from entering factories. These steps, they say, have worked at repurposed factories now…

A team of national defense scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory that studies contagions with award-winning accuracy has developed its own U.S. forecast for the spread of the coronavirus. It’s one model that states are utilizing as they consider the duration of directives on social distancing and restrictions on business and President Trump steps up pressure to follow his road map to gradually reopening a crippled economy. With support from the U.S. Energy Department, the Los Alamos model builds upon a decade of past experience in forecasting contagions, including the seasonal flu, the Ebola virus and mosquito-borne Chikungunya. Last year Los Alamos statisticians beat out more than 20 teams in a CDC competition aimed at improving flu forecasting using supercomputing power. The lab’s “Dante” model was most successful in predicting…

Little was predictable about the Beastie Boys in their three-plus decades of making music. They were spontaneous, always evolving, off-the-cuff pranksters who turned pro without ever losing the punchline. Even seeing ahead to the end of a rhyme was impossible. Their lyrics took circuitous, hysterical routes. “I’ll stir fry you in my wok/Your knees’ll start shakin’ and your fingers pop/Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock.” So why is “Beastie Boys Story,” a documentary of Mike Diamond and Adam Horowitz’s staged show, so predictable? “Beastie Boys Story,” which arrives Friday on Apple TV-Plus, is billed as a “live documentary experience.” And with Spike Jonze, who so memorably directed the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” music video presiding over both the theater show and the film, one could reasonably expect —…

When your entire life is happening inside your home, it matters how that space feels and functions. Interior designers often focused on this even before self-quarantine, asking clients how they spend their time at home and how various rooms might make them happier. These questions get at the real purpose of a well-designed home. And now they seem more important than ever. “We’re expecting more from our homes than we ever have before, and they can serve us in more ways than we’ve asked in the past,” says New York-based interior designer Carolyn DiCarlo. ``We’ve historically looked to trends or magazines to tell us what to put in our homes. But now is a different time. It’s time to consider our home as our personal place of refuge, and how…

On most mornings, Somaya Farooqi and four other teen-age girls pile into her dad’s car and head to a mechanic’s workshop. They use back roads to skirt police checkpoints set up to enforce a lockdown in their city of Herat, one of Afghanistan’s hot spots of the coronavirus pandemic. The members of Afghanistan’s prize-winning girls’ robotics team say they’re on a life-saving mission — to build a ventilator from used car parts and help their war-stricken country battle the virus. “If we even save one life with our device, we will be proud,” said Farooqi, 17. Their pursuit of a low-cost breathing machine is particularly remarkable in conservative Afghanistan. Only a generation ago, during the rule of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban in the late 1990s, girls weren’t allowed to go…

More than 4.4 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week as job cuts escalated across an economy that remains all but shut down, the government said Thursday. Roughly 26 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the five weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors. About one in six American workers have lost their jobs in the past five weeks, by far the worst string of layoffs on record. That’s more than the number of people who live in the 10 largest U.S. cities combined. Economists have forecast that the unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20%. The enormous magnitude of job cuts has plunged the U.S. economy into the worst economic crisis since the…

While celebrities and billionaires have announced huge gifts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, many charities and nonprofits are still struggling. Donations to some churches have plummeted, and many charities have had to cancel crucial fundraising events such as galas, bike races and walkathons. There’s plenty of big-time philanthropy: Nine-figure gifts for coronavirus relief efforts — including food banks and medical research — were recently announced by billionaires Jeff Bezos, George Soros and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Nonetheless, nonprofits are facing hard times amid prolonged lockdowns and a floundering economy. “The arts and culture sectors are in trouble because they can’t earn revenue from performances and exhibitions,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “Colleges and universities are worried — are people still going to see them…

As the spread of the coronavirus eases and people gradually return to work pondering the impact it might have on their jobs, Europe’s second-biggest port is getting ready to test a device aimed at helping thousands of people employed there to respect social distancing. At Antwerp in Belgium, where some 900 companies operate in an area the size of a small town, two teams of port workers will be wearing next month a bracelet originally designed to find tugboat crew members that have fallen overboard but now modified to help stop the spread of the disease. Until a vaccine is found, respecting Europe’s recommended safe distance of 1.5 meters (around five feet), regular hand-washing and the use of masks remain the best methods to defend against any new virus outbreak.…

Ever since the launch of the original iPhone SE in 2016, consumers have been begging for another affordable smartphone from Apple. After four years, the company quietly announced a second-generation SE that packs its punch with high-end features and a price tag that everyone can get behind. This week, we go hands-on and explore the new device in detail. CHANGING TIDES FOR APPLE Though the iPhone SE 2 had been widely rumored for several months, its launch came as a welcome surprise in the middle of a global pandemic. With millions around the world filing for unemployment due to the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on the economy, Apple could not have picked a better time to launch a device that’s budget-friendly and powerful enough to handle both everyday tasks…

During the first week that her San Diego public school was shuttered to slow the spread of the coronavirus, not one of Elise Samaniego’s students logged on to her virtual classroom. Three weeks in, the teacher still hadn’t connected online with roughly two-thirds of the students in her third- and fourth-grade combo class at Paradise Hills Elementary. She fears the pandemic will exact a devastating toll on education in the United States, especially at low-income schools like hers. “I do have several students below grade level, and this is just going to make it worse,” said Samaniego, who has been emailing and calling families to get her 22 students to participate. Teachers across the country report their attempts at distance learning are failing to reach large numbers of students. Hundreds…

This year’s San Diego Comic-Con has been canceled due to coronavirus-related restrictions around large gatherings. Organizers say they are planning for the festival to return in July 2021. The annual confab was scheduled to take place from July 23 through July 26 in and around the San Diego Convention Center. California Governor Gavin Newsom said that he was not optimistic about a return of “mass gatherings” for things such as sports events, concerts and fairs in 2020. “Continuous monitoring of health advisories and recent statements by the Governor of California have made it clear that it would not be safe to move forward with plans for this year,” organizers said in a statement. Comic-Con attracts over 135,000 people — often elaborately costumed — to the Gaslamp District every year for…

Warner Bros. is delaying a batch of theatrical releases including “The Batman” and “The Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark.” The studio says that “The Sopranos” film will be pushed from September 2020 to a March 2021 release, while “The Batman” starring Robert Pattinson will be delayed four months to October 2021. Many studios have shuffled release dates due to both shuttered productions and the closure of movie theaters to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. This year also lost the Will Smith drama “King Richard,” which has been moved back a year to November 2021, and a biographical drama about Black Panthers activist Fred Hampton set for August which now has no release date. Baz Luhrmann’s yet-to-be-titled Elvis film that Tom Hanks was shooting in Australia when he…

Global digital platforms Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for news content in Australia, the government said this week, as the coronavirus pandemic causes a collapse in advertising revenue. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would release in late July draft rules for the platforms to pay fair compensation for the journalistic content siphoned from news media. Frydenberg said he believed that Australia could succeed where other countries, including France and Spain, had failed in making Google and Facebook pay. “We won’t bow to their threats,” Frydenberg told reporters. “We understand the challenge that we face. This is a big mountain to climb. These are big companies that we are dealing with, but there is also so much at stake, so we’re prepared for…

Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters, where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Industry leaders and government officials say they’re determined to prevent a repeat of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. It spilled 134 million gallons of oil that fouled beaches from Louisiana to Florida, killed hundreds of thousands of marine animals and devastated the region’s tourist economy. Yet safety rules adopted in the spill’s aftermath have been eased as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to boost U.S. oil production. And government data reviewed by The Associated Press shows the number of safety inspection visits has declined in recent years, although officials…

A once-bustling bar and grill tucked below a Michigan Avenue overpass famously inspired a “Saturday Night Live” skit starring John Belushi and Bill Murray. But the money the Billy Goat Tavern is losing during the coronavirus outbreak is no joke. The tavern and millions of other shuttered businesses nationwide have turned to their insurers to help recoup their losses following state-mandate closures, which combined may exceed $300 billion a month. But insurers have widely rejected the claims, so the Billy Goat joined a growing line of businesses, including barbershops and casinos, suing insurers to force them to pay. “These businesses are in the most trying times in their history and are going to their insurance company to get what they paid for,” said Chris Esbrook, a lawyer for the landmark…

The new coronavirus is devastating lives, health care systems and economies, and European Union leaders must work together, using every lever at their disposal, to rebuild and restore public faith in the EU project, the head of the bloc’s parliament warned. Speaking to reporters after giving a speech to the bloc’s 27 leaders at the start of their video-conference summit, European Parliament President David Sassoli said “we are extremely concerned because we can see a downward spiral, and we are going to need every instrument available.” Referring to the massive U.S. aid package in 1948 that helped Europe rebuild after World War II, Sassoli said that “we’ve all called for this new Marshall Plan for Europe, but with a major difference of course. The funds will not be coming from…

Netflix picked up nearly 16 million global subscribers during the first three months of the year, helping cement its status as one of the world’s most essential services in times of isolation or crisis. The quarter spanned the beginning of stay-at-home orders in the U.S. and around the world, a response to the coronavirus pandemic that apparently led millions to latch onto Netflix for entertainment and comfort when most had nowhere to be but home. Netflix more than doubled the quarterly growth it predicted in January, well before the COVID-19 outbreak began to shut down many major economies. It was the biggest three-month gain in the 13-year history of Netflix’s streaming service. The numbers — released this week as part of Netflix’s first-quarter earnings report — support a growing belief…

The NFL’s practice draft this week to test technology and communications for the real thing beginning Thursday night had no major hangups. There were some technical glitches at the outset, when the Cincinnati Bengals were making the first selection, and at various spots, several people involved in the virtual test told The Associated Press. A few of them spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Indeed, Commissioner Roger Goodell earlier this month warned team executives not to be critical of the process, nor of the league’s decision to go ahead with the draft as scheduled April 23-25. But general managers John Lynch of the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers and John Elway of the Denver Broncos were satisfied with the proceedings. “I think we used it as…

Frustration is mounting as more families across the U.S. enter their second or even third week of distance learning — and some overwhelmed parents say it will be their last. Amid the barrage of learning apps, video meet-ups and e-mailed assignments that pass as pandemic home school, some frustrated and exhausted parents are choosing to disconnect entirely for the rest of the academic year. Others are cramming all their children’s school work into the weekend or taking days off work to help their kids with a week’s worth of assignments in one day. “We tried to make it work the first week. We put together a schedule, and what we found is that forcing a child who is that young into a fake teaching situation is really, really hard,” said…

Attorney General Maura Healey has announced that one of the largest consumer credit reporting agencies in the country, Equifax, has agreed to pay $18.2 million after a massive data breach in 2017 that compromised the personal information of nearly three million Massachusetts residents. Healey, a Democrat, said that a consent judgment approved by a Suffolk Superior Court judge on April 13 resolves the 2017 suit alleging Equifax failed to patch a known vulnerability in its network, allowing hackers to infiltrate its systems and gain access to the sensitive personal information of least 147 million consumers nationwide. According to the AG’s complaint, unauthorized third parties infiltrated Equifax’s computer system through its website for months without the company detecting them and stole sensitive and personal consumer information. The complaint alleges Equifax lacked…

Volvo and the truck division of Daimler have agreed to set up a joint venture to develop and produce fuel cell systems for heavy vehicles, the Swedish and German companies said Tuesday. The two firms said that they will be equal partners in the new enterprise. Daimler Truck will put all its current fuel cell activities into the joint venture, and the Volvo Group will buy a 50% stake in the venture for around 600 million euros ($652 million). The joint venture will be independent and autonomous, with Daimler Truck and Volvo continuing to compete in all other business areas, the companies said. They hope that joining forces on fuel cells will lower development costs and bring forward the introduction of fuel cells for heavy transport. “In the context of…

Facebook says it plans to invest $5.7 billion in India’s telecom giant Reliance Jio. The investment will give Facebook a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms, the digital technologies and app developing division of Reliance Industries. Reliance Jio has the highest number of customers in the country, and plans to roll out an e-commerce business using WhatsApp. “India is a special country for Facebook,” Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s India head, wrote in an online post highlighting India’s digital transformation as one of the main reasons for the investment. India is one of the world’s fastest growing internet markets, with the number of users forecast to grow to 907 million by 2023, according to a report by Cisco issued in February. The number of new internet users soared after Reliance Industries launched Jio…

An unplanned grand experiment is changing Earth. As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seem more visible at night. People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don’t usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India,…