Month: September 2022

Enlarge / The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. (credit: Apple)

The ever-larger lens array may not be the only bumpy thing about the iPhone 14 Pro Max's camera. Some users are reporting that the phone is making grinding noises and vibrating when they try to take photos with third-party apps like SnapChat and TikTok, severely distorting the camera images and, in some cases, damaging the camera's hardware. The issue doesn't appear to be universal, but MacRumors has gathered complaints from users across multiple social media sites and its own forums, as has The Guardian. Some YouTubers have also documented the phenomenon.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple has acknowledged the issue and plans to release a fix next week.

The distortion and vibration is most likely being caused by the camera's optical image stabilization gyroscope, which when working normally corrects for shaking and hand motion so that the camera can take in a bit more light without taking blurry images (although the iPhone cameras do feature optical zoom, it's handled using different physical lenses and not one lens with mechanical parts that can physically zoom in and out).

Enlarge / A pair of ID Buzzes bask in the Copenhagen sunshine. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

After what feels like many years of teasing, Volkswagen's retro-groovy ID Buzz has finally gone into production in Hannover, Germany. US market sales of the electric minivan are still two years away, but it has gone on sale in Europe, and demand has been so strong that VW is doubling production. "And this is without any of the customers seeing, touching, or even being able to drive the vehicle," VW Commercial Vehicles Chairman Carsten Intra told Automobilwoche.

Built using VW's new modular EV platform, the ID Buzz has launched in Europe with the shorter wheelbase variant, either as a two-row passenger vehicle or a commercial version that ditches windows and seats for pure cargo capacity. VW Commercial Vehicles says it has received roughly 12,500 preorders from European customers for the ID Buzz, and nearly half of those are for that commercial van.

VW dealers in Europe are about to receive their first demonstration models, and Intra told Automobilwoche that by the end of the year Hannover should have doubled production from 100 Buzzes a day to 200. 2023 is when things get serious, with a plan to produce 100,000 electric vans a year, increasing eventually to 130,000.

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  Here's the iPhone 14 with front and back panels, and a middle frame. [credit: iFixit ]

As has become an annual custom, iFixit has done a teardown of the iPhone 14, Apple's baseline flagship iPhone for 2022. While the iPhone 14 seems almost identical to its immediate predecessor on the surface, iFixit found one vital difference Apple hasn't announced publicly: it's much easier to repair.

iFixit calls it "the most significant design change to the iPhone in a long time," for their purposes, at least.

In the new design, the bulk of the phone is in a midframe, but the frame can be opened on either side—both the front and the back. Other recent models—including the still-sold iPhone 13, iPhone 12, and iPhone SE, as well as the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max—could only be opened from the front.

Enlarge / Colorized photo image of a Western blot test result. (credit: Getty Images)

Scientific publishers such as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and Taylor & Francis have begun attempting to detect fraud in academic paper submissions with an AI image-checking program called Proofig, reports The Register. Proofig, a product of an Israeli firm of the same name, aims to help use "artificial intelligence, computer vision and image processing to review image integrity in scientific publications," according to the company's website.

During a trial that ran from January 2021 to May 2022, AACR used Proofig to screen 1,367 papers accepted for publication, according to The Register. Of those, 208 papers required author contact to clear up issues such as mistaken duplications, and four papers were withdrawn.

In particular, many journals need help detecting image duplication fraud in Western blots, which are a specific style of protein-detection imagery consisting of line segments of various widths. Subtle differences in a blot's appearance can translate to dramatically different conclusions about test results, and many cases of academic fraud have seen unscrupulous researchers duplicate, crop, stretch, and rotate Western blots to make it appear like they have more (or different) data than they really do. Detecting duplicate images can be tedious work for human eyes, which is why some firms like Proofig and ImageTwin, a German firm, are attempting to automate the process.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks at the Detroit Auto Show, in Detroit on September 14, 2022. (credit: Getty | Anadolu Agency)

"The pandemic is over," President Joe Biden said matter-of-factly in a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night. The impromptu comment immediately drew headlines, as well as criticism from health experts. It also likely raised the anxiety levels of administration officials, who have been striving to promote booster uptake this fall. Some officials described the president's comment as surprising.

“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it," Biden immediately noted in the interview. "But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks," he said, referencing the crowds at the auto show in Detroit, where he made the comments. "Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And, so I think it’s changing and I think this is a perfect example of it.”

Though many in the public health community will argue that the pandemic is objectively not over, the president's remarks reflect the country's relationship status with the pandemic, which is a resounding: "It's complicated."