Passwords are hard to remember — especially if you use a lot of online services and try (which you should) to use a strong, different password for each one. But the days of trying to think of yet another password to sign up for a new service may be behind us.
In a WWDC developer session titled “Move beyond passwords,” Apple engineer Garret Davidson shows a new feature, allowing users to sign up for new online services using Face ID or Touch ID instead of a password.
On a field in England, three robots have been given a mission: to find and zap weeds with electricity before planting seeds in the cleared soil.
The robots — named Tom, Dick and Harry — were developed by Small Robot Company to rid land of unwanted weeds with minimal use of chemicals and heavy machinery.
The startup has been working on its autonomous weed killers since 2017, and this April launched Tom, its first commercial robot which is now operational on three UK farms. The other robots are still in the prototype stage, undergoing testing.
The US Supreme Court has declined to hear Johnson & Johnson’s appeal over a pay-out to women who alleged that its talcum powder contained asbestos and caused them to develop ovarian cancer.
The healthcare giant must pay $2.1bn (£1.5bn) in damages to the women.
The top US court did not comment on its decision, but has left in place a 2018 verdict that favoured them.
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) said decades of independent research show the product is safe.
The company asked the court to review the penalty it had been given after it was upheld in Missouri in 2020.
When the Small Business Administration shuttered the Paycheck Protection Program for all lenders other than community financial institutions earlier this month–three weeks before the forgivable loan program’s May 31 end date–it sent shock waves through the system.
Womply, a loan facilitator based in San Francisco, quickly rattled off a report noting that as many as 1.6 million of its small-business customers would be left out. Numerated, the Boston-based digital lending platform for banks, said it had $1.4 billion in outstanding applications from more than 33,000 businesses that had been started but not yet approved by the SBA. Meanwhile, other lenders worked to scuttle their programs and divert borrowers, even as it remained unclear how much money was actually left.
Just in time for the warm (almost) summer weather, Baskin-Robbins has decided to expand its menu to accommodate vegans nationwide, by launching oat milk ice cream at all 2,500 U.S. locations. Needless to say, the plant-based community is preparing to get their sweet tooth on, and gearing up for the widely beloved frozen treat.
“We’re a brand that’s all about creating new flavor experiences and with so many people living plant-based or flexitarian lifestyles today, we couldn’t be more excited to launch our new oat milk-based option,” Shannon Blakely, VP of Marketing & Culinary at Baskin-Robbins, said in a press release. “We’re so passionate about this new base and Flavor of the Month as it’s not just an evolution of our offerings, but a sign of our passion and commitment to creating what’s ‘next’ in frozen desserts.”
Amazon’s entertainment empire is about to get a massive boost.
The company announced on Wednesday that it’s signed an agreement to acquire MGM Studios for a purchase price of $8.45 billion. It’s a blockbuster deal that will further bolster Amazon’s already-potent entertainment division, the Emmy- and Academy Award-winning Amazon Studios.
The acquisition turbocharges Amazon’s efforts to make noise in Hollywood, giving the company a massive roster of beloved entertainment properties to support and mine for new ideas. And that’s in addition to an upcoming MGM slate that includes new movies for James Bond and The Addams Family, as well as House of Gucci, and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will officially step down from his role as chief executive on July 5, he announced during the company’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday.
Bezos will hand the reins to Andy Jassy, who currently runs Amazon Web Services, after a nearly three-decade run leading the internet giant that made him one of the richest people in the world. Bezos will become Amazon’s executive chair.
The company first announced the leadership change as part of its February earnings report, saying Jassy would take over during the fiscal third quarter. Amazon (AMZN) had not previously shared the precise date of the transition.
A “lost” letter written by Albert Einstein to a rival physicist recently sold to an anonymous collector for $1.2 million at auction. The handwritten letter includes Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation and is one of just four known examples of the equation in the physicist’s own handwriting, according to archivists from the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The one-page letter, written in German on paper with Einstein’s blind-stamped personal Princeton letterhead, was sent to Polish American physicist Ludwik Silberstein, a well-known critic of some of Einstein’s theories at the time. The document is signed “A. Einstein” and is dated Oct. 26, 1946.
Lumber and plywood prices have jumped through the roof in the U.S. Building materials prices will retreat in 2022, returning to pre-pandemic levels by 2023. They reflect housing-specific issues, not general inflation. (The general inflation is coming, I have argued, but lumber is not an early sign.)
Wood products prices typically fluctuate more than most goods, because homebuilding can move up or down much faster than sawmill capacity can. Wood products have other uses that are more stable, such as non-residential construction, crates and pallets, but new housing is the largest usage, followed by home repairs and remodeling, and both of those activities are highly cyclical.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell has become the mother of a baby girl.
The 50-year-old announced the news on Instagram as she shared a picture of her hand holding the baby’s feet.
“A beautiful little blessing has chosen me to be her mother, so honoured to have this gentle soul in my life,” she posted on the social media website.
Dispatches From The Front 