Innholdsfortegnelse for #628 i Techlife News

Amazon is taking another shot at becoming a regular health care source for customers with the launch of a service centered on virtual care. The e-commerce giant says its Prime customers can now get quick access to a health care provider through a program that costs $9 a month or $99 annually. The announcement this week arrives less than a year after Amazon announced the $3.9 billion acquisition of the membership-based primary care provider One Medical, which has medical offices in more than 20 markets. The company has made a number of attempts to incorporate healthcare into its platform and has started building momentum after some initial setbacks. The company announced in August that it was adding video telemedicine visits in all 50 states to a virtual clinic it launched…

Apple might end up on the hook after all for billions of euros in back taxes to Ireland in the latest twist in a longrunning European Union dispute, following a legal opinion Thursday from an adviser to the bloc’s top court. A lower court’s decision that the U.S. tech giant doesn’t have to repay the 13 billion euros ($13.9 billion) in taxes “should be set aside,” Advocate General Giovanni Pitruzzella told the European Court of Justice, according to a press release summarizing his opinion. The case drew outrage from Apple when it was opened in 2016, with CEO Tim Cook calling it “total political crap.” Then-U.S. President Donald Trump slammed European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who spearheaded the campaign to root out special tax deals and crack down on big U.S.…

With a decade-long legacy of innovation, the iPad has become synonymous with the very concept of a tablet. However, according to Bloomberg, 2024 could serve as a significant upgrade cycle, with an overhaul that could redefine the iPad experience once more. A RENAISSANCE FOR THE IPAD In a technology landscape that moves at breakneck speed, a year without a new iPad release could be seen as stagnation. Indeed, it’s virtually unheard of for Apple not to upgrade the iPad, with the devices often forming part of the company’s usual November event. However, Apple’s plan to revamp the entire iPad range in 2024 suggests a strategic retooling rather than a lack of innovation. The lineup, including the flagship iPad Pro, the versatile iPad Air, the compact iPad mini, and the entry-level…

The conviction of former cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried for stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors is the latest black mark for the cryptocurrency industry, but in Washington, there seems to be little to no interest in pushing through regulation. When cryptocurrencies collapsed and a number of companies failed last year, Congress considered multiple approaches for how to regulate the industry in the future. However, most of those efforts have gone nowhere, especially in this chaotic year that has been dominated by geopolitical tensions, inflation and the upcoming 2024 election. Ironically, the failure of Bankman-Fried’s FTX and his subsequent arrest late last year may have contributed to the momentum for regulation stalling out. Before FTX imploded, Bankman-Fried spent millions of dollars — illegally taken from his customers it…

As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy. Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years, driven by for-profit clinics and telehealth services offering the medication as a treatment for pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions. The generic drug can be purchased cheaply and prescribed by most physicians and some nurses, regardless of their training. With limited research on its effectiveness against pain, some experts worry the U.S. may be repeating mistakes that gave rise to the opioid crisis: overprescribing a questionable drug that carries significant safety and abuse risks. “There’s a paucity of options for pain and so there’s a tendency to just grab the next…

Chinese President Xi Jinping said this week that potential risks associated with artificial intelligence are challenges that countries should deal with together, remarks that come against the backdrop of China’s rigid control of free speech on the internet. At the same time, China has also maximized the internet’s economic benefits and social media’s propaganda contributions to the ruling Communist Party’s authoritarian agenda. Xi’s prerecorded speech was broadcast at the opening of the World Internet Conference Summit in the eastern city of Wuzhen. He called for common security in cyberspace instead of confrontation. He said China would work with other countries to address risks brought by the development of AI and expressed his objections to “cyberspace hegemony.” China is ready to “promote the safe development of AI,” he said, with the…

Missed your favorite actors? After nearly four months of striking, they’re coming back. Wednesday’s deal between striking actors and studios and streaming services won’t immediately restore filming to its full swing. That will take months. But the tentative agreement — which both sides say include extraordinary provisions — means that more than six months of labor strife in the film and television industries is drawing to a close. Soon, tens of thousands of entertainment sector workers could get back to work. And popular franchises, like “Deadpool,”“Abbott Elementary” and “The Last of Us,” will be a step closer to returning to screens. Hollywood loves a happy ending. The actors strike might provide that, though there’s still the chance of strike sequels in the months ahead. Here’s some of what will happen…

Building a robot that’s both human-like and useful is a decades-old engineering dream inspired by popular science fiction. While the latest artificial intelligence craze has sparked another wave of investments in the quest to build a humanoid, most of the current prototypes are clumsy and impractical, looking better in staged performances than in real life. That hasn’t stopped a handful of startups from keeping at it. “The intention is not to start from the beginning and say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make a robot look like a person,’” said Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. “We’re trying to make robots that can operate in human spaces.” Do we even need humanoids? Hurst makes a point of describing Agility’s warehouse robot Digit as human-centric, not humanoid, a…

On the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, a former engineering director at the social media giant who had rejoined the company as a consultant sent an alarming email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic. Arturo Béjar, known for his expertise on curbing online harassment, recounted to Zuckerberg his own daughter’s troubling experiences with Instagram. But he said his concerns and warnings went unheeded. And on Tuesday, it was Béjar’s turn to testify to Congress. “I appear before you today as a dad with firsthand experience of a child who received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram,” he told a panel of U.S. senators. Béjar worked as an engineering director at…

Electric vehicle maker Rivian said this week that it will allow other companies to purchase its fleet of delivery vans, ending an exclusive agreement with Amazon. In an announcement made alongside its third quarter earnings, the Irvine, California-based car maker said the decision provides other companies more opportunity to electrify their delivery fleets and reduce carbon emissions. The agreement with Amazon, made in 2019, included provisions that barred Rivian from selling commercial vans to other customers and provided Amazon exclusive access to the vans for four years from when it began receiving the EVs. Rivian reiterated its pledge to help Amazon put 100,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Amazon says it’s rolled out more than 10,000 so far. More sales of Rivian vans also helps Amazon, which owns…

Airbnb will highlight rental listings that have received top scores from guests, information that the company’s CEO says will help bring hotel-like reliability to booking a house or room on the site. Airbnb said that it will roll out what it calls “Guest Favorites” this week. About 2 million of the site’s 7 million listings will get the label. It is unclear how hosts who don’t get the favored badge will react — they could lose bookings, or they might have to cut prices to compete. CEO Brian Chesky said he expects favorites to charge more than other listings. Chesky acknowledges that the variety of properties on Airbnb creates uncertainty among renters. He said the unpredictability of listings is the biggest reason why someone would choose a hotel room over…

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested Thursday that the Fed is in no hurry to further raise its benchmark interest rate, given evidence that inflation pressures are continuing to ease at a gradual pace. At the same time, in a panel discussion at the International Monetary Fund, Powell did not rule out another rate hike to help reduce inflation to the Fed’s 2% target level. Inflation, as measured by the U.S. consumer price index, has sunk from a 9.1% peak last year but is still 3.7%. “We are not confident,” Powell said, that the Fed’s benchmark rate is high enough to steadily reduce inflation to 2%. He added: “We know that ongoing progress toward our 2% goal is not assured. Inflation has given us a few head fakes.” Powell noted,…

Less than a year into its meteoric rise, the company behind ChatGPT unveiled the future it has in mind for its artificial intelligence technology on Monday, launching a new line of chatbot products that can be customized to a variety of tasks. “Eventually, you’ll just ask the computer for what you need and it’ll do all of these tasks for you,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to a cheering crowd of more than 900 software developers and other attendees. It was OpenAI’s inaugural developer conference, embracing a Silicon Valley tradition for technology showcases that Apple helped pioneer decades ago. At the event held in a cavernous former Honda dealership in OpenAI’s hometown of San Francisco, the company unveiled a new version called GPT-4 Turbo that it says is more capable…

Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on its hit video game “The Legend of Zelda,” the Japanese company behind the Super Mario franchise said this week. The film, with financing from Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as its own investment, will be directed by Wes Ball, the American director of the upcoming “Planet of the Apes” film. It’s being co-produced by Nintendo and Arad Productions Inc., which is behind the live-action Spider-Man films and headed by Avi Arad. The move highlights Kyoto-based Nintendo’s strategy to leverage various aspects of its business, including theme parks, merchandising and movies, to boost machine and software sales, and vice versa. That strategy has met success. Its animation film “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” released earlier this year, has raked in more than $1.3…

Facebook and Instagram will require political ads running on their platforms to disclose if they were created using artificial intelligence, their parent company announced on Wednesday. Under the new policy by Meta, labels acknowledging the use of AI will appear on users’ screens when they click on ads. The rule takes effect Jan. 1 and will be applied worldwide. The development of new AI programs has made it easier than ever to quickly generate lifelike audio, images and video. In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to create fake videos of a candidate or frightening images of election fraud or polling place violence. When strapped to the powerful algorithms of social media, these fakes could mislead and confuse voters on a scale never seen. Meta Platforms Inc. and…

WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, marking a stunning fall for the office sharing company once seen as a Wall Street darling that promised to upend the way people went to work around the world. In a late Monday announcement, WeWork said it entered into a restructuring support agreement with the majority of its stakeholders to slash the company’s debt while further evaluating WeWork’s commercial office lease portfolio. This agreement is expected to erase about $3 billion of WeWork’s debt, CEO David Tolley told The Associated Press. WeWork is also requesting the ability to reject leases for some of its locations, which the company says are largely non-operational, as part of the filing. Just over 70 leases will be rejected right at the beginning of the process, according…