Innehållsförteckning för #576 från AppleMagazine

A weekend fire that injured over three dozen people — and forced firefighters to use ropes to pluck people from a 20th-story window — is drawing attention to a rising concern in New York City: battery fires that can arise in the electric bikes and scooters that have proliferated here. City officials are considering new laws after the fire department counted nearly 200 blazes and six fire deaths this year tied to problems with lithium-ion batteries in such “micromobility” devices. WHAT ARE THESE BATTERIES? ARE THEY THE SAME TECH USED IN PHONES AND CARS? Lithium-ion batteries are a Nobel Prize-winning innovation that entered the market in the early 1990s. Hailed as rechargeable, lightweight, powerful, durable and safe, the batteries have been envisioned as a key to greening the world’s energy…

Pariss Chandler built a community for Black tech workers on Twitter that eventually became the foundation for her own recruitment company. Now she’s afraid it could all fall apart if Twitter becomes a haven for racist and toxic speech under the control of Elon Musk, a serial provocateur who has indicated he could loosen content rules. With Twitter driving most of her business, Chandler sees no good alternative as she watches the uncertainty play out. “Before Elon took over, I felt like the team was working to make Twitter a safer platform, and now they are kind of not there. I don’t know what’s going on internally. I have lost hope in that,” said Chandler, 31, founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a jobs board and recruitment website. “I’m both sad…

Elon Musk’s Tesla paved the way nearly two decades ago. Now, the global transition to fully electric vehicles is littered with startups, inspired by a new era in mobility and drawn by the lower cost of building EVs compared with their fossil-fuel-guzzling forebears. Gone are the billion-dollar investments that have made legacy auto-making into such a cash cow. Suppliers offer ready-made generic electric platforms and manufacturers can take on contracts for assembly — approaches that translate into savings on jobs and infrastructure. What has been missing in the new EV formula, according to a Milan-based startup, AEHRA, is a fresh design concept. “Electric vehicles are looked at as being boring by the general public,” AEHRA CEO Hazim Nada said. “It is very easy to build an extremely powerful electric vehicle.…

California voters on Tuesday approved a ballot measure backed by a celebrity lineup that included Barbra Streisand and Los Angeles-born rappers will.i.am and Dr. Dre that could pump as much as $1 billion a year from the state’s general fund into arts education. The measure had faced no organized opposition, a rarity. With about a quarter of the ballots counted, Proposition 28 won handily with 75.8% of the vote. It will require the state to provide the equivalent of 1% of California’s state funding for public schools from prekindergarten through 12th grade for the arts. Supporters said it would benefit public school programs that go beyond the traditional art, theater, dance and music classes to include graphic design, computer coding, animation, music composition and script writing. Despite California’s vibrant arts…

by Matt Peters Genre: Action & Adventure Released: 2022 Price: $19.99 Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons In a bid for world domination, Starro (voiced by Darin De Paul) takes control of Batman (Troy Baker) and Superman (Travis Willingham) – leading their respective sons, Damian Wayne (Jack Griffo) and Jonathan Kent (Jack Dylan Grazer), to team up on a mission to stop Starro. FIVE FACTS: 1. In this film, Damian and Jonathan have the respective superhero guises of Robin and Superboy. 2. Grazer already has an impressive history in the superhero genre, having played Freddy Freeman in 2019’s Shazam! and its upcoming sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods. 3. DC Entertainment announced Battle of the Super Sons in October 2021. 4. Battle of the Super Sons is DC…

When “The Crown” returns after a two-year absence, the splintering marriage of Charles and Diana and more woes for Queen Elizabeth II are in the drama’s elegant but intrusive spotlight. There’s swirling off-stage drama as well for the Netflix series that began with Elizabeth’s marriage in the late 1940s and, in its fifth season, takes on the British royal family’s turbulent 1990s. The queen famously labeled one stretch her “annus horribilis” — Latin for “horrible year.” The safe distance of history is gone in the 10 new episodes set within recent memory for many and whose stories, sight unseen, have been denounced. The death of Queen Elizabeth, 96, in September adds an uneasy dimension: We speculate freely about the famous before and after they’re gone, but is more owed a…

Apple Inc. is warning customers they’ll have to wait longer to get its latest iPhone models after anti-virus restrictions were imposed on a contractor’s factory in central China. The company announcement gave no details but said the factory operated by Foxconn in the central city of Zhengzhou is “operating at significantly reduced capacity.” “We now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated,” the company said. “Customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.” Foxconn Technology Group said earlier it imposed anti-virus measures on the factory in Zhengzhou following virus outbreaks. Apple and Foxconn previously hadn’t responded to questions about how iPhone production might be affected. Last week, access to the industrial zone where the factory is located was suspended…

After months of back and forth, Tesla founder Elon Musk closed the $44 billion deal to buy the social network Twitter, and the takeover hasn’t been without its controversy. The tech tycoon has big plans for the blue bird and could change the way we use Twitter - or the “town square of the world” - for good. Twitter 2.0 is coming. MUSK TAKES OVER TWITTER While Facebook has dominated social media in recent years with Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram, LinkedIn has flourished under the ownership of Microsoft, and Pinterest has grown into its own. Twitter, on the other hand, is a rare phenomenon. Despite being a word on everybody’s lips, with handles and hashtags mentioned during every TV show, the social network has declined in recent years. Where Instagram…

Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic. Zuckerberg as well said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic ended. “Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to…

The European Union has launched an investigation into Microsoft’s planned takeover of video game giant Activision Blizzard, fearing the $69 billion deal would distort fair competition to popular titles like Call of Duty. Microsoft, maker of the Xbox gaming system, first announced the agreement to buy the California-based game publisher in January, but it still awaits scrutiny by antitrust regulators in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. If it goes through, the all-cash deal would be the largest in the history of the tech industry. Members of the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, said in a statement that “the point is to ensure that the gaming ecosystem remains vibrant to the benefit of users in a sector that is evolving at a fast pace.” “We must ensure that opportunities…

It’s easy to forget that the Netflix original film department is still rather young. Five years ago, the streaming service didn’t even really have one. But things move quickly in the competitive streaming world, especially when starting from scratch. Now with a robust library of proprietary and commercially minded films and characters, Netlifx is leaning into another important pillar of the movie business: Sequels. They’ve dabbled before, with romantic comedies and teen-focused fare like “The Kissing Booth” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” but with a breakneck annual output, Netflix has now amassed enough of their own intellectual property to develop franchises in more genres, including adventure, mystery, comedy, action and thrillers, created by and starring some of the industry’s biggest names. Kicking off with “Enola Holmes 2,”…

The story of Twitter’s blue checkmarks — a simple verification system that’s come to be viewed as an elite status symbol — began with some high-profile impersonations, just as the site began taking off in 2008 and ‘09. Celebrities who saw their likeness spoofed included Kanye West, now Ye, the basketball star Shaquille O’Neil and the actor Ewan McGregor, who was also impersonated on a wildly popular website called ... MySpace. Then, in June 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter, claiming that a fake account, using his name to make light of drunken driving and two Cardinals pitchers who died, damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress. LaRussa eventually dropped his lawsuit. But in June of that year, Twitter’s then-CEO Biz Stone introduced a verification system…

Should California’s richest residents pay higher taxes to help put more electric vehicles on the road? That’s a question the state’s voters are weighing in the election. Proposition 30 would place a new 1.75% tax on incomes above $2 million, which is estimated to be fewer than 43,000 taxpayers. It would raise billions annually, with most going to help subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles and construction of charging stations. Twenty percent of the money would go toward boosting resources to fight wildfires. The ballot fight comes as California races to reduce emissions from transportation — by far the largest source — and meet its ambitious climate goals. Wildfires, meanwhile, are spewing more carbon into the air as they become larger and more destructive, threatening to set back the state’s…

The cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it plans to buy its rival FTX Trading, in the latest example of how fortunes can change rapidly in the crypto world. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said on Twitter that his company had signed a letter of intent to buy FTX because the smaller exchange was experiencing a “significant liquidity crunch.” The deal was pending due diligence, Zhao said on Twitter. The news shook the cryptocurrency world as the biggest crypto exchange had to apparently bail out the third largest exchange. Prices for major crypto assets plunged, with bitcoin prices falling more than 10% and ethereum dropping more than 15%. Shares of publicly traded companies with heavy exposes to crypto fell sharply as well, with Coinbase and Robinhood seeing double-digit percentage declines. Samuel Bankman-Fried, founder…

Nintendo hopes to leverage a new Super Mario movie, various merchandising and theme parks to draw more people into playing its video games, President Shuntaro Furukawa said Wednesday. Nintendo content, including Donkey Kong and Pokemon, has drawn fans over more than four decades, with parents and grandparents now playing games with children. But the intellectual property now extends beyond games, Furukawa told reporters and investors in an online presentation. Among the key efforts for what he called “building a relationship” with game lovers was “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” set to be released in April next year. There are also theme parks like the one that opened in Japan’s Universal Studios more than a year ago featuring restaurants, merchandising and rides, said Furukawa. A Nintendo theme park is set to…

Genre: Alternative Number of Songs: 11 Price: $9.99 Semblance MorMor MorMor – born Seth Nyquist – established a reputation for insular pop during his late-2010s rise to prominence. However, his first full-length record, Semblance, with its array of both upbeat and reflective moments, reflects the impressive range of his musical prowess. FIVE FACTS: 1. “I was kind of inspired by [Red Hot Chili Peppers’] Blood Sugar Sex Magik and the way they recorded that in a big mansion,” Nyquist has revealed to Apple Music. 2. This helps to explain why, in early 2020, Nyquist was renting a property in Toronto’s High Park neighborhood, where the album was set to be recorded. 3. However, due to COVID travel restrictions, “I had to go back to how I started the first projects,”…

Rihanna knew that if she was going to return to the stage less than a year after giving birth to her first child, the performance would have to top anything she’d done before. “If I’m going to leave my baby, I’m going to leave my baby for something special,” the multi-Grammy winner told in an interview. That something special turned out to be the upcoming 2023 Super Bowl halftime show. “It was now or never for me,” she said. The singer had previously declined to perform in the 2019 halftime show out of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. But in a recent interview ahead of her “Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 4,” Rihanna said that the timing and circumstances this time around were right for her. “It was a challenge that…

As Sharon Wilson pulled up to the BP site in Texas last June, production tanks towered above the windblown grass roughly 60 miles southeast of San Antonio. Cows and pumpjacks lined the roadsides. All looked placid. But when Wilson flipped on a high-tech video camera, a disquieting image became visible: A long black plume poured from a flare pipe. Her camera, designed to detect hydrocarbons, had revealed what appeared to be a stream of methane — a potent climate-warming gas, gushing from the very equipment that is supposed to prevent such emissions. “It’s very discouraging and depressing, but mostly it’s infuriating,” said Wilson, a field advocate for Earthworks, which promotes alternatives to fossil fuels. “Our government is not taking the action that needs to be taken.” Methane is the main…