Venmo and your privacy

On Apps Like Venmo, You May Be Oversharing

TECHNOLOGY

BRIAN X. CHEN

There’s an app for snooping on your friends, family and colleagues to find out about their dinners, the people they’re dating and the parties they’re attending.

But it’s not Facebook. It’s Venmo, the app that became popular more than a decade ago by enabling people to send mobile payments to one another and to post those transactions.

Even if you seldom use Venmo today, the app may be leaking sensitive information about you to the general public.

I recently discovered that my contacts list, which includes the names of people in my phone book, was published on Venmo for anyone using the app to see.

That’s because more than a decade ago, Venmo made people’s contact lists visible to its users. It created an option to hide the address book only two years ago.

Venmo is a strong example of how even as social norms shift the ways we use technology, the companies and their apps don’t change much. Venmo was founded in 2009 as a music start-up that let users buy songs from bands through a text message. By the time eBay acquired it in 2013, it had become a mobile wallet service that was trendy among younger people who were gung-ho about sharing information about themselves online.

At the time, social media was novel, and posting your thoughts, movements and achievements for everyone to know about was cutting edge, not sinister. Since then, we have learned that sharing such seemingly innocuous information can be hazardous. Stalkers, employers or data brokers can use the data to study our whereabouts and activities.

But Venmo remains an app with a strong social networking element, one of many in a generation of apps that are now nearly 15 years old.

In the early 2010s, Venmo rode the coattails of Facebook and Twitter, which brought the concept of a public timeline into the mainstream. Venmo allowed people to publicly post to a feed details of payment transactions, including the dollar amount, time, date and a description, such as a pizza or taxicab emoji.

Venmo, now owned by PayPal — which spun off from eBay in 2015 — has made some changes over the years to protect its users’ privacy. In 2021, it disabled its global feed, a stream where users could see Venmo transactions among strangers.

But critics say the app still falls short. Today, you can see transactions among people who are not your friends if you visit their profiles.

Venmo is still set by default to publicly share when you receive or make a payment. There’s an option to make the transaction private, but if you don’t notice the setting, you could unknowingly broadcast payments.

“It’s not just that I went out to pizza with this person,” said Gennie Gebhart, a managing director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digitalrights nonprofit. “It’s a pattern of who you live with, interact with and do business with, and how it changes over time.”

Last month, The Guardian discovered through a Venmo feed that an aide for Justice Clarence Thomas was taking payments from lawyers who have had business with the Supreme Court, a potential conflict of interest. The aide has since hidden his Venmo activity from public view.

Venmo said in a statement that it had worked to change its privacy measures for customers and that privacy settings could be controlled within its app. “The privacyand safety of allVenmo users is always a top priority,” the company said.

To prevent your day-to-day life from being broadcast on Venmo, click the Me tab inside the app, tap the settings icon and select Privacy. Under default privacy settings, select Private. Then, under the “More” section in Privacy, click “Past Transactions” and make sure to set that to “Change All to Private.”

Venmo has made the contacts list, which can be generated from your smartphone’s address book or your Facebook friends list, viewable to other users.

That can make a lot of information public. In 2021, my colleague Ryan Mac, who was then at BuzzFeed News, used Venmo to discover President Biden’s account and personal contacts list. Mr. Biden later deleted his Venmo account.

On a personal level, a public address book can reveal a new romantic partner to an ex. For professionals, it could expose a doctor’s patients, a journalist’s sources or a salesperson’s clients.

To hide your contacts list from public view, visit the privacy settings, click on Friends List and select Private. Also, toggle off the option for “appear in other users’ friends lists.”

All tech companies change their data-sharing features and settings over time. So take a moment to scroll through your phone and review the settings inside apps you haven’t used in a while to see if there’s something you missed.

-- New York Times (Star Advertiser, August 20, 2023, page E6)

AI startup: xAI

(Reuters) - Elon Musk launched his long-teased artificial intelligence startup xAI on Wednesday, unveiling a team made up of engineers from the same big U.S. technology firms that he hopes to challenge in his bid to build an alternative to ChatGPT.

The startup will be led by Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter, who has said on several occasions that the development of AI should be paused and that the sector needed regulation.

"Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality," Musk said in a tweet on Wednesday.

The website said xAI will hold a Twitter Spaces event on July 14.

The team at xAI includes Igor Babuschkin, a former engineer at DeepMind, Tony Wu, who worked at Google, Christian Szegedy, who was also a research scientist at Google and Greg Yang, who was previously at Microsoft.

Musk in March registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing.

The firm lists Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk's family office, as a secretary.

The billionaire had said in April that he would launch TruthGPT or a maximum truth-seeking AI to rival Google's Bard and Microsoft's Bing AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.

Generative AI caught the limelight with OpenAI's launch of popular chatbot ChatGPT, which came in November last year, ahead of the launch of Bard and Bing AI.

Dan Hendrycks, who will advise the xAI team, currently serves as the director of the Center for AI Safety and his work revolves around the risks of AI.

Musk's new company is separate from X Corp, but will work closely with Twitter, Tesla, and other companies, according to the website.

xAI said it is recruiting experienced engineers and researchers in the Bay Area.

the Apple headset

The Apple headset is coming, and it’s called the Apple Vision Pro.

Apple on Monday entered a new category of interest to Hollywood: The virtual reality/augmented reality space, and the Apple Vision Pro is the company’s first product in that sector, as well as the first entirely new product category in nearly a decade.

The headset was announced Monday by CEO Tim Cook during a keynote address at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference. It will “start at $3,499” and launch in early 2024.

And in a sign of how important entertainment will be to the product, Disney CEO Bob Iger appeared onstage during the presentation, calling the product “real life magic” and announcing that Disney+ would be available on the Vision Pro on the day it launches.

“We’re constantly in search of new ways to entertain, inform and inspire our fans by combining extraordinary creativity was groundbreaking technology to create truly remarkable experiences,” Iger said. “And we believe Apple vision Pro is a revolutionary platform that can make our vision a reality.”

The product will “allow us to bring Disney to our fans in ways that were previously impossible,” Iger added, with a sizzle reel showing a user immersed in an NBA game, placing themselves into an episode of Marvel’s What If …? or bringing a Disney World parade into their home.

The Apple Vision Pro is “a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world. It’s the first Apple product you look through and not out,” Cook said in introducing the product. A dial lets the user decide how much of the world around them they can see, or can choose to be immersed in an app. People around the user can see their face if they can see around them, giving them a vision cue.

The initial pitch also included Apple TV+ shows Ted Lasso and Foundation in the sizzle reel.

And an Apple engineer, En Kelly, showcased cinematic modes, letting users watch content on screens in their homes, in a cinematic mode that places the user in a theater, or in real-world locations like at the foot of a mountain.

Apple claims Vision Pro could become a “personal movie theater” by creating a “cinematic experience” for viewing movies, series and sports. Announced features include 4K, HDR, spacial audio and stereoscopic 3D — suggesting that viewers could immerse themselves in James Cameron’s Avatar movies.

Rumored for years, Vision Pro runs on a new spacial computing platform — “the start of an entirely new platform,” the company claimed during the presentation — and has a 3D interface controlled by face, hands and voice.

With a glass lens and lightweight frame, Apple announced that it is working with lens maker Zeiss to offer vision correction in the headset.

The mixed-reality headset has been rumored for months and puts Apple in direct competition with Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, which currently dominates the (still very nascent) market with its Meta Quest devices.

DART mission

NASA’s Asteroid Redirection Test Alters Its Orbital Period

robotaxi

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) - Lyft and Motional are continuing their work towards launching a fully driverless robotaxi service in Las Vegas.

According to a news release, starting Tuesday, as part of a partnership with Motional, the two companies have launched a new all-electric, fully driverless robotaxi in Las Vegas.

The companies say that as part of the launch, Lyft passengers can control their ride without the assistance of a driver, providing a “custom-designed user experience for a fully autonomous journey.”

As part of the experience, riders can now control the following:

Unlocking doors via the Lyft app

Starting the ride from the new in-car Lyft AV App, an intuitive in-ride display tailored to autonomous rideshare

Contacting remote agents if needed

According to the companies, as part of this phase of the program, there are two vehicle operators present in the front seats. The operators are there to monitor the technology and provide additional support to passengers, if needed, the companies said.

In 2023, Motional says it will remove its vehicle operators and the service will become completely driverless.

“Launching Motional’s all-electric IONIQ 5 on Lyft’s network in Las Vegas represents tremendous progress in our vision to make an electric, autonomous, and shared future a reality for people everywhere,” said Logan Green, Lyft’s CEO and co-founder.

The rides, which can be requested through the Lyft app, are offered in an all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 5 autonomous vehicle.

The companies say they have been conducting autonomous rides in Las Vegas since 2018 and this launch is the “next milestone” as they prepare to offer the service in multiple U.S. cities in 2023.

“Motional and Lyft have a clear path to widespread commercialization of Level 4 autonomous vehicles,” says Karl Iagnemma, Motional’s President and CEO. “We’ve led the industry in commercial operations for years, and today’s launch signals we’re on track to deliver a fully driverless service next year. Riders in Las Vegas can now experience Motional’s IONIQ 5 AV that will make that service a reality. Through our strategic partnership with Hyundai, the IONIQ 5 AV is fully customized for driverless ride-hail operation, while maintaining the vehicle’s award-winning comfort and design.”

Elon Musk, Time's person of the year

What do you get the richest person in the world?

How about a perch as Time’s Person of the Year. The magazine has conferred that honor on Tesla founder Elon Musk, citing his work revolutionizing the electric car industry, as well as the fact that his company SpaceX’s won an exclusive NASA contract to put astronauts on the moon. Musk, as the magazine notes, also had a well-received hosting turn on SNL. It wasn’t all encomiums. The magazine also brought up Musk’s penchant for inspiring controversy on social media and his ability to rumble markets with the power of a single tweet.

Time Editor-in-Chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal writes, “In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society. Musk’s rise coincides with broader trends of which he and his fellow technology magnates are part cause and part effect: the continuing decline of traditional institutions in favor of individuals; government dysfunction that has delivered more power and responsibility to business; and chasms of wealth and opportunity. In an earlier era, ambitions on the scale of interplanetary travel were the ultimate collective undertaking, around which Presidents rallied nations….For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year.”

Time named the scientists behind the COVID-19 vaccines as the year’s heroes, it honored “Drivers License” hitmaker Olivia Rodrigo as its artist of the year, and cited Simon Biles, the Olympic gymnast whose decision to go public with her mental health struggles sparked a global debate, as the athlete of the year.

Last year, Time named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the people of the year. Past recipients have included Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

The Metaverse

In its most recent earnings call on July 29, Facebook Inc. (FB, Financial) CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects the social media platform to transition to a "metaverse" company. He said the company’s future is in the metaverse, a virtual social environment where people can be present in digital spaces. This is an embodied internet platform allowing people to play games, work and socialize using digital avatars and virtual reality technology. Virtual reality workspaces will be the company's first step into making the metaverse a reality. The company has been using Workrooms (VR workspace) for meetings internally for about six months, and on Aug. 19, Facebook introduced Horizon Workrooms to the public to showcase how it works.

Commenting on the launch of Horizon, Zuckerberg recently posted on his Facebook page:

“We just launched Horizon Workrooms – a new collaboration experience in virtual reality. When you use Workrooms, it feels like you’re really there with people. You’ll notice conversations flow more naturally and you’ll pick up social cues that are missing on video – people turning to listen to each other, hand gestures, and spatial audio to give everyone a sense of place in the room. There’s also a whiteboard for brainstorming together, a screen for people to video conference in, and virtual desktop so you can use your computer in VR for presentations or multitasking. In the future, working together will be one of the main ways people use the metaverse. Horizon Workrooms is one more step towards bringing the metaverse to life.”

It’s not all bad! 20 things that made the world a better place in 2020

From record-beating scientific discoveries to an elephant baby boom, 2020 was about much more than just the global pandemic

This is not a year we'll look back on fondly. It began with Australia on fire and ends with more than 1.5 million dead in a pandemic.

But there have been bright points in this annus horribilis. While many of us saved lives by hunkering down at home watching Netflix, a communal act of selflessness that shouldn't be soon forgotten, progress was made in science, the environment, and even politics – Biden won! We can buy lab-grown meat! British beavers built a dam for the first time in 400 years!

Here's our rundown of the best news to come out of 2020. 

The world's first mRNA vaccine was made in less than a year

The world's medical and pharma scientists have never made a vaccine as quickly as it did this year – and we got three out of the bargain, with more to come. But the BioNTech and Moderna vaccines will not only let us emerge from lockdown, they're also the first using messenger RNA, proving that vaccine technology works. That not only opens the door for its use against existing diseases but also means we could more quickly make vaccines to fight future pandemics – because we may have to do this all over gain someday. Read more at WIRED.

Lab-grown meat on sale for first time

The era of slaughter for protein could be coming to an end, with the Singapore Food Agency approving for the first time the sale of lab-grown chicken. Made by American company Eat Just, the cells for the "chicken bites" are harvested from live animals and grown in a bioreactor. Though foetal bovine serum is still used in the process, the company plans to switch to a plant-based growing medium for its next production line. Read more at The Guardian

DeepMind solves 50-year-old protein folding problem

DeepMind's AI has accurately predicted protein shapes from their sequences alone, a tough task that normally requires lengthy, expensive lab experiments. While the AI, known as AlphaFold, couldn't unpick all protein structures, it has helped answer questions that have long challenged researchers – and could herald major changes in medical research. Read more at Nature

Nuclear fusion could give us unlimited clean energy

Researchers are building a star on Earth in an attempt to create nuclear power without the radioactive waste. The Joint European Torus (JET) will begin work next year, smashing together hydrogen atoms to generate energy and heat, which could eventually be harvested to generate electricity. Read more at WIRED

Kiwis gift Remarkables land to nation

Dill and Jillian Jardine could have sold their 900 hectares along the shore of Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand's Remarkables mountain range to developers. After all, the region is popular among the remarkably wealthy, including PayPal and Palantir founder Peter Thiel. Instead, the farming couple donated it to a local trust as a park for the enjoyment of everyone, not just billionaires. Read more at The Guardian

Beavers build first dam in four centuries

The National Trust released beavers into the wild in January, after the buck-toothed creatures went extinct in England four-hundred years ago. Efforts to return the animals have found success with beavers in Scotland relocated to the Holnicote Estate in Exmoor, where they've settled in well enough to chew up a few trees and assemble a "modest but… incredibly special" dam, according to the Trust. Read more at the BBC

Spider rediscovered in Surrey

Mike Waite of the Surrey Wildlife Trust spent two years in the dark tramping around a Ministry of Defence site, searching for a specific species of spider not seen in the UK since 1999. But in October, he spotted it: a great fox-spider. "It's a gorgeous spider, if you're into that kind of thing," he said. The two-inch creature doesn't build a web, instead chasing beetles and smaller arachnids in order to immobilise them with venom that liquefies their organs. How very 2020. Read more at The Guardian

First new coral reef found in 120 years

Scientists mapping the seafloor north of Australia's Great Barrier Reef made a massive discovery: a new reef that's taller than the Empire State Building. It's the first such coral structure to be found in the region in 120 years, and aided by an underwater robot, the year-long exploration journey also discovered 30 new species of sea life, including a 150-foot predator string – yes, that's right – known as a siphonophore. Read more at the BBC

Pandas have sex after decade-long wait

When the pandemic hit, Hong Kong's Ocean Park zoo shut to visitors. Several weeks later, perhaps enjoying their new-found privacy, pandas Ying Ying and Le Le did something zookeepers had been trying to inspire for ten long years: they had sex. The mating doesn't appear to have led to a pregnancy for Ling Ling, but getting it on after ten years of ignoring each other is encouraging to those in stale long-term relationships everywhere. Read more at VICE

There's a baby boom – for elephants

The Amboseli National Park in Kenya reported more than 170 calves by the end of summer, versus 113 in all of 2018 – including two sets of twins. The pachyderm pregnancy peak followed heavy rain the previous year, which means better grazing and more successful births. Alongside the elephantine baby boom, Kenya has said that the rate of poaching has fallen to just seven – down from 80 in 2018 – with numbers of the animals rebounding from 16,000 in 1989 to more than 34,000. Read more at NPR

Painting turbine blades slashes bird deaths

The shift to wind power is good news for the planet, but bad news for birds that fly into the blades of turbines at onshore wind farms. Researchers at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research have found a potential solution: painting one of the three rotor blades black to make them easier to see. And it worked, reducing bird strikes by 70 per cent – not bad for a lick of paint. Read more at the BBC

UK record coal-free run tops 67 days

67 days, 22 hours and 55 minutes – it's the longest the UK has gone without coal-generated power since the industrial revolution. The record run came to an end mid-June only because a north Yorkshire power station fired up a coal unit for maintenance. The rest of the energy mix during the two-plus months was dominated by renewable energy at 36 per cent, followed by gas at 33 per cent and nuclear at 21 per cent. Read more at The Independent

Enzyme eats through plastics

Plastic waste is choking the planet, but researchers at the University of Toulouse: have found a mutant bacterial enzyme that will happily chew through it all, breaking it down for easy recycling into new plastic materials. The enzyme was originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, though it needed some tweaking to optimise its ability to break down plastic. The mutated version managed to degrade a tonne of waste plastic in ten hours. Read more in The Guardian

SpaceX's first launch with humans

Elon Musk's SpaceX started the commercial space flight era by successfully launching a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon capsule and two Nasa astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, to the International Space Station (ISS). The Falcon 9 rocket has previously ferried cargo to orbit, but the trip marks the first private space launch with humans aboard – and the beginning of private space flight, including tourism. Read more at WIRED

Porn starts to consider ethics

Pornhub removed two-thirds of the videos on its site – some ten million clips – after an investigation by the New York Times revealed some of the user-uploaded clips featured children and other abuse, sparking Visa and Mastercard to halt processing payments. From now on, the site will only permit verified users to upload videos, perhaps finally kickstarting an era of ethics in mainstream porn sites. Read more at Motherboard

UK gets its first tech union

United Tech and Allied Workers set up a branch in the UK amid wider activism in the sector in the US, with walkouts at Facebook, Google and Amazon. The aim is to give workers more power to hold their employers to account without having to quit and find another job – not easy during a pandemic. Read more at WIRED

Art sculpture saves train driver

Public transport met public art in dramatic, life-saving fashion when a Rotterdam metro train crashed through buffers at the end of the elevated line in the Dutch city. The driver's carriage was saved from falling the 10m to the ground by a public art installation by Maarten Struijs, propped up by one of two whales' tails. Struijs called the accident "rather poetic" and he's not wrong: the name of the work is Saved by a Whale's Tale. Read more in The Times

Kamala Harris becomes first female vice president

The US has its female vice-president, and she's a woman of colour known to her step-kids as "Momala". In a year of difficult politics, and amid a backdrop of racial tension, the US managed to make a major step forward by electing Kamala Harris as the first female vice-president. Read more pretty much anywhere, but start with the New York Times

Argentina set to legalise abortion

Abortion remains illegal across most of South America, but Argentina is set to become the first large nation and only the fourth on the continent to allow women the right to choose. It follows the lead of Cuba, Uruguay and Guyana, though UN research suggests more than six million abortions still happen in the region each year, the majority of which are unsafe for women. The bill still needs to be approved by the senate later in December. Read more at The Guardian

Endurance runner carries disabled friend to top of Mount Olympus

Eleftheria Tosiou always wanted to scale Mount Olympus, the highest peak in Greece. The wheelchair-bound student reached the goal with the help of her friend, long-distance endurance runner Marios Giannakou, who scaled the 2,917-metre mountain with Tosiou strapped to his back. “I have never done something more beautiful,” said Giannakou. “I think it has completed me as a person.” Read more at Reuters

-- by Nicole Kobie, Friday 18 December 2020

Visible / Google Pixel 3a XL

Prologue (added 10/27/20): I bought a Google Pixel 3a XL phone to replace my Motorola RAZR (not the new one), but hadn't activated it yet.  I wanted to make sure that all the photos and messages were transferred over to my computer (the only way I could see to do this would be to email them to myself).  So I was just using like a mini-tablet over wi-fi, to watch videos and play games, not to make phone calls and texts.

Once this was done, I wanted to switch my carrier from T-Mobile (which I had for a long time, I originally had VoiceStream and it became T-Mobile in 2002, so it's been a while.)  I might have stayed with T-Mobile, but their reception is terrible at home with the calls often cutting in and out.  More often than not, I would have the caller call me back on my landline.  The reception is usually much better when I'm not at home.

The question was what I would switch to.  After doing some research, the choices narrowed to Mint Mobile (Ryan Reynolds' company) and Visible.  I had been paying about $24/mo (including tax -- not bad) for T-Mobile.  Mint Mobile's plan starts at $15.00 (with 3 GB of data).  Visible's plan started at $40, but you can get it down to $25 if you join a Visible Party (see below).  Mint Mobile uses the T-Mobile network, so I would probably get poor reception like before.  Visible uses the Verizon network, which is the higher rated network as far coverage.  The other main difference is that Visible gives you unlimited data.  Truly unlimited data which is not throttled after using so many GB.  That would be cool to have when I'm out of range of a wifi network and still would be able to stream video without worrying about a data cap.

[Huh.  Just noticed that my laptop has a USB 3.1 port with a USB-C connector.  So I really didn't need to buy those USB-C to USB cables to charge the phone from my laptop.  I could have been using the USB-C to USB-C cable that came with the phone all this time.  But I guess I can use both cables.  I can charge the phone with one and the tablet with the other.]

10/22/20 - Decided to sign up for Visible (on 10/20/20), which is a prepaid cell phone service owned by Verizon.  The contenders were Visible and Mint Mobile.  Visible is $40 a month while Mint Mobile is $15.  But I decided to go with Visible because they have truly unlimited data whose speed is not throttled after reaching a certain data limit.  Plus it's not really $40 if you join a Party Pay plan.  With Party Pay, the price goes down $5 for each member of the party.  A party can go up to 4 members, so it can go down as low as $25.  Which is about what I'm currently paying for T-Mobile (including tax).

Another reason I went with Visible is because they use Verizon's network, while Mint Mobile uses T-Mobile's network.  I currently use T-Mobile and I have to say their service is terrible at my home location.  A lot of times I can't hear what the other person is saying as the connection keeps cutting in and out.  It's mostly just at home and the service seems OK if I'm not at home.  I can't really say if Verizon is better at my location since I haven't used it.  Plus I'm using T-Mobile with an ancient Motorola RAZR.  So it could be that too.  I now have a Google Pixel 3a XL.  So hopefully the connection will be better at home with the Google Pixel / Visible combination.

I was going to activate the Google Pixel months earlier, but I wanted to make sure I got all the pictures out of the RAZR.  The only way I could figure to do that was by emailing the pictures, so I had to check my email to make sure all the pictures were transferred.

So I created an account on Visible, got up to entering the payment method.  Then got the message "An error occurred.  Please try again later."

I went to chat (in the lower right of the website, there's a tab that says "Chat with an Expert".  The Expert asked me what browser I was using.  I said Chrome.  Then the Expert said to try it in Private mode.  I asked how to do that.  The Expert directed me to go to Incognito mode and I tried it and it worked.  Thank you Expert.

I think the website needs work.  To check your account, you first sign in (of course).  Then if you put the cursor on your login name, the options Account and Sign Out appear under the box.  Then if you arrow down to Account, the options disappear (sometimes).  You have to click on your name, then click on Account.

Once you click on Account, the status of your account is supposed to appear in the "overview" screen.  But often it doesn't.   I've had to go to incognito mode or try Edge.  The sometimes even that doesn't work.  Then I tried Firefox and it worked.  But I didn't try again.  As I'm writing this, I'm trying again in Chrome and this time it worked.

I opened the account on October 20 and usually they try to ship the order by the next day.  The screen is currently saying "Your order is on it's way" [it should say its not it's -- another red flag].  The expected delivery is Thu, Oct 22 (which is today).  Clicking the Track Order button shows that it's being sent by FedEx and that it arrived in Honolulu at 11:11 am.  Which is odd since it's 10:42 am as I'm writing this.  Maybe it's PST?. 

The order status says Ordered Tue, October 20, Shipped Wed Oct 21, not yet out for delivery.

Next steps are to Validate email -- is verified!

Then Hang tight -- transferring number over.  It may take up to 48 hours.  Checking my email, they sent me an email thanking me for my order which was received 10/20/20 at 5:39 p.m.  It's now 10:47 a.m., so it's been about 41 hours so far. 

The next steps are to download the app and finally to install the SIM.

My next question is whether this can be done in time before my next T-Mobile bill which I think is either today or tomorrow.  If the Visible activation isn't done by today, I might wait a few days before activating it because I'll be getting billed T-Mobile for non-existent service.

Checking my account on T-Mobile, it says Due Oct 25, 2020 $24.21.  And Autopay scheduled for October 23, 2020 from Visa *******8.  I think I'll cancel the Auto-Pay to give me a couple more days.

OK, we'll see.  Looks like you have to call support to cancel the service.  I wonder if I cancel service now, the number will still be ported?  I think I'll just wait for now.

Now checking my Visible status again.  The drop down options don't appear when I mouse over my name.  Have to click my name to get the options to appear.  Then when I click Account nothing happens.

Now restarted a new browser window in Chrome.  My name doesn't appear, just a down arrow.  When I arrow over, the Account and Sign out options appear.  Clicking on Account gets me to a new page, but no status.  But now I see my name again.  But arrowing over my name doesn't give me the options.  Have to click on my name, then click on Account.  And get nothing again.

Let me switch to Edge.

I'm still signed in.  No drop down when mousing to my name.  Click then click Account.  Nope that didn't work.  Sign out.

Sign back in.  Now mousing over bring the drop-down options.  Promising.  But bring the mouse down to Account makes the options disappear.  Not promising.  But if you bring the arrow down fast, then it won't disappear.  Let's try that.  There you go.  Still says to Hang tight.  Looks like the trick is to arrow down fast before the Account option disappears.

Let's try on Chrome.  Once again, no name.  But let's try arrow down fast to Account then click.  Didn't work, but now got my name again.  But no drop-down options appear when mouse over.

Let me sign out on Chrome.  Create new incognito window.  Sign in.  Name appears.  Drop-down options appear.  Arrow down fast before the options disappear and lock on Account.  OK that worked.  Figuring it out.

[10/22/20] In the don't hold your breath department, I now read this.

"Why is it taking so long to transfer my number to Visible?

Your previous carrier must release your number so we can use it for Visible. We looked into it, and the average time for a complete porting process is 4.9 days, although many of our members have seen much shorter times. Stay tuned to your email, as we'll let you know when your port is complete and you're ready to go and thanks in advance for your patience."

OK, we'll see.  Could be another month of paying T-Mobile :(

***

So I have four more steps to go.  Receive the SIM via FedEx.  Wait for the phone number to transfer from T-Mobile.  Download the app.  Install the SIM.

I wonder if I can download the app before receiving the SIM and waiting for the number to transfer?  I don't have to wait to receive the SIM since I'm installing after the app is installed.  How about waiting for the number to transfer?  Well, according to these instructions for inserting the SIM and activating Visible:  

3.) If you haven't already, download the Visible app.

4.) Open the Visible app and log into your account.

Heads up: Transferring your number? The app will tell you status of the transfer, including when it's time to insert your Visible SIM.

(note: your number will still work until you tap Activate in the Visible App)

So apparently you can.  In fact, the app should tell me when the transfer is completed, so it's just like the website in that regard.  Plus I believe they're going to email me too.

OK, let's download the app then.

Install and log in.

The first question is asks Would you like to set up Fingerprint Authentication?  What?  I wants my fingerprints to log into the app?  Maybe later

Allow Visible to make and manage phone calls?  I guess so.  Allow.

Now it says Your order is out for delivery.  OK I'll wait.

I see in settings, there's an option to Enable Biometrics.  I guess that's where the Fingerprint Authentication is.

I'm looking further down the home page.  It says Service is ready.  Activate your service.  Does that mean the number has been transferred?

I don't see anything in my email.  And the website still says Hang Tight.  Transferring Number Over.  Then again the website still says to download our app.

Well I'll wait until the SIM is delivered.

***

FedEx delivered the the package.  Left it on my steps while I was napping.

Website now says delivered, but still says transferring number over.

App looks like it's hung up at the opening screen with the letters T3DUF rotating.

Exited out and went back in.  Had to sign back in.

Still says Service is ready.

I guess I'll go on chat.

Chat had me verify my email [to verify that they were talking to the right person] and said it's ready to go, despite what the website says.  OK, let me end chat and figure out how to insert it (since I've never done it before).

Here's the instructions from the web.

5.) Open the SIM kit then remove the tool (the metal piece) and the SIM card.

OK, it's in a little clear plastic envelope.  Removed the tool which was taped to the card.  The SIM was attached to the card to the card by little cardboard attachments and I had to pop it out with my finger.  And it went flying up and onto the carpet.

Where'd it go? :(

There it is!  It flew up on the table, not on the floor (where I was looking)

Next I need to remove the phone from the protective case.

Look for the little hole.

Push the SIM tool into the hole.

OK, the tray popped out a bit.

OK, pull out the tray and put the SIM in the tray.  It's label side up since that's the way the notch is oriented.

Shove the tray back into the phone.

Now it says

10.) Turn your phone off, then back on. If you get any notification about updating carrier settings go ahead and do it.

But I already turned the phone off before took off the case.  So I'll just turn the phone on.

I now see a little triangle between the wifi icon and the battery icon.  No notifications came up.

11.) Return to the Visible app and follow the instructions to complete activation.

Open the Visible app.

Said "something went wrong, we are working hard to fix it".  Then the message disappeared.

When I go to account payment has a series of three horizontal dots.

Exit the app.

Try dialing my home phone.  Says mobile network not available.

Go back into the app.  Have to sign in again.

Now it says Go to Activation

Tap that.

Then gets to the Activate service page

Please confirm the information below before activating your service.

Payment method

Option to autopay my monthly service fee

Turn on

I agree

You'll be charged $40 for your first month of service.  Your next payment will be due one month from today.  [even though I had the $20 off for the first month]

Activate

You did it! (briefly flashed)

Last step: Restart your phone

After you restart your device, the SIM will be recognized, service will activate, and you'll be Visible.  Easy right?  Oh, we're just getting started.

See you soon.

Got it

OK, looking at my payment history I got charged $20 on October 23, 2020.  Well it says -$20 on Oct. 23 2020 (Payment Service) followed by $20 on October 23, 2020 (Charge Visa ...6038).  So I guess it charged me $20.

I wonder if it works without restarting the phone?  Call ended.

OK restart the phone.

Well I noticed the letters LTE popped briefly to the left of the triangle.

Try dialing my landline.

Your call cannot be completed as dialed.  Please check the number and try again.

Hmm.  Had to add the area code.  Then it rang.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-have-to-dial-the-area-code-when-making-local-calls

Also was able to receive a phone call from my home phone.

Let me turn off wi-fi and see how well the data works.

The signal doesn't look that strong.

Let me try YTTV.  Well it plays.

Let me see if my T-Mobile RAZR still works.  Try calling home.  Call failed and now says unregistered.

Let me run a speed test.  Wow, got 23.5 down and 7.24 up.  Like more than 3 times faster than my wifi.

Later I want to test the hot spot.

Let me see if I can still log into the T-Mobile website.

First let me check the Visible website.  No longer has the steps I need to activate.

Says balance is $40.00 and total due is $40 on Nov. 22, 2020.  Visible credit is $0.00.

I could still log in and says balance due on [10/25/20 I believe]

Your Team of Experts is typically available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, due to recent COVID-19 guidelines, we’re temporarily adjusting hours to help keep your team safe. You can still contact T-Mobile Customer Care by dialing 1-800-937-8997 or 611 from your T-Mobile phone during the hours listed below. Thank you for your understanding.

T-Mobile Customer Care is available from

7 am - 12 am ET, Monday - Sunday

I guess I'll call tomorrow.  

Let my try log in incognito mode.

It says to Link your phone number to your My T-Mobile account.

So maybe it's inactive now?  But I'll call to confirm anyway.

After you’re up and running, we suggest that you call your old cell phone company to confirm the cancellation.

Got an email that said 

T-Mobile Confirmation: Plan Cancelled

Thanks for using T-Mobile!

You recently deleted your Mobile Internet account. If you would like to create a new account at a later point in time, you can use the T-Mobile ID username and password that you've already set up. Just click, 'Already have a user ID' when you set up a new account.

On Speedtest.net got 28.5 download.  Then 27.22.  Then 26.55.  Then 26.61.  Good enough.

Requested to join walton123.

Got a message saying walton123 has approved you to join the party -- and you're $5/mo richer.

Checking my account is says Party Pay Discount (3 members) -10.00.  So total due is down to $30.00.  Need one more.

Got one more.  $25.00 8)

***

OK, I tried calling my cell phone from my landline without the area code and it worked.  So I guess people can call in without the area code.

*** [10/23/20]

Called T-Mobile to verify that my service was cancelled and that I won't get billed any more.  The friendly guy answered after about 10 minutes and said yes my service has been cancelled and that I will get one last charge on the 25th.  So I guess I didn't cancel in time?  Or I'm paying for the service that I already had been using this month (so it's not prepaid).  Not sure how I'll be paying because I cancelled by credit card autopayment.  Maybe they'll take it out automatically or send me the bill in the mail.  They'll figure it out I guess.

*** [10/23/20]

Let me try the hotspot.  Turn on the hotspot.  Disconnect this computer from my regular WiFi and connect to the hotspot.  It's now connected as I'm writing this.

Let me try a speedtest.

Got 5.67 down and 1.32 up.  Very similar to my regular WiFi.

Now let's see if I can connect another device.  Supposedly it only allows one device to connect at a time, but I've heard/seen others connect multiple devices.

I'll turn of my router so I know that it's running on the hotspot.

Well, the Fire Stick connected.  Running Netflix and the connection speed is only 1.81 mbps.  Let me run Netflix on this computer.  

Well they're both running.  I think they might be at 480p but still it doesn't look that bad.

Let me run speedtest on my computer while Killing Gunther is running on the Fire TV.

Oddly I got 1.20 down and 5.01 up.  Kind of reverse of the first time.

Let me turn off Killing Gunther.

Ran speedtest on Silk on the Fire TV.  Got 2.88.

Run speedtest again on this computer with the phone on the coffee table.

Got 7.19 down and 10.36 up.

So I can connect more than one device, but the speed takes a hit.

Let me check how much data I've now used. 

Going to Settings, Network & internet, Mobile network, it says I've now used 607 MB.

Now I want to see if I can live with just this phone on without my regular wifi for like an hour...

You know what might be cool.  See if I can monitor the data usage in real time.   OK, it's now 608 MB at 10:46 AM.

Let me put on YTTV.  Well, the phone screen blacked out.  Let me run it for a couple minutes.

Unblacked the screen.  Now up to 635 MB at 10:48 AM.

Apparently doesn't update the screen in real time.  I'll press the back arrow and go back in.  669 MB at 10:50 AM.

Connected my iPad Mini.  Phone says Wi-Fi hotspot 3 devices connected.  Apparently it only supports the 2.4 GHz Band.

...  OK playing Pluto TV on the phone while working on Google Docs on my laptop.  Now up to 1.20 GB at 11:30 AM.

... Tried running YTTV off the hotspot with the phone on the dining table.  Started out under 2 mbps, then went under 1 mbps running 480@30.  Then after a number of minutes it ramped up to 720@60 all the way up to 15 mpbs.  So it varied a lot with the peak speed higher than my throttled fiber optic internet connection.

My data is up to 1.53 GB at 12:26 PM.

OK that's enough.  I'll switch back to my regular internet.  Don't want Visible to throttle me.

*** 10/24/20

I wonder how this USB tethering works? / I think it means I can connect the computer to the internet via the Visible service on the phone.  Normally you can do this by using the phone as a hotspot.  But I think you can also connect via the USB cable instead by using USB tethering.

OK, let me test.  Turn off the mobile hotspot.  Disconnect the computer from my wifi.  My phone is already connected to the computer with a USB-C to USB cable.

Going to Settings, Network & internet, Mobile network.  I have the Mobile data on.

Then exit out of Mobile network, then go to Hotspot & tethering.

I have my Wi-Fi hotspot off.  And my USB tethering off.

Let me turn UBS tethering on and see if anything happens.

My computer made a sound and got a notification asking if I wanted to make it discoverable on this network

The notification panel disappeared and I now see a Network interface access icon in my task bar, where usually the wifi icon appears.

It looks like I'm connected to the internet now?

Let me run speedtest.net

6.96/1.44.  Just about the same speed as the hotspot mode.  Ping 7, Download 6.70, Upload 1.46

OK, let me turn off USB tethering and connect the computer using the phone as a hotspot instead

Ping 8, Download 6.68, Upload 1.42.  Just about the same.  8, 6.67, 1.42

And now I see there's two options for AP Band: 2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz Band preferred

OK, back to my regular wifi connection

Wait a minute, I see the W-Fi was turned on for the phone, so it was actually using my regular Wi-Fi connection, not the mobile data

OK, turn off Wi-Fi on the phone, turn back on USB tethering

Ping 275, Download 4.77, Upload 1.33 / so Ping not so great, but the others comparable / 278, 1.73, 1.02 a big drop / 338, 2.98, 0.42 not very consistent

ok let's connect using mobile hotspot now

280, 24.75, 10.42 wow / 282, 17.43, 8.19 / 275, 17.69, 10.67

so no real upside to using USB tethering as far as speed is concerned

connect the computer back to my wifi

7, 6.27, 1.44

*** 10/25/20

Visible supports Wi-Fi Calling.  You have to turn it on from the Phone app (or doing a search in Settings or Settings, Network & internet, Mobile network, Calling Advance).  Wi-Fi calling uses your Wi-Fi instead of your mobile connection.  Phone calls when I'm at home usually haven't been clear with the voice breaking up.  So much so that I would direct them to call my landline.

It was pretty bad with T-Mobile on my Motorola flip phone.  It was better on the last (and only) call to my Google Pixel 3a XL on Visible (from a Samsung phone on T-Mobile).  Now that I turned on Wi-Fi Calling, I'm curious to see if the call quality will be any better.

*** 10/25/20

Got this email from Facebook this morning.

The mobile number (808) 389-xxxx has been deactivated for Facebook text messages due to the following reason: the mobile service provider this number was registered with no longer recognizes this number as valid. If you changed your mobile number or switched mobile service providers, please visit Facebook to add your number again.

I never even knew you could use a phone number for text messages.  Well, since I don't think I've ever used it, I'll just ignore this for now.

Actually it might be notifications that Facebook might send to you.  And they had the option to send the notification as a text message to your phone.

If I go to settings, then to General, then to Contact, I see there's an option to "Add another email or mobile number".  I'll leave it alone for now.

*** 10/26/20

Got a call from an unknown number.

Then after that got his message

New! Stop robocalls

Turn on automatic Call Screen for unknown calls to let your Google Assistant decline robocalls without interrupting you

[let's try it]

Turn on

*** 10/28/20

Added a couple Google accounts to the phone for YouTube TV.  Then got a notification from one the accounts.  Turned off synchronization.  We'll see if I still get notifications.

***

Tried to send a text and it failed.  Couldn't figure out why.  Then couldn't call out or in.  Turned off wifi calling and it worked.  Turned wifi calling back on and it still worked.  I dunno.

*** 11/12/20

[a few days ago] Removed the Google account (my sisters) that I was getting notifications from.  So that solved that.  I just had added her account so I could watch YouTube TV on her family account.

But when I get a text from my sister, just the number shows up, not the number.  I think it got confused from when I her account on my phone and it was using her contact list.  Her name does show up for phone calls, but not for texts.

***

For some reason, the audio wasn't working when I was trying to watch YouTube TV (or any other videos).  It worked when I plugged in my earbuds.

I played around, fiddling around with the settings, but no luck.

I finally able to hear audio when I adjusted the ringtone.  So I knew the speaker was working.

It also worked when I played back voice messages.

Then the sound came back again mysteriously.

The only thing I can think of is that the phone was in my bag when we played pickleball last night.  And it rained.  I think my bag was open and the phone got wet from the rain.  So maybe that did something.  Anyway, the audio seems to be working OK now.  Hopefully nothing else will go wrong.  Got to remember to zip close my bag next time.

***

Noticed that Google Photos is ending unlimited storage for high quality photos next year.  But Pixel phones will still get that unlimited storage.  That's a bonus.  Now I have to remember to upload the photos that have not been already uploaded to Google Photos.  I think all of my photos from my iPad are on there, but not the photos taken with my Kodak before that.

Either that or I will upload to Amazon Photos which has true unlimited storage (though only 5 GB for videos).  I'm not planning to end my Amazon Prime subscription any time soon.  (I could always sell 1 share of AMZN stock to pay for 25 years of Prime 8)  I'll probably be checking out the Amazon Photos app.

FAA certifies Amazon drone delivery testing

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over the weekend gave Amazon the green light to begin testing customer drone deliveries in the US. With an FAA Part 135 certification in hand, Amazon's drones will be able to fly out of an operator's line of sight. Earning the certification is a key milestone for Amazon's years-long effort to launch commercial drone deliveries.

Amazon's ultimate goal is to deploy drones to make deliveries in 30 minutes or less.

"This certification is an important step forward for Prime Air and indicates the FAA's confidence in Amazon's operating and safety procedures for an autonomous drone delivery service that will one day deliver packages to our customers around the world," David Carbon, VP of Prime Air, said in a statement. "We will continue to develop and refine our technology to fully integrate delivery drones into the airspace, and work closely with the FAA and other regulators around the world to realize our vision of 30 minute delivery."

Other companies that have been awarded Part 135 certification for drone deliveries include the Alphabet-owned Wing and UPS.

To achieve the certification, Amazon logged thousands of flight hours. The company says it has been refining its fully-electric drone, which is shrouded for safety and features a sense-and-avoid system.

Amazon made its first trial drone delivery in Cambridge, England in 2016. The company launched its autonomous drone efforts as part of its larger ambitions to build an expansive logistics network. Building its own shipping and delivery network can help Amazon cut down on costs as it manages its growing customer base.

In addition to building delivery drones, Amazon in the past few years has launched it own fleet of cargo aircraft, along with a network of ocean freighters, trucks and local delivery vehicles. It's also explored shipping options like robots.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

PARIS — A hugely ambitious project to replicate the energy of the sun is entering a critical phase, as scientists and technicians in southern France begin assembling giant parts of a nuclear fusion device, an international experiment aimed to develop the ultimate clean energy source.

World leaders involved in the project, or their representatives, on Tuesday appeared virtually at a ceremony for the start of the new stage of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, noting that work has proceeded despite the COVID-19 pandemic in many of the 35 contributing countries.

“Clearly, the pandemic impacted the initial schedule,” said ITER’s director-general, Bernard Bigot, who led the ceremony at Saint-Paul-les-Durance, northeast of Marseille. He said none of the on-the-ground staff has contracted COVID-19.

Scientists have long sought to mimic the process of nuclear fusion that occurs inside the sun, arguing that it could provide an almost limitless source of cheap, safe and clean electricity. Unlike in existing fission reactors, which split plutonium or uranium atoms, there’s no risk of an uncontrolled chain reaction with fusion and it doesn’t produce long-lived radioactive waste.

The project “seeks to create an artificial sun,” said South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “An artificial sun is an energy source of dreams."

Among other elements, Korea is manufacturing four sectors of a vacuum vessel, a hermetically sealed chamber in which plasma particles, derived from heated hydrogen gas, spiral without touching walls. European countries are building five other sectors.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed ITER as a “promise of peace” because it brings together countries that decided to forego differences for the “common good.” China, the U.S., India, Russia, South Korea and nations of the European Union are taking part in the project.

There was no sign of the acute discord currently roiling ties between the U.S. and China, and India and China.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a statement read by the Indian ambassador to France, called international collaboration “a perfect symbol of the age-old Indian belief ... (that) the world is one family.”

Bigot compared the milestone phase getting under way to assembling a giant, three dimensional puzzle that “must (have) the precision of a Swiss watch.”

Billed as the world’s largest science project, ITER is gigantic. The circular device, called a tokamak, has a 30-meter circumference, stands 30 meters (100 feet) high, and is made up of more than a million parts constructed in numerous countries.

Some pieces transported to France weigh several hundred tons. Tools to put the reactor together match that size, with giant lifts that must transfer components over the walls and down into “the pit.” A key component being built by the U.S., the Central Solenoid, is the most powerful of ITER’s numerous magnets. Together, they will be strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier.

The project begun in 2006 is far from over. The experimental reactor is to head for another landmark moment in five years, described as a “trial run” when scientists launch what is called “First Plasma” showing that the machine functions, including magnetic fields and other operations.

Bigot, the ITER’s director-general, called fusion energy a “miracle for our planet.”

He said that smaller experiments are complementary to ITER. Bigot predicts a bright future for his international baby, saying he foresees a scaled-up ITER, perhaps twice as large, to provide power to the grid. But its viability and economic competitiveness must first be demonstrated, he said.

The project's estimated cost just for the EU was about 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion), Bigot told reporters. He said a full price tag was difficult to estimate because participating countries make their own contributions.

Super computers tackling COVID-19

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, the haughty supercomputer Deep Thought is asked whether he can find the answer to the ultimate question concerning life, the universe, and everything. He replies that, yes, he can do it, but it’s tricky and he’ll have to think about it. When asked how long it will take him he replies, “Seven-and-a-half million years. I told you I’d have to think about it.”

Real-life supercomputers are being asked somewhat less expansive questions but tricky ones nonetheless: how to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re being used in many facets of responding to the disease, including to predict the spread of the virus, to optimize contact tracing, to allocate resources and provide decisions for physicians, to design vaccines and rapid testing tools, and to understand sneezes. And the answers are needed in a rather shorter time frame than Deep Thought was proposing.

The largest number of COVID-19 supercomputing projects involves designing drugs. It’s likely to take several effective drugs to treat the disease. Supercomputers allow researchers to take a rational approach and aim to selectively muzzle proteins that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, needs for its life cycle.

slow internet?

Restricted to our homes for months now, many of us have been putting up with a persistent annoyance: a lousy internet connection.

When we are working, a video call with colleagues becomes pixelated, with delayed audio. When we are relaxing, movies and video games take ages to download. In the worst cases, the connection drops altogether.

As people have hunkered down to contain the spread of the coronavirus, average internet speeds all over the world have slowed. Some broadband providers are feeling crushed by the heavy traffic. And dated internet equipment can create a bottleneck for our speeds.

Even the most tech savvy are affected. Keerti Melkote, the founder of Aruba Networks, a division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise that offers Wi-Fi products for businesses, said that in recent weeks, his DSL service from AT&T had dropped periodically. He waited several days for a technician to arrive and is now contemplating subscribing to Comcast for a second internet connection.

“I had three or four days of calls, and I had to go find a particular spot in my house where I had better coverage,” Mr. Melkote said.

At the beginning of the pandemic, my internet also became unbearably slow and suffered several outages. So I asked experts to explain what’s causing our internet problems — and the different remedies.

First, diagnose the problem.

What’s causing your slow speeds — your internet provider or your equipment at home? Here’s a method to figuring that out.

• Download an internet speed test app on your phone, like Speedtest by Ookla (free for iPhones and Android phones).
• Stand near your router and use the app to run a speed test.
• Move to a room farther away from the router and run the speed test again.
• Compare the results.

Less than 15 megabits a second is pretty slow. Speeds of about 25 megabits a second are sufficient for streaming high-definition video; more than 40 megabits a second is ideal for streaming lots of video and playing video games.

If the speed test results were fast near your Wi-Fi router but slow farther away, the problem is probably your router, said Sanjay Noronha, the product lead of Google’s Nest Wifi internet router. If speeds were slow in both test locations, the issue is probably your internet provider.

If it’s your router, here’s what to do.

If you have pinpointed that the problem is your router, the bad news is that you may have to buy new equipment. The good news is that there are many approaches to improving your Wi-Fi connection.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

How old is my router? If it’s more than five years old, you should definitely replace it. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission removed restrictions that had limited the wireless transmission power of Wi-Fi routers, allowing new routers to be 20 times more powerful than they were before. Upgrading to a newer router will probably be one of your most life-changing tech purchases.

Where is my router placed? Ideally, your router should be in a central location in your home so that the signal covers as many rooms as possible. In addition, your router should be out in the open, like on top of a shelf, not hidden inside cabinets or under a desk, to beam a clear signal. You should also avoid placing the router near objects and materials that cause interference, like large fish tanks and metal.

How big is my home? If you have a home with multiple stories and lots of rooms, and your Wi-Fi is weak in some areas, the best solution is to buy a so-called mesh network system. It’s a system of multiple Wi-Fi access points, including a main router and satellite hubs, that lets you connect multiple wireless access points together to blanket your home with a strong internet connection.

My favorite mesh systems are Google Wifi and Amazon’s Eero, which start at $99 for a single router and can be bundled with additional access points. In general, I recommend mesh systems even for smaller homes, because they are fast and very easy to install.

Are my other devices slowing down my connection? Gadgets with slower internet technology can slow down speeds for all your other devices.

For example, the iPhone 5 from 2012 uses an older-generation Wi-Fi standard. Newer iPhones, from 2014 and later, use a faster wireless standard.

Let’s say you own a new iPhone and your teenager owns the iPhone 5. If your teenager begins downloading a video on the iPhone 5 and then you start downloading something on your iPhone, the older phone will take longer to finish before the signal frees up for your phone to download at maximum speed.

As a remedy, many modern Wi-Fi routers offer settings that can give specific devices a priority for faster speeds. Consult your router’s instruction manual for the steps. In this hypothetical example, you would want to give your new iPhone top priority and move your teenager’s old iPhone to the bottom.

Are my neighbors slowing down my connection? In apartment buildings crowded with gadgets, the devices’ signals are fighting for room on the same radio channels. You can see what radio channels your neighbors’ devices are using with scanning apps like WiFi Analyzer. Then consult your router’s instruction manual for steps on picking a clearer radio channel.

This step is tedious, and many modern routers automatically choose the clearest radio channel for you. In general, replacing an outdated router is the most practical solution.

If it’s your service provider, there’s not much to do.

If you have determined that your internet provider’s service is the root of the issue, your only option is to call your internet service provider and ask for help.

When you call, ask a support agent these questions:

Why are my speeds slow? Occasionally a support agent can analyze your internet performance and make changes to speed up your connection. This rarely happens, and more often a technician will need to pay a visit.

Does my modem need to be replaced? The modem, which is the box that connects your home to the internet provider’s service, also can become outdated and occasionally needs to be replaced. If the support agent confirms the modem is old, you can schedule an appointment for a technician to install a new one.

Or you can buy your own modem and call the internet provider to activate it. Wirecutter, our sister publication that tests products, recommends modems from Motorola and Netgear, which cost about $80 to $90.

Can I buy faster speeds? Your provider may offer packages with more bandwidth meant for higher-quality video streaming and faster downloads. Ask about your options.

As a last resort, you can turn to backups. Many modern phones come with a hot spot feature, which turns the device’s cellular connection into a miniature Wi-Fi network. (Apple and Google list steps on their websites on how to use the hot spot feature on iPhones and Androids.)

Whatever you do, be patient. In these trying times, everything takes longer.

As for me, I confirmed my slow speeds were related to my internet provider, Monkeybrains. I called to report the issue, and after more than a month, a technician replaced the antenna on our roof. Now my speeds are even faster than before the pandemic, so it was well worth the wait.

ncov2019.live / worldometer

[3/28/20] Last week, as cities across the country shut down in an effort to slow the spread of covid-19, President Trump said, “We have a problem that, a month ago, nobody thought about.” Well, somebody did. On December 29th, as Trump vacationed with his family at Mar-a-Lago, Avi Schiffmann, a seventeen-year-old from Washington State, launched a homemade Web site to track the movement of the coronavirus. Since then, the site, ncov2019.live, has had more than a hundred million visitors. “I wanted to just make the data easily accessible, but I never thought it would end up being this big,” the high-school junior said last week over FaceTime. Schiffmann, gap-toothed and bespectacled, was sitting on his bed wearing a blue T-shirt and baggy pajama bottoms. It was late morning. He was at his mother’s house, on Mercer Island, outside Seattle. Somewhere in the room his cat, Louie, mewed. Behind him hung a Ferrari poster.

Using a coding tactic known as “web-scraping,” Schiffmann’s site collates data from different sources around the globe—the W.H.O., the C.D.C., Yonhap News Agency in South Korea—and displays the latest number of covid-19 cases. It features simple graphics and easy-to-read tables divided by nation, continent, and state. Data automatically updates every minute. In a politicized pandemic, where rumor and panic run amok, the site has become a reputable, if unlikely, watchdog.

Schiffmann goes to Mercer Island High School. (Its mascot: Herbert the Snail.) He began teaching himself to code when he was seven, mainly by watching YouTube videos, and has made more than thirty Web sites. “Programming is a great creative medium,” he said. “Instead of using a paintbrush or something, you can just type a bunch of funky words and make a coronavirus site.” One of his first projects, in elementary school, was what he calls “a stick-figure animation hub.” Later sites collated the scores for his county’s high-school sports games, aggregated news of global protests, and displayed the weather forecast on Mars. “His brain is constantly going from one thing to another, which is good, but I also try to focus him in,” his mother, Nathalie Acher, said. “I’m not techy at all myself. I see it as just really boring. He sees it as an art form.”

Schiffmann created the virus project during a family ski weekend in Snoqualmie Pass. Acher, who is a primary-care doctor, said that, when he had finished building it (he’d skipped a ski day), “he was beaming as though he’d discovered the cure for cancer.” Flattening the curve has been an isolating experience for many, but Schiffmann has never had so much attention. “I’m getting e-mail after e-mail,” he said. “Every couple of seconds it’s a new one.” Some people suggest changes to the site. “They’re, like, ‘Great Web site!’ ” he said. “And then they send a massive list of demands, and I’m just, like, ‘O.K., later.’ ”

While his twelfth-grade friends worry about whether the prom will be cancelled, Schiffmann is navigating global fame.“I literally see myself on, like, African news Web sites, Thailand, Taiwan—like, everywhere,” he said. He had two podcast interviews scheduled for that day. Then he was off to a photo shoot. “I want more professional photos, because I don’t like the ones that the news places use.” (“I look weird,” he said.) A few days earlier, his school had shut down. But he had already skipped the last week of classes to focus on the site, he said, “when it kind of blew up.” His mother, whose medical colleagues use the site, had given up coaxing him to return. “Maybe learning algebra can come later,” she said. (Her son is a C student.)

Schiffmann took the virus threat seriously before many others did. “I’ve been kind of concerned for a while, because I watched it spread very fast, and around the entire world. I mean, it just kind of went everywhere.” He took his own precautions. “I got masks a while ago. I got, like, fifteen for seventeen dollars. Now you can’t even buy a single mask for, like, less than forty.” His mother chimed in. “I wish I had listened to him,” she said. “But, in his teen-ager way, he’d come down the stairs with his eyes huge and be, like, ‘There are fifty thousand more cases!’ and I’d be, like, ‘Yeah, but they’re over there, not here.’ ”

Now that the grownups of the world are finally, and appropriately, freaking out, it is hard for Schiffmann not to feel righteous vindication. “If you told someone three months ago that we should spend, like, ten billion dollars in upgrading the United States’ health care, they would have been, like, ‘Nah,’ ” he said. “Now, everyone’s, like, ‘Oh, my God, yes.’ But this is the kind of stuff we should have done a long time ago.”

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[6/1/20] Have started to use worldometer in addition to nov2019.live.  Some of the data on ncov2019.live (e.g. New York) hasn't been updating recently.  The main worldometer page is also interesting.

There's also a discrepancy with Spain between the two.  ncov2019.live has them at 239,638 cases, while worldometer has them at 286,718.  Johns Hopkins has Spain at 263.638.  So I'll go with ncov2019.live in this case.

a new era in space travel

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era in commercial space travel and putting the United States back in the business of launching astronauts into orbit from home soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit.

“Let's light this candle,” Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the historic words used by Alan Shepard on America's first human spaceflight, in 1961.

The two men are scheduled to arrive Sunday at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, for a stay of up to four months, after which they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea, something the world hasn't witnessed since the 1970s.

The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. over the case of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police.

NASA officials and others expressed hope the flight would lift American spirits and show the world what the U.S. can do.

“We are back in the game. It’s very satisfying,” said Doug Marshburn, of Deltona, Florida, who shouted, “USA! USA!" as he watched the 260-foot rocket climb skyward.

SpaceX becomes the first private company to launch people into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments: the U.S., Russia and China.

“This is something that should really get people right in the heart of anyone who has any spirit of exploration,” Musk, the visionary also behind the Tesla electric car company, said after liftoff, pounding his chest with his fist.

The flight also ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA. Ever since it retired the space shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

Over the past few years, NASA outsourced the job of designing and building its next generation of spaceships to SpaceX and Boeing, awarding them $7 billion in contracts in a public-private partnership aimed at driving down costs and spurring innovation. Boeing’s spaceship, the Starliner capsule, is not expected to fly astronauts until early 2021.

NASA plans to rely in part on commercial partners as it pursues it next goals: sending astronauts back to the moon within a few years, and on to Mars in the 2030s.

At a post-liftoff rally held at NASA's massive 525-foot-high Vehicle Assembly Building, President Donald Trump commended Musk and proclaimed: “Today we once again proudly launch American astronauts on American rockets, the best in the world, from right here on American soil.”

He vowed the U.S. will be the first to land on Mars, promising a “future of American dominance in space.”

Vice President Mike Pence, who also witnessed the launch, said that as the nation deals with the coronavirus and racial strife, "I believe with all my heart that millions of Americans today will find the same inspiration and unity of purpose that we found in those days in the 1960s” during Apollo.

The first attempt to launch the rocket, on Wednesday, was called off with less than 17 minutes to go in the countdown because of lightning. On Saturday, stormy weather threatened another postponement for most of the day, but the skies began to clear just in the time.

CVS delivers

Nuro, the autonomous robotics startup that has raised more than $1 billion from Softbank Vision Fund, Greylock and other investors, said Thursday it will test prescription delivery in Houston through a partnership with CVS Pharmacy. The pilot, which will use a fleet of the startup's autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles and transition to using its custom-built R2 delivery bots, is slated to begin in June.

The partnership marks Nuro's expansion beyond groceries and into healthcare. Last month, the startup dipped its autonomous toe in the healthcare field through a program to delivery food and medical supplies at temporary field hospitals in California set up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pilot program centers on one CVS Pharmacy in Bellaire, Texas and will serve customers across three zip codes. Customers who place prescription orders via CVS' website or pharmacy app will be given the option to choose an autonomous delivery option. These pharmacy customers will also be able add other non-prescription items to their order.

Once the autonomous vehicle arrives, customers will need to confirm their identification to unlock their delivery. Deliveries will be free of charge for CVS Pharmacy customers.

crises lead to innovation

Economic, geopolitical, and health crises throughout human history have often spurred a flurry of innovation, production, and growth. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 and 1919 – which killed some 50 million people worldwide – eventually gave way to the “Roaring Twenties,” one of the most productive economic periods the country has ever experienced.5 World War II brought women into the workforce and turned factories in the US into wartime production facilities, assembling all of the materials needed to win the war. There are countless other examples.

These crises are never welcomed ones, and they often lead to devastating, tragic losses. But we must also remember that crises are inevitable – they are part of the human story and always will be.

-- Mitch on the Markets, 5/2/20

artificial leaves

One can not help but marvel at the ingenuity of nature. Leaves, for instance, do an incredible job of converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into oxygen, making a better planet for us all.

Impressively, researchers have successfully copied nature and created artificial leaves that work just as well or even better than real ones. These engineered leaves mimic photosynthesis effectively; however, they have one caveat. So far, they only work in labs.

Because they use pure, pressurized carbon dioxide from tanks, these little marvels of engineering could not be taken outside in the real world where they could help with reducing CO2, until now.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have invented a solution that could see artificial leaves be used in the real world. Better yet, their leaves would be 10 times more effective at converting CO2 than real ones.

"So far, all designs for artificial leaves that have been tested in the lab use carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks. In order to implement successfully in the real world, these devices need to be able to draw carbon dioxide from much more dilute sources, such as air and flue gas, which is the gas given off by coal-burning power plants," said Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering in the UIC College of Engineering and corresponding author on the paper.

To solve this dilemma, Singh and his team have devised an artificial semi-permeable membrane that would allow water to evaporate when hit by sunlight. When this occurs the water would also pull in carbon dioxide from the air.

Then, an artificial photosynthetic unit would convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen. The carbon monoxide would be collected and used in the development of synthetic fuels. The oxygen, however, could be released back into the environment where it is very much needed.

"By enveloping traditional artificial leaf technology inside this specialized membrane, the whole unit is able to function outside, like a natural leaf," Singh said.

Have you bought your last car?

A growing number of tech analysts are predicting that in less than 20 years we'll all have stopped owning cars, and, what's more, the internal combustion engine will have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Yes, it's a big claim and you are right to be sceptical, but the argument that a unique convergence of new technology is poised to revolutionise personal transportation is more persuasive than you might think.

The central idea is pretty simple: Self-driving electric vehicles organised into an Uber-style network will be able to offer such cheap transport that you'll very quickly - we're talking perhaps a decade - decide you don't need a car any more.

And if you're thinking this timescale is wildly optimistic, just recall how rapidly cars replaced horses.

Best Buy to stop selling CDs

Best Buy, formerly one of the biggest music merchandisers in the United States, has plans to pull CDs from all of its stores by July 1, Billboard reported.

Target could be the next retailer to do so, as it's now demanding that music suppliers sell them inventory on a consignment basis and pay for unsold inventory. One music manufacturer is leaning towards saying no to this deal, according to Billboard.


This should come as no big surprise — between streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify taking over and vinyl returning to popularity, there doesn't seem to be much of a place for CDs anymore. Over 800 million CDs were sold in the United States in 2001, but that number has since dropped down to 89 million, according to Consequence of Sound.

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[OK, when's the clearance sale?]