Category: I-phone

On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including science fiction, horror, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published four ebooks and one paperback anthology of those stories so far.

I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here, or use the form below. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

Continue reading “Weekly Short Story: Patrol”

In a few short weeks, Rivian will start shipping its first R1T pickup and R1S SUV "Launch Edition" models to consumers. If you’ve been thinking about preordering one of the vehicles, you’ve had to base your decision on internal estimates from the company. No more. The Environmental Protection Agency has published its official range guidelines after testing both the R1S and R1T.

Fitted with Rivian’s 135kWh power pack, the EPA says the R1T can travel 314 miles (approximately 505 kilometers) on a single charge, while the R1S can go 316 miles on a full battery. In 2022, Rivian will offer a “Max” pack the company estimates will provide approximately 400 miles of range per charge. The automaker promised to share more details about its EPA certification soon.

Lyft will cover the legal fees of drivers sued under the state of Texas’ recently enacted SB8 abortion law, the company announced on Friday. The law prohibits women from terminating a pregnancy after six weeks. That’s a time frame before most even know they’re pregnant. Critically, SB8 also allows private citizens to sue anyone who assists a pregnant woman trying to skirt the ban, including rideshare drivers who face the prospect of $10,000 fines.

“This law is incompatible with people’s basic rights to privacy, our community guidelines, the spirit of rideshare and our values as a company,” Lyft said in a blog post. In response to SB8, the company is establishing a legal defense fund it says will cover 100 percent of the legal fees incurred by its drivers. It’s also donating $1 million to Planned Parenthood.

“This is an attack on women’s access to healthcare and on their right to choose,” Lyft CEO and co-founder Logan Green said on Twitter in which he also called other companies to offer the same support. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi responded some 30 minutes later, announcing Uber would follow suit. “Team Uber is in too and will cover legal fees in the same way,” Khosrowshahi said. “Thanks for the push.” The move comes after the US Supreme Court formally denied a request earlier in the week from abortion clinics in the state to freeze the law.

Fans of Neil Gaiman could soon see another of the author’s creations get the TV treatment. According to a report from Variety, WarnerMedia has ordered a pilot for a potential HBO Max series featuring the Dead Boy Detectives. The two characters, Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, first appeared in issue 25 of Gaiman’s TheSandman comic. They’re ghosts who investigate supernatural crimes.

The interesting thing here is that Rowland and Paine will appear in the upcoming third season of HBO Max’s Doom Patrol. However, Variety reports it’s unclear whether Sebastian Croft and Ty Tennant, the two actors who play Rowland and Paine in Doom Patrol, will also play the detectives in this new pilot. Steve Yockey, best known for his work on The Flight Attendant, is penning the episode’s script.

Following the success of Good Omens, streaming audiences have wanted to see more of Gaiman's unique brand of fantasy. That’s led to an influx of projects linked to the author, including an upcoming Netflix adaptation of The Sandman.

BMW’s Motorrad division has been on something of a roll in recent years, delivering fun and futuristic concept vehicles. Take the CE 04 electric scooter as an example. It looks like the company’s design team pulled the idea straight from Akira or Ghost in the Shell. Its latest project is no different.

Spotted by The Verge, BMW describes the CE 02 as “neither a classic motorcycle nor a scooter.” The company envisions it appealing to young people who may not have ridden a motorcycle before. Like its older sibling, it’s an all-electric vehicle.

BMW

BMW didn’t disclose the capacity of the onboard battery but said the EV can travel about 56 miles on a single charge, while an 11kW belt-drive engine affords it a top speed of 56 miles per hour. With its 15-inch front and rear disc brake wheels included, the entire frame comes in at approximately 264 pounds. This being a concept, you’ll notice in the photos BMW shared there aren’t pedals or footrests for a rider to plant their feet on. What the CE 02 does have is storage space for a skateboard you can use for that purpose instead. Good times.

BMW

BMW hasn’t said whether it plans to manufacture the CE 02. But if the automaker decided to make the electric mini-bike, it could find a more affordable niche under the CE 04, which will go on sale for around $16,000 in 2022.

Though the Overwatch League's post-season gets underway this weekend, league officials are already making plans for next year. OWL vice-president Jon Spector wrote on Twitter that the current plan is to kick off the 2022 season in April, but there's an interesting wrinkle, as Dot Esports first reported. As things stand, the next season will start on an early version of Overwatch 2, the long-awaited sequel to the current game.

"The plan right now is for the Overwatch League’s 2022 season to begin on an early build of Overwatch 2," an Overwatch League spokesperson told Engadget. "We’ll have more details to share about our 2022 season as we get closer to the planned start date in April of next year."

Recent reports suggested the next OWL season might not start until fall 2022, amid Overwatch 2 release date uncertainty. However, Dexerto reported this week that Blizzard is targeting a Q2 release window — in other words, around the time the next OWL season starts, or soon after. In February, Activision Blizzard said it was unlikely to releaseOverwatch 2 or Diablo 4 this year.

The arrival of Overwatch 2, which Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2019, will spell huge changes for the esport, and the Overwatch scene as a whole. All of the player vs. player updates will be reflected in the current game (OW2 will have a big focus on co-op story missions too). 

The sequel will herald new modes and maps, a fresh game engine, more characters, an overhaul of existing heroes and, most significantly, a shift from teams of six to squads of five, with each side fielding one tank instead of the current two. That'll likely have an impact on Overwatch League rosters for next season and beyond, with fewer spots available for tank players.

Moving OWL to Overwatch 2 in this fashion has its pros and cons, especially given that it'll be an early build. If the latest release timeline reports are accurate, though, the game will be almost ready for public consumption by that point, so there hopefully won't be many bugs. What's more, OWL players will want to practice on public servers as much as possible, so there might be an Overwatch 2 beta, at the very least, by April.

Plans could change and OWL might stick with the current version of Overwatch if there are any significant development hurdles. However, if Blizzard can get the early build ready in time, the next Overwatch League season could give the publisher a great opportunity to show off Overwatch 2 to fans before the game eventually arrives.

Working since 2017 with Tokyo’s Waseda University, Nissan says it has developed and recently started testing a new recycling process that represents a more efficient and cost-effective way of recovering rare-earth metals from electric motors.

The process itself involves heating a used motor to 1,400 degrees Celsius (approximately 2,552 degrees Fahrenheit) so that it melts down. The company then adds an iron oxide to the mixture to oxidize the rare-earth metals, followed by a borate-based flux. The latter substance causes the molten mixture to separate into two liquid layers, with the rare-earth metals floating to the top of the mixture where they can be easily removed.

In testing, Nissan claims it’s been able to recover 98 percent of a motor’s rare-earth elements using the new recycling process. The entire procedure also takes about half as much time as manually disassembling a motor, which is what Nissan currently does to recycle rare-earth metals. The company hopes to implement the process by the mid-2020s.

Nissan

If we’re to have any chance to address the climate crisis, finding new and novel ways to recycle and reuse rare-earth metals will be vital. The 17 minerals that make up the rare-earth group are critical to making electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines. A 2018 study by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure found a shortage of rare-earth metals is likely to limit the world’s ability to meet the emission reduction targets set out by the Paris climate agreement.

Segway is moving into the robot mower market with the Navimow. What sets this model apart from many others is that you don't need to install a boundary wire. Instead, Navimow uses GPS and other sensors to stay within the perimeter of your lawn.

A so-called Exact Fusion Locating System can maintain Navimow's position accurate to within two centimeters, according to Segway. If the GPS signal ever dips, the company says the device's array of sensors and data ensure it will still work. You can tell Navimow where to mow, define the boundaries and instruct it to avoid certain parts of your garden via an app. Segway claims Navimow uses an algorithm to figure out a mowing path so it doesn't have to criss-cross.

Segway says Navimow operates relatively quietly at 54 dB. There are offset blades to trim edges and corners, while the mower gradually cuts grass from above to reach the height you want (between three and six centimeters). The mower can handle 45-degree inclines and it has an IPX6 water resistance rating, according to Segway.

There are safety features too. Segway says Navimow can detect and bypass obstacles, and its blades will stop spinning if pets or kids get too close. If the device detects rain, it'll return to the charging station, but you can turn off the rain sensor and put Navimow to work even when it's wet outside. When the battery gets too low, Navimow will continue cutting from where it left off after it recharges.

Segway

Installing a perimeter wire can take some time and as SlashGear notes, it can damage a garden, since it's usually buried under grass. So Navimow might be a healthier solution for your lawn than other robot mowers. iRobot planned to make a mower with wireless boundary beacons, but it put the device on hold last year amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Segway is releasing four versions of its mower. The Navimow H500E is for lawns with an area of up to 5,400 square feet. It costs €1,199 (around $1,425). The other three models have larger batteries to support bigger lawns, along with 4G support and a GPS anti-theft system. The prices top out at €2,499 (around $2,970). However, Segway hasn't announced US launch details yet.

Once you get offworld, count water among your most valuable resources: drink it, wash in it, use it to power your spacecraft. This humble molecule is critical to space exploration and exoplanetary colonization which is why, ahead of an international effort to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon (aka the Artemis Program), NASA scientists plan to land the world’s first autonomous lunar rover there in search of dihydrogen-monoxide deposits worth their weight in gold.

We’ve known that there is water ice on the Moon’s surface for nearly thirty years — potentially hundreds of millions of gallons buried amid regolith at the poles — thanks to the pioneering efforts of the Lunar Prospector, LCROSS, and SOFIA missions.

“Every mission, no matter what type, whether roving or not, will be standing on the shoulders of what was learned by other missions before,” Dan Andrews, VIPER project manager, told Engadget. “Otherwise you're just throwing away really good learning.”

However, we don’t necessarily have a great understanding of how those frozen molecules are actually distributed or how to best extract them from the lunar soil — and that’s where the upcoming Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission comes in.

This golf cart-sized machine will be delivered to the Moon’s South Pole in late 2023 and spend its scheduled 100-day mission scouring the area for four “ice stability regions” — surface regions where we might find ice just laying about, shallow regions where the ice is covered by 50 centimeters of regolith, deep regions where the ice is buried up to 100 centimeters, and dry regions where there is no ice present below 100 centimeters. Andrews notes that “those regions exist all over the place in both the North and the South Pole. There's thousands of them.”

As the VIPER trundles about, it will employ its Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS) to indirectly survey the soil around itself in search of water at depths up to three feet (.9m) by looking for the energy losses in cosmic rays (mostly in the form of neutrons) that occur when they strike hydrogen molecules. And where there’s hydrogen, there could well be water.

NASA

Once the NSS finds a suitable concentration, the VIPER will deploy its meter-long TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrains) to drill down and pull up soil samples for examination by the onboard Near-Infrared Volatiles Spectrometer System (NIRVSS pronounced “nervous”), which can identify the hydrogen’s form, whether that’s free hydrogen atoms or slightly more complex hydroxyls. And even before the rover sets a wheel off its orbital delivery vehicle, the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSolo) will be sampling gases kicked up during landing in search of stray hydrogen atoms.

When the LCROSS mission slammed a probe into the moon’s surface, it measured and analyzed the resulting ejecta for water ice using variations of nine commercially available instruments that could be traced back to “everything from NASCAR car instrumentation to manufacturing.” The VIPER mission is taking a similar tack. While not directly a part of the mission itself, other units of the instruments that will land aboard VIPER will also be delivered to the Moon in both 2021 and 2022 as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program for use in various experiments. This will serve as a sort of shake-down cruise for the instruments, allowing the VIPER team to see how the gear they’re sending will operate under real-world conditions. “If the instruments work beautifully, well great,” Andrews said. “If the instruments have a peculiar behavior that was unexpected, we can plan that in. And if they outright fail… we at least have the chance to try to diagnose why it did go wrong.”

While it won’t be the first wheeled vehicle to roll across the Moon, it will be the first autonomous vehicle to do so with a mission far more important than ferrying astronauts around. But the Moon is a harsh and unforgiving mistress, presenting an entirely unique set of challenges not faced by the larger rovers currently crawling over Mars. For one thing, Mars has an (albeit thin) atmosphere, the Moon has none, “which means it gets really, really hot, and it gets really, really cold,” Andrews said. “There's no moderating atmosphere so that becomes a really strong design point for the rover.”

What’s more, at the South Pole where the VIPER will be prowling the sun will rarely get more than 10 degrees above the horizon, which causes “unbelievably long shadows,” he continued. “And since there's no atmosphere, the lighting conditions are such that it looks to be very, very bright and right next to it can be unbelievably dark and black,” which can create havoc for visual navigation systems.

And then there’s the regolith — the moon’s razor-sharp, electrostatically-charged, insidiously-invasive soil. Created from eons of micrometeorite impacts, the stuff has built into berms and hills, lined craters and valleys across the lunar surface. Regolith can pile high and deep enough to bury the likes of a VIPER. So to ensure that the rover remains mobile, Andrew’s team taught it to “swim.” 

NASA

Under typical conditions, the VIPER’s wheels roll conventionally at the ends of a rocker-bogie suspension system at speeds approaching a blistering half-mile-per-hour (that’s 20cm/s). Since the rover is powered exclusively through solar energy with a 450W battery, rather than a handy radioactive core, “we need to be able to move in any direction at any time, independent of how [VIPER is] pointed,” Andrews explained. “That means we need to be able to crab walk. So, each of our four wheels has the ability to independently be steered.”

And when the rover finds itself mired in regolith, it can turn these wheels sideways acting as scoops to drag itself forward. What’s more, the suspension setup enables the rover to lift each wheel independently, like a foot. Combining the vertical movements with dragging action somehow resulted in the Shaq-esque shimmy.

“We know we're going in and out of craters — and in fact we want to, because some of the areas where the water that can be found are going to be in very dark permanently shadowed craters — and because no robot or human has been down there, we don't exactly know what it's going to be like,” Andrews said. “So we needed to improve the capabilities of the rover to handle a lot of the unknown.”

The VIPER will not be driving blind, mind you. NASA is already hard at work producing a lunar road map to help guide the rover on its journey. The 3D, meter-scale maps were created using NASA’s open source Stereo Pipeline software tool alongside its Pleiades supercomputer to assemble satellite images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter using a technique known as photoclinometry. With them, the VIPER will be less likely to fall into craters or tip head over wheels trying to climb a too-steep incline.

Unlike its Mars-based cousins, VIPER won’t have to rely nearly as heavily on automation thanks to its drastically shorter signal lag time — 6-10 seconds compared to the 15-20 minutes needed to talk to Mars. That’s still too long a delay to take control of the VIPER directly from Earth, but it will allow Mission Control to plot a series of incremental 15-foot-long navigational waypoints. “Once we pick the landing site… which will be in October,” Andrews said. “We're going to pick the optimal traverse plan for the rover to get as much science as we can out of it.”

After VIPER completes its mission, NASA researchers should have a much broader and more detailed view of where water deposits are located in the region. But what will happen to VIPER itself once its duties are done?

While the decision on that subject is still being debated by the VIPER team, Andrews points to two possible outcomes. We could drive the rover into the deepest, darkest crater it can find, consequences be damned, to see just what the heck is down there (maybe ghosts!). The other option would be to park it on the highest and best-lit mound of regolith we can find and hope that the rover can be revived after the region sinks into 6 to 9 months of complete darkness.

“NASA would then have to decide if it is worth them keeping the team going for that amount of time,” Andrews conceded, “so when the South Pole comes back into the sun, to try to somehow bring Viper back to life… Is it worth it to NASA, is it worth the money, to do that? Those are the trades that the agency is going to have to make.”

Since April, we’ve known EA has been working on a standalone mobile version of its popular Battlefield games it plans to release sometime in 2022. This week, the publisher shared new details on the upcoming title.

To start, EA plans to begin beta testing Battlefield Mobile this fall with “a series of smaller playtests" involving players in Indonesia and the Philippines who own Android devices. “As we continue with testing, we’ll expand the size of these tests, [and] add new regions,” the company said over on its community website.

The initial beta test will only feature a single map called Grand Bazaar and the franchise’s signature Conquest game mode. EA promised to share more details about other maps and modes closer to Battlefield Mobile’s 2022 release date. In the meantime, the company confirmed the game would be a free-to-play title that will “only” include cosmetic items. You’ll earn some of those through optional seasonal battle passes. Battlefield Mobile won’t support crossplay between any console or PC versions of the Battlefield franchise since it is “being built specially for mobile.”

If you live in Indonesia or the Philippines, you can pre-register on the Google Play Store to get more information about the upcoming beta tests.

WhatsApp has started rolling out its long-awaited cross-platform chat history transfer feature. First announced at Samsung’s recent Unpacked event, the tool allows you to move your chat history, including any voice memos, photos and videos you may have sent to family and friends, between Android and iOS. The feature is currently only available on Samsung phones running Android 10 and above, though WhatsApp notes it will come to more Android devices “soon.”

You can see the full rundown of how to use the tool on WhatsApp’s website. However, one of the more notable requirements is that you’ll need a Lightning to USB-C cable to connect your two phones together. What’s more, both devices must have the same phone number. Oh, and your Samsung phone must be either brand new or recently factory reset. In short, the process isn’t quite as streamlined as we had hoped, but WhatsApp promises it’s secure and reliable.

The current Fortnite season will wrap up in a little over a week, and once again, Epic Games plans to go out with a bang. Chapter 2 Season 7 is centered around an alien invasion of the island, and it seems you'll have the chance to help send the infiltrating forces packing.

In the Operation: Sky Fire event, which takes place on September 12th at 4PM ET, you'll be able to team up with 15 of your friends and undertake a secret mission. You and your squad will “join a strike team and sneak aboard the Mothership to deliver IO’s final message to the invading aliens.”

As with other Fortnite seasonblowouts, you'll only have one chance to experience this for yourself. You can queue up and reserve your spot 30 minutes before it all goes down.

With the season ending soon, it's worth taking care of some other Fortnite business. You should definitely spend all your bars before the stash resets. Helpfully, residents and vending machines on the island are offering major discounts during Bargain Bin Wild Week, which starts on September 9th. Any battle stars or alien artifacts you don't exchange by the end of the season "will be automatically redeemed for rewards and styles starting with the earliest available unlocks," Epic said.

Until Operation: Sky Fire begins, you can still unlock characters and cosmetics through the current battle pass. Superman's Quests will also no longer be available when the event starts, but you still have some time to unlock the Superman glider, pickaxe and shadow style. Other quests that aren't part of the battle pass, such as the LeBron James and Vox Hunter ones, will still be available in the next season, which should start soon after Operation: Sky Fire.

According to the National Park Service, washing machines are bad for our planet, so bad in fact that they can use up to 41 gallons of water per load. That’s not ideal given the prevalence of droughts as climate change intensifies its work to wipe humanity from the face of the planet. That’s why Bosch, the German multinational which makes, uh, pretty much everything, has created FreshUp. It’s a tool designed to “refresh” your clothes without the need to dump them into your washing machine.

The idea is to remove odors from clothes that are otherwise clean, in the sense that they’re not visibly stained. You know, an evening gown or tuxedo that looks a million dollars but smells like the bottom of a well-visited ashtray, or that t-shirt that goes perfectly with your outfit, but smells a little bit sweaty. In those situations, you’d grab this doodad, rub it over the required garment and step out smelling fresh as a daisy.

FreshUp is a lozenge-shaped device measuring 6.5-inches long, with a 2-inch treatment area on its underside. Once charged and turned on, you press this against your dry clothes so that the process of breaking down the smell can begin. It works as an ionizer, creating a plasma which Bosch says dissolves the connections between odor molecules.

There’s a beautiful design on the top that’s designed to resemble an interlacing series of magnetic field lines. This is backlit in white, and turns purple when it’s actually treating your clothes with its ionization. Despite the overall vibe that this is a product that fell out of a Sharper Image catalog twenty years ago, it’s impeccably designed. Thankfully, there are no “but wait, there’s more” innovations to add to the list of jobs this thing can do.

The battery takes around four hours to charge and will give you an hour of processing before it needs to go back on the wire. Bosch also chose a micro USB port for charging rather than USB-C, which is, you know, a choice you can make in 2021. But it’s not ideal if you’re trying to minimize cable clutter and are looking to ditch the older standard as soon as possible.

As soon as you’ve treated a garment with FreshUp, you’ll be acutely aware of the ionization in the air. It offers a similar smell to the taste you get in your mouth when you’ve bitten your tongue. That iron-in-the-blood scent that clings to your hand when you’ve held onto some loose change while waiting for a vending machine. And it doesn’t just sit on your clothes, but hangs in the air, where on very dry summer days you’ll want to make sure you leave your windows open to encourage airflow.

In its sales pitch, Bosch says that FreshUp was designed to eliminate what it describes as a “chair-drobe.” You know, that pile of clothes in your bedroom that maybe you drape over the back of a chair, or stuff on the bottom of your wardrobe, because they’re too clean to wash. I’m not a regular chair-drobe-ist, but the fan housing of my rowing machine is sturdy enough to drape clothes over on the rare occasions they wind up in this state. Bosch adds that, after treatment, “even tough odors such as cigarette smoke and body odor are removed, leaving clothes as if they have been hung outside to dry.”

Daniel Cooper

And here’s where I’ve really earned my wages over the last month or so, because I’ve spent a chunk of this summer sniffing awful things. Not to mention, of course, wearing already-worn clothes and spending way too long with my nose in my own armpit. I’ve been testing a high-intensity exercise bike and trying to be as active as possible, all the while getting my clothes covered in cigarette smoke and frying oil. Consider this a content warning for what is about to follow, as well as a polite request for danger pay.

There were plenty of smells that the FreshUp was able to dispel without breaking much of a sweat, including the cigarette smoke and fried food. It’s in this regard that makes me think that FreshUp is perfect for traveling, when you want to make sure that you’re looking and smelling your best. If your top smells like the inside of an ashtray, just waft this thing over it, hang it up for an hour or two, and boom, you’re away.

But no matter how much I rubbed this thing over the armpits of my well-worn t-shirts (after, I should make clear, the fabric had dried out) I could never banish the smell of my sweat. I tried everything, including leaving a t-shirt hanging up for a day or two and then treating it again, then leaving it to hang for another couple of hours, and nothing. The scent wasn’t eliminated, although I will say that it was moderated somewhat, but not enough to make you not deeply self-conscious about how you smell. But I did wonder if this was a “me” problem rather than Bosch’s, and so grabbed clothes from other family members. One of my relatives who went for a run handed me a pair of their socks which stank so bad that they probably violated chemical weapons laws.

And again, I’d like to reiterate that the time I spent dry-retching was all in the service of good journalism.

Once dried out, I treated those socks and found that, again, FreshUp hadn’t destroyed the smell, but it had reduced the urge to heave. That, broadly speaking, means that this is not going to be your savior if you’re schlepping around in a warm country.

But if you aren’t cursed with the blight of free-flowing underarms (or, in Richard Nixon’s case, upper lip) then I think FreshUp may have a place for you. I can think of some times where, after a long evening on assignment, I’d love to give my clothes an emergency refresh. If you’re doing two or three smart events back-to-back and can’t visit a dry cleaners, then FreshUp is probably a good shout, but the use cases are limited.

But don’t expect the results to be as good as washing, because fundamentally, nothing is going to be able to replace your washing machine just yet. And then there’s the price, which at £250 ($342) is a little high for a device that can’t revolutionize how you do laundry. At least, not yet.

Apple says it's delaying the rollout of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) detection tools "to make improvements" following pushback from critics. The features include one that analyzes iCloud Photos for known CSAM, which has caused concern among privacy advocates.

“Last month we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material," Apple told 9to5Mac in a statement. "Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.”

Apple planned to roll out the CSAM detection systems as part of upcoming OS updates, namely iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8 and macOS Monterey. The company is expected to release those in the coming weeks. Apple didn't go into detail about the improvements it might make. Engadget has contacted the company for comment.

The planned features included one for Messages, which would notify children and their parents when Apple detects that sexually explicit photos were being shared in the app using on-device machine learning systems. Such images sent to children would be blurred and include warnings. Siri and the built-in search functions on iOS and macOS will direct point users to appropriate resources when someone asks how to report CSAM or tries to carry out CSAM-related searches.

Apple

The iCloud Photos tool is perhaps the most controversial of the CSAM detection features Apple announced. It plans to use an on-device system to match photos against a database of known CSAM image hashes (a kind of digital fingerprint for such images) maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and other organizations. This analysis is supposed to take place before an image is uploaded to iCloud Photos. Were the system to detect CSAM and human reviewers manually confirmed a match, Apple would disable the person's account and send a report to NCMEC.

Apple claimed the approach would provide "privacy benefits over existing techniques since Apple only learns about users’ photos if they have a collection of known CSAM in their iCloud Photos account." However, privacy advocates have been up in arms about the planned move.

Some suggest that CSAM photo scanning could lead to law enforcement or governments pushing Apple to look for other types of images to perhaps, for instance, clamp down on dissidents. Two Princeton University researchers who say they built a similar system called the tech "dangerous." They wrote that, “Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn’t restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser.”

Critics also called out Apple for apparently going against its long-held stance of upholding user privacy. It famously refused to unlock the iPhone used by the 2016 San Bernardino shooter, kicking off a legal battle with the FBI.

Apple said in mid-August that poor communication led to confusion about the features, which it announced just over a week beforehand. The company's senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi noted the image scanning system has "multiple levels of auditability." Even so, Apple's rethinking its approach. It hasn't announced a new timeline for rolling out the features.

China's second largest e-commerce platform JD.com will stop selling up to 86 games following a crackdown on gaming that limits children to three hours per week, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has reported. Popular titles being removed from its platform include FIFA 21, The Last of Us 2 and Super Mario Maker 2. 

Earlier this week, China's National Press and Publication Administration (NPAA) regulator issued an edict limiting gaming for kids under 18 to three hours of gaming per week. They're only allowed to play now for an hour every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and on statutory holidays, marking some of the governments strictest measures since a blockade on new approvals back in 2018. 

The new rule has a few gaping holes, notably that officials won't be able to monitor unlicensed games not officially in the system. It's difficult to see how officials would monitor offline gameplay, as well. 

However, it's still a big shift in JD.com's strategy, as SCMP has noted. The company announced that it would ban any game that violates China's constitution or national security laws. That also includes games that might promote vulgarity, pornography, gambling and violence. (It's hard to see how some of those games like FIFA 21 and Super Mario Maker 2 violate those rules.)

Previously, JD.com allowed sales of certain games that straddled or crossed those lines, banning them only when they stirred up controversy. Other firms have sold banned games using code titles, changing the name of Resident Evil 2: Remake to First Day on the Job at the Police Station: Remake, for example. 

The new strategy may be due in to stepped up government enforcement, with Guangdong regional officials arresting 54 parallel importers in April and confiscating $11.9 million worth of smuggled consoles, according to the report.