Month: August 2022

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Meta is ever so slowly expanding its trial of end-to-end encryption in a bid to protect users from snoops and law enforcement.

End-to-end encryption, often abbreviated as E2EE, uses strong cryptography to encrypt messages with a key that is unique to each user. Because the key is in the sole possession of each user, E2EE prevents everyone else—including the app maker, ISP or carrier, and three-letter agencies—from reading a message. Meta first rolled out E2EE in 2016 in its WhatsApp and Messenger apps, with the former providing it by default and the latter offering it as an opt-in feature. The company said it expects to make E2EE the default setting in Messenger by sometime next year. The Instagram messenger, meanwhile, doesn’t offer E2EE at all.

Starting this week, the social media behemoth will begin testing a secure online storage feature for Messenger communication. For now, it’s available only to select users who connect using either an iOS or Android device. Users who are selected will have the option of turning it on.

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  The new Moto Razr. [credit: Motorola ]

Lenovo's Motorola division still hasn't given up on a modern reboot of the Motorola Razr.

Last night, the company announced the "Moto Razr 2022," though it will seemingly be available only in China. The good news is that there's a big price drop this year: The phone is now 5999 CNY, or about $900. Previous Razr reboots sold in the $1,400 range, and the second-generation version was actually more expensive (~$1,830) in China than in the US.

The inner screen is getting a big upgrade with this version; it's now a 144Hz, 2400×1080, 6.67-inch OLED. Powering this super-fast display is the flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. This is another huge upgrade for the Razr since the previous version had a midrange chip. The phone has 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 3500 mAh battery, and 33 W charging. That's a lot of upgrades compared to the midrange and more-expensive second-generation version. If Motorola wants to compete with the $1,000 Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, though—which this phone seems to borrow a lot from—these changes were necessary.

Enlarge (credit: Simone Marchi/SwRI)

One of Earth's defining features is its plate tectonics, a phenomenon that shapes the planet's surface and creates some of its most catastrophic events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. While some features of plate tectonics have been spotted elsewhere in the Solar System, the Earth is the only planet we know of with the full suite of processes involved in this phenomenon. And all indications are that it started very early in our planet's history.

So what started it? Currently, two leading ideas are difficult to distinguish based on our limited evidence of the early Earth. A new study of a piece of Australia, however, argues strongly for one of them: the heavy impacts that also occurred early in the planet's history.

Options and impacts

Shortly after the Earth formed, its crust would have been composed of a relatively even layer of solid rock that acted as a lid over the still-molten mantle below. Above that, there was likely a global ocean since plate tectonics wasn't building mountains yet. Somehow, this situation was transformed into what we see now: The large regions of moving, buoyant crust of the continental plates and the constantly spreading deep ocean crust formed from mantle materials, all driven by the heat-induced motion of material through the mantle.

Enlarge (credit: Meta)

Meta's Portal displays have always felt pretty niche. The 10- to 14-inch screens were heavily marketed as video-calling devices for apps like Facebook Messenger and Zoom. Even with the addition of music apps like Spotify and productivity apps like Microsoft Teams and a calendar, the products struggled to become something that felt necessary in tech-gadget-filled homes.

Rumor has it that Meta is pivoting the Portal from consumers to businesses, but first, the product is getting at least one more chance to prove it can add value to people's homes. On Wednesday, Meta announced that the Portal Plus Gen 2 and Portal Go now support Duet Display, an app that can turn a display into a secondary monitor for Macs and PCs.

The Portal Plus is the same size as some of the best portable monitors, so it makes sense to repurpose it for that function. Because it's built for video image quality, it has a decent resolution for a portable display—2160×1440.