Innehållsförteckning för #465 från AppleMagazine

Tesla is working on new battery technology that CEO Elon Musk says will enable the company within the next three years to make sleeker, more affordable cars that can travel dramatically longer distances on a single charge. But the battery breakthroughs that Musk unveiled Tuesday at a highly anticipated event didn’t impress investors. They were hoping Tesla’s technology would mark an even bigger leap forward and propel the company’s soaring stock to even greater heights. Tesla’s shares shed more than 6% in extended trading after Musk’s presentation. That deepened a down downturn that began during Tuesday’s regular trading session as investors began to brace for a potential letdown. Musk raised those worries with a series of tweets Monday warning that Tesla’s new battery technology might not be ready for high-volume…

iPad has long been one of Apple’s most successful product categories, and following upgrades to the iPad Pro and iPad mini earlier in the year, Apple used its September Event to unveil the next-generation iPad and iPad Air, taking its tablet portfolio to even greater heights. THE MOST POWERFUL iPAD AIR The star of the show at this year’s Time Flies event was undoubtedly the all-new iPad Air, reimagined from the ground up to offer a stunning user experience on a larger 10.9-inch display, ideal for multitasking. Apple calls the new iPad its most “powerful, versatile, and colorful” yet, with Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, praising the device’s “gorgeous new all-screen design, Liquid Retina display, Touch ID, and a massive boost in performance with A14 Bionic.…

Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 5 video game console will cost $500 and launch Nov. 12, the company said Wednesday, setting up a holiday battle with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X over whose new console will turn up under more trees this year. Video game fans have been chomping at the bit for the new consoles, and not just because they’ve been stuck inside since March. The roughly 7-year life cycle of a video game console has been nearing an end. Both predecessor consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, launched in 2013. The new consoles promise faster load times, souped up graphics and new games. Sony’s console is also more expensive this time around; the PS4 launched for $400 in 2013. Sony’s PS5 will come in two different models — a…

THE SPEED OF NOW Part 1 Keith Urban The New Zealand-born, Australia-raised country star Keith Urban has always had a “blended style,” so he recalls – and he further tells Apple Music that “the speed of now”, after which his new album is named, is “always relative to each of us at any given time,” like music itself. FIVE FACTS: 1. THE SPEED OF NOW Part 1 is Urban’s 11th studio album. 2. The contributors to the album have been picked from various genres and geographical areas. 3. Urban completed the album during quarantine, and has reflected that his “very working-class” upbringing proved “a great way to have been raised when something like this hits.” 4. Big-name artists who feature on the album include Nile Rodgers and P!nk. 5. Urban…

The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial-recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009 even while denying at times that it used the controversial technology at all, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. The LAPD doesn’t have its own face-scanning platform but uses the face-comparison software provided through the Los Angeles County Regional Identification System, a database of about 9 million mugshots, the Times said. Recent denials that the Police Department used facial recognition were mistakes, Assistant Chief Horace Frank told the paper. Frank said he told the city’s Police Commission about its use two years ago. “We aren’t trying to hide anything,” he said. The software has been used to help identify suspects in crimes without witnesses, gang crimes where witnesses are afraid to come forward, and by…

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Mobile apps tracing new COVID-19 cases were touted as a key part of Europe’s plan to beat the coronavirus outbreak. Seven months into the pandemic, virus cases are surging again and the apps have not been widely adopted due to privacy concerns, technical problems and lack of interest from the public. Britain, Portugal, and Finland this month became the latest to unveil smartphone apps that alert people if they’ve been near someone who turned out to be infected so they can seek treatment or isolate - a key step in breaking the chain of contagion. But a few countries have scrapped their tracing apps and others that have rolled them out have found so few users that the technology is not very effective. The adoption rate goes from about a…

America’s worsening climate change problem is as polarized as its politics. Some parts of the country have been burning this month while others were underwater in extreme weather disasters. The already parched West is getting drier and suffering deadly wildfires because of it, while the much wetter East keeps getting drenched in mega-rainfall events, some hurricane related and others not. Climate change is magnifying both extremes, but it may not be the only factor, several scientists affirm. “The story in the West is really going to be... these hot dry summers getting worse and the fire compounded by decreasing precipitation,” said Columbia University . “But in the eastern part more of the climate change impact story is going to be more intense precipitation. We see it in Sally.” North Carolina…

You’ve probably heard the phrase “your mileage may vary” with regard to how your real-world fuel economy compares to the EPA estimate. The adage refers to gasoline-powered vehicles, but the same applies to electric vehicles. Edmunds has found, however, that the variance can be even greater with an EV, depending on the vehicle. After owning and testing many of the popular EVs on the roads today, Edmunds created its own standardized real-world test to provide an additional data point for comparison. A closer look at its tests for the Porsche Taycan and the Tesla Model Y Performance turned up some interesting results. The 2020 Porsche Taycan 4S, an all-new electric luxury sport sedan, was way off from the EPA estimated 203 miles of range in Edmunds’ real-world driving test. Edmunds…

Monday’s return to New York City schools wasn’t the one anyone planned for. For most, it wasn’t a return at all. Only pre-kindergarten and some special education students ended a six-month absence from school buildings after a last-minute decision to postpone, for the second time, plans to be among the first big districts to resume in-person instruction after the coronavirus forced students and staff home. Mayor Bill de Blasio greeted pre-K students at a school in Queens and praised the “air of energy and spirit” among teachers and pupils. “To see those children so engaged, so happy to be there, it was truly inspiring,” de Blasio said. In Manhattan, Alexandra Safir greeted her daughter, Harper, after the first day of in-school pre-K at P.S. 33. “The first day went really…

Microsoft is buying the company behind popular video games The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout. The software giant said that it is paying $7.5 billion for ZeniMax Media, the parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. Microsoft said it is buying Bethesda in part to beef up its Xbox Game Pass game subscription service, which it says has over 15 million subscribers. Bethesda games, such as Starfield, which is currently in development, will launch on Xbox Game Pass the same day they launch on Xbox or computers, Microsoft said. Microsoft has new consoles debuting on Nov. 10, the Xbox Series X and stripped down Series S version. It will be competing against Sony’s new PlayStation 5 console. R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said the deal is part of a…

There is a long, questionable and occasionally successful tradition of spinning off iconic literary and film characters through relatives distant and not from James Bond Jr. to John Shaft II and III. In other words, it’s not out of bounds that someone would come along and invent a little sister for Sherlock Holmes and eventually make a movie out of it. Enola Holmes is the creation of American author Nancy Springer who wrote a series of six young adult novels about Sherlock and Mycroft’s teenage sister who becomes a detective in her own right. The lighthearted and enjoyable film adaptation stars “Stranger Things’” Millie Bobby Brown as the titular character in an origin story that is clearly an attempt to start a franchise. Thankfully it isn’t merely a “set-up” film.…

Adam Schiff was in the audience at the 2018 Aspen Security Forum when a Microsoft executive mentioned an attempted hacking of three politicians up for reelection. It was the first that Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, had ever heard of it. Schiff said he thought it was “odd” that Congress hadn’t been briefed. He got in touch with high-ranking officials in the intelligence agencies, and they didn’t know about it, either. It turned out that Russian hackers had unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate the Senate computer network of then-Sen. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and other unidentified candidates. Two years later, Schiff says that breakdown is still emblematic of the disjointed effort among government agencies, Congress and private companies as they try to identify and address foreign…

New Mexico’s largest electric utility and one of the nation’s premiere federal research laboratories will team up on a series of projects aimed at making the electric grid more resilient as the state prepares to add more renewable energy to the mix, officials said. The research and development partnership between Sandia National Laboratories and Public Service Co. of New Mexico is designed to address energy challenges not just in New Mexico but across the U.S., said lab director James Peery. “This agreement provides a pathway for Sandia’s advanced technologies to be put to the test in a real-world system, while advancing the goals of electric power system resiliency and safety that are critical to national security,” he said in a statement. As New Mexico and other states mandate that more…

Finland has deployed coronavirus-sniffing dogs at the Nordic country’s main international airport in a four-month trial of an alternative testing method that could become a cost-friendly and quick way to identify infected travelers. Four dogs of different breeds trained by Finland’s Smell Detection Association started working this week at the Helsinki Airport as part of the government-financed trial. “It’s a very promising method. Dogs are very good at sniffing,”Anna Hielm-Bjorkman, a University of Helsinki professor of equine and small animal medicine, said. “If it works, it will be a good (coronavirus) screening method at any other places,” she said, listing hospitals, ports, elderly people’s homes, sports venues and cultural events among the possible locations where trained dogs could put their snouts to work. While researchers in several countries, including Australia,…

Volkswagen is unveiling a battery-powered sport-utility vehicle that is headed for global markets including the United States and China, as the company takes a major step forward in its campaign to make electric cars a mass-market choice. The ID.4 combines the battery drive favored by environmental rules in Europe and China with the compact SUV design that has drawn many consumers away from hatchbacks and sedans. The new model comes close on the heels of the German company’s first vehicle built on its electric-only platform, the ID.3 compact, that went on sale in September. The ID.3 is not, however, coming to the United States, where larger vehicles such as SUVs increasingly rule the market. The ID.4 is by contrast “designed as a world car,” according to Volkswagen brand head Ralf…

A group of leading cybersecurity experts told an Ohio court that absentee ballot applications can be safely transmitted using email, countering the secretary of state’s assertions that the practice would open up voting in the presidential battleground to outside interference. In a filing late Monday, eight experts in computer information and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown, Princeton and other universities joined the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice in asking a state appellate court to allow the ballot applications to be accepted by electronic means. “Election officials can easily facilitate electronic submission of applications at little cost while minimizing associated security risks,” their filing said. “Ideally this should be done by a secure online portal, but it is also feasible to do so…

Antebellum The empowered and successful author Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe) finds herself suddenly flung into a terrifying and twisted reality that literally enslaves her. It’s a race against time for her to confront the past, present and future and free herself from the nightmare. FIVE FACTS: 1. This is the first feature film written, produced and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, who are known for their advocacy advertising work hitting out at social injustice. 2. Indeed, racial, class and gender injustices are all strong themes running through Antebellum. 3. The word “antebellum” literally means “before the war”, making the film’s title a reference to the pre-American Civil War setting where the main character finds herself. 4. Monáe admitted it was “triggering” to shoot the film at a plantation,…

Let’s take a trip back in American history, but not too way back. To a time not that unfamiliar — the last presidential election. Do you remember all the stuff swirling around in 2016? Fancy Bear. Paul Manafort. Julian Assange. Guccifer 2.0. George Papadopoulos. The Steele dossier. The “Access Hollywood” tape. The FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. James Comey and Roger Stone. Remember how they all fit together? No? You’re not alone. Enter director Alex Gibney with HBO’s two-part “Agents of Chaos,” a timely yet dispiriting look at how a whole bunch of Russian dirty tricks helped Donald Trump into the White House — just in time for a possible replay. “I am interested in figuring out this Trump-Russia thing. What was that all about?” asks Gibney, who has previously made…

Facebook says it has removed a small network of fake accounts and pages that originated in China and focused on disrupting political activity in the U.S. and several other countries. The U.S.-focused activity was just a “sliver” of the accounts’ overall activity and gained almost no following, Facebook said. Their primary focus was Southeast Asia, including the Philippines. In the U.S, the accounts posted material both in support of and against presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. Facebook did not link the network directly to the Chinese government. It said the people behind the network tried to conceal their identity and location via virtual private networks and other methods. Concerns about foreign efforts to interfere in the election were underscored by a warning from the FBI…

Heidi Kershaw was sitting in on a therapy session with her 7-year-old son, who has autism, when she noticed he kept getting distracted from the therapy exercises. His eyes were glued to the corner of the room, where Mickey Mouse was on the TV. If only there were an image of Mickey Mouse on her face, the mom told the therapist, she would finally be able to establish eye contact with her son. Kershaw, who is the senior vice president of operations at the Entertainment Industry Foundation in Los Angeles, kept the thought with her and came up with an idea: a pair of glasses that stream digital content on the lenses, allowing parents or therapists to keep eye contact with nonverbal children with autism. After getting turned down by…

An international team of scientists said it had joined forces to combat the spread of anti-Semitism online with the help of artificial intelligence. The project Decoding Anti-Semitism includes discourse analysts, computational linguists and historians who will develop a “highly complex, AI-driven approach to identifying online anti-Semitism,” the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which supports the project, said in a statement. “In order to prevent more and more users from becoming radicalized on the web, it is important to identify the real dimensions of anti-Semitism — also taking into account the implicit forms that might become more explicit over time,” said Matthias Becker, a linguist and project leader from the Technical University of Berlin. The team also includes researchers from King’s College in London and other scientific institutions in Europe and Israel. Computers…