Many Android smart phones are spying on you and your data
Google sends large amounts of obfuscated data from your phone to Google – no one knows what Google is collecting: Study Warns Android Phones From Samsung, Xiaomi And Others Are…
Australia’s smart phone contact tracing app found 17 potential “cases”
The Australian government says its COVIDSafe app identified 2,827 potential close contacts from 37,668 encounters in NSW and Victoria. Only 17 cases in NSW were identified separately to manual contact…
A year ago, I said smart phone tracing apps had numerous problems and were not suited for contact detection … then this happened
Last week, the UK contact dection phone system “pinged” one half million residents who were then forced into isolation for ten days. Even the Prime Minister, who was hospitalized for…
Canada’s smart phone Covid-19 tracking app found to be mostly worthless
I pointed out in the spring of 2020, and several times since then, that smartphone based Covid-19 tracking apps were essentially worthless and applying tech in a way that would…
The end of smart phone based contact tracing apps
As explained in detail several times last year, smart phone-based, Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps were never likely to be useful. Effectively with this announcement today, Oregon has abandoned it’s smart…
Boondoggle: Oregon’s smart phone contact tracing app failure
Smart phone contact tracing apps are a technology whose time never arrived: Months after agency officials said they were actively “assessing the results” of a trial conducted at Oregon State…
One year later: Smart phone, Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps remain AWOL
One year ago, the tech sector jumped in with a plan to develop smart phone based contact detection apps. These would use Bluetooth to estimate potential contacts with someone later…
Smart phone contact tracing apps mostly ignored, unused
In reality, adoption of contract tracing apps by citizens was largely sporadic and unenthusiastic. A trio of researchers in Australia decided to explore why contract tracing apps weren’t more widely…
Instagram’s new Data Policy – And why I deleted the Instagram app yesterday – Social Panic
I deleted my last FB/IG app from a device yesterday. I still had IG running on one Android tablet but I no longer view use of FB/IG apps as safe.…
What is the most power efficient (least electricity use) programming language?
Can energy usage data tell us anything about the quality of our programming languages? Last year a team of six researchers in Portugal from three different universities decided to investigate…