Month: September 2020

Enlarge / If the Trump administration has its way, these logos will be scarce inside the US in a few days. (credit: Ivan Abreu | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

Consumers inside the US will no longer be allowed to download TikTok or WeChat from any US app store after Sunday, the Trump administration announced today.

Any "provision of service to distribute or maintain" the mobile applications or their "constituent code" is prohibited beginning after 11:59pm ET September 20, the Department of Commerce said this morning. That means Google Play and Apple's App Store will have to yank their listings for the apps, and users who already have one or both apps will not be able to download updates or patches for them.

"At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of US laws and regulations," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a written statement.

Enlarge / From left to right: iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Eleven months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared privacy a “fundamental human right.” The affirmation came as the iPhones his customers carry in their pockets store ever more sensitive information and the company seeks to make privacy a key differentiator as it competes with Google and other rivals.

On Wednesday, the company sought to make good on its commitment with the release of iOS 14. It introduces a bevy of privacy features designed to give iPhone users more control over their personal information. The protections are intended to rein in app developers, online providers, and advertisers who all too often push the limits of acceptable data collection, assuming they don’t fully step over the line.

I spent a little more than an hour testing some of the features. Here’s a brief description of each, how to use them, and some first-blush impressions of how some work.

Enlarge / The iPhone 6S (left) and first-generation iPhone SE (right) running iOS 14. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It’s September, and you know what that means: shorter days, the first tentative tinge of chill in the night air, Halloween candy at the grocery store, and—most relevantly for us—a new version of iOS.

Apple supports its own phones with new software updates for years longer than any of the Android phone makers do, but that doesn’t mean that using a new version of iOS on the oldest-supported hardware is always pleasant. For iOS 14, that hardware is the iPhone 6S and the original 4-inch iPhone SE, the same as it was for iOS 13.

Originally released in late 2015 (the 6S and 6S Plus) and early 2016 (the SE), both phones include an Apple A9 processor and 2GB of RAM, and both devices boast the bare minimum you need for things like augmented reality apps or hardware accelerated decoding of h.265/HEVC video. In the move from iOS 12 to iOS 13, we found that the phones slowed down a little but remained perfectly usable; the same was true of iPadOS on older hardware, which we didn’t re-test this time around. This year, we were pleasantly surprised on the performance front, but the second-generation iPhone SE makes upgrading much easier to justify now than it was last year.

Enlarge / The flight of Astra's rocket looked smooth coming off the pad. (credit: John Kraus for Astra)

Welcome to Edition 3.16 of the Rocket Report! This week, we have a couple of small-launch failures to discuss, as well as schedule slippages for the debut of European and Japanese rockets. Finally, Europe's next heavy-lift rocket, the Ariane 6, has been showing signs of progress.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astra launches its first orbital rocket. Following months of technical and weather delays, Astra launched its first orbital rocket, Ars reports. The vehicle launched on September 11 from a spaceport in southern Alaska. The small rocket's five main engines lit several seconds before liftoff, and Rocket 3.1 appeared to climb straight and true for about 15 seconds before it began to sway back and forth a little bit. Later, the company's co-founder and chief technology officer, Adam London, explained that a problem with the rocket's computerized guidance system introduced a slight roll oscillation. Local video of the launch and explosion can be seen here.

Like so many current realities, no one could've seen "musicians as the new Twitch stars" coming back in January. Yet in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the music industry relied heavily on livestreams—typically just one artist in a room with webcam doing an acoustic performance.

In our ever-connected present day, it was the adjustment of least resistance. At first, there was some novelty to seeing artists like Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard interacting with fans in the chat and taking an occasional request. But this summer, long time New York Times music critic Jon Pareles succinctly summed up the audience experience for this impromptu livestream era: "So many good intentions, so little joy."

When the bedrock of the music industry—concerts and music festivals—becomes impossible, though, what can anyone do? Drive-in shows have recently become a thing, but those can't replicate the sheer scale (number of artists, stages, or fans) of even the smallest US music festivals. Most events simply embraced the livestream, like the annual counter-SXSW programming of Willie Nelson's annual Luck Reunion festival transforming into a coordinated set of at-home performances.