Innehållsförteckning för #422 från AppleMagazine

With Apple announcing an overhaul to its Everyone Can Code curriculum, we take a closer look, explore the exciting sessions coming to Apple Stores to celebrate Computer Science Education Week, and discuss how the firm holds the keys to a brighter education system… EVERYONE CAN CODE Last week, Apple lifted the lid on an all-new Everyone Can Code curriculum, designed to get more students into coding. It’s a bold move for one of the world’s biggest technology firms, but as it makes millions a year from iPad sales to the world’s educational http://www.simbainformation.com/Content/Blog/2017/08/07/Apples-iPad-is-Most-Popular-Tablet-in-Schools establishments and even more in revenue from the App Store , it’s in Apple’s best interests to give everyone the skills they need to code and create the Next Big Thing in apps. The redesigned curriculum is focused…

US consumer confidence declined slightly for a fourth consecutive month, but it remains elevated with the holiday shopping season ramping up. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index ticked down to 125.5 in November from October’s 126.1 reading. Consumers’ feelings about the present economic conditions also regressed slightly, but their short-term expectations for the future rose. Consumers’ assessment of the job market also declined slightly, despite low unemployment and rising wages. “Overall, confidence levels are still high and should support solid spending during this holiday season,” Conference Board economist Lynn Franco said. Earlier this month, the Commerce Department reported that Americans stepped up their shopping in October, spending more online and buying more cars, another good sign as the holiday shopping season kicks off this week with…

The next time you get sick, your care may involve a form of the technology people use to navigate road trips or pick the right vacuum cleaner online. Artificial intelligence is spreading into health care, often as software or a computer program capable of learning from large amounts of data and making predictions to guide care or help patients. It already detects an eye disease tied to diabetes and does other behind-the-scenes work like helping doctors interpret MRI scans and other imaging tests for some forms of cancer. Now, parts of the health system are starting to use it directly with patients. During some clinic and telemedicine appointments, AI-powered software asks patients initial questions about their symptoms that physicians or nurses normally pose. And an AI program featuring a talking…

How excited James Brown would have been for “21 Bridges.”Take you to bridge? How about 21 of them? But I suspect even the Godfather of Soul would give an easy pass to Brian Kirk’s “21 Bridges,” with Chadwick Boseman (who played Brown in the biopic “Get on Up”). It’s a just-good-enough New York crime thriller, made with sufficient slinky shadows and leading-man charisma to do the trick. Even if its best trick is informing you, in case you ever wondered, how many bridges there are crossing into Manhattan. The filmmakers, themselves, very nearly got it wrong. The movie’s original title was “17 Bridges.” Accounting errors are one thing, but misplacing the Queensboro Bridge plus three more doesn’t exactly engender confidence in the entire enterprise. The story is simple, even if…

U.S. communications regulators have cut off government funding for equipment from two Chinese companies, citing security threats. The Federal Communications Commission also proposed requiring companies that get government subsidies to rip out any equipment from Huawei and ZTE that they already have in place. It’s the latest action by the U.S. government against Chinese tech and telecom companies. The FCC voted unanimously to bar U.S. telecommunications providers from using government subsidies to buy equipment from Huawei or ZTE. The FCC’s order mostly affects small, rural companies, as larger U.S. carriers do not use equipment from those Chinese companies. In a statement, Huawei urged the FCC to reconsider what it called a “profoundly mistaken” and “unlawful order.” It said the decision was “based on selective information, innuendo, and mistaken assumptions” and…

London’s transit authority this week refused to renew Uber’s operating license over concerns about impostor drivers, with the ride-hailing company vowing to appeal the decision as it struggles to secure its future in the British capital. It’s the latest chapter in Uber’s rocky history with London transport officials, who have subjected the San Francisco-based tech company to ever tighter scrutiny over concerns about passenger safety and security. Uber called the decision “extraordinary and wrong,” and has 21 days to file an appeal, which it said it would do. It can continue operating during the appeals process. Transport for London cited “several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk” in its decision not to extend Uber’s license, which expired at midnight last Monday. Among other things, unauthorized drivers carried…

China issued new, tougher guidelines for protection of patents, copyrights and other intellectual property in a move that may be timed to help along halting progress in trade talks with the United States. The guidelines issued by the State Council, or Cabinet, and by the powerful Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party order beefed up laws for protecting such intellectual property rights, increased compensation for infringements and stricter enforcement of existing laws. They also lower the threshold for criminal prosecution of IPR offenses. The new blueprint makes protection of intellectual property one of the criteria for evaluating local government officials’ performance, creating a greater incentive for compliance. In past decades, officials were judged mainly by political loyalties and economic growth in their localities. More recently, China’s leaders added environmental…

The first cargo-carrying robot marketed directly to consumers is on sale this holiday season. But how many people are ready to ditch their second car to buy a two-wheeled rover that can follow them around like a dog? Corporate giants like Amazon, FedEx and Ford have already been experimenting with sending delivery robots to doorsteps. Now Piaggio, the Italian company that makes the Vespa scooter, is offering a stylish alternative to those blandly utilitarian machines — albeit one that weighs 50 pounds (23 kilograms) and costs $3,250. It’s named the Gita (JEE’-tah) after the Italian word for a short, pleasurable excursion — the kind you might take to pick up some lacinato kale and gourmet cheese at the farmers market. Its creators have such trips in mind for the “hands-free…

As Amy Witt prepared for the grand opening of her Dallas clothing store, she read up on the demise of thousands of chain stores this past year so she wouldn’t repeat their mistakes. “Big box retailers are selling 20,000 square feet of, what? Stuff. There’s no connection, no experience, no service,” says Witt, who opened A Velvet Window earlier this month. “That model no longer works.” So Witt has created a store that aims to feel like a home. She serves food and snacks, and helps shoppers put outfits together. She’s invited other local businesses to sell in her store, giving her customers something else to consider if they don’t feel like buying clothes. As small and independent retailers begin the holiday shopping season, they’re finding ways to give shoppers…

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee released an ambitious rule book for online governance — a bill of rights and obligations for the internet — designed to counteract the growing prevalence of such anti-democratic poisons as misinformation, mass surveillance and censorship. The product of a year’s work by the World Wide Web Foundation where Berners-Lee is a founding director, the “Contract for the Web” seeks commitments from governments and industry to make and keep knowledge freely available — a digital policy agenda true to the design vision of the 30-year-old web. The contract is non-binding, however. And funders and partners in the endeavor include Google and Facebook, whose data-collecting business models and sensation-rewarding algorithms have been blamed for exacerbating online toxicity. “We haven’t had a fairly complex, fairly complete plan…

Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood In the Los Angeles of 1969, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Hollywood actor whose career has seen better days, attempts to resurrect his glory days with help from his friend and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), even as Hollywood’s Golden Age is evidently fading to a close. FIVE FACTS: 1. This is the 10th film directed by Quentin Tarantino. 2. The story concept was inspired by Tarantino meeting an actor who had worked with the same stunt double for 20 years. 3. Dalton and Booth are both fictional; however, real-life characters depicted in the film include Roman Polanski, Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee. 4. Meanwhile, Margot Robbie portrays Polanski’s ill-fated second wife Sharon Tate. 5. Dalton’s 1966 Cadillac in this movie is the…

Former CNN mainstay Nancy Grace is signing up for a crime show on Fox Nation, an illustration of how Fox News’ streaming service has evolved counter to expectations one year into operation. Cameras will show her delivering her podcast and SiriusXM radio show, “Crime Stories with Nancy Grace,” five days a week. The program is modeled after her popular television series that ran on the HLN network for many years. “We spotlight breaking crime and justice news, help find missing people, especially children, solve unsolved homicides and analyze clues left behind,” Grace said. Fox Nation, the streaming service available for $65 a year, will begin offering “Crime Stories” in January. The on-demand service recently announced that former CBS News correspondent Lara Logan will host a documentary series on media bias,…

Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world by claiming he had helped make the first gene-edited babies. One year later, mystery surrounds his fate as well as theirs. He has not been seen publicly since January, his work has not been published and nothing is known about the health of the babies. “That’s the story — it’s all cloaked in secrecy, which is not productive for the advance of understanding,” said Stanford bioethicist Dr. William Hurlbut. He talked with Hurlbut many times before He revealed at a Hong Kong science conference that he had used a tool called CRISPR to alter a gene in embryos to try to help them resist infection with the AIDS virus. The work, which He discussed in exclusive interviews with The Associated Press, was denounced…

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s shares jumped 6.6% in their debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday, an auspicious start at a time when the former British colony is reeling from political unrest. Alibaba closed at 187.60 Hong Kong dollars ($23.96) per share after trading as high as 189.50 Hong Kong dollars. Its offering price was 176 Hong Kong dollars. The company’s shares already are listed in New York, where its 2014 IPO set a record at $25 billion. This offering of 500 million new shares raised more than $11 billion in Hong Kong’s biggest listing since 2010 — a rare boost for the city after months of political unrest. Charles Li, executive director and chief executive of Hong Kong Stock Exchanges praised the company for carrying out the…

Countries need to begin making steep cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions immediately or risk missing the targets they’ve agreed for limiting global warming, with potentially dire consequences, senior United Nations officials said this week. A report by the U.N. Environment Program, published days before governments gather in Madrid for an annual meeting on climate change, showed the amount of planet-heating gases being pumped into the atmosphere hitting a new high last year, despite a near-global pledge to reduce them. Man-made greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2018 to 55.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the U.N.’s annual ‘emissions gap’ report. While much of the increase came from emerging economies such as China and India, some of those emissions are the result of manufacturing outsourced from developed countries.…

Mike Maddaloni went to Amazon.com knowing exactly what he wanted to buy. But instead of showing him the Synology router he was searching for at the top of his results, Amazon bombarded him with ads for hard drives and routers that he didn’t want. Maddaloni, a web strategist in Appleton, Wisconsin, said searching on the world’s biggest shopping site had always been a good experience for him up until a month ago, when he started seeing more ads. “Now I have to scroll down,”he said.“It’s annoying.” Amazon has turned its online store into an advertising powerhouse in just a few years. It overtook Microsoft last year as the third largest ad platform in the U.S. following Google and Facebook, according to market research firm eMarketer. That’s mostly due to Amazon’s…

Best Buy is entering the critical holiday season with good cheer, raising its profit expectations for the current quarter. The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer joined a handful of other big box stores like Target and Walmart which are putting up strong sales numbers from the third quarter. Best Buy, once under severe threat from Amazon.com, is holding its own after aggressively expanding its online operations, speeding up deliveries and making visits to its stores for customers a better experience. That effort was led by Hubert Joly until he stepped down in 2019 after seven years as CEO. Corie Barry took over the job in June. The Richfield, Minnesota, company has also recognized the value of technology that will help an aging nation. In May, Best Buy acquired Critical Signal…

EBay is selling StubHub to ticket seller viagogo for $4.05 billion in cash. The transaction is part of a review that eBay undertook earlier this year following pressure from an activist investor. The San Jose, California-based company then said it was also reviewing options for its classified ads business. EBay Inc. bought StubHub in 2007 for $310 million. Both StubHub and the classifieds business each brought in less than 10% of eBay’s total revenue last year. The addition of StubHub will allow viagogo to sell tickets in more than 70 countries and give buyers access to a wider selection of tickets. Viagogo’s founder and CEO Eric Baker is a StubHub co-founder. In a statement, Baker said it has been his longtime wish to unite the two companies. The sale is…

Everyday Life Coldplay Everyday Life is stylistically a marked departure from the British rock band’s previous studio release back in 2015, but very much reflects the times, with lead vocalist Chris Martin and the rest of the boys turning more philosophical in a world that has grown scarier and more intimidating. FIVE FACTS: 1. Coldplay’s lineup of Martin, bassist Guy Berryman, lead guitarist Jonny Buckland, drummer Will Champion and creative director Phil Harvey has stayed present since the band’s formation in the late 1990s. 2. Everyday Life is a double album, its first half titled Sunrise and its second named Sunset. 3.“It’s the challenges we see happening in our lives and in lots of other people’s lives,” Martin has explained to Apple Music about Sunrise. 4. Meanwhile, Sunset is “a…

The Department of Commerce has proposed requiring case-by-case approvals of all purchases of telecommunications equipment in a move likely to hit major Chinese suppliers like Huawei. The plan issued this week follows President Donald Trump’s order in May declaring a national emergency and restricting purchases by U.S. companies of telecoms equipment that might be considered a security threat. It calls for a period of public comment before it is implemented. That order did not name specific countries or companies but was thought to target Chinese suppliers such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. It gave the Commerce Department 150 days to come up with the regulations issued this week. The May 15 order by Trump said foreign “adversaries” were exploiting information and communications technology and services, or ICTS, for espionage…

ONE CREW OVER THE CREWCOO’S MORTYRICK AND MORTY, SEASON 4 (UNCENSORED) THE WORLD BEFORETHE WALKING DEAD, SEASON 10 LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND SOUR PEACHESTHE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA, SEASON 12 LET’S ALL GO TO THE BARGREY’S ANATOMY, SEASON 16 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEATRICK AND MORTY, SEASON 4 (UNCENSORED) SHIPS AND COUNTRIESMADAM SECRETARY, SEASON 6 THE HAWALADAR (NO. 162)THE BLACKLIST, SEASON 7 EDGE OF TOMORTY: RICK DIE RICKPEATRICK AND MORTY, SEASON 4 (UNCENSORED) KILL BEALE: VOL. 1NCIS: LOS ANGELES, SEASON 11 408 REQUEST TIMEOUT MR. ROBOT, SEASON 4…

Trees toppling onto above-ground power lines spark wildfires, more than 1,000 of them in the last decade in California alone. The wires snap in blizzards and hurricanes, causing dayslong outages. Everywhere, power poles topple in all kinds of disasters, blocking escape routes. Around the U.S., dealing with the vulnerability of overhead power lines — one of many problems that experts say will only get worse as the climate deteriorates — by burying them or strengthening them is spotty and disorganized on a national level, and painfully slow, at best. Utilities say there’s no one best way to safeguard the millions of miles of U.S. power lines and that doing so would cost many billions of dollars — $3 million for a single mile of power lines by some estimates. Critics…