"ALL BUT useless?"
I suppose because it actually shows the weather for Misrata, Libya?
The developers behind a much-hyped, headline-grabbing humanitarian smartphone app are in damage control mode after their software was found to be junk. The iSea app for iOS was billed as a way for users to help rescue refugees adrift at sea by combing over satellite imagery of oceans on their smartphones and flagging any shots …
Well, as Tay pointed out, you have to know things about stuff to instantly recognize how ludicrous the very premise of this app is. And to be able to prove it, you *really* need skills beyond that of basic journalism -- or at least be smart enough to ask someone who does have the skills.
We're in a world where people are *shocked* to discover that yes, a jet airliner can disappear without there being satellite videos that will show exactly where it was for every second of its journey. And people want to feel good about being able to help from their armchairs (slacktivism). If wearing pink cures breast cancer, can't we solve the refugee disaster by swiping right? Don't we *deserve* the opportunity to know that downloading an app will fix everything??
Well, someone else downloading an app, really. I'd download it myself, but it looks kind of boring.
There are crowd-sourcing sites like zooniverse.org which really do help with problems that computers still aren't very good at such as image recognition (mapping solar flares, deforestation, ocean floor analysis). They can simply rely on lots of amateurs pre-ranking images for expert analysis, which helps in putting those needles you're looking for into a much smaller haystack.
Yes, there are plenty of ludicrous premises - real time refugee monitoring of the high seas isn't a clever one. But there are plenty of actually useful applications for this sort of technology.
You're all talking about the app, you all know the name of the developer, and... well... before being blacklisted forever, Grey Goo was nominated for several awards.
As long as you believe that there's no such thing as bad publicity, this whole experience has been awesome for everybody involved.
Well, they won an advertising award, that's something right?
(Amusingly, pretty much every search for the app is bringing up results saying it's a scam now)
...deserves to be had.
It always had to be a con, because there was no money in it. Now, had the developers thought a bit harder they could have taken the "market-maker" model of Uber, or Airbnb, and come up with Fugee, a new platform to link those with the wish to travel unsafely (plus the means to pay) to people smugglers.
Lucrative, flexible, and socially useful. What more could any developer want? And there's plenty of opportunity for value added extras like paying your people smuggler to put all your real identity documents in a weighted bag destined for Davy Jones' locker (5 USD), or for a badly photocopied guide to bluffing your way through the EU asylum systems (10 USD), higher rates for the less unseaworthy vessels (basic plus 500 USD per head). Or even for your people smuggler to send a postcard to your next of kin if the worst happens (10 USD).
So I suppose, what this news story shows is not the problem with gullible users, but in fact, that the problem with most developers: No sense of commerce or meeting people's needs.
No need to be all cynical and snippy. There have been pretty useful dev-led solutions in things like refugee re-unification and disaster relief. A lot of open source stuff is not primarily about money though it may have self-promotion as an incentive.
If you insist on dismissing all open source as junk, which is your prerogative, that primarily leaves you with one consumer operating system these days that is not open source based in any form ;-) Hint: it is not universally loved by its users.
Not sure how well this app would have worked out in practice, but there was nothing wrong per se with wanting to help. Something similar was attempted with Steve Fossett, IIRC.
What was wrong was a) the team misrepresenting (rather pointlessly) the current state of the app, instead of stating it was a prototype. And b) whatever the team's error of judgment, all sorts of journalists in prestigious publications not doing their job correctly.
~ Blame for the media should be first on your hit-list imho... No one asked a single difficult question before helping to hype this???
~ Its not like iAppDroid crapware / Malware hasn't been fairly pervasive in recent months...
~ Yet no one in Medialand is asking very necessary questions... ~ Fuck the media! They hang users out to dry, then just walk away!
~ Yet no one in Medialand is asking very necessary questions... ~ Fuck the media! They hang users out to dry, then just walk away!
Why should they? Once upon a time, journalists/reporters did ask tough questions. But then the advertisers started waving the money sword at the media. So... happy news, happy articles, and no tough, embarrassing questions.
Ad agency: "we're thinking of building an app that would help people rescue refugees"
MOAS: "that sounds like a good idea"
Press release follows. Easy.
I see you're a yank, if you were in the UK you would see this sort of selective quoting and misrepresentation being currently played out on electoral posters all over Britain whenever the facts are deemed inconvenient.
I see you're a yank, if you were in the UK you would see this sort of selective quoting and misrepresentation being currently played out on electoral posters all over Britain whenever the facts are deemed inconvenient.
I hate to say it, but we in the States are seeing the same level of bullcrap. Otherwise the two front runners for President wouldn't be the frontrunners.
Apple has introduced a game-changer into its upcoming iOS 16 for those who hate CAPTCHAs, in the form of a feature called Automatic Verification.
The feature does exactly what its name alludes to: automatically verifies devices and Apple ID accounts without any action from the user. When iOS 16 ships later this year, it will eliminate the frustrating requirement to select all the stops signs in a photo or decipher a string of characters.
The news was mentioned at Apple's 33rd annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) along with the usual slew of features designed to enhance the functionality of iPhones.
Another day, another legal claim against Apple for deliberately throttling the performance of its iPhones to save battery power.
This latest case was brought by Justin Gutmann, who has asked the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to approve a collective action that could allow as many as 25 million Brits to claim compensation from the American technology giant. He claims the iGiant secretly degraded their smartphones' performance to make the battery power last longer.
Apple may therefore have to cough up an eye-popping £768 million ($927 million), Gutmann's lawyers estimated, Bloomberg first reported this week.
A week after confirming plans for Telegram Premium, the messaging platform's CEO, Pavel Durov, is again criticizing Apple's approach to its Safari browser for stifling the efforts of web developers.
Durov would very much like his web-based messaging platform, Telegram Web, to be delivered as a web app rather than native, but is prevented from offering users a full-fat experience on Apple's mobile devices due to limitations in the iOS Safari browser.
There's no option for web developers on Apple's iPhone and iPad to use anything but Safari, and features taken for granted on other platforms have yet to make it to iOS.
WWDC Apple opened its 33rd annual Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday with a preview of upcoming hardware and planned changes in its mobile, desktop, and wrist accessory operating systems.
The confab consists primarily of streamed video, as it did in 2020 and 2021, though there is a limited in-person component for the favored few. Apart from the preview of Apple's homegrown Arm-compatible M2 chip – coming next month in a redesigned MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro – there was not much meaningful innovation. The M2 Air has a full-size touch ID button, apparently.
Apple's software-oriented enhancements consist mainly of worthy but not particularly thrilling interface and workflow improvements, alongside a handful of useful APIs and personalization capabilities. Company video performers made no mention of Apple's anticipated AR/VR headset.
Apple may ditch its exclusive Lightning port in favor of the more widely used USB-C for future iPhone models.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted the shift on Wednesday, pointing out that the move would beef up the devices' wired connectivity, and shake up supply chains.
"My latest survey indicates that 2H23 new iPhone will abandon [the] Lightning port and switch to USB-C port. USB-C could improve iPhone's transfer and charging speed in hardware designs, but the final spec details still depend on iOS support," he said.
A study has found more outdated apps in Apple's App Store and Google Play than actively updated ones.
Analytics biz Pixalate – the outfit behind the study, titled The Abandoned Mobile Apps Report – told The Register its figures appear "to support Apple's apparent desire to 'clean up' abandoned apps," despite the unpopularity of the announcement with developers. The iGiant last month threatened to wipe away software from its store that hasn't been updated for a significant period of time.
The report consists of data from crawls of the Android and iOS app stores to look for what Pixalate classified as abandoned apps – those that have gone two or more years without an update. Between the two stores in the first quarter of 2022, Pixalate said it found more than 1.5 million abandoned apps, amounting to 33 percent of the more than five million apps it told The Register it examined.
Column For the past six months I've been staring at the backside of my iPhone 13 Pro wondering what possessed Apple to build a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) camera into its flagship smartphone.
It's not as though you need a time-of-flight depth camera, sensitive enough to chart the reflection time of individual photons, to create a great portrait. That's like swatting a fly with a flamethrower – fun, but ridiculous overkill. There are more than enough cameras on the back of my mobile to be able to map the depth of a scene – that's how Google does it on its Pixel phones. So what is Apple's intention here? Why go to all this trouble?
The answer lies beyond the iPhone, and points to what comes next.
Google has started rolling out an iOS app to help those using Apple devices move their data to Android systems.
The Chocolate Factory's "Switch to Android" app had been unofficially available in the iOS App Store to those with the direct link for about a week but is now published for anyone to try.
"The Switch to Android app from Google helps you quickly and securely move your most important data types – photos, videos, contacts, and calendar events — to a brand new Android device without fussy cables," the app's description explains, in reference to the cable-based data-transfer method previously recommended.
Apple has warned developers it will remove their products from its App Stores if they've not been updated for three years.
A policy update issued last Friday explained apps that "fail to meet a minimal download threshold – meaning the app has not been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period" will also be at risk of deletion from the App Store. The policy applies to iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
Apple's justification for the stance is that refreshed apps "work for the vast majority of users and support our latest innovations in security and privacy". The company's announcement proudly states that Apple's attention to such matters has seen it remove 2.8 million apps from its digital storefronts over the last six years.
Special report Europe's Digital Markets Act – near-finalized legislation to tame the internet's gatekeepers – contains language squarely aimed at ending Apple's iOS browser restrictions.
The Register has received a copy of unpublished changes in the proposed act, and among the various adjustments to the draft agreement is the explicit recognition of "web browser engines" as a service that should be protected from anti-competitive gatekeeper-imposed limitations.
Apple requires that competing mobile browsers distributed through the iOS App Store use its own WebKit rendering engine, which is the basis of its Safari browser. The result is that Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on iOS are all, more or less, Safari.
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