An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Toronto Star: Nassir the gorilla, languid in the heat of a summer afternoon, sits just within reach of a faded sign taped to the glass of his enclosure at the Toronto Zoo, advising visitors not to share images on their cellphones with the swinging bachelor. "We've had a lot of members and guests that actually will put their phones up to the glass and show him videos," says Maria Franke, the zoo's director of wildlife conservation and welfare. "And Nassir is so into those videos. It was causing him to be distracted and not interacting with the other gorillas, and you know, being a gorilla. He was just so enthralled with gadgets and phones and the videos."

Gorillas, it seems, share more than just 98 per cent of our DNA. Zookeepers have discovered they can become every bit as interested in cellphones as the bipedal visitors who pay to see them. [...] Biologist Rob Laidlaw sees animal interest in technology as a manifestation of their need for stimulation -- a result of the boredom they experience in captivity. He says keeping such animals stimulated is a huge challenge, even for sanctuary organizations that provide sprawling enclosures. "They're looking for any opportunity they can find to engage intellectually," said Laidlaw, a chartered biologist and executive director of Zoocheck, an animal protection organization. Laidlaw says technology has its uses in zoos, but the emphasis needs to remain on providing as many animals as possible with environments that are as close to their native habitats as possible. "My fear is always that people see these things and think they're a panacea when in fact they're not. They're just one little tiny facet of relieving the boredom of animals."

As most teenagers do, Nassir seems to have grown out of his preoccupation with cellphones, says Franke. He is strongly bonded to his half-brother, Sadiki, who shares the zoo's rainforest habitat with him. "It's like Nassir was a little boy, all he wanted to to do was sit in the basement and play games on the computer," said Franke. "I'm not really sure what the content of the videos was. Was it gorillas in the wild? I have no idea. Was it a cartoon? I have no idea. But obviously, there was something that was attracting him to it." But just in case he isn't quite over it, the note to the public remains up -- for now.

A new Harris Poll shared exclusively with Fast Company found that most Americans would prefer to live "in a simpler era before everyone was obsessed with screens and social media," reports Fast Company, adding "this sentiment is especially strong among older millennials and Gen Xers."

The Wrap summarizes the poll results: 77% of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was "plugged in," meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage...

63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy. In total, 67% of respondents said they'd prefer things as they used to be versus as they are now.
"Interestingly, baby boomers were slightly less eager to time hop, with only 60% of people over 55 saying they'd prefer to return to yesteryear," notes Fast Company: While Americans may want to unshackle themselves from the burden of constant connectivity, an overwhelming 90% also said that being open-minded about new technologies is important, a finding that mostly held up across demographics. About half of respondents even said they tend to adopt new technologies before most people they know...

Just over half said they found keeping up with new technologies overwhelming, and about that same percentage said they believe technology is more likely to divide people than unite them. Here, it was younger respondents who took the most pessimistic view, with 57% of people under 35 agreeing that technology divides, versus 43% who disagreed.

"It's worth questioning the status quo of technology," argues the Washington Post's Tech Friend newsletter, "including apps as we know them."

Then they tout the benefits of the "non-app app... a hybrid of a website and a conventional app, with features of each" — the unappreciated Progressive Web App (which many still don't know can be installed on your phone's home screen): Web apps look and function pretty much like the conventional apps for your phone or computer, but they clog less space on your device and are less pushy about surveilling you. People who make web apps also say they are easier to create and update than conventional apps... But web apps have been around for years, and most people don't know they exist...

[Traditional apps] come with profound downsides, including Big Tech control, privacy compromises and high development costs. It would be healthy if there were palatable alternative paths to our current app system. Web apps might be part of the solution... At their core, web apps are "the web with an app-like cover," said Rob Kochman, senior product manager for Google's Chrome. Kochman and other web app fans say these apps are less demanding and less intrusive than a conventional app. The web app for Starbucks, for example, takes up just 429 kilobytes of storage on my phone — or less than 1 percent of the storage taken by the standard Starbucks Android app...

And by design, once a conventional app is on your phone, it can access your phone's guts and peek under the hood of your internet network. Web apps are stingier about access, Kochman and other experts told me. "If you're worried about installing some app, you'd probably prefer that as a web app," said a veteran tech executive who helped develop the original technology for web apps. He referred to a web app as "just a website that took all the right vitamins...."

It's difficult to figure out which companies make web apps or find them. There's not an app store for web apps, although there are some attempts like Store.App and Appscope. They're not ideal... Some technologists told me that Apple has held back web apps by limiting their capabilities for Apple devices. The company has said that's not true. And this year, Apple added iPhone feature options for web apps...

We should keep challenging what can feel like immutable parts of digital life, including apps. We have to keep asking: What if there's something better?
It's as easy as "press the three-dot icon, then select 'Add to home screen.'" But it'd be interesting to hear the perspective of Slashdot readers. So share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Are you using progressive web apps?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After endless leaks, Motorola made its fourth-generation lineup of foldables official today. The flagship is the Moto Razr+, which will launch in the US on June 23 for $999. There's also a cheaper phone called only the "Moto Razr" with a smaller outside screen, slower SoC, and no clear US price or release date. Internationally, these phones are called the Moto Razr 40 Ultra and Moto Razr 40. The Ultra model's SoC is a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 -- that's not the best you can get from Qualcomm, which would be the 8 Gen 2 -- this is a year-old mid-cycle upgrade chip. The phone has 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 3800 mAh battery with 30 W quick charging. The leaked display specs have been all over the place, but officially, the interior display is a 6.9-inch, 2640x1080 OLED that runs at a smoking 165 Hz. The exterior display is super big on the Ultra model and is a 3.6-inch, 144 Hz OLED at a nearly square 1066x1056. Motorola has the phone's dust and water ingress protection rated at IP52, which typically only protects from "direct sprays of water up to 15 degrees from the vertical" and is far from qualifying the Razr as a water-resistant phone.

The design has been better. The original foldable Moto Razr reboot from 2020 had beautiful throwback looks that screamed "Moto Razr." It looked just like the old-school flip phone from the early 2000s but modernized. This fourth foldable generation tones things down a lot and is more of a generic rectangle. You could easily confuse it for Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip. This fourth generation seems more mature, though. Motorola will now let you run any app you want on the ultra's giant front screen, complete with the option of a super tiny Android navigation bar tucked away in the bottom left corner, to the left of the two front cameras. You can peruse the app drawer, use Google Pay, or play media on the front display. You can even type on the keyboard: Google GBoard has a special full-screen mode that will show a single line of input text.

Those front cameras give this font display one of the strangest display shapes on the market. With two big dead spots in the bottom right corner, the workable display area is kind of an upside-down L shape. By default, apps will stay out of the non-rectangular part of the screen, but it's possible to enable a "full screen" mode for the front apps. This will force apps to use the lower part of the display, and you just have to hope that they will somehow deal with that. Android has APIs to identify dead areas of the display for apps to work around, but usually, that's for a top camera notch. Not many apps are built for this, but you're apparently welcome to try to make them work with the feature. [...] If you're interested in the Razr+, preorders start June 16.

In a groundbreaking ruling, a district court judge in New York, United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), declared that a warrant is necessary for cell phone searches at the border, unless there are urgent circumstances. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports: The Ninth Circuit in United States v. Cano (2019) held that a warrant is required for a device search at the border that seeks data other than "digital contraband" such as child pornography. Similarly, the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Aigbekaen (2019) held that a warrant is required for a forensic device search at the border in support of a domestic criminal investigation. These courts and the Smith court were informed by Riley v. California (2014). In that watershed case, the Supreme Court held that the police must get a warrant to search an arrestee's cell phone. [...]

The Smith court's application of Riley's balancing test is nearly identical to the arguments we've made time and time again. The Smith court also cited Cano, in which the Ninth Circuit engaged extensively with EFF's amicus brief even though it didn't go as far as requiring a warrant in all cases. The Smith court acknowledged that no federal appellate court "has gone quite this far (although the Ninth Circuit has come close)."

We're pleased that our arguments are moving through the federal judiciary and finally being embraced. We hope that the Second Circuit affirms this decision and that other courts -- including the Supreme Court -- are courageous enough to follow suit and protect personal privacy.

The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is being launched today in the U.S. for $699. It's the first co-branded phone from Motorola that arrives nine years after Lenovo purchased the Motorola brand for $2.91 billion. According to The Verge, the smartphone offers "a suite of productivity features designed to work with ThinkPad laptops." From the report: The ThinkPhone has a lot of the same stuff as a mainstream flagship phone, even though it's priced just below the likes of the $799 Samsung Galaxy S23. It comes with a big 6.6-inch 1080p OLED with up to 144Hz refresh rate. Build quality is quite sturdy with an aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass on the front panel, and Lenovo's signature textured aramid fiber back panel for a softer touch. The whole device is IP68 rated for strong dust and water resistance, and it's also MIL-STD-810H compliant to protect against falls and more extreme conditions.

In addition to the ThinkPad-like look and feel, there's a red key on the side of the phone in a nod to Lenovo's classic keyboard nub. You can customize it to a degree: a double-press can be assigned one of the phone's ThinkPad integration features, while a single-press can act as an app shortcut. Some apps will even let you launch certain features -- mapping it to the "Pay" screen of the Starbucks app could save you a lot of embarrassing fumbling at the register, for example. The ThinkPhone is available first to enterprise customers, with general availability on April 28th via Motorola.com.

Satellite manufacturer AST SpaceMobile partnered with AT&T to make the first two-way audio call using satellites with a standard smartphone. "The initial call was placed using AT&T's networks in Midland, Texas, to mobile carrier Ratuken in Japan on an unmodified Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone using AST SpaceMobile's BlueWalker 3 satellite," reports Engadget. AST SpaceMobile claims to be building "the first and only space-based cellular broadband network." From the report: AT&T aims to use satellites to provide global cellular broadband from 2G to 5G. "Achieving what many once considered impossible, we have reached the most significant milestone to date in our quest to deliver global cellular broadband from space," Abel Avellan, CEO and chairman of AST SpaceMobile, said in a release. "While we take a moment to celebrate this tremendous accomplishment, we remain focused on the path ahead and pivotal next steps that get us closer to our goal of transforming the way the world connects."

It's unclear whether satellite access would come at an extra cost. In AT&T's original AST SpaceMobile partnership announcement, the company couldn't say whether existing plans would include satellite coverage. [...] While satellite offerings aren't available for consumers yet, this successful test brings widespread access one step closer to becoming a reality.

At Google I/O on May 10th, Google will launch its first foldable smartphone, "challenging Samsung's market-leading foldable phone business," reports CNBC. From the report: The Pixel Fold, known internally by the codename "Felix," will have the "most durable hinge on a foldable" phone, according to the documents. It will cost upward of $1,700 and compete with Samsung's $1,799 Galaxy Z Fold 4. Google plans to market the Pixel Fold as water-resistant and pocket-sized, with an outside screen that measures 5.8 inches across, according to the documents. Photos viewed by CNBC show that the phone will open like a book to reveal a small tablet-sized 7.6-inch screen, the same size as the display on Samsung's competitor. It weighs 10oz, slightly heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, but it has a larger battery that Google says will last for 24 hours, or up to 72 hours in a low power mode.

The Pixel Fold is powered by Google's Tensor G2 chip, according to the documents. That's the same processor that launched in the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro phones last year.

An anonymous reader shares a report from KrebsOnSecurity: KrebsOnSecurity received a nice bump in traffic this week thanks to tweets from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about "juice jacking," a term first coined here in 2011 to describe a potential threat of data theft when one plugs their mobile device into a public charging kiosk. It remains unclear what may have prompted the alerts, but the good news is that there are some fairly basic things you can do to avoid having to worry about juice jacking.

The term juice jacking crept into the collective paranoia of gadget geeks in the summer of 2011, thanks to the headline for a story here about researchers at the DEFCON hacker convention in Vegas who'd set up a mobile charging station designed to educate the unwary to the reality that many mobile devices were set up to connect to a computer and immediately sync data by default. Since then, Apple, Google and other mobile device makers have changed the way their hardware and software works so that their devices no longer automatically sync data when one plugs them into a computer with a USB charging cable. Instead, users are presented with a prompt asking if they wish to trust a connected computer before any data transfer can take place. On the other hand, the technology needed to conduct a sneaky juice jacking attack has become far more miniaturized, accessible and cheap. And there are now several products anyone can buy that are custom-built to enable juice jacking attacks. [...]

How seriously should we take the recent FBI warning? An investigation by the myth-busting site Snopes suggests the FBI tweet was just a public service announcement based on a dated advisory. Snopes reached out to both the FBI and the FCC to request data about how widespread the threat of juice jacking is in 2023. "The FBI replied that its tweet was a 'standard PSA-type post' that stemmed from the FCC warning," Snopes reported. "An FCC spokesperson told Snopes that the commission wanted to make sure that their advisory on "juice-jacking," first issued in 2019 and later updated in 2021, was up-to-date so as to ensure 'the consumers have the most up-to-date information.' The official, who requested anonymity, added that they had not seen any rise in instances of consumer complaints about juice-jacking." The best way to protect yourself from juice jacking is by using your own gear to charge and transfer data from your device(s) to another.

"Juice jacking isn't possible if a device is charged via a trusted AC adapter, battery backup device, or through a USB cable with only power wires and no data wires present," says security researcher Brian Krebs. "If you lack these things in a bind and still need to use a public charging kiosk or random computer, at least power your device off before plugging it in."

France announced Friday it is banning the "recreational" use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees' phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures. Reuters reports: The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, said in a statement that ''recreational" apps aren't secure enough to be used in state administrative services and "could present a risk for the protection of data." The ban will be monitored by France's cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok.

Guerini's office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps. Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes, like public communication, they can request permission to do so. Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter.

The European Commission has adopted a new set of right to repair rules (PDF) that, among other things, will add electronic devices like smartphones and tablets to a list of goods that must be built with repairability in mind. The Register reports: The new rules will need to be need to be negotiated between the European Parliament and member states before they can be turned into law. If they are, a lot more than just repairability requirements will change. One provision will require companies selling consumer goods in the EU to offer repairs (as opposed to just replacing a damaged device) free of charge within a legal guarantee period unless it would be cheaper to replace a damaged item. Beyond that, the directive also adds a set of rights for device repairability outside of legal guarantee periods that the EC said will help make repair a better option than simply tossing a damaged product away.

Under the new post-guarantee period rule, companies that produce goods the EU defines as subject to repairability requirements (eg, appliances, commercial computer hardware, and soon cellphones and tablets) are obliged to repair such items for five to 10 years after purchase if a customer demands so, and the repair is possible. OEMs will also need to inform consumers about which products they are liable to repair, and consumers will be able to request a new Repair Information Form from anyone doing a repair that makes pricing and fees more transparent. The post-guarantee period repair rule also establishes the creation of an online "repair matchmaking platform" for EU consumers, and calls for the creation of a European repair standard that will "help consumers identify repairers who commit to a higher quality."

"Repair is key to ending the model of 'take, make, break, and throw away' that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy," said Frans Timmermans, EVP for the European Green Deal, which aims to make the whole of EU carbon neutral by 2050. On that note, the EC proposed a set of anti-greenwashing laws alongside passing its right to repair rule yesterday that would make it illegal to make any green claims about a product without evidence. Citing the fact that 94 percent of Europeans believe protecting the environment is important, the EC said its proposal covers any explicit, voluntarily-made claims "which relate to the environmental impact, aspect, or performance of a product or the trader itself." Any such claims, like a laptop being made from recycled plastic, would need to be independently verified and proven with scientific evidence, the EC said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission today finalized rules requiring mobile carriers to block robotext messages that are likely to be illegal. The FCC described the rules as the agency's "first regulations specifically targeting the increasing problem of scam text messages sent to consumers." Carriers will be required to block text messages that come from "invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers." Carriers must also block texts from "numbers that the subscriber to the number has self-identified as never sending text messages, and numbers that government agencies and other well-known entities identify as not used for texting," the FCC said. Carriers will have to establish a point of contact for text senders so the senders can inquire about blocked texts. The FCC already requires similar blocking of voice calls from these types of numbers. The order will take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, according to a draft of the order released before the meeting.

More robotext rules may be on the way because today's "action also seeks public comment on further proposals to require providers to block texts from entities the FCC has cited as illegal robotexters," the FCC said. For example, the FCC proposes to clarify that Do Not Call Registry protections apply to text messaging. The FCC said it's further proposing to close the "lead generator loophole" that "allows companies to use a single consumer consent to deliver robocalls and text messages from multiple -- perhaps thousands -- of marketers on subjects that may not be what the consumer had in mind." The FCC "will also take further public comment on text authentication measures and other proposals to continue to fight illegal scam robotexts." The FCC separately voted today to close another gap in its Caller ID authentication rules that target illegal robocalls. The rules already required phone companies to implement the caller ID authentication technologies known as STIR and SHAKEN. But the rules don't apply in every possible scenario, so the FCC has periodically strengthened them. In June 2022, for example, the FCC required carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers to comply a year earlier than these small carriers were originally required to. The FCC said in a statement: "The new rules will require intermediate providers that receive unauthenticated IP calls directly from domestic originating providers to use STIR/SHAKEN to authenticate those calls. Although STIR/SHAKEN has been widely implemented under FCC rules, some originating providers are not capable of using the framework. In other cases, unscrupulous originating providers may deliberately fail to authenticate calls. By requiring the next provider in the call path to authenticate those calls, the FCC closes a gap in the caller ID authentication regime and facilitates government and industry efforts to identify and block illegal robocalls."

T-Mobile is buying Mint Mobile, the budget-friendly mobile carrier that's partially owned by Ryan Reynolds. The Verge reports: In a post published on Wednesday, T-Mobile announced that the deal's valued at up to $1.35 billion and comes as T-Mobile looks to build out its prepaid phone offering. The acquisition should close later this year and involves a 39 percent cash and 61 percent stock purchase of Mint's parent company, Ka'ena Corporation. The price could change, however, as it depends on Mint's performance.

Once the deal closes, Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim will join T-Mobile to continue managing the brand, which T-Mobile says "will generally operate as a separate business unit." Meanwhile, Reynolds will also remain a part of Mint's branding, as T-Mobile says he will "continue on in his creative role on behalf of Mint." "I never dreamt I'd own a wireless company and I certainly never dreamt I'd sell it to T-Mobile," Reynolds said in a tweet. "Life is strange and I'm incredibly proud and grateful."

As noted by T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert in a YouTube video posted on Wednesday, T-Mobile will retain the price of Mint's cheapest phone plan at $15 per month. The deal also includes Ka'ena's other companies, including Ultra Mobile, a prepaid carrier that offers international calling, and Plum, a wholesale wireless solutions provider. [...] By purchasing Mint, T-Mobile may be looking to claw back the customers it lost when it sold Boost Mobile to Dish as part of its merger with Sprint.

Last summer, Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced "Coverage Above and Beyond," a joint initiative that aimed to bring Starlink satellite coverage compatible T-Mobile devices. Now, SpaceX is getting ready to begin testing its satellite-to-cellular service. Engadget reports: During a panel at the Satellite Conference and Exhibition 2023, SpaceX VP of Starlink enterprise sales Jonathan Hofeller said the company had plans to "start getting into testing" its satellite-to-cell service this year. "We're going to learn a lot by doing -- not necessarily by overanalyzing -- and getting out there, working with the telcos."

Hofeller didn't specifically say which Telco SpaceX was working with, but the timeline certainly lines up with Musk's original vision for the T-Mobile partnership. [...] Either way, the panel seemed optimistic about the future of sat-to-cell technology. Lynk Global CEO Charles Miller said that satellite cellular service has the potential to be the "biggest category in satellite," and Iridium CEO Matt Desch sees cellular satellite service as just the beginning. "Satellite should connect everything everywhere," he said at the event, imagining the technology connecting to computers, vehicles and more.

Samsung's Galaxy smartphones now offer "Space Zoom," writes Apple Insider, a feature augmenting 3x and 10x telephoto cameras with digital zoom "aided by Samsung's AI Super Resolution technology."

But the resulting 100X zoom levels "appear to be more a feat of AI trickery than anything else," they conclude, citing an investigation by a Reddit user: That so-called Space Zoom could potentially allow users to photograph the moon, and many do. However, it may be the case that the level of detail in the moon shots may only be higher due to software shenanigans....

The user tested the effect by downloading a high-resolution image of the moon, then downsized it to a 170 by 170-resolution image, and then applied a gaussian blur to obliterate any final details of its surface. They then showed the low-res blurry moon at full screen on their monitor, walked to the other end of their room, zoomed in on the fake celestial body, and took a photograph. After some processing, an image of the moon was produced by the smartphone, but the surface had considerably more detail for the surface than the doctored source. The user reckons Samsung "is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess."

They go further to stress that while super resolution processing uses multiple images to recover otherwise-lost detail, this seems to be something different. It is proposed that this is a case "where you have a specific AI model trained on a set of moon images, in order to recognize the moon and slap on the moon texture on it."
The Reddit user has now posted an update: I photoshopped one moon next to another (to see if one moon would get the AI treatment, while another would not), and managed to coax the AI to do exactly that.... [O]ne moon got the "AI enhancement", while the other one shows what was actually visible to the sensor — a blurry mess....

It's literally adding in detail that weren't there. It's not deconvolution, it's not sharpening, it's not super resolution, it's not "multiple frames or exposures". It's generating data.

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week in Barcelona, OnePlus showcased a concept smartphone with liquid cooling technology, dubbed "Active CryoFlux." While the headset may never see the light of day, at least in its current form, it serves to show how serious OnePlus hopes to get about mobile gaming. From a report: A 0.2 square centimeter piezoelectric ceramic micropump moves the coolant up and down a pipeline near the rear of the device and around the massive camera array. The rear of the device is covered in a transparent material, showcasing the process as a kind of light show. It's a cool effect, and one that invariably shares comparisons to Phone (1), released by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei's Nothing last year. "A lot of young people like playing games," said OnePlus President and COO Kinder Liu. "Gaming plays an important role in their digital life, and in the future, we will continuously improve their gaming experience. Currently, we definitely engage with our users about gaming development. We are talking about how to improve the gaming experience, and in the future, we believe we will have more time to talk to them."

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Lenovo demoed a laptop and smartphone with rollable screens that "can gradually expand to offer more screen real-estate, rather than needing to be completely unfolded like books," writes Jon Porter from The Verge. These are early proof of concept devices that don't have any public release dates as of yet. From the report: Before we get into the concept laptop's signature feature, it's worth pointing out just how unassuming the device looks before its screen unrolls. Lenovo had the device sitting alongside its other laptops in a conference suite, and not a single one of the dozen-or-so journalists in attendance clocked that it was anything other than a standard ThinkPad. In its unextended form, it's got a regular looking 12.7-inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. That all changes with a flip of a small switch on the right of the chassis, at which point you can hear some motors whirring and the screen extends upwards. That switch causes a couple of motors in the laptop to spring into action, pulling the screen out from underneath the laptop's keyboard to hoist it up more or less vertically in front of you. It's an admittedly slow process on this concept device (from our footage it seems to take a little over ten seconds to fully extend) but eventually you're left with an almost square 15.3-inch display with an 8:9 aspect ratio. The device brings to mind LG's fancy (and eye-wateringly expensive) rollable TV that's designed to roll away when you're not using it. Only in Lenovo's case the screen is rolling down into the laptop's keyboard rather than a small box, and it also can't roll away entirely. Once fully extended, Lenovo's laptop screen has a small crease where its screen originally bent underneath the keyboard. But again -- it's a prototype.

Lenovo's other rollable device it's demoing at MWC is a Motorola smartphone. We've seen numerous companies including Samsung Display, Oppo, TCL, and even LG (RIP) show off rollable concept devices in various stages of development over the years, but we're yet to see the technology break through in a consumer device. Like a foldable, the idea is that a rollable smartphone can be small when you need it to be portable, and big when you need more screen to get the job at hand done. Lenovo's phone -- which it's calling the Motorola rollable smartphone concept -- is all about taking a small square of a display and making it longer. It's almost like a foldable flip phone, but without a secondary cover display because it's the same screen the entire time. When all neatly rolled up, Lenovo's Motorola rollable offers a 5-inch display with a 15:9 aspect ratio. Then, with a small double tap of a side button, the screen unfurls to give you a remarkably tall 6.5-inch display with a 22:9 aspect ratio. [...] "In 2019, it seemed like foldable phones were about to become the next big thing in the world of smartphones," writes Porter, in closing. "But four years later, it feels like we're still waiting for this future to become a mainstream reality. Lenovo would be the first to admit that its rollable concept devices are far from ready for prime time, but they offer a compelling argument for an alternative, rollable future."

HealthDay reports: If you spend hours a day scrolling on your smartphone or tablet, you might get "tech neck."

"Humans are upright creatures, and our bodies aren't designed to look down for long periods of time, which puts extra pressure on the cervical spine," said Dr. Kavita Trivedi, associate medical director of the Spine Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Americans spend about five hours a day on their cellphones and more on laptops and computers, Trivedi noted in a university news release. As a result, people can experience muscle stiffness, joint inflammation, pinched nerves, arthritis, and even bone spurs or herniated discs. ...

"The good news is that most patients with tech neck don't require surgery, and we have a wide range of therapies that can be very effective," Trivedi said. "There's no need to live with pain if it can be treated."

Protect yourself from future neck pain by holding your phone at eye level as much as possible, she advised.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Now that the Safe Connections Act (SCA) has become law, the Federal Communications Commission is taking steps to help domestic violence survivors leave their partners' phone plans. The agency has proposed rules that would require carriers separate the line for a survivor within two business days of a request. Another proposal would also have carriers hide contact with abuse hotlines from consumer-facing call and text logs.

The FCC also hopes to use the Lifeline or Affordable Connectivity Program to support survivors enduring financial hardships for up to six months. Separately, providers are teaming with the National Domestic Violence Hotline to ensure survivors leaving a family plan will get in touch with someone who can offer support from experts on abuse. The proposals are entering a public comment phase and may be modified when they take effect as required by the SCA.

Two non-profit news site, the Markup and Grist, have co-published their investigation into how big tech rewrote America's first cellphone repair law.

"That New York passed any electronics right-to-repair bill is 'huge,' Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne told Grist. But 'it could have been huger' if not for tech industry interference." The passage of the Digital Fair Repair Act last June reportedly caught the tech industry off guard, but it had time to act before Governor Kathy Hochul would sign it into law. Corporate lobbyists went to work, pressing for exemptions and changes that would water the bill down. They were largely successful: While the bill Hochul signed in late December remains a victory for the right-to-repair movement, the more corporate-friendly text gives consumers and independent repair shops less access to parts and tools than the original proposal called for. (The state Senate still has to vote to adopt the revised bill, but it's widely expected to do so.)

The new version of the law applies only to devices built after mid-2023, so it won't help people to fix stuff they currently own. It also exempts electronics used exclusively by businesses or the government. All those devices are likely to become electronic waste faster than they would have had Hochul, a Democrat, signed a tougher bill. And more greenhouse gases will be emitted manufacturing new devices to replace broken electronics....

Jessa Jones, who founded iPad Rehab, an independent repair shop in Honeoye Falls, about 20 miles south of Rochester, New York, says the original bill included provisions that would have made it far easier for independent shops like hers to get the tools, parts, and know-how needed to make repairs. She pointed to changes that allow manufacturers to release repair tools that only work with spare parts they make, while at the same time controlling how those spare parts are used... "If you keep going down this road, allowing manufacturers to force us to use their branded parts and service, where they're allowed to tie the function of the device to their branded parts and service, that's not repair," Jones said. "That's authoritarian control."
The bill's sponsor believes it could create momentum for dozens of other states trying to pass similar laws, the article points out, possibly leading ultimately to one national agreement between electronics manufacturers and the repair community. A lawmaker from another state argued that New York's law "gives us something to work from. We're going to take that now and try to do a better piece of legislation."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K for submitting the article.