#4technologydrivepeabodyma

[bigyack-com]

When Facebook Is More Trustworthy Than the President

“Pandemic does not mean panic-demic,” he said Friday afternoon. He was seated cross-legged on a black leather sofa., trying out lines. “Do you like that? Or is that corny?” He decided it was good and corny.Dr. Varshavski delivers solid health information to young people, much of it through videos of him reacting to memes and TV shows. When the coronavirus crisis began, he responded. And because YouTube's system now favors authoritative voices, videos like his “The Truth About the Coronavirus” rank high in recommendations. It has drawn more than five million views.Mr. Varshavski also debunks misinformation from many directions. One of his targets Friday was an influencer who talks to deer. Another is the TV star Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has been recommending zinc tablets and elderberry syrup. (A spokesman for Dr. Oz said the products have been shown to be helpful with the common cold.) Then, of course, there’s President Trump.Responsible voices like Dr. Varshavski’s and a whole generation of researchers, reporters, and even tech company employees seem, at least right now, to be breaking through. Mr. Zuckerberg, the industry’s most committed optimist, says the power of social media will be viewed “as a bigger part of the story if we do our job well over the coming weeks.”When I talked to Mr. Zuckerberg and other social media executives last week, I kept returning to the same point: Will the flow of responsible information last beyond this crisis? Could it extend into our upcoming presidential campaign?“I hope so,’’ Twitter’s Mr. Dorsey wrote. “Up to all of us.”Mr. Zuckerberg was less sanguine. Right now, Facebook is tackling “misinformation that has imminent risk of danger, telling people if they have certain symptoms, don’t bother going getting treated …. things like ‘you can cure this by drinking bleach.’ I mean, that’s just in a different class.”That black and white clarity cannot easily be extended back into the grays of political battles, he said. While social media may be mirroring the solidarity of the moment, it’s hard to see how it would prolong it.“It’s perhaps a positive sign that, despite how polarized people are worried that society is, people can pull together and try to get things done and support each other and recognize people who are heroes on the front lines fighting this stuff,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. Given that the pandemic is likely to go on for a while, he said: “It’s hard to predict exactly how it plays out beyond that. And that’s not really my job, anyway.” Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Judge Halts Work on Microsoft’s JEDI Contract, a Victory for Amazon

A federal judge in Washington ordered Microsoft on Thursday to halt all work on a $10 billion cloud-computing contract for the Pentagon, in a victory for Amazon, which had challenged the awarding of the contract.In a sealed opinion, the judge, Patricia E. Campbell-Smith of the Court of Federal Claims, ordered work to stop on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, known as JEDI, until Amazon’s legal challenge was resolved. The 10-year contract was one of the largest tech contracts from the Pentagon, and Microsoft was set to begin work on it this month.The decision adds to the acrimony surrounding the lucrative deal, which was a major prize in the technology industry, and ratchets up the legal battle around the transformation of the military’s cloud-computing systems. Amazon had been seen as a front-runner to win the JEDI contract, but the Department of Defense awarded it to Microsoft in October.Amazon protested and said the process had been unfair. The internet giant claimed that President Trump had interfered in the bidding for the contract because of his feud with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and owner of The Washington Post. The Post has aggressively covered the Trump administration, and the president has referred to the newspaper as the “Amazon Washington Post” and accused it of spreading “fake news.”“This is all setting the stage for a major court fight between Amazon and Microsoft, with the D.O.D. caught in between,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst for Wedbush Securities who has been tracking the JEDI contract. “It’s a political football that’s being kicked around.”Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s vice president of communications, said in a statement on Thursday that the company was “disappointed with the additional delay” but that it believed “we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work to make sure those who serve our country can access the new technology they urgently require.”“We believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft,” he added.Lt. Col. Robert Carver, a Pentagon spokesman, said it was disappointed by the decision, which has “unnecessarily delayed implementing D.O.D.’s modernization strategy and deprived our warfighters of a set of capabilities they urgently need.” He added that the Defense Department was “confident in our award.”Amazon did not return a request for comment.When Microsoft was awarded the contract, the Defense Department was explicit that the bidding process had been correctly executed. “The acquisition process was conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations,” it said at the time. “All offerors were treated fairly and evaluated consistently with the solicitation’s stated evaluation criteria.”In public, Mr. Trump has said there were other “great companies” that should have a chance at the contract. But a speechwriter for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in a recent book that Mr. Trump had wanted to foil Amazon and give the contract to another company.In December, Amazon filed its legal challenge against the awarding of JEDI, saying that Mr. Trump used “improper pressure” on the Pentagon at its expense. The company also argued that its cloud-computing services were superior to Microsoft’s and that it was better situated to fulfill the contract’s technical requirements.Since then, Amazon has escalated the battle. The company asked the court this week to let it depose Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Amazon argued that hearing from them was crucial to determine if they had intervened against it in the contract. Mr. Esper had recused himself from the contract award decision in October, citing his son’s employment at IBM, one of the early bidders on the JEDI contract.“The question is whether the president of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the D.O.D. to pursue his own personal and political ends,” an Amazon spokesman said at the time.The Pentagon said it was strongly opposed to Amazon’s deposition request. Microsoft said Amazon “only provided the speculation of bias, with nothing approaching the ‘hard facts’ necessary” to demand them.In another court filing this month, Amazon argued that an injunction was necessary to prevent it from losing the profit it could earn from the contract.JEDI “will transform D.O.D.’s cloud architecture and define enterprise cloud for years to come,” wrote Kevin Mullen, an attorney representing Amazon in the case.The JEDI contract has also been in the spotlight because it is viewed as crucial to the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize its technology. Much of the military operates on computer systems from the 1980s and ’90s, and the Defense Department has spent billions of dollars trying to make them talk to one another.Mr. Ives, the analyst, has said that landing the JEDI contract put Microsoft in a position to earn the roughly $40 billion that the federal government is expected to spend on cloud computing over the next several years.On Thursday, Judge Campbell-Smith also required that Amazon pay a $42 million deposit that the court will hold in case it later determines that the injunction was wrongfully issued and that Microsoft is owed damages. Amazon must submit a plan for offering the money to the court by next Thursday, and it must agree to redactions to the judge’s order no later than Feb. 27 so that it can be made public.The preliminary injunction was a “prudent decision” given the complexities of the deal and the monetary stakes, Mr. Ives said, and the $42 million demanded from Amazon would not be a burden for the company.“It’s less than a rounding error relative to their treasure chest,” he said. He added that he expected Microsoft to prevail in the deal.Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Foldable Phones Are Here. Do We Really Want Them?

To make gadgets bend, you have to sacrifice some hardness. The flexible displays of foldables are generally covered by a plastic layer, which can be scratched up or penetrated more easily than the tough glass protecting traditional phone displays. (Samsung said its Z Flip uses an ultrathin, foldable glass that would let you fold and unfold your phone 200,000 times.)“If you take a ballpoint pen and you push really hard on the iPhone screen, it’ll be fine,” said Kyle Wiens, the chief executive of iFixit, a company that provides instructions and parts to repair gadgets. “If you do the same thing on the foldable displays, you’ll kill it.”In theory, the clamshell designs of the Z Flip and the Razr offer a partial solution to the durability problem. That’s because the main screens are not exposed when folded up. Yet if you drop the phones while using them — say, when you are walking and texting and trip over something — you will have a problem.“There’s no protecting the foldable display in a real-world environment the way that consumers treat their smartphones,” said Raymond Soneira, the founder of DisplayMate, who advises tech companies on screen technology.Foldables also have a design flaw. In general, when they are unfolded, the screen has a visible crease — an eyesore compared with the seamless displays on our smartphones and tablets.Last but not least, it remains to be seen whether the mechanical hinges of folding phones will survive the test of time. There are early reports of potential problems with the hinge on the Razr: Some reviewers said the hinge is extremely tight, making it cumbersome to fold and flip open the phone. CNET, the tech reviews site, said the hinge of its Razr test unit broke after 27,000 cycles using a robot.Motorola said in a statement that it was confident in the durability of Razr, adding that CNET’s test method put undue stress on the hinge. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Data of All 6.5 Million Israeli Voters Is Leaked

Israel’s Privacy Protection Authority said it was looking into what it called a “grave” security lapse by the maker of an app promoted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party that led to the exposure of personal data of all 6.5 million eligible voters in Israel, including full names and identity card numbers.The flawed website for the app, called Elector, failed to secure personal details in the voter registry, which also included the address and gender of each voter, even those who did not use it, and in some case phone numbers as well, the Haaretz newspaper first reported on Sunday, raising concerns about identity theft and foreign interference.The maker of Elector did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, but in a statement issued to the Israeli news media, it sought to play down the potential consequences, describing the leak as a “one-off incident that was immediately dealt with” and saying it had since bolstered the site’s security.The data required essentially no hacking skills to access, and it was unknown how many people had downloaded the registry.Mr. Netanyahu had encouraged supporters to download the app, which offers news and information related to the March 2 election, the third in less than a year after the first two failed to provide an outright winner and efforts to form a coalition came up short.In a statement issued in response to the reports on Sunday, the Privacy Protection Authority, a unit of the Justice Ministry, said that responsibility for complying with Israeli privacy law involving use of the voter registry “lies with the parties themselves.”It stopped short of announcing a full-fledged investigation, however, and said it could not give further details at this stage. Ran Bar-Zik, a developer for Verizon Media who wrote the story the Haaretz published on Sunday, was alerted to the breach over the weekend.In an interview on Monday, he said he had received a tipoff about the Elector website breach on Friday night. The message was sent in English to Cybercyber, a Hebrew podcast that he runs that he hosts with two colleagues. As evidence, the tipster included Mr. Bar-Zik’s own details and those of his wife and son.“It was spooky,” Mr. Bar-Zik said.Explaining the ease with which the voter information could be accessed, Mr. Bar-Zik wrote in a blog post that visitors to the app’s website could right-click to “view source,” an action that reveals the code behind a web page.The code revealed the user names and passwords of site administrators, and using those credentials would allow anyone to log in and download the voter information.Mr. Bar-Zik said he chose the Likud administrator and “Jackpot! Everything was in front of me!”“When we talk about hacking, we imagine people in hoodies doing technical stuff,” Mr. Bar-Zik said. But in the Elector case, he added, no hacking technique was necessary.One Israeli website said it had been able to access the personal information of, among others, Mr. Netanyahu; his wife, Sara; the chief of staff for the Israeli military, Aviv Kochavi; and Nadav Argaman, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency.The leak was believed to be the largest disclosure of Israeli voter information since 2006, when an employee of the Interior Ministry stole the population registry and then published it.The exposure of the database of Israeli voters could have significant consequences. Databases listing personal information of private citizens can be exploited for a number of purposes, including by criminals looking to make money through identity theft, or by foreign state-backed hackers looking to spy on Israeli voters ahead of a critical election.“This is a treasure for foreign countries with geostrategic interests in Israel,” Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the Media Reform Project at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Jerusalem, told Channel 12 news.Massive voter databases are one more reason that cybersecurity officials across the world have warned that new technology is best kept out of the hands of election officials and political parties.Most recommend that new technology, including voting machines and apps used by political parties, be tested for months, or even years before it is deployed to the general public.Cybersecurity experts specializing in election technology have begun holding specialized sessions at the world’s largest annual conference for hackers, DefCon. During the sessions they hack into voting machines and other technology used during elections around the world in an effort to lay their vulnerabilities bare.Last week, an app introduced by the Iowa Democratic Party to help tally votes during the Iowa caucus failed on the day of the vote, throwing the first-in-the-nation contest into chaos.The app, which had been privately developed for the party and had not been tested by independent cybersecurity experts, had been kept a secret by the party until the weeks leading up to the vote.When it was eventually unveiled, many had trouble downloading and using it. Cybersecurity experts quickly found the app was riddled with bugs and potential vulnerabilities. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Is Identifying Child Victims of Abuse

“We thought it was too controversial of a feature because it was too easy to use that functionality for abuse,” said Mr. Burns. “And also it’s just a legal nightmare.”Still, Mr. Burns said, he understood why investigators would want to use facial recognition software. “They are faced with a very grim task, and if there’s a tool that gives them an opportunity to safeguard victims, I don’t blame them for trying to grab it with both hands,” he said.Since Clearview’s practices have come to light, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Venmo and YouTube have sent the company cease-and-desist letters, asking it to stop scraping photos from their sites and delete existing images in its database. The attorney general of New Jersey banned the use of Clearview by officers in the state and called for an investigation into how it and similar technologies were being used by law enforcement. A class-action lawsuit seeking certification was filed in Illinois, where a strong biometric privacy law prohibits the use of residents’ faceprints without their consent, and another was filed on Feb. 3 in Virginia.Bills banning the use of facial recognition by police have recently been introduced in New York and Washington. And Clearview received a letter from Senator Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, asking for a list of law enforcement agencies that have used the app and whether biometric information has been collected for children under 13 years old.“While this type of technology has existed for quite some time, we believe we have created something that enables law enforcement to solve previously unsolvable crimes and, most importantly, protect vulnerable children,” Mr. Ton-That said in his email. “At the same time, we are responding to requests for information from government and other interested parties as appropriate, and look forward to engaging in constructive discussions with them as we work to make our communities safer.”In October, law enforcement groups sent a letter to members of Congress, urging them to not ban the use of facial recognition for their investigations. “We understand the public’s concern about protection of their privacy and civil rights,” they wrote. “With clear, publicly available policies we believe those concerns can be addressed.”Many agencies had been using Clearview for months at the time the letter was sent, but the letter made no mention of it.Michael H. Keller and Aaron Krolik contributed reporting. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

How to Run a Business in 2020

In recent years, stars have lent their names to all kinds of sneaker collaborations. Puma had Rihanna. Reebok had Gigi Hadid. Adidas had Kanye West. Nike had … Jesus Christ?Not exactly. In October, a pair of “Jesus shoes” — customized Air Max 97s whose soles contained holy water from the River Jordan — appeared online for $1,425. They were designed by a start-up called MSCHF, without Nike’s blessing.The sneakers quickly sold out and began appearing on resale sites, going for as much as $4,000. The Christian Post wrote about them. Drake wore them. They were among the most Googled shoes of 2019.The only thing that didn’t happen, said Kevin Wiesner, 27, a creative director at MSCHF, was a public disavowal of the shoes by Nike or the Vatican. “That would’ve been rad,” he said.Now, in the MSCHF office in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, a pair stands like a trophy.MSCHF isn’t a sneaker company. It rarely even produces commercial goods, and its employees are reluctant to call it a company at all. They refer to MSCHF, which was founded in 2016, as a “brand,” “group” or “collective,” and their creations, which appear online every two weeks, as “drops.”Many of those drops are viral pranks: an app that recommends stocks to buy based on one’s astrological sign (which some observers took seriously), a service that sends pictures of A.I.-generated feet over text, a browser extension that helps users get away with watching Netflix at work.As Business Insider recently noted, the present and future profitability of these internet stunts is dubious. Yet, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MSCHF has raised at least $11.5 million in outside investments since the fall of 2019.In the high-risk, maybe-reward world of venture capital, the group’s antics are well known. Nikita Singareddy, an investment analyst at RRE Ventures, compared MSCHF to Vine and Giphy. All three, she said, offer “lots of delight” and encourage content sharing.“Sometimes investors are a little too serious about monetizing something immediately,” Ms. Singareddy said. “With MSCHF, there’s faith that it’ll pay off. There’s an inherent virality and absurdness to all the projects that they’ve created, and it’s something people want to share and ask questions about.”For starters: What is it?

‘This Is How We Live’

The MSCHF office says as much about the company as any of its products.A giant white pentagram covers the entrance floor. On a visit in December, an inflatable severed swan’s head dangled from a ceiling beam, and a rubber chicken bong — a recent drop — sat on a coffee table, full of weed.“My mom thinks we make toys,” said Gabriel Whaley, 30, the chief executive.MSCHF has 10 employees, nine of whom are men. The company Twitter and Instagram pages are private, so most of its direct marketing takes place not on social media but through text messages from a mysterious phone number.Though the team used to run a marketing agency, working with brands like Casper in order to fund MSCHF projects, they stopped taking on clients last year. Now, they pretty much do whatever they want.“The cool thing that we have going for us is we set this precedent that we’re not tied to a category or vertical. We did the Jesus shoes and everyone knows us for that, and then we shut it down,” Mr. Whaley said. “We will never do it again. People are like, ‘Wait, why wouldn’t you double down on that, you would have made so much money!’ But that’s not why we’re here.”The point, he said, is to produce social commentary; the “story” the sneakers told was more important than turning a profit. “There are several youth pastors that have bought a pair, and even more who are asking, like, ‘I love sneakers, and I love God. I would love a pair of these,’ and that wasn’t the point,” Mr. Whaley said. “The Jesus shoes were a platform to broach the idea while also making fun of it: that everybody’s just doing a collaboration now.”In order to prepare each drop — be it an object, an app or a website — MSCHF’s employees log long hours. Most mornings, Mr. Whaley gets to the office around 7; the rest of the team arrives by 10. They often stay late into the evenings, conducting brainstorms, perfecting lines of code, shooting live-streams or assembling prototypes. Weekends, Mr. Whaley said, aren’t really a thing.“It’s not just a full-time job,” he said. “This is how we live. The distinction between your work and normal life doesn’t really exist here, and it’s just because this is what we were all doing whether we were getting paid or not in our former lives. So nothing has really changed, except we have more power as a unit than we did as individuals.”Though Mr. Whaley eschews corporate titles, functional groups exist within MSCHF: idea generation, production, distribution and outreach. In their past lives, most of the staffers were developers and designers, some with art backgrounds, working at their own firms and for companies like Twitter and BuzzFeed. The oldest employee is 32, and the youngest is 22.Some C.E.O.s of Fortune 500 companies have tried to mentor Mr. Whaley and “shoehorn” MSCHF into a traditional business, he said. They insist MSCHF is building a brand, that it needs a logo, a mission, a go-to product that people recognize.But MSCHF doesn’t have a flagship product, or market its releases traditionally. “It just happens that anything we make tends to spread purely because people end up talking about it and sharing it with their friends,” Mr. Whaley said.That’s part of the appeal for V.C. firms. With software companies, for example, there are “very clear metrics and paths to monetization that are tried and true,” Ms. Singareddy said. For MSCHF, that path is less obvious.“Some of the best investments, even early on it wasn’t clear what the result would be, but you’re making an investment in the team,” she said. “That’s what makes a company like MSCHF so exciting. Venture is about taking reasoned risk — it’s a true venture capital opportunity.”

Banksy for the Internet

Mr. Whaley talks a lot about what MSCHF is and who the people who work there are — and aren’t. Running ads on subways, or trying to build a social media following, or landing a spot on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list isn’t who they are. He cringes at the word “merch.” (“The day we sell hoodies is the day I shut this down.”)To observers, critics and followers, the company’s portfolio may amount to a very successful string of viral marketing campaigns, a series of jokes or something like art.“I don’t see anybody doing exactly what MSCHF is doing,” said Frank Denbow, a technology consultant who works with start-ups. “Everybody is able to get a one-off campaign that works, but to consistently find ways to create content that really sticks with people is different. It reminds me of Banksy and his ability to get a rise out of people.”On Twitter and Reddit, users trade theories and tips about MSCHF’s more cryptic offerings, such as its most recent, password-protected drop, Zuckwatch — a website that looks like Facebook and appears to be commentary on data privacy.Among these ardent fans, the drops are treated as trailheads, or entry points, setting off mad, winding dashes in search of cracking the code. Other followers, less devoted, may only know MSCHF for its Jesus shoes, which Mr. Wiesner said have been knocked off by sellers around the world. He is happy about it. “If we can make things that people run away with, that’s absolutely the dream,” he said. “Most of what we make is us personally running away with stuff.”Ahead of the presidential election, MSCHF’s employees plan to take on more political projects. (A drop in November, involving a shell restaurant, enabled users to mask political donations as work expenses; it was promptly shut down.) The company also hopes to expand beyond apps and objects to experiences and physical spaces.“Everything is just, ‘How do we kind of make fun of what we’re observing?’” Mr. Whaley said. “Then we have as much fun with it as possible and see what happens.” Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

I Quit My Smartphone - The New York Times

Thanks to the Allen Carr technique for quitting smoking. Jan. 20, 2020 About a year ago, I noticed a distressing tendency in myself to drift off while the people I loved were talking. It didn’t matter if they were talking about a book they had read or recent health problems or crushing grief or revelations from therapy. Never before had I struggled to listen, but now I couldn’t help checking out. Several times in the last year, my husband has had to ask in the middle of a conversation, “Where did you go?” Where did I go? Nowhere good. Usually my mind returned me to the small computer in my pocket, to an unanswered email, to a “like” or a retweet, to a comment I found threatening or flattering (though increasingly, any kindness I received through a device acted on my nervous system like derision). Suffice to say, I went away. In giving my attention to the device, I withheld it from the person I value most. And there were other troubling symptoms. It was hard to read or write for sustained periods, which is concerning because that is my job. I was forcing myself to push through a handful of pages before reaching for the phone as reward — orienting toward the activities I loved as if they were chores, and toward the object as a source of pleasure (though it was more often a source of anxiety). I hadn’t deliberately chosen to worship my smartphone, but when you repeatedly bow your head to something, stroking it thousands of times a day, it begins to shine like an idol. I tried to moderate, leaving the phone off or at home when I went for a walk. But rather than feeling free, I felt more tightly leashed, worried about missing phantom emergencies. I’d reflexively pat my body down, like I did when I first quit smoking: the addiction policing the addict. Come to think of it, this was all beginning to feel very familiar. Once upon a time, I smoked a half a pack a day. Sometimes I smoked more, sometimes less, but I was a smoker through and through. Before I quit, I couldn’t imagine life without cigarettes, my constant companion, my carcinogenic security blanket! I leaned on them for everything. They calmed my stress, anger and fear. They underscored celebration and increased pleasure. I used them as an excuse to be outdoors, to escape socializing, or as entree to a circle of others. I loved the good will fellowship of smokers, the gift economy of bumming. I loved the ceremony of packing a fresh pack, undressing the cellophane, lighting up, stubbing out. I loved it all. Frankly, I still think smoking looks cool, and quite often sexy. No one thought I would quit smoking — least of all me — but I did. Not because I was fed up with smelling bad, or being sick all the time, or because I knew smoking caused cancer and heart disease. Instead, it was because every hour on the hour, no matter where I was, who I was talking to or what I was doing, an internal timer would go off alerting me to my master’s need, pulling my focus away no matter how desperately I wanted to stay in the moment. “Each cigarette causes the craving for the next, to fill the emptiness caused by the nicotine leaving your body.” I had read this in “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking,” a 1985 book by Allen Carr that helped me (and purported millions of others) to quit cold turkey. To paraphrase a key point: You do not smoke because you need something to do with your hands, or because you love the ritual of it, or any of the other excuses people make. You smoke because you’re addicted to a powerful drug called nicotine. “Get it clear in your mind,” he writes. “CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE ONE!” I wound up kicking nicotine by never smoking another cigarette. It was that simple. It was hellish at first, and then I got used to it. Smartphones are not cigarettes (I’d argue their charms are fewer), but like cigarettes, those who design and peddle them have worked hard to cultivate addiction in their users, creating voids that only they can fill. I don’t deny the convenience and timesaving benefits in having a smartphone, but I don’t think convenience is what is driving people to stroke their screens about 2,600 times a day. So I got rid of my smartphone. And brother, it was approximately one million times easier than quitting smoking. I can check my email and social media platforms on a laptop as needed, but now that they are out of my pocket they no longer nag at me. Turns out using a dumbphone is like riding a bike; T9 (the old-fashioned texting we used to do using the nine numerical buttons) is not nearly as bad as I’d remembered. I have a gazetteer in the car, and when that fails, I ask people for directions. (This typically prompts the Samaritan to pull out a smartphone.) It took about 72 hours to teach my body that we had gone back to the old ways, and though I had assumed it would take much longer, the change was almost instantaneous. Moderation requires effort and will power, but when the device is gone there is nothing to resist. I can read a book for hours in a sitting, and when my loved ones speak I hear the story they’re telling. Which is to say, I am free again to enjoy the things I have always loved, to worship the god I choose. Lisa Wells lives in Seattle and is the author of “The Fix,” a collection of poetry. Photo illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

I Quit My Smartphone - The New York Times

Thanks to the Allen Carr technique for quitting smoking. Jan. 20, 2020 About a year ago, I noticed a distressing tendency in myself to drift off while the people I loved were talking. It didn’t matter if they were talking about a book they had read or recent health problems or crushing grief or revelations from therapy. Never before had I struggled to listen, but now I couldn’t help checking out. Several times in the last year, my husband has had to ask in the middle of a conversation, “Where did you go?” Where did I go? Nowhere good. Usually my mind returned me to the small computer in my pocket, to an unanswered email, to a “like” or a retweet, to a comment I found threatening or flattering (though increasingly, any kindness I received through a device acted on my nervous system like derision). Suffice to say, I went away. In giving my attention to the device, I withheld it from the person I value most. And there were other troubling symptoms. It was hard to read or write for sustained periods, which is concerning because that is my job. I was forcing myself to push through a handful of pages before reaching for the phone as reward — orienting toward the activities I loved as if they were chores, and toward the object as a source of pleasure (though it was more often a source of anxiety). I hadn’t deliberately chosen to worship my smartphone, but when you repeatedly bow your head to something, stroking it thousands of times a day, it begins to shine like an idol. I tried to moderate, leaving the phone off or at home when I went for a walk. But rather than feeling free, I felt more tightly leashed, worried about missing phantom emergencies. I’d reflexively pat my body down, like I did when I first quit smoking: the addiction policing the addict. Come to think of it, this was all beginning to feel very familiar. Once upon a time, I smoked a half a pack a day. Sometimes I smoked more, sometimes less, but I was a smoker through and through. Before I quit, I couldn’t imagine life without cigarettes, my constant companion, my carcinogenic security blanket! I leaned on them for everything. They calmed my stress, anger and fear. They underscored celebration and increased pleasure. I used them as an excuse to be outdoors, to escape socializing, or as entree to a circle of others. I loved the good will fellowship of smokers, the gift economy of bumming. I loved the ceremony of packing a fresh pack, undressing the cellophane, lighting up, stubbing out. I loved it all. Frankly, I still think smoking looks cool, and quite often sexy. No one thought I would quit smoking — least of all me — but I did. Not because I was fed up with smelling bad, or being sick all the time, or because I knew smoking caused cancer and heart disease. Instead, it was because every hour on the hour, no matter where I was, who I was talking to or what I was doing, an internal timer would go off alerting me to my master’s need, pulling my focus away no matter how desperately I wanted to stay in the moment. “Each cigarette causes the craving for the next, to fill the emptiness caused by the nicotine leaving your body.” I had read this in “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking,” a 1985 book by Allen Carr that helped me (and purported millions of others) to quit cold turkey. To paraphrase a key point: You do not smoke because you need something to do with your hands, or because you love the ritual of it, or any of the other excuses people make. You smoke because you’re addicted to a powerful drug called nicotine. “Get it clear in your mind,” he writes. “CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE ONE!” I wound up kicking nicotine by never smoking another cigarette. It was that simple. It was hellish at first, and then I got used to it. Smartphones are not cigarettes (I’d argue their charms are fewer), but like cigarettes, those who design and peddle them have worked hard to cultivate addiction in their users, creating voids that only they can fill. I don’t deny the convenience and timesaving benefits in having a smartphone, but I don’t think convenience is what is driving people to stroke their screens about 2,600 times a day. So I got rid of my smartphone. And brother, it was approximately one million times easier than quitting smoking. I can check my email and social media platforms on a laptop as needed, but now that they are out of my pocket they no longer nag at me. Turns out using a dumbphone is like riding a bike; T9 (the old-fashioned texting we used to do using the nine numerical buttons) is not nearly as bad as I’d remembered. I have a gazetteer in the car, and when that fails, I ask people for directions. (This typically prompts the Samaritan to pull out a smartphone.) It took about 72 hours to teach my body that we had gone back to the old ways, and though I had assumed it would take much longer, the change was almost instantaneous. Moderation requires effort and will power, but when the device is gone there is nothing to resist. I can read a book for hours in a sitting, and when my loved ones speak I hear the story they’re telling. Which is to say, I am free again to enjoy the things I have always loved, to worship the god I choose. Lisa Wells lives in Seattle and is the author of “The Fix,” a collection of poetry. Photo illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Glenn Greenwald Charged With Cybercrimes in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO — Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force.In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year.The Intercept Brazil, a news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, has published several stories based on a trove of leaked messages he received last year.Mr. Greenwald could not immediately be reached for comment. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Who’s Watching Your Porch?

Ring offers a front-door view of a country where millions of Amazon customers use Amazon cameras to watch Amazon contractors deliver Amazon packages. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Tech Bro Uniform Meets Margaret Thatcher. Disruption Ensues.

In the case of Mrs. Thatcher, the silk scarf, which, along with the skirt suit and pussy-bow blouse, became signifiers of the Iron Lady, the woman who put on her absolutely appropriate clothes like armor in her battle to liberate the markets and bring “tough capitalism” to Britain.Combining both, Mr. Denny, 37, found the shape, literally, of an idea.Mr. Denny is known for work that explores the culture of technology and its effects on society. He grew up in New Zealand and moved to Germany in 2007 to attend art school. After graduating, as he began developing his signature, he started “following” individuals he saw as paradigm changers: reading their press, their speeches and books; checking in as their careers progressed.Peter Thiel was one. Mr. Denny’s 2019 exhibition, “The Founder’s Paradox,” held in Auckland, New Zealand, featured Mr. Thiel (for one), the billionaire tech venture capitalist who is known for buying up swaths of land in that country, as a figure called Lord Tybalt, in art inspired by fantasy board games. Dominic Cummings, the architect of Boris Johnson’s electoral victory, is another. Ditto Mrs. Thatcher.“She was very visible in the 1980s, shaping a new kind of politics that emphasized the individual, deregulation and global neoliberalism,” Mr. Denny said, speaking on the phone from Berlin a few days before the opening.Though Mr. Denny has previously had exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and the Serpentine in London, and represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, this is the first time he has used fashion in his work, and it is partly because of the former prime minister. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

An Ice Skater’s Paradise in Quebec

On the Rivière du Loup, or Wolf River, Le Baluchon offers 89 rooms in a mix of inns and chalets on 1,000 acres featuring about 25 miles of cross-country ski and snowshoe trails, a tubing run and an ice rink with supplied equipment for broomball — a hockey-like game played with brooms and without skates. The sledders headed straight for the Nordic spa to steep in a series of hydrotherapy pools indoors and out.Later that evening, a full moon lit the riverside trail to the inn’s restaurant — acclaimed for its menu using local ingredients in dishes like walleye with Quebec seaweed butter — and of waterfalls stilled by ice.Agritourism on iceOne winter, when Jean-Pierre Binette and Madeleine Courchesne, beekeepers in rural Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, about an hour north of Trois-Rivières, had three children under the age of 9, they flooded a small section of woods on their property. Excited by the frozen forest playground, their children invited their friends, who invited their friends. In 1997, the seasonal diversion became a secondary business as Le Domaine de la Forêt Perdue, or the Lost Forest, opened to the public, keeping a form of agritourism alive in winter (in summer, they offer a high-ropes course).“We were the first skating path in Quebec and now we are training people who are opening trails around the province,” Thérèse Deslauriers, the managing director of the Forêt Perdue, said, as she worked the rustic entry house that doubles as a retail shop for honey products.Outside, beyond the skate rental tent, 15 kilometers — more than nine miles — of iceways wove through pine and hardwood forests dotted with farm pens occupied by goats, sheep, ducks, deer and more exotic animals, including an ostrich. Next to the alpaca enclosure, a repurposed phone booth dispensed handfuls of animal feed for a Canadian quarter. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

The F.A.A. Wants to Start Tracking Drones’ Locations

The Federal Aviation Administration proposed wide-sweeping regulations on Thursday that would require that all but the tiniest drones incorporate technology that would enable them to be tracked at all times while flying in United States airspace.“Remote ID technologies will enhance safety and security by allowing the F.A.A., law enforcement and federal security agencies to identify drones flying in their jurisdiction,” the federal transportation secretary, Elaine L. Chao, said in a statement.As drone operators, manufacturers and others involved in the rapidly expanding drone industry began sifting through the 319-page proposal on Thursday afternoon, responses varied wildly. While some applauded the F.A.A. for finally creating a system to rapidly identify owners of rogue — potentially deadly — drones, others declared that this was going to drastically hinder drone efficiency and cost effectiveness. Since 2015, operators of all drones that weigh more than half a pound have been required to register their devices, by submitting their names along with their email and home addresses to the F.A.A. Some federal facilities — prisons, for example — are authorized to use systems to detect the presence of drones, said Reggie Govan, a former chief counsel to the F.A.A. who now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.But at the moment, officials do not have a quick way to identify the owner of a given drone or to track the location of drones that have been registered by a particular person. Even airports and power plants currently lack the legal authority to track drones, Mr. Govan said. At the simplest level the proposed regulation requires all drones over 0.55 pound to emit a very particular kind of signal. “Once you have drones that are emitting an identifier then you can have a system that can track all drones,” Mr. Govan said, adding that he applauded the regulations.Brendan Schulman, vice president for policy and legal affairs at DJI, a Chinese company that is one of the leading manufacturers of small consumer drones, said that for the past several years, industry leaders and government stakeholders had been trying to figure out how to create a sort of drone “license plate system.” He said that the proposed system could make sense. His primary concern is that the cost and burden to drone pilots and operators remain low — something he is still evaluating. (DJI was embroiled in another government drone matter, with mounting security concerns that the cameras and other technology on its drones could send surveillance data back to China.)But for Paul Aitken, a founder of DroneU, a drone pilot training company in New Mexico, the costs immediately struck him as excessive. The new regulations require all registered drones within 36 months to begin carrying a specific type of remote identification system that broadcasts over the internet. Often finding an internet connection is not feasible in the locations where drone operators fly, Mr. Aitken said. According to his reading of the rules, if you don’t have cellular service or another way to connect to the internet, operators will have to limit flights to 400 feet laterally, which is roughly to the end of a block — and back.Search and rescue missions often require going at least four times that distance, he said. “People will literally die from these rules,” he said, adding that other “industries that are thriving with drones like utility inspection, precision agriculture, land surveying, ranch management and even some construction management would suffer greatly” given that the rules undermine efficiency, which for many is part of the appeal of drones.He is also concerned that drone pilots will have to publicly disclose their locations. “Pilots need privacy to protect them from fear-based citizens who think that drones are spying on them,” he said.A New York City councilman, Justin Brannan, said he thought this was a step in the right direction, however. It is currently illegal to fly a drone in most of New York City. “We need to create a framework for drones to legally and safely operate here in New York City because I do believe the benefits will outweigh the risks,” he said.The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, as the proposed legislation is called, will be open for a 60-day comment period. At that point the regulations become law.Jonathan Rupprecht, a Florida-based lawyer who specializes in drones, was left with many questions as to how this would be enforced. He pointed out that the F.A.A. had rarely prosecuted violations of drone regulations — such as flying in a careless manner or flying an unregistered aircraft — over the last decade. “They should refrain from biting off more than they can chew,” he said. Mr. Rupprecht said that focusing on locations that need protecting, instead of creating an unwieldy tracking system for the entire United States, would be more realistic. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Scientists Consider Indoor Ultraviolet Light to Zap Coronavirus in the Air

As society tries to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, some scientists hope a decades-old technology could zap pathogens out of the air in stores, restaurants and classrooms, potentially playing a key role in containing further spread of the infection.It has the ungainly name of upper-room ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, and it is something like bringing the power of sunlight indoors.“We have struggled in the past to see this highly effective, very safe technology fully implemented for airborne infections,” said Dr. Edward A. Nardell, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We’ve done the studies. We know it works.”Sunlight disinfects, and the UV part of its spectrum is particularly effective at knocking out airborne pathogens.In the approach scientists like Dr. Nardell describe, fixtures mounted on walls or ceilings, similar to fluorescent lights used today, shine ultraviolet light across the top of an interior space, well above people’s heads. Ceiling fans are sometimes installed to draw air upward so that floating bacteria, viruses and fungi are zapped more quickly. A different frequency of ultraviolet might be even safer, even when it shines directly on people, which would also allow disinfection of surfaces.Ultraviolet light mangles the genetic material in pathogens — DNA in bacteria and fungi, RNA in viruses — preventing them from reproducing. “You’ve killed it essentially,” said William P. Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at Pennsylvania State University.Dr. Nardell estimated that installing commercially available fixtures for an intermediate-size warehouse-type store like Walmart would cost about $100,000, which might be too expensive for some smaller businesses.The systems also add to electricity bills and require cleaning and maintenance. “They’re not plug in and walk away forever,” Dr. Nardell said.In the 1930s, the first upper-room ultraviolet fixtures were installed around Philadelphia.During five years of experiments at several schools there, students in classrooms outfitted with ultraviolet fixtures were less likely to catch and spread some contagious diseases, such as smallpox and mumps.The most striking divergence occurred during the spring of 1941 when measles swept through schools around Philadelphia. At Germantown Friends School, one of the schools studied, ultraviolet fixtures had been installed in the primary grade classrooms. There, about 15 percent of children who did not possess immunity to measles — that is, those who had not previously contracted the disease — became sick.In the upper-grade classrooms, where ultraviolet fixtures had not been installed, more than half of the susceptible students contracted measles.“There’s no doubt that wavelength band will kill or inactivate micro-organisms,” said Dr. Bahnfleth, who recently presented an online seminar on the topic.But experts concede that the use of ultraviolet light indoors could be a tough sell. After all, people have been told for decades to wear sunscreen to ward off skin cancer caused by the ultraviolet rays in sunlight — the wavelengths known as UVA and UVB.For that reason, the germicidal fixtures employ wavelengths of light known as UVC that are shorter than UVA and UVB. The shorter wavelengths mean that the particles of light, or photons, are of higher energy. Counterintuitively, this means UVC is safer for people, because it is absorbed by proteins in the outer layer of dead skin cells before reaching the DNA in the living cells. (Outdoor sunlight is devoid of UVC, because Earth’s atmosphere blocks it.)UVC can irritate skin and eyes, which is why the light is usually restricted to above people’s heads, or for use in unoccupied rooms. The irritation usually clears up within a couple of days. The safety of UVC “is really long established,” Dr. Nardell said.Sometimes UV-C lamps are installed within ventilation air ducts, out of sight and completely shielded from people.Syracuse Hancock International Airport in upstate New York, for example, has installed the fixtures above security checkpoints and its arrivals areas.“Historically, it’s been homeless shelters and medical centers,” said Daniel Jones, president of UV Resources of Santa Clarita, Calif., a manufacturer of the fixtures used by the airport. Sales are up tenfold in the past month. “The demand is through the roof,” he said.Dr. Nardell started research in the field in the 1980s after an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis at a Boston homeless shelter, Later, in a tuberculosis ward in South Africa, he and his collaborators installed ultraviolet fixtures, which were turned on every other day. When the fixtures were operating, air from the ward flowed to a chamber of 90 guinea pigs, which can contract tuberculosis. A second group of 90 guinea pigs served as the control group. When the fixtures were off, untreated air was sent to their chamber.Scientists are now also exploring what is called far UVC — an even shorter, higher energy wavelength — that appears to be even safer and which could be bathed throughout a room continuously, disinfecting surfaces in addition to destroying pathogens in the air. Manufacturers are just beginning to ramp up production of far UVC fixtures.“Not soon enough to help us with the current wave,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center. “Perhaps soon enough for the next bump everyone says is coming.”Dr. Brenner is conducting laboratory experiments that will shine far UVC on hairless mice for eight hours a day for 60 weeks. After 40 weeks, there are no signs of precancerous lesions or eye damage, he said.One of the challenges in the wider use of ultraviolet lights is showing that it works well in a variety of settings. Hospitals are generally well ventilated and well maintained. Would air in a cavernous department store flow close enough to the fixtures to be disinfected? Would a fixture on the wall of a restaurant be effective enough to halt virus from traveling from an infected diner at one table to the neighboring tables?“The mall owners are calling with the exact same question,” said Jelena Srebric, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland.Part of the challenge is that the placement of fixtures and fans would need to be optimized for specific spaces, and the effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated in big public areas.Earlier computer simulations by Dr. Srebric showed that her models matched experimental tests, but the work looked at small spaces like individual rooms.Ceiling fans helped, improving the efficiency by about a third. Without fans, about 25 percent to 30 percent of the pathogens were never killed, because pockets of air never rose into the path of the ultraviolet rays.She and Dr. Nardell are now applying the models to bigger spaces like airports and retail stores.“I know it will definitely improve safety,” Dr. Srebric said, “but I cannot tell you by how much or how safe or whether I would go to a mall.”Then there is the problem of calling the technology ultraviolet germicidal irradiation. Dr. Nardell thinks it needs a new name, perhaps something as simple as “light disinfection.”“We’ve had a P.R. problem for decades and have suffered from it,” Dr. Nardell said. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Why the Apple iPhone SE Doesn't Matter

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Join us for a live conversation about tech and the coronavirus. Today at 4 p.m. Eastern time, my Times Opinion colleague Charlie Warzel and I are hosting a conference call to talk about the use of smartphone location data to fight the coronavirus and other aspects of using technology in this pandemic. Lend us your ears, and ask your burning questions. You can RSVP here.This sure feels like a strange time for Apple to release a new iPhone. But here’s a hard truth: Our habits show that new phones are irrelevant to most of us — in a pandemic or otherwise.Brian X. Chen, a New York Times personal technology writer, wrote about Apple’s plan to release a new version of the iPhone SE next week. That’s the four-year-old model with a relatively small screen and a relatively low price of $399 and up in the United States.This iPhone model hasn’t been a blockbuster, but it’s a nice option for some people. Apple and other companies are likely to keep releasing more fresh smartphone models this year, perhaps with some pandemic-related delays.Conditions aren’t ideal for selling stuff. American consumer spending in March fell at the fastest rate in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data. Many stores around the world, including Apple’s and other cellphone retailers’, are closed. Millions of newly unemployed people don’t have spare money, and Americans are shifting what they are buying. Groceries and streaming video, yes. Electronics, no.Apple probably had this latest model ready to go before the pandemic hit — and sure, why not give it a go? The honest truth is, it’s impossible to predict if and when our buying habits will return to normal.New smartphones have been a tough sell for some time. People in the United States and many other countries are waiting longer to replace their phones — for Americans, it’s more than three years on average.Pick your favorite explanation for this phenomenon. Many people don’t want to pay the going rate of $1,000 or more for phones with all the bells and whistles. To some people, even the features that are supposed to be exciting feel blah.The best explanation for the smartphone sales malaise is a simple one: This is what happens when products go from new and novel to normal.Products get more reliable and resilient as they become mass market, and new models don’t feel so different from the old. Apart from the die-hards, most people lose interest in the latest and greatest. The hot new thing feels…fine.In Brian’s assessment of last fall’s iPhone models, he said there was no rush to buy a new phone if your current one is less than a few years old. (Yes, a professional tech reviewer suggested you might NOT need to buy something.)The shift from wow to shrug happened with cars, personal computers and televisions. More than a decade after modern smartphones hit the market, we’ve lost our zing for those pocket computers, too. Until economic conditions stabilize, our zing will probably be even less zingy than normal.A smartphone is now a refrigerator. We need it, but we don’t replace our current model when a new ice-making feature comes out. This is not great for companies with shiny new phones to sell. For the rest of us, it’s fine.

When old tech really is a problem

A three-year-old smartphone is great. Broken government technology that’s failing struggling people is not.My colleagues have written about the Small Business Administration’s online application system melting down with loan requests from businesses applying for help. A Lyft driver in New York was told to fax his pay stubs to the unemployment office. There are unprecedented demands right now. But, wow, this is a bad look for government technology when it’s needed most.The problem isn’t necessarily the age of the technology used by government organizations. It’s the upkeep.The hidden secret of the internet is that behind the scenes, there are Sputnik-era computers doing chores like handling your credit card payment on Amazon and filling your online travel reservations. That 60-year-old computer programming language that New Jersey’s governor talked about? It works, as long as there are people to keep it up-to-date.The problem with many government and even corporate technology is the lack of money and care for upkeep. Chris O’Malley, the chief executive of Compuware, which works on old tech, told me there’s a mentality that tech systems are something you set up once and they’re done. Nope. If it ain’t broke, it still needs fixing.

Before we go …

When “less bad” is good. Businesses are cutting back on advertisements. Others are nervous about their ads appearing in a Facebook feed next to grim news. That dynamic is likely to hurt Google and Facebook, which make most of their money from selling ads, my Times colleagues write. Still, the tech titans will probably hold up better than other companies reliant on advertising.We need baby ducks right now: In our doom times, people are gravitating to news websites and social media accounts featuring happy tales like a police officer guiding ducklings, the Times reporter Taylor Lorenz writes. (A shameless plug to stick around for the end of this newsletter.)Another idea to bridge America’s digital divide: Thomas L. Friedman, the Times Opinion columnist, talks up a proposal for federal loans and regulatory changes to help rural communities and cooperatives build fast internet networks. Expanding online access would encourage more inventions like the robotic poultry coop cleaners he found in Minnesota. Yesterday, I wrote about another plan to make fast internet available to more people.Stick to the basics. Brian, in another article, said the pandemic has made it clear what technology is essential in our personal lives, and what is neat but frivolous.Hugs to thisPete Wells, a restaurant critic for The Times, writes a lovely appreciation of this six-hour video of sheep at a California vineyard. They are mostly sitting, bleating or munching grass. The monotony is strangely soothing.You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.To receive On Tech in your inbox each weekday, please sign up here. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Why the Apple iPhone SE Doesn't Matter

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Join us for a live conversation about tech and the coronavirus. Today at 4 p.m. Eastern time, my Times Opinion colleague Charlie Warzel and I are hosting a conference call to talk about the use of smartphone location data to fight the coronavirus and other aspects of using technology in this pandemic. Lend us your ears, and ask your burning questions. You can RSVP here.This sure feels like a strange time for Apple to release a new iPhone. But here’s a hard truth: Our habits show that new phones are irrelevant to most of us — in a pandemic or otherwise.Brian X. Chen, a New York Times personal technology writer, wrote about Apple’s plan to release a new version of the iPhone SE next week. That’s the four-year-old model with a relatively small screen and a relatively low price of $399 and up in the United States.This iPhone model hasn’t been a blockbuster, but it’s a nice option for some people. Apple and other companies are likely to keep releasing more fresh smartphone models this year, perhaps with some pandemic-related delays.Conditions aren’t ideal for selling stuff. American consumer spending in March fell at the fastest rate in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data. Many stores around the world, including Apple’s and other cellphone retailers’, are closed. Millions of newly unemployed people don’t have spare money, and Americans are shifting what they are buying. Groceries and streaming video, yes. Electronics, no.Apple probably had this latest model ready to go before the pandemic hit — and sure, why not give it a go? The honest truth is, it’s impossible to predict if and when our buying habits will return to normal.New smartphones have been a tough sell for some time. People in the United States and many other countries are waiting longer to replace their phones — for Americans, it’s more than three years on average.Pick your favorite explanation for this phenomenon. Many people don’t want to pay the going rate of $1,000 or more for phones with all the bells and whistles. To some people, even the features that are supposed to be exciting feel blah.The best explanation for the smartphone sales malaise is a simple one: This is what happens when products go from new and novel to normal.Products get more reliable and resilient as they become mass market, and new models don’t feel so different from the old. Apart from the die-hards, most people lose interest in the latest and greatest. The hot new thing feels…fine.In Brian’s assessment of last fall’s iPhone models, he said there was no rush to buy a new phone if your current one is less than a few years old. (Yes, a professional tech reviewer suggested you might NOT need to buy something.)The shift from wow to shrug happened with cars, personal computers and televisions. More than a decade after modern smartphones hit the market, we’ve lost our zing for those pocket computers, too. Until economic conditions stabilize, our zing will probably be even less zingy than normal.A smartphone is now a refrigerator. We need it, but we don’t replace our current model when a new ice-making feature comes out. This is not great for companies with shiny new phones to sell. For the rest of us, it’s fine.

When old tech really is a problem

A three-year-old smartphone is great. Broken government technology that’s failing struggling people is not.My colleagues have written about the Small Business Administration’s online application system melting down with loan requests from businesses applying for help. A Lyft driver in New York was told to fax his pay stubs to the unemployment office. There are unprecedented demands right now. But, wow, this is a bad look for government technology when it’s needed most.The problem isn’t necessarily the age of the technology used by government organizations. It’s the upkeep.The hidden secret of the internet is that behind the scenes, there are Sputnik-era computers doing chores like handling your credit card payment on Amazon and filling your online travel reservations. That 60-year-old computer programming language that New Jersey’s governor talked about? It works, as long as there are people to keep it up-to-date.The problem with many government and even corporate technology is the lack of money and care for upkeep. Chris O’Malley, the chief executive of Compuware, which works on old tech, told me there’s a mentality that tech systems are something you set up once and they’re done. Nope. If it ain’t broke, it still needs fixing.

Before we go …

When “less bad” is good. Businesses are cutting back on advertisements. Others are nervous about their ads appearing in a Facebook feed next to grim news. That dynamic is likely to hurt Google and Facebook, which make most of their money from selling ads, my Times colleagues write. Still, the tech titans will probably hold up better than other companies reliant on advertising.We need baby ducks right now: In our doom times, people are gravitating to news websites and social media accounts featuring happy tales like a police officer guiding ducklings, the Times reporter Taylor Lorenz writes. (A shameless plug to stick around for the end of this newsletter.)Another idea to bridge America’s digital divide: Thomas L. Friedman, the Times Opinion columnist, talks up a proposal for federal loans and regulatory changes to help rural communities and cooperatives build fast internet networks. Expanding online access would encourage more inventions like the robotic poultry coop cleaners he found in Minnesota. Yesterday, I wrote about another plan to make fast internet available to more people.Stick to the basics. Brian, in another article, said the pandemic has made it clear what technology is essential in our personal lives, and what is neat but frivolous.Hugs to thisPete Wells, a restaurant critic for The Times, writes a lovely appreciation of this six-hour video of sheep at a California vineyard. They are mostly sitting, bleating or munching grass. The monotony is strangely soothing.You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.To receive On Tech in your inbox each weekday, please sign up here. Read the full article