Table of contents for #467 in AppleMagazine

Tech giants Google and Oracle are clashing at the Supreme Court in a copyright dispute that’s worth billions and important to the future of software development. The case before the justices Wednesday has to do with Google’s creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. Google says that to create Android, which was released in 2007, it wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform. Google has defended its actions, saying what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. But Oracle says Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism” and sued, seeking more than $8…

A drug company says it has asked the U.S. government to allow emergency use of an experimental antibody therapy based on early results from a study that suggested the drug reduced symptoms, the amount of virus, hospitalizations and ER visits for patients with mild or moderate COVID-19. Eli Lilly and Company announced the partial results in a news release; they have not yet been published or reviewed by independent scientists. Its drug is similar to one that President Donald Trump received from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. These medicines supply concentrated versions of specific antibodies to help the immune system clear the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. They’re given as a onetime treatment through an IV. Lilly has already started making one of the two antibodies in its drug, betting that ongoing studies…

There’s little evidence of Americans’ passion for fitness at the tens of thousands of small and independent gyms around the country. Gyms, health clubs and workout studios began reopening in late spring following government-ordered shutdowns aimed at halting the coronavirus spread. But most are only allowed to have a fraction of their regular clientele onsite at one time. And some clients are staying away for fear of catching the virus. The International Health Racquet & Sportsclub Association, an industry group, estimates that gyms, health and fitness clubs lost an aggregate $13.9 billion during shutdowns as of Aug. 31. The group warns that without government help, at least a quarter could close by Dec. 31 as limits on indoor workouts continue. Michael Hanover is lucky if he gets 45 client hours…

A Call To Spy After World War II breaks out, Vera Atkins (Stana Katic), the “spymistress” of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), recruits two women – Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) – who will assist in undermining the Nazi regime on French soil. FIVE FACTS: 1. This film adapts the true stories of the real-life SOE members Vera Atkins, Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan. 2. Thomas also produced the film and wrote its screenplay, which was based on years of research, including reference to historical records. 3. Thomas’s research also saw her interviewing Virginia Hall’s living relatives. 4. The film’s world premiere took place at the 2019 Edinburgh International Film Festival – notable, Thomas reckons, because the SOE actually trained its spies in…

There is a scene in the documentary “Time” that captures a woman on the phone trying to speak to a judge’s clerk. She’s put on hold. Nothing happens as the seconds tick away. One minute becomes two. The woman is still, waiting patiently. Eventually, she gets through but the call comes to nothing. Most filmmakers would leave that tedious moment on the cutting room floor, but not director Garrett Bradley, who is making her first nonfiction feature. Her film is precisely about wasted time. “Time” is a story about loss and patience and an unjust system that demands both. The woman on the phone is Sibil Fox Richardson and she’s trying to get her husband released from prison while also raising six boys. “Time” is her story, augmented by video…

In the latest blow to the beleaguered film industry, the second-largest movie theater chain in the U.S. is temporarily shuttering its locations due to a lack of blockbusters on the calendar and major domestic markets like New York remaining closed. Cineworld Group Plc said that it would close 536 Regal cinemas in the U.S. and 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse venues in the U.K. this week, affecting some 45,000 employees. “This is not a decision we made lightly,” said Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger. In the past few days, the already decimated 2020 release calendar lost another big film in the James Bond pic “No Time to Die.” It is at least partly due to the fact that one of the country’s biggest markets, New York, has not committed to a plan…

Graphics chip maker Nvidia said this week it plans to build Britain’s fastest supercomputer that healthcare researchers can use to work on medical problems including COVID-19. Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, said it will spend 40 million pounds ($52 million) on the supercomputer, dubbed Cambridge-1, which will consist of 80 Nvidia systems and is expected to be online by the end of the year. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Cambridge-1 will be available to healthcare researchers using artificial intelligence to working on urgent medical challenges. “Tackling the world’s most pressing challenges in healthcare requires massively powerful computing resources to harness the capabilities of AI,”Huang said. Cambridge-1 would be ranked the world’s 29th most powerful supercomputer and the most powerful in the U.K., the company said. Pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and…

One of the largest coal-fired power plants in the U.S. Southwest would undergo a $1.4 billion overhaul as part of a proposal to keep the plant operating for at least another decade while meeting stricter environmental requirements aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes was in New Mexico this week to discuss the project, saying he believes carbon capture, use and storage technology — or CCUS — could be a game changer for fossil-fuel generation in the U.S. and around the world. “Rather than driving out fuels that produce emissions, we drove emissions down while producing from these same fuels. We want to build on that amazing process,” he said. “CCUS is an an incredible example of innovation, one that has the potential to…

Add last-minute holiday shopping to the list of time-honored traditions being upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Retailers are kicking off the holiday season earlier than ever this year in hopes of avoiding big in-store crowds and shipping bottlenecks in November and December. Stores like Best Buy, Macy’s, and Target typically offer their biggest Black Friday deals over Thanksgiving weekend, but now they’re starting them in October so people don’t crowd their stores later, creating a potentially dangerous situation during a pandemic. And with more people expected to shop online, retailers are trying to avoid a rush of orders closer to Christmas, which could lead to late packages and more expensive shipping. Many had a hard time keeping up with the surge in buying when shoppers were locked down in their…

Boeing is lowering its expectations around demand for new planes over the next decade as the coronavirus pandemic continues to undercut air travel. The company predicted that the world will need 18,350 new commercial airplanes in the next decade, a drop of 11% from its 2019 forecast. The value of that market will slide by about $200 billion from last year’s forecast, to $2.9 trillion. Boeing Co. largely stuck to its rosy forecast for long-term demand, predicting that increasing air travel in Asia will help create a market for more than 43,000 planes over the next 20 years, down about 1,000 from its 2019 outlook. The long-term optimism is based on history, including aviation’s eventual recovery after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and other crises, said the company’s vice…

While the world wants flashy quick fixes for everything, especially massive threats like the coronavirus and global warming, next week’s Nobel Prizes remind us that in science, slow and steady pays off. It may soon do so again. Science builds upon previous work, with thinkers “standing on the shoulders of giants,” as Isaac Newton put it, and it starts with basic research aimed at understanding a problem before fixing it. It’s that type of basic science that the Nobels usually reward, often years or decades after a discovery, because it can take that long to realize the implications. Slow and steady success in science has made researchers hopeful in the fight against the pandemic. It even offers a glimmer of climate optimism. Many years of advances in basic molecular science,…

The Rarities Mariah Carey As part of a round of promotional activities commemorating 30 years since her eponymous debut studio album, pop favorite Mariah Carey has released this, a collection of little-known and previously unreleased material spanning her decades-long career. FIVE FACTS: 1. The 30th-anniversary campaign is being marketed with the hashtag “#MC30”. 2. Carey recently told Good Morning America : “I found stuff in my vault that I had either started to work on a long time ago and never released or that I wanted to finish mixing or do whatever.” 3. Previously released songs on the album include the B-sides “Do You Think of Me” and “Slipping Away”. 4. On September 29, Carey released her memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey. 5. That same month, she was interviewed…

The release of the James Bond film “No Time To Die” has been delayed again, this time to 2021, because of the effects of COVID-19 on the theatrical business. MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, said on Twitter that the 25th installment in the franchise will now open globally on April 2, 2021. “No Time To Die” was originally supposed to open in April 2020 but was pushed back to Nov. 12 in the U.K. and Nov. 20 in the U.S. It was one of the first Hollywood films to abandon its release before cinemas in the U.S. shut down in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic. The film from director Cary Joji Fukunaga stars Daniel Craig as 007, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch and Ana…

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With consumers increasingly using cashless ways to buy things, the European Central Bank took a step closer to issuing a digital version of the euro currency shared by 19 countries, saying it had to be ready to launch digital money if a changing world requires it. The central bank issued a comprehensive report outlining the reasons why it might need to take the step. The ECB also said it would hold public consultations on the idea with citizens, academics and bankers. It said no decision has been made, and that any digital euro would complement cash, not replace it. The consultations will start Oct. 12. “The euro belongs to Europeans and our mission is to be its guardian,” said Christine Lagarde, ECB President. “Europeans are increasingly turning to digital in…

Airbnb will prohibit one-night rentals over Halloween weekend as part of its ongoing effort to crack down on party houses. The action comes nearly a year after a deadly shooting at an Airbnb in Orinda, California. Five people were killed in the shooting, which happened during an unauthorized Halloween party. San Francisco-based Airbnb said it will ban one-night rentals of entire homes in the U.S. and Canada on Oct. 30 or Oct. 31. Previously booked one-night rentals will be canceled and Airbnb will offer refunds. Airbnb said it will also look more closely at two-and three-night reservations during Halloween. A guest may be denied, for example, if they try to book a whole home close to their own home during that period and they don’t have a history of positive…

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for establishing the all-too-weird reality of black holes — the straight-out-of-science-fiction cosmic monsters that suck up light and time and will eventually swallow us, too. Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and Andrea Ghez of the United States explained to the world these dead ends of the cosmos that are still not completely understood but are deeply connected, somehow, to the creation of galaxies. Penrose, an 89-year-old at the University of Oxford, received half of the prize for proving with mathematics in 1964 that Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicted the formation of black holes, even though Einstein himself didn’t think they existed. Genzel, who is at both the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of California, Berkeley,…

Few filmmakers can bring a rut to life like Sofia Coppola. When her characters are in a funk, whether it’s a Hollywood actor in between jobs, a few lost souls in a foreign place or a Queen, it’s never the stuff of melodrama. She has an eye for the comedic banalities of the everyday like the excruciating awkwardness of a stilted conversation or, as in her latest “ On the Rocks,” the image of an overwhelmed mother trying to nap in the glaring sunlight while a Roomba bangs its way through the apartment. She turns her camera this time to Laura (Rashida Jones), a well-off writer living in a SoHo loft with two young daughters and a husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans) who lately has been distant, physically and emotionally, while…

The 2020 theatrical release calendar is getting even slimmer in the wake of the announcement that Regal cinemas are temporarily closing, although AMC, North America’s largest theater chain, says it will remain open. Warner Bros. said that its sci-fi pic “Dune” will now open in October 2021, instead of this December. The studio also pushed back “The Batman” to March 2022 and moved up its “Matrix” sequel to Dec. 2021. AMC Entertainment reiterated its commitment to stay open and cited a slew of upcoming new releases that it will be playing, including this weekend’s new films “The War With Grandpa,” with Robert De Niro, and “Yellow Rose.” Roughly 80% of its U.S. locations are currently open. With the recent exit of the next James Bond film, that leaves a mere…

Microsoft has announced plans to build three data center sites in greater Athens, providing a badly needed investment of up to $1 billion to the Greek economy which has been hammered by the pandemic. The news was announced this week by the U.S. tech giant and Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis and follows nine months of confidential negotiations for an agreement that also includes digital-skills training programs for some 100,000 government and private sector workers as well as educators and students. “This significant investment is a reflection of our confidence in the Greek economy, in the Greek people and the Greek government,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said at a ceremony held in the Acropolis Museum, facing the ancient site in central Athens. “It’s not something we do often and it’s not…

Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst to build a stronger Britain led by private enterprise, and took aim at “potshot, snipeshot” opponents who want to prolong government bailout programs forever. In a sometimes combative speech to his Conservative Party, Johnson said simply defeating the virus wasn’t enough, because history has shown that “events of this magnitude” often lead to social and economic change. “We see these moments as the time to learn, and to improve on the world that went before, and that’s why this government will build back better,” Johnson said in a video address to the annual party conference, which is being held online this year due to the pandemic. The speech was an effort to inject optimism into the political…