Innehållsförteckning för #611 från AppleMagazine

Wondering if you should choose to accept the latest “Mission: Impossible” entry? Maybe you’re sick of all the bombast at the movie theater lately? Well, put it another way: Do you really want to disappoint Tom Cruise? On the first day cameras were rolling for “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One,” Cruise drove a motorcycle off an actual 4,000-foot Norwegian cliff and then parachuted down. He did it for you. The least you can do to repay him is watch his movie, right? If you do give in, you’re in for a treat — a heart-pounding, never dragging, mission accomplished that takes audiences from the frozen Bering Sea to the rooftop of Abu Dhabi International Airport and the narrow alleyways of Venice. It’s got plenty of facemasks being ripped…

A federal judge has handed Microsoft a major victory by declining to block its looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard. Regulators sought to ax the deal saying it will hurt competition. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a ruling that the merger deserved scrutiny, noting it could be the largest in the history of the tech industry. But federal regulators were unable to show how it would cause serious harm and wouldn’t likely prevail if they took it to a full trial, she wrote. The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws, “has not raised serious questions regarding whether the proposed merger is likely to substantially lessen competition” between video game consoles or in the growing markets for monthly game subscriptions or cloud-based gaming,…

A group of congressional Democrats reported this week that three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over the course of at least two years. Their report urges federal agencies to investigate and potentially go to court over the wealth of information that H&R Block, TaxAct and Tax Slayer shared with the social media giant. In a letter to the heads of the IRS, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS watchdog, seven lawmakers say their findings “reveal a shocking breach of taxpayer privacy by tax prep companies and by Big Tech firms.” Their report said highly personal and financial information about sources of taxpayers’ income, tax deductions and exemptions was made accessible to Meta…

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Amazon is disputing its status as a big online platform that needs to face stricter scrutiny under European Union digital rules taking effect next month, the first Silicon Valley tech giant to push back on the pioneering new standards. The online retailer filed a legal challenge with a top European Union court, arguing it’s being treated unfairly by being designated a “very large online platform” under the 27-nation bloc’s sweeping Digital Services Act. Amazon, whose filing to the European General Court was made available this week, is the second company to protest the classification. German online retailer Zalando filed a legal claim two weeks ago with a similar argument. The Digital Services Act imposes new obligations on the biggest tech companies to keep users safe from illegal content and dodgy…

Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new text-based app called Threads, which has drawn tens of millions of users since launching this week as a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform. In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app. The move ramps up the tensions between the social media giants after Threads debuted last week, targeting those who are seeking out alternatives to Twitter amid unpopular changes Musk has made to the platform since buying it last year for $44 billion. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote on Threads: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former…

Celebrities, lawmakers, brands and everyday social media users are flocking to Meta’s freshly minted app Threads to connect with their followers, including many Twitter refugees tired of the drama surrounding Elon Musk’s raucous oversight of that platform. But the real question is: Will they stay? Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a Threads post that in the five days since its launch, 100 million people have signed up for Threads, which was rolled out as a companion app to Instagram. Ann Coleman is among them. The 50-year-old, who lives in Baltimore, said she joined Threads after hearing about the platform from a comedian she follows on social media. She said she loves Twitter and has been using it for more than 10 years. She even met her husband on there.…

Is non-English language music the future of the music business? Perhaps. The global music industry surpassed 1 trillion streams at the fastest pace, ever, in a calendar year, Luminate’s 2023 Midyear Report has found. The number was reached in three months, a full month faster than 2022. Global streams are also up 30.8% from last year, reflective of an increasingly international music marketplace. Additionally, Luminate found that two in five — or 40% — of U.S. music listeners enjoy music in a non-English language. And a whopping 69% of U.S. music listeners enjoy music from artists originating outside of the U.S. According to the report, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, German, and Arabic are the most popular languages for non-Anglophonic music among U.S. music listeners, with Latin genres and K-pop…

The Biden administration asked a federal appeals court Monday to temporarily block a lower court’s order limiting executive branch officials’ discussions with social media companies about controversial online posts. The request for an emergency stay was filed at the 5th U.S. District Court of Appeals shortly after U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty rejected an administration motion that he put his own July 4 order on hold. The order came in a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, as well as a conservative website owner and four individual critics of government COVID-19 policies. The lawsuit claimed the administration, in effect, censored free speech by using threats of regulatory action or protection while pressuring companies to remove what it deemed misinformation. COVID-19 vaccines, legal issues involving President Joe…

Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live. The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday (05) night to users in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite some early glitches, 30 million people had signed up before noon on Thursday (06), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads. New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay — as well as corporate accounts from Taco Bell, Netflix, Spotify, the Washington Post and other media outlets. Threads, which Meta says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations,” arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Elon…

Kia Corp. will invest $200 million in its Georgia factory to begin producing an electric-powered SUV, the company announced this week. The South Korean company said it would hire an additional 200 workers to begin producing its large EV9 vehicle in West Point by early 2024. The company said it would expand overall production at the plant near the Alabama state line southwest of Atlanta. Kia says the plant currently produces 340,000 vehicles a year, including Telluride, Sorrento and Sportage SUVs and K5 sedans. Kia had 2,700 employees at the plant in 2021. Hyundai Motor Group, Kia’s parent, is pushing hard into electric vehicles. Hyundai is sprinting to complete a $5.5 billion plant to assemble electric vehicles and batteries in Ellabell, Georgia, near Savannah. The company also invested $300 million…

The European Union signed off Monday on a new agreement over the privacy of people’s personal information that gets pinged across the Atlantic, aiming to ease European concerns about electronic spying by American intelligence agencies. The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework has an adequate level of protection for personal data, the EU’s executive commission said. That means it’s comparable to the 27-nation’s own stringent data protection standards, so companies can use it to move information from Europe to the United States without adding extra security. U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October to implement the deal after reaching a preliminary agreement with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Washington and Brussels made an effort to resolve their yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens’ data that…