Month: April 2018

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

Grindr—the gay hookup app that has over 3.6 million daily active users globally—has been reportedly transmitting its users’ HIV status (of those who include it) with two mobile app contractors.

On Monday, Bryce Case, the company's top security official, responded to public outcry over the issue by saying the company would stop the practice.

"I understand the news cycle right now is very focused on these issues," Case told Axios, which first reported the change on Monday evening. "I think what's happened to Grindr is, unfairly, we've been singled out."

Enlarge / The iMac Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

A new Bloomberg report claims Apple is working on its own CPUs for the Mac, with the intent to ultimately replace the Intel chips in its computers with those it designs in-house.

According to Bloomberg's sources, the project (which is internally called Kalamata) is in the very early planning stages, but it has been approved by executives at the company. The report says that Apple could ship computers based on its own processors as early as 2020, but the report also says this would be part of a "multi-step transition" in a larger effort to make iOS devices and Macs "work more similarly and seamlessly together." Apple could still change or drop these plans in the future.

This is the latest in a long series of Bloomberg reports that has lifted the veil off of the inner workings and strategies at Apple, including a related story about a project the company has dubbed Marzipan. That project's goal is to enable software developers to create and publish apps that would work in both iOS and macOS. An app would be usable with either a touchscreen or a mouse/trackpad, depending on which device is running it. Apple hopes to introduce that as early as this year; if it does so, it will likely be announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

Enlarge / Car Exhaust With Two Tailpipes (credit: Getty Images)

Scott Pruitt, Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced today that he had made a "final determination" to revise current vehicle emissions standards for model year 2022-2025 vehicles. Pruitt did not specify any new standards at this time; instead, he stated that he would start a joint rulemaking process with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which manages a parallel set of rules called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE) standards.

The current emissions standards were approved by the Obama-era EPA in December 2016, two years ahead of time and just before the Trump administration took office. The standards had been years in the making, requiring research and discussions between policymakers and auto industry representatives. But at the change of leadership, the auto industry seized on an opportunity to roll back regulations that would cost it money. The industry also appealed to Trump to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards. Pruitt opened a public-comment period on revising the emissions standards last summer.

The stricter rules would have been beneficial from a climate change perspective. According to the Energy Information Agency, keeping the EPA's fuel economy rules in place would have resulted in 1.2 million fewer barrels of gasoline consumed per day in 2025 than in 2017. Without knowing how Pruitt will revise the emissions standards, it's unclear how his plan will compare to the previous one, but it will likely result in fewer barrels of gasoline saved per day.