Technology

The New York Times reports: California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles. “This is huge,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert …

Ars Technica reports: A new report from market measurement firm Nielsen says that for the first time, TV viewers watched more on streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ than they did on cable TV, making streaming the most popular way to consume content. The shift has been predicted by analysts and commentators for years, but it has only now come …

Bloomberg News reports: Apple Inc. is aiming to hold a launch event on Sept. 7 to unveil the iPhone 14 line, according to people with knowledge of the matter, rolling out the latest version of a product that generates more than half its sales. The new iPhones will kick off a busy fall product season, which will also include multiple …

Vice News reports: At a Russian arms fair this week, a developer showed off their new creation, and the logical next step of the robot arms race: a Boston Dynamics-style dog robot with an RPG strapped to its back. A video uploaded by RIA Novosti, a Russian-state owned news agency, shows the robot in action, in which the robot tiptoes …

The Los Angeles Times reports: The California Department of Motor Vehicles has accused Tesla of false advertising in its promotion of the company’s signature Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technologies. The agency alleges the electric carmaker misled customers with advertising language on its website describing Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technologies as more capable than they actually are. The company “made or …

Ars Technica reports: Attorneys general from all 50 states have created an Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force “to investigate and take legal action against the telecommunications companies responsible for bringing a majority of foreign robocalls into the United States,” they announced yesterday. In the task force’s first action, it “issued 20 civil investigative demands to 20 gateway providers and other entities …

Gothamist reports: “Getting on the subway” may no longer be a valid excuse to stop responding to those work messages. The MTA announced on Tuesday a plan to provide cell service between stations and expand Wi-Fi to its above-ground stations and Staten Island Railway stations. To complete the decade-long project, the agency is again partnering with 5G wireless infrastructure company …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Elon Musk engaged in a brief affair last fall with the wife of Sergey Brin, prompting the Google co-founder to file for divorce earlier this year and ending the tech billionaires’ long friendship, according to people familiar with the matter. Their falling out is one of a string of personal issues Mr. Musk has faced …

Bloomberg News reports: The Federal Communications Commission has ordered phone companies to stop carrying traffic related to robocalls about scam auto warranties. US voice service providers must now “take all necessary steps to avoid carrying this robocall traffic,” or provide a report outlining how they’re mitigating the traffic, the FCC’s Robocall Response Team said in a statement on Thursday. The …

Futurism reports: What happens in VR in Vegas, amirite? Forget strap-ons — a porn outfit called VR Bangers is helping customers strap into a brand new porn experience in Sin City. For the curious and/or terminally lonely, the adult entertainment outfit says it’s delivering smut-enabled VR headsets via delivery robots. Although the city’s notorious getaways often offer adult movies for …

The Verge reports: Google says it’ll start automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics, and other potentially sensitive locations from users’ location histories in the coming weeks. In a blog post on Friday, the company says that the deletion will happen “soon after” the visit, once its systems have identified that a trip was made …

Axios reports: Grindr is partnering with Spectrum Labs, tapping the startup’s AI-based system to help filter postings on the LGBTQ dating service. For years, Grindr has chosen not to implement an AI system for content moderation, not because it didn’t want to augment its keyword-based filtering system, but because it was concerned that the models weren’t sensitive enough to keep …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas is planning to add enough electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state to support 1 million electric vehicles with dozens of new stations to allow for easier long-distance travel. The plan is to have charging stations every 50 miles along most non-business interstate routes. The chargers will be high-powered at 150kW, able to bring most …

Gallup reports: The percentage of U.S. adults saying they use their smartphone “too much” has increased markedly in recent years, rising from 39% when Gallup last asked this in 2015 to 58% today. This sentiment was strongly age-contingent in 2015 and remains so now; however, all age groups have become more likely to express this concern. Also, this belief is …

The Verge reports: In a Thursday letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Sen. Ed Markey  — along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — demanded that the department develop a strategy to require a common charging port across all mobile devices. The letter comes a week after European Union lawmakers reached a deal on new legislation forcing all …

Ars Technica reports: A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook. The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of …

Courthouse News reports: Apple will have to face claims the company profited off of criminal enterprise schemes featuring stolen gift cards after a federal judge declined to dismiss claims the company benefited monetarily from sophisticated schemes that employ fake apps to swindle consumers. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila dismissed some of the claims from a class of plaintiffs that said …

The New York Times reports: Over the course of 10 months, nearly 400 car crashes in the United States involved advanced driver-assistance technologies, the federal government’s top auto-safety regulator disclosed Wednesday, in its first-ever release of large-scale data about these burgeoning systems. In 392 incidents cataloged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from July 1 of last year through …

People Magazine reports: After first announcing the decision last year, Microsoft will shut down Internet Explorer on Wednesday. The move comes about 27 years after the company first debuted the browser. Starting Wednesday, most people who try to open the application will be directed to Microsoft Edge — the company’s newer browser. Although the browser is nowhere near as popular …

Changing America reports: A fleet of driverless box trucks will soon begin delivering paper goods such as Dixie cups and toilet paper to dozens of Sam’s Club stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a significant stride toward making driverless technology a reality on U.S. roads. Autonomous vehicle startup Gatik on Tuesday announced a commercial partnership with Georgia Pacific, a manufacturer …