Indholdsfortegnelse for #355 i AppleMagazine

MORE GAS FOR THE APPLE CAR It’s one of the worst-kept secrets in Apple history. Despite Tim Cook and co sweeping talk of a self-driving vehicle under the rug, reports suggest that Apple has been working for years on technology to power the next evolution of travel: the Apple Car. Several reports have suggested that Apple’scar project had been shelved , with the firm instead choosing to work on improving Apple Maps and creating software to sell to other manufacturers, but new developments confirm that the company is still in the self-drive car race, bringing Tesla’s chief vehicle engineer intothe mix to work on research and testing . Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on the Apple Car, exploring Apple’s hidden testing sites, weighing up the acquisition of Didi Chuxing,…

CASHING OUT – WHY PHYSICAL MONEY IS IN TERMINAL DECLINE Analysts and financial whizz-kids have been predicting for years that electronic payments will overtake old-fashioned notes and coins but with the rise of Apple Pay, it looks like this will now become a reality. In the UK , e-payments including debit card swipes are set to overtake cash as the most frequently used payment method. In 2006, 62% of all payments in the UK were made with cash. In 2016, that fell to 40%. If current trends continue then the figure could be as low as 21% by 2026. At the same time, the number of times people used ATMs and the amount of cash drawn from them are both falling fast. 2016 saw the lowest number of withdrawals for…

Uber will have to navigate around a new regulatory pothole in New York on an already bumpy road to its initial public offering of stock next year. New York City is imposing a one-year moratorium on new ride-hailing licenses in Uber’s largest U.S. market, raising the specter that other cities may adopt similar crackdowns as they try to ease traffic congestion. If that were to happen, it would be more difficult for Uber to boost its revenue and reverse its history of uninterrupted losses. That, in turn, would affect the price that investors are willing to pay for Uber’s stock in the IPO that the San Francisco company plans to make next year. Uber maintains that New York’s moratorium is a bad idea.…

It took until mid-August, but an original movie is finally no. 1 at the box office. After several months of sequel and franchise reboots leading the weekend box office, the shark thriller “The Meg” swam away with $45.4 million in its debut at North American theaters, according to final figures Monday. The Warner Bros. release might not be the most inventive movie, but audiences have shown an appetite for shark movies in recent years. Starring Jason Statham, “The Meg” far exceeded expectations to topple “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” which slid to second with $19.4 million in its third weekend. Opening in 1,512 theaters, Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” also pulled in a strong $10.8 million for Focus Features. The result is the director’s best debut in more than a decade. 1.“The Meg,”…

Sit at the back of the movie theater, and it’s possible to see the appeal of ScreenX, the latest attempt to drag film lovers off the sofa and away from Netflix. Instead of one screen, there are three - one at the front, and two on the sides - to add to the immersive experience you can’t get from the home TV. First adopted in South Korea in 2012, the system is being launched in the U.K. and theater chain Cineworld plans to add over 100 new screens to the worldwide count of 151. The technology is the latest attempt by cinema operators to attract film viewers amid the growing popularity of online subscription services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. They’ve ranged from 3D screens launched almost a decade ago…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s elaboration on his plan to engineer a buyout of the electric car maker could get the Silicon Valley maverick into legal trouble by revealing that the deal is far more uncertain than how he initially described it in his brash tweet last week. If everything falls into place, Musk plans to buy Tesla from any existing shareholders willing to sell using money raised through Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Until his Monday blog post , Musk hadn’t identified the source for financing a deal that analysts estimate could cost anywhere from $25 billion to $50 billion. But when he initially dropped his bombshell in an August 7 tweet , Musk stated he had “funding secured” to buy Tesla stock at $420 per share — 23 percent…

Prospects for Ph.D. earners are dismal in the academic job market, with stories abounding of people who have doctorates serving lattes at Starbucks. N.C. State University has taken on that conundrum with a new program that leads science, technology, engineering and math doctoral students to careers in industry. Known as A2i, or Accelerate to Industry, the program started last year with 50 students. It’s so popular that NCSU trademarked the curriculum, which is now offered at the University of Florida, the University of Arkansas and soon, at other campuses around the country. The program is something of a crash course in business for hard-core scientists who rarely make it out of their solitary world in the lab. They learn soft skills such as teamwork, networking, project management, mentoring and marketing…

Who knew connecting the world could get so complicated? Perhaps some of technology’s brightest minds should have seen that coming. Social media bans of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have thrust Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others into a role they never wanted — as gatekeepers of discourse on their platforms, deciding what should and shouldn’t be allowed and often angering almost everyone in the process. Jones, a right-wing provocateur, suddenly found himself banned from most major social platforms this week, after years in which he was free to use them to promulgate a variety of false claims. Twitter, which one of its executives once called the “free speech wing of the free speech party,” remains a lonely holdout on Jones. The resulting backlash suggests that no matter what the tech companies…

The latest efforts to disrupt the U.S. midterm elections through Facebook manipulation seem to be following a persuasion playbook refined by legitimate companies and organizations — but with a twist. The aim of these possibly Russia-linked perpetrators appears to be to draw in as many people as possible with emotional appeals and then spur them to action. In this case, though, the action is public protest rather than affinity marketing, and the goal is to sow dissension rather than to build brand awareness. “They’re almost functioning like social media editors, figuring out what the trending topics are in the U.S. and figuring out where they can insert themselves”, said Jennifer Grygiel, a communications professor at Syracuse University. The idea, experts say, is to widen the rifts in the U.S. population…

Investor Warren Buffett’s company added to its stakes in Apple and Israeli drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals in the second quarter while tweaking several of its other stock investments. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. filed an update on its U.S. stock portfolio with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. Berkshire held nearly 252 million Apple shares at the end of June, up from 239.57 million in March. The Teva investment was just disclosed earlier this year and has grown to 43.2 million shares from 40.5 million in the first quarter. Berkshire had said Monday that it reduced some of its investments in airline and banking companies, such as American Airlines and U.S. Bancorp, because it seeks to own no more than 10 percent of any firm and those companies have been repurchasing stock.…

RBG At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a lengthy legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But the unique personal journey of her rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG explores Ginsburg’s life and career. FIVE FACTS: 1. The movie grossed over $13.5m at the US box office alone. 2. The movie was made by CNN Films and debuted at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. 3. The subject of the movie – US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the court in 1993 by President Clinton. 4. She was born on March 15th 1933 and is 85 years old. 5. She has also…

In 1979, a man named Ron Stallworth who was the first African-American police officer and detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department also became a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan and the leader of the local chapter. He would send a white co-worker to play him for in-person meetings as part of the wild undercover operation, but Stallworth was the one on the phone, insisting his hatred for non-white races with everyone from the local chapter members to the KKK’s “grand wizard” David Duke himself. It’s Stallworth’s story that provides the framework for Spike Lee’s blistering new film, “BlacKkKlansman”, but hardly the full picture. Deceptively epic in scope, in “BlacKkKlansman” Lee has made an immensely entertaining film about everything — love, friendship, ambition, civil rights, the power of…

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is expressing full support for President Donald Trump’s proposed military “space force”, but says it will have a role separate from NASA. Bridenstine said in New Orleans that NASA’s role involves science, space exploration and technology development. He said the agency should remain independent from national security and defense issues. Bridenstine was touring the Michoud (mih-SHEWD) Assembly Center, where workers are putting together major parts of the systems that are planned to return U.S. astronauts to the moon and, eventually, take them to Mars. That includes the 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) rocket known as the Space Launch System, and the spacecraft called Orion. Bridenstine is a former Republican congressman. He was nominated by Trump to head NASA last year and was confirmed by the Senate in April.…

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China says it is challenging a U.S. tariff hike on solar panels before the World Trade Organization, adding to its sprawling conflicts with President Donald Trump over trade and technology. The 30 percent tariffs announced in January improperly help U.S. producers in violation of WTO rules, the Commerce Ministry said. It said a formal complaint was filed Tuesday with the WTO in Geneva. The solar duties are separate from tariff hikes imposed by the Trump administration starting in July on Chinese imports in response to complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology. The duties also apply to imports of solar cells and modules from Europe, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. That strained relations with U.S. allies. The Trump administration has defended the solar tariffs as necessary to…

The founders of the dating app Tinder, along with current executives and some of its employees, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against IAC/ InterActiveCorp and its Match Group subsidiary for allegedly bilking them by manipulating financial information to create a lowball estimate of Tinder’s value. They are seeking at least $2 billion in the lawsuit against Match and IAC, which is controlled by media mogul Barry Diller. IAC and Match Group, of which Tinder is now part, called the allegations in the lawsuit “meritless.” The lawsuit claims that there were written contracts between IAC and Match and Tinder employees, including founders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen. The contracts required Tinder be valued on specific dates in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021 and that the workers be allowed to exercise…

Even if “Location History” is off on your phone, Google often still stores your precise location. Here are some things you can do to delete those markers and keep your location as private as possible. But there’s no panacea, because simply connecting to the internet on any device flags an IP address, a numeric designation that can be geographically mapped. Smartphones also connect to cell towers, so your carrier knows your general location at all times. TO PREVENT FURTHER TRACKING For any device: Fire up your browser and go to myactivity.google.com. Sign into Google if you haven’t already. On the upper left drop-down menu, go to “Activity Controls”. Turn off both “Web & App Activity” and “Location History”. That should prevent precise location markers from being stored to your Google…

Los Angeles’ subway will become the first mass transit system in the U.S. to install body scanners that screen passengers for weapons and explosives, officials said this week. The deployment of the portable scanners, which project waves to do full-body screenings of passengers walking through a station without slowing them down, will happen in the coming months, said Alex Wiggins, who runs the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s law enforcement division. The machines scan for metallic and nonmetallic objects on a person’s body, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet (9 meters) away and have the capability of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour. “We’re dealing with persistent threats to our transportation systems in our country,” said Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske. “Our job is to ensure…

Astroworld Travis Scott The third album from Houston rapper has already had a great reception – it’s gone in at no.1 on the Billboard 200 album chart and ALL 17 songs from the album are in the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart!. Drake features on the track “Sicko Mode” and includes other notable guest artists like James Blake, The Weeknd and a talented newcomer who we predict big things for with his harmonica called Stevie Wonder. FIVE FACTS: 1. Scott is only the fourth artist in history to achieve this feat along with Drake, Ed Sheeran and J.Cole. 2. His real name is Jacques Webster. 3. He is romantically involved with Kylie Jenner and the couple are expecting a baby. 4. He dated Rhianna before meeting Jenner. 5. He was…

The diversity crisis in Hollywood may rage on, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continues to try to open up access to the entertainment business for people from underrepresented communities and give some a foot in the door at the most critical moment — when college graduation is in sight and the job market is looming. For seven weeks this summer, 107 college students from across the nation convened in Los Angeles for internships at places like HBO, Warner Bros., Dolby Laboratories, Universal Pictures, IMAX and AMC Networks, in addition to film screenings and weekly panels on various aspects of the film industry from people at the top of their fields. Notable speakers this summer included cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (“Schindler’s List”), production designer K.K. Barrett (“Her”), “Sorry…

Embarking on a mission that scientists have been dreaming of since the Sputnik era, a NASA spacecraft hurtled last Sunday (12) toward the sun on a quest to unlock some of its mysteries by getting closer than any object sent before. If all goes well, the Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, in November. In the years ahead, it will gradually get within 3.8 million miles (6 million kilometers) of the surface, its instruments protected from the extreme heat and radiation by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wizardry. Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to our star during the seven-year, $1.5 billion journey. “Wow, here we go. We’re in for some learning…

If teens are so attached to their phones and all things connected, why do so many of them wind up in no-device summer camps with smiles on their faces? Thirteen-year-old Daniela Blumenfeld of Scarsdale, New York, just finished her fifth summer at sleepaway camp with no devices beyond a simple iPod. “I didn’t really miss my phone,” she said, especially given camp distractions like banana boating — that is, riding a yellow, banana-shaped inflatable towed by a motorboat. America’s summer camps have gone device-free in a big way. Most sleepaway camps moved to ban personal electronics years ago, driven by the idea that campers should soak up the scenery, sports, crafts and camaraderie their parents are shelling out hundreds of dollars for, all in service to slower living and a…

Russian cosmonauts took a spacewalk Wednesday to fling tiny satellites into orbit and install an antenna for tracking birds on Earth. Soon after leaving the International Space Station, Sergey Prokopyev released all four research satellites by hand. “I’m ready for the launch,” Prokopyev told Russian flight controllers near Moscow. The first satellite tumbled away as the space station soared 250 miles above Illinois. By the time the fourth one was on its way 14 minutes later, the station was almost to Spain. Two were the size of a tissue box, while the other two were longer. Prokopyev and Oleg Artemyev then turned their attention to a German-led, animal-tracking project known as Icarus, short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space. The space station is an ideal perch for the…