#3technologydrive

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The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

Addicted to A.I.

Mr. Ton-That, 31, grew up a long way from Silicon Valley. In his native Australia, he was raised on tales of his royal ancestors in Vietnam. In 2007, he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco. The iPhone had just arrived, and his goal was to get in early on what he expected would be a vibrant market for social media apps. But his early ventures never gained real traction.In 2009, Mr. Ton-That created a site that let people share links to videos with all the contacts in their instant messengers. Mr. Ton-That shut it down after it was branded a “phishing scam.” In 2015, he spun up Trump Hair, which added Mr. Trump’s distinctive coif to people in a photo, and a photo-sharing program. Both fizzled.Dispirited, Mr. Ton-That moved to New York in 2016. Tall and slender, with long black hair, he considered a modeling career, he said, but after one shoot he returned to trying to figure out the next big thing in tech. He started reading academic papers on artificial intelligence, image recognition and machine learning.Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Ton-That met in 2016 at a book event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Mr. Schwartz, now 61, had amassed an impressive Rolodex working for Mr. Giuliani in the 1990s and serving as the editorial page editor of The New York Daily News in the early 2000s. The two soon decided to go into the facial recognition business together: Mr. Ton-That would build the app, and Mr. Schwartz would use his contacts to drum up commercial interest.Police departments have had access to facial recognition tools for almost 20 years, but they have historically been limited to searching government-provided images, such as mug shots and driver’s license photos. In recent years, facial recognition algorithms have improved in accuracy, and companies like Amazon offer products that can create a facial recognition program for any database of images.Mr. Ton-That wanted to go way beyond that. He began in 2016 by recruiting a couple of engineers. One helped design a program that can automatically collect images of people’s faces from across the internet, such as employment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Venmo. Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping, and Twitter said it explicitly banned use of its data for facial recognition. Read the full article

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People Are Panic-Buying Meat, Toilet Paper … and Pelotons?

Lauren Allbright, a teacher, children’s book author and triathlete, was antsy from weeks of sheltering in place. So last month, she “panic bought” a $2,245 Peloton bike.It was a “pricey decision,” she admitted. But her gym was closed, and it had been raining nonstop in Richardson, Texas, where she lives. Soon the heat would make it even harder for her to train outside.So when Texas extended its stay-in-place rules by a month, Ms. Allbright, 39, clicked “buy.” She reasoned that her husband and three children would also use the internet-connected bike, which comes with streaming classes for an extra $39 a month.“Working out daily is huge for our mental health,” she said.Peloton, which last year endured a rocky initial public offering and a widely mocked holiday ad, is emerging as a potential winner of the quarantine economy. While gyms, boutique studios and personal trainers have been sidelined, home workout systems are thriving.Since mid-March, Peloton’s stock has soared 86 percent, valuing the New York company at $10 billion, or twice as much as the gym chain Planet Fitness. Last month, Peloton reported a record: More than 23,000 people had joined one of its live classes.When Peloton reports quarterly financial results on Wednesday, Wall Street expects the unprofitable company to post rising sales. Analysts pointed to spikes in the number of ratings for fitness classes on Peloton’s system and longer waits for delivery of the bikes, which signal higher-than-expected demand. The results may not reveal the full extent of Peloton’s popularity, since they cover only a few weeks of the lockdown period in March.“Consumer habits are fundamentally changed coming out of this crisis and this pandemic,” said Ron Josey, an analyst at JMP Securities. “A device and service like Peloton comes to the forefront in that.”Peloton declined to comment ahead of its earnings.Other home fitness companies have reported similar surges in demand. Sales at Echelon, which makes a less expensive internet-connected bike, grew five times higher than expected in the first three months of 2020, with demand comparable to Black Friday, said Lou Lentine, the company’s chief executive. Icon Health & Fitness, which owns the NordicTrack and ProForm equipment brands, said sales last month were four times as high as a year earlier.“It’s absolutely bigger than any other boom time we’ve had,” said Mark Watterson, president of iFit, a division of Icon Health.New converts include Ben Carlson, a wealth manager in Grand Rapids, Mich. He wasn’t interested in a home workout setup before because he exercised on lunch breaks at a gym near his office.But now that he’s working at home with three children under the age of 6, it’s harder to get away for a run. Last month, he bought a Peloton, which he rides after his children are in bed.The bike is “part of my new life for the time being,” Mr. Carlson, 38, said. Even when things reopen, he said, “I don’t know that I’ll be the first one to rush back into the gym.”Gyms and studios, which have frozen memberships while they are closed, are hurting. Some yoga and dance studios have resorted to asking for donations in exchange for free online classes. Several national gym chains have faced lawsuits and state investigations for charging fees during the shutdown.ClassPass, an online service for booking studio classes, said its revenue had dropped to nearly zero within 10 days in March. Last month, it rushed to create a virtual workout offering while laying off or furloughing more than half of its 690-person staff. It now offers 50,000 virtual classes and has waived the commission it normally takes from studios.Mindbody, a similar service, laid off or furloughed around 700 people, or 35 percent of its work force, in early April. Rick Stollmeyer, chief executive, has said he does not believe Mindbody’s business will recover for more than a year.SoulCycle, which operates dozens of cycling studios, closed them in March, cutting employee pay by 25 percent and furloughing its instructors. The company began offering virtual workouts on SiriusXM and through an app called Variis, operated by Equinox Group, SoulCycle’s parent company.“Saturday Night Live” ribbed SoulCycle’s attempt to move its self-described “inspirational, meditative fitness experience” into instructors’ apartments. “I hear a lot of people talking about antibody. I am pro-body!” an instructor named Toyota, played by Chris Redd, barked.In March, SoulCycle also began taking preorders for a $2,500 home bike that it announced last year. The bikes, available in certain U.S. cities, are expected to begin shipping this month.“Equinox Group anticipates the consumer will want experiences both online and offline,” a spokesman said. When its studios reopen, SoulCycle said, it will make changes like placing bikes — normally packed close together — six feet apart, significantly cutting down on the number of customers per class.Peloton initially responded to the virus by extending a 30-day free trial of its digital-only subscription to its streaming classes to 90 days. It introduced contactless delivery for its equipment and pledged to waive up to $1 million of subscription fees for customers who had lost their jobs or were unable to work because of the coronavirus. Peloton also closed 96 showrooms around the country and stopped delivering the treadmills it also makes.Peloton and other providers of home exercise equipment are under pressure to create enough fresh digital content to keep users engaged. Among the most popular videos on Icon Health’s iFit platform are the ones that let people work out to travel montages, like a tour of Egyptian tombs.“People use them as a mind escape,” said Colleen Logan, head of marketing at Icon Health. “In your own four walls, you don’t want to be looking at someone else’s four walls.”Peloton stopped filming live classes in early April after an employee at its New York studio tested positive for the coronavirus. But by the end of the month, it was streaming live classes again.The first one happened on April 22 from the apartment of Robin Arzón, Peloton’s head instructor. More than 23,000 customers logged in and rode along with her, issuing virtual high fives and climbing a digital leader board.“When things are uncertain, we adapt,” Ms. Arzón wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of herself surrounded by production equipment and electrical cords in her apartment. Read the full article

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In This Creepy New Novel, the Toys Are Watching Us

Samanta Schweblin’s writing straddles the unsettling border between the real and the surreal. Her novel “Fever Dream” takes place in a hospital where a dying woman narrates episodes from her past to a strange young boy who is missing part of his soul. Her short story collection “Mouthful of Birds” features a woman who falls in love with a merman, an expectant mother who shrinks her fetus to the size of an almond and spits it out, and a teenage girl who devours live birds.Her latest novel, “Little Eyes,” may be her most unsettling work yet — and her most realistic. Its dystopian premise is eerily plausible: People around the world have become obsessed with robotic stuffed animals called kentukis, which are operated remotely by strangers who can move and see the toy’s surroundings but can’t communicate except through grunts and squeaks.The narrative unfolds in more than a dozen towns and cities around the world, with characters that include “dwellers” who inhabit the toys and the “keepers” who own them. A lonely Guatemalan boy operates a stuffed dragon in Norway and dreams of seeing snow. A Peruvian woman who inhabits a bunny in Germany becomes engrossed with the romantic life of her keeper. A Venezuelan girl who has been kidnapped by sex traffickers is rescued by a panda kentuki controlled by someone in Croatia. The relationships between the owners and their toys range from nurturing to manipulative to violent, raising questions about voyeurism, the limits of virtual connection and how technology is both infantilizing and empowering us.“There’s a lot of ambiguity in her writing, and she trusts the reader a lot,” Megan McDowell, who translated “Little Eyes” and Schweblin’s earlier works into English, said in a Skype interview. “She leads you where she wants you to go, and then she leaves you there.”Schweblin, 42, grew up in a middle-class family on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and has lived in Berlin since 2012. She has long been celebrated as one of the most innovative Spanish-language writers of her generation, ever since she published her award-winning debut collection nearly 20 years ago. Her books have been translated in 35 languages. But her work has only recently caught on with U.S. readers, beginning with the English translation in 2017 of “Fever Dream.” Since then, her global rise has been swift: “Fever Dream” was a finalist for the Booker International Prize and won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novella, and is being adapted into a film for Netflix; both “Mouthful of Birds” and “Little Eyes” were longlisted for the Booker International Prize.In an email interview, Schweblin discussed the avoidance of technology in literature, the surreal nature of her work and how she thinks quarantine is affecting us. A condensed and edited excerpt from the exchange, which McDowell translated, is below.Can you tell me about where you are right now and how the pandemic has affected your daily life?I’m in Lago Puelo, in the far south of Argentine Patagonia, a small and isolated town. I came here almost two months ago now to visit my mom for a few days, but the pandemic and obligatory quarantine trapped me, and I haven’t been able to get back to Berlin.The first days were tough. Life was telling me: You’re staying here, with your little carry-on suitcase and your two books for the plane, you’re staying here and you have no return date. But now the days pass quickly, and I feel ever more comfortable, strangely comfortable. I rented a ramshackle cabin from a neighbor where I go every day to write. On the way I pass cows, bulls, horses, packs of dogs that keep me company almost the whole way. I concentrate on work, I exercise, I practically don’t talk to anyone all day long. I’m almost ashamed to say it: I’m happy amid the storm.How did you come up with the concept of kentukis?From the intersection of some circumstances of my life two or three years ago: a lot of connection with other people through social networks and mobile devices, traveling a lot, practically jumping city to city, language to language and culture to culture. Also a disquiet, or curiosity, that I couldn’t manage to formulate to myself and that had to do, precisely, with the way literature was writing these worlds.I was reading contemporary literature, and I could feel how writers often avoided naming terms that by then absolutely belonged to our reality: “WhatsApp,” “Instagram,” even something as simple as the idea of a “cellphone.”I myself, in my own writing, found myself noticing this problem. Why does the incursion of these technological realities into more literary texts bother us so much? Or, for example, absolutely realistic and literary poetry that dares to include this new reality, but are then labeled as “tech-poetry” or “sci-fi” or “futurist”? I wondered, and I still wonder, what happens to us with technology that we incorporate it so easily into our everyday, but then we reject it in the space of fiction?As a writer, another question arose from all this, the question that I think finally freed the idea of the kentukis: How can we talk about technology without getting tangled up in technical terms? How can we talk about the problems that we, as users, have with technology, without letting technology play a starring role?Your work often features animals, and “Little Eyes” centers on machines that are part human, part stuffed animals. What effect were you aiming for with that combination?Animals, toys, robots, all have in common a strange moral force that they exercise over us. There’s something in those eyes, in the way we see ourselves reflected, that destabilizes us. The digital world is full of strangers, real people without faces or bodies. If we could see their facial expressions and gestures, would we behave the same way with them?Pets watch how we live, they know we’re real, and we like to be looked at and adored. But it also soothes us to know that an animal looks but doesn’t talk, adores but doesn’t offer an opinion.Something that makes the relationships between kentukis and their owners so uncomfortable is that the kentukis can’t speak. That reminded me of something I read about your childhood — that you stopped speaking for a year when you were 12 because you didn’t want to be misunderstood. I wondered how that experience shaped your approach to language and writing.How odd, I had never made that connection, but you’re absolutely right. The thing is, language has always made me uncomfortable. I feel language as something heavy, rigid, but above all, inexact. It’s so easy to open our mouths and say something we’d rather not have said, it’s so terrifying to finally name out loud this thing that wasn’t said and to see it transformed into something real.Clarice Lispector said, “The word is my dominion over the world.” That’s what I feel with the written word: While orality exposes me to all the noises and dangers of language, the written word stops the world and gives me all the time I need to say exactly what I want to say.At the moment, we’re all isolated but the world also feels more interconnected, because every person in every country is experiencing, to a degree, the same catastrophe. As an artist, how are you processing what’s happening right now? Do you think the world you created in “Little Eyes” will resonate with people who are now even more dependent on technology for connection?It’s strange, because it wasn’t intentional. In “Little Eyes,” the users connect without bodies, they’re there and at the same time they’re not. They can move freely around another person’s living, nip at their heels, and still not really be there.In this sense, the quarantine isn’t imposing something new. We’ll come out of it with new rules, which will normalize part of this world in which we are beings who are ever more surveilled, and where the physical presence of bodies almost seems threatening.What are you working on right now?I’ve been thinking about a new novel for a few months now, but I’m still in the stage of notes and preparation, and I still don’t fully see its form or tone. In part because of this coronavirus quarantine but also because of personal reasons, my life has taken a radical turn in these past three months. I feel dizzy, as I guess most people in the world are right now, and I foresee that something essential is changing in the way I look at everything. I guess it’s a process that we’re all going through. I feel myself floating when I’m surprised to see I don’t know where I stand, and my ideas about what fiction is and how it affects reality change day by day. Read the full article

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Vallejo Official's Removal Is Sought After He Throws Cat During Zoom Meeting

The city Planning Commission meeting in Vallejo, Calif., last week followed the same humdrum pattern of so many municipal meetings: There was the Pledge of Allegiance and a roll call, followed by various reports.That posed the usual challenges: Commissioners with microphones muted when they were trying to be heard, some of them appearing half offscreen at times or talking over one another.But things took an unexpected turn about 2 hours and 24 minutes into the session after one of the commissioners, Chris Platzer, was asked if he had any comments after reviewing a project application.“Yes, this is the section where you can, Commissioner Platzer,” the commission’s chairman said.The cat meowed loudly again. “OK, first, I’d like to introduce my cat,” Mr. Platzer said, lifting it close to the camera and then, with two hands, tossing it off screen.The cat squeaked as it was being thrown, and a thud could be heard.One commissioner on the videoconference put his hands to his forehead and covered his eyes in response.The meeting concluded 26 minutes later, but that was hardly the end of it.Bob Sampayan, the mayor of Vallejo, which is about 30 miles north of San Francisco, and Robert McConnell, a City Council member and the liaison to the commission, have asked for the council to consider Mr. Platzer’s immediate removal at a meeting on Tuesday, a city spokeswoman, Christina Lee, said on Monday.“The city does not condone the behavior that Vallejo Planning Commissioner Chris Platzer exhibited during the April 20th Planning Commission meeting,” she said. “This type of behavior does not model the core values of the City of Vallejo.”After the planning meeting adjourned, Mr. Platzer was heard using expletives, she said, adding that the mayor and Mr. McConnell discussed his behavior immediately after the episode and called for his removal within 48 hours.Stephanie Bell, senior director of cruelty casework for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the group was prepared to place the cat “in an understanding, loving home” if Mr. Platzer’s “lack of patience or understanding” made cat guardianship inappropriate.“The cats in our care rely on us for everything, including food, respect and affection, and no one should ever punish them for seeking our attention,” she said. “While cats are known for agility, this cat was thrown and could have slammed into furniture, the wall or the ground.”As of Monday morning, the city had not received a formal resignation from Mr. Platzer, Ms. Lee said; however, The Times-Herald of Vallejo reported on Saturday that it had received an email from him suggesting that he was stepping down.Mr. Platzer, who could not be reached on Monday, was appointed to the volunteer position in August 2016 and his term was set to expire in June.“I did not conduct myself in the Zoom meeting in a manner befitting of a planning commissioner and apologize for any harm I may have inflicted,” he wrote in the email, The Times-Herald reported. “I serve at the pleasure of the council and no longer have that trust and backing.”He added, “We are all living in uncertain times and I certainly, like many of you, am adjusting to a new normalcy.”The Zoom episode was one of the latest to surface as officials adjust to remote working. In Florida, a judge this month admonished lawyers for getting too lax in their dress during their videoconference court appearances. Read the full article

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An Official’s Removal Is Sought After He Throws Cat During Zoom Meeting

The city Planning Commission meeting in Vallejo, Calif., last week followed the same humdrum pattern of so many municipal meetings: There was the Pledge of Allegiance and a roll call, followed by various reports.That posed the usual challenges: Commissioners with microphones muted when they were trying to be heard, some of them appearing half offscreen at times or talking over one another.But things took an unexpected turn about 2 hours and 24 minutes into the session after one of the commissioners, Chris Platzer, was asked if he had any comments after reviewing a project application.“Yes, this is the section where you can, Commissioner Platzer,” the commission’s chairman said.The cat meowed loudly again. “OK, first, I’d like to introduce my cat,” Mr. Platzer said, lifting it close to the camera and then, with two hands, tossing it off screen.The cat squeaked as it was being thrown, and a thud could be heard.One commissioner on the videoconference put his hands to his forehead and covered his eyes in response.The meeting concluded 26 minutes later, but that was hardly the end of it.Bob Sampayan, the mayor of Vallejo, which is about 30 miles north of San Francisco, and Robert McConnell, a City Council member and the liaison to the commission, have asked for the council to consider Mr. Platzer’s immediate removal at a meeting on Tuesday, a city spokeswoman, Christina Lee, said on Monday.“The city does not condone the behavior that Vallejo Planning Commissioner Chris Platzer exhibited during the April 20th Planning Commission meeting,” she said. “This type of behavior does not model the core values of the City of Vallejo.”After the planning meeting adjourned, Mr. Platzer was heard using expletives, she said, adding that the mayor and Mr. McConnell discussed his behavior immediately after the episode and called for his removal within 48 hours.Stephanie Bell, senior director of cruelty casework for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the group was prepared to place the cat “in an understanding, loving home” if Mr. Platzer’s “lack of patience or understanding” made cat guardianship inappropriate.“The cats in our care rely on us for everything, including food, respect and affection, and no one should ever punish them for seeking our attention,” she said. “While cats are known for agility, this cat was thrown and could have slammed into furniture, the wall or the ground.”As of Monday morning, the city had not received a formal resignation from Mr. Platzer, Ms. Lee said; however, The Times-Herald of Vallejo reported on Saturday that it had received an email from him suggesting that he was stepping down.Mr. Platzer, who could not be reached on Monday, was appointed to the volunteer position in August 2016 and his term was set to expire in June.“I did not conduct myself in the Zoom meeting in a manner befitting of a planning commissioner and apologize for any harm I may have inflicted,” he wrote in the email, The Times-Herald reported. “I serve at the pleasure of the council and no longer have that trust and backing.”He added, “We are all living in uncertain times and I certainly, like many of you, am adjusting to a new normalcy.”The Zoom episode was one of the latest to surface as officials adjust to remote working. In Florida, a judge this month admonished lawyers for getting too lax in their dress during their videoconference court appearances. Read the full article

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Australia’s Fire Season Ends, and Researchers Look to the Next One

“Nine times out of 10,” he said, manual analysts produce more accurate results than the model. Using their experience, analysts are able to incorporate the uncertainty inherent in fire behavior, something “the computer just isn’t able to grasp.” But where the computer model excels, Dr. Heemstra said, is in analyzing several fires at once and determining which one poses the greatest risk — and therefore which one manual analysts should focus on.Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, has developed computer software called Spark, which aims to improve upon Phoenix.Phoenix was built to predict fire behavior in forest and grass, Dr. Heemstra said, so for several other fuel types, like shrub land, “it’s a bit like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.” Spark, because it uses unique equations for each fuel type, is more intuitive and reliable. It could be “the next evolutionary step” in firefighting models, Dr. Heemstra said, and the NSW Rural Fire Service hopes to use it as early as the next fire season.Whereas fire behavior models like Phoenix and Spark help predict the spread of a fire, drone technology may be able to predict where fires are likely to start. For the moment, drones are used mainly to monitor grassland fires. Forest fires burn particularly hot, and are volatile, making them unsafe for drones to fly over or for anyone nearby to operate the devices.The wildfire conditions in Australia are sufficiently severe that they verge on otherworldly. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., has been exploring, with the CSIRO, the possibility of testing artificial intelligence for drones, rovers and satellites — not yet developed but intended for future space exploration — on the fires. This software would need to withstand extreme conditions on other planets, like “hot temperatures, low visibility and turbulent winds,” said Natasha Stavros, a science system engineer at J.P.L., in an email.A November 2019 study by J.P.L.’s Blue Sky Thinktank, on which Dr. Stavros was an author, found that the fire-management technologies offering the highest return on investment were autonomous micro-aerial vehicles — small drones typically weighing less than a quarter of a pound — that would be able to navigate themselves through wildfires. Eventually, these drones would operate in autonomous groups or “swarms,” which could monitor wider areas. Their ability to communicate with one another and a distant control center could potentially be used in exploring other planets. Read the full article

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Facebook-Powered Virus 'Heat Map' Unveiled

Researchers on Monday unveiled a coronavirus "heat map" powered by Facebook data which is aimed at helping track the spread of the disease and plan for reopening society.The Carnegie Mellon University project offers "real-time indications of COVID-19 activity not previously available from any other source," according to a university statement.The map was developed with millions of responses to surveys of Facebook and Google users as part of an effort to monitor the spread of the virus.Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the heat map, currently available for the United States, was being expanded globally with help from University of Maryland research teams."As the world fights COVID-19 and countries develop plans to reopen their societies, it's critical to have a clear understanding of how the disease is spreading," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page and in the Washington Post."With a community of billions of people globally, Facebook can uniquely help researchers and health authorities get the information they need to respond to the outbreak and start planning for the recovery."Carnegie Mellon researchers said they are receiving about one million responses per week from Facebook users, and have also gotten some 600,000 from Google users."Using these and other unique data sources, the CMU researchers will monitor changes over time, enabling them to forecast COVID-19 activity several weeks into the future," the research team said.The research uses responses to Facebook surveys about symptoms people are experiences, with data controlled by university team and not shared with the social network.The scientists also rely on anonymized data from Google and other partners on symptoms and search queries."The survey asked people if they have symptoms such as fevers, coughing, shortness of breath or loss of smell that are associated with COVID-19," Zuckerberg said."Since experiencing symptoms is a precursor to becoming more seriously ill, this survey can help forecast how many cases hospitals will see in the days ahead and provide an early indicator of where the outbreak is growing and where the curve is being successfully flattened." Read the full article

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Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10 Series Tipped to Get One UI 2.1 Next Month

Samsung has lately been comparatively more active at rolling out software updates, especially when it comes to flagships. The company is looking to continue the momentum with its previous generation flagships as well. As per a report, Samsung is set to release the One UI 2.1 update for the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 series next month. Moreover, Samsung is also planning to roll out the One UI 2.1 update for its 2018 flagship phones as well, which include the Galaxy S9 duo and the Galaxy Note 9.As per a report, a Samsung community moderator has revealed that the Galaxy S10, S10e, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy Note 10 will get the One UI 2.1 build based on Android 10 in the next three weeks. Currently, the only four phones in Samsung's portfolio that run One UI 2.1 are the Galaxy Z Flip and the Galaxy S20 trio. In terms of standout features, One UI 2.1 is not much different from One UI 2.0, except for the Quick Share file transfer feature.The report also adds that the next major build of Samsung's custom skin - tentatively called One UI 2.5 – will be based on Android 11 and will debut with the Galaxy Note 20. Moreover, the One UI 2.5 build is expected to arrive on the Galaxy S20, S10, and the Galaxy Note 10 series down the road.Separately, another Samsung community manager has reportedly mentioned on the company's official support channel that the One UI 2.1 update will be rolled out for the company's 2018 flagships as well. Although an exact release date has not been revealed, the Galaxy S9, S9+, and the Galaxy Note 9 are set to get the One UI 2.1 OTA in the foreseeable future.Is Redmi Note 9 Pro the new best phone under Rs. 15,000? We discussed how you can pick the best one, on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below. Read the full article

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True Tales of Quarantined Socializing

Digital dance raves. Streaming soundbaths. Book readings by phone. Now we’ve gotta get creative. Read the full article

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Amazon Bans, Then Reinstates, Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’

SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon quietly banned Adolf Hitler's manifesto “Mein Kampf” late last week, part of its accelerating efforts to remove Nazi and other hate-filled material from its bookstore, before quickly reversing itself.The retailer, which controls the majority of the book market in the United States, is caught between two demands that cannot be reconciled. Amazon is under pressure to keep hate literature off its vast platform at a moment when extremist impulses seem on the rise. But the company does not want to be seen as the arbiter of what people are allowed to read, which is traditionally the hallmark of repressive regimes.Booksellers that sell on Amazon say the retailer has no coherent philosophy about what it decides to prohibit, and seems largely guided by public complaints. Over the last 18 months, it has dropped books by Nazis, the Nation of Islam and the American neo-Nazis David Duke and George Lincoln Rockwell. But it has also allowed many equally offensive books to continue to be sold.An Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement on Tuesday that the platform provides “customers with access to a variety of viewpoints” and noted that “all retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer.”“Mein Kampf” was first issued in Germany in 1925 and is the foundational text of Nazism. The Houghton Mifflin edition of “Mein Kampf,” continuously available in the United States since 1943, was dropped by Amazon on Friday.“We cannot offer this book for sale,” the retailer told booksellers that had been selling the title, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.After disappearing for a few days, “Mein Kampf” is once again being sold directly by Amazon. But secondhand copies and those from third-party merchants appear to be still prohibited, a distinction that sellers said made no sense.But on Amazon’s subsidiary AbeBooks, which operates largely independently, hundreds of new and used copies of “Mein Kampf” are available.“It’s ridiculous how the greatest e-commerce company in the world has such lousy control of their platforms,” said Scott Brown, a California bookseller who sells on Amazon. “They somehow can’t prevent price gouging and they can’t prevent people from selling counterfeit goods and they can’t manage to — or don’t want to — effectively implement a Nazi ban.”For years, Amazon took the attitude that it would sell even the most objectionable books. Nazi books garnered a following and accumulated good reviews. That led to increased sales and prominence on the platform, which in turn prompted increasing demands from Holocaust memorial associations and other groups that the books be dropped.Amazon has also been under pressure for how it depicts Nazis. In February, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum criticized “Hunters,” an Amazon series showing a deadly human chess game at a concentration camp. The memorial said the fictional scene “welcomes future deniers.” The creator of the drama, David Weil, responded that he employed fiction because he did not want to trivialize reality.Amazon also prohibited last week all editions of “The International Jew,” the anti-Semitic propaganda published by the automaker Henry Ford in the early 1920s, as well as editions of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the notorious fabrication from the early 20th century describing a plan for Jewish domination.Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust, a group that works with students, school and communities in Britain, said Amazon should go further. She welcomed the dropping of “Mein Kampf” but tweeted that “surely @AmazonUK should also remove books by Himmler, Goebbels and Rosenberg too?”On an Amazon sellers forum devoted to the topic, quite a few merchants expressed queasiness about the retailer’s latest actions.“When companies decide what you can and can’t read,” wrote one, “the population is in for real trouble.”Another said the wrong books were being dropped.“What I’d really like to see them ban are the books that are really hurting people, like ‘Stop seeing your doctor and cure your cancer the NATURAL way.’ ”Perhaps it was the attention, or perhaps “Mein Kampf” is something people want to read as they hunker down around the country, but its sales rank on Amazon rose to 3,115 on Tuesday from about 50,000 a few weeks ago. Read the full article

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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

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Google Building Self-Check Website for Coronavirus

US President Donald Trump announced Friday that internet giant Alphabet is creating a website where people will be able to check whether they have symptoms of the novel coronavirus.Verily Life Sciences, once a project in a Google X lab devoted to "moonshot" projects and now its own health business unit, is testing a "tool to help triage individuals for COVID-19 testing," Google confirmed on Twitter."Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time," the tweet said, referring to San Francisco and surrounding communities.Trump thanked Google while declaring a state of national emergency due to the deadly coronavirus pandemic.Google is helping to develop a website "to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location," Trump said.Google has a large team of engineers devoted to the project, and has made significant progress, according to Trump."Our overriding goal is to stop the spread of the virus and help all Americans impacted by this," Trump said."Again, we don't want everybody taking this test. It is totally unnecessary. And this will pass."A launch date for the website should be known by late Sunday, according to Vice President Mike Pence."You can go to the website, type in your symptoms and be given direction whether or not a test is indicated," Pence said.The website will then direct users to locations where they can obtain drive-through testing, he said.San Francisco has begun setting up temporary, drive-through coronavirus testing locations. Read the full article

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Baby Brezza, a $200 Formula Maker, May Pose Health Risks to Infants

Like many first-time parents, Jon Borgese, a tech executive in Manhattan, had heard the buzz around the Baby Brezza formula maker, a countertop device that automatically dispenses warm bottles of formula at the touch of a button.The $200 machine, widely available at retailers like Amazon, Target and Buy Buy Baby, markets itself as the “most advanced way” to mix powdered baby formula and water “to perfect consistency.”But after Mr. Borgese and his wife, Nicole, started giving the machine-mixed formula bottles last year to their 2-month-old daughter, Lily, she became fussy and began to look thin, he said. The couple rushed her to the pediatrician, who confirmed that Lily was losing weight and sent her for medical tests to determine the cause.The problem was the Baby Brezza gadget, which had dispensed watery formula with insufficient nutrients for the baby, said Dr. Julie Capiola, Lily’s pediatrician. Mr. Borgese said he had since filed two class-action lawsuits against the machine’s maker, claiming the device was defective.“You don’t want any baby or any parent to go through this,” he said, adding that Lily gained weight once the family stopped using the formula maker. “It was very, very upsetting.”Mr. Borgese was one of many parents who have reported issues with the Baby Brezza formula machine, which was the top-selling baby feeding accessory in the United States over the last two years, according to the NPD Group, a market research company. On Amazon, Facebook, Better Business Bureau and parenting forums, people have posted more than 100 complaints saying the machines dispensed incorrect or inconsistent amounts of water or baby formula.Separately, five pediatricians described to The New York Times how they had recently treated babies — whose parents had fed them Brezza-dispensed bottles — for failure to thrive, a condition caused by lack of nutrients. The doctors said the health risks could be even more severe because infants’ digestive systems aren’t developed enough to process formula that is too watery or too concentrated.“It’s fine if it’s your coffee machine and you get more caffeine,” said Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas. But when it comes to infant formula, she has warned parents against using automated devices like the Baby Brezza, saying it “could potentially be harmful.”David Contract, marketing team lead for the Betesh Group, a private company in Newark that makes the Baby Brezza devices, said the company had carefully calibrated the machines to work with more than 2,000 types of baby formulas and regularly tested the devices for precision. He said people must clean the machines frequently to prevent powder buildup, which could cause the systems to dispense watery formula — requirements he compared to installing infant car seats correctly.“We are confident our machine works properly and accurately when it’s used right,” he said. He later added, “I do think there are people who don’t use it properly, who get a bad outcome, who get a watery bottle because they’re not cleaning, they’re not using the right settings.”Mr. Contract said the Betesh Group believed that the lawsuits were an “attempt by a plaintiff’s lawyer to troll for additional plaintiffs by seeking media attention.” The Brezza machine had no other insurance claims or lawsuits against it, he said.The problems that families said they have had with the Brezza machines illustrate the risks of adopting novel health-related devices before they are on the radar of federal regulators.While the Food and Drug Administration regulates infant formula as a food and the Consumer Product Safety Commission oversees the safety of “durable” baby products like cribs, each agency initially said the other was responsible for vetting possible inaccuracies with automated baby formula-dispensing machines.Last year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission received two reports from health care professionals about how babies who had been fed formula mixed by the Brezza devices had “lost significant weight” or “had to be evaluated after drinking the formula.” Last month, the commission clarified that it was responsible for overseeing the devices and urged consumers to report any problems to saferproducts.gov.“Is anybody overseeing devices like this?” said Dr. Gayle S. Smith, a pediatrician in Richmond, Va., who said she had treated a Brezza-fed baby for failure to thrive. Or, she added, “is it babies who are supposed to fail to thrive in large enough numbers” before regulators intervene?Mr. Contract said the machines were safe and met F.D.A. requirements for materials that come into contact with food.Dr. Jacqueline Winkelmann, a pediatrician in Orange, Calif., said she had seen babies admitted to a hospital for weight loss because they were given bottles that had been mixed incorrectly by hand.“I believe the Baby Brezza Formula Pro is a great way to ensure baby gets the right amount of nutrients in every bottle,” said Dr. Winkelmann, who consults for the Betesh Group.The Betesh Group began selling automated formula-dispensing machines in 2013. The devices took off in 2018 when the company introduced a new model, the Baby Brezza Formula Pro Advanced. About half a million of the Brezza machines have been sold in the United States, the company said. Several similar machines are also available, with brand names like Baby EXO and Zomom.To use the Brezza machine, people fill compartments for water and infant formula powder. They also set the machine to their desired number of ounces and specific type of formula. Mr. Contract said the devices can save parents several minutes per formula bottle, a welcome convenience in the middle of the night.On BabyList, a popular site for expectant parents, more than 60,000 people — or about 6 percent of users — included the Brezza machines on their baby gift registries last year. Many parents swear by the devices.“Instead of stumbling around in the middle of the night, you go into the kitchen, press a button on the machine, go get the baby and, by the time you get back to the kitchen, the warm bottle is ready,” said Linda Murray, senior vice president of consumer experience at BabyCenter, a pregnancy information site where parents have debated the pros and cons of the devices.But Mr. Borgese and some other parents said that even when they carefully cleaned, set and filled the machines, the devices seemed erratic — sometimes producing opaque, milky-looking formula and other times dispensing watery-looking, translucent formula. In a federal class-action case he filed on Feb. 12, Mr. Borgese argued that the Betesh Group knew the devices did not mix the appropriate amount of formula and failed to warn parents and physicians. Some parents who said the device was inconsistent ran their own experiments to test it.“It was never giving you the right ratio,” said Paola Ortega, a brand strategist in Austin, who said the device dispensed too much formula powder and seemed to cause her son, Andrés, to vomit. She compared the machine-dispensed bottles with those she made by hand, she said, and found noticeable differences. Another parent, Ortal Gefen in Orange, Conn., said she stopped using a Brezza machine to make bottles for her son, Henry, in 2017 after she discovered it “wasn’t consistent from one bottle to the next.”She recently bought a newer model of the formula maker, which seemed more reliable. “When it works, it’s a lifesaver for parents,” Ms. Gefen said.Some parents who contacted the Betesh Group said they were frustrated with its customer service. In complaints posted on the Baby Brezza Facebook page or filed with the Better Business Bureau, consumers said the company was slow to answer emails, blamed them for user error or told them that their one-year warranties were expired.The Better Business Bureau has posted an F rating, a failing grade, for the Betesh Group, partly because of many complaints against the company and how long it took to respond.Mr. Contract said the company had resolved most of the complaints submitted to the Better Business Bureau and believed that they were generally not “an accurate reflection of our customers’ satisfaction with our products.”He added that the company’s customer service agents provide extensive troubleshooting, often helping people solve user errors like insufficient cleaning. As a precaution, he said, the machines are programmed to stop working and beep after every fourth bottle when they need to be cleaned. The Betesh Group is developing a third-generation “smart” version of the device, which will be introduced this summer. Mr. Contract said it would include an app that enabled parents to direct the Brezza machine to prepare formula bottles from their smartphones. Read the full article

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The Week in Tech: Gigs at Home, but Not What Start-Ups Intended

Each week, we review the week’s news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry.Hello from our new market-melting, social-distancing, work-from-home reality. This is Erin Griffith, a start-ups and venture capital reporter in San Francisco. I hope you are staying sane while staying inside.I’m calling this past week The Tom Hanks Awakening. Seemingly from the moment news broke Wednesday evening that Mr. Hanks, our American treasure, had tested positive for the coronavirus, conversations about the virus shifted from half-measures and are-we-overreacting Twitter debates to blanket cancellations and true fear. A number of prominent tech companies, like Twitter, shifted from recommending that employees work from home to issuing mandatory policies.(Not to diminish the power of Mr. Hanks, but the rapid spread of the virus across the country and the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic may have also nudged things along.)For the tech industry, that means more fallout and some opportunity. Every business, from small start-ups to the largest tech companies in the world, is preparing for a challenging year.For many large, unprofitable start-ups, this will be the first true test of whether their businesses can withstand a downturn. Many of the industry’s most prominent start-up “unicorns,” including Uber, Airbnb and WeWork, have long boasted that they were born in the recession of 2008-09. They capitalized on the moment by giving people who were laid off in the downturn flexible “gig economy” work and office space. Therefore, the thinking goes, they can survive the next one.But their businesses are now global, with tens of thousands of employees and delicate networks of millions of customers, drivers, home-rental operators — and, in WeWork’s case, potentially germ-laden office spaces. This is a whole new kind of test for their business models.For example, many Airbnb hosts have seen their bookings fall off a cliff as the company grapples with travel cancellations. This past week, the company made its refund policy more flexible to encourage people to book travel. It even set up a small fund to keep Chinese hosts afloat during the outbreak. Tracey Northcott, a full-time Airbnb host in Japan whom I interviewed for an article, said she had lost $40,000 worth of bookings for April. She is trying to stay upbeat, joking that she may need to start selling off her supplies of toilet paper to make ends meet.The newly announced ban on European travel to the United States only adds to the blow.Drivers for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates petitioned those gig-economy companies for better protections for those affected by the virus. The companies responded by proposing a fund that would pay drivers who have been quarantined or infected. It’s a small gesture of support for the workers, many of whom have no other safety net. But it further strains these money-losing businesses when they’re already under pressure to show investors they can turn a profit.Some companies are set up to thrive in this moment. Digital-learning services are in demand as schools close. The stock prices of remote-working tools like Zoom surged. Telemedicine is growing. Fitness fanatics are flocking to at-home workout systems like Peloton. Teenagers are turning to Instagram memes to get their virus news. Streaming and video-game companies like Netflix and Activision Blizzard and delivery services like Amazon and GrubHub have been added to stock-picker lists. Criminals and scammers are also thriving: Hackers are using misinformation about the virus to set digital traps and steal personal data from people, Sheera Frenkel, Davey Alba and Raymond Zhong reported.Some creative Airbnb hosts are even advertising “corona-free” getaways stocked with doomsday prepper supplies. Capitalism.

Some stories you shouldn’t miss

Oh, right, the election. The fight over what constitutes free speech online has continued to escalate, most recently with a manipulated video of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Twitter, Cecilia Kang reported.The much-buzzed-about Samsung Galaxy flip phone is a dud, Brian Chen determined. Brian tested out the phone’s purported attention-grabbing abilities by conspicuously flipping it open at several bars. “Not a single person noticed or commented on my nonconformist Z Flip,” he wrote, noting that he got more attention for dyeing his hair blue in high school.Outdoor Voices, a prominent e-commerce start-up selling workout clothes to millennial women, recently imploded, pushing out its founder and slashing its valuation by more than half, Sapna Maheshwari and I reported. The blowup revealed the business challenges facing many “direct to consumer” brands backed by venture capital, and the generational challenges between young disrupters and the experienced executives needed to help them mature.How are we doing?We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to bits_newsletter@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. Read the full article

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High-Flying Trading App Robinhood Goes Down at the Wrong Time

“This is a huge black eye for them and they really need to do something to earn back the trust of their clients,” said Ben Carlson, the director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management in New York and the author of the blog, A Wealth of Common Sense. “I can’t recall another time when an entire platform was down all day like this.”During the market turbulence, other trading firms that cater to small investors have also experienced difficulties. The website for mutual fund giant Vanguard experienced “sporadic unavailability” on Friday because of heavy trading volumes, a spokesman said. TD Ameritrade also said trade confirmations were slow to process on Friday. But none were down as long as Robinhood, which has made it particularly easy to buy and sell not only traditional stocks, but also riskier investment products like cryptocurrencies and options, a contract that makes it possible to bet on stocks going up or down.Many Robinhood customers nursing losses on Monday, when markets rose, had purchased options contracts to bet that the markets would fall. When markets instead surged, they were unable to get out of the contracts because the app was down.Taylor Dalton, 29, said he had recently decided to invest roughly $8,000 in stocks and option contracts through Robinhood, including “put” contracts on airline stocks, which would give him the opportunity to profit if their shares declined.“Yesterday, I had plans to close out all of my options and take a profit,” said Mr. Dalton, who co-owns a cupcake and coffee bar franchise. “Now I am in the red,” he added, referring to his gains that have been erased, “and I am not sure what to do.”As for Robinhood, he said, “I am definitely never using them again.”Nathaniel Popper reported from San Francisco and Tara Siegel Bernard from New York. Read the full article

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No Time to Die Trailer Now Available in 10 Indian Languages, Bond Movie to Release in Five

Would you like to watch Daniel Craig's James Bond talk in Bhojpuri? How about Gujarati? Marathi? Or Bengali? Well, thanks to the dedication of Universal Pictures' Indian division, the No Time to Die trailer — originally released in December, only in English — is now available in 10 Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, and the aforementioned four. The new Bond movie isn't actually releasing in all 10 languages, only five: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. The fifth is the English original, naturally. It's hilarious, as you would expect.No Time to Die Hindi trailerNo Time to Die Tamil trailerNo Time to Die Telugu trailerNo Time to Die Kannada trailerNo Time to Die Malayalam trailerNo Time to Die Bengali trailerNo Time to Die Punjabi trailerNo Time to Die Marathi trailerNo Time to Die Gujarati trailerNo Time to Die Bhojpuri trailerDirected by Emmy-winner Cary Joji Fukunaga, No Time to Die will be the twenty-fifth Bond movie overall — the fifth and final for Craig. He stars alongside Rami Malek as the new villain Safin, Léa Seydoux as Bond's returning love interest Dr. Madeleine Swann, Lashana Lynch as the new 007 Nomi, Ralph Fiennes as the MI6 head M, Naomie Harris as M's assistant Eve Moneypenny, Rory Kinnear as the MI6 chief of staff Bill Tanner, Ben Whishaw as the MI6 quartermaster Q, Jeffrey Wright as CIA field officer Felix Leiter, and Christoph Waltz as the returning Ernst Stavro Blofeld.It's been a troubled production for the 25th James Bond film, with original director Danny Boyle exiting due to creative differences in August 2018, a few months prior to start of filming. Fukunaga was hired as the new director and co-writer a month later, with series veteran writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade returning to work alongside. Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) was added to the writing team, while Craig brought in Emmy-winner Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) to polish the script.Owing to all that, No Time to Die's release date was pushed from November 2019 to February 2020, and then later pushed to April 2020. As has been the case for the longest time, EON Productions' Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli are the producers on the new Bond movie, which is a production of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and EON Productions. Universal Pictures is handling No Time to Die distribution outside the US, including in India.Here's the official synopsis for No Time to Die, via Universal Pictures:“In No Time to Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.”No Time to Die is out April 2 in India in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. Filming locations for the new Bond movie included the Faroe Islands, Italy, Jamaica, Norway, and the UK. Read the full article