Month: March 2021

Rick and Morty fans won't have to wait much longer for a fifth season of the irreverent, Emmy-winning animated comedy. Adult Swim just dropped the official S5 trailer, showcasing a new round of wacky interdimensional adventures for our favorite belching mad scientist and his wide-eyed, long-suffering grandson.

(Some spoilers for prior seasons below.)

For the uninitiated, Rick and Morty centers on the adventures of Rick Sanchez, an eccentric, alcoholic scientist who lives with his horse-surgeon daughter, Beth, her husband, Jerry, and grandkids, Summer and Morty. When not ensconced on the family couch or cooking up mad scientist schemes in his lab, Rick frequently takes Morty on zany adventures throughout the multiverse. The series grew out of short parody film of Back to the Future by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, who also voices the titular characters.

Enlarge / Insomnia people and mobile-addiction concepts. (credit: Getty Images)

Whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, it’s continuously sending data including your location, phone number, and local network details to Apple or Google. Now, a researcher has provided a side-by-side comparison that suggests that, while both iOS and Android collect handset data around the clock—even when devices are idle, just out of the box, or after users have opted out—the Google mobile OS collects about 20 times as much data than its Apple competitor.

Both iOS and Android, researcher Douglas Leith from Trinity College in Ireland said, transmit telemetry data to their motherships even when a user hasn’t logged in or has explicitly configured privacy settings to opt out of such collection. Both OSes also send data to Apple and Google when a user does simple things such as inserting a SIM card or browsing the handset settings screen. Even when idle, each device connects to its back-end server on average every 4.5 minutes.

Apps and more

It wasn’t just the OSes that sent data to Apple or Google. Preinstalled apps or services also made network connections, even when they hadn’t been opened or used. Whereas iOS automatically sent Apple data from Siri, Safari, and iCloud, Android collected data from Chrome, YouTube, Google Docs, Safetyhub, Google Messenger, the device clock, and the Google search bar.

Enlarge / Insomnia people and mobile-addiction concepts. (credit: Getty Images)

Whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, it’s continuously sending data including your location, phone number, and local network details to Apple or Google. Now, a researcher has provided a side-by-side comparison that suggests that, while both iOS and Android collect handset data around the clock—even when devices are idle, just out of the box, or after users have opted out—the Google mobile OS collects about 20 times as much data than its Apple competitor.

Both iOS and Android, researcher Douglas Leith from Trinity College in Ireland said, transmit telemetry data to their motherships even when a user hasn’t logged in or has explicitly configured privacy settings to opt out of such collection. Both OSes also send data to Apple and Google when a user does simple things such as inserting a SIM card or browsing the handset settings screen. Even when idle, each device connects to its back-end server on average every 4.5 minutes.

Apps and more

It wasn’t just the OSes that sent data to Apple or Google. Preinstalled apps or services also made network connections, even when they hadn’t been opened or used. Whereas iOS automatically sent Apple data from Siri, Safari, and iCloud, Android collected data from Chrome, YouTube, Google Docs, Safetyhub, Google Messenger, the device clock, and the Google search bar.