Indholdsfortegnelse for #382 i AppleMagazine

Being a pessimistic consumer is relatively easy. Until something is in your hands and you can see and feel its tangible benefits, any promises of ‘bigger, better, quicker’ sit firmly in category of the brain marked ‘pipe dreams’. 5G, for instance, reads like a simple, even standard upgrade on 4G, 3G, and the other two that you may not have been around for long enough to remember using: 2G and 1G. However, 5G is set to be the biggest mobile phone generation game changer since 1G was introduced in 1979. To get an idea of how significant 5G could prove to be, telecom experts are going as far as eulogizing its arrival as the spark to ignite the fourth Industrial Revolution. It is more – much more – than a…

A special house will be listed for sale in Lawton on March 1. The 1,600-square foot home, from floor to roof, granite-topped kitchen counters to walk-in closet, is the work of building trades students at Great Plains Technology Center and represents about 18 months of classroom work. Just call it on-the-job learning. The house is the eighth built by Great Plains students and was fronted — meaning, money provided to finance construction — by the Great Plains Technology Center Foundation, a volunteer board dedicated to supporting Great Plains and its students. Any surplus revenue realized from the sale of the house will go back into the foundation to support activities such as student scholarships. It’s a worthwhile venture, Glen Boyer, the foundation’s executive director, said to The Lawton Constitution. Boyer…

British lawmakers issued a scathing report this week that calls for tougher rules to keep Facebook and other tech firms from acting like “digital gangsters” and intentionally violating data privacy and competition laws. The report on fake news and disinformation on social media sites followed an 18-month investigation by Parliament’s influential media committee. The committee recommended that social media sites should have to follow a mandatory code of ethics overseen by an independent regulator to better control harmful or illegal content. The report called out Facebook in particular, saying that the site’s structure seems to be designed to “conceal knowledge of and responsibility for specific decisions.” “It is evident that Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws,” the report said. It also accused CEO Mark Zuckerberg…

Alexis Ohanian wants other guys to be jealous of him. Not because he’s a multimillionaire venture capitalist. Or because he’s married to tennis pro Serena Williams. The Reddit co-founder wants men to covet the time he gets to spend with his 1-year-old daughter, Olympia. The pair is all over Instagram cheering for mom at her tennis matches, make silly faces with Mickey Mouse ears and toting around favorite doll Qai Qai, who has her own Instagram account with 114,000 followers. It’s all part of his advocacy for making paid paternity leave the new normal in America. When Olympia was born on Sept. 1, 2017, Ohanian was very public about taking the full 16 weeks of paid leave available to him at Initialized Capital, the venture capital firm he co-founded and…

Head Above Water Avril Lavigne Incredibly, it has been six years since Lavigne’s last, self-titled album – and there have been many changes for her to reflect on. A very public divorce from Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and her battle with Lyme disease has influenced both her sound and mood. She is still confident, independent and strong, but now for different, mature and life-changing reasons. The biggest change is in her voice; resounding, reverberating proof that Lavigne is back, stronger than ever. FIVE FACTS: 1. While legally French since birth due to her father’s heritage, Lavigne didn’t get her French passport until 2011. She has since studied, lived and even got married in France. 2. She has a rude word tattooed on her ribs, beginning with the letter ‘F’. 3. Lavigne…

An eastern Chinese province plans to ban teachers from assigning homework to be completed on cellphone apps as part of efforts to preserve students’ eyesight. Zhejiang province issued a draft regulation last week and is seeking public comment. It is one of several provinces considering such measures. Along with barring app-based homework assignments, the Zhejiang regulation would limit the use of electronic devices to 30 percent of total teaching time and encourage the issuing of paper homework to be completed by hand. Soaring rates of nearsightedness are blamed partly on screen usage. While China’s overall rate of myopia is 31 percent, among high school students it stands at 77 percent and among college students 80 percent. The regulation aims to pull that back to 70 percent among senior high school…

The United States and China resume talks aimed at ending a fight over Beijing’s technology ambitions ahead of a deadline for a massive U.S. tariff hike. The White House said that meetings between mid-level delegations will begin in Washington following talks last week in Beijing that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said “made headway” on key issues. On Thursday, Lighthizer will lead higher level talks, joined by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and trade adviser Peter Navarro. Leading the Chinese team will be Vice Premier Liu He, according to the Xinhua news agency. Business groups and economists saw Friday’s surprise announcement of further talks this week as a sign that the two counties were making progress. Both governments have expressed…

Samsung unveiled a highly anticipated smartphone with a foldable screen in an attempt to break the innovation funk that has beset the smartphone market. But it’s far from clear that consumers will embrace a device that retails for almost $2,000, or that it will provide the creative catalyst the smartphone market needs. The Galaxy Fold, announced Wednesday in San Francisco, will sell for $1,980 when it is released April 26. Consumers willing to pay that hefty price will get a device that can unfold like a wallet. It can work like a traditional smartphone with a 4.6 inch screen or morph into something more like a mini-tablet with a 7.3 inch screen. When fully unfolded, the device will be able to simultaneously run three different apps on the screen. The…

With Apple on the cusp of announcing its long-awaited streaming service, we take a closer look at the giant’s plans to revolutionize home entertainment, reveal the shows and movies in the pipeline, and consider reactions from industry rivals Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon. ONE MORE THING… Apple’s March event has long been used to show off hardware - just as it did in 2018 with the iPad education presentation . Next month’s event, however, is likely to take a different approach. Don’t worry - Apple is still rumored to show off a whole host of new hardware at the keynote, including the long-awaited AirPods 2, new MacBooks, a refreshed iMac lineup, the iPad mini 5, and perhaps the AirPower, first announced in 2017 . Apple’s ‘one more thing’ announcement, however,…

Some students and professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are asking the university to cancel celebrations for a new computing center. The Boston Globe reported that 18 students, alumni and faculty published an opinion piece in The Tech , an MIT student publication. The Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, named for the CEO of the Blackstone Group investment firm, is opening next week. Schwarzman gave $350 million to MIT. The opinion piece says the group is concerned about Schwarzman advising President Donald Trump, opposing an affordable housing measure in California, and hosting the Saudi crown prince. MIT Provost Martin Schmidt says the launch will celebrate an historic moment for MIT and allow for many voices to explore the social impacts of artificial intelligence. A Blackstone spokeswoman said artificial…

For the first time since its meteoric rise, “Fortnite” is no longer a no-doubt victory royale atop the video game industry. “Apex Legends” — a battle royale from Electronic Arts — has charged into the market and smashed “Fortnite” records for downloads and viewership since its release three weeks ago. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and other streaming stars have powered that surge, as has the emergence of an 18-year-old “Apex” superstar. Esports teams are already scrambling to sign talented players and invest long-term, while others are raising concerns about overcommitting to the suddenly volatile battle royale genre. Developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA, “Apex” has shaken the industry by building on many of its shining successes. It has pulled popular elements from other battle royales — a type of…

Born in the 3-D land rush, “How to Train Your Dragon” has never quite shrugged off the bland corporate sheen attached to it from the start. But almost a decade since taking flight in 2010, these movies have made up for their lack of fire with enough sincerity and genuine sense of wonder to sustain a mild but moving trilogy. “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” brings the franchise to a close with an affectionate chapter that continues the adventures of the Viking boy-turned-chief Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his faithful dragon Toothless, a sleek, black kind of dragon called a Night Fury (not to be confused with an evening-time presidential tweet storm). In “The Hidden World,” the dragon utopia that Hiccup has built on the Island of Berk,…

Travelers in Berlin will soon be able to use a single app to switch seamlessly between public transport, rental bikes, car-sharing and taxis without signing up for each service individually, officials said. Lithuanian startup Trafi said Berlin will be the first major European capital to get a transport app that handles billing for all services centrally and requires only a single login. Similar services are already available in Vilnius, Rio de Janeiro and Jakarta. So-called ‘deep integration’ apps, which remove the annoyance of dealing with multiple providers, are seen as important for cities trying to prevent people from clogging up congested roads with their own cars. “This goes in precisely the right direction,” said Andreas Knie, a mobility expert at the Social Science Center Berlin. “Transport services need to be…

The U.S. government will lead an ambitious effort to develop technologies to recycle lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles, cellphones and other sources to ensure a reliable and affordable supply of metals crucial to battery production in anticipation of soaring global demand and potential shortages, Department of Energy officials said. Calling the effort a national security issue, the agency announced a $15 million, three-year research and development project housed at the Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago. The collaboration between Argonne, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and several universities also is an attempt to catch up with China and other countries that manufacture and recycle the vast majority of lithium-ion batteries, including those shipped back from the U.S., officials said. U.S. dependence on other countries for metals…

Google said this week it forgot to mention that it included a microphone in its Nest Secure home alarm system, the latest privacy flub by one of the tech industry’s leading collectors of personal information. The company said earlier this month that its voice assistant feature would be available on the system’s Nest Guard, which controls home alarm sensors. But Google hadn’t told consumers about the device’s built-in microphone when it began selling the hubs in the fall of 2017. As recently as January, the product specs for the device made no mention of a microphone. Google said in a statement that the omission was a mistake. “The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs,” it said. The microphone…

At the glad-handy Oscar nominees luncheon earlier this month, film academy president John Bailey proudly told the 171 nominees in the room that there were a record number of women nominated for Academy Awards this year. The statement seemed to take everyone a moment to process, or calculate, but soon Lady Gaga, Amy Adams, “Black Panther” costumer Ruth E. Carter and others were applauding. Numbers-wise, women did have a comparatively good year. In the 20 non-gendered categories, 52 individual women were nominated, up eight from last year’s 44. And yet why does it feel like progress is not being made? Perhaps because there have still only ever been five women nominated for best director (none this year), and only one who has won. There’s also the fact that none of…

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Magizoologist Newt Scamander attempts to thwart the fiendish plot of escaped dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, who is attempting to dominate both the magical and non-magical worlds with a race of pure-blood wizards. Enlisted by a young Albus Dumbledore, Newt again calls on witch Queenie Goldstein and adventurous human Jacob Kowalski, as he seeks to unravel a web of secrets, spectacles and spells that lead them through dark, magical underworlds across Europe. FIVE FACTS: 1. Callum Turner, who plays Newt’s older brother Theseus, actually grew up less than one hundred meters away from Eddie Redmayne, who plays Newt. 2. Johnny Depp is the fourth actor to play Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter universe. Colin Farrell, Jamie Campbell Bower and Michael Byrne have also played…

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that no final decision has been made on whether Huawei equipment can be used in a planned network upgrade. New Zealand’s international spy agency in November stopped mobile company Spark from using the equipment in its planned 5G upgrade, saying it posed a “significant network security risk.” But in a television interview with Newshub, Ardern said Spark had the option of mitigating the spy agency’s concerns. Ardern said it was important to note there had been no final decision. “I’m not here to pass assessments on vendors ...” Ardern told Newshub. “It’s in the public domain that issues and concerns have been raised, but again, as I say, the ball is in now back in the court of the company that made the…

Chinese police have investigated 380 online lenders and frozen $1.5 billion in assets following an avalanche of scandals in the huge but lightly regulated industry, the government announced this week. Beijing allowed a private finance industry to flourish in order to supply credit to entrepreneurs and households that aren’t served by the state-run banking system. But that threatens to become a liability for the ruling Communist Party after bankruptcies and fraud cases prompted protests and complaints of official indifference to small investors. The police ministry said it launched the investigation because person-to-person, or P2P, lending was increasingly risky and rife with complaints about fraud, mismanagement and waste. The ministry gave no details of arrests but said more than 100 executives were being sought by investigators and some had fled abroad.…