Category: BUYSEMPERFI

You can still swap between your Focused and Other inboxes with a tap, and you can still quickly jump between the various components of the app when you need to. Sadly the calendar part of the Outlook app hasn’t yet been optimized in the same way, but it’ll still expand to fill the available space, meaning a better view of your appointments.

OneDrive

You can easily navigate around OneDrive in the mobile app.

Microsoft via David Nield

Our second Microsoft entry in the list, OneDrive solves the problem of trying to manage and manipulate files when you’re on the go. By putting a navigation bar and the files themselves on the screen, the app lets you actually get work done, whether it’s marking files for deletion or sorting them into the appropriate folders.

This is going to be much more suitable for people who are already invested in OneDrive and the Microsoft ecosystem in general, but you get access to all of your cloud storage in the same interface. You can quickly jump to files that have recently been opened, to files and folders you’ve shared with other people, and to photos and videos.

YouTube

YouTube makes clever use of the two halves of the screen.

YouTube via David Nield

No doubt YouTube isn’t a new app to anyone, but it really shines on a foldable screen, because it uses the two halves of the display separately: In landscape mode with the display slightly folded, you get the video playing on the top half and the playback controls on the bottom half, making it much easier to control your video queue with fewer taps.

It’s likely having your own little portable video player you can prop up anywhere you want. Even if the screen is fully flat (which automatically hides the playback controls again), the YouTube app intelligently adapts to show a carousel of recommended videos down the right-hand side, which you can scroll through separately.

Many years ago, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 gained notoriety when its batteries caught fire in a series of incidents. There’s been a steady stream of similar, though isolated, incidents ever since. However, despite the high-profile coverage of batteries gone wrong, the vast majority of Li-ion batteries are safe.

The chemical reaction that occurs inside a lithium-ion cell is complex, but as in any battery, there’s a negative and a positive electrode. In lithium batteries, the negative is a lithium-carbon compound, and the positive is cobalt oxide (though many battery makers are moving away from cobalt). These two compounds cause a reaction that is safe when controlled and delivers energy to your devices. When the reaction gets out of control though, you end up with earbuds melting in your ears. What changes a safe reaction to an uncontrolled reaction can be any number of things: excess heat, physical damage during use, physical damage during manufacture, or using the wrong charger. 

The three basic rules that have kept me safe (thus far) through testing dozens and dozens of batteries are: 

1. Avoid cheap cords, chargers, and outlet adapters.
2. Make sure batteries aren’t exposed to excessive heat (over 110 degrees).
3. Regularly inspect batteries for signs of damage.

Avoiding cheap wall-outlet adapters, cords, and chargers is the most important. These are your most likely source of problems. Those chargers you see on Amazon for $20 cheaper than the competition? Not worth it. They probably got the price down by skimping on insulation, leaving out power-management tools, and ignoring the basics of electrical safety. Price alone is no guarantee of safety, either. Buy from reputable companies and brands.

Then there’s heat. Too much of it can cause all manner of problems, both in terms of discharge and in terms of safety. Avoid heat, and pay attention to your batteries when they’re charging. If your device gets overly hot when charging, this can be a sign of problems. Similarly, beware of any swollen, bulging, or otherwise misshapen batteries.

A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek, previously linked to the infamous Russian military hacking unit Sandworm, took credit this week for a disruptive attack on the Ukrainian internet and mobile service provider Kyivstar. As Russia’s kinetic war against Ukraine has dragged on, inflicting what the World Bank estimates to be around $410 billion in recovery costs for Ukraine, the country has launched an official crowdfunding platform known as United24 as a means of raising awareness and rebuilding.

Kytch, the small company that aimed to fix McDonald’s notably often-broken ice cream machines, claims it has discovered a “smoking gun” email from the CEO of McDonald’s ice cream machine manufacturer that Kytch’s lawyers say suggests an alleged plan to undermine Kytch as a potential competitor. Kytch argues in a recent court filing that the email reveals the real reason why, a couple of weeks later, McDonald’s sent an email to thousands of its restaurant franchisees claiming safety hazards related to Kytch’s ice-cream-machine-whispering device.

WIRED looked at how Microsoft’s Digital Crime Unit has refined a strategy over the past decade that combines intelligence and technical capabilities from Microsoft’s massive infrastructure with creative legal tactics to disrupt both global cybercrime and state-backed actors. And we dove into the controversy over reauthorization of Section 702 surveillance powers in the US Congress.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t break or cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there.

Geofence warrants, which require tech companies to cough up data on everyone in a certain geographic area at a certain time, have become an incredibly powerful tool for law enforcement. Sending a geofence warrant to Google, in particular, has come to be seen as almost an “easy button” among police investigators, given that Google has long stored location data on users in the cloud, where it can be demanded to help police identify suspects based on the timing and location of a crime alone—a practice that has appalled privacy advocates and other critics who say it violates the Fourth Amendment. Now, Google has made technical changes to rein in that surveillance power.

The company announced this week that it would store location history only on users’ phones, delete it by default after three months, and, if the user does choose to store it in a cloud account, keep it encrypted so that even Google can’t decrypt it. The move has been broadly cheered by the privacy and civil liberties crowds as a long-overdue protection for users. It will also strip law enforcement of a tool it had come to increasingly rely on. Geofence warrants were sent to Google, for instance, to obtain data on more than 5,000 devices present at the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but they have also been used to solve far smaller crimes, including nonviolent ones. So much for the “easy button.”

In a different sort of technical move to tighten users’ data protections, Apple has added new security features designed to make it harder for thieves to exploit users’ sensitive data and accounts. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on how thieves who merely learned someone’s passcode—say, by looking over their shoulder—and then stole their phone could access their online accounts and even make payments to drain their bank balances. Apple has now created a Stolen Device Protection feature that, when enabled, will require you to use a biometric feature like TouchID or FaceID to access certain accounts and phone features, in addition to the passcode that unlocks the phone. For the most sensitive features, like changing passwords or passcodes or turning off Find My, Apple will also force you to wait an hour and authenticate again if the phone isn’t in a location the user typically frequents.

The group of Chinese hackers known as Volt Typhoon has rung alarm bells across the cybersecurity industry all year with news of its intrusions targeting power grids and other critical infrastructure in the Pacific region and the US. A new report from The Washington Post offers fresh details of the disturbing mix of networks that the group has breached, including a water utility in Hawaii, an oil and gas pipeline, and a major West Coast port. The hackers haven’t actually caused any disruptions, nor have they penetrated the industrial control system side of their targets’ networks—the sensitive systems capable of triggering physical effects. But in combination with previous reports of Volt Typhoon’s work to plant malware inside electric utilities in the continental US and Guam, the report paints a picture of China’s escalating moves to prepare the groundwork for disruption in the event of a crisis, such as an invasion of Taiwan.

The notion that your iPhone or Amazon Echo is quietly listening to your conversations has long been one of the most paranoid suspicions of all technology users—bolstered, of course, by the targeted ads that are often so accurate that they seem to be pulled directly from verbal conversations. This week, that suspicion finally became more than an urban legend when 404 Media reported on an advertising company actively claiming that it can eavesdrop on conversations via those kinds of devices. The company, Cox Media Group, (CMG) brags in its marketing materials that it’s already offering the technique to clients and “the ROI is already impressive.” It lists Amazon, Microsoft, and Google as alleged customers. But 404 Media couldn’t verify if the technique works as advertised—an enormous “if”—and CMG didn’t respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Sony’s A95K TV (9/10, WIRED Recommends) was a breakthrough in picture quality, becoming an instant hit with critics and videophiles everywhere. Part of the first generation of QD-OLED TVs, which marry a layer of quantum dots with a more traditional OLED display to boost brightness and color volume, the A95K and Samsung’s 2022 S95B both helped push OLED technology into a new era of performance.

The A95K’s success made for a pretty daunting follow-up, with TV fanatics everywhere wondering where Sony would take the A95 Master Series next. After spending several days with the A95L, all I can say is: Wow.

Like Samsung’s second-generation QD-OLED, the S95C (8/10, WIRED Recommends), Sony’s A95L raises the bar once again with a sizable punch up in brightness, while its Cognitive Processer XR helps to create unparalleled clarity, contrast, color accuracy, and realism. It’s not cheap, but investment rewards you with a stirring experience that amounts to the best picture performance I’ve encountered.

Google, Take the Wheel

Sony wisely employs Google TV as its primary operating system, which has become my favorite system not named Roku. It serves as a simple and intuitive command center, starting with the Home app, which whips you through the setup for network connection and streaming apps in just minutes.

Like Roku’s system, things are all the simpler if you’ve used Google TV before, as it calls up the majority of your previous streaming apps and baseline settings. If you use any of Google’s other ubiquitous services, your account helps you do things like auto-sign into select apps or access Google Photos for a cheery ambient backdrop. Sure, Google’s a powerful overlord, but it’s an incredibly convenient one in this case.

You’ll still have to walk through some of Sony’s onboard options—setting up antenna channels was surprisingly slow—but it’s all straightforward, and the interface makes daily use a relative breeze. I did notice Google TV’s performance was laggy at the start, but it seemed to settle in over time as it compiled viewing data, which lets you easily step into movies and shows in progress from any of your apps via the home screen. It’s still a bit slow at loading live TV channels with my HD antenna but otherwise runs smoothly.

The TV supports handy streaming features like Google Cast and AirPlay 2 as well as Google Assistant voice search. The latter is accessible via a microphone on the remote or a built-in onboard microphone, muted by default with a physical switch.

Sony has its own software extras, including a gaming hub that lets you optimize features like VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) for next-gen gaming devices and make adjustments like adding crosshairs or optimizing black levels. The A95L also offers a special Auto Genre Picture Mode for PS5, designed to determine whether you’re gaming or watching a movie and optimize the picture accordingly.

As for picture adjustments, Sony’s unique blend of settings can be daunting at first, but one of the best parts of buying a flagship OLED TV of this caliber is that it doesn’t take much to get it to sing. After choosing the recommended Professional Mode in HDR and SDR, and the default Dolby Vision Bright mode, I made very few adjustments.

One setting to keep an eye on is Peak Luminance, which I left at its default High setting in HDR, and set to Low or Medium for SDR depending on ambient lighting.

Bigger Is Better?

For a TV with ambitions (and pricing) aimed at being the best in the business, the A95L looks relatively beefy when compared to the pencil-thin designs of OLED TVs from a few years back. Models like the S95C are marginally slimmer, but flagship OLEDs have generally bulked up in recent years as they add more tech to combat the brightness assault from LED TVs, as well as to dissipate the heat that comes with it.

The A95L’s plastic backside is plain, even compared to second-tier models like LG’s C3 OLED, but its hearty, uniform design makes it easier to move around without worrying about bending the display. It looks appropriately fancy from the front, and it’s refreshingly simple to attach the stand pieces and get the TV literally on its feet.

My one complaint there is that there’s no pedestal mount or narrow configuration, so if your console spans less than 60 inches, like mine, you’ll likely need to mount the TV. There is an alternative stand configuration, but it simply raises the display to accommodate a soundbar.

This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Perhaps no single Christmas custom is more ubiquitous than putting up the Christmas tree. It originated in eastern Europe more than 500 years ago, when people decorated evergreen trees with roses or apples as symbols of Eve and the Garden of Eden. Today, that ancient tradition is a booming business that employs nearly 100,000 people, garners close to $2 billion in revenue, and harvests 25 million to 30 million natural Christmas trees annually—about 30 percent of them from the Pacific Northwest. Sales of real Christmas trees have increased by nearly 20 percent since 2020, though fake trees are booming too.

Artificial trees have drawn criticism for the chemicals used in their manufacturing, as well as their carbon footprint. But live trees have drawbacks too. One in particular—the agricultural chemicals and insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides used in tree farming—has drawn remarkably little attention, partly owing to a lack of research on the risk to consumers or farmworkers.

People who love their traditional green Christmas trees, even those worried about environmental impacts, seldom think about how those trees are grown. “I’ve used a fake tree for about 10 years,” said Denise Castro, from Eugene, Oregon. “Prior to that I bought real trees. I never considered that there might be pesticides on trees.” After High Country News reached out to her, she started asking longtime friends if they’d thought about it. But pesticides were either something they hadn’t considered or weren’t particularly worried about. “You can count me in on this consensus,” said Michele Zemba. “Pesticides never crossed my mind when buying a real tree.”

Among the most common chemicals used by the industry are chlorothalonil, atrazine, glyphosate (better known as Roundup), and dimethoate, all of which have known impacts on human health. The half-life of some of these chemicals ranges from days to years, depending on the chemical involved and other factors. Over time, these pesticides accumulate in the environment, lingering in soil and groundwater and building up in plant and animal tissues—especially in human beings, who perch at the top of the food chain.

In Oregon, low levels of pesticides are commonly found in surface and drinking water. In 2021, researchers at Portland State University released data showing that forestry-related pesticides were present in Oregon’s coastal waters, a sign that they were flowing downstream in the state’s rivers. But it’s difficult to quantify any particular industry’s contribution to such widespread, low-level pollution over long periods of time—or to calculate the risks to consumers. Laura Masterson, an organic farmer and former Oregon Department of Agriculture board member, acknowledged that it’s another gap in the science. “We don’t really understand microdose impacts [of these chemicals] on health.”

Sick of climbing that ladder every year to put your lights up? Consider a permanent set of smart lights. This weatherproof model from Govee scores an IP67 rating (IP65 for the control box) and can handle temperatures of –4 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. They are designed to be up year-round. I (Simon) tested the 100-foot string (200-foot is also an option), which comes divided into six sections, with an extension cord to branch from the lower level to your roof line. Each bulb is around an inch and a half square and juts out an inch. A flat cable joins them together at 18-inch intervals. Installation was fairly easy for the most part, with the adhesive sticking well to the plastic underhang of my home. I used the supplied screw clips to tidy up some cables and fix them more securely. You can cut them, and connectors are included, but this task is not for the faint of heart.

Govee offers everything but the kitchen sink in its busy companion app. You can set colors in zones (two per section), tweak the color temperature, and choose from a frankly bewildering array of lighting effects, called Scenes. Christmas is well represented in the Festival section of the Scenes, but there are also some nice effects in there for other holidays like Halloween. Depending on your home, they can serve as feature lights. The white looks quite classy, and they can get pretty bright (up to 50 lumens a bulb). There is Matter support for easy setup, and you can use voice commands with Alexa or Google Assistant.

If you already have other Govee lights, you will enjoy the ability to group them for shared effects, and you can schedule them, create effects, and even sync them to music or sound, though this feels gimmicky. They seem pricey until you compare them to other permanent lighting. If you don’t have much of an overhang, the lights will cast shadows and make shapes on the wall (Govee suggests installing 1 to 3 inches out, and I would recommend further if you can). My house is fairly small, so I only needed four sections. I wish the lights were closer together, and a little more subtle. If visible bulbs and cables annoy you, these aren’t for you.

In an informal survey of the contents of my coworkers’ Notes apps, I found that multiple people keep drafts of texts or emails to friends or family members. There are lists of forgotten passwords and the requisite travel packing lists. One person says they use Notes to prewrite posts for social media. Others kept lists of mansard roof homes, or a searchable list of friends’ and family’s astrological signs. Multiple people had written their wedding vows in Notes and kept them saved there.

Everyone Take Note

Of course, we plebeians are not the only Notes devotees. Celebrities have been apologizing via heartfelt Notes screenshots for years. TikTok is full of users reminding each other to vent into the Notes app instead of sending an angry text or firing off a spicy social media post. “What’s in your Notes app” is the new “what’s in your bag.” We all have a Notes app. And we all pour the darkest (and brightest!) moments of our souls into it.

When Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo, the duo behind the popular podcast A Thing or Two, did an episode about the ways they used the Notes app, they were shocked by the intensity of the listeners’ responses. Many who wrote in were eager to share the personal ways that they used Notes, from listing baby names that they loved to keeping a “shame log” as a reminder to treat themselves a little more kindly. “Your notes are not public-facing or performative,” Mazur says in a Zoom interview. “You’re being your most authentic self, as opposed to performing what someone wants to see from you.”

Cerulo says that our Notes apps put us directly in touch with our most intimate selves. “’It’s like what one of our commenters said, ‘Forget my search history. When I die, my BFF needs to delete my Notes app.’”

Unlike a photo app expressly devoted to digital memories, my Notes have never triggered what is termed “the miscarriage problem”—the internet’s tendency to ping you with painful, unprompted reminders of traumatic events in your life. I am never made sad by what I see when I go through my notes, or when I ask to see someone else’s. Notes are not polished memories, set in stone. They’re hasty, messy, and generally unhinged. They can even be lyrical; as my colleague Lauren Goode notes (ha ha), “Who among us has not jotted down a random thought on the go and thought, ‘My God, I am a poet.’” (For the record, I have never thought this.)

Especially if you’re a writer like me, it’s tempting to create and adhere to the story of your life. Here is where you started, here is where you made mistakes, here is where you won, and here is where you made that decision you can never take back. Contrasted with all the oppressive, maybe harmful, apps that you may have on your phone, the Notes app serves as a playful reminder that we’re all just works in progress.

This is how we should want to be remembered 50,000 years hence. Not as the composed and probably artificial facades that we present at work or on our holiday cards, but messy and whole. Here we were, loving preposterous baby names or singing the worst songs out loud in public. Here we tried to remember what mattered to the people we loved, what socks they wanted, and what their favorite pizzeria order is. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good, and we’re writing it all down.

The Apple TV+ series For All Mankind is an alternate history story in which the Soviet Union beats the United States to the moon, leading to a greatly intensified space race. Screenwriter Rafael Jordan was excited to see another science fiction show from Ronald D. Moore, creator of the hit series Battlestar Galactica.

“I’ve been saying for two or three years that this is probably the best show on TV, and it’s not the first time we’ve said that about a Ron Moore show,” Jordan says in Episode 556 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley thinks that For All Mankind will appeal to a wider audience than most outer space shows, since its first season revolves around the familiar and relatable world of the Apollo program. “It starts off with this fairly realistic world of the ’70s, so if you’re someone who’s put off by super science fiction stuff, it kind of eases you into it,” he says. “And then by the time you’re hooked, then the fusion reactors and all that kind of stuff starts coming in.”

For All Mankind also features top-notch dialogue and characterization. Writer Sara Lynn Michener thinks the show will appeal to anyone who likes the knotty domestic drama of shows like Mad Men. “Very few characters, if any, ever feel like they’re just there to provide filler and there to provide something else for the main characters,” she says. “Every time you think that you’re going to write them off as some sort of caricature, you’re wrong, and they’re going to come back around and be real again in a new way, in a refreshing way, and I absolutely love that about this show.”

For All Mankind is currently airing its fourth season, out of a planned seven. Lightspeed magazine editor John Joseph Adams hopes the show becomes one of the rare science fiction series to last that long. “I think this is one of the best science fiction shows probably ever, certainly the best alternate history show,” he says. “Everybody watch it and get your friends to watch it, because we’ve got to get those seven seasons.”

Listen to the complete interview with Rafael Jordan, Sara Lynn Michener, and John Joseph Adams in Episode 556 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Rafael Jordan on alternate history:

For once my background as a musician ties into this, and there’s really nothing they can do about this, but as the timelines start to diverge from reality, they use a lot of specific songs from certain years to create the mood. And I dig that, but also those songs wouldn’t exist any more. They would be different. “Come As You Are” by Nirvana. That song wouldn’t exist in this new timeline. It would be slightly different, because music is a reflection of the times and culture. … In the perfect version of this show they would have had the extra money to hire bands to make fake songs in the style of the times.

John Joseph Adams on the Season 2 finale:

What they figure out is that they can basically cover every inch of them with duct tape. So they basically make spacesuits out of duct tape, because that’s what they have, and they have some kind of face masks that they can put on them. And they explain in excruciating detail, “Any bit of your skin that’s exposed is just going to balloon.” It sounds completely awful, and you can see the angst on their faces as it’s explained what’s going to happen to them. And they have 15 seconds to get from where they are to this control panel on the outside, and it’s so intense. It’s just incredible.

David Barr Kirtley on astronaut Garrett Reisman:

Ron Moore calls [Garrett Reisman] and says, “I have an idea I’d like to bounce off you.” So they meet up, and Ron Moore says, “I’m thinking about doing a show about NASA in the ’70s, or maybe make it an alternate history thing, where we start off that way but then it diverges from actual history. One or the other.” And Garrett Reisman says, “Well, when I was in Russia I saw their lander”—their lunar lander that they built that they never used. And he’s like, “Most people don’t realize how close the Russians actually came to beating us to the moon.” And so they started talking about, “Whoa, what if that had happened? Then this would have happened, and this would have happened.” So that’s where the show’s origin was.

Sara Lynn Michener on Apple TV+:

I remember being very worried when this show came out, because I was literally pleading with people to watch it. Because I desperately wanted it to have all of the seasons, and I had read somewhere that they have a whole planned seven-season arc. And I want to see every bit of it. So I remember when it came out I was just like, “Why am I the only person talking about this show?” … I think Apple TV+ is smart enough to look at the long game and say, “Hey, if we finish this show, we can keep making money off of it in perpetuity,” and that is such a smarter way of doing stuff like this, because they’re aware shows go through ebbs and flows of popularity.

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Netflix just did the unthinkable: It released viewership numbers. After years of withholding information on how many hours subscribers spent watching its shows and movies, on Tuesday the streaming giant released a huge trove of data. It covers 18,000 titles, breaking them all down by how many hours viewers have watched of each during the period of January to June 2023. The winner, with 812 million hours viewed? The Night Agent.

This bodes well for The Night Agent and maybe less good for people drawn to Netflix’s more esoteric fare. Because while the first season of Sex/Life—a steamy, soapy show about hooking up with a hot former lover—scored 126 million hours viewed, the first season of Sex Education—a warm, funny show about teenagers learning about intimacy and boundaries—landed just south of 28 million. The streaming giant was quick to point out that “success on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes” and isn’t determined by this stat alone. Although, on a call announcing the numbers co-CEO Ted Sarandos put it somewhat differently: “This is the data we use to run the business.”

Netflix, then, is having it both ways—saying that numbers help it decide what shows to make, while also saying stats don’t mean everything. Two things can always be true at once, but it’s hard to imagine Netflix, coming out of Hot Strike Summer and facing a growing number of competitors, not wanting to keep pouring resources into sure things.

Not to say that more of The Night Agent is a bad thing. If you’re not one of the apparent millions of people who’ve watched it, then you’ve probably heard someone tell you, “Oh yeah, it’s … fine?” while copping to having watched a whole season in a weekend. It’s what my colleague Jason Parham likes to call “just OK TV”—neither offensive, nor boundary-pushing, just there.

This era of Just OK also comes as Netflix captures the King of Reality TV throne. Shows like Love Is Blind and Selling Sunset are becoming cultural juggernauts, and the streamer shows no sign of slowing down, especially now that the Squid Game spinoff, Squid Game: The Challenge, is getting major traction. (The show came out after the time period tracked for Netflix’s latest report, but its early viewer numbers were quite good.)

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to X.