2020-09-18 applemagazine

ORACLE AND TIKTOK STRUCK A DEAL. WHAT IT IS, NONE WILL SAY

VENUS: ASTRONOMERS SEE POSSIBLE HINTS OF

LIFE IN CLOUDS

TIME FLIES: SERIES 6 AND SE TAKE APPLE WATCH TO NEW HEIGHTS

08 90

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NVIDIA TO BUY UK’S ARM, SPARKING FEARS OF CHIP DOMINANCE

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MOVIES & TV SHOWS 100

MUSIC 108

TOP 10 SONGS 158

TOP 10 ALBUMS 160

TOP 10 MUSIC VIDEOS 162

TOP 10 TV SHOWS 164

TOP 10 BOOKS 166

GOOGLE EXEC ON HOT SEAT IN CONGRESS OVER ADVERTISING POWER 20

AMAZON TO HIRE 100,000 TO KEEP UP WITH ONLINE SHOPPING SURGE 30

REPORT FINDS GLOBAL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED 36

DRONE MAKER HURT BY US-CHINA RIFT, OPENING DOOR TO US RIVALS 68

‘WALKING DEAD’ TO BE LAID TO REST IN 2022, SPIN-OFFS TO RISE 116

NETFLIX DELVES INTO THE ‘HUMAN SIDE’ OF CHALLENGER DISASTER 120

PHONE FLIP: NEW QUIBI SERIES ‘WIRELESS’ EMPOWERS THE VIEWER 128

VIACOMCBS TO REBRAND CBS ALL ACCESS AS PARAMOUNT PLUS 136

Q&A: T-MOBILE PUSHES INTERNET FOR VIRTUAL SCHOOL 140

TRICK-OR-WHAT? PANDEMIC HALLOWEEN IS A MIXED BAG ALL AROUND 146

AS MLB PLAYS ON, THE BUSINESSES IT FEEDS FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL 168

EUROPE TESTS GATEWAY FOR TRACING APPS TO WORK ACROSS BORDERS 184

AI ROBOTS SERVE RESTAURANT CUSTOMERS IN SOUTH KOREA 188

EU HEAVYWEIGHTS SEEK STRICT RULES FOR DIGITAL CURRENCIES 194

CHINA SAYS MARS PROBE STABLE; NO WORD ON REUSABLE SPACECRAFT 198

MICROCLIMATES: SOMETHING GARDENERS CAN DO ABOUT THE WEATHER 202

The short-video app TikTok has chosen Oracle as its corporate savior to avoid a U.S. ban ordered by President Donald Trump. The U.S. government will review the prospective deal.

That much is known. Everything else is confusion, at least to outsiders. For instance:

— What does it mean that, as Oracle declared, it will become a “trusted technology provider” for TikTok? Is this a joint venture, a vendor agreement or something else? Oracle is pointedly not referring to its deal as a sale or acquisition.

ORACLE AND TIKTOK STRUCK A DEAL. WHAT IT IS,

NONE WILL SAY

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— Will Trump approve such an arrangement after having threatened a ban if TikTok remains owned by its China-based parent ByteDance? Would it answer the national-security concerns around potential data siphoning, censorship and propaganda from Beijing that Trump raised?

— Will the Chinese government go along with it?

— Will TikTok get kicked out of the major app stores after Sept. 20, when Trump’s threatened ban was supposed to go into effect, threatening its future in the U.S.?

“This whole process has been a mess,” said Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Microsoft, an announced TikTok suitor, said that its rejected bid would have protected U.S. national security interests by making “significant changes” to ensure security, privacy, online safety, and anti-misinformation measures. Oracle’s statement was more muted, emphasizing that it has a “40-year track record providing secure, highly performant technology solutions.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared to support the Oracle bid on CNBC. Oracle’s proposal made “many representations for national security issues,” Mnuchin said. He also noted a new commitment — by whom, he didn’t say — to make TikTok’s global operations a U.S.-headquartered company with 20,000 new jobs. Neither TikTok nor Oracle mentioned that pledge, although TikTok said in July that it would add 10,000 U.S. jobs

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TikTok said in a statement that its proposal to the Treasury Department should “resolve the Administration’s security concerns” and emphasized the importance of its app to the 100 million users it claims in the U.S.

TikTok, which says it has about 700 million globally, is known for its fun, goofy videos of dancing, lip-syncing, pranks and jokes. It’s also home to more political material, some of which is critical of Trump.

An Aug. 6 Trump order threatened a vague ban on TikTok, creating a sense of emergency and seeding chaos into an existing national-security review of TikTok by a U.S. interagency group, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. A subsequent Aug. 14 order demanded that ByteDance divest its U.S. business. In addition, Trump insisted that the U.S. government get a cut of any deal, something experts said was unprecedented and possibly illegal.

Matters were complicated further when the Chinese government appeared to suggest that the technology used in TikTok’s algorithm could not be exported without government permission. ByteDance tapped Oracle as its U.S. partner, embracing a company whose co-founder Larry Ellison has raised funds for Trump. Its decision also followed criticism of Microsoft by a Trump trade adviser, Peter Navarro.

Oracle and TikTok did not answer questions about the structure of the proposal. The Treasury Department didn’t return an emailed request for more information about the proposal.

“We don’t know that this is the wrong outcome. But we do know that (the administration)

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shouldn’t have politicized it this way,” said Derek Scissors, who studies China at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

The promise of 20,000 new jobs and a U.S. headquarters for TikTok “certainly smacks of crony capitalism,” said Chorzempa.

Eurasia analyst Paul Triolo noted that if ByteDance retains ownership of TikTok, it won’t have actually sold anything. China doesn’t want to be seen approving a deal where a Chinese company is forced to a sale or stripped of its intellectual property, he said, while Trump can’t easily walk back a ban without major concessions he can point to. “A face saving way out of this will be very difficult for all parties to find,” he said.

Any deal must still be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, a group chaired by the Treasury Secretary that studies mergers for national security reasons. Mnuchin said he expects the group to review the proposal this week and later make a recommendation to the president.

The president can approve or deny a transaction recommended by the panel, though Trump has already voiced support for Oracle as a “great company” that could handle the acquisition.

Oracle primarily makes database software. It competes with tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon that provide cloud services as well as business-software specialists like Salesforce. Some analysts see Oracle’s interest in a consumer business as misguided, but its shares popped 4.3% to $59.46.

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If the arrangement is approved by the U.S. government, TikTok would be allowed to continue operating.

Whether the Oracle-TikTok deal will allow the sidestepping of Chinese export restrictions depends on which entity retains control of TikTok in the U.S., said Paul Haswell, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Pinsent Masons.

Another loose end is Walmart, which had planned to partner with Microsoft on the acquisition. The retailer said it “continues to have an interest in a TikTok investment” and is talking about it with ByteDance and other parties.

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A Senate panel put a top Google executive on the defensive over the company’s powerful position in online advertising as some lawmakers look hopefully toward an expected antitrust case against the tech giant by the Trump administration.

Donald Harrison, Google’s president for global partnerships and corporate development, insisted at a hearing by the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee that Google’s ad business faces ample competition, has benefited consumers, and has kept prices low for advertisers and publishers such as local newspapers.

GOOGLE EXEC ON HOT SEAT IN CONGRESS OVER

ADVERTISING POWER

21IMAGE: Jacquelyn Martin

The Justice Department has pursued a sweeping antitrust investigation of big tech companies, looking at whether the online platforms of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have hurt competition, stifled innovation or otherwise harmed consumers. The department is reportedly readying a major case accusing Google of abusing its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and boost its profits.

That expected action “could be the beginning of a reckoning for our antitrust laws,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the panel’s senior Democrat. She said she hoped “there’s a start” at the Justice Department and that also “things are going on” at the Federal Trade Commission, which has carried on a separate antitrust investigation of the Big Tech companies.

The administration has long had Google in its sights. A top economic adviser to President Donald Trump said two years ago that the White House was considering whether Google searches should be subject to government regulation. Trump himself has often criticized Google, recycling unfounded claims by conservatives that the search giant is biased against conservatives and suppresses their viewpoints, interferes with U.S. elections and prefers working with the Chinese military over the Pentagon.

Google has denied the claims and insisted that it never ranks search results to manipulate political views.

The company has acknowledged that it’s been in discussions with the Justice Department as well as state attorneys general, without elaborating on

22Image: Jacquelyn Martin

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Image: Jacquelyn Martin

the nature of the talks. A bipartisan coalition of 50 U.S. states and territories, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, announced a year ago that they were investigating Google’s business practices, citing “potential monopolistic behavior.”

The issue of perceived bias by Google against conservatives also arose at Tuesday’s hearing. Subcommittee chairman Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and other Republicans raised an instance in which Google warned the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, that its news website could be banned from making money from Google’s ad platform because of remarks in the site’s comment section that Google considered racist.

Lee told Harrison that Google was applying a double standard in its treatment of the Federalist web site, by invoking free-speech legal protections that shield it from liability for users’ offensive comments. “This is how a company acts when it senses, perhaps correctly, that it doesn’t have competition,” Lee said.

But mostly the senators homed in on Google’s position in advertising as they questioned Harrison. In the “ad tech” marketplace bringing together Google and a huge universe of advertisers and publishers, the company controls access to the advertisers that put ads on its dominant search platform. Google also runs the auction process for advertisers to get ads onto a publisher’s site. In addition, Google owns Android, which is the world’s largest mobile operating system, email systems, video service YouTube and mapping services, which provide it with users’ data that it can deploy in the advertising process.

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“This looks like monopoly upon monopoly,”saidSen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who is aleading critic of Big Tech.

Klobuchar cited research showing that Googlemay be taking between 30% and 70% ofevery ad dollar spent by advertisers using itsservices — money that critics say should go topublishers that produce content and run theads, such as newspapers.

Google, whose parent is Alphabet Inc., controlsabout 90% of web searches. Google has longargued that although its businesses are large,they are useful and beneficial to consumers.

Harrison said that Google shares the majority ofits “ad tech” revenue with publishers.

He rejected even the lawmakers’assertionthat Google is dominant, saying that marketdominance suggests abuse, which is foreignto the company. He reeled off names ofcompetitors in “ad tech”business: Adobe,Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, News Corp.,Oracle and Verizon.

“We know that we’re popular,” Harrison said. “Butwe don’t agree that we’re dominant.” Consumershave “tons of choices,”he said.

Harrison noted that online advertising prices inthe U.S. have fallen more than 40% since 2010,according to Federal Reserve data. Last year,Google’s search and advertising tools generated$385 billion in economic activity for U.S.businesses, he said.

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Image: Jacquelyn Martin

Amazon will hire another 100,000 people to keep up with a surge of online orders.

The company said that the new hires will help pack, ship or sort orders, working in part-time and full-time roles. Amazon said the jobs are not related to its typical holiday hiring.

The Seattle company reported record profit and revenue between April and June as more people turned to it during the pandemic to buy groceries and supplies.

The company already had to hire 175,000 people earlier this year to keep up with the rush of orders, and last week said it had 33,000 corporate and tech jobs it needed to fill.

This time around, Amazon said it needs the people at the 100 new warehouses, package sorting centers and other facilities it’s opening this month.

Alicia Boler Davis, who oversees Amazon’s warehouses, said the company is offering $1,000 sign-on bonuses in some cities where it may be harder for it to find workers, such as Detroit,

AMAZON TO HIRE 100,000 TO KEEP UP WITH ONLINE SHOPPING SURGE

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New York, Philadelphia and Louisville, Kentucky. Starting pay at Amazon is $15 an hour.

Things are about to get a lot busier at Amazon’s warehouses. In addition to the holiday shopping rush, Amazon plans to hold its one of its busiest shopping days, Prime Day, in the fall this year after postponing it from July.

Amazon will be monitoring whether it needs to hire more workers for the holidays, but doesn’t have anything to announce yet, Boler Davis said. Last year, it hired 200,000 ahead of the holidays.

One company is already preparing for the spike in orders: UPS said last week that it plans to bring in 100,000 people to help it deliver packages during the holiday season.

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The global economy is not doing as bad as previously expected, especially in the United States and China, but has still suffered an unprecedented drop due to the coronavirus pandemic, an international watchdog said this week.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report that the world’s gross domestic product is projected to decline by 4.5% this year - less than the 6% plunge it had predicted in June.

REPORT FINDS GLOBAL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED

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The global economy is expected to rebound and grow by 5% next year, the organization said.

Yet the OECD notes that its outlook is “subject to considerable uncertainty” as the pandemic continues, and assumes that “sporadic local outbreaks will continue” and a vaccine will not be available until late in 2021.

The OECD upgraded its forecast for the U.S. economy, anticipating a contraction of 3.8% this year instead of a plunge of 7.3% forecast previously.

China is expected to be the only country in the group of 20 most powerful economies to grow this year - by 1.8%, instead of a drop of 2.6% previously projected.

The OECD cut its forecasts for India, Mexico and South Africa.

The Paris-based organization, which advises developed countries on economic policy, urged governments not to raise taxes or cut spending next year “to preserve confidence and limit uncertainty.” Fiscal and monetary support for the economy need to be maintained, it said.

“Everything needs to be done to strengthen confidence,” OECD Chief Economist Laurence Boone told a news conference. “That is really, really key to the recovery and to make it faster and larger.”

Governments will especially need to keep helping people to find jobs and support investment, she said. “So the first message we want to send is do not repeat the mistakes of the past, do not withdraw the fiscal support too early.”

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Apple’s annual Fall Event felt a little different this year. For starters, it was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with no cheers or applause to be heard. But the biggie? No new iPhones. The company already confirmed that the iPhone 12 will launch in October, but in the meantime, Tim Cook and Co used the keynote to show off the all-new Apple Watch Series 6, a low-cost Apple Watch SE, and a bunch of family-focused Watch improvements.

BREAKTHROUGH CAPABILITIES ON THE APPLE WATCH SERIES 6

The star of the show at this year’s September Special Event was, without doubt, the Apple Watch Series 6. Putting health at the forefront of this release, Apple confirmed the rumored blood oxygen levels monitoring feature, helping users better understand their overall health and fitness levels. Oxygen saturation is measured using clusters of green, red, and infrared LEDs, alongside four photodiodes on the back crystal of the Apple Watch, measuring the amount of light reflected back from the blood. Apple will then use an advanced algorithm to measure blood oxygen levels between 70% and 100%, with periodic measurements taken over time to help users track trends and see how their blood oxygen level changes. Apple has already confirmed it will partner with the University of California, Irvine, and Anthem to measure how the longitudinal measurements of blood oxygen and other physiological signals can help manage and control asthma, as well as the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the University Health Network to measure how blood oxygen measurements

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could help with the management of heart failure. The firm also announced a partnership with the Seattle Flu Study at the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine and faculty from the University of Washington School of Medicine to see how Heart Rate and Blood Oxygen could offer signs of respiratory conditions like COVID-19, that could lead to breakthrough treatments or early warnings.

As is to be expected with a new Apple Watch launch, Series 6 offers enhanced performance over the previous generation thanks to redesigned hardware. Series 6 sports the new A13 Bionic chip, which is used in the iPhone 11, offering 20% faster performance, all whilst being able to maintain the same 18-hour battery life. The U1 chip and Ultra-Wideband antennas in the Apple Watch allow for short-range wireless location support for new features such as the Apple Car Key. The new Apple Watch can also be fully charged in less than 90 minutes, battery life has been improved when tracking certain workouts line indoor and outdoor runs, and the watch’s always-on Retina display has been made up to 2.5 times brighter when outdoors. A brand new always-on altimeter will offer real-time elevation all day long by using a power-efficient barometric altimeter, allowing for the detection of small elevation changes above ground level, up and down to the measurement of one foot, and can be shown as a new watch face complication or workout metric. This makes activity and calorie tracking even more accurate.

Apple has also introduced stunning new color options with the Apple Watch Series 6, with the new blue color joining the iconic silver, space gray, and gold aluminum case options.

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A brand new (PRODUCT)RED Apple Watch has also launched, whilst stainless steel Apple Watch models are now offered in graphite - which is a gray-black hue with a high-shine finish - alongside a refreshed classic yellow gold color. The Apple Watch Edition, Apple’s premium Apple Watch models starting at $899, are now available in natural and space black titanium. Apple has also made changes to the Apple Watch bands, introducing a new Solo Loop that is a continuous, stretchable band that is available in yarn and silicone. The Loop has been given a special UV treatment process which results in a smooth, silky finish, whilst new leather link straps wrap elegantly around the wrist for a stunning, fashionable Apple Watch.

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The Apple Watch Series 6 is powered by watchOS 7, which introduces a wide range of benefits for consumers. Personalization is taken to new heights with a bunch of new watch face options, like Stripes, Chronograph Pro, and Memoji, whilst new health and fitness features make Apple Watch even more useful. Sleep tracking comes to the Apple Watch for the first time, and automatic handwashing detection helps to ensure good hand hygiene and reduce the spread of coronavirus. Apple Maps was also updated with cycling directions, and Siri has been updated with new language translation services on the wrist for the first time.

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THE AFFORDABLE APPLE WATCH SE

Alongside the launch of the “premium” Apple Watch Series 6, Apple confirmed that a second device would launch this year, the Apple Watch SE. It’s designed to offer all of the essential features you’d expect from a smartwatch into a design that customers will love, at a price point that’s more accessible. Apple was keen to stress that all of the hardware included in the Series 6 will come with the new SE, including the stunning advanced Retina display which helps users see more details and information at one time. The new SE features the same accelerometer, gyroscope, and always-on altimeter as Apple Watch Series 6, and it offers advanced safety capabilities like fall detection, Emergency SOS, international emergency calling, and the Noise app, making it the ideal choice for children and the elderly.

Speaking of the product launch at this year’s virtual September Event, Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, said: “Apple Watch SE combines elements of the Series 6 design with the most essential features of Apple Watch, all at a more affordable price. We’re excited to offer another great option to stay connected, be active, and keep an eye on your health.”

Unlike the $199 Apple Watch Series 3, which will still be available for sale as the entry-level Apple Watch, the new SE features a Retina display, with thin borders and curved corners, that is 30 percent larger than the Series 3. This means more icons, fonts, and text can be displayed on the screen at any one time, making it the ideal choice for those without a paired iPhone. And with the new S5 System in

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https://avxlive.icu/

Package (SiP) and a dual-core processor, Apple Watch SE delivers incredibly fast performance, up to two times faster than Series 3. The new always-on altimeter provides real-time elevation all day long by using a new, more power-efficient barometric altimeter using GPS and nearby WiFi networks, and an in-built compass offers better directions and more support for inclines, elevations, and more. Apple Watch SE users can add three Compass complications to their watch face, ideal for those who love to climb or explore in the great outdoors without a smartphone in their pocket.

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Apple Watch SE also features Emergency SOS, which allows users to call for emergency services at the push of a button, and cellular models are available to allow for international calls over cellular data. Fall detection will also be useful for vulnerable Apple Watch users, with Apple using an advanced algorithm and accelerometer data to detect when a user falls. Apple Watch then sends a user an alert, which can be dismissed or used to call emergency services. The new SE also uses a latest-generation microphone to measure ambient sound levels, sending a notification when the decibel level of surrounding sound has risen to a point that it could cause damage - exposure can be monitored in the Noise app.

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INTRODUCING APPLE FAMILY SETUP

Though Apple didn’t announce the once-rumored Apple Watch for Kids, it did make a major leap forward at this year’s keynote. With Family Setup, parents can set up Apple Watches for children through an iPhone, so that kids can stay connected through phone calls, messages, and apps, without needing their own iPhone. “For family members who do not have an iPhone, Apple Watch offers a remarkable set of features that can help them keep in touch with loved ones, be more active, and stay safe,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. “With Family Setup, we’re thrilled to extend these features to the entire family, so everyone can gain more independence and live a healthier life.”

From everyday watchOS features such as making phone calls and FaceTime audio calls, through to sending messages, emails, and using Walkie-Talkie, the new Family Setup feature finally makes Apple Watches accessible to children and those without an iPhone.

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All users will have their own phone number through a separate cellular plan and can take advantage of iOS features like the Calendar app, Reminders app, Photo sync, and Apple Cash Family, allowing parents to send kids money to spend on their watch using Apple Pay.

Apple has optimized the Activity rings experience for children, tracking Move minutes rather than calories burned and offering customizable goals for the Exercise and Stand rings. Apple has introduced Outdoor Walk, Outdoor Run, and Outdoor Cycle workouts which have been fine-tuned for children, and coaching notifications have been made more fun and engaging for children, encouraging physical activity without overcomplicating the workout process.

The Apple Watch App Store has been updated for children, with a new kid-friendly mode that allows users to download third-party apps like Coloring Watch and English Dictionary, and with Family Setup, parents can decide what’s

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available to their children. Schooltime is a new mode for children, helping them stay focused when learning at home or at school. Parents can schedule the new Schooltime feature as well as Screen Time, reminding children to take a break from their smartwatch. Of course, privacy is one of Apple’s core values, and at the forefront of Apple Watch. All personal data is securely encrypted on devices and in iCloud, and Family Setup was designed to ensure parents have full control over their kids’ data.

What’s particularly exciting about watchOS 7 and Family Setup is that Apple Watch has also been optimized for older adults. Fall detection and irregular rhythm notifications are ideal for those in later life, and a refreshed X-Large face shows the time and a rich complication at a glance. Activity goals can be customized to help users stay motivated, and Health Checklist is designed to check whether features like fall detection are enabled quickly and easily.

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MORE INCREDIBLE UPDATES FROM APPLE

This year’s Special Event may have been missing an iPhone or two, but there were plenty of other announcements. To celebrate the launch of the Apple Watch Series 6, the Cupertino company confirmed Apple Fitness+. The new fitness service will arrive later in the year and brings together Apple Watch alongside iPhones and iPads to offer a personalized workout experience for users of all backgrounds and experience

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levels. One of the most exciting things about the new service is that recommendations and workouts will be personalized to users, with Apple guiding subscribers to immersive and engaging experiences. Apple Watch rings will also appear on the screen to further engage and incentivize users to complete their workouts, whether dancing, walking, or running.

Bringing together all of Apple’s services is Apple One, a new bundle service that offers users access to Apple Music, iCloud storage,

Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, and Apple News+ under one monthly plan, starting from $14.99 and running through $24.99 for a Premium package with two terabytes of cloud storage. “Apple One is the ultimate collection of Apple services for one low monthly price. It’s simple to sign up for and easy to manage. And with the Family plan or Premier plan, you can invite up to five other people to join,” the company said in a statement, confirming the new service will launch before the end of 2020.

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Finally, Apple made some significant improvements to its iPad family, launching the seventh generation iPad and the “most powerful iPad Air ever,” which features a new all-screen design with the removal of the traditional home button and bezels, in favor of a new Touch ID sensor on the power button on the top of the iPad’s chassis. The Air features a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, a better camera, and microphone, and the powerful A14 Bionic chip, which Apple says increases performance significantly over the previous generation Air. The best news? We have plenty more to look forward to when Apple lifts the lid on the iPhone 12 in October, alongside AirTags and Apple-branded headphones.

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Image: Jeff Chiu

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Skateboarders, surfers and mountain bikers used to be the target customers for California startup Skydio, a maker of high-end drones that can home in on people and capture their movements on video all by themselves. Now police officers, firefighters and soldiers are interested in the self-flying machines.

That’s partly because U.S. national security concerns about the world’s dominant consumer

DRONE MAKER HURT BY

US-CHINA RIFT, OPENING DOOR TO US RIVALS

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Image: Jeff Chiu

drone-maker, China-based DJI, have upended the market for small drones and opened the door to lesser-known companies pitching applications for government agencies and big businesses.

Companies like Skydio are also tapping into a technological revolution that could do away with the need for human pilots to put drones through each one of their paces. Instead, advanced artificial intelligence is starting to power drones that can follow humans and other targets on their own. Robotics experts say Skydio’s cutting-edge AI makes its drones appealing as reconnaissance tools, as does its made-in-America vibe.

“There’s a lot of anti-China rhetoric,” said Vijay Kumar, a drone entrepreneur and the dean of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Years before President Donald Trump cited spying concerns in pushing to ban popular Chinese-owned apps TikTok and WeChat and ratcheting up sanctions against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, Shenzhen-based DJI was already under close watch as a potential national security threat.

A document from U.S. customs authorities alleged in 2017 that DJI drones likely provided China with access to U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data. DJI denied the allegation. As political concerns grew, its rivals have increasingly seized on the opportunity to pile on the anti-DJI sentiment.

“Do you trust DJI drones?” said promotional material teasing the launch of a new product this summer from French drone-maker Parrot. “Don’t trust Chinese drones,” said another Parrot promotion.

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“They’re the dominant incumbent and we’re the scrappy American underdog,” Skydio CEO Adam Bry said in an interview. “There’s a real opportunity for U.S. companies to lead the way.”

The Defense Department in August gave a seal of approval to Skydio, Parrot and three other firms to supply U.S.-manufactured drones to agencies across the federal government. “We need an alternative to Chinese-made small drones,” Mike Brown, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, said in a statement.

DJI has referred to U.S. actions against it as “part of a politically-motivated agenda” to reduce market competition and support American technology “regardless of its merits.”

The attacks on DJI’s reputation and bans on its use in the military and some other federal agencies have coincided with a lull in demand for pricey personal drones as their novelty wore off. Camera-maker GoPro abandoned its drone business in 2018 and other companies have struggled to build affordable devices.

“Once you get one, it’s not real clear what you do with it as a consumer,” said tech industry analyst William Stofega of IDC.

Stofega said that’s one reason why drone companies are tailoring their products for government or commercial tasks such as inspecting pipelines, monitoring crops or police surveillance. Skydio last year hired a retired Southern California police captain to pitch its drones to law enforcement.

DJI has made a push to counter the security concerns, most recently with an announcement that it will enable an internet “kill switch” on more drones so that commercial and

Image: Jeff Chiu

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Image: Jeff Chiu

government users can halt data transmission on sensitive flying missions. Its products, while off-limits to some federal agencies, are still favored by many local and regional governments in the U.S.

“If an enemy of the United States wants to see me looking for someone on a mountain, so be it,” said Kyle Nordfors, drone team coordinator for the mostly volunteer search-and-rescue crew of Weber County, Utah. “They can see how we take care of our own.”

Nordfors said he sometimes uses a Skydio drone to scout a riverbed or for other daytime tasks that require the drone to fly by itself without hitting a tree. Skydio, founded by engineers who worked on Google’s delivery drone venture Wing, employs computer vision rather than satellite-based GPS to move its drones around — enabling them to “see” and autonomously navigate around obstacles.

But mostly Nordfors uses a remote-controlled DJI drone — such as the one that helped his team track down a lost teenager this summer in Waterfall Canyon, a rugged hiking area north of Salt Lake City. “He was so thrilled,” Nordfors said of the 19-year-old. “He was jumping up and down.”

At the Clovis Police Department in California’s Central Valley, officers also have a choice of drones they can dispatch to be a “first responder” at crime scenes — at least before the haze of nearby forest fires temporarily grounded them.

The department doesn’t have its own helicopter, but officers can get their eyes and ears out to a scene quickly by piloting the drones from atop

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a roof near the city’s center, said Clovis police Lt. James Munro. He said the department typically uses its fleet of about a dozen DJI drones because of their durability and infrared night vision, but is also experimenting with a Skydio drone because of its ability to home in on an officer or suspect.

“You can put a little dot on the person and the drone will follow them,” Munro said.

Kumar, the Penn engineering dean who also founded a startup that sends drones into mines, said it’s not easy to shift from hobby drones to commercial applications. Aerial robots consume a lot of power, limiting how long their missions can last — one reason he said that payload-carrying delivery drone efforts spearheaded by Amazon and Google haven’t yet taken off.

Navigating safely with full autonomy is also difficult, he said.

“Skydio has taken on this challenge of developing vision-only platforms in all kinds of conditions,” he said. “That’s really hard to do.”

DJI doesn’t yet offer such autonomy, but Kumar said it won’t easily be beaten. It was first to really capitalize on the consumer potential of drones and has built out a strong manufacturing and supply chain capacity.

“It’s amazing to me that we discriminate against DJI because we think that company can spy on us,” said Kumar. “Are they a national security threat? I don’t believe so. Are they innovative? Absolutely. Do they attract top talent? Absolutely. Some of my best students have gone to DJI.”

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U.S. graphics chip maker Nvidia said it plans to buy U.K.-based Arm Holdings in a deal worth up to $40 billion, in a move that would create a global powerhouse in the industry.

The deal, announced this week by Nvidia and Arm’s parent company, Japanese technology giant SoftBank, raises concerns about the independence of Arm, one of Europe’s most important tech companies.

The vast majority of the world’s smartphones run on Arm’s chip designs and it’s a vital supplier for companies like Apple and Samsung. It’s also an innovator in chip technology that can power artificial intelligence for connected devices like medical sensors, known as the “Internet of Things.” The company’s business centers on designing chips and licensing the intellectual property to customers, rather than chip manufacturing, for which it relies on partners.

NVIDIA TO BUY UK’S ARM, SPARKING FEARS OF CHIP DOMINANCE

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Being owned by a U.S. company could mean Arm is exposed to U.S. government export bans at a time when Washington is in a battle for tech supremacy with China.

Under the terms of the deal, Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia will pay SoftBank $21.5 billion in stock and $12 billion in cash. SoftBank could earn a further $5 billion if Arm hits performance targets while Arm employees will get $1.5 billion worth of Nvidia shares. Nvidia shares jumped more than 6% on news of the deal.

SoftBank bought Arm for about $32 billion in 2016, in a deal that sparked fears one of Britain’s most successful tech companies would succumb to a foreign takeover. To allay the concerns, the British government got SoftBank to agree to keep Arm’s headquarters in the U.K. and double its British staff over five years.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the U.S. company still plans to keep Arm based at its headquarters in Cambridge, England, where it will also build an artificial intelligence research center.

“Together we’re going to create the world’s premier computing company for the age of AI,” Huang told reporters.

“We want more great engineers not fewer, we want more R&D not less. And we want that work to be done in the U.K., in Cambridge,” Huang said, adding that it wasn’t about consolidation or cost savings.

However, Hermann Hauser, who helped set up Arm, called the deal an “absolute disaster for Cambridge, the U.K. and Europe.”

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Hauser, now a technology investor, told the BBC’s Radio 4 that his biggest concern was that it would degrade what he called the U.K.’s “economic sovereignty” because Arm would end up falling under the jurisdiction of U.S. export controls.

That means “if hundreds of U.K. companies that incorporate Arm’s (technology) in their products, want to sell it, and export it to anywhere in the world including China, which is a major market, the decision on whether they will be allowed to export it will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street.”

Arm CEO Simon Segars shrugged off the concerns. He said whether the U.S. has jurisdiction is determined by how and where products were developed, not the parent company’s ownership.

“The majority of our products are designed in the U.K. or outside the U.S. and the majority of our products don’t fall under much of the U.S. export control set of rules,” he said.

The deal would also destroy Arm’s “neutral” business model, which has made it the “Switzerland of the semiconductor industry,” Hauser said. Arm has become successful by licensing its technology to more than 500 companies, many of which are rivals to Nvidia, and the sale would create a “monopoly problem,” he said.

Nvidia plans to maintain its open licensing model and customer neutrality, Huang said.

Regulators in the U.S., U.K., China, the European Union will need to approve the deal, which will need about 18 months to complete.

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The British government said it could intervene in the deal because of the “vital role” Arm plays in the U.K.’s tech sector.

“The government monitors acquisitions and mergers closely and when a takeover may have a significant impact on the U.K. we will not hesitate to investigate further and take appropriate action,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, James Slack.

“We are investigating this deal further and ministers are speaking to the relevant companies.”

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VENUS: ASTRONOMERS SEE POSSIBLE HINTS OF LIFE IN CLOUDS

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Astronomers have found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere of neighboring Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hothouse planet.

Two telescopes in Hawaii and Chile spotted in the thick Venusian clouds the chemical signature of phosphine, a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with life, according to a study in journal Nature Astronomy.

Several outside experts — and the study authors themselves — agreed this is tantalizing but said it is far from the first proof of life on another planet. They said it doesn’t satisfy the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” standard established by the late Carl Sagan, who speculated about the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus in 1967.

“It’s not a smoking gun,” said study co-author David Clements, an Imperial College of London astrophysicist. “It’s not even gunshot residue on the hands of your prime suspect, but there is a distinct whiff of cordite in the air which may be suggesting something.”

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As astronomers plan for searches for life on planets outside our solar system, a major method is to look for chemical signatures that can only be made by biological processes, called biosignatures. After three astronomers met in a bar in Hawaii, they decided to look that way at the closest planet to Earth: Venus. They searched for phosphine, which is three hydrogen atoms and a phosphorous atom.

On Earth, there are only two ways phosphine can be formed, study authors said. One is in an industrial process. (The gas was produced for use as chemical warfare agent in World War I.) The other way is as part of some kind of poorly understood function in animals and microbes. Some scientists consider it a waste product, others don’t.

Phosphine is found in “ooze at the bottom of ponds, the guts of some creatures like badgers and perhaps most unpleasantly associated with piles of penguin guano,” Clements said.

Study co-author Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist, said researchers “exhaustively went through every possibility and ruled all of them out: volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites falling into the atmosphere. ... Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team’s findings.”

That leaves life.

The astronomers hypothesize a scenario for how life could exist on the inhospitable planet where temperatures on the surface are around 800 degrees (425 degrees Celsius) with no water.

“Venus is hell. Venus is kind of Earth’s evil twin,” Clements said. “Clearly something has gone

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wrong, very wrong, with Venus. It’s the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect.”

But that’s on the surface.

Seager said all the action may be 30 miles (50 kilometers) above ground in the thick carbon-dioxide layer cloud deck, where it’s about room temperature or slightly warmer. It contains droplets with tiny amounts of water but mostly sulfuric acid that is a billion times more acidic than what’s found on Earth.

The phosphine could be coming from some kind of microbes, probably single-cell ones, inside those sulfuric acid droplets, living their entire lives in the 10-mile-deep (16-kilometer-deep) clouds, Seager and Clements said. When the droplets fall, the potential life probably dries out and could then get picked up in another drop and reanimate, they said.

Life is definitely a possibility, but more proof is needed, several outside scientists said.

Cornell University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger said the idea of this being the signature of biology at work is exciting, but she said we don’t know enough about Venus to say life is the only explanation for the phosphine.

“I’m not skeptical, I’m hesitant,” said Justin Filiberto, a planetary geochemist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston who specializes in Venus and Mars and isn’t part of the study team.

Filiberto said the levels of phosphine found might be explained away by volcanoes. He said recent studies that were not taken into account in this latest research suggest that Venus may have far more active volcanoes than originally

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thought. But Clements said that explanation would make sense only if Venus were at least 200 times as volcanically active as Earth.

David Grinspoon, a Washington-based astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute who wrote a 1997 book suggesting Venus could harbor life, said the finding “almost seems too good to be true.”

“I’m excited, but I’m also cautious,” Grinspoon said. “We found an encouraging sign that demands we follow up.”

NASA hasn’t sent anything to Venus since 1989, though Russia, Europe and Japan have dispatched probes. The U.S. space agency is considering two possible Venus missions. One of them, called DAVINCI+, would go into the Venusian atmosphere as early as 2026.

Clements said his head tells him “it’s probably a 10% chance that it’s life,” but his heart “obviously wants it to be much bigger because it would be so exciting.”

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MoviesTV Shows&

Critical Thinking | Official Trailer (HD)

Vertical Entertainment

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Critical Thinking

Guided by their eccentric but inspirational teacher Mario Martinez (John Leguizamo) of Miami Jackson High School, five Latinx and black teenagers from Miami’s toughest underserved ghetto reach the National Chess Championship, where they ultimately taste glory.

FIVE FACTS:

1. The film’s plot is based on a true story which happened in 1998.

2. Leguizamo also directs the film, with this being his directorial debut.

3. On the talk show Live with Kelly and Ryan, Leguizamo said he decided to direct his own film after realizing what he had learnt from working with directorial greats like Spike Lee and Brian De Palma.

4. The movie’s world premiere had been set for South by Southwest in March until that festival was cancelled in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

5. It was only after this cancellation that Vertical Entertainment acquired the rights to distribute the film.

Rotten Tomatoes

93%

by John LeguizamoGenre: DramaReleased: 2020Price: $12.99

6 Ratings

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John Leguizamo Makes His Directorial Debut

With “Critical Thinking”

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Superman: Man of Tomorrow

Clark Kent (Darren Criss) is working as an intern at newspaper the Daily Planet when intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo and terrifying alien Parasite set their sights on the city of Metropolis, leading the mild-mannered journalist to fly into action once again as Superman.

FIVE FACTS:

1. The film’s story is loosely adapted from that of the 2015 graphic novel Superman: American Alien by Max Landis.

2. The character of Superman was originally created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in the 1930s.

3. Meanwhile, the character of Lobo was originally created in the 1980s as a hardened villain, although he was reinvented as an anti-hero biker in the 1990s.

4. During this period, Lobo was intended to satirize the Marvel Comics superhero Wolverine.

5. Parasite, meanwhile, made his first comic-book appearance in 1966.

Rotten Tomatoes

100%

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by Chris PalmerGenre: Action & AdventureReleased: 2020Price: $19.99

42 Ratings

Superman: Man of Tomorrow | Official Trailer 2020

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DCU Superman: O Homem do Amanhã

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Kelsea Ballerini - hole in the bottle

(ballerini album version) [Official Lyric Video]

Music108

balleriniKelsea Ballerini

Kelsea Ballerini has already established herself as a respected songwriter in country music – but with these stripped-down renditions of various songs from her acclaimed third studio album Kelsea released earlier this year, she is bringing the melodies and lyrics to the forefront.

FIVE FACTS:

1. Ballerini was born in Mascot, Tennessee and grew up in Knoxville.

2. Her first single, “Love Me Like You Mean It”, reached the summit of the Billboard Country Airplay chart in the summer of 2015.

3. This feat made her the first solo female country musician to reach number one with their first single since Carrie Underwood achieved it with “Jesus, Take the Wheel” in 2006.

4. Since December 2017, Ballerini has been married to Australian country singer Morgan Evans, who she started dating in March 2016.

5. Ballerini has explained that, while the album Kelsea was “emotional, vulnerable and soft”, its counterpart ballerini is “bold and effervescent”.

Genre: CountryReleased: Sep 11, 202013 SongsPrice: $9.99

90 Ratings

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Kelsea Ballerini - half of my hometown

(ballerini album version) [Official Audio]

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WE ARE CHAOSMarilyn Manson

The controversial metalhead known as Brian Hugh Warner on his passport might have long been perceived as unhinged, but thanks to the chaos of 2020, the rest of us have finally caught up with him, as the surprisingly timely tracks on his band’s new studio album show.

FIVE FACTS:

1. Manson took his stage name from Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson, combining and juxtaposing the names of a sex symbol and a serial killer.

2. Although Manson’s music is credited to “Marilyn Manson”, this refers to the rock band named after him rather than the man himself, the band’s lead singer.

3. The band’s lineup has shifted many times over the years, to the extent that their eponymous main vocalist is now the sole original member.

4. Manson has been married once: to the burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese from 2005 to 2007.

5. Manson produced the new album alongside country musician Shooter Jennings.

Marilyn Manson - WE ARE CHAOS

(Official Music Video)

Genre: RockReleased: Sep 11, 202010 SongsPrice: $9.99

253 Ratings

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DON’T CHASE THE DEAD

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The end is coming for “The Walking Dead,” but not until 2022.

The AMC series that became a franchise with current and planned spin-offs will wrap with an 11th season spanning 24 episodes and two years, the channel said.

The series has yet to air six episodes that are part of an expanded 10th season. Those are set for early next year.

‘WALKING DEAD’ TO BE LAID TO REST IN 2022,

SPIN-OFFS TO RISE

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When “The Walking Dead” is laid to rest in late 2022, a new spin-off centered on characters Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier (Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride) will follow in 2023, AMC said.

An anthology series, “Tales of the Walking Dead,” focusing on new and existing characters, is in development along with other projects “grounded in ‘The Walking Dead’ universe,” the channel said.

Closer at hand are “Fear the Walking Dead,” which begins its sixth season Oct. 11, and newcomer “The Walking Dead: World Beyond,” which debuts Oct. 4 and follows the first generation to grow up during the apocalypse.

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Many Americans have vivid memories of Jan. 28, 1986.

That was the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded over a chilly Florida, just seconds after liftoff. School children across the country had tuned in to see Christa McAuliffe become the first teacher in space.

One person watching was Steven Leckart, a space-obsessed elementary school kid. Like everyone else, he was shocked by the blast and felt the slow, sickening realization that all seven aboard were gone.

“I remember wanting to be an astronaut and I remember wanting to go to space. And then I remember Challenger completely shattering my dream for that,”he recalled.

NETFLIX DELVES INTO THE

‘HUMAN SIDE’OF CHALLENGER

DISASTER

121Image: NASA

Leckart has returned to that dark day as co-director of the four-part Netflix documentary series “Challenger: The Final Flight,” executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Glen Zipper. It premieres Wednesday.

The series approaches the disaster less like a

post-mortem and more like a drama. It explores

NASA history and the lives of the seven lost

astronauts, why the accident occurred and the

inquest that followed.

Zipper and Leckart conceived of it in 2015 while

looking to make something personal. Both

had seen the disaster as boys but could only

remember the name of one astronaut aboard

Challenger: McAuliffe. Who were the other six?

The more they dug, the more they found

extraordinary people: Ellison Onizuka was the

first Asian American in space and Ronald McNair

was the second African American. Judith Resnik

was the second American woman in space and

the first Jewish woman.

“We wanted to humanize these astronauts

and wanted you to know these characters and

understand the human side of this whole story,”

co-director Daniel Junge said.

Watching the series was a “rollercoaster ride of

emotion” for June Scobee Rodgers, the widow

of Challenger commander Dick Scobee and who

helped establish the Challenger Center for Space

Science Education.

“There is sadness and as a reminder of that

tremendous private grief that was made so

public,” Scobee Rodgers said. But there is also

home movies of her late husband having fun

with family and friends. “There are wonderful

snippets of joy.”

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She credited the filmmakers for telling a story “no one else has ever been able to do. There’s been many, many stories, but they give it the serious respect that it deserves by telling the whole story.”

Months after the disaster, the cause was revealed: O-ring seals failed, causing leaks in the right booster rocket. An investigation found some workers had warned NASA about the danger of launching Challenger because the O-rings grew brittle in cold weather. But NASA was under pressure to keep to its ambitious flight schedule and the risk was deemed acceptable.

“When we started this series, I did kind of expect to find that mustache-twirling villain, that one person that everything could be laid at their feet. And I don’t think we did find that person,” Zipper said.

“There is no one who said ‘This thing is definitely going to disintegrate. But let’s launch it anyway.’ They all were loyal to their missions to a fault.”

Scobee Rodgers said the series shows how people can rationalize away problems, but despite her immense loss, she has no anger toward the Challenger decision-makers.

“I have such empathy for the gentlemen that made the difficult decisions because they were under pressure for that schedule, placed on NASA unfairly, I do believe,” she said.

Leckart likened the way the Challenger disaster unfolded to another man-made disaster in 1986 — the Chernobyl meltdown. “These are not necessarily nefarious people with anything but the best of intentions. But that can quickly go awry.”

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The series airs just as space exploration has returned to America’s consciousness. In May, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched astronauts into orbit from home soil for the first time in nearly a decade. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic also plan trips to space.

“We are going to be going further in space and we’re going to be taking more risk. So the time is right to remind people of what can go wrong,” Zipper said.

The series has lessons for any complex organization, especially how red flags are handled, the necessity to slow the process down when necessary and the need to have both transparency and clear decision-making.

“There’s always going to be risk. There’s always going to be loss. If we want to launch ourselves into the next frontier, the final frontier, we’re going to lose more people. It’s inevitable,” Zipper said.

“But the question becomes, ‘What level of risk is acceptable?’ Because if we said no risk is acceptable, then I don’t think we can continue our mission into space.”

Making “Challenger” made watching the SpaceX launch earlier this year a dicey proposition for Leckart. He was with his children to witness two NASA astronauts blast off to the International Space Station

“I remember having a moment of thinking, like, ‘Do I want my children to be watching this live?’ And I’m not sure I would have thought about that quite the same had I not made ‘Challenger,’” he said. “When they did get to orbit safely, I had breathed a huge sigh of relief.”

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Most directors insist on having final edit approval of their films. Not the creators of “Wireless.”

The series on the mobile-platform Quibi employs an ingenious way to tell a story on a smartphone: You see different things on the screen depending on whether you hold your phone vertically or horizontally.

Horizontally, a traditional cinematic film follows a college student navigating the snowy Colorado mountains. But flip your phone vertically and you see his smartphone as he scrolls through photos, checks the map or calls his mom.

PHONE FLIP: NEW QUIBI SERIES

‘WIRELESS’ EMPOWERS THE VIEWER

129

Wireless | Official Trailer | Quibi

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That means that the viewer becomes the editor. And each viewer sees a slightly different film, depending on at what points they rotate the phone.

“You’re never going to have the same experience as somebody else watching the show,” said Zach Wechter, the director, co-creator and co-writer. “It really is in our viewers’ hands when they’re going to turn the phones at any given moment.”

The 10-episode series that launched this week has the backing of director Steven Soderbergh, an eager adopter of nascent technology whose influential films include “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Traffic.”

He signed on to be an executive producer after seeing “Pocket,” a short film by Wechter and his creating partner Jack Seidman that experimented with the two-screen technology.

“It was the first thing I’d ever seen that I felt was designed to be watched and experienced on the phone and absolutely worked,” Soderbergh said.

The show signals a technological jump for Quibi, which launched during the pandemic offering mobile-friendly installments of movies and TV in 10 minutes or less.

The platform initially got fewer subscribers than hoped, despite landing celebs like Chance the Rapper, Chrissy Teigen and Jennifer Lopez. Even so, it heads into the weekend Emmy Awards with an impressive 10 nominations.

The technological leap with “Wireless” means it waves goodbye to passive entertainment. By letting viewers rotate their phones and choose their perspective, Wechter is empowering

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the audience, letting them feel like they’re controlling the story.

“I’d like to think that our project is something that will inspire filmmakers and artists to consider the possibilities of this new frontier — a new landscape for storytelling,” Wechter said.

“Wireless” stars Tye Sheridan as a college student with an unhappy past and a secret habit who is driving to a New Years Eve’s party to try to rekindle a relationship with his ex-girlfriend.

As he drives over the mountains, we watch what he does on his phone: Scrolling through Instagram, checking maps, firing up Tinder, texting friends, asking Siri questions and cuing up the band Brockhampton on the stereo. The human in horizontal mode and the technological on vertical are fused.

The filmmakers have so seamlessly integrated the phone-in-the-phone that our hero listens to his old voicemail messages and looks at photos from happier times to give context for his emotions. They’ve even created a fake, chirpy online commercial for a fictional vehicle, the Chevy Colorado.

Wechter said he was inspired to create the show based on how much time everyone spends on their phone these days, and says we have almost an emotional relationship with our devices. Soderbergh agrees, calling them “an additional appendage.”

“I think the ubiquity of smartphones is one of the most impactful parts of our lives nowadays,” Wechter said. “It really just was birthed out of realizing how essential these devices have become in our day-to-day lives.”

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Soderbergh laughs that filmmakers these days are lamenting how putting their work on a phone is a depreciation of their work. “This is a complete inversion of what you typically hear a filmmaker say: To experience it NOT on your phone would be a diminishment.”

He hopes viewers will watch the thriller and then re-watch it, flipping their phone for more looks at the in-screen phone during the second time or focusing more on the actor’s perspective. “I hope other people will seize on the ability to do their own edits.”

In an interesting twist, Andie MacDowell, who starred in the indie “Sex, Lives and Videotape” 31 years ago, voices the college student’s mom in this Quibi show. Soderbergh laughs at the old technology of that film, which used video confessionals. “Think about how quaint that seems,” he said. “It’s like a Jane Austen novel compared to what we are experiencing now.”

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Wireless | Behind The Scenes | Quibi

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ViacomCBS will rebrand its CBS All Access streaming service as Paramount Plus, set to debut early next year with new, original shows.

The expanded streaming service has been in the works since February, when CEO Bob Bakish said ViacomCBS planned to add “substantial content” to CBS All Access by drawing from a number of its media platforms.

The new service will add shows from BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, other Paramount Pictures and ViacomCBS brands, in addition to what CBS All Access already offers.

CBS and Viacom joined forces last August, saying they could better compete as one in the increasingly competitive streaming environment.

CBS was one of the first media companies to launch its own streaming service. Its $6-a-month service CBS All Access includes original programming such as new “Star Trek” series and a revival of “The Twilight Zone.” The service also has old and current broadcast shows.

VIACOMCBS TO REBRAND CBS

ALL ACCESS AS PARAMOUNT PLUS

137

Paramount Plus enters an increasingly crowded field. Disney last year launched its $7-a-month Disney Plus service. This year, Comcast’s NBCUniversal launched Peacock, which has a free ad-supported tier. AT&T’s WarnerMedia debuted its $15 a month HBO Max service. Traditional media companies are all trying to lure viewers away from Netflix, Amazon as more people dump the cable TV subscriptions they had relied on.

New original shows for Paramount Plus will include “The Offer,” a series about the making of “The Godfather”; a new “Behind the Music” series from MTV; a spy drama called “Lioness”; a revival of BET’s comedy-drama “The Game”; and a true crime series called “The Real Criminal Minds.”

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T-Mobile is pushing to offer internet service to schools that are doing online learning with a program aimed at low-income students who don’t have access. In the U.S., millions of students don’t have high-speed internet or computers at home — a difficult enough situation when it was just about trying to get homework done, but a much bigger problem when many school districts have moved part or all of the school day online during the coronavirus pandemic.

Q&A: T-MOBILE PUSHES

INTERNET FOR VIRTUAL SCHOOL

141

School districts are spending big to address the crisis. The L.A. Unified School District is investing $100 million in online learning, including computers and internet service for kids who don’t have them. T-Mobile wants to expand its business that serves large organizations like big companies and schools.

It had already planned to give districts 100 gigabytes of free wireless data per year per student, a commitment the company made while pursuing its acquisition of Sprint. But since that allotment wouldn’t last more than a few months if kids streamed school all day, T-Mobile is adding two paid plans as well: $12 a month per household for 100GB, or $15 a month for unlimited data. The carrier says those prices are discounted to reflect the free-data offer.

Matt Staneff, T-Mobile’s chief marketing officer, and Mike Katz, an executive who leads the T-Mobile division that caters to large organizations like schools and big companies, spoke with The Associated Press about the company’s new effort to serve schools. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Is providing connectivity to schools something that you see as a big business opportunity?

Staneff: Sure, there’s business opportunities there. But the motivation of doing this is that we recognize there’s a problem in society of kids not being connected. We want to do more than just try to win customers. This is a huge problem.

Q: And you think 10 million kids have connection issues that stops them from

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being able to do online school? Estimates vary, but I’ve seen higher numbers. (A new study says between 15 million and 16 million public-school students don’t have adequate internet connections or devices for online school.)

Staneff: There’s another data point that says 56% of school-age kids have had trouble completing their homework. And that’s a little bit broader because it’s not just the internet. A lot of them do it on a phone. They have internet access. It could be that they need a bigger screen, which is why we’re also offering at-cost, larger-screen devices. We’ve looked at the enrollments in the school lunch program, we’ve looked at all the Census data. That’s what this number is.

Q: What have you been charging schools for getting internet to students who don’t have it?

Katz: It ranges greatly. I can tell you this program is now going to be our main education program. The district, they can get unlimited starting at $15. That’s value that’s not available anywhere else in the market, and it enables schools to then pass through service at no cost to the students.

Q: So does the new program offer better pricing for schools than what’s available to them from T-Mobile now?

Katz: It’s netting so prices are lower than what we’ve done at any time.

Q: How long will this be available?

Staneff: Once you sign up, you’re good for five years.

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Roving grown-ups tossing candy at kids waiting on lawns. Drive-thru Halloween haunts. Yard parties instead of block parties and parades. Wider paths through corn mazes.

The family holiday so many look forward to each year is going to look different in the pandemic as parents and the people who provide Halloween fun navigate a myriad of restrictions and safety concerns.

TRICK-OR-WHAT? PANDEMIC

HALLOWEEN IS A MIXED BAG ALL AROUND

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Image: Frank Frankli

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Some were looking extra-forward to Halloween this year because it falls on a Saturday, with a monthly blue moon to boot.

Decisions are outstanding in many areas on whether to allow kids to go door to door or car trunk to car trunk in parking lots in search of candy, with Los Angeles first banning trick-or-treating, then downgrading its prohibition to a recommendation.

Other events have been canceled or changed, from California’s Half Moon Bay to New York’s legendary Sleepy Hollow — and points in between.

On a typical Halloween along Clark Avenue in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves, neighbors go all out to decorate their houses and yards with spooky skeletons, tombstones and jack-o’-lanterns as up to 1,000 people pack the blocked-off street to carry on an old tradition: Tell a joke, get a treat.

Not this year. There will likely be no warm bags of popcorn, cups of hot chocolate or cotton candy doled out in exchange for the laughs as residents figure out how to pivot.

“We plan to decorate the house as usual so families can feel the Halloween spirit on their evening walks,” said Kirsten Starzer, mom to two kids, ages 11 and 15. “We will put up a sign that says, `See you next year!’”

Along the Pacific Coast about 25 miles south of San Francisco, this Halloween was meant to be a milestone for the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. The two-day event, now canceled, usually draws up to 300,000 people from around the world to show off parade floats and school bands for the holiday.

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“It was supposed to be our 50th year. I guess we’ll have to celebrate that in 2021,” said Cameron Sinn, a local business owner and president of the festival. “This year we have other things to worry about.”

The kick-off event the week before, the Safeway World Championship Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off, will carry on with no public spectators but plenty of humongous orange contestants as the judging goes virtual. With any luck, a potential world record-breaker from the U.K. will make it safely to Half Moon Bay. Its grower has a shot at $30,000 if he sets a new record.

There’s still some Halloween fun to be had in Sleepy Hollow more than 200 years after Washington Irving published his classic story about the headless horseman who terrorized a hapless Ichabod Crane. But the undead, evil and insane who usually entertain at Philipsburg Manor won’t be present for the annual walk-through horror attraction Horseman’s Hollow.

It, too, is a pandemic casualty.

So is a popular festival in the Kansas City suburb of Shawnee, Kansas, in which children stuff straw into donated clothes to make their own scarecrows.

In North Kansas City, Missouri, the city’s parks and recreation department canceled its Halloween in the Park event, instead inviting families to pick up a mystery box with candy and other surprises inside.

“The health and safety of our children and families are our priority during this time,” the city explained on its website.

Image: Charles Fremont

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While the future is uncertain for trick-or-treating, Americans have been stocking up on candy. U.S. sales of Halloween-themed chocolate and candy were up 70% over 2019 in the four weeks ending Aug. 9, according to the National Confectioners Association.

Ferrara Candy Co., which makes a Halloween staple, Brach’s Candy Corn, said most of its retail partners asked for early shipments of Halloween candy because of expected demand. Target, however, is reducing candy assortments in anticipation of less trick-or-treating. It will give away surprise Halloween bags to shoppers who drive up to its stores in October.

CVS Pharmacy said it has scaled back the number of large and giant bags of candy its stores will receive in favor of smaller bags for smaller outings and family gatherings.

Feeding the desire for safety, Walmart is bringing in more masks that can pull double duty as costume accessories, such as versions that feature the words “princess” or “queen.” Walgreens has increased its assortments of indoor and outdoor Halloween decorations, and it stepped up offerings of beverage and snack options for entertaining at home.

Candy-getting scenarios are afloat on social media, with some planning treat tosses to stationary children in their yards so the young don’t have to leave their pandemic bubbles. Others are considering long sticks with hooks for candy buckets at the end, offering social distance at collection time, or long chutes to send the candy through to dressed-up recipients.

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Image: Jamie Bender

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Alina Morse, a 15-year-old candy entrepreneur outside Detroit, suggests fashioning a Halloween candy tree decorated with lights and treats so kids can pluck their own from a porch or yard.

“Selecting a treat from the tree makes the safe, self-serve experience much more fun, said Alina, who heads Zolli Candy.

None of that is enough for some parents wary about going door to door with their kids, while others are willing, with care, if their areas allow it.

In Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, Jamie Bender said it all depends for her two kids, ages 3 and 5.

“If our neighbors are wearing masks when they open the door, we would let the kids trick-or-treat a few houses then do the obligatory wipe-down of candy wrappers,” she said.

Halloween is Camille Maniago’s 10th birthday. With Halloween on a Saturday, her family in Long Beach, California, was going to go big, but the pandemic put a stop to that.

“We’re not sure what we’ll do now, but it will probably involve a family costume and a small celebration with our immediate pod,” said Camille’s mother, Rachel Maniago. “I have friends who were thinking of planning Easter egg style candy hunts for their kids in their yards in costumes and finishing it with a movie night. Definitely not the same, but I think it has a festive element to it.”

While many haunted houses and events indoors or in tight spaces aren’t happening this year, the folks at the world record-holding largest

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Image: Frederic J. Brown

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Image: Ben Margot

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temporary corn maze in Dixon, California, are pressing on, starting Sept. 27.

At 60 acres, the maze at Cool Patch Pumpkins now has widened paths. Visitors must walk through with live-in household members only, and masks are required when social distance can’t be maintained.

On the Halloween haunts front, Brett Hays of the Haunted Attraction Association, said roughly half the attractions among his 800 or so members will not be able to run this year due to the pandemic.

“It’s so uneven in terms of regulations right now,” said Hays, the group’s president. “Whatever local agencies have been put in charge of this really are clamoring to try to get a hold of what’s going on and be able to handle it.”

A few haunts have already opened, he said, “and they’re having to really stay after people to keep them distanced and to get them to keep their masks on. It’s a lot of babysitting the customers.”

A few haunts have created drive-thru experiences, an approach Hays isn’t a huge fan of, noting the potential danger of the startle reflex in drivers with their feet on gas pedals. Other attractions have gone to timed tickets. Many expect a 50 percent reduction in attendance in an industry that usually generates about $1.14 billion in annual ticket sales, primarily during Halloween season.

“Nobody’s going to have a great year,” Hays said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

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The cathedrals lie empty. Wrigley. Fenway. Yankee Stadium. PNC Park. Progressive Field.

Sure, their lights are on as Major League Baseball tries to squeeze in a truncated 60-game season in the middle of a pandemic. But no one is home save for a few dozen players running around in masks under the din of artificial crowd noise in front of a handful of well-positioned cardboard cutouts.

Step outside the gates, and the artifice evaporates. Reality sets in.

AS MLB PLAYS ON, THE BUSINESSES IT

FEEDS FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

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As MLB sprints through two months trying to provide a small semblance of normalcy to its fan base and much-needed fresh content to its broadcast partners, the businesses in the neighborhoods surrounding the stadiums that rely so heavily on thousands making their way through the turnstiles 81 times a year are struggling, their futures murky at best. According to the ADP Research Institute, firms with fewer than 500 employees – a much-used cutoff for small businesses -- have lost more than 5.4 million jobs, or nearly 9%, since February.

It’s those kinds of businesses that serve as the lifeblood at downtown stadiums.

The bars and restaurants around Wrigleyville in Chicago’s North Side managed just fine during a World Series drought that lasted a century. Some of them might not make it to the other side of the pandemic. The walk to Progressive Field in Cleveland now resembles a trip through a ghost town, with doors locked and windows boarded up.

“We rely on that 40,000-fan-a-game foot traffic and seasonal tourism each year in order for us to be successful, and unfortunately all of us right now are witnessing what life is like on the polar opposite side of that,” said Cristina McAloon, the director of retail for Wrigleyville Sports. Outside Fenway Park, parking spaces that go for $60 during a Red Sox home game can be had for $10 now. The pop-up village on Jersey Street that organically materializes from April through September has vanished. Souvenir shops stand idle. The postgame crowd that flows in singing “Sweet Caroline” under their breath is back home watching on TV.

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Desperate for help, businesses in the Bronx are are even begging for assistance from the Yankees themselves. A local community leader is organizing a protest before a game on Thursday. He wants the team to provide $10 million in aid to shops around the storied Stadium.

While some of those spots fighting for survival have been around for decades, Mike Sukitch is simply hoping to make it through his first year. Sukitch opened the North Shore Tavern across from PNC Park in Pittsburgh in January. He expected a challenge while returning to the neighborhood where he grew up. He didn’t expect to be closed for three months, though he knows he’s got it better than most others in the area who have shuttered for good.

As he talks, Sukitch — like so many of his brethren spread across the country — tries to sound optimistic. It’s practically a job requirement when so much of what happens outside city-centered stadiums depends on what happens inside.

Right now, that’s not much. Actually, it’s less than that. For many, it’s time to turn to that familiar refrain, one that feels less like some well-worn cliche and instead serves a mantra for survival.

Wait till next year.

BOSTON RED SOX

The coronavirus pandemic has hit all kinds of businesses around Fenway Park - the Red Sox’s home since 1912 - hard, including restaurants and stores that were closed down for months and reopened to find fewer customers were eager to venture out. But for the establishments surrounding major league ballparks, the

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resumption of play has been a special kind of sadness: they’re glad to have the games back, but they can’t make any money without fans.

“Never have I seen anything like this,” said Jeff Swartz, a manager at The Team Store, a 20,000 square-foot souvenir shop that has been open across the street from Fenway Park for 75 years.

“It’s never been this empty unless they’re not playing,” said Swartz, who has worked at the store for 30 years. “Business is off as much as you can imagine. It’s negligible.”

Jersey Street in front of the store is usually gated off on game days to create a pedestrian mall that provides ticketed fans with some extra space to roam that isn’t possible within the century-old ballpark. In addition to food stands, there might be a brass band, a stilt-walker and someone making balloon animals for kids.

This year, all is quiet.

Read more about the businesses around Fenway Park.

CHICAGO CUBS

All over Wrigleyville — the quirky neighborhood that surrounds Wrigley Field, the longtime home of the Chicago Cubs — businesses are counting pennies, searching for help and dreaming of a return to normalcy.

Looking for a bridge to a vaccine, some ballpark businesses are leaning on revenue streams or avenues that were previously lower on their priority list. Nisei Lounge sold cardboard cutouts of bar patrons - real and imaginary - mimicking the promotion at ballparks across the country. Of course, sticking to the spirit of the eccentric

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spot, among the cardboard customers that have saddled up to the bar: Charles Comiskey, the Hall of Fame founder of the crosstown White Sox, and a kindergarten picture of a patron.

“We’re down easily 80% from a regular baseball season,” said Pat Odon, the director of beer and baseball operations for Nisei. “But weirdly, we’ve started doing merchandise. You never get into owning a bar to sell T-shirts, but that’s helping us get where we can make it till there’s a vaccine.”

Sluggers has indoor batting cages, dueling pianos and games like Skee-Ball. But it’s leaning on its kitchen right now.

“You know, instead of the live, get crazy atmosphere,” said Zach Strauss, who runs Sluggers with his brothers David and Ari after their father, Steve, opened the bar in 1985. “We’re (usually) the opposite of social distancing,”

“When’s the next time there’s going to be a dancer? When’s the next time people are going to feel comfortable sharing a baseball bat, or the basketballs in the basketball machine?” Zach Strauss said. “So we are, we’re suffering pretty bad.”

Read more about the businesses around Wrigleyville.

CLEVELAND INDIANS

It’s a sunny Sunday, and there’s a hint of fall in the air on this August afternoon as the Indians are about to play their series finale against Detroit. But except for the dull roar from fake crowd noise being pumped inside the ballpark, it’s quiet in downtown Cleveland.

Too quiet. Desolate and nearly deserted.

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And no band has plugged its guitars into the amplifiers on Wilbert’s stage since mid-March.

“I can probably last another two months,” said Micheal Miller, Wilbert’s 17-year owner and Cleveland-area native.

He didn’t get the usual bump from Indians opening day, a pseudo holiday in Cleveland, when it’s wall-to-wall inside Wilbert’s and Miller makes enough profit to pay off his insurance and licence fees for the entire year.

But Miller has managed to keep a couple of his employees working, and some financial assistance from the government has helped.

A father of four, the 62-year-old Miller is trying to stay positive. At this point, it’s all he can do.

He’s got a magic act booked in a few weeks, and it’s going to take some sleight of hand to keep his doors open in the fall if the state of Ohio doesn’t relax some of its COVID-19 mandates. Miller’s only allowed to be at half-capacity — about 100 patrons — and he’s not even sure that would be safe.

Read more about the businesses around Cleveland’s stadiums.

NEW YORK YANKEES

The neighborhood around Yankee Stadium has maintained some life through the coronavirus pandemic thanks to densely populated residential areas nearby, but that’s done little for shops and bars that exist specifically to serve the 3 million-plus fans who venture to the Bronx annually.

Yankee Tavern has been one of the busier businesses but the outlook is still bleak for the watering hole that’s been open since 1927.

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“What’s going on is devastating,” owner Joe Bastone said.

Bastone’s father was among a group that purchased the bar and restaurant in 1964, and Bastone -- 9 years old at the time -- has been working there since. He became sole owner 35 years ago.

“I’ve seen grandfather to father to son, great-grandson,” he said. “I’ve seen generations have come through here.”

Once a watering hole for Yankee greats Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, Yankee Tavern is the oldest drink spot in the area. It includes separate bar and restaurant spaces that routinely fill up on game days.

Bastone spoke to the AP prior to a Red Sox-Yankees game last month. Normally, he’d serve nearly 2,000 customers with baseball’s most historic rivalry in town. On this night, he had about 20 customers seated under a tent outside.

The patio seating has proved popular -- including with Yankee Stadium employees ducking out for lunch -- and the Tavern has salvaged some business via takeout and delivery.

Still, Bastone said he owes over $150,000 in rent, has already burned through his $31,000 in Paycheck Protection Program loans and been forced to reduce his staff by half to seven.

Read more about the businesses around Yankee Stadium.

PITTSBURGH PIRATES

The saxophone guy, the one that plays theme songs from 1970s TV shows for loose

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change as fans squeeze past on the Roberto Clemente Bridge on their way to and from PNC Park, is gone. The line to take selfies next to Willie Stargell’s statue outside the left field entrance to the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates is, too.

So is Rico Lunardi’s joint Slice on Broadway. He opened his franchise’s fourth store underneath the left-field bleachers in 2016. His lease technically expired last year, but the team granted him an extension as they negotiated terms for a new deal.

When the shutdown began, Lunardi attempted to stay open. The shop had a street-front entrance on Federal Street. But the double-whammy of no baseball combined with the decision by many offices in the immediate vicinity to allow employees to work remotely meant the lunchtime crowd dipped, too.

By the middle of June, with no fans allowed inside PNC Park, attendance for events at nearby Heinz Filed uncertain and government’s restrictions on capacity in indoor spaces — be they restaurants or office buildings — in place indefinitely, Lunardi finally gave up. He found landing spots for 13 of the 15 full-time employees at the ballpark location, and wouldn’t rule out a potential return one day.

“If this didn’t happen, I would have signed a lease for another 10 years,” he said. “It was fun. It was exciting to say we’re a part of it. We did grow a nice business there. When you lose two revenue sources, it’s like having the rug pulled out from under your feet.”

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Six European Union countries and the bloc’s executive Commission have begun testing a virtual “gateway” to ensure national coronavirus tracing apps can work across borders.

The trial starting this week will allow national computer systems that run tracing apps in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Latvia to communicate with each other via a central hub.

If the tests succeed, travelers from each of the six countries will be able to use their own apps while abroad in the other five to ensure they’re

EUROPE TESTS GATEWAY FOR TRACING APPS TO WORK ACROSS BORDERS

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notified if they have been in close contact to another user who tests positive.

Tracing apps were touted as a potentially game-changing tool to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but most have been beset with privacy concerns, technical problems or users’ apathy.

Among the most popular apps is the one developed in Germany, which has been downloaded 18 million times in a country of 83 million. So far an estimated 3,700 people in Germany have confirmed in the app that they tested positive, alerting other users they were in close contact with over the previous fortnight that they might have been exposed.

Getting apps to work across borders has posed a headache because of differing national data protection rules and tracing systems in place. But officials say that the large number of people traveling across the EU for work and leisure makes communication across national apps essential.

“Travel and personal exchange are the core of the European project and the single market,” Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner for the single market, said in a statement. “The gateway will facilitate this in these times of pandemic and will save lives.”

Operators hope the gateway, consisting of a server located in Luxembourg, will be fully functional next month.

Other countries that use the same decentralized system for their apps — designed to ensure maximum user privacy — will be able to join later. France, which has opted for a system where data is stored centrally, will likely not become part of the network.

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A burger shop in the South Korean capital is a bit different from typical fast food restaurants: Its key staff are robots.

From order to pick-up, customers don’t need a single face-to-face interaction. All they need to do is to click the menu they want on a kiosk touchscreen, pay and wait for a serving robot to bring their takeout bag to the pick-up spot.

While waiting for their food, customers take photos or stare with curiosity at the capsule-shaped robots, reminiscent of the popular minions characters from the animated film “Despicable Me.” The yellow and black accent colors of the No Brand Burger restaurant also give the place the look of a toy shop.

AI ROBOTS SERVE RESTAURANT

CUSTOMERS IN SOUTH KOREA

189Image: Lee Jin-man

“This is the first time I’ve actually seen such robots, so they are really amazing and fun,” said Shin Hyun Soo, a 31-year-old office worker trying out the service.

The restaurant’s human manager, Bae Eunyoung, explained the process: When a customer orders at the kiosk, it is automatically sent to the kitchen. There, an automated cooking machine kicks in and heats the buns and patties.

The human staff do have a role to play, Bae explained, adding toppings to the cooked ingredients before wrapping them and passing them over to a robot to serve.

“The customer can take the food without any direct contact with the staff,” Bae said.

That’s been seen as a selling point amid the coronavirus pandemic and its restrictions.

Before it eased them on Monday, South Korea had for the last few weeks allowed restaurants to provide only deliveries and takeout meals after 9 p.m. and franchised coffee shops like Starbucks to provide only takeout drinks.

The number of new reported coronavirus cases in South Korea almost doubled from 56 to 103 over two days in mid-August and continued to spike until it reached a peak of 441 daily cases on August 26. Since then the resurgence has slowed down but still climbs by at least 100 each day.

In August, takeout orders accounted for 58% of No Brand Burger’s total sales, up by 16% from July, according to Shinsegae Food, the South Korean food company that operates No Brand Burger.

No Brand Burger isn’t the only local restaurant using robots to serve customers.

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191Image: Ahn Young-joon

South Korea’s major IT company KT has partnered with the family restaurant chain Mad for Garlic to provide AI serving robots.

Using 3D space mapping and other technology, the robot can freely move through the narrow lanes between tables and avoid obstacles to reach its destination, said Lee Youngjin, team leader of AI Platform Business Team at KT.

The robot can serve up to four tables per trip.

“Children customers often like to see the robot. Also, customers in general feel it is fresher to receive their food through the robot because of the coronavirus,” said Lee Young-ho, the manager of one Mad for Garlic restaurant using the robots.

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Finance ministers from five of Europe’s biggest economies called for the European Union to produce strict rules for new, private digital currencies such as Facebook-backed Libra and ban those that don’t comply.

The ministers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands said in a joint statement that new regulations being drawn up by the EU’s executive Commission — and expected this fall — should seek to “preserve our monetary sovereignty and address the risks to monetary policy, and on the other hand protect EU consumers.”

EU HEAVYWEIGHTS SEEK STRICT RULES FOR

DIGITAL CURRENCIES

195Image: Kay Nietfeld

The five countries say that if it isn’t clear that a digital currency is firmly linked to an existing currency, and if there is a danger to the stability of financial markets, “what has got off the ground must be banned,” German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on the sidelines of a meeting with his eurozone counterparts in Berlin.

France’s Bruno Le Maire stressed “one very simple principle: the (European) Central Bank ... is the only one to be allowed to issue currency, and this point is something that cannot be jeopardized or weakened by any kind of project, including the so-called Libra project.”

Facebook has backed the Libra project for a so-called stablecoin, a digital currency linked to existing currencies.

Spanish Finance Minister Nadia Calviño noted that European officials have long expressed “concern on the development of these wrongly called stablecoins — crypto-assets is a more correct denomination.” She said that Europe could pave the way for a global standard.

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China’s Mars probe Tianwen-1, which blasted into space in July, is now more than 15 million kilometers (9 million miles) from Earth en route to the red planet, the National Space Administration said.

The administration said that Tianwen-1 was in stable condition, having completed its first mid-course orbital correction early last month. It will be about 195 million kilometers (118 million miles) from Earth when it arrives at Mars around February, having traveled 470 million kilometers (292 million miles) in all to get there.

CHINA SAYS MARS PROBE STABLE;

NO WORD ON REUSABLE

SPACECRAFT

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The administration, however, has yet to release information about a mysterious reusable experimental spacecraft that returned to Earth a week ago after a two-day flight.

The spacecraft consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, and marks China’s most ambitious Mars mission yet as it seeks to join the United States in successfully landing a spacecraft on the planet. It was blasted into space aboard a Long March-5 on July 23 during a month when the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. also took advantage of a shortened distance between the planets to launch similar missions.

China said the reusable spacecraft returned to its designated landing site, calling the flight a breakthrough that will eventually provide convenient round-trip transport to space at a low cost. No other details on the mission or the configuration of the spacecraft have been released.

That is also seen as an attempt to put China on the leading edge of space flight. The U.S. has for years been operating the secretive X-37B space plane that remains in orbit for months.

China’s military-backed space program has developed rapidly since it became just the third country after Russia and the U.S. to put a man in space in 2003. Last year, China’s Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft from any country to land on the far side of the moon.

The program has also suffered the occasional setback. The northwestern satellite launch center of Jiuquan reported that an optical satellite launched midday last Saturday failed to enter its preset orbit after abnormalities were observed during the flight of its carrier rocket.

200Image: CNSA

The weather has gotten weirder and more unpredictable, but there is a small way that gardeners can take more control: finding and exploiting microclimates.

I’ve been looking for them around my upstate New York yard as cooler weather slowly creeps in.

Microclimates are pockets of air and soil that are colder or warmer, or more or less humid, than the general climate due to the influence of slopes, walls and pavement.

Every parcel of land, from a 40-acre farm field to a quarter-acre lot, will have some microclimates. Siting plants with this in mind can be the difference between whether or not they thrive or even survive.

MICROCLIMATES: SOMETHING

GARDENERS CAN DO ABOUT THE

WEATHER

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MODERATING WINTER’S COLD

I’m banking, for instance, on the slightly warmer temperatures near the wall of my house to get my stewartia tree, which is borderline cold-hardy around here, through my winters, when temperatures often drop to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Proximity to concrete, stone or any other material that retains the sun’s heat also provides a slightly warmer microclimate. I’m expecting spring to arrive early, with a colorful blaze of tulips, in the bed pressed up against the south side of my brick house.

Even sooner, in late winter, winter aconites will be spreading their small, yellow blossoms in the slightly raised bed surrounding my terrace. Those aconites warm more quickly thanks to the double benefit of raised beds and a concrete wall surrounding them. (Actually, the benefit is more for me, getting to enjoy their blooms extra early.)

KEEPING WARMTH AT BAY

Microclimates can also be useful for keeping plants cooler. By training my hardy kiwi vines right up against the shaded, north sides of their hefty supports, I keep direct winter sunlight from warming their trunks. This avoids the splitting that occurs when their trunks are alternately warmed during winter days, then rapidly cooled as the winter sun drops below the horizon.

Diluted white latex paint on the trunks of young trees keeps them cold through winter days and nights to likewise prevent damage.

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By planting the coveted blue poppy in a bed on the east side of my house, I hoped to give the plant the summer coolness it demands. Even that east bed was still too sultry, however; the plants collapsed.

Microclimates are important when growing fruiting plants that blossom early in the season because frozen blossoms do not go on to become fruits. Early-season bloomers need microclimates that are slow to warm up. The north side of a house or other building stays cool because it’s shaded from winter sun.

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SLOPES PLAY A ROLE, TOO

South-facing slopes stare directly at the sun, so they warm up early in spring and are warmer both in summer and winter. Therefore, a south-facing slope can be used to hasten fruit ripening on a plant like persimmon, whose late blossoms are rarely threatened by frost but which does need a long season to ripen when grown near its northern limit.

Sunlight glances off north slopes, delaying their warming in spring and keeping them cool in summer. Such a microclimate is ideal for an early-blooming fruit tree like apricot or peach, and for plants such as sweet peas that enjoy cool summer weather.

If a slope has some elevation, the air is going to cool it by about 1 degree Fahrenheit for every 200 feet of elevation. Avoid planting at the very top, though, because it will be windy.

Oddly enough, valleys might also provide a cooler microclimate. On clear, windless nights, heat that the ground absorbed during the day is re-radiated back to the sky. Cold air, then at ground level, is denser than warmer air, so if there is any slope, the cold air runs downhill as water would. The cold air collects in valleys.

You might have noticed a temperature change even from slight differences in elevation as you ride a bicycle or drive a car on a clear summer night.

It’s a bit chilly this morning (55 degrees Fahrenheit.) I’m going to find a warmer microclimate in which to sit.

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2020-09-18 applemagazine

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