Month: September 2021

Enlarge / The security of Facebook's popular messaging app leaves several rather important devils in its details. (credit: WhatsApp)

Yesterday, independent newsroom ProPublica published a detailed piece examining the popular WhatsApp messaging platform's privacy claims. The service famously offers "end-to-end encryption," which most users interpret as meaning that Facebook, WhatsApp's owner since 2014, can neither read messages itself nor forward them to law enforcement.

This claim is contradicted by the simple fact that Facebook employs about 1,000 WhatsApp moderators whose entire job is—you guessed it—reviewing WhatsApp messages that have been flagged as "improper."

End-to-end encryption—but what’s an “end”?

This snippet from WhatsApp's security and privacy page seems easy to misinterpret. (credit: Jim Salter)

The loophole in WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is simple: the recipient of any WhatsApp message can flag it. Once flagged, the message is copied on the recipient's device and sent as a separate message to Facebook for review.

Enlarge / Sony's new standardized cross-gen upgrade cost will be $10 for all first-party games slated to release on both PS4 and PS5. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | PlayStation)

Sony announced last week that players will be able to upgrade any version of Horizon Forbidden West from the PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5 for free—but that game is the last first-party release that will include this option.

In a September 4 post on PlayStation.Blog, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan confirmed that every new first-party, cross-generation release in the future will offer players a paid current-gen upgrade path option for $10. This list includes the next God of War, Gran Turismo 7, and any other Sony-published games slated to appear on both systems, only exempting Horizon Forbidden West.

Now it will cost you

The publisher reversed course on the Forbidden West preorder plans it announced two days earlier because it had offered no way, paid or otherwise, for players to upgrade the game’s bare-bones PS4 editions to current-gen. Instead, the convoluted pricing structure required anyone interested in owning Horizon Forbidden West on both consoles to choose from multiple high-cost deluxe editions, a move that sparked significant backlash from fans.

Enlarge / The assembled magnet gets lowered into its testing apparatus. (credit: Commonwealth Fusion Systems)

In 2015, a group of physicists at MIT did some calculations to rethink how we're approaching the problem of fusion power. High-temperature, nonmetallic superconductors were now commercially available and could allow the generation of stronger magnetic fields, enabling a simpler, more compact fusion reactor. But the physicists behind the work didn't stop when the calculating was done; instead, they formed a company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and set out to put their calculations to the test.

On Tuesday, Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced that it had hit a key milestone on its roadmap to having a demonstration fusion plant operating in 2025. The company used commercial high-temperature superconductors to build a three-meter-tall magnet that could operate stably at a 20-tesla magnetic field strength. This magnet is identical in design to the ones that will contain the plasma at the core of the company's planned reactor.

Aggressive roadmap

Giving yourselves less than 10 years to solve a problem that an entire research field has been struggling with for decades is ambitious, but it reflects how relevant fusion could be to helping with the climate crisis we're facing. Several of the company's leaders mentioned climate change as an inspiration for their work.

Enlarge / Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes collects her belongings after going through security at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building with her defense team on August 31, 2021 in San Jose, California. (credit: Ethan Swope | Getty Images)

Elizabeth Holmes’ failure to make her blood-testing technology startup Theranos a viable business was not a crime, her lawyers told a federal jury on Wednesday, at the beginning of a closely watched trial that will scrutinize her mental state and Silicon Valley’s promotional culture.

“Elizabeth Holmes did not go to work every day intending to lie, cheat, and steal,” an attorney for Holmes, Lance Wade, told jurors during opening arguments. “The government would have you believe her company her entire life is a fraud.”

Holmes, 37, “worked herself to the bone for 15 years trying to make lab testing cheaper and more accessible. She poured her heart and her soul into that effort,” Wade added.

Enlarge / Artist's impression of low Earth-orbit satellites like those launched by SpaceX and OneWeb. (credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld)

In the ongoing battle between the two companies, Amazon fired back at SpaceX today at the Federal Communications Commission, claiming that the Starlink operator refuses to obey the rules and that it launches unjustified attacks on anyone who points out SpaceX's rule-breaking.

"Whether it is launching satellites with unlicensed antennas, launching rockets without approval, building an unapproved launch tower, or re-opening a factory in violation of a shelter-in-place order, the conduct of SpaceX and other Musk-led companies makes their view plain: rules are for other people, and those who insist upon or even simply request compliance are deserving of derision and ad hominem attacks," Amazon told the FCC.

Two weeks ago, Amazon urged the FCC to reject SpaceX's proposal for the next-generation version of Starlink that could include up to 30,000 broadband satellites. Amazon claims that SpaceX violated a rule against incomplete and inconsistent applications by submitting plans for "two mutually exclusive configurations" with "very different orbital parameters." SpaceX says it is pitching two possible configurations in case its preferred setup doesn't work out and says this does not violate the FCC rule. SpaceX also told the FCC that Amazon frequently tries to hinder competitors to "compensate for Amazon's failure to make progress of its own."

Enlarge / World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (credit: Getty | Fabrice Coffrini)

The director-general for the World Health Organization on Wednesday called for a longer moratorium on high-income countries administering COVID-19 booster shots—extending the agency's requested moratorium from the end of September to at least the end of 2021.

The call is likely to raise more scientific and ethical questions on the need and timing for boosters as many high-income countries are already beginning or at least planning to roll them out. In the US, the Biden administration said it is prepared to offer third doses the week of September 20. However, the decision has already drawn criticism from US experts who say the medical need for third doses is not yet clear, and the decision to offer them overstepped review by the Food and Drug Administration and expert advisers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cons of boosting

The WHO maintains that, so far, clinical evidence does not indicate that booster doses are needed to prevent severe outcomes and death from COVID-19, a point that US officials do not dispute. "The vaccines are holding up very, very well against the severe end of the disease spectrum," Kate O'Brien, director of the WHO's Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, said in a press briefing Wednesday. "We're not asking to withhold something for which there is a strong set of evidence that it is needed."

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  The Lenovo P12 Pro, pictured with its keyboard, pen, and kickstand case. [credit: Lenovo ]

Android tablets are coming back—honestly—and next out of the gate with a flagship iPad Pro-style tablet (after Xiaomi) is Lenovo. Say hello to the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro, a $609.99 high-end Android tablet with an optional pen, kickstand case, and clip-on keyboard.

In the low-competition world of Android tablets, the P12 Pro looks pretty good. A 12.6-inch, 2500x1600 (16:10) OLED display dominates the front of the device, while the frame and back are aluminum. It's rare to see the Snapdragon 870 SoC that powers the device, but the chip represents a small clock increase to the Snapdragon 865 from 2020 flagship smartphones. It's a 7 nm chip with four Cortex A77 cores and four Cortex A55 cores. The starter model comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and an upgraded SKU comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

There's a 10,200 mAh battery, a fingerprint reader integrated into the side power button, a USB-C port with 45 W Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0 compatibility, Wi-Fi up to version 6 (802.11ax) with a 2x2 MIMO antenna, and a microSD slot. There are four speakers, but you'll need to use the included USB-C-to-3.5 mm adapter if you want to use normal headphones. For cameras, you get a front 8 MP sensor and a ToF sensor (presumably for face unlock), plus two rear cameras, a 13 MP main camera and a 5 MP wide-angle. The device ships with Android 11.