Techlife News #537

States are being given the go-ahead to build a nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations that would place new or upgraded stations every 50 miles (80 kilometers) along interstate highways, part of the Biden administration’s plan to spur widespread adoption of the zero-emission cars. The administration announced the availability of $5 billion in federal funds to states over five years under President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law, sketching out a vision of seamless climate-friendly car travel from coast to coast. Under new requirements issued by the Transportation Department, states must submit plans to the federal government and can begin construction by this fall if they focus first on highway routes, rather than neighborhoods and shopping centers, that can allow people to take their electric vehicles long distances. Each station would need to…

Tesla Inc. posted record fourth-quarter and full-year earnings as deliveries of its electric vehicles soared despite a global shortage of computer chips that has slowed the entire auto industry. Although the company predicted it would be able to build 50% more vehicles than it made last year, CEO Elon Musk said the chip shortage would stop the company from rolling out any new models in 2022. That means another delay for the Cybertruck pickup, which was originally scheduled to go on sale last year. Musk also said Tesla isn’t yet working on a promised $25,000 small electric car, but it will. “We have enough on our plate right now, quite frankly,” he said. And Musk said the company is looking at building additional factories and will offer an update on locations later in…

Entrepreneur Elon Musk is helping reconnect Tonga to the internet after a volcanic eruption and tsunami cut off the South Pacific nation more than three weeks ago, according to officials, while repairs on an undersea cable are proving more difficult than first thought. The tsunami severed the sole fiber-optic cable that connects Tonga to the rest of the world and most people remain without reliable connections. Three people were confirmed killed in the Jan. 15 eruption of the massive undersea volcano and the resulting tsunami, and several small settlements in outlying islands were wiped out and a thick layer of volcanic ash that blanketed the main island tainted much of the drinking water. Tonga had avoided the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years, but it is now in the midst of an…

Twitter’s shares jumped in early trading Thursday after it posted strong revenue growth last year and announced a $4 billion share buyback program. That’s despite losing money in 2021 and falling short of Wall Street expectations for user growth in the last three months of the year. Revenue increased 37%, to $5.08 billion, compared with 2020. But the San Francisco company reported a net loss of $221 million for the year largely tied to the settlement of a shareholder lawsuit. In the October-to-December quarter, Twitter earned $182 million, or 21 cents per share. Adjusted for one-time gains and costs, per-share earnings were 33 cents, hitting Wall Street expectations. Revenue grew in the fourth quarter to $1.41 billion, up 22% from the same period a year ago. Twitter had an average of 217 million…

A theme-park comeback continued to boost Disney’s results in the most recent quarter. The company also added more subscribers to its Disney+ streaming service than analysts expected. Disney had closed or limited capacity at its theme parks and suspended cruises earlier in the pandemic. Domestic parks have reopened, and revenue in that division doubled in the most recent quarter, to $7.23 billion, while profit came to $2.45 billion from a year-ago loss of $119 million, even as the omicron variant suppressed some people’s travel plans COVID-19 restrictions continued to affect some international operations. Burbank, California-based Disney reported net income of $1.15 billion in the three months through Jan. 1, compared with $17 million in the fiscal first quarter the year before. Earnings per share came to 60 cents, or $1.06 when excluding certain…

A judge has tossed two of six fraud counts against a former Boeing pilot involved in evaluating the troubled Boeing 737 Max jetliner. A federal judge in Fort Worth on Tuesday dismissed, on technical grounds, counts that accused Mark A. Forkner of making and using “a materially false writing... concerning an aircraft part,” in violation of federal law. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied, however, Forker’s attorneys’ request for dismissal of four other wire fraud counts for not stating a case. Forkner, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, is scheduled to go on trial March 7. A federal indictment accuses Forkner, 50, of deceiving regulators about a critical system that played a role in two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets that killed 346 people. Prosecutors said that because of Forkner’s alleged deception,…