Month: July 2022

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  Scroll down on a Google Play app listing and you'll soon see this new privacy section. [credit: Google ]

Google's developer deadline for the Play Store's new "Data Safety" section is next week (July 20), and we're starting to see what the future of Google Play privacy will look like. The actual Data Safety section started rolling out in April, but now that the developer deadline is approaching... Google is turning off the separate "app permissions" section? That doesn't sound like a great move for privacy at all.

The Play Store's new Data Safety section is Google's answer to a similar feature in iOS 14, which displays a list of developer-provided privacy considerations, like what data an app collects, how that data is stored, and who the data is shared with. At first blush, the Data Safety entries might seem pretty similar to the old list of app permissions. You get items like "location," and in some ways, it's better than a plain list of permissions since developers can explain how and why each bit of data is collected.

The difference is in how that data ends up in Google's system. The old list of app permissions was guaranteed to be factual because it was built by Google, automatically, by scanning the app. The Data Safety system, meanwhile, runs on the honor system. Here's Google's explanation to developers of how the new section works:

Enlarge / If you live in the West, it's difficult to maintain denial about fires and drought. (credit: Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images)

There are many dramatic contrasts between the Biden administration and its immediate predecessor, and climate policy is high on the list. After four years of promises to restore coal use and claims that windmills caused cancer, we have an administration that promises to cut emissions in half by the end of the decade.

What does the US public think of this change? The Pew Research Center has been tracking attitudes on climate issues for the past several years, and it has new polling data from early May. The polling shows a general weakening of support for climate policies, with most of the change coming from Republicans. But it also shows that the two parties may not even inhabit the same reality, as they largely disagree about whether the weather has changed.

Mind the gap

Pew's data is based on a survey of over 10,000 US residents, and it was performed in early May (that's before the most recent surge in gasoline prices, which may be relevant for some questions). In a number of cases, the same questions have been asked for several years running, so we have some data on how attitudes have changed over the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration.

Enlarge / Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery, seated in the middle and surrounded by the court's vice chancellors and masters in chancery. (credit: Delaware Court of Chancery )

Elon Musk has reason to worry about the Delaware Court of Chancery judge handling Twitter's lawsuit against him. Kathaleen McCormick, the court's chancellor, or chief judge, "has a no-nonsense reputation as well as the distinction of being one of the few jurists who has ever ordered a reluctant buyer to close a US corporate merger," Reuters wrote today.

Specifically, McCormick last year "order[ed] an affiliate of private equity firm Kohlberg & Co LLC to close its $550 million purchase of DecoPac Holding Inc, which makes cake decorating products," Reuters wrote.

McCormick's April 2021 ruling in that case, available on the court's website, centered on a specific performance clause in the purchase contract—similar to the clause that Twitter is citing in its attempt to force Musk to complete his $44 billion purchase. "Chalking up a victory for deal certainty, this post-trial decision resolves all issues in favor of the seller and orders the buyers to close on the purchase agreement," McCormick wrote in the ruling.

Check out almost any popular science article about woodpeckers and you'll likely find some mention of why the birds don't seem to suffer concussions, despite energetically drumming away at tree trunks all day with their beaks. Conventional wisdom holds that the structure of the woodpecker's skull and beak acts as a kind of built-in shock absorber, protecting the bird from injury. But a new paper published in the journal Current Biology argues that this is incorrect and that woodpecker heads behave more like stiff hammers than shock absorbers.

“While filming the woodpeckers in zoos, I have witnessed parents explaining to their kids that woodpeckers don’t get headaches because they have shock absorbers built into their head,” said co-author Sam Van Wassenbergh of Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium. “This myth of shock absorption in woodpeckers is now busted by our findings.”

As for why this particular myth has endured for so long, Van Wassenbergh told Ars, "To us humans, the first thing that comes to our mind when watching an animal violently smashing their head against trees is to wish the animal had some kind of a built-in cushioning to prevent it from getting headaches or concussions. It is logical for us to think of such action in terms of protection and safety, as if it is an accident."