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Apple’s foldable iPhone is probably coming, just maybe not as soon as we’d hoped – CNET

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Apple’s foldable iPhone is probably coming, just maybe not as soon as we’d hoped – CNET
Will Apple follow Samsung’s lead and release a foldable phone?

 

Jessica Dolcourt/CNET

It’s no secret Apple has its sights set on a foldable iPhone. The company has been registering patents for foldable mechanisms and devices for almost a decade now with no launch date in sight. The question is whether any of them will ever see the light of day, and if so, when?

Read more: iPhone 13’s juiciest rumors: Smaller notch, lidar and more leaks

 

 

Now playing: Watch this: Apple’s foldable may be coming later than expected


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Launch date is a moving target

Early rumors pointed to 2021 as a potential target date, but a recent report from long-time Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo (via MacRumors) suggests 2023 might be more realistic, if it ever happens. According to Kuo, Apple still needs to figure out technology and mass production issues before bringing a device like this to market, hence the two-year wait.

This is a far cry from Samsung’s first-to-market approach, the Korean company having already launched three foldable devices within the last two years: the Galaxy Fold, Z Fold 2 and Galaxy Z Flip. Other manufacturers like Microsoft, Motorola and Huawei have also thrown their hats in the ring with their own foldable devices.

What will the foldable iPhone look like?

The 2023 timeline would match up with a report from Bloomberg earlier this year that indicated Apple already has a working prototype of a foldable iPhone display. While it’s not yet a working model, it’s a step up from a patent which, until now, was all we had.

foldableiphone.png
This illustration, according to Apple’s patent filing, shows a “device that bends along a flexible portion such as a flexible seam associated with a hinge.”

 

Apple/US Patent and Trademark Office

Apple seems to have taken out every patent under the sun when it comes to foldable displays, including an origami-style folding display, a flip-up display and even a wrap-around display. And while we don’t know which one will make the final cut, both Kuo and Bloomberg seem to agree that the current prototype is more of a traditional fold-out design that would open up to a 7.5- or 8-inch main display. Unlike Microsoft’s Surface Duo, which has the hinges on the exterior, Apple’s would have one continuous display with a hidden hinge mechanism like the Galaxy Fold.

What still stands in the way?

corning-final-cut1
Corning is working on bendable glass for foldable phones.

 

Richard Peterson/CNET

While Samsung and others have been testing the waters, Apple has been learning from the pain points of their foldable devices and figuring out whether there’s a real use case for it.

One of these pain points: the crease. A lot of the current cover materials, including the glass and plastic mix that Samsung uses for the Z Fold and Z Flip, show a visible crease when folded out to full screen. To avoid it, Apple would likely have to wait for Corning, Apple’s glass provider, to create some kind of bendable version of its Ceramic Shield screen. The company is already working on a bendable glass, but hasn’t announced a launch date for it.

The fold doesn’t come cheap

Price is another major problem for these types of devices. At $2,000 the Fold 2 is over twice the price of Samsung’s other flagship phones and a foldable iPhone wouldn’t be any cheaper. Apple’s foldable needs to be in line with current foldable and nonfoldable models to be able to compete against other brands and entice iPhone users to ditch their single-screen devices and pay more for a foldable.

Read more: iPhone 13 release date: We have a good idea of when Apple will unveil its next phones

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Astronomers May Have Found The First Evidence For Tectonic Activity On An Exoplanet

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On Earth, the heat generated from the radioactive decay of elements in Earth’s mantle drives convection currents, pushing and dragging large plates of Earth’s crust around. When the plates collide, mountains form, and parts of Earth’s crust are recycled into the mantle. When the plates are pushed apart, the partially molten mantle rises upward to fill the gap. Plate tectonics is an essential part of the cycle that brings material from the planet’s interior to the surface and the atmosphere, and then transports it back beneath the Earth’s crust. Tectonics thus has a vital influence on the energy and matter transfer that ultimately makes Earth habitable.

Until now, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system. A team of researchers led by Tobias Meier from the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and with the participation of ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford, and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS has now found evidence of the flow patterns inside a planet, located 45 light-years from Earth: LHS 3844b. Their results were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

LHS 3844b is an exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf star LHS 3844, discovered using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It orbits its parent star once every 11 hours, and its radius is 1.32 times that of Earth. It has a low albedo, indicating that its surface may resemble that of the Moon or Mercury.

“Observing signs of tectonic activity is very difficult, because they are usually hidden beneath an atmosphere”, Meier explains. However, recent results suggested that LHS 3844b probably does not have an atmosphere. Slightly larger than Earth and likely similarly rocky, it orbits around its star so closely that one side of the planet is gravitationally locked towards its sun. One hemisphere of the planet is in constant daylight and the other in permanent night. With no atmosphere shielding it from the intense radiation, the surface gets blisteringly hot: it can reach up to 800 degrees Celsius on the dayside. Common rocks, like granite and basalt, melt at temperatures of 900 to 1,200 degrees Celsius. The night side, on the other hand, is freezing. Temperatures there might fall below minus 250 degrees Celsius. “We thought that this severe temperature contrast might affect material flow in the planet’s interior”, Meier recalls.

Cool rocks are brittle and tend to break, becoming much more liquid-like as they heat up. The team ran computer simulations with different strengths of material and internal heating sources, such as heat from the planet’s core and the decay of radioactive elements. The simulations also included the large temperature contrast on the surface imposed by the host star.

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“Most simulations showed that there was only upwards flow on one side of the planet and downwards flow on the other. Material therefore flowed from one hemisphere to the other”, Meier reports. Surprisingly, the direction was not always the same. “Based on what we are used to from Earth, you would expect the material on the hot dayside to be lighter and therefore flow upwards and vice versa”, co-author Dan Bower at the University of Bern and the NCCR PlanetS explains. Yet, some of the teams’ simulations also showed the opposite flow direction. “This initially counter-intuitive result is due to the change in viscosity with temperature: cold material is stiffer and therefore doesn’t want to bend, break or subduct into the interior. Warm material, however, is less viscous – so even solid rock becomes more mobile when heated – and can readily flow towards the planet’s interior”, Bower elaborates. Either way, these results show how a planetary surface and interior can exchange material under conditions very different from those on Earth.

As a result, the researchers suggest that LHS 3844b could have one entire hemisphere covered in volcanoes comparable to terrestrial volcanism as found in Hawaii and Iceland. Here mantle-plumes form very hot lava with low viscosity.

“Our simulations show how such patterns could manifest, but it would require more detailed observations to verify,” says Meier.

“For example, with a higher-resolution map of surface temperature that could point to enhanced outgassing from volcanism, or detection of volcanic gases. This is something we hope future research will help us to understand.”

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Growing Up In The Barrens: Hits And Misses In The New ‘Hearthstone’ Expansion

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The popular digital card game Hearthstone’s upcoming expansion, Forged in the Barrens, will launch the game’s three-expansion Year of the Gryphon; update everything from Battlegrounds to the new player experience; and launch Mercenaries, a new game mode.

The release date for the new expansion hasn’t been set yet. Traditionally the first Hearthstone expansion of each year is in April, but the team had barely begun development on Barrens before being sent home for the COVID pandemic.

We caught up with Hearthstone game designers Liv Breeden and Joe Killion to chat about how Blizzard Entertainment came up with the ideas for the expansion, its mechanics and its cards. And, as always, we talk about what was just too awful to make the cut and was mercifully removed.

Heather Newman:  What led you to the core theme of this expansion?

Joe Killion: When we first started working on this set, we started discussing the concept of another year-long narrative, kind of like we did with Descent of Dragons. Something that everyone was excited about was going back to that classic Warcraft experience of experiencing the world as a newbie, who knows nothing about it and is super low level, and then becoming this great hero.

The Barrens was a super iconic starting zone, especially for Horde players. So it was something that we could tap into for a lot of that nostalgia that players, and us on the development team, had.

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Liv Breeden: So whose story are we going to tell, right? We have these 10 characters, there’s one legendary in each class, these 10 mercenaries. These are the iconic characters that you’ve probably like played, or at least seen played, in World of Warcraft.

So there’s the Orc warrior, there’s the Troll and there’s the Tauren druid; there’s the Human paladin and the Forsaken warlock. We’ve got such a huge cast of characters, but they’re ones you probably identify with. For me one of the big things is getting excited about telling this year long narrative of these 10 characters as they level up from zero to hero.

Newman: How much does that theme drive the original mechanics of the new expansion?

Breeden: Early on in exploration, when we said we wanted to do a year-long narrative, we asked do we also want to do a year-long a mechanic as well? In the Year of the Dragon we had Lackeys. Every expansion we added a new Lackey, so the interactions that you dealt with were a little bit different every time.

We explored a couple of different directions, but we didn’t find any that resonated with us, that really felt like we could build upon over the course of the whole year. So we focused more on the narrative side.

Newman: How did that play out in the mechanic you chose for the Barrens expansion?

Breeden: If you look at the characters themselves, they’ll be seen throughout all of the expansions. But what their mechanics are will change as the year goes on. There’s also the, “Hey, I’m a new shaman hanging out in the Barrens. I just went from Chain Lightening I to Chain Lightning II. I just ranked that spell up.” We wanted to make sure we captured those things.

So there’s Chain Lightning, rank one. When you reach five mana, it goes to rank two, and it deals one more damage. When you reach 10 mana, it deals four damage at rank three. It’s kind of a, a cool, fun story for people who have played World of Warcraft.

Newman: What didn’t make the cut?

Breeden: We tried something, we’ll call it “champion.” There’s a second hero next to you, and your opponent would choose to attack you or attack the hero. They had a hero power. It was kind of cool — there’s a lot of like interesting decisions there. But it was really complex, and suddenly, I didn’t know how to play Hearthstone anymore.

I’m sure we’ll revisit some iteration of that. But it was a lot of extra complexity and the gameplay that came out of it was pretty bad-feeling, because if you’re behind, you fall further behind, because now they have this thing that you can’t destroy.

Killion: Another thing we explored was introducing a new minion type. But with our minion types, like elementals or Murlocs, we really want them to have a distinct feeling in the game.

As we iterated on that, spell schools was something that we landed on. We’re tagging a lot of spells throughout the game with seven iconic spell schools in Warcraft.

Newman: How does that spell school tag play out in game?

Killion: One of the best examples is Bru’kan, the Legendary shaman mercenary. His power is Nature spell damage +3. It works really well with Chain Lightning, because that’s a Nature smell.

Newman: How did you decide which spells got which tags? What those spells were like in WoW? Other factors?

Breeden: I think it’s about leaning into the class fantasy, what they do best.

Killion: We spent a lot of time talking about the different schools that we wanted and what we would name them. We had a few extra schools that we didn’t put in just because they didn’t really fit with the theme.

Once we landed on these seven, we started looking at the cards. We spent a lot of time looking at the art. Does it have like lots of fire in it, or does it make sense visually, and also in the name? Sometimes it is exactly what the mechanics are doing.

Breeden: There are some that are like, well, it was a Shadow spell [in Warcraft], but in our game it looks like a Fel spell. There are some that are on the fence, that we decided to go with what’s best for Hearthstone. It’s harder going backward and typing stuff in the past than going forward.

Newman: So what were some of the spell types that didn’t make it through?

Killion: The big one that we didn’t add in was a Physical spell type. Rogue and Warrior don’t tend to do a lot of stuff with spells that are in like a specific school. So we had explored a Physical spell school that could focus more on weapons and armor. But as we played with it, we found that it wasn’t the most exciting; and it also added an extra layer of complexity to those classes that we didn’t feel was necessary.

It makes their game play a little bit more diverse than the other classes, which I think is a good thing.

Newman: Are there any card interactions you feel are especially exciting to play?

Breeden: I think Blademaster Samuro is a really interesting one because some classes don’t have access to a lot of like board clears. [Blademaster is a 1/6 neutral card with Rush and Frenzy, which does his attack power in damage to all enemy minions if he takes damage and survives.]

But those classes do have access to Samuro, and then they also have buffs. He works pretty well if you buff him up and then run him in.

Killion: A card that’s pretty interesting to me is Druid of the Plains. It’s a Druid card with Rush. It’s a 7/6 that has a Frenzy transform into a 6/7 with Taunt. So you have this card that gets on the board, maybe you have some ways to buff it up, but then when it gets that Frenzy, it flips over to a taunt minion.

You get this really good benefit of lots of damage and then a pretty big protective minion for you.

Newman: How has development changed on Hearthstone over the years?

Breeden: Hearthstone is unique for game development because we put out three expansions every year. We ship 135 [cards in an expansion], but we probably make closer to 500 that don’t make it. A lot of those might be really bad, a lot of them are pretty decent, and some are really good, and we keep those. People gain a lot of skills very quickly.

By having a lot of different projects that they can work on, they don’t feel quite as restricted. If they’re excited about something, we have a lot of room to move around. Maybe an initial designer goes to the final design team for a little bit. Maybe they go to the Tavern Brawl team. We have a lot of outlets.

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Do You Seriously Need To Stop Using WhatsApp?

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WhatsApp’s privacy backlash has returned—you need to make a change to your account or risk losing access to all your messages. WhatsApp’s nightmare start to 2021 has also exposed a much more serious problem that could be a game-changer for the platform. Millions more could leave. Should you do the same?

Don’t worry, WhatsApp assured its two billion users when hit by a privacy backlash earlier this year—we don’t share that much data with Facebook and we were overly hasty when we said you can delete your account unless you accept our new privacy policy by February 8. And so, despite the headlines urging users to ditch WhatsApp, despite soaring installs for Telegram and Signal, the sensible advice was to stay put.

Fast forward a few weeks, though, and the WhatsApp situation has taken a turn for the worse. It now seems clear that all those angry user complaints have prompted nothing out of WhatsApp beyond a smart PR campaign and a short delay. We appear to be right back where we started. And this has raised some very serious concerns.

In response to the privacy backlash, WhatsApp rightly pointed out that its end-to-end encrypted messages are protected against any snooping, including from WhatsApp itself. The company also pointed out, rightly again, that the change of terms simply enabled Facebook business customers to chat to you on the platform.

But WhatsApp, which says security and privacy are in its DNA, is owned by the world’s most avaricious data harvesting machine. And so, it’s unsurprising that WhatsApp’s PR blitz has ignored the metadata harvesting issue. “Metadata—data about your data,” Cyjax CISO Ian Thornton-Trump explains, “is almost as powerful as the actual data.”

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Let’s not forget that the backlash came in two parts. First, Apple introduced its privacy labels, and it was immediately clear that WhatsApp collects much more of our data than Signal, Telegram and iMessage. Whether or not that data is shared with Facebook is important, but not as important as the rationale for collecting it in the first place.

Have you read WhatsApp’s privacy policy? Likely not. In it, WhatsApp says, “we use all the information we have to help us operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our services,” and that “we share your information to help us operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our services.”

WhatsApp also says that “Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads.”

Remember—if the product is free, then you’re the product.

“Other apps,” WhatsApp has now told users, “say they’re better because they know even less information than WhatsApp—we believe people are looking for apps to be both reliable and safe, even if that requires WhatsApp having some limited data.”

But it isn’t “limited data.” It’s a long list of data, all linked to your identity. We know why WhatsApp wants your metadata—because it tells us in its privacy policy. And no-one claims Signal or iMessage or Telegram are unreliable or unsafe because they collect less data from their users. And how does WhatsApp collecting your data for advertising tally with it “requiring” your data to keep its app “reliable and safe?”

This isn’t complicated. WhatsApp’s privacy label is awful. It’s the only leading secure messenger that harvests “data linked to you,” including your device ID, for “developer’s advertising and marketing.” It also collects your contact info, user ID and device ID for ominously vague “other purposes.” Other messengers collect your data to tailor functionality. WhatsApp is harvesting it for other reasons.

The second part of that backlash, the forced change of terms, hit hard because it seemed WhatsApp was collecting this data and sharing it with Facebook—that was the misreporting. It’s all good, WhatsApp said, we don’t share all your data with Facebook. But suddenly WhatsApp had shone a light on the fact that there is some data sharing. The fact this isn’t new is hardly the point. Those privacy labels are stark.

More importantly, the rationale behind collecting all this data in the first place was downplayed. It seemed that WhatsApp’s was taking the view that the backlash would blow over and we would all forget. We collect it because we need it, was the message. But there was no word on exactly what was being used, and how. This is your data. You have the right to know what’s being collected and how it’s being used.

Yes, WhatsApp is a free platform. And they are completely entitled to say we collect certain data fields and use those to send you ads that might be relevant. We, as users, can then choose whether that’s acceptable to us or not. What they’re not entitled to do is obfuscate, to talk around the subject and refuse to provide transparency, to say that it’s an inevitable and intangible part of this free service they offer.

WhatsApp isn’t helped by the fact that it’s owned by Facebook, and Facebook’s privacy labels appear worse than their peers in each category. As bad as WhatsApp is, Facebook Messenger is much worse, Instagram and Facebook itself worse still. And when you consider that this is all part of the slow process of integrating Facebook’s various platforms at the back-end, it’s not a good sign for the future.

Ironically, most users accept that some form of data collection is a price worth paying for free platforms. But there has to be a limit. And there has to be transparency. It is impossible to argue that the data collection is proportionate with the services on offer. Facebook reported $28.1 billion in revenues last quarter—it’s not scraping a living.

WhatsApp’s specific backlash has been blown out of proportion. The change of terms is more benign than it was (mis)reported at the time. WhatsApp’s owner, Facebook, wants to enable its business customers to communicate with you on WhatsApp, and only if you agree to those contacts. If you do, though, some of those messages might be stored off of WhatsApp, outside its fabled end-to-end encryption.

This is a non-issue. Who cares about the security of your messages with your dry cleaner or supermarket—especially given you have opted in each specific chat? But it still breaks WhatsApp’s existing data handling terms and so the change needs to be made. As WhatsApp says, it needs to sell services to keep the messenger free. But the change has opened WhatsApp to belated scrutiny on its metadata—and that has not gone well. WhatsApp’s privacy issue is not going to be put back into its Pandora’s Box.

You now have a few weeks to accept WhatsApp’s new terms. After that, WhatsApp has now confirmed in a not especially helpful FAQ, “you won’t have full functionality of WhatsApp until you accept. For a short time,” it says, “you’ll be able to receive calls and notifications, but won’t be able to read or send messages from the app.”

WhatsApp says that “if you haven’t accepted by [May 15], WhatsApp will not delete your account,” but you will, effectively, lose use of your account after “a short time.”

So, what does this actually mean? You will still be able to access the account for a while, albeit you won’t be able to read or send any messages. In WhatsApp’s terminology, your account will seemingly become “inactive.” And here WhatsApp’s policy is clear. “To maintain security, limit data retention, and protect the privacy of our users, WhatsApp accounts are generally deleted after 120 days of inactivity. Inactivity means the user hasn’t connected to WhatsApp.”

All of this is confusing. WhatsApp hasn’t said it will delete accounts after that “short time,” or even how long a grace period that is. But the media is reporting that deletions will take place and that’s not being corrected.

Even WhatsApp appeared confused over its plans as it delayed the February 8 deadline for accepting the new terms. On January 15th, WhatsApp said “we will make sure users have plenty of time to review and understand the terms—rest assured we never planned to delete any accounts based on this and will not do so in the future.”

That implies that accounts won’t be deleted. And maybe they won’t—despite headlines warning exactly that. I asked WhatsApp again whether they would confirm any of this, and they declined to answer. All WhatsApp says is that it has “extended the effective date to May 15th. If you haven’t accepted by then, WhatsApp will not delete your account. However, you won’t have full functionality of WhatsApp until you accept.”

Of course, one could be more cynical about a tweet sent on January 15, mid-backlash, that assured users that accounts would not be deleted over the change of terms, “we never planned to delete accounts based on this and will not do so in the future,” which was followed a month later by the news that accounts would be at best locked out and at worst deleted if terms are not accepted by May 15.

WhatsApp also declined to comment on this apparent contradiction.

Back in January, I advised users to stick with WhatsApp, albeit to maybe trial other options, particularly Signal, in parallel. I said there was no reason to ditch WhatsApp, that the issue around the change of terms had been overblown. But the way WhatsApp has managed this situation might just change that advice.

This was an opportunity to listen and engage, not to blitz users with slick PR while sticking to Plan A. Apple has changed the game by introducing privacy labels and removing ad tracking. Platforms either need to step up and change how they behave, or they risk losing users to alternatives that will. Facebook has made its stance against Apple’s changes clear. WhatsApp is doing the same.

The new privacy terms are fine to agree—there’s nothing to worry about there. But WhatsApp’s stubborn data collection and refusal to budge or even review the situation is pure Facebook. This is the clearest sign yet as to the direction WhatsApp is heading. So, do you seriously need to stop using WhatsApp? Maybe this time you do.

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Why You Should Stop Using Gmail On Your iPhone

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If you’re one of hundreds of millions of people using the Gmail app on your iPhone, then Google’s stark new data harvesting disclosures should serve as a serious warning. You should delete the app from your phone today—here’s why.

The news this week that Google will not develop secretive new methods to track its users across the internet is very welcome. Ignoring the fact that its existing stance on tracking is now under investigation, it’s good that, yet again, Google is finally hurrying after Apple on the privacy front, before it falls too far behind.

Protecting the privacy of users is a philosophy—a fairly binary one at that. You either believe it’s the right thing to do, or you don’t. And if you appear to be ticking boxes, with times changing around you, then it comes across as fairly hollow. Whether you’re an Apple or Google fan, iPhone or Android, Safari or Chrome, you’ll know that privacy is core to Apple’s DNA—that simply isn’t the case when it comes to Google.

As ESET’s Jake Moore points out, “Apple is ramping up its privacy claim, firing on all cylinders to keep their users’ data protected. With data firmly being the currency of the 21st century, Apple, as ever, is thinking outside the box with how it operates.”

More evidence of this in recent days, as Google has belatedly started adding privacy labels to its most popular titles on Apple’s App Store—including YouTube and Gmail, with more to follow. I’m sure it’s just an unfortunate coincidence that Google stopped updating these apps at the exact time Apple mandated that any updates needed to carry such labels and is only now putting those in place. 

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MORE FROM FORBESWhatsApp Beaten By Apple’s New iMessage Privacy UpdateBy Zak Doffman

These privacy labels have become a game-changer in a world where smartphone users and their information has become a product fueling the staggeringly sized mobile marketing industry. As alarming as browser tracking might be, when an app on your phone can tap into all of the information it carries, and then use that to algorithmically determine how best to manipulate you into buying goods and services, that’s worse.

Some have suggested that Google might have been carrying out work behind the scenes to tone down its data harvesting. I doubt that’s true at any scale. And so, here’s a different theory. If you need to cross a minefield, then better someone else goes first. The global media storm awaiting the results of Apple’s privacy label launch was just such a minefield, and Google was able to watch (and learn) as Facebook went first.

Not only did Facebook’s various missteps plot something of a path, but they also took the sting out of the media response—privacy labels were news for a while, and then that inevitably faded. There has certainly been no first mover advantage here. Countless articles appeared on the release of Facebook’s (alarming) privacy labels. WhatsApp’s woes, in particular, become something of a viral storm. Google’s delayed and now gradual approach has triggered a much more muted response. 

And so, to Gmail. Google’s email app, the most popular productivity install on Apple’s App Store, finally has a privacy label. We can now see each data category and field in which Gmail can tap into your data, collecting it and processing it for its own use and subject, of course, to its own privacy policy. 

Google is a data harvesting machine in the same way as Facebook. And when it comes to platforms like Gmail, which is linked to your Google account and the other services you consume, there are multiple ways to collect your data and monitor your activity. And with a content-rich email platform like Gmail, there’s more than just metadata which Google can analyse to infer things like “which ads you’ll find most useful,” in its own words, and “the people who matter most to you online.”

Gmail’s privacy label is not pretty—you can see it below. The contrast with Apple Mail is stark, and so the comparison with Outlook may be more potent. Not only are Gmail’s labels much longer, but it captures your identifiers in every category. Gmail is also the only one of these three leading iOS email apps that passes your identifier and location data to third-party advertisers. Think that through for a moment.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” security researcher Sean Wright points out. “Contrasting the apps makes it pretty obvious what the differences are.”

Gmail can gather most of the information on its privacy label from your use of the platform itself, whichever app or browser or client you use. But there are data fields that your phone provides that Google may not have been given access to—your location, your contacts, your search history, for example. And while the privacy labels are just an indicator of the most harvesting an app can do—they don’t tell us exactly what’s being taken and for what purpose, it tells us what we need to know.

Tommy Mysk, one of the researchers who caught TikTok snooping on iOS clipboards and Facebook downloading user links, explains that “while the Gmail app might be able to collect more info than Gmail in a web browser, the majority of the issues highlighted by the privacy labels still apply anywhere you use Gmail. Google has gigantic computing capabilities. They can infer all the data on their backend service.” 

Clearly true. But if we don’t pick and choose the apps we install based, at least in part, on the data they collect from us, then we send the message that it’s open-house on our information, that anything goes. If you access Gmail on your iPhone using a browser or through Apple’s own mail client, then Google is collecting less of your data and you are exercising more control. You are sending a message. As for the fact that Google collects so much data at the backend—well, that might be a reason to ditch Gmail altogether.

Absent any controls, Cyjax CISO Ian Thornton-Trump warns that “the ‘collection’ of all these data points may be fed into an AI model which may spawn a host of ethical questions around your inbox. Purchase confirmations could indicate health, marital status, political and religious persuasion, births and deaths… Will AI make suggestions that are crass, inappropriate or even offensive?”

This isn’t a suggestion that Gmail is taking steps in this direction—although users can judge their levels of SPAM and draw their own conclusions as to the algorithms operating behind the scenes. “I often wonder if email has become so noisy that it’s now become nearly unmanageable and if there is any profiling for advertising?” Thornton-Trump says. But it’s a warning that where all this data is open, not encrypted between senders and recipients, then it can be accessed. Facebook, by way of example, admits to monitoring Messenger content for compliance with its policies.

Gmail isn’t the only Google app now coming under scrutiny following these data disclosures. The privacy label for Classroom, for example, an app many have been forced to use as they homeschool their kids, is pretty depressing given what it’s being used for and that it’s mandated by many schools.

“Google’s primary business model is based on advertising,” Wright says, “and this shows in terms of the amount of data they collect from individuals. You could argue this is somewhat ok if you are not paying for that service, but what for their paid services like Workspace?”

I haven’t included Google’s YouTube, which has an even worse privacy label, because as a marketing platform that’s par for the course. Unsurprisingly, YouTube passes a lot of that data to advertisers. It’s very different with apps used for work and private communications. But, worryingly for Gmail users, it’s the only one of the four Google apps in the chart below that says that it passes your data to advertisers.

“It does seem like Google took a bunch of Edward Snowden presentations,” Thornton-Trump says, “and said ‘we should do this. Imagine the marketing and advertising opportunities if we monitor everything someone does online.’”

With Gmail in particular there are parallels with Facebook Messenger. If you know that a company has built a business mining and monetizing your data, then you need to beware the data you make readily available. WhatsApp’s defense against its own privacy backlash was to highlight its end-to-end encryption, the privacy of your actual content. You don’t get that with Messenger. And you don’t get that with Gmail.

Andy Yen, Founder and CEO of uber-secure ProtonMail, tells me that “it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see how much personal data Gmail collects. Google’s entire business model revolves around collecting as much private information on users as possible in order to benefit advertisers and other third parties. Even Apple Mail collects more data than it needs. It’s possible to provide reliable email while collecting minimal information.”

MORE FROM FORBESIf This ‘Very Dangerous’ App Is Installed On Your Phone, Delete It NowBy Zak Doffman

According to Moore, “iPhone users with the Gmail app are breaking Apple’s desired ecosystem. But as Apple Mail allows Gmail accounts to be used, this latest revelation may make those people use the native Apple Mail app instead to reduce data leakage.” So, delete the Gmail app on your iPhone. If you’re sticking with Gmail itself, then you can use Apple Mail as the client.

Google was approached ahead of publication and asked about Gmail’s data harvesting, why it is out of step with similar apps, and why users should not switch to other clients instead of Google’s own app. The company did not provide a response.

Whether you’re on iPhone or Android, the last two years has seen the biggest ever shift toward protecting our privacy. But only if we use the tools that are in place to disable trackers and limit data capture, and if we judge the apps and services that we use by the liberties they take. What happens next is down to all of us.

“The amount of data connected to us can be extremely powerful and lucrative,” Moore says. “But the more people understand the trade-off behind our apps, the more companies will start to sway in removing such linked data.”

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Will EVs Create A Transportation Class Divide?

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The vast majority of electric vehicle owners don’t want to go back to fossil fuel. In fact, a survey by the UK’s Zap-Map at the end of 2020 showed that just 1% said they missed their internal combustion vehicles. It’s easy to assume from statistics like this that battery electric vehicles are the perfect choice for everyone. But they could be another example of how some can afford to take advantage of the benefits of new technology while others will find it much more difficult and get left behind.

Although EVs have seen huge growth in the last year, with 40% more of them on UK roads at the end of 2020 than there were at the beginning, the people buying them are primarily the more financially comfortable early adopters. An EV is still £5-£10,000 ($7-14,000 ) more than an equivalent fossil fuel car. There are also much fewer of them on the used market, with only a small number of cars available in the UK, for example, for less than £5,000 ($7,000). This already puts EVs out of the reach of those who can only ever afford a cheap used car.

It’s a problem that will diminish with time, as the increased number of cars bought new in the last year or so enter the used market. But it will probably be at least another 5 years before we see lots of decent EVs within the price bracket many people can afford. Right now, the cheapest used market is mostly old Nissan Leafs with 24kWh batteries that probably only deliver 50-80 miles of range, which is a far cry from the 200+ miles available from an increasing number of the latest EVs. The latest base version of the Tesla Model 3 now offers 278 miles, and even the latest Nissan Leaf provides 239 miles. But these won’t be available second-hand in numbers for at least three years.

Even more telling, however, is that further research has shown how around two thirds of current EV owners claim they wouldn’t have gone electric if they didn’t have home charging. It is perfectly possible to own an EV without private parking and charging, but it is more complicated and loses one of the most enjoyable benefits of EV ownership. Being able to charge at home and set off on a journey with a full battery whenever you want makes EVs more convenient than any fossil fuel vehicle. If the vast majority of your journeys are within the range of your EV, you will almost never need a public charger, so one of the usual criticisms from the EV hater crowd – that you can’t refuel in 5 minutes – is irrelevant.

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Unfortunately, there’s a significant number of people in most countries who don’t have access to home charging and never will. In the UK, only 38% of households have access to private parking where charging can be installed. The figure is much higher in the US at 63%, but that still leaves a significant proportion without. The desire to install home charging will also vary with levels of home ownership, which differs a lot across Europe, for example. In Romania, 95.8% of people owned their own homes in 2019, but in Germany it was just 51.1%. You won’t want to spend money on installing home EV charging if you’re only renting and might move on soon.

Not only are those without home charging going to be more reluctant to get EVs in the first place, they also can’t enjoy their killer benefit of leaving home with a full charge, or the cheap driving it entails. Home electricity supplies can be half the price per kWh of public chargers, or even less, and there are tariffs around that make this even cheaper if you charge at night. Most countries provide other financial benefits from EV ownership, too, such as cheap or zero vehicle tax, cheaper residents’ parking, and cheaper or zero toll charges for city use. Servicing costs less as well and can have longer intervals – often two years instead of one.

If you have the financial means and the possibility of home charging, EVs are already a no brainer. Once you’ve got past the higher initial purchase price, the running costs will be peanuts, and unless you make a long journey beyond the range of the vehicle, you will never need to worry about the lack of public charging infrastructure. You just need to remember to plug the car in occasionally overnight to keep it topped up.

For those who can’t afford an EV yet, however, and don’t have home charging, it’s a different story. There will still be plenty of cheap-to-buy second-hand fossil fuel cars available for at least the next decade, but they will be increasingly expensive to run compared to EVs. The fuel prices will continually go up, servicing is more expensive, and there will be more penalties based on levels of pollution, similar to the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone, which is expanding to a huge area of the city later in 2021 and entails a charge of £12.50 ($17) every time you drive. It may even be increasingly hard to refuel an internal combustion engine, as fuel stops decline in numbers. The Californian city of North Bay just banned the building of new gas stations, and as EVs gain in popularity this will hasten the closure rate.

The end result could be richer people who own homes with home charging enjoying the benefits that EVs offer, while the less well-off are relegated to an increasingly dilapidated fleet of used internal combustion engine cars that cost more to keep on the road every year. This is why government input will be so important over the next decade. This won’t necessarily mean lots of financial expenditure, but it will entail other incentives, such as relaxing the planning permission for street chargers or for people living in terraced houses to have parking in front of their homes with charging. Otherwise, many will get left behind by the EV revolution, which will limit how far the environmental benefits can reach alongside lots of other negative side effects on society.

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‘Zoom fatigue’ is apparently a real thing, and there are 4 main culprits – CNET

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‘Zoom fatigue’ is apparently a real thing, and there are 4 main culprits – CNET
So. Much. Zoom.

 

Sarah Tew/CNET

If you’ve ever felt utterly drained after a workday, even though your most strenuous physical activity involved smiling through seemingly endless video calls, Stanford researchers now have a name for that feeling: “Zoom fatigue.” Although the scientists behind a new study, published Feb. 23 in the journal of Technology, Mind and Behavior, are quick to point out it can happen on any video calling platform, they now say they have a better idea why Zoom fatigue happens.

Researchers say Zoom fatigue has four main culprits: excessive and intense eye contact, constantly watching video of yourself, the limited mobility of being stuck at your desk, and more energy spent identifying social cues you’d otherwise pick up on intuitively in person.

The research also suggests strategies to counterbalance the negative physical effects of video calls: Make the onscreen window smaller to minimize participants’ face size, get some distance from your webcam to increase your “personal space bubble,” hide your self-view video feed, and periodically turn off your camera then physically turn away from the screen so you’re not watching others.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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Inspiring Women To Become Sustainability Leaders In Engineering: The Yewande Akinola Vision

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Growing up in Ibadan, Nigeria, Yewande Akinola spent her time building models of her ideal home with whatever materials she could find. But it wasn’t until her mother, an artist, made a suggestion about her university studies that she considered pursuing a career in engineering over one in architecture. Also crucial in her decision was finding an engineering degree at Warwick University in the U.K. that focused on developing countries—using little resources and lots of creativity. The rest, as they say, is herstory.

Fast-forward three decades, and the 36-year-old Akinola has built skyscrapers in China and researched the involvement of women engineers in the construction of London’s Waterloo Bridge for the BBC. She has received the Member of the Order of the British Empire honor from the Queen for her services to engineering innovation and to diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—the fields collectively known as STEM—and she was recently appointed the U.K. ambassador for clean growth and infrastructure under the country’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.

Akinola’s success story remains an exception rather than the rule in the world of engineering. In the U.K., only 12% of engineers are women. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a focus of Akinola’s diversity-in-STEM efforts as a member of the steering committee of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s GCRF Africa Catalyst program, the figure is estimated to be less than 10%.

With World Engineering Day (March 4) and International Women’s Day (March 8) just a few days apart, this is as good a time as any to inspire women to enter the male-dominated field of engineering and make an impact on their countries’ progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Starting On The Engineering Path

Engineering is a vast field with many specialities, and the choice can be overwhelming for students. For those interested in sustainability, Akinola has no doubt that the best focus is in energy engineering because it’s the basis for all other sustainability activities, whether in construction or agriculture. 

Geography can also shape an engineer’s focus. Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, has a diversity not just of languages, landscapes and cultures but also of energy needs and opportunities. Countries like Akinola’s native Nigeria, where oil has determined the fortunes of many, have yet to show a full commitment to a post-oil future. Elsewhere, the picture is different. “Where there isn’t that much oil, you can see solar panel farms popping up, wind turbine farms, and there’s that accelerated renewable response because of a lack of a natural resource,” Akinola points out. 

To those who doubt engineering would suit them, Akinola suggests looking beyond its reputation as a difficult, math-heavy subject. “The artist’s impression is what we always start off with,” she says; the rest is just “using maths and physics as a tool for creating that creative stroke.” 

Another issue that deters prospective engineers is visibility. “I’ve seen young people say, ‘Actually, I don’t think I can do this because I don’t see many people like myself,’” Akinola says. But she has seen the impact that grants—like those managed by the GCRF Africa Catalyst program, which has awarded $4.8 million across 37 projects in 14 countries since 2016—can have. The Higher Education Partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa Programme, working with Institution of Engineers Rwanda, helped to increase the proportion of female internship applicants from 5% in 2018 to 25% in 2019. 

Akinola says you can see the growing confidence of those who receive that support and think, “If I’m receiving this amount in grants, it’s because somebody believes in me—somebody thinks that I have a role to play in ensuring that engineering can become the tool for that economic development in my country.”

Believe In Yourself

Embarking on a career path where women, and especially women of color, are still a rarity comes with its own challenges. Akinola has developed a useful mantra to deal with those who doubt her skills because of their own biases.

“Early on in my career, I had to be comfortable with who I was, as a person,” she says, “and through that journey, I’ve met people who recognize a level of authenticity.” She acknowledges that it takes conscious effort to remember to appreciate those experiences that make you unique, but they will pay off in the end, she says. 

“It’s not easy,” she says, “and I have to remind myself all the time, but at least it’s my fallback.” 

On the flip side of the visibility issue in male- and white-dominated environments is the issue of tokenism—feeling like you’ve been hired or offered an opportunity just to tick a diversity box. That, too, is something that Akinola is familiar with.

“Sometimes you leave some of those sessions or events or panels a bit upset because you figure out that they just wanted you to be a face there,” she says. Akinola is nonetheless motivated by the thought that her time and words can cause a ripple effect and make someone else feel empowered. 

“Of course, sometimes you have to give yourself a bit of a break,” she says, “because a lot of women, as we always do, we take on the responsibility of fixing the world. And it’s not quite 100% our responsibility. We need our allies, and sometimes it gets tiring, so it’s a balance. We have to take care of ourselves and step back and know that actually we’re doing it on our own terms.”

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet ever as an NFT – CNET

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet ever as an NFT – CNET
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet ever.

 

Angela Lang/CNET

Jack Dorsey is putting his first tweet up for sale as an NFT, a nonfungible token. The Twitter CEO’s tweet — which read “just setting up my twttr” — will be 15 years old later this month.

Dorsey announced the sale by linking to it in a tweet Friday at around 4 p.m. PT. A little over an hour an half later, the highest bid on the NFT was $110,000.

An NFT is a cryptographic token that is enjoying popularity with artists and musicians. The digital assets are stored on the blockchain. The Kings of Leon is selling its latest album as an NFT, and Christie’s is in the midst of its first NFT auction.

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Apple Loop: New iPhone 13 Leaks, Apple’s App Store Problems, M1 iMac Uncovered

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Taking a look back at another week of news and headlines from Cupertino, this week’s Apple Loop includes the latest iPhone 13 leaks, the stubborn lightning port, Google Photos bonus, pressure on the App Store, Apple Stores’ opening doors, and the M1 iMac…

Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days (and you can read my weekly digest of Android news here on Forbes).

Lates iPhone 13 Leaks 

A raft of iPhone 13 details this week, presumably from the supply chains getting ready to step up production – after all you can’t suddenly magic up ten million components as Tim Cook steps out on stage in September! Let’s start with the discussions over storage; it feels a racing certainly that Apple will offer 1 TB of storage as an option across the range – previously this was limited to the Pro iPhone models:

“Apple currently only offers this capacity as an option in its iPad Pro models, but the additional storage would make sense for iPhone owners, especially those taking advantage of new photography features like ProRAW. ProRAW files are 10 to 12 times larger than HEIF or JPEG files, which means users will need a great deal more on-device storage or else pay for larger amounts of iCloud storage space.”

MacRumors.

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Faster Screens For 13

Causing the most excitement in Apple circles is the news of the display. Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggests the iPhone 13 family will support a faster refreshing screen of 120Hz. No doubt Android circles will point out just how long this tech has been available on their smartphones:

“The latest note from Kuo suggests that both the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max will work with 120Hz support (like ProMotion on the iPad Pro). The report also confirms earlier rumors that the display panel on the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max will work with LTPO tech for more power-efficient operation.”

SlashGear.

This Port Is Not For Changing (Just Charging)

The final details this week cover the ports on the new iOS smartphones. For all the talk of going portless, or joining the iPad Pro with a USB-C connector, the iPhone 13 looks to be sticking with lightning:

“”We believe that USB-C is detrimental to the MFi business’s profitability, and its waterproof specification is lower than Lightning and MagSafe,” continues Kuo. “Therefore, if the iPhone abandons Lightning in the future, it may directly adopt the portless design with MagSafe support instead of using a USB-C port.””

Apple Insider.

From Apple To Google

Apple’s online services have been in the news this week as well. First up is one of Apple’s own moves; you can now transfer your iCloud photos to Google Photos from inside Apple’s cloud. It’s not immediate, as Apple will perform checks to ensure ownership of the various services. It’s nice to have data portability from Apple’s system, although I feel that this should be something universal across every online platform:

“As outlined in an Apple support document, you can go to Apple’s privacy website and sign in to see the “Transfer a copy of your data” option. If you select this and go through all the steps, Apple will transfer your ‌iCloud‌ photos and videos to Google ‌Photos‌. Transferring photos and videos from iCloud Photos does not remove the content you have stored with Apple, but it provides a backup method and stores a copy of the content on Google ‌Photos‌.”

MacRumors.

App Store Pressure

Meanwhile the App Store’s use of a single payment system – Apple’s – is coming under more pressure. In the UK the Competition and Markets Authority has opened an investigation. But it’s the legislation progressing through Arizona that could be the first significant disruption. An amendment to HB2005 would stop app store operators from mandating a preferred payment service to Arizona based developers. It has cleared the House of Representatives, and is heading to the the Senate and then the State Governor:

“The bill opens the door to developers using third-party payment systems, thereby allowing them to bypass the industry standard 30 percent cut Apple and Google have collected for years. It’s not clear how the tech companies will respond, as the bill could have significant effects on their businesses in the state of Arizona while also putting pressure on them to change the rules for all developers everywhere. Both Apple and Google declined to comment.”

The Verge.

The Doors Are Mostly Open

Apple has opened all of its Apple Stores in the US, the first time since the shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. But don’t expect to just walk in anywhere, many of the stores are running ‘appointment only’ systems:

“Not all Apple stores in the U.S. are fully open for walk-in customers to go inside and browse, however. Customers should check Apple’s website before heading to their store in case it is appointment-only or service is limited in other ways.”

CNBC.

And Finally…

Apple started the Apple Silicon adventure with the lower end MacBook laptops and a revitalised mac Mini. Other models are sure to show up in the next 18 months, but YouTuber Luke Mian has taken the circuity and carefully hacked together an M1 powered 2011 iMac:

“Miani notes that the Mac mini motherboard is so small that it can fit snugly within the iMac chassis without any modifications. Using an HDMI display adapter from the Mac mini motherboard to the custom Apple iMac display connector was the vast majority of work on the project.Essentially, the Mac mini is running unmodified within the chassis of the iMac and using it as a display with the help of that adapter circuitry. This, however, comes with several limitations.”

Apple Insider.

Apple Loop brings you seven days worth of highlights every weekend here on Forbes. Don’t forget to follow me so you don’t miss any coverage in the future. Last week’s Apple Loop can be read here, or this week’s edition of Loop’s sister column, Android Circuit, is also available on Forbes.

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