Innehållsförteckning för #679 från AppleMagazine

Some Apple AirPods wireless headphones can be used as hearing aids with a new software update available Monday. It’s a high-profile move that experts applaud, even if they only reach a small portion of the millions of Americans with hearing loss. An estimated 30 million people — 1 in 8 Americans over the age of 12 — have hearing loss in both ears. Millions would benefit from hearing aids but most have never tried them, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Countless others have tried them, but don’t use them because of cost, poor quality, poor fit, how they look or for other reasons. Over the past few years, there’s been a push to change that. Two years ago, federal rules changed to allow hearing…

Apple is releasing a free software update that will inject its first dose of artificial intelligence into its iPhone 16 lineup as the trendsetting company tries to catch up with technology’s latest craze. The upgrade to the iOS 18 operating system on Monday arrives more than a month after four iPhone 16 models equipped with the special computer chip needed to power the AI features went on sale at prices ranging from $800 to $1,200. Last year’s premium models — the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max — also possess a processor that will enable the AI technology after the software update is installed. Recent versions of Apple’s iPad and Mac computer also can be updated with the software. Countries outside the U.S. won’t be getting the AI…

Nathan Lim, a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, recently spent the summer working on an artificial intelligence tool to help students evaluate their senior project ideas for ethical and social justice implications. He is one of many California college students choosing to learn about AI theory and its emerging applications while preparing to enter an ever-changing workforce. Simultaneously, colleges and universities across the state are working to expand and develop AI courses and degrees to keep up with demand. With hopes of bolstering these efforts, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the first statewide partnership with a tech firm to bring AI curriculum, resources and opportunities to California’s public higher education institutions. The partnership with Nvidia, a leading AI software development company, will bring AI tools to community colleges…

Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.” But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text — known in the industry as hallucinations — can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments. Experts said that such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos. More concerning, they said, is a rush by medical centers to utilize Whisper-based tools to transcribe patients’…

Between finding openings, sending out your resume and interviewing, looking for a job is tough. Now a growing trend of scammers impersonating recruiters is making it even harder. In the last year, job scams have been on the rise, according to Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps consumers when their identities are compromised. Because most job seekers turn to online platforms for employment, scammers impersonate companies and recruiters to trick people into giving them money or personal information. “We’ve really seen tremendous growth in job scams,” Velasquez said. “I think that’s just due to the fact that we fundamentally changed the way we recruit and hire people.” It happened to Tehseen Islam, a 28-year-old quality assurance analyst. She had been looking…

As a mist of rain sprinkled the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford bemoaned how expensive it had been running a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his five-acre farm — and how bad it was for the planet. Earlier this month, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically saturate the roots of his crops, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” Although they may be more costly up front, he sees such climate-friendly investments as a necessary expense — and more affordable than expanding his workforce of two. It’s “much more efficient,” said Ford. “We’ve tried to figure out ‘How do we do it?’ with the least amount of adding labor.” A growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture. It could ease…

Apple has taken another step towards revolutionizing the world of personal computing with the launch of its latest iMac. The new iMac sports the same form factor as its predecessor. Still, it’s packed with a powerhouse of features, including the latest M4 chip, which delivers unprecedented performance gains, and the introduction of Apple Intelligence. APPLE SILICON, UPGRADED The iMac has long been celebrated for its sleek design and impressive performance, but the new M4 chip takes things to a new level. Apple has designed the M4 to provide up to 1.7 times faster processing for everyday tasks and an even greater 2.1 times boost for demanding workloads such as gaming, video editing, and photo manipulation, compared to its M1 counterpart. This new chip’s core is the Neural Engine, which is…

An investigation by French newspaper Le Monde found that the highly confidential movements of U.S. President Joe Biden, presidential rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and other world leaders can be easily tracked online through a fitness app that their bodyguards use. But the U.S. Secret Service told the newspaper that it doesn’t believe the protection it provides was in any way compromised. Le Monde found that some U.S. Secret Service agents use the Strava fitness app, including in recent weeks after two assassination attempts on Trump, in a video investigation released in French and in English. Strava is a fitness tracking app primarily used by runners and cyclists to record their activities and share their workouts with a community. Le Monde also found Strava users among the security staff…

The World Series beat “Monday Night Football” in the battle for television viewers. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ 4-2 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the Fall Classic averaged 13.64 million viewers on Fox, Fox Deportes and streaming according to early numbers by Nielsen. That beat the 13.4 million that tuned in for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 26-18 win over the New York Giants on ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, ESPN2 and streaming. The audience for Yankees-Dodgers peaked at 14.25 million from 9-9:15 p.m. EDT. It was the most-watched Game 3 since 2018, when the Dodgers’ 18-inning victory over the Red Sox average 13.3 million. It is Fox’s most-viewed prime time telecast on a Monday since Game 5 of the 2013 Series between Boston and St. Louis (14.45 million).…

The good news: You will get a glorious extra hour of sleep. The bad: It’ll be dark as a pocket by late afternoon for the next few months in the U.S. Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. local time next Sunday, Nov. 3, which means you should set your clock back an hour before you go to bed. Standard time will last until March 9 when we will again “spring forward” with the return of daylight saving time. That spring time change can be tougher on your body. Darker mornings and lighter evenings can knock your internal body clock out of whack, making it harder to fall asleep on time for weeks or longer. Studies have even found an uptick in heart attacks and strokes right after the March…

Robert Downey Jr. doesn’t think Marvel executives would ever recreate his portrayal of Tony Stark using artificial intelligence. But if they did, he would lawyer up — even posthumously. On a recent episode of the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast, the Oscar-winning actor said he intends to “sue all future executives” who allow an AI-created version of him. Speaking about his role as Iron Man, Downey said he does not want his likeness recreated by AI technology. “I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me, with or without me,” Downey said. Swisher noted that those executives would eventually be replaced. “Well, you’re right,” Downey…

The European Union is imposing duties on imports of electric vehicles from China starting Wednesday after talks between Brussels and Beijing failed to find an amicable solution to their trade dispute. Electric vehicles have become a major flashpoint in a broader trade dispute over the influence of Chinese government subsidies on European markets and Beijing’s burgeoning exports of green technology to the bloc. “By adopting these proportionate and targeted measures after a rigorous investigation, we’re standing up for fair market practices and for the European industrial base,” European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said on Tuesday. “In parallel, we remain open to a possible alternative solution that would be effective in addressing the problems identified and (World Trade Organization)-compatible,” he added. The duties would stay in force for five years,…

Google is still thriving while the company navigates through a pivotal shift to artificial intelligence and battles regulators trying to topple its internet empire. The latest evidence of Google’s prosperity emerged this week with the release of its corporate parent Alphabet Inc.’s results for the July-September period. Both Alphabet’s profit and revenue increased at a brisker pace than industry analysts anticipated, thanks primarily to a moneymaking machine powered by Google’s ubiquitous search engine. Alphabet earned $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share during the most recent quarter, a 34% increase from a year ago. Revenue rose 15% from the same time last year to $88.27 billion. The profits would have been even higher if Google wasn’t pouring so much money into building up its AI arsenal in a technological arms race…

Film productions often wrestle with shifts in the weather, the threat of the crew going into overtime or the fading of a day’s light. Less common are concerns over the cast slipping off the top of a blimp. But that was one of the quirks of making “Grand Theft Hamlet,” a documentary about a pair of British actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, who, while idled by the pandemic, decided to stage “Hamlet” within the violent virtual world of “Grand Theft Auto.” When Shakespeare wrote of the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” he may not have imagined the threat of a python loose in a bar or Hamlet wrestling with whether “to be” on a helipad. Yet “Grand Theft Auto” might be an oddly appropriate venue for a play…

The U.S offshore wind energy industry says it needs to fight back against disinformation being spread by opponents of wind farms. During the first day of a national offshore wind conference Tuesday in New Jersey, which has become ground zero for vocal, well-organized opposition to such projects, numerous industry officials said they are in a difficult battle against deliberate falsehoods. These include thus far unsubstantiated claims that offshore wind preparation is killing whales along the East Coast. “We know it wasn’t us, and we have the research to back it up,” said Crystal Pruitt, an external affairs official with Atlantic Shores, which plans two offshore wind farms off the New Jersey coast. “But the hardest thing to do is prove a negative.” She said the industry needs to publicly push…