Innehållsförteckning för #454 från AppleMagazine

Uber has widened its reach in the fiercely competitive delivery market by acquiring Postmates in a $2.65 billion all-stock deal, the company said. The acquisition enables the ride-hailing giant to increase its delivery offerings at a time when the global pandemic has suppressed customers’ desire for rides while boosting home delivery needs. While Uber’s meal delivery business, Uber Eats, has mostly focused on restaurants, Postmates delivers a wider array of goods including groceries, pharmacy items, alcoholic drinks and party supplies. “The vision for us is to become an everyday service,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, in a conference call with investors Monday. “Postmates is a great step along that vision. Anyplace you want to go, anything you want delivered to your home, Uber is going to be there with…

The Supreme Court upheld a 1991 law that bars robocalls to cellphones. The case, argued by telephone in May because of the coronavirus pandemic, only arose after Congress in 2015 created an exception in the law that allowed the automated calls for collection of government debt. Political consultants and pollsters were among those who asked the Supreme Court to strike down the entire 1991 law that bars them from making robocalls to cellphones as a violation of their free speech rights under the Constitution. The issue was whether, by allowing one kind of speech but not others, the exception made the whole law unconstitutional. Six justices agreed that by allowing debt collection calls to cellphones Congress “impermissibly favored debt-collection speech over political and other speech, in violation of the First…

Walgreens will squeeze primary care clinics into as many as 700 of its U.S. stores over the next few years in a major expansion of the care it offers customers. The drugstore chain said that it will partner with VillageMD to set up doctor-led clinics that also use nurses, social workers and therapists to provide regular treatment for patients. The retailer will redesign stores that get the clinics, narrow their shelves and pull products like tobacco and other grocery items to make room. Drugstores like Walgreens and rival CVS Health Corp. typically tuck small clinics in the back of their stores to dole out flu shots or treat minor ailments like sinus infections or poison ivy. But Walgreens said last fall it was going to close nearly 40% of those…

One county in Utah beat back a spike of pandemic virus infections in the spring, and another saw its rate jump. Both trends showed up in their sewage. Yes, sewage. Across the U.S. and in Europe, researchers and health officials say they can track the course of a community outbreak of the new coronavirus by studying the waste flushed from its bathrooms. And that can provide a valuable addition to public health tools, they say. In Utah, wastewater from communities near a Cache County meatpacking plant that discovered 287 infected workers indicated an outbreak several days before it was officially reported. In contrast, sewage from Summit County showed a decline after officials imposed anti-virus measures, including asking tourists to stay away from its popular Park City ski area. The monitoring…

Since contracting COVID-19 in March, Tom Hanks has been, by most measures, busy. He and his wife, Rita Wilson, flew home after recuperating in Australia, where he had been shooting Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley film. He hosted a from-home episode of “Saturday Night Live,” an already distant enough memory that it takes a beat for him to remember it. And he saw his new World War II naval drama “Greyhound” steered from theatrical release by Sony Pictures to Apple TV+ — the streaming service’s biggest movie yet. But he’s mostly been taking it day by day. “There’s sort of an ongoing physiological maintenance for your brain and for your body that we’ve been following through,” Hanks says, speaking by video conference from his home in California. “What can you do…

NASA has added more safety fixes for Boeing’s space capsule before it can fly astronauts following a pair of close calls during last year’s test flight. In closing out the seven-month investigation, NASA officials said they have now identified 80 corrective actions, mostly involving software and testing, that must be done before the Starliner capsule launches again. The previous count was 61. “It’s a bit of a wake-up call for NASA and its contractors” across the board, said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program. During its space debut last December with no one on board, the Starliner ended up in the wrong orbit and could not reach the International Space Station. Ground controllers barely had time to solve another software problem that could have destroyed the capsule at…

For two weeks, Rachael Jones has stayed home, going without a paycheck while waiting and waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test from a pharmacy near Philadelphia. “I’m just so disappointed. I just don’t know how -- with the resources and the people we have and the money we have -- we can’t get this right,” she said. Four months, 3 million confirmed infections and over 130,000 deaths into the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, Americans confronted with an alarming resurgence of the scourge are facing long lines at testing sites and going a week or more without receiving a diagnosis. Some sites are running out of kits even as testing is ramped up. Labs are reporting shortages of materials and don’t have enough workers to process the tests, leading to…

Indian TikTok users awoke Tuesday (30) to a notice from the popular short-video app saying the company was working to comply with an India government ban on dozens of Chinese apps amid a military standoff between the two countries. While service in India was suspended, the ban was largely symbolic since the apps can’t be automatically erased from devices where they’ve already been downloaded. The move was a response to a border clash with China where 20 Indian soldiers died earlier this month, digital experts said. “They want to send a message. This is a decision based on a geopolitical situation,” said digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa. Indian protesters have been calling for a boycott of Chinese goods since the June 15 confrontation in the remote Karakoram mountain border region.…

A two-year audit of Facebook’s civil rights record found “serious setbacks” that have marred the social network’s progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias. Facebook hired the audit’s leader, former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. Its 100-page report released Wednesday outlines a “seesaw of progress and setbacks” at the company on everything from bias in Facebook’s algorithms to its content moderation, advertising practices and treatment of voter suppression. The audit recommends that Facebook build a “civil rights infrastructure” into every aspect of the company, as well as a “stronger interpretation” of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias. Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in…

Samsung Electronics Co. said this week its operating profit for the last quarter likely rose 23% from the same period last year. The growth was apparently driven by increasing demands for memory chips used in personal computers and servers as the COVID-19 pandemic forces more people to work from home. The South Korean technology giant, which will release more detailed information when it announces its finalized earnings later this month, projected its operating profit during the April-June period to come in at 8.1 trillion won ($6.8 billion). The company’s revenue for the quarter was expected to fall 7% to 52 trillion won ($43.6 billion). After reporting a 3.4% increase in operating profit for the first three months of the year, Samsung had said in April it expected its second-quarter profit…

Acts of kindness may not be that random after all. Science says being kind pays off. Research shows that acts of kindness make us feel better and healthier. Kindness is also key to how we evolved and survived as a species, scientists say. We are hard-wired to be kind. Kindness “is as bred in our bones as our anger or our lust or our grief or as our desire for revenge,” said University of California San Diego psychologist Michael McCullough, author of the forthcoming book “Kindness of Strangers.” It’s also, he said, “the main feature we take for granted.” Scientific research is booming into human kindness and what scientists have found so far speaks well of us. “Kindness is much older than religion. It does seem to be universal,” said…

The Truth Ageing French film star Fabienne Dangeville (Catherine Deneuve) publishes her memoirs, leading her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) to return to Paris to commemorate the book’s release with her husband, Hank (Ethan Hawke). However, mother-daughter conflicts soon ensue. FIVE FACTS: 1. This is the 13th film both written and directed by the Tokyo-born Hirokazu Kore-eda. 2. It is, however, his first film both set outside Japan and not in the Japanese language. 3. The world premiere was held at the Venice Film Festival on August 28, 2019. 4. The Truth was also included in the Toronto International Film Festival’s lineup in September 2019. 5. The Truth was set for theatrical release in the United States on March 20, 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic saw the film taken off the…

Getting into “good trouble” is a guiding principle for John Lewis. It’s not only OK, but necessary to enact and inspire meaningful change. And it’s not just rhetoric, either. The 80-year-old congressman has the receipts to prove it. He has been arrested 45 times, five of which happened while he was a sitting representative. In the new documentary “ John Lewis: Good Trouble,” he couldn’t be prouder of that fact because it’s all been in service of his lifelong fight for civil rights. He even predicts that he’ll add to that tally. It’s a principle that the country seems to have taken to heart in the past month in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. People have taken to the streets and to Twitter to call attention to injustices. They…

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Jennifer Stile was apprehensive when she found out that training classes for her puppy Josie would be moving online because of the pandemic. “Initially I said I’d wait till it’s over,” says Stile, who was taking a class at My Fantastic Friend in Ellicott City, Maryland. “But then I realized that it wasn’t going to be over fast enough, and I knew I needed to train my dog and I didn’t have the tools to do that without help.” So she took the plunge — and she’s glad she did. “I’d been trying to watch YouTube videos and do it on my own, but I wasn’t getting that instant feedback, knowing if I was doing it correctly,” she says. “Having that feedback from a trainer who was invested in me…

The world’s mountain of discarded flat-screen TVs, cellphones and other electronic goods grew to a record high last year, according to an annual report. The U.N.-backed study estimated the amount of e-waste that piled up globally in 2019 at 53.6 metric tonnes (59.1 tons) — almost 2 million metric tons more than the previous year. The authors of the study calculated the combined weight of all dumped devices with a battery or a plug last year was the equivalent of 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2. Among all the discarded plastic and silicon were large amounts of copper, gold and other precious metals — used for example to conduct electricity on circuit boards. While about a sixth of it was recycled, the remainder of those valuable…

Gov. John Bel Edwards is using much of the $50 million in discretionary education aid awarded to Louisiana to help with the coronavirus response to buy computers and expand internet access for public school students. The Democratic governor has agreed to spend $32 million for the effort to bridge the digital divide at K-12 schools. Another $15 million will go to higher education, with two-thirds of that money paying to accelerate training for students to get them to work. Louisiana’s governor received $50 million from the federal CARES Act to divvy up among K-12 schools, colleges and universities. That money is on top of $287 million directly sent to public schools and $147 million sent to colleges and universities earlier this year. The Advocate reports the governor said as he…

Despite the coronavirus pandemic causing the world’s biggest tech events to be canceled, Apple powered through with a virtual alternative, with Craig Federighi taking to the stage to lift the lid on an all-new macOS. To the surprise of developers and consumers, this year’s release is one of the biggest in macOS history, introducing an all-new look, a bunch of new features, and, of course, signaling the start of a new era for Macs with custom Apple chips. STUNNING NEW DESIGN Though Apple has had some subtle design tweaks to its operating systems over the years, macOS Big Sur represents the first major redesign since Mac OS X. With a design language that’s modern yet familiar, Apple has placed greater emphasis on your content, with all-new translucent toolbars and sidebars,…

The Silicon Valley data-mining firm Palantir Technologies confidentially filed to go public, setting up what could be the biggest stock offering from a technology company since Uber’s debut last year. Founded in 2004 by investors including Peter Thiel, the company works with governments, law enforcement agencies and the defense establishment to organize and analyze huge volumes of data. The technology can be used to disrupt terrorist networks or battle human trafficking. Most recently, it was used by the White House to track coronavirus infections. Last year, Palantir won army contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Palantir’s clients include major banks and the U.N.’s World Food Program. The company has stirred controversy for upgrading Immigration and Customs Enforcement software that has been used in the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown,…

Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon Pop Smoke The recently deceased rapper and songwriter Bashar Barakah Jackson, known professionally as Pop Smoke, had already established himself as a pioneer of Brooklyn drill music before the release of this, his debut studio album and his first posthumous project. FIVE FACTS: 1. Jackson was born in New York City’s Brooklyn borough on July 20, 1999. 2. He revealed that his artist name Pop Smoke was derived from “Poppa”, a nickname his Panamanian grandmother gave him, and “Smoke”, part of a nickname childhood friends gave him. 3. Jackson released two mixtapes: Meet the Woo in July 2019 and Meet the Woo 2 in February this year. 4. According to the artist’s friend and manager Steven Victor, who presided over those mixtapes’…

After becoming homeless, Connie Wade realized she’d be missing something critical to care for her daughter. She and 12-year-old Emilyanne couldn’t camp in a car or on the streets because they need to plug in a machine that helps the girl breathe easier. Emilyanne has Down syndrome and her breathing is interrupted every six minutes without a CPAP device. A typical open-space homeless shelter promised them a spot by an electrical outlet, but Wade felt they’d be too vulnerable. Then they got an offer from Mary’s Place, a family homeless shelter that recently opened a facility inside a gleaming new building on Amazon’s Seattle campus. Believed to be the first homeless shelter built inside a corporate building in the U.S., the nonprofit’s Popsicle Place shelter program helps homeless children with…

It’s time to do your taxes — no more delays. As the coronavirus pandemic took hold this spring, the federal government postponed the traditional April 15 filing deadline until July 15. The move provided some economic and logistical relief for taxpayers dealing with the disruptions and uncertainty brought on by lockdowns, school closures and shuttered businesses. But now that new deadline is rapidly approaching. Taxpayers must file or seek an extension by the new deadline or face a penalty. The IRS is expecting about 150 million returns from individuals and as of last count, it had received almost 139 million. So for those of you still waiting to file, make a payment or with other questions, a few answers: DO I HAVE TO? Yes. In most cases, you must file…

TikTok said it will stop operations in Hong Kong, joining other social media companies in warily eyeing ramifications of a sweeping national security law that took effect last week. The short-form video app’s planned departure from Hong Kong comes as various social media platforms and messaging apps including Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Google and Twitter balk at the possibility of providing user data to Hong Kong authorities. The social media companies say they are assessing implications of the security law, which prohibits what Beijing views as secessionist, subversive or terrorist activities or as foreign intervention in the city’s internal affairs. In the communist-ruled mainland, the foreign social media platforms are blocked by China’s “Great Firewall.” Critics see the law as Beijing’s boldest step yet to erase the legal divide between the…