Innehållsförteckning för #671 från AppleMagazine

Every day, millions of people use Spotify to stream music. A few years ago, it would’ve felt like an impossibility: Click, and bam — a seemingly endless catalog of recorded music opens up, right at your fingertips. Streaming now accounts for most of the money generated by the music industry — a whopping 84% in the United States, according to the RIAA, and 67.3% worldwide, according to a 2024 report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which tracks global sales. Spotify is the largest platform of all — making up roughly 31% of the total market share — with a reported 626 million users and 246 million subscribers in over 180 markets. In July, Spotify increased its monthly subscription cost. So, how does money from advertisers and subscription…

Children giggle as young people flash their smartphones to film robots carrying plates of freshly prepared meals on their inbuilt trays to deliver to diners in a busy eatery in Kenya’s capital. Nairobi has a vibrant tech industry with various startups and innovations in operation and has positioned itself as a tech hub in the East African region bearing the nickname The Silicone Savanna. This is the Robot Cafe, believed to be the first of its kind in Nairobi and East Africa, where three robots glide among human waiters serving food to mesmerized customers. These preprogrammed robots were acquired for entertainment. Cafe owner Mohammed Abbas says he experienced robot service in Asian and European countries and decided to invest in them. “It was very expensive to import the robots,” he…

California lawmakers approved a host of proposals this week aiming to regulate the artificial intelligence industry, combat deepfakes and protect workers from exploitation by the rapidly evolving technology. The California Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, is voting on hundreds of bills during its final week of the session to send to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.. The Democratic governor has until Sept. 30 to sign the proposals, veto them or let them become law without his signature. Newsom signaled in July he will sign a proposal to crack down on election deepfakes but has not weighed in other legislation. He warned earlier this summer that overregulation could hurt the homegrown industry. In recent years, he often has cited the state’s budget troubles when rejecting legislation that he would otherwise support.…

Three weeks after the U.S. presidential election in November, Ridley Scott will present his latest big-screen opus. “Gladiator II” returns the prodigious filmmaker to ancient Rome for a story about a power, the survival of Rome and the fate of democracy. “Hopefully,” Scott says, “it will be a good omen.” This fall, Hollywood will be trying — with everything from swaggering historical epics like “Gladiator II” to the high-seas adventure of “Moana 2” — to capture the nation’s attention at a time when much of it will be directed at the polls. Already, Hollywood has played a co-starring role in the election. The Democratic Convention in August was packed with stars like Oprah Winfrey. Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, was first introduced to many by the 2020 big-screen adaptation of…

Dollar Tree is slashing its full-year earnings and sales forecasts as its customers continue to struggle with higher prices and spend less. Shares tumbled more than 10% before the opening bell Wednesday after hitting a 52-week low on the prior day. Less than a week ago, shares of rival bargain chain Dollar General had their biggest one-day decline ever after a dismal quarter. Dollar Tree said that it now expects full-year adjusted earnings between $5.20 and $5.60 per share. Its prior outlook was for $6.50 to $7 per share. The Chesapeake, Virginia, company also projected annual sales in a range of $30.6 billion to $30.9 billion, down from $31 billion to $32 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet expect full-year earnings of $6.56 per share on revenue of $31.17 billion. Dollar…

Another offshore wind project in New Jersey is encountering turbulence. Leading Light Wind is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to give it a pause through late December on its plan to build an offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Beach Island. In a filing with the utilities board made in July but not posted on the board’s web site until Tuesday, the company said it has had difficulty securing a manufacturer for turbine blades for the project and is currently without a supplier. It asked the board to pause the project through Dec. 20 while a new source of blades is sought. Wes Jacobs, the project director and vice president of Offshore Wind Development at Invenergy — one of the project’s partners — said it…

How do you know if an artificial intelligence system is so powerful that it poses a security danger and shouldn’t be unleashed without careful oversight? For regulators trying to put guardrails on AI, it’s mostly about the arithmetic. Specifically, an AI model trained on 10 to the 26th floating-point operations per second must now be reported to the U.S. government and could soon trigger even stricter requirements in California. Say what? Well, if you’re counting the zeroes, that’s 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 100 septillion, calculations each second, using a measure known as flops. What it signals to some lawmakers and AI safety advocates is a level of computing power that might enable rapidly advancing AI technology to create or proliferate weapons of mass destruction, or conduct catastrophic cyberattacks. Those who’ve crafted such…

With a subscriber count of 93 million, Apple Music is on the up and faces a dynamic landscape where innovation, competition, and user engagement are crucial to its success. With new AirPods and AI features on the way, there’s never been a better time to enjoy music in the Apple ecosystem. GROWING SUCCESS Apple Music has carved out a significant space in the streaming world, thanks in part to its deep integration with Apple’s ecosystem, high-quality audio offerings, and robust library of over 100 million songs. The platform’s ability to attract nearly 93 million subscribers is a testament to its appeal and the value it offers to users seeking a premium music experience. One of the critical factors behind Apple Music’s success is its commitment to delivering high-quality audio and…

Despite slowing U.S. electric vehicle sales, Hyundai this week rolled out the 2025 versions of its Ioniq 5 electric SUV with improved battery range and charging aimed at broadening the appeal of vehicles to be built at a massive new Georgia factory. The South Korean automaker unveiled a test version of its latest EV at a dealership in Savannah, Georgia, a few miles from a sprawling new $7.6 billion manufacturing complex. The company says the plant will begin producing new Ioniq 5s before the end of the year, though it hasn’t said precisely when. During the first half of 2024, the Ioniq 5 was America’s second-best selling electric vehicle not made by industry leader Tesla. Tesla’s Model Y was first with more than 198,000 in sales, followed by the Model…

British regulators on Wednesday cleared Microsoft’s hiring of key staff from startup Inflection AI, saying the deal wouldn’t stifle competition in the country’s artificial intelligence market. The Competition and Markets Authority had opened a preliminary investigation in July into Microsoft’s recruitment of Inflection’s core team, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, chief scientist Karen Simonyan and several top engineers and researchers. The watchdog said its investigation found that the hirings amounted to a “merger situation” but that the “transaction does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition.” Big technology companies have been facing scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic lately for gobbling up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them. Three U.S. Senators called for the practice to be…

Imagine a customer-service center that speaks your language, no matter what it is. Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects. So an Alorica representative who speaks, say, only Spanish can field a complaint about a balky printer or an incorrect bank statement from a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Alorica wouldn’t need to hire a rep who speaks Cantonese. Such is the power of AI. And, potentially, the threat: Perhaps companies won’t need as many employees — and will slash some jobs — if chatbots can handle the workload instead. But the thing is, Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It’s still hiring aggressively.…

Grant Jeide looked like another dude riding the rollicking waves left in the wake of a 23-foot (7-meter) boat ripping through the water at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour on a river in Northern California’s Delta earlier this summer. But Jeide was performing his aquatic acrobatics behind a different breed of boat — one powered by electricity instead of gasoline. Unencumbered by the din and acrid smell of a combustion engine, the boat’s passengers could chat with Jeide as he surfed behind them while they savored the afternoon breeze wafting along the river. “It’s like a playground back there, you feel like you could just ride all day,” exclaimed Jeide, part of the sales team at Arc Boats, a 3-year-old startup embarking on a voyage to electrify…

Sweden-based Volvo Cars has eased off on its pledge to stop selling cars with internal combustion motors by 2030, saying slow rollout of places to charge up and withdrawal of purchase incentives will leave room for a few cars that still need fossil fuels. Volvo Cars, part of China’s Geely Holding, now foresees a model lineup at the end of the decade that’s at least 90% electric cars and has widened that to include both battery-only and plug-in hybrids that combine battery power with an internal combustion engine. On top of that, up to 10% could be a “limited number” of mild hybrids, which mainly run on internal combustion and store electric power from braking in a 48-volt battery to assist acceleration and improve fuel economy. The company said it…

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The blocking of social media platform X in Brazil divided users and politicians over the legitimacy of the ban, and many Brazilians had difficulty and doubts over navigating other social media in its absence. The shutdown of Elon Musk’s platform started early last weekend, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through mobile apps after the billionaire refused to name a legal representative to the country, missing a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The blockade marks an escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users. “I’ve got the feeling that I have no idea what’s happening in the world right…