Month: September 2020

Enlarge (credit: Page Light Studios)

Federal courts in the Chicago area have three times rejected government applications for warrants to force Google to produce a list of smartphones near two particular commercial establishments during one of three 45-minute intervals. The most recent ruling was handed down last week and was recently made public.

The decisions are significant because Google has reported massive growth in law enforcement use of such "geofence" searches. Google says there was a 1,500 percent increase between 2017 and 2018 and a further 600 percent jump from 2018 to 2019. That's a hundredfold increase in two years. Google received 180 geofence search requests a week during 2019, according to CNet.

Google is a popular target for this kind of request because almost everyone uses Google products in one way or another. Google's Android controls a majority of the smartphone market, and even most users who run iPhones use apps like Google Maps and Gmail. Moreover, Google frequently has GPS data that places a user's phone to within a few meters—much more accurate than the tower location data law enforcement can get from wireless providers.

Enlarge / Glacial meltwater lakes in the Bhutan Himalaya. (credit: NASA EO)

When we talk about sea level rise, one of the causes we have to mention is the shrinking of mountain glaciers, which are often overlooked as we focus on the monster ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Seas rise because glacial ice melts and meltwater makes its way to the ocean, turning land ice into ocean volume. But this description is obviously a simplification. For mountain glaciers, the meltwater has to do some traveling to reach the ocean, and interesting things may happen along that journey.

That journey creates a known blind spot in the math. Sea level rise is measured, and the change in glacial ice is tracked as best we can, but there’s no global estimate for anything in between. A new study led by the University of Calgary’s Dan Shugar fills in that gap by assessing meltwater lakes near glaciers—and confirms it doesn’t affect the sea level math much.

As was the case with a recent study of ice fractures in Antarctica, the primary challenge here is labor. Finding and mapping every glacial lake in satellite images would be a herculean lift—it has to be automated to be practical. So the researchers grabbed some 255,000 satellite images of glacial areas between 1990 and 2018 and turned to computerized detection to outline each lake. They then relied on an average estimate for the relationship between a lake’s surface area and volume in bodies like these to calculate changes over time based on the lake outlines.

Enlarge / An Amazon Flex driver delivers an armload of packages in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 18, 2018. (credit: Pat Greenhouse | The Boston Globe | Getty Images)

Amazon is working extremely hard to counter both internal unionization efforts and external bad press even as working conditions for its Flex drivers seem to get ever more desperate amid the persistent pandemic, a set of new reports reveals.

The Internet's biggest everything store has been busy during the COVID-19 pandemic. As in-person retail bottomed out, online retail skyrocketed and Amazon hired an additional 175,000 warehouse, grocery, and delivery workers to keep up with the sharply increased demand this year provided.

One of the ways Amazon gets packages to your doorstep is through Amazon Flex. The program is basically like Uber, but for Amazon: drivers use Amazon's app and their own cars to collect packages from Amazon facilities and deliver them to local homes. Typically, drivers sign up for a scheduled two-to-four-hour delivery block or shift, but Flex also makes "Instant Offers," which are immediate, on-demand deliveries drivers can pick up like an Uber or Lyft fare.

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  ZTE's official render, which shows a pristine display. There's a camera behind there somewhere. [credit: ZTE ]

ZTE has officially announced the world's first commercial phone with a behind-the-screen camera: the ZTE Axon 20 5G. Shrinking phone bezels have made locating the front camera a major design point of phones for the past few years. We've seen big camera notches, small camera notches, round camera cutouts, and pop-up cameras. Rather than any of those compromises, the under-display camera lets you just put the camera under the display, and by peering through the pixels, you can still take a picture. It's the holy grail of front-camera design.

As we've seen in explainers from Xiaomi, these under-display cameras work by thinning out the pixels above the display, either by reducing the number of pixels or by making the pixels smaller, which allows more light to reach the camera. In the area above the camera, manufacturers will have to strike a balance between a denser display with lower-quality camera results or better camera output in exchange for an uglier above-the-camera display.

AmazTech to the rescue

ZTE's official renders of the device claim the camera is completely invisible, which can't be right. It's standard practice to not make any attempt at a realistic-looking pixel display in these renders, but in this case, that's a big deal, since the display should look slightly darker above the camera. With COVID cutting down everyone's ability to travel, there isn't much in the way of live footage of the phone, either. ZTE posted an official live video to Weibo that really goes out of its way to never linger on a close-up shot of the camera, which is highly suspicious given the camera is the phone's only headline feature. The best footage we can find right now is a YouTube unboxing from AmazTech, which at least takes the time to scrutinize the sensor location. AmazTech doesn't have the sharpest video quality on Earth, but it doesn't seem like ZTE has a lot to hide: the camera is still hard to spot. I would still like a better look at the screen, particularly with lower brightness levels, but so far it looks amazing.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Starlink user terminal/satellite dish. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX, Charter, Verizon, CenturyLink, Frontier, Cox, and about 500 other companies are seeking government funding to provide broadband in rural areas. The Federal Communications Commission yesterday released a list of applicants for the first phase of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which is set to pay up to $16 billion to Internet service providers over 10 years.

SpaceX would be the first low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite provider to get FCC rural-broadband funding. The RDOF and predecessor programs generally fund expansion of wired or terrestrial wireless services by paying ISPs to expand their networks into rural areas where they would not otherwise have built.

As a satellite provider, SpaceX won't need to install wires or wireless towers in any particular area. But traditional satellite providers have obtained FCC funding before despite already offering service throughout the United States. For example, the FCC's Connect America Fund last year awarded $87.1 million to satellite operator Viasat on condition that it provide service in specific parts of 17 states at lower prices and with higher data caps "than it typically provides in areas where it is not receiving Connect America Fund support."

Enlarge / Left to right: Swift 3 14" model, Swift 5 14" model, Swift 3 13.5" model. All three models feature Intel Tiger Lake CPUs, HD displays, and promise long battery life. (credit: Acer)

Acer is launching three new laptop models in coordination with today's Intel Tiger Lake CPU launch event. The three models are the Swift 3 SF313-53, Swift 3 SF314-59, and Swift 5 SF514-55; all feature the upcoming Tiger Lake CPUs with integrated Intel Xe graphics and Intel Wi-Fi 6.

Recently, we thoroughly tested and reviewed Acer's Ryzen 7 4700u-powered Swift 3 SF314-42, and we liked it a lot. Many reviewers dinged the SF314-42 for its lower-than-average display brightness—although we found it more than adequate for indoor use, even in harsh lighting. Two of the three new models promise much brighter displays, if that's your sticking point—the 13.5" Swift 3 is rated at a whopping 400 nits, while the Swift 5 comes in at 340 nits.

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  The Swift 5, a slightly more upscale model, offers a shallow keyboard -elevation angle from the hinge when opened. [credit: Acer ]

All three models feature thin, lightweight metal chassis with (so far unspecified) i5 and i7 Tiger Lake CPUs and up to 16GiB of RAM. Acer hasn't specified whether the laptops are upgradeable, but we suspect the Swift 3 models at least will not be, judging by their thin (16mm) design. The laptops are all part of Intel's "Project Athena" innovation program, with the Swift 5 already boasting Intel Evo platform verification and both Swift 3 models targeting the same verification pending possible further tuning.

Enlarge / Shiva Ayyadurai, seen here in January 2017. (credit: Boston Globe / Getty Images News)

Shiva Ayyadurai may be best known for his dubious claim to have invented email and for filing defamation lawsuits against online publications that debunked his claim. On Tuesday, Ayyadurai added to his list of non-accomplishments when Massachusetts voters denied him the Republican nomination for US Senate.

Attorney Kevin O'Connor beat Ayyadurai by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent.

This is Ayyadurai's second failed campaign for US Senate. In 2018, he ran as an independent against Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Warren and came in third place with 3.4 percent of the vote.