Innehållsförteckning för #551 från AppleMagazine

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses have quickly adopted remote working and transitioned to new technologies, such as contactless payments and online ordering. Unfortunately, these adjustments have come with increased risks. According to a 2022 report from Barracuda, a cloud and networks security company, small businesses with fewer than 100 employees receive 350% more social engineering attacks — like phishing, scamming or email compromise — than larger businesses. Compared with larger companies, many small businesses have fewer resources to dedicate to cybersecurity, leaving them vulnerable to the ever-evolving tactics of cybercriminals. And dealing with the consequences of a cyberattack can be seriously detrimental to a business’s bottom line, costing approximately $25,000 per year. Learn how to protect your small business from cyberattacks with these four tips. EVALUATE…

An autonomous vehicle technology company that partners with Ford and Volkswagen says it has started driverless operations in two of eight cities where it is developing its technology. Pittsburgh-based Argo AI has pulled drivers from its autonomous cars in Miami and Austin, Texas, though it is still in the testing phase. Its commercial partnerships with Walmart and Lyft still have backup drivers in both cities. The company is partnering with Lyft to use its autonomous test vehicles for their ride-sharing network in Miami Beach and grocery delivery for Walmart in Miami and Austin. Argo says it is the first company to go driverless in two American cities, but Argo isn’t the first company to go driverless. Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been running a…

The Biden administration is taking the first steps to release $45 billion to ensure that every U.S. resident has access to high-speed internet by roughly 2028, inviting governors and other leaders to start the application process. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is overseeing the distribution and said that universal access to broadband internet would be akin to the electrification of rural America during the 1930s, a recognition that the internet is a utility needed for U.S. residents to function in today’s economy. “There’s more than 30 million Americans who don’t have internet,” Raimondo said. “And in this day and age without high-speed internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to the doctor, can’t do simple things. Think of how many times in a day you Google something or go online.”…

Elon Musk’s ties to China through his role as electric car brand Tesla’s biggest shareholder could add complexity to his bid to buy Twitter. Other companies that want access to China give in to pressure to follow Beijing’s positions on Taiwan and other issues. But Twitter is shut out by internet barriers that block most Chinese users from seeing global social media, which gives Beijing no leverage over the company, though the ruling Communist Party uses it to spread propaganda abroad. Tesla Inc.’s ambitions in China might give Beijing that leverage to pressure Twitter to silence human rights activists and other critics or ease its rules on propaganda if Musk’s $44 billion purchase goes ahead, some experts suggest. Chinese customers bought half the Teslas sold last year. Its busiest factory…

Congress held its first hearing in half a century on unidentified flying objects. And no, there is still no government confirmation of extraterrestrial life. Testifying before a House Intelligence subcommittee, Pentagon officials did not disclose additional information from their ongoing investigation of hundreds of unexplained sightings in the sky. But they said they had picked a director for a new task force to coordinate data collection efforts on what the government has officially labeled “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said the Pentagon was also trying to destigmatize the issue and encourage pilots and other military personnel to report anything unusual they see. “We want to know what’s out there as much as you want to know what’s out there,” Moultrie told lawmakers, adding that…

Dance Fever Florence + the Machine Just before the pandemic, Florence Welch – the lead singer of the English indie rock group Florence + the Machine – read about choreomania, the medieval European “dancing plague”. This inspired her to work on an album about her own relationship to performance. FIVE FACTS: 1. “When I make records, I make them with the idea that no-one else will hear them,” Welch admitted to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. 2. She added: “When you get to the realization that this private dialogue is going to be completely public, it’s like I’ve tricked myself again.” 3. Dance Fever is Florence + the Machine’s fifth studio album. 4. Welch revealed that the song “King” is about her conflict between committing to performance and wanting to start…

My mom died at age 61, when I was 31. Seeing her headstone in a field of others smacked me with a brutal, if obvious fact: Everyone, including everyone’s parents, will die. I promise I’m not trying to depress you. I want to prepare you, as this loss can happen sooner than you’d expect. And when parents die, it’s often up to their children to manage not just grief but also financial tasks. Planning for those to-do’s now could help later, when you experience what may be some of your hardest days. “We surely ought to have some idea of what we’re facing,” says Melanie Cullen, San Francisco Bay Area-based author of “Get It Together: Organize Your Records So Your Family Won’t Have To.” She adds: “On the other side…

When Chandler Jones realized she was pregnant during her junior year of college, she turned to a trusted source for information and advice. Her cellphone. “I couldn’t imagine before the Internet, trying to navigate this,” said Jones, 26, who graduates Tuesday from the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I didn’t know if hospitals did abortions. I knew Planned Parenthood did abortions, but there were none near me. So I kind of just Googled.” But with each search, Jones was being surreptitiously followed — by the phone apps and browsers that track us as we click away, capturing even our most sensitive health data. Web searches. Period apps. Fitness trackers. Advice helplines. GPS. The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than…

With an overhauled MacBook Air reportedly just around the corner, experts are gearing themselves up for a new generation of computing. Likely to sport the M2 chip and an all-new design, the upcoming MacBook Air refresh could be one of the most significant to date. THE UPCOMING MACBOOK AIR Over the past couple of years, Apple has made something very clear: it means business when it comes to the Mac. Professionals and everyday users had grown frustrated with the Cupertino company’s approach to the Mac prior to 2020, with some calling the line-up scale and lagging behind competitors, especially in regards to price. But as Apple enters a new age with its own silicon chips, namely the M1 series and its Pro, Max, and Ultra counterparts, the company is once…

Nissan is considering adding a new auto plant in the U.S. to keep up with growing demand for electric vehicles, a top executive at the Japanese automaker said. “It may not be a surprise that we go for a third plant,” Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta told reporters at Yokohama headquarters. Nissan Motor Co. now has two auto plants in the U.S. One in Canton, Mississippi makes the Titan pickup truck and Altima sedan, among other models. The other in Smyrna, Tennessee makes the Leaf electric car, Pathfinder sport utility vehicle and other models. Each of the plants employs thousands of workers and has produced millions of Nissan vehicles. The third plant would not just be an added assembly line to an existing plant but a totally new facility, although…

A state agency in New York has filed an administrative complaint against Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant discriminated against pregnant and disabled workers by denying them “reasonable accommodations” and forcing them to take unpaid leave, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced this week. Amazon has more than 39,000 workers across New York in nearly two dozen worksites, which employ in-house consultants who evaluate accommodation requests, according to a statement from the governor’s office. But the New York State Division of Human Rights, the agency that filed the complaint, alleges the retailer has a policy that allows onsite managers to override recommendations from the consultants, which has led to denials in the worker requests. State law requires all employers to provide reasonable accommodation for pregnant and disabled workers. The governor’s office lists three…

A NASA spacecraft on Mars is headed for a dusty demise. The Insight lander is losing power because of all the dust on its solar panels. NASA said it will keep using the spacecraft’s seismometer to register marsquakes until the power peters out, likely in July. Then flight controllers will monitor InSight until the end of this year, before calling everything off. “There really hasn’t been too much doom and gloom on the team. We’re really still focused on operating the spacecraft,” said Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Bruce Banerdt, the principal scientist. Since landing on Mars in 2018, InSight has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes; the biggest one, a magnitude 5, occurred two weeks ago. It will be NASA’s second Mars lander lost to dust: A global dust storm took out…

The Bad Guys Upon being caught, a group of criminal animals known as ‘The Bad Guys’ pretend to attempt to reform themselves as model citizens – but their leader, Mr. Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell), is soon attracted to the idea of genuinely putting his dubious past behind him. FIVE FACTS: 1. This film is loosely based on Aaron Blabey’s children’s book series of the same name. 2. The other four members of ‘The Bad Guys’ in the film are Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha, Mr. Shark, and Ms. Tarantula. 3. These characters are voiced respectively by Marc Maron, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson and Awkwafina. 4. Meanwhile, Zazie Beetz voices Diane Foxington, a red fox governor and Mr. Wolf’s love interest. 5. A real professional choreographer conceived the choreography for the…

The hotel name Zoetry (in Zoetry Montego Bay Jamaica) has an umlaut mark over the letter “e.” For some travelers, all-inclusive hotels conjure up images of flavorless food served under a heat lamp in lush and vibrant destinations where guests never actually leave the resort grounds. Lower-tier liquor flows freely (the good stuff will cost you more), as the few overindulgers put a damper on the trip. That image is changing, as hotel companies expand their offerings, while redefining what all-inclusive means. HOTELS ARE GROWING THEIR ALL-INCLUSIVE BRANDS Many hotel companies are rapidly adding all-inclusive resorts to their portfolio. Hyatt’s acquisition of Apple Leisure Group in November 2021 made it one of the largest owners of luxury all-inclusive resorts in the world. That acquisition included the luxury-focused AMR Collection, which…

Hawaiian Airlines is exploring electric aircraft technology with a company based in Boston. The airline is interested in using the vehicles for travel between Hawaii’s islands, Hawaii News Now reported. The company called REGENT is designing“seagliders” that would each carry up to 100 people. Hawaiian hasn’t committed to purchasing any of the aircraft but is exploring the possibility. A news release from REGENT said Hawaiian agreed to strategically invest to support the initial design of the company’s next-generation seaglider. Hawaiian is the first airline to partner with the company, which hopes to have its Monarch seagliders in the air by 2028. “We look forward to working with REGENT to explore the technology and infrastructure needed to fulfill our vision for convenient, comfortable and environmentally sustainable interisland transportation,” said Avi Mannis,…

Jeff Bezos this weekend became the latest centibillionaire to launch a political fight on Twitter by denouncing a tweet from President Joe Biden about corporate taxes as “disinformation” and “misdirection.” The White House quickly retorted Monday that Bezos “opposes an economic agenda for the middle class.” And then Bezos fired back, arguing that the Biden administration would have made inflation worse if its $3.5 trillion economic and social spending bill, known as “Build Back Better,” had made it into law. “They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high,” Bezos tweeted. The dispute marks an unusually high-profile one for Bezos, who has generally sought to avoid political fights in public. Bezos is the second-wealthiest…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised that taking over Twitter would enable him to rid the social media platform of its annoying“spam bots.”Now he’s arguing — without presenting any evidence — that there might be just too many of those automated accounts for the $44 billion deal to move ahead. The sharp turnaround by the world’s richest man makes little sense except as a method to scuttle or renegotiate a deal that’s becoming increasingly costly for him, experts said. And while such hardball tactics aren’t uncommon in corporate mergers, the way this is playing out — in a highly public, seemingly erratic conversation on the very platform Musk wants to buy — has little precedent. Which means that Musk is negotiating the future of Twitter ... on Twitter. It’s increasingly clear…

The pandemic vastly changed the way Americans spend money and now as they return to pre-pandemic behavior, they’re tripping up retailers again. That dynamic has only been intensified in recent months as inflation jumps sharply, and the latest financial report from Target underscore the challenges. Target reported Wednesday that its profit tumbled 52% compared with the same period last year in an environment of rising costs for things like fuel, and also a lightening quick return by consumers to more normalized spending. Purchases of big TVs and appliances that Americans loaded up on during the pandemic have faded, leaving Target with a bloated inventory that must be marked down to sell. Target’s quarterly financial report comes a day after shares of rival Walmart tumbled about 17% for similar reasons after…

Something was missing when Fox announced its plans for the fall television season: a schedule. It was one of several signs of how the business has changed since networks resumed their annual glitzy presentations for advertisers, which had been suspended because of the pandemic. Both NBC and Fox, which kicked off the week Monday, emphasized how the flagship networks were now part of larger media companies. Networks still can boast star power. Susan Sarandon, George Lopez, Raymond Lee, Camila Cabello and Trace Adkins will be featured in new contexts. Kelly Clarkson sang to open NBC’s show, and Miley Cyrus performed to end it. The traditional presentations usually reveal what new shows are coming, what old shows are departing and when they will air during the week and year. While fixed…

Early on in “Top Gun: Maverick,” Tom Cruise hops on his sleek motorcycle, wearing Aviator sunglasses and a leather jacket with patches, and speeds into a time machine. No, that’s not right. It’s actually us who take a trip back. More than 30 years after Cruise smirked his way to the cocky heights of the ’80s as the maverick Navy pilot codenamed Maverick, he effortlessly picks up the character in a new chapter of “Top Gun” that is an absolutely, thoroughly enjoyable ride — a textbook example of how to make a sequel. “Top Gun: Maverick” satisfies with one foot in the past by hitting all the touchstones of the first film — fast motorcycles, the song “Danger Zone,” military fetishisms, humorless Navy bosses, shirtless bonding sports, “the hard deck,”…

Public schools were closed and evacuation bags packed this week as a stubborn wildfire crept within a few miles of the city of Los Alamos and its companion U.S. national security lab — where assessing apocalyptic threats is a specialty and wildland fire is a beguiling equation. Lighter winds last Friday (13) allowed for the most intense aerial attack on those flames west of Santa Fe as well as the biggest U.S. wildfire burning farther east, south of Taos. “We had all kinds of aviation flying today,” fire operations chief Todd Abel said at a Santa Fe National Forest briefing Friday evening. “We haven’t had that opportunity in a long time.” In Southern California, where a fire has destroyed at least 20 homes south of Los Angeles in the coastal…