The Volla Phone 22, a new smartphone available for preorder via a Kickstarter campaign, is unlike any other smartphone on the market today in that it ships with a choice of the Android-based Volla OS or the Ubuntu Touch mobile Linux distribution. "It also supports multi-boot functionality, allowing you to install more than one operating system and choose which to run at startup," writes Liliputing's Brad Linder. Some of the hardware specs include a 6.3-inch FHD+ display, a MediaTek Helio G85 processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB storage, 3.5mm audio jack and a microSD card reader. There's also a 48-megapixel main camera sensor and replaceable 4,500mAh battery. From the report: While Volla works with the folks at UBPorts to ensure its phones are compatible with Ubuntu Touch, the company develops the Android-based Volla OS in-house. It's based on Google's Android Open Source Project code, but includes a custom launcher, user interface, and set of apps with an emphasis on privacy. The Google Play Store is not included, as this is a phone aimed at folks who want to minimize tracking from big tech companies. Other Google apps and services like the Chrome web browser, Google Maps, Google Drive, and Gmail are also omitted. The upshot is that no user data is collected or stored by Volla, Google, or other companies unless you decide to install apps that track your data. Of course, that could make using the phone a little less convenient if you've come to rely on those apps, so the Volla Phone might not be the best choice for everyone.

Volla OS also has a built-in user-customizable firewall, an App Locker feature for disabling and hiding apps, and optional support for using the Hide.me VPN for anonymous internet usage. The source code for Volla OS is also available for anyone that wants to inspect the code. The operating system also has a custom user interface including a Springboard that allows you to quickly launch frequently-used apps by pressing a red dot for a list, or by starting to type in a search box for automatic suggestions such as placing a phone call, sending a text message, or opening a web page. You can also create notes or calendar events from the Springboard or send an encrypted message with Signal. The phone is expected to ship in June at an early bird price of about $408.

For 2022, OnePlus has announced the Nord N20 5G as its budget offering for the US and Canadian markets, free when you add a line or $282. Android Police reports: Compared to the previous models, this year's phone sure seems to be a mid-range device rather than a budget one. The phone features a 6.43-inch AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint scanner, a Snapdragon 695 chip, 6GB RAM, and 128GB storage. There's a microSD card slot, too, so you can expand the storage by up to 512GB if needed. A 4,500mAh battery powers the device, coming with 33W fast charging support that's enough to top up the cell to 50% in just 30 minutes. The phone's rear houses a triple-camera setup consisting of a 64MP primary sensor, a 2MP macro, and a monochrome lens -- there's no ultra-wide sensor here.

Judging from the specs, it is clear that the Nord N20 is a sister variant of the Nord CE 2 Lite with some minor downgrades. The latter is due to launch in India later this month. The Nord N20 runs the Android 11-based OxygenOS 11 and not Android 12. There's no word on when an update to Android 12 will arrive, either. Previous Nord phones in the US received only one OS update, so it is possible Android 12 could be the first and last OS update for the N20.

The nonprofit online news site Virginia Mercury investigated their state police departments' "real-time location warrants," which are "addressed to telephone companies, ordering them to regularly ping a customers' phone for its GPS location and share the results with police." Public records requests submitted to a sampling of 18 police departments around the state found officers used the technique to conduct more than 7,000 days worth of surveillance in 2020. Court records show the tracking efforts spanned cases ranging from high-profile murders to minor larcenies.... Seven departments responded that they did not have any relevant billing records, indicating they don't use the technique. Only one of the departments surveyed, Alexandria, indicated it had an internal policy governing how their officers use cellphone tracking, but a copy of the document provided by the city was entirely redacted....

Drug investigations accounted for more than 60 percent of the search warrants taken out in the two jurisdictions. Larcenies were the second most frequent category. Major crimes like murders, rapes and abductions made up a fraction of the tracking requests, accounting for just under 25 of the nearly 400 warrants filed in the jurisdictions that year.
America's Supreme Court "ruled that warrantless cellphone tracking is unconstitutional back in 2012," the article points out — but in practice those warrants aren't hard to get. "Officers simply have to attest in an affidavit that they have probable cause that the tracking data is 'relevant to a crime that is being committed or has been committed'.... There's been limited public discussion or awareness of the kinds of tracking warrants the judiciary is approving." "I don't think people know that their cell phones can be converted to tracking devices by police with no notice," said Steve Benjamin, a criminal defense lawyer in Richmond who said he's recently noticed an uptick in cases in which officers employed the technique. "And the reality of modern life is everyone has their phone on them during the day and on their nightstand at night. ... It's as if the police tagged them with a chip under their skin, and people have no idea how easily this is accomplished."
The case for these phone-tracking warrants?

• The executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police tells the site that physical surveillance ofen requires too many resources — and that cellphone tracking is safer. "It may be considered an intrusive way of gathering data on someone, but it's certainly less dangerous than physical tracking."
• A spokesperson for the Chesterfield County police department [responsible for 64% of the state's tracking] argued that "We exist to preserve human life and protect the vulnerable, and we will use all lawful tools at our disposal to do so." And they added that such "continued robust enforcement efforts" were a part of the reason that the county's still-rising number of fatal drug overdoses had not risen more.

The site also obtained bills from four major US cellphone carriers, and reported how much they were charging police for providing their cellphone-tracking services:

• "T-Mobile charged $30 per day, which comes to $900 per month of tracking."
• "AT&T charged a monthly service fee of $100 and an additional $25 per day the service is utilized, which comes to $850 per 30 days of tracking..."
• "Verizon calls the service 'periodic location updates,' charging $5 per day on top of a monthly service fee of $100, which comes to $200 per 30 days of tracking."
• "Sprint offered the cheapest prices to report locations back to law enforcement, charging a flat fee of $100 per month."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Beerismydad for sharing the article!

"Headline says it all," writes Slashdot reader segaboy81. "Lots of people have been looking forward to this Kickstarter for the Unihertz Titan Slim, but it is easily the thickest phone of 2022." Neowin's Dean Howell reacts to an unboxing video of Unihertz's Titan Slim, the successor to last year's Titan Pocket physical keyboard-equipped BlackBerry clone, writing: While Blackberry refugees have been clamoring for new PKB devices, they've been asking for them to be thin and sleek like the Blackberry of yesterday. We thought that's what we were getting with the announcement of the Titan Slim, but after yesterday's unboxing video by Adam over at TechOdyssey we know that's not the case at all. [...] Normally he would show how it compares to other devices, and I think this go 'round he was reticent to compare it directly to the Titan Pocket because if he did it would confirm what I think is true; the Titan Slim is not slim at all and it's every bit as think as the Titan Pocket.

The drama doesn't end there I'm afraid. There is a review embargo on this device, so there are a lot of details Adam didn't talk about, like performance characteristics. [...] New year, new phone, new CPU right? Wrong. I wondered what CPU the Titan Slim would ship with and it took less than a minute to figure out. I went over to Geekbench and found it had already been tested. Unfortunately, the Titan Slim will ship with the same CPU as last year's Titan Pocket. What's worse is the Helio P70 in the Titan Slim is comparable at best to the then-mid-range Snapdragon 660 of the 2018 Key2.

The United States has extradited a man it accuses of working for Anom, a company that sold encrypted phones to criminals but which was secretly backdoored by the FBI to spy on the communications of organized crime around the globe. Aurangzeb Ayub quietly arrived in the U.S. last month, according to court records reviewed by Motherboard. From the report: Ayub is the first of 17 alleged Anom workers to be extradited since Motherboard reported on the operation, known as Trojan Shield, and the FBI and its law enforcement partners held press conferences on its success in June. While authorities have arrested and prosecuted users of the Anom devices, Ayub's extradition is some judicial movement regarding those who allegedly sold phones for Anom, some of whom the U.S. Department of Justice has also charged. "Ayub is charged with 16 other co-defendants; he is the first defendant to appear on the Indictment and was extradited from the Netherlands to the United States," a court document filed on Tuesday reads. He first appeared in the Southern District of California on March 21, the document adds.

The Department of Justice and Ayub's defense team have already discussed the production of discovery, which includes all of Ayub's communications on the Anom platform, according to court records. That material contains around 3,500 communications and about 14GB of data, the court records add. By last Friday, the government was expected to turn over these messages to Ayub's defense team, the document reads. The court record adds that the Department of Justice anticipates that it will turn over more material in May, which will contain recorded conversations between an FBI confidential human source (CHS) and Ayub, a technical report about the Anom platform, and other reports. [...] Ayub is charged under RICO, a law traditionally used to prosecute mob bosses. Since 2018 when the FBI started shutting down encrypted phone companies initially with Phantom Secure, the Department of Justice has leveled similar charges against the administrators and sellers for such companies.

A new article on the Verge argues that the era of fixing your own phone "has nearly arrived." When I called up iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, I figured he'd be celebrating — after years of fighting for right-to-repair, big name companies like Google and Samsung have suddenly agreed to provide spare parts for their phones. Not only that, they signed deals with him to sell those parts through iFixit, alongside the company's repair guides and tools. So did Valve.

But Wiens says he's not done making deals yet. "There are more coming," he says, one as soon as a couple of months from now. (No, it's not Apple.) Motorola was actually the first to sign on nearly four years ago. And if Apple meaningfully joins them in offering spare parts to consumers — like it promised to do by early 2022 — the era of fixing your own phone may be underway. Last October, the United States effectively made it legal to open up many devices for the purpose of repair with an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now, the necessary parts are arriving.

What changed? Weren't these companies fighting tooth and nail to keep right-for-repair off the table, sometimes sneakily stopping bills at the last minute? Sure. But some legislation is getting through anyhow... and one French law in particular might have been the tipping point.

"The thing that's changing the game more than anything else is the French repairability scorecard," says Wiens, referring to a 2021 law that requires tech companies to reveal how repairable their phones are — on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 — right next to their pricetag. Even Apple was forced to add repairability scores — but Wiens points me to this press release by Samsung instead. When Samsung commissioned a study to check whether the French repairability scores were meaningful, it didn't just find the scorecards were handy — it found a staggering 80 percent of respondents would be willing to give up their favorite brand for a product that scored higher.

"There have been extensive studies done on the scorecard and it's working," says Wiens. "It's driving behavior, it's shifting consumer buying patterns." Stick, meet carrot. Seeing an opportunity, Wiens suggests, pushed these companies to take up iFixit on the deal.

Nathan Proctor, director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), still thinks the stick is primarily to thank. "It feels cheeky to say 100 percent... but none of this happens unless there's a threat of legislation... These companies have known these were issues for a long time, and until we organized enough clout for it to start seeming inevitable, none of the big ones had particularly good repair programs and now they're all announcing them," Proctor notes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The European Union's top court ruled on Tuesday that national authorities cannot retain phone data in a "general and indiscriminate" manner, but could use specific information to tackle some very serious crime. The court ruled on a case brought by the Supreme Court in Ireland where a man sentenced in 2015 to life imprisonment for murder appealed, saying the court of first instance had wrongly admitted traffic and location data of telephone calls as evidence.

The Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) on Tuesday said it was up to a national court there to decide whether the evidence was allowed. But it also said the bloc's members cannot have laws in place that would allow crime prevention through the "general and indiscriminate" retention of such data. Some circumstances, such as particularly serious crime regarded as a threat to national security, could justify data retention but only in a narrower scope or for a limited time.

Starting this summer, Samsung says it will sell genuine parts and tools to customers needed to repair its Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S21 smartphones, along with its Galaxy Tab S7+ tablet. Fast Company reports: The company, which is partnering with device repair resource iFixit on the initiative, will also provide access to step-by-step repair guides, and it plans to support more devices and repairs over time. The program is similar to one that Apple announced last fall, allowing users to repair the display, battery, and camera on their iPhones. Samsung says it's launching the program to "promote a circular economy and minimize e-waste," though it's just as likely responding to regulatory pressure. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it would crack down on illegal repair restrictions, and iFixit expects dozens of states to introduce right-to-repair laws this year. [...]

But while phone makers may now feel compelled to supply repair parts and guides to consumers, that doesn't mean the repairs themselves will be any easier. According to iFixit's Galaxy S21 teardown, some repairs involve work that's "unnecessarily sticky and complicated," requiring a heat gun to pry open the display panel and an isopropyl alcohol bath to loosen the "tar pit" around the battery. At least customers brave enough to make those repairs won't have any trouble getting the parts and tools they need.

Recruitment ad hits social media feeds of mobile phones located outside or inside the diplomatic compound. From a report: The FBI is trying a novel strategy to recruit Russian-speaking individuals upset about the country's invasion of Ukraine: aiming social media ads at cellphones located inside or just outside the Russian Embassy in Washington. The ads, which appear on Facebook, Twitter and Google, are carefully geographically targeted. A Washington Post reporter standing next to the embassy's stone walls on Wednesday morning received the ad in their Facebook feed. But the ads did not appear in the feed when the reporter stood on the other side of Wisconsin Avenue NW, in the District's Glover Park neighborhood.

The ads are designed to capitalize on any dissatisfaction or anger within Russian diplomatic or spy services -- or among Russian emigres to the United States -- over the invasion of Ukraine, an event that counterintelligence experts call a huge opportunity for the U.S. intelligence community to recruit new sources. The unlikely star of the campaign is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose own words are used to encourage people working in or visiting the embassy to talk to the FBI. The ad quotes Putin at a meeting last month where he publicly chastised his intelligence chief, Sergey Naryshkin, correcting the spy boss's position on Russian policy toward the separatist eastern regions of Ukraine. Naryshkin, the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, stammered at the meeting and seemed unsure of what Putin wanted him to say.

The Washington Post looks at what happened after Starlink activated its satellite-based internet service to help Ukraine: Ukraine has already received thousands of antennas from Musk's companies and European allies, which has proved "very effective," Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with The Washington Post Friday. "The quality of the link is excellent," Fedorov said through a translator, using a Starlink connection from an undisclosed location. "We are using thousands, in the area of thousands, of terminals with new shipments arriving every other day...." A person familiar with Starlink's effort in Ukraine, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said there are more than 5,000 terminals in the country....

Internet flows deteriorated on the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 and have not fully recovered, according to data-monitoring services. But since that initial dip, connectivity has remained fairly stable, with mainly temporary, isolated outages even during heavy Russian shelling. "Every day there are outages, but generally service comes back," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, which monitors global data flows.

Even before Fedorov tweeted at Musk for help, SpaceX was working on a way to get Starlink to Ukraine. President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a talk at California Institute of Technology this month that the company had been working for several weeks to get regulatory approval to allow the satellites to communicate in Ukraine.
In addition, the Washington Post reports, this week on Twitter Elon Musk also "challenged Putin to a fight and followed up by pledging he would use just one hand if Putin was scared. And he told Putin he could bring a bear." Reached for comment by the Post's reporters, Elon Musk responded by telling The Post to give his regards "to your puppet master Besos," following it with two emojis.

But the Post's article also argues Starlink's technology "could have widespread implications for the future of war. Internet has become an essential tool for communication, staying informed and even powering weapons." And The Telegraph reports that Starlink "is helping Ukrainian forces win the drone war as they use the technology in their effort to track and kill invading Russians." In the vanguard of Ukraine's astonishingly effective military effort against Vladimir Putin's forces is a unit called Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance) which is using surveillance and attack drones to target Russian tanks and positions. Amid internet and power outages, which are expected to get worse, Ukraine is turning to the newly available Starlink system for some of its communications. Drone teams in the field, sometimes in badly connected rural areas, are able to use Starlink to connect them to targeters and intelligence on their battlefield database. They can direct the drones to drop anti-tank munitions, sometimes flying up silently to Russian forces at night as they sleep in their vehicles...

Should Ukraine's internet largely collapse, the "drone warriors" of Aerorozvidka would still be able to communicate with their bases by sending signals from mobile Starlink terminals, and using ground stations in neighbouring countries including Poland.... As Ukraine's internet is inevitably degraded, Starlink will be an alternative. General James Dickinson, commander of US Space Command, told the Senate armed services committee: "What we're seeing with Elon Musk and the Starlink capabilities is really showing us what a megaconstellation, or a proliferated architecture, can provide in terms of redundancy and capability."
It's not all Starlink. The Telegraph points out that "The Ukrainian system benefitted from equipment given by Western countries, including radio communications which superceded Soviet-era technology, and the US has also poured in millions of dollars to protect against Russian hacking, jamming of signals and attempts to 'spoof' GPS technology."

And meanwhile, weakness in Russia's own communications infrastructure may have played a role in the killing of five senior Russian generals in the last three weeks, according to a recent CNN interview with retired U.S. army general and former CIA director David Petraeus: "The bottom line is that [Russia's] command-and-control has broken down. Their communications have been jammed by the Ukranians.

Their secure comms didn't work. They had to go single-channel. That's jammable, and that's exactly what the Ukranians have been doing to that. They used cellphones. The Ukranians blocked the prefix for Russia, so that didn't work. Then they took down 3G. [The Russians] are literally stealing cellphones from Ukranian civilians to communicate among each other.

So what happens? The column gets stopped. An impatient general is sitting back there in his armored or whatever vehicle. He goes forward to find out what's going on... And the Ukranians have very, very good snipers, and they've just been picking them off left and right.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared a smartphone app from Tandem Diabetes Care to program insulin delivery for its t:slim X2 insulin pump, the company announced Wednesday. The Verge reports: It's the first phone app for both iOS and Android to able to deliver insulin, the company said in a statement. Previously, delivery had to be handled through the pump itself. With this update, pump users will be able to program or cancel bolus doses of insulin, which are taken at mealtimes and are crucial in keeping blood glucose levels under control. "Giving a meal bolus is now the most common reason a person interacts with their pump, and the ability to do so using a smartphone app offers a convenient and discrete solution," John Sheridan, president and CEO of Tandem Diabetes Care, said in a statement. [...] Tandem said in the statement that it will launch the new bolus delivery update for select users this spring ahead of a wider launch this summer.

Samsung Electronics this week announced plans to give plastic waste a second life as a new material for use in its electronic devices -- starting with the latest Galaxy gadgets, set to be revealed on Wednesday. PC Magazine reports: "These devices will reflect our ongoing effort to eliminate single-use plastics and expand the use of other eco-conscious materials, such as recycled post-consumer material (PCM) and recycled paper," Samsung said in a news release. "With this transformation, the future of Galaxy technology will bring leading product design and deliver better environmental impact." Water bottles and grocery bags usually spring to mind when people hear "ocean-bound plastic," but they're not the only things littering the world's waterways. According to Samsung, a "more hidden threat" is the 640,000 tons of fishing nets abandoned and discarded every year.

The so-called "ghost nets" are responsible for trapping and entangling marine life, damaging coral reefs and natural habitats, and eventually ending up in our food and water sources. "Collecting and repurposing these nets are vital first steps in keeping our oceans clean," Samsung said, "as well as preserving the planet and our collective future." It's unclear exactly what part the repurposed plastics play in the upcoming handsets. We'll have to wait until this week's virtual Unpacked event, where Samsung is expected to unveil the Galaxy S22 series and Tab S8. Watch the event online at Samsung.com from 10 a.m. ET on Feb. 9. The news comes just weeks after Samsung stopped a 106-day toxic spill in Austin, Texas, that resulted in the release of as much as 736,000 gallons of sulfuric acid waste into a Northeast Austin creek.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: A bill introduced Tuesday in the Senate could help make it easier for farmers [...] to repair their tractors independently. The legislation would require agriculture equipment manufacturers to make spare parts, instruction manuals and software codes publicly available, allowing farmers to fix devices by themselves or hire third-party mechanics of their own choosing. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said in an interview that he has heard from many farmers who reported that difficulties repairing equipment hurt their businesses. "We've got to figure out ways to empower farmers to make sure they can stay on the land. This is one of the ways to do it," Tester said. "I think that the more we can empower farmers to be able to control their own destiny, which is what this bill does, the safer food chains are going to be."

Tester said farmers often reported that company-authorized repairs were costly and could be handled only by licensed technicians who may take days, or even weeks, to show up. That type of delay can have serious impacts on the delicate harvest cycle for planting and reaping crops. [...] The rules about farming equipment could help boost the wider "right to repair" movement, which has gained steam across the country in recent years. Consumer rights groups like U.S. PIRG, a federation of nonprofit public interest research groups, or PIRGs, say people have a fundamental right to control devices they already own, especially when they need to be fixed. Over the last few decades, they say, companies have made third-party repairs nearly impossible by locking software, writing prohibitive warranties or restricting spare parts.

The Senate bill is the latest effort to tackle the issue in Congress, following similar legislation sponsored in the House last year by Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y. But unlike some of the other proposed laws, the Senate bill narrowly targets farmers, who have become one of the most vocal groups advocating for more repair regulations. Tester said: "I think when you get into other areas like cellphones and TVs and all that kind of stuff, it brings in all sorts of other issues that I am personally not as familiar with as agriculture. That's not to say that those other issues aren't really, really important. What it is to say is that I know this issue reasonably well, and I thought this is an issue that we need to deal with, and the sooner the better."

Around 1.35 billion smartphones were shipped in 2021, according to IDC's quarterly mobile phone tracker. Overall, fewer smartphones were shipped in the final quarter of 2021 compared to Q4 2020 but overall, more were shipped last year than in 2020, IDC said Thursday. CNET reports: Samsung retook the top spot for smartphone shipments in 2021, holding 20% market share globally after shipping 272 million phones during the year. Apple came in second, at 235.7 million phones, Xiaomi with 191 million, Oppo with 133.5 million and Vivo with 128.3 million. Slightly different numbers from Counterpoint Research, also released Thursday, showed similar results: Samsung in first place with 271 million phones shipped during 2021, Apple in second with 237.9 million, Xiaomi with 190 million, Oppo with 143.2 million and Vivo with 131.3 million. It's the first time the smartphone market has grown annually since 2017, according to Counterpoint, with Apple clocking record shipments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Aaron Gordon: Not quite three years ago, I bought a Pixel 3, Google's flagship phone at the time. It has been a good phone. I like that it's not too big. I dropped it a bunch, but it didn't break. And the battery life has not noticeably changed since the day I got it. I think of phones in much the same way I think of refrigerators or stoves. It's an appliance, something I need but feel no attachment to, and as long as it keeps fulfilling that need, I don't want to spend money replacing it for no real reason. The Pixel 3 fulfills my needs, so I don't want to spend $600 on the Pixel 6, which seems to be just another phone that does all the phone things.

But I have to get rid of it because Google has stopped supporting all Pixel 3s. Despite being just three years old, no Pixel 3 will ever receive another official security update. Installing security updates is the one basic thing everyone needs to do for their own digital security. If you don't even get them, then you're vulnerable to every security flaw discovered since your last patch. In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, "We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device."

This has been a problem with Android for as long as Android has existed. In 2015, my colleague Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote a farewell to Android because of its terrible software support and spotty upgrade rollouts. Android has long blamed this obvious issue on the fact that updates need to run through the cellphone company and phone manufacturer before being pushed to the user. At the time, Google didn't make any Android phones; the Nexus line was the closest thing, a partnership with other manufacturers like Motorola and HTC (I had one of those, too). But for the past six years, Google has made the Pixel line of phones. They are Google-made phones, meaning Google can't blame discontinuing security updates on other manufacturers, and yet, it announced that's exactly what it would do. Gordon goes on to say that he's "switching to an iPhone for the first time," noting how the most recent version of iOS can be installed on phones going as far back as the iPhone 6s, which was released more than six years ago.

"Unless you routinely destroy your phone within two or three years, there's no justification from a sustainability perspective to keep using Android phones," he adds. "Of course, Apple is only good by comparison, as it also manufactures devices that are difficult to repair with an artificially short shelf life. It just happens to have a longer shelf life than Google."

The Missouri State Highway Patrol alert sent cellphones blaring statewide: Authorities in Gotham City, Missouri, were searching for a purple and green 1978 Dodge 3700GT. From a report: But there is no Gotham City, Missouri, and the car referenced was the one used by the Joker in the 1989 "Batman" movie. Soon after the Tuesday evening alert, the patrol sent another saying to disregard it. In a brief news release, the patrol said a routine test of Missouri's Blue Alert system was inadvertently transmitted statewide. The system is meant to let the public know when a police officer is killed or seriously injured in the line of duty.

At least six people were killed Friday night when an Amazon warehouse was struck by a tornado, causing part of the building to collapse.

Bloomberg reports that the incident "amplified concerns" about a warehouse policy that Amazon has been re-implementing for its workers: banning cellphones. Amazon had for years prohibited workers from carrying their phones on warehouse floors, requiring them to leave them in vehicles or employee lockers before passing through security checks that include metal detectors. The company backed off during the pandemic, but has been gradually reintroducing it at facilities around the country.

Five Amazon employees, including two who work across the street from the building that collapsed, said they want access to information such as updates on potentially deadly weather events through their smartphones — without interference from Amazon. The phones can also help them communicate with emergency responders or loved ones if they are trapped, they said. "After these deaths, there is no way in hell I am relying on Amazon to keep me safe," said one worker from a neighboring Amazon facility in Illinois. "If they institute the no cell phone policy, I am resigning."

Another worker from an Amazon warehouse in Indiana said she is using up her paid time off whenever the company decides to remain open despite warnings of extreme weather events. Having her phone with her is critical to making those decisions, especially about sudden tornado risks, she said. "I don't trust them with my safety to be quite frank," she said. "If there's severe weather on the way, I think I should be able to make my own decision about safety..."

The National Weather Service puts out extreme weather alerts via text messages, letting the public know in advance about dangerous conditions... Tornadoes are trickier to anticipate than hurricanes and snowstorms, but the weather service still issues warnings to those in their path. The weather service sent such a warning at about 8 p.m. local time Friday, about 30 minutes before the storm collapsed the Edwardsville Amazon delivery station, the workers said.
The Daily Beast tells the story of young Navy veteran named Clayton Cope who started working at the Amazon fulfillment center earlier this year: After an alert was issued Friday night about a deadly tornado approaching Illinois, Carla Cope told her son "to get to shelter" at the Amazon delivery facility where he was working.

Instead, she told The Daily Beast her 29-year-old son, Clayton, insisted he needed to alert others about the impending natural disaster. "He just said he needed to tell someone that [the tornado] was coming," Cope told The Daily Beast on Saturday, hours after she learned her son was among six people killed in Edwardsville, Illinois, when storms ripped through.
Two more Amazon warehouse workers died in 2018 when another building partially collapsed in a tornado in Balitmore.

Bloomberg reports today that Amazon "declined to address the concerns raised by workers about its mobile phone policy, saying its focus now is 'on assisting the brave first responders on the scene and supporting our affected employees and partners in the area.'"

Life360, a popular family safety app used by 33 million people worldwide, has been marketed as a great way for parents to track their children's movements using their cellphones. The Markup has learned, however, that the app is selling data on kids' and families' whereabouts to approximately a dozen data brokers who have sold data to virtually anyone who wants to buy it. From the report: Through interviews with two former employees of the company, along with two individuals who formerly worked at location data brokers Cuebiq and X-Mode, The Markup discovered that the app acts as a firehose of data for a controversial industry that has operated in the shadows with few safeguards to prevent the misuse of this sensitive information. The former employees spoke with The Markup on the condition that we not use their names, as they are all still employed in the data industry. They said they agreed to talk because of concerns with the location data industry's security and privacy and a desire to shed more light on the opaque location data economy. All of them described Life360 as one of the largest sources of data for the industry.

Today, Google has officially launched Android 12 for select Pixel devices. The Verge reports: It's available to install right now on Pixel 3 and up, including the Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 5A. It'll launch on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well. Android 12 will be coming later this year to Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices.

The most noticeable feature in Android 12 is the new Material You design, which lets you go a little deeper to tweak the look of the homescreen to your liking. It's more expressive than previous versions of Android, with tools to let you coordinate colors that can extend across app icons, pull-down menus, widgets, and more. Speaking of widgets, many of those have been updated to match the new look, and Google shared today that by the end of October, it plans to have over a dozen new or refreshed widgets available for its first-party apps. Google has published a blog post detailing more features available in this release, including the "Pixel-first" features like Material You.

For its 60th anniversary, Fisher-Price announced a special edition Chatter telephone that can make and receive real phone calls. Engadget reports: Before you start planning on where to display it at your home, know that it doesn't work as a landline unit. It connects to your iOS or Android phone via Bluetooth instead and has to be within 15 feet of your mobile device to work. You'll get nine hours of talk time on the Chatter phone on a single charge, and it comes with a speakerphone button. Other than the features that make it a working device, this Chatter for grown-ups looks just like its toy counterpart with its rotary dial, red handset and wheels. [...] You can get the fully functional Chatter for $60 exclusively from Best Buy's website, starting today until supplies last.