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Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says working with Google convinced him that self-driving technology is closer than he thought and could be on the road in five years. “I don’t find it that unsettling,” Marchionne said Friday. “I see this as having tremendous use in real life.” FCA and Google announced a partnership earlier this week. The companies will work together to add self-driving technology to 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans for testing purposes. This is the first time Google has worked directly with an auto company to install self-driving sensors and computers. Marchionne discussed the partnership at a ceremony to mark launch of Pacifica production at FCA’s plant in Windsor. The Pacifica is replacing the Chrysler Town and Country. Some automakers have been reluctant to team up with tech companies…

Apple has announced a new partnership with German software giant SAP to develop mobile apps that business customers can use on iPhones and iPad tablets. While Apple’s consumer product business is slowing, it’s been looking for new growth by tapping into the lucrative market for commercial technology. Apple has a similar arrangement with IBM to develop specialized apps for airline workers, sales clerks and other business users. Under the new deal, Apple and SAP plan to release programming tools that software developers can use to build apps for Apple’s handheld devices. The apps will tie into SAP’s commercial software, which businesses use to manage inventory, manufacturing, sales and other operations. Apple has recently begun selling “Pro” versions of its iPad tablets with features designed for business users.…

A video game that allowed players to zap marching aliens with dot lasers and another that gave them flamethrowers and put them in the driver’s seat in a violent 3-D world are among six games inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. “Space Invaders” and “Grand Theft Auto III,” along with “The Oregon Trail,”‘’Sonic the Hedgehog,” ‘’The Legend of Zelda” and “The Sims,” were honored Thursday for their influence on gaming and pop culture at the hall inside The Strong museum in Rochester. “Space Invaders” wasn’t the first shooter game when it was introduced in Japan in 1978, but it spurred many imitators and a craze for arcade games, said Jeremy Saucier, assistant director of The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games. A virtual universe…

Japanese Internet company SoftBank Group Corp., which is struggling to turn around Sprint in the U.S., reported Tuesday a 27 percent drop in profit for the fiscal year ended March 31, compared to the previous year. Tokyo-based SoftBank had a net profit of 558.2 billion yen ($5.1 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2016. It reported a 763.7 billion yen profit for the previous fiscal year. It didn’t give a forecast, citing many uncertain factors. It also did not break down quarterly results. Sales for the fiscal year that ended in March totaled 9.15 trillion yen ($84 billion), up nearly 8 percent on year. Although SoftBank’s mobile and broadband business in Japan is not lagging, it is not expected to grow in coming years, so the company is eyeing…

High-Rise After the death of his sister, a London doctor moves into a towering apartment complex which features supermarkets, schools, and everything the residents need to never have to leave the building again. However, things soon begin to go awry between the residents – but how out of control will things get? FIVE FACTS: 1. The movie is an adaption of the 1975 novel of the same name by J. G. Ballard. 2. Director Ben Wheatley has also directed several episodes of popular British sci-fi television series Doctor Who. 3. When producer Jeremy Thomas first bought the rights back in 1975, he intended for Nicolas Roeg to direct. Roeg has also directed The Witches and The Man Who Fell to Earth. 4. In about 80% of the scenes, someone is…

The CBS drama “The Good Wife” is on pace to record its biggest audience in more than a year with a series finale that had more than a few of its loyal fans talking. The Nielsen company said an estimated 10.6 million people watched Sunday’s finale. That is the show’s biggest audience on the night of its original airing since November 2014. That finale left inconclusive the question of whether Alicia Florrick, played by series star Julianna Margulies, would divorce her pol husband and run off with her current lover. It also ended with a resounding slap, applied to Florrick by her law partner for exposing the affair of that woman’s husband in a court of law. For a series widely regarded as broadcast television’s best drama, it was an…

The Milky Way just got a lot more crowded - with planets. NASA on Tuesday announced 1,284 new planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, called exoplanets. That’s on top of the approximately 1,000 previously authenticated exoplanets detected by the Kepler Space Telescope since its launch in 2009. Scientists taking part in the news conference were ecstatic - it’s the biggest planetary collection ever verified in a single swoop. “One of the great questions of all time, and one of NASA’s science objectives in our journey to the solar system and beyond, is whether we are alone in the universe,” said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics for NASA. “The first step in answering this question is to detect and understand the population of planets around other stars.” According to NASA,…

Disney said Tuesday it is shutting down its Disney Infinity line of video games, saying the changing market is too risky. The company booked a $147 million charge, mostly for unsold inventory. It also laid off about 300 employees, most of them based in Salt Lake City at Avalanche Software, a game studio Disney bought in 2005. CEO Bob Iger told analysts the risks “caught up with us.” Although the unit did well - bringing its interactive division into profitability in recent years - Disney determined it was better to manage the risks by licensing characters rather than developing video games from scratch, he said. “That business is a changing business, and we did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of it being stable enough to stay…

The Magic Kingdom finally seems to be getting the hang of Hollywood magic. Once upon a time, Disney just couldn’t get a handle on the movie business. For every few “Iron Man”-style blockbusters, the studio had to dig itself out of the crater left by at least one “Lone Ranger” bomb. But it brought in new studio management in 2012, pared its misfires - it hasn’t declared a film write-down in three years - and revved up its multibillion-dollar acquisitions Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Just eight years ago, it was dead last in box office receipts among the six major Hollywood studios; this year, it’s on pace for a record-breaking No. 1 spot. It’s expected to get big assists from movies like “Captain America: Civil War,” which kicked off the…

In a further sign that the download era is waning, Warner Music Group says it made more money from streaming platforms than any other single source of recorded music revenue in the latest quarter. Warner claims it is the first of the three majors to hit the milestone. But the others are sure to follow. Last month, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said streaming revenue globally grew 45 percent last year, while the number of subscribers who paid for services like Spotify and Apple Music leapt 66 percent to 68 million. Meanwhile, the IFPI said download revenue dropped 10.5 percent. For Warner, streaming revenue grew 59 percent in the quarter through March, helping boost overall revenue by 10 percent to $745 million.…

When it comes to virtual reality, how exclusive is exclusive? After delaying orders because of component shortages and angering wannabe early adopters, VR company Oculus is confronting another headache as it seeks to technologically and culturally establish the immersive medium. It’s now possible to play titles that were intended to only be used with the Oculus Rift system on an entirely different VR headset. In less than four weeks after the March 28 launch of the $600 system, cunning amateur coders figured out how to unlock the cartoony platforming game “Lucky’s Tale” and VR vignette collection “Oculus Dreamdeck” for the HTC Vive, an $800 competing VR system released April 5 by smartphone maker HTC and gaming company Valve, which operates online marketplace Steam. And in recent weeks, additional “only on…

A Moon Shaped Pool Radiohead The ninth studio album from the Oxford rock legends is one of their most haunting yet, but still offers the stunning musicianship and artistic/ lyrical statements that the band are known and loved for. FIVE FACTS: 1. The band have been nominated for 70 awards, winning 18. 2. The band surprise-released the album, with several promotional events occurring before they did - including fans who had previously made orders from the band receiving cards featuring the album’s lyrics in the post, and the band deleting all content from their website and social media profiles. 3. Their original name was On A Friday – a reference to the band’s usual rehearsal day in the school’s music room. 4. The band have headlined major music festivals several…

A judge has rejected an attempt by Britain’s security services to force an alleged hacker to hand over the passwords to his encrypted computers. Lauri Love is fighting extradition to the United States, where he has been charged with breaking into Federal Reserve computers. When British police arrested him in 2013, they seized encrypted computers and hard drives from his home in eastern England. Love was not charged in Britain, but the National Crime Agency sought to look through his computers before returning them. Judge Nina Tempia ruled Tuesday that the agency as trying to “circumvent” the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which governs data privacy. Love said the decision “retains the status quo which means there has to be safeguards before you force people to undermine their security.”…

The Food and Drug Administration will reevaluate its definition of “healthy,” which could eventually change how a range of foods are marketed. In light of evolving research, the FDA said it believes “now is an opportune time to reevaluate the regulations concerning nutrition content claims, generally, including the term ‘healthy.”The agency plans to solicit public comment on the matter in the near future, said Lauren Kotwicki, an FDA representative, in an email. The FDA currently allows use of the term “healthy” on packaging only when products meet certain nutrient criteria, which largely revolve around limited levels of fat, cholesterol and sodium. The issue captured attention last year after the FDA sent a warning letter to the maker of Kind fruit-and-nut bars saying the company’s products should not be labeled as…

Amazon has launched a self-publishing platform for video creators, a move that could make money for the company and budding filmmakers in the same way YouTube has created a community of online celebrities. Amazon Video Direct, which kicked off Tuesday, shares money with video creators through the method they choose: ads, subscriptions, rentals, or simply by the number of hours streamed to tens of millions of subscribers of Amazon Prime, its two-day shipping service. Amazon keeps about half the revenue, or if the video is restricted to Prime, it pays a set fee of 15 cents per hour viewed in the U.S. Several production companies made videos available Tuesday including Baby Einstein, Pro Guitar Lessons and Conde Nast. The service allows creators to publish videos in the U.S., Great Britain,…

Fingerprinting drivers for ride-hailing companies must continue in Texas’ capital city after voters rejected a $9 million campaign by Uber and Lyft to overturn the safety measure. Both Uber and Lyft threatened to leave Austin, which hosts major annual events such as the South by Southwest and Austin City Limits music festivals, on Monday after Saturday’s defeat, the Austin American-Statesman reported (http://atxne.ws/1O8v8tb ). “Lyft and Austin are a perfect match and we want to stay in the city,” Lyft spokeswoman Chelsea Wilson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the rules passed by City Council don’t allow true ridesharing to operate.” Voters decided to keep city rules that require ride-hailing company drives to undergo fingerprint-based background checks by Feb. 1, 2017. Austin also prohibits drivers from stopping in traffic lanes for passenger…

EVEN THREE IS NO LONGER ENOUGH For many years, the three-movie series was a staple of Hollywood. The original Star Wars trilogy may be the most famous example, but down the decades, we have also had the likes of Mad Max, The Matrix, The Dark Knight and Toy Story in glorious three-pronged form. It seemed for generations that the trilogy format just worked - after all, it was surely the perfect way to capture filmgoers with a logical beginning, middle and ending. However, the evidence is that things have changed in recent years, with even the most sacred trilogies spawning fresh sequels. What’s happening? Of course, Hollywood has always had a love affair with the sequel - the dependable formula of a proven smash hit with a familiar set of…

Louis Cervi was looking to buy a small car for basic transportation with a monthly payment in the mid-$200 range. After six months of looking, Cervi, 41, drove off a dealer lot north of Pittsburgh in a Ford Focus for $192 a month. The dealership even accepted his 2001 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with a failed transmission as a down payment on his lease. “I thought I’d probably get something in the $240 (per month) range,” Cervi says. “It was the end of the month, so I think I got kind of lucky there. They were trying to meet a quota.” With many Americans rushing to buy trucks and SUVs, there are good deals to be had on cars, especially smaller models. In April, supplies of small cars on dealer lots…

“Captain America: Civil War” is still the fifth biggest opener of all time despite a slight drop in grosses from initial Sunday estimates. According to Monday actuals the superhero spectacle brought in $179.1 million in its first weekend in theaters - slightly below Sunday’s $181.8 million projection. It’s a massive success for the film, which cost $250 million to produce and has already earned over $673 million worldwide. “Civil War” had the skies to itself as the only new film to open wide this past weekend, and effectively bumped “The Jungle Book” into second place after three weekends in first. In third place, Garry Marshall’s “Mother’s Day” saw a 33 percent bump from its first weekend in theaters, taking in $11.1 million with a little help from the actual holiday.…

For the second month in a row, the aerospace upstart SpaceX landed a rocket on an ocean platform early Friday, this time following the successful launch of a Japanese communications satellite. A live webcast showed the first-stage booster touching down vertically in the pre-dawn darkness atop a barge in the Atlantic, just off the Florida coast. The same thing occurred April 8 during a space station supply run for NASA. That was the first successful landing at sea for SpaceX, which expects to start reusing its unmanned Falcon rockets as early as this summer to save money and lower costs. Because of the high altitude needed for this mission, SpaceX did not expect a successful landing. But it was wrong. As the launch commentator happily declared, “The Falcon has landed.”…

CAN’T STOP THE FEELING!  (ORIGINAL SONG FROM DREAMWORKS ANIMATION’S “TROLLS”) JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE ONE DANCE (FEAT. WIZKID & KYLA) DRAKE GO AHEAD AND BREAK MY HEART  (FEAT. GWEN STEFANI) BLAKE SHELTON H.O.L.Y. FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE DON’T LET ME DOWN (FEAT. DAYA) THE CHAINSMOKERS 7 YEARS LUKAS GRAHAM THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR  (FEAT. RIHANNA) CALVIN HARRIS NO MEGHAN TRAINOR LOVE HAS NO PRIDE  (THE VOICE PERFORMANCE) ADAM WAKEFIELD WORK FROM HOME (FEAT. TY DOLLA $IGN) FIFTH HARMONY…

Senate Republicans on Tuesday demanded an explanation from Facebook after reports that former company staffers excluded links to conservative political stories. A senior Facebook executive said the company has found no evidence to back up the anonymous allegations. In a letter to chairman and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, South Dakota Sen. John Thune requested information on who at the company made the decisions on stories for Facebook’s Trending Topics feature, what training is provided to employees, whether the company is investigating and what steps it will take to hold people accountable. “If Facebook presents its Trending Topics section as a result of a neutral, objective algorithm, but it is in fact subjective and filtered to support or suppress particular political viewpoints, Facebook’s assertion that it maintains ‘a platform for people…