Innholdsfortegnelse for #448 i Techlife News

President Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order Thursday aimed at curbing liability protections for social media companies, two days after he lashed out at Twitter for applying fact checks to two of his tweets. Trump had threatened social media companies with new regulation or even shuttering, lambasting the new policy he believed interfered with his political messaging. But he alone can’t do that. His proposed order would direct executive branch agencies including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to study whether they can place new rules on the companies — though experts expressed doubts much could be done without an act of Congress. A similar executive order was previously considered by the administration but shelved over concerns it couldn’t pass legal muster and that…

Tech giant Microsoft plans to start a new software development hub in northern Virginia that state officials say while create 1,500 new jobs. Gov. Ralph Northam’s office announced Wednesday that Microsoft plans to spend $64 million on the new hub, which will be located in Reston Town Center in Fairfax County. The new space will also have retail space for customers to visit and is expected to start housing employees next summer. Microsoft will be eligible for a $22.5 million grant from the state, subject to approval by the General Assembly. Construction of Amazon’s new Virginia headquarters is currently underway. That project is expected to bring in anywhere from 25,000 to 38,000 workers to northern Virginia.…

The outbreak of the coronavirus has dealt a shock to the global economy with unprecedented speed. Following are developments related to the national and global response, the work place and the spread of the virus. IMMOBILIZED Job cuts in the transportation industry have arrived this week by the thousands. The auto industry has suffered a number of setbacks, including interrupted production do to infection. — American Airlines will cut its 17,000 management and support staff by 30%, about 5,100 jobs. Layoffs may begin in October if enough employees do not take buyout offers. Executive Vice President Elise Eberwein said in a memo to employees that nearly 39,000 people have signed up for partially paid leave or early retirement, and the airline has extended a buyout offer to administrative staff. Laid-off…

Even before darker anxieties took hold, the bad guys of “Scooby-Doo” were charmingly quaint. An evil circus owner, a grumpy civil servant, a plotting first mate — these were the villains of “Scooby-Doo,” all of them revealed with an unmasking flourish and the cursing of “you meddling kids.” But for anyone looking for the nostalgic and corny delights of the old 1970s cartoon in the new animated reboot “Scoob!” — well, and I’m sorry to resort to this, ruh roh. “Scoob!” is the kind of movie less predicated on original formulas than the contemporary dictates of corporate franchise-making. Scooby-Doo has been amplified and digitized. Superheroes and current pop culture references have been ushered in, most of them from other properties of the same studio (including even “Shallow” from “A Star…

Vicki L. Friedman always wanted to play golf with her adult sons but until this spring couldn’t find time to learn the game and practice. Shaun Warkentin was looking for a diversion when his young sons tired of jumping on the backyard trampoline and being indoors. He discovered the joy of taking them fishing. Neighborhood and park trails across the country have been getting higher-thanusual use by runners, walkers and bicyclists as people find ways to get fresh air while maintaining social distancing during the coronavirus outbreak. Golf courses are welcoming more beginners and people returning to the game, states have seen robust sales of fishing licenses since the coronavirus hit full force in the U.S. in March and fitness tracking technology has shown a surge in the number of…

Bashar Ali Naim used to work in a perfume and accessories store in Baghdad, earning $480 per week on average. About three months ago, the coronavirus outbreak swept into Iraq, and the 28-year-old father of two has been out of work ever since. “I am suffering a lot without work. I feel like a human with a body but no soul, especially when I look at the kids and wonder: How will I provide for them?” he said. Naim is not alone: The U.N. labor agency reported Wednesday that more than one in every six young workers globally have stopped working during the pandemic, warning that long-term fallout could lead to a “lock-down generation” if steps aren’t taken to ease the crisis. The International Labor Organization, in a new look…

For a preview of the future of office work, watch how the biggest tech companies are preparing for a post-pandemic world. Silicon Valley and Seattle giants — Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter — were the first to send their employees home as the virus spread to the U.S. Now they’re among the last to return them to the office. Some of their employees might never go back. The companies are studying what their highly-paid, highly-valued employees want, using their own technology to make remote work easier and looking to hire new workers outside of big city hubs. It’s a potentially huge turnaround after years in which companies like Amazon and Google chased scarce tech talent by opening or expanding offices in hip urban locations such as San Francisco and New York.…

Between technical glitches and food worries, retail therapy and sheer amnesia, something has happened to shopping during the pandemic that can be summed up thusly: rubber chickens. Melissa Jean Footlick bought some while sheltering at home in San Diego with her husband and three dogs. She’s a kidney transplant patient so she’s been taking extra care. She’s among millions who have helped online retail sales surge as consumer spending fell off rapidly when businesses shut down. “I spent two hours trying to find a Funfetti cake mix and frosting. No reason, I just wanted it. I also got a game where you throw rubber chickens at a target. I misread the description and thought it was like badminton with rubber chickens,” she explained. Said husband and dogs have yet to…

With a loud whir and a whoosh, a fixed-wing drone slingshots out of a medical warehouse, zips through hazy skies at 80 mph, pops open a belly hatch and drops a box of medical supplies. Slowed by a little parachute, the box drifts downward and lands with a plop, less than 8 minutes after launch. For North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Basil Yap, it is a eureka moment. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deadly consequences of fractured medical supply chains. Drones, said Yap, may be part of the solution. Proponents say they eliminate the need for delivery trucks and avoid human contact. For more than a year, North Carolina — where modern aviation was born, at Kitty Hawk — has been the site of tests of drone deliveries, in…

The White House will not release its official midyear economic update this summer, declining to put its stamp on data documenting the plunge into recession during the coronavirus pandemic and avoiding going on record with a prediction about the economy’s future. Updated information about the budget picture will come out as planned, a senior Trump administration official said Thursday. A significant decline in tax receipts as well as outlays from almost $3 trillion in coronavirusrelated aid bills are sure to produce a multitrillion-dollar government deficit for the budget year ending Sept. 30. But the White House maintains that the underlying economic data would be too uncertain to convey a meaningful picture about the recovery, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly before an official…

CVS Health will try delivering prescriptions with self-driving vehicles in a test that begins next month. The drugstore chain said Thursday that it will partner with the Silicon Valley robotics company Nuro to deliver medicines and other products to customers near a Houston-area store. A CVS spokesman said the prescriptions will routinely be delivered within an hour of being ordered. Customers will have to confirm their identity in order to unlock their delivery after the vehicle arrives. Nuro has previously started partnerships to test the delivery of pizzas for Domino’s or groceries for Kroger, also in the Houston area. This is the company’s first venture into health care. Drugstores like CVS and rival Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. have been expanding home and office delivery services for a few years now…

U.S. orders for big-ticket factory goods plunged for the second straight month in April as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the economy. The Commerce Department said Thursday that orders for durable goods dropped 17.2% last month after falling 16.6% in March. Excluding orders for transportation equipment, which can be volatile from month to month, durable goods orders fell 7.4%. New orders for cars, trucks and auto parts shrank 52.8%. A category that tracks business investment — orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — decreased 5.8% after falling 1.1% in March. The lockdowns, travel restrictions and social distancing measures meant to contain COVID-19 have brought economic activity to a near standstill across the United States. Still, last month’s decline in durable goods orders was slightly less than economists had expected. Separately…

It’s been eight months since the launch of Apple Arcade, the company’s gaming subscription service, and though its initial reception was mixed, there’s no denying that the Cupertino firm has reinvented the way we play games on our iPhones, Macs, and Apple TVs. But now with more than 100 premium gaming titles to choose from, deciding what to play can be tough. CHANGING THE WAY WE PLAY Last year, Apple went all-in on subscriptions. As well as announcing its revolutionary Apple Card and the long-awaited Apple TV+, Tim Cook and co also lifted the lid on Apple News+ - a new way to access content from your favorite publishers - and a wildcard: Apple Arcade. There’s no denying that Apple has revolutionized the gaming industry, contributing towards the mobile gaming…

During lockdown, have you taken a moment to appreciate that at least you’re not quarantined with eight free-thinking adventurers in a terrarium of depleting oxygen levels? Matt Wolf’s documentary “Spaceship Earth” provides some illuminating context to our shut-in days by going back to the early 1990s to study the Biosphere II, that quixotic endeavor in the Arizona desert in which eight men and women sealed themselves off in a 3-acre complex. The whole affair, of dubious scientific benefit but high public interest, had the look and feel of science fiction, right down to the “Star Trek”- like jumpsuits and the Buckminster Fuller-inspired architecture. The goal of Biosphere II (Earth they considered the first Biosphere) was to create a self-sustaining colony that could be replicated on other planets and prepare this…

Have you been missing something amid the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders? No, not human contact. Not even toilet paper. Robocalls. Industry experts say robocalls are way down — scam calls as well as nagging from your credit-card company to pay your bill. The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted millions of job losses, and scammers have not been immune. YouMail, which offers a robocall-blocking service, says 2.9 billion robocalls were placed in April in the U.S., down from 4.1 billion in March and 4.8 billion in February. That’s a daily average of 97 million calls in April, down from 132 million in March and 166 million in April. The main reason: many global call centers have closed or are operating with fewer workers, said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. While it may be…

It all started with the dream of growing a rose on Mars. That vision, Elon Musk’s vision, morphed into a shake-up of the old space industry, and a fleet of new private rockets. Now, those rockets will launch NASA astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station -- the first time a for-profit company will carry astronauts into the cosmos. It’s a milestone in the effort to commercialize space. But for Musk’s company, SpaceX, it’s also the latest milestone in a wild ride that began with epic failures and the threat of bankruptcy. If the company’s eccentric founder and CEO has his way, this is just the beginning: He’s planning to build a city on the red planet, and live there. “What I really want to achieve here is to…

U.S. consumer confidence inched up this month, showing signs of stabilizing, but remained near a six-year low in the face of the widespread business shutdowns that have sent the economy into recession. The Conference Board said that its confidence index ticked up to a reading of 86.6 in May from 85.7 in April. The index, which reflects consumers’ assessments of present conditions and expectations about the future, had plummeted in the previous two months. The index had reached 130.7 in February before tumbling about 12 points in March and by more than 20 in April. The coronavirus pandemic has forced businesses across the country to close, stifling consumer spending, which drives about 70% of all economic activity in the the United States. Optimism about the economy in general has improved…

France’s government is injecting more than 8 billion euros ($8.8 billion) to save the country’s car industry from huge losses wrought by virus lockdowns, and wants to use the crisis to make France the No. 1 producer of electric vehicles in Europe. Starting next week, consumers can get up to 12,000 euros from the government for buying an electric car under the “historic” plan unveiled by French President Emmanuel Macron. “Our country wouldn’t be the same without its great brands – Renault, Peugeot, Citroen,” Macron said, decrying an “unprecedented crisis” for the industry that has seen production plunge more than 90% in France alone. Carmakers and governments around the world are grappling with similar losses. Politicians are divided over whether and how to bail out an industry that already won…

Google kept tabs on the whereabouts of its users even if they had turned off location tracking, an Arizona official alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The suit filed by Attorney General Mark Brnovich stemmed from an investigation that began after The Associated Press reported on Google’s location tracking in 2018. The suit alleges Google violated the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act and it seeks to claw back profits from the tracking. “Every company has a responsibility to be truthful to consumers,” Brnovich said. “You cant deceive them, you can’t make misrepresentations.” A Google spokesman said Brnovich and the “contingency fee lawyers” who brought the case have mischaracterized the company’s services. “We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data,” the spokesman, Jose Castaneda,…

Dining at a table where each person is enclosed by a clear plastic shield might look and sound futuristic, but it could be one way for some restaurants to reopen. It also might help out if your companion orders escargots, heavy on the garlic. The prototype plastic shields are known as the “Plex’eat,” and they resemble big clear lampshades suspended from the ceiling. They are being showcased temporarily at H.A.N.D., a Parisian restaurant seeking a way to reopen its dining room as coronavirus restrictions are relaxed. As restaurateurs around the world seek to resume in-person dining amid the pandemic, they want to adhere to social distancing rules while also trying to serve as many customers as health and safety measures will allow. Some are putting mannequins at every other table…

In the beginning, in the “Star Trek” universe, there was only Captain Kirk. At least to the general public. When the Starship Enterprise first whooshed across American television screens on Sept. 8, 1966, William Shatner’s James T. Kirk was the smart leader sitting in the captain’s chair. He was stouthearted, eloquent, curious, fair. Kennedylike, even. He was a principled explorer committed to spreading New Frontier values to the 23rd-century stars. And yet: Kirk could also be something of an interstellar Don Draper — brooding, arrogant, a top-down manager who earned his privilege but also often presumed it. Despite being progressive for his era, he could be condescending to anyone but his top righthand men — and sometimes creepily appreciative of the women he encountered. But Kirk had actually been preceded…

Is a pandemic the perfect time to launch a new and relatively expensive streaming service? AT&T sure hopes so. The phone company is investing billions in HBO Max, its first big entertainment venture since it spent $85 billion for Time Warner in 2018. The good news for its timing: millions are stuck at home, watching more video than ever. The bad news: many of them also out of work and carefully watching their incomes. The service launches Wednesday in the U.S. “People are going to look at the price point first,” said Steve Nason, research director at Parks Associates. HBO Max costs $15, same as the HBO Now streaming service it’s supposed to replace, with discounts after the launch limited to some AT&T customers as well as a one-week free…

Walt Disney World is presenting its plans for reopening after being shuttered along with Florida’s other theme parks since mid-March because of the new coronavirus. Disney World and SeaWorld Orlando will present their proposals for phased reopenings before an Orange County task force on Wednesday, said Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings. If Demings signs off on them, the plans will be sent to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for approval. With 77,000 workers, Disney World is central Florida’s biggest employer. Last week, Disney World allowed third-party businesses at its Disney Springs dining and shopping complex to open with new restrictions. All workers and visitors older than 2 at Disney Springs must wear masks, temperatures are checked at entrances to keep out anyone with a temperature 100.4 degrees (38 degrees Celsius) or…

Joel Johnson hadn’t owned a bicycle since he was 15, but the pandemic changed all that. Johnson first bought a multipurpose bike to avoid the germs on crowded buses and trains but then discovered a passion for pedaling around San Francisco, where some streets are now closed to traffic. He has been taking regular morning rides to stay fit and weekend excursions in leafy Golden Gate Park or along the Pacific Ocean. He has since upgraded to a new road bike. “It’s addictive,” he said. Johnson, 25, is among thousands of cooped-up Americans snapping up new bicycles or dusting off decades-old bikes to stay fit, keep their sanity or have a safe alternative to public transportation. The pandemic is proving to be a boon for bike shops, which have seen…

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit failed Monday in its first test launch of a new rocket carried aloft by a Boeing 747 and released over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. The inaugural launch had appeared to be going well until moments after the rocket was dropped from beneath the left wing of the jumbo jet dubbed Cosmic Girl. “We’ve confirmed a clean release from the aircraft. However, the mission terminated shortly into the flight. Cosmic Girl and our flight crew are safe and returning to base,”Virgin Orbit said in its official Twitter commentary on the launch. There was no immediate word on what went wrong with the rocket, which carried a test satellite. Will Pomerantz, Virgin Orbit’s vice president for special projects, commented during a preflight briefing…

With sports around the world shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, the World Anti-Doping Agency is looking to artificial intelligence as a new way to detect athletes who cheat. WADA is funding four projects in Canada and Germany, looking at whether AI could spot signs of drug use which might elude even experienced human investigators. It’s also grappling with the ethical issues around the technology. Athletes won’t be suspended solely on the word of a machine. Instead, AI is a tool to flag up suspect athletes and make sure they get tested. “When you are working for an anti-doping organization and you want to target some athletes, you look at their competition calendar and you look at their whereabouts, you look at the previous results and so forth,” WADA senior…

A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles. Judge Brian Morris said the Interior Department did not do enough to encourage development outside of areas with greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird whose numbers have dropped dramatically in recent decades. The judge canceled energy leases on more than 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of public land in Montana and Wyoming. That means officials will have to return millions of dollars in sales proceeds to companies that purchased the leases. The leases at issue already had been invalidated in previous cases that went through other…