Innholdsfortegnelse for #497 i Techlife News

Google says it expects about 20% of its workforce to still work remotely after its offices reopen this fall, while some 60% will work a hybrid schedule that includes about three days in the office and two days “wherever they work best.” The remaining 20% can change their location to a different Google office. The policy announced Wednesday relaxes the company’s stricter earlier stance. “The future of work is flexibility,” CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in an email to employees that was also posted on Google’s website. “The changes above are a starting point to help us do our very best work and have fun doing it.” Most of Google’s 135,000 employees can continue to work from home through September of this year. For up to 20 days per year, Google…

About 8% of New York’s public school students did not have a laptop or other device to use for remote learning in the first months of the school year, and about 6% lacked adequate internet access, survey results released Wednesday show. Preliminary results from the state Education Department’s fall Digital Equity Survey showed the greatest deficiencies in higher needs urban and suburban schools. The report also revealed the level of need in city districts that, as the pandemic closed schools, rushed to obtain wireless hot spots and strike deals with cable companies to provide internet to students without access at home. After Syracuse schools supplied internet to 8% of students, nearly 1 in 4 students remained without adequate service at the time the survey was conducted, between October 2020 and…

Microsoft is pledging to let business and public sector customers in the European Union keep cloud computing data inside the 27-nation bloc to avert concerns about U.S. government access to sensitive information. Microsoft “will go beyond our existing data storage commitments and enable you to process and store all your data in the EU,” said Brad Smith, the U.S. technology giant’s president. “In other words, we will not need to move your data outside the EU,” Smith wrote in a blog post. Microsoft is responding to customers that want stronger commitments on so-called data residency, Smith said. The updates will apply to the company’s core cloud services including Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. Transatlantic data protection has been a growing concern since the European Union’s top court struck down…

Big Tech stocks are flexing their enormous strength again, after getting knocked around a bit earlier this year. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google’s parent company and Facebook all gave profit reports last week that blew past investors’ already high expectations. Apple earned 40% more than what Wall Street forecast, for example, leading one analyst to call it a “drop the mic” performance. The blowout reports are forcing the spotlight back onto this group of stocks that dominate the market like no fivesome ever has before, especially after they lagged behind earlier this year. Shares of each of the Big Five companies jumped between 7% and 16.5% in April, easily beating the S&P 500’s 5.2% rise over the month. The financial results give some validation to investors who bid up the stocks…

AOL and Yahoo are being sold again, this time to a private equity firm. Wireless company Verizon will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the once-pioneering tech platforms, to Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal. Verizon said Monday that it will keep a 10% stake in the new company, which will be called Yahoo. Yahoo at the end of the last century was the face of the internet, preceding the behemoth tech platforms to follow, such as Google and Facebook. And AOL was the portal, bringing almost everyone who logged on during the internet’s earliest days. Verizon spent about $9 billion buying AOL and Yahoo over two years starting in 2015, hoping to jump-start a digital media business that would compete with Google and Facebook. It didn’t work…

Former President Donald Trump will find out whether he gets to return to Facebook this week, when the social network’s quasi-independent Oversight Board plans to announce its ruling in the high-profile case. The decision likely to stir up strong feelings no matter which way it goes. If the board rules in Trump’s favor, Facebook has seven days to reinstate his account. If it upholds Facebook’s decision, Trump will remain “indefinitely suspended.”That means he’ll remain banned from the platform for as long as Facebook sees fit. Here’s how the process works and what might happen after the announcement. WHY DID TRUMP GET SUSPENDED? Trump’s Facebook account was suspended for inciting violence that led to the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots. After years of treating Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric with a light touch,…

Mister Rogers’ neighborhood is expanding. In rare welcome news of sprawl, PBS Kids is releasing a new puppet-led series called “Donkey Hodie,” inspired from characters in the original Fred Rogers TV show. “Every part of it seems to be infused with joy and heart and humor,” says Adam Rudman, who co-created and co-produced the show with his brother, David. “And I think that’s something that Fred Rogers would appreciate.” The whimsical series for children ages 3-5 starts airing Monday and centers on the adventures of Donkey Hodie, an enthusiastic yellow donkey with a bright magenta mane. She’s the granddaughter of the donkey puppet Rogers created back when TV shows were in black and white. “This is a show about a little donkey with big dreams. It’s about persistence, it’s about…

NASCAR’s next generation race car is finally here after two years of hype and hope that it will revolutionize the stock car series. How can a spec car radically change a sport? Competition. Cost containment. Manufacturer relevance. The Next Gen car, first proposed in 2018 and originally slated to debut this season until the pandemic delayed it until 2022, is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between NASCAR and its partners with everyone focused on the future. All parties had to work toward creating a car that served the entire industry. “I think the world is just going to look a lot different at NASCAR once you get to the Next Gen car,” NASCAR President Steve Phelps said. “The dynamics are going to change so significantly. There are many things that Next Gen…

The United States set another record for the number of air travelers since the pandemic set in, although passenger numbers remain far below 2019 levels. More than 1.6 million people were screened at U.S. airport checkpoints last Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration. That was the highest number screened since March 12 of last year when air travel began to plummet. However, it was still 35% below the number of airport travelers reported on the comparable Sunday in 2019, according to TSA figures. Airlines started to see an increase in bookings around mid-February, and the TSA has screened at least 1 million people every day since March 11. Vacation destinations have been most popular — business travel, which is more profitable for airlines, remains drastically reduced. Government restrictions are…

Uber saw record demand in the first quarter as its food delivery business grew and ride-hailing began to see some recovery. The San Francisco-based company said Wednesday that its bookings jumped 24% to $19.5 billion __ an all-time high __ in the January-March period. That was far ahead of the $18 billion Wall Street was anticipating, according to analysts polled by FactSet. Uber said its delivery bookings rose 166% from the same period last year. Mobility __ or ride-hailing __ bookings were down 38%, and flat compared to the fourth quarter. But ride-hailing demand improved throughout the quarter, and by March ride-hailing demand had reached its highest level in a year, the company said. Uber said ride-hailing demand improved further in April as the pace of vaccinations increased in the…

When the pandemic passed the one-year mark, Lisa Phillips wasn’t exactly eager to walk down memory lane. She had developed symptoms and quarantined with a suspected case of COVID-19 last spring, lost her mother to the disease in July and been hospitalized in November from what she describes as a nervous breakdown fueled by grief and isolation. But Phillips also wasn’t ready to delete the apps that provide those reminders that showed her each day what she’d shared on social media just a year earlier. That pain, she says, shouldn’t be forgotten. So she still wanted to save the memories — but for later. As we navigate these weeks that are unspooling a year after March, April and May 2020, memories from earlier in the COVID-19 crisis are popping up…

European Union leaders said that in the wake of the U.S. backing patent waivers for COVID-19 vaccine technology, the 27-nation bloc immediately will start discussing whether they should join such a move. The leaders’ first opportunity to mold a common view will come as soon as a two-day summit in Porto, Portugal, that starts Friday. While many insist that waiving patents would only go part way toward making vaccines available and likely in the midterm only, French President Emmanuel Macron said he “completely” supports opening up intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines as “a global public good.” At the same time, Macron insisted that the immediate priority for wealthier countries should be first donating more vaccine doses to poorer countries. EU nations have long insisted they were in the vanguard…

Two years after they were first rumored, Apple finally lifted the lid on its tracking device AirTag at its Spring Loaded event in April, designed to help consumers keep track of items that matter most. Combined with significant enhancements to the Find My app, including support for third-party accessories, there’s no excuse to lose personal belongings again. INTRODUCING AIRTAG Although the stunning new iMac and M1-powered iPad Pro were the stars of the show at this year’s Spring Loaded event, held virtually in April to introduce products ahead of WWDC in June , Apple had another surprise up its sleeve: an introduction to the highly-anticipated AirTag product, which was first revealed in iOS 13 beta code back in 2019 . The new device, which retails for just $29 in the…

Magazine publisher and multimedia company Meredith Corp. said this week it will sell its Local Media Group consisting of 17 television stations to Gray Television Inc. for $2.7 billion in cash and will focus on expanding its print and digital magazines business. The Des Moines, Iowa-based company publishes more than 20 magazines including People and Better Homes & Gardens in both print and digital versions. The company’s magazine and digital division will become a stand-alone publicly traded company retaining the Meredith Corp. name and New York Stock Exchange trading ticker symbol MDP. The company will remain headquartered in Iowa and will organize under digital and magazine segments for financial reporting purposes. The senior executive team will remain in place, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tom Harty said. “This transaction will…

Easily the most heartfelt movie about family life that also includes a robot apocalypse and a pug often mistaken for a loaf of bread, “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” is an antic, irreverent animated delight that somehow doesn’t sacrifice depth even as it hurtles forward at breakneck comic speed. Director Mike Rianda’s film, produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, shares much of the DNA of Lord and Miller’s other cartoon adventures (“The Lego Movie,”“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) in its ability to remake movie cliches with madcap irreverence, youthful zeal and a contemporariness that often eludes less freewheeling films. “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” which debuts Friday on Netflix (after originally being set for theatrical release from Sony Pictures), manages to spin through a sincere father-daughter relationship, our technology addictions,…

What’s your relationship with money? Maybe your personal finances are like a distant cousin you barely think about — or an unsettling stranger you avoid. Or perhaps money feels like your enemy, frustrating you and rarely doing what you want. In fact, 31% of Americans said they feel anxious when thinking about the current state of their personal finances, according to a NerdWallet survey last year. That sounds exhausting. What if you thought of money as your friend instead? A more positive relationship can help you feel more confident and empowered to make the most of your money. Addie McHale , a Denver-based certified financial planner, gives the following tips for befriending your money. “These are things you can start to do today,” she says. “You don’t even have to…

Sixty years after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, everyday people are on the verge of following in his cosmic footsteps. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company used Wednesday’s anniversary to announce an auction for a seat on the company’s first crew spaceflight, launched by a rocket named New Shepard. The Texas liftoff is targeted for July 20 — the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic aims to kick off tourist flights next year, just as soon as he straps into his space-skimming, plane-launched rocketship for a test run from the New Mexico base. And Elon Musk’s SpaceX will launch a billionaire and his sweepstakes winners in September. That will be followed by a flight by three businessmen to the International Space Station in…

Chinese tech giant Baidu rolled out its paid driverless taxi service last Sunday, making it the first company to commercialize autonomous driving operations in China. Unlike previous Baidu autonomous driving demonstrations in Beijing, this was the first time there was no safety driver sitting behind the wheel. Instead, a safety member was seated in the front passenger seat to deal with any emergencies. Up to 10 Apollo “robotaxis” are now operating simultaneously in an area of about 3 square kilometers (1.2 square miles), picking up and dropping off passengers at eight stops in Shougang Park in western Beijing. Each ride costs 30 yuan ($4.60), and is open to passengers ages 18 to 60. The park is a former site of iron and steel plants that’s been redeveloped into a sightseeing…

Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have used facial recognition technology to solve homicides and bust human traffickers, but concern about its accuracy and the growing pervasiveness of video surveillance is leading some state lawmakers to hit the pause button. At least seven states and nearly two dozen cities have limited government use of the technology amid fears over civil rights violations, racial bias and invasion of privacy. Debate over additional bans, limits and reporting requirements has been underway in about 20 state capitals this legislative session, according to data compiled by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Lawmakers say they want to give themselves time to evaluate how and why the technology is being used. “I think people are just freaked out, and rightfully so, about this technology,” said Freddy…

Nintendo Co.’s profit for the fiscal year that ended in March jumped 86% on healthy sales of its Switch handheld machine as people stayed home due to the pandemic, turning to video games for entertainment. Annual profit for the Japanese maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games totaled a record 480.4 billion yen ($4.4 billion), up from 258.6 billion yen the year before. The results, released this week, were better than the company’s internal profit forecast of 400 billion yen ($3.7 billion). Sales rose 34% to 1.76 trillion yen ($16 billion), the company said. In game software sales, demand remained strong for “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” with 20.85 million units sold for cumulative sales of 32.6 million units. “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” and “Ring Fit Adventure” also were popular. Kyoto-based…

San Francisco has largely beaten the coronavirus pandemic by avoiding it, while Los Angeles was nearly beaten by it during a deadly winter surge. But both emerged simultaneously as the first urban areas in California to reach the least-restrictive tier for businesses to reopen. California’s signature cities met infection and vaccine thresholds to allow indoor bars to welcome people again, larger crowds to cheer on Major League Baseball’s Dodgers and Giants, and expanded capacity at restaurants, movie theaters, amusement parks, gyms and other establishments. It’s a remarkable turnaround for LA considering it was ground zero for infections and deaths when California was the nation’s epicenter of the virus outbreak just a few months ago. “It was horrible,” John Pryor said after one of his few outings at the recently reopened…

Intel will be investing $3.5 billion in its New Mexico plant to manufacture what executives said this week will fuel “a new era of innovation” and advanced computing as demands increase for the tiny microchips used in nearly all modern devices. Intel executives were joined by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other politicians at the plant in the Albuquerque suburb of Rio Rancho as they shared details of Intel’s global strategy as it looks to reclaim the top spot in the semiconductor sector. Multibillion-dollar expansions also are underway at the company’s sites in Arizona, Oregon, Ireland and Israel. Almost every aspect of life today depends on technology, and the demand for more manufacturing and advanced packaging systems for microchips is more critical than ever as more people are working from…

Ford has raised its stake in a manufacturer of solid-state batteries — a move that its chief product and operations officer, Hau Thai-Tang, says will strengthen the company’s effort to increase the range and reduce the costs of its next generation of electric vehicles. Ford, along with BMW, this week announced their investment in a $130 million funding round for Solid Power, a Denver-area company that is developing sulfide solid-state battery technology. Thai-Tang says the technology should give Ford the flexibility to either shrink battery sizes to make it less expensive to manufacture some vehicles or keep the same size battery and achieve a greater range of distance in other models. Solid state batteries, with their solid ion-conducting material instead of the liquid electrolyte found in most lithium-ion batteries, can…

In the new Tom Clancy adaptation, “Without Remorse,” Michael B. Jordan is a Navy SEAL about to trade military life for private security when his pregnant wife (Lauren London) is executed in their Washington D.C. home. It’s part of a calculated ambush: The assassins are picking off the men in his unit because of a mishap in Aleppo where the Americans attacked the Russian military instead of Syrians. They were following orders without knowing the full story and soon the Russians are in the U.S. retaliating. Jordan’s John Kelly was the target, but he happened to be on the couch with noise canceling headphones and not the bed when they broke into his home. It’s somewhat frustrating that movies like this tend to be so similar that it almost ensures…

The WNBA signed a multiyear deal with Google this week to be the presenting partner for the league’s playoffs, part of the technology giant’s efforts to help champion women’s sports. Twenty-five WNBA games will be televised on ABC and ESPN in celebration of the league’s 25th season, with Google as the presenting sponsor. The league will also have 40 games on CBS and CBS Sports Network. The WNBA will also have 12 games streamed on Twitter and 20 on Facebook. Google is the latest business to join the league as a “WNBA Changemaker,” a program that Commissioner Cathy Engelbert started last year. Changemakers are intended to provide direct support to the WNBA in its ongoing business transformation across marketing, branding and player and fan experience. AT&T, Deloitte U.S. and Nike…

Mars missions, astronauts coming and going at the International Space Station, China’s increasingly ambitious space program. Space-related news is flowing, and not just from the world’s richest, biggest nations. Take Latin America. On Feb. 17, the congress in Nicaragua, one of the region’s poorest, most conflict-prone nations, approved a law creating a space agency. Costa Rica, known for relative growth and stability, did the same on Feb. 18, the day that the NASA rover Perseverance landed on Mars to look for signs of ancient life. The potential benefits of space are tantalizing for many countries with scarce resources. Satellite technology, international partnerships, national pride and local development all beckon. Inevitably, critics suspect a boondoggle, a vanity project, a diversion from pressing problems on the ground. “The truth is, the type…

Sprawling wind farms located off the coast. Hydropower transmission lines that cut through some of America’s most beloved forests and rivers. Solar megaprojects of unprecedented size. As President Joe Biden’s administration plans to fight climate change by weaning the nation off fossil fuels, these large-scale renewable energy projects are the source of conflict within a seemingly unlikely group: environmentalists. America’s patchwork of environmental and conservation groups — encompassing players such as public lands advocates, animal welfare proponents and hunting organizations — have disparate opinions about new renewable energy infrastructure and its trade-offs. While all agree on the need for clean power sources, there are deep disputes about the wisdom of projects that will impose their own impact on the environment. Some argue projects like the planned 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind offshore…