Protect your BlackBerry KeyOne with one of these cases

The BlackBerry KeyOne may be an Android smartphone manufactured by TCL, but it also sports a traditional, full QWERTY keyboard and it has been generating some excitement. If you can’t wait to get your hands on one, then you should also be thinking about how to safeguard that 4.5-inch screen and aluminum body. These are the best BlackBerry KeyOne cases we’ve found so far, and since pickings are slim right now, we’ll update this with some fresh options before the May 31 U.S. release.

Noreve Tradition B Leather Case ($55)

Easily the best BlackBerry KeyOne case currently available, Noreve’s luxurious, folio-style, real leather wallet is extremely well made. The soft, padded leather exterior comes in a range of different textures and colors and has a secure magnetic closure. Inside there’s room for a couple of credit cards and a slim plastic shell, which holds your KeyOne snugly and securely. There are generous openings for easy access to ports and controls, and you’ll find a cut-out on the back which allows you to use the main camera.

Buy one now from:

Noreve

CoverON TPU Bumper Case ($9)

With a hard, polycarbonate back panel, and a flexible TPU bumper, this affordable, slim case offers some protection without cramping the KeyOne’s style too much. We like the patterned version with the teal bumper, but you can also get a completely clear case, or opt for the clear back with a black or teal bumper section. It has tactile button covers and openings for your camera and ports.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

TopACE Transparent TPU Case ($9)

If you like the idea of a clear case that showcases BlackBerry’s design, but you prefer soft, malleable cases, then this could be the one for you. It’s a simple, soft TPU case that’s easy to fit. It has precise cut-outs for your ports and camera, and pronounced button covers for volume and power. The matte finish adds some grip and it should guard against minor falls and bumps.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

ONX3 Faux Leather Pouch ($5+)

Maybe you prefer a pouch, or you want something cheap to tide you over until some better BlackBerry KeyOne cases are released? In that case, you might want to opt for one of these fake leather pouches. The interior is soft and velvety and there’s a tab you can pull to slide your phone out easily. It comes with a set of earphones, but we wouldn’t expect much from them at this price. The pouch itself comes in a wide variety of different colors.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

There’s only a small selection announced so far, but don’t despair if you don’t like any of these because we’ve heard that cases from Incipio and Seidio are on the way, and there will be some official cases from BlackBerry, too. We expect more case manufacturers will weigh in if the phone proves popular, so stay tuned.

Newly launched Heesen superyacht, Home, runs silently up to 9 knots

Why it matters to you

If the only thing keeping you from buying a superyacht is engine noise while underway, here’s your solution.

One truth about boats is that they make noise. Most engine-powered water vessels make quite a racket. Some styles are designed for maximum rumble and roar for the same reasons many motorcycles and performance cars audibly proclaim their power and speed. Heesen Yachts has taken an opposite approach with the newly christened M/Y Home. It’s reportedly very quiet on Home.

Home is the first of Heesen’s new breed of superyachts designed to be cleaner, quieter, and more fuel-efficient than typical vessels. The two major factors that account for the 50-meter (164-foot) Home’s desirable attributes are a Fast Displacement Hull Form (FDHF) and a hybrid propulsion system.

According to Heesen, Home is the first yacht to combine a Fast Displacement hull with hybrid power. Like other Heesen yachts, Home’s has an aluminum hull.

Fast Displacement Hulls

Here’s a quick rundown on some terms. A displacement hull vessel never leaves the water at any speed, but pushes through the water, creating bow waves and rear waves. Semi-displacement hulls flatten towards the back of the hull to lessen the resistance. A semi-displacement hull rises in the front as speed builds but never entirely leaves the surface — not by plan, at least.

If a semi-displacement hull boat does come up out of the water, bad things can happen, as boat hulls have no way to control movement under those circumstances. You may have seen videos of racing boats flipping end-over-end or went into fast and often deadly barrel rolls.

Displacement boats are designed for both a maximum speed and an efficient cruising speed. In general, it’s rare that a large vessel will travel at full speed — full consumption can easily be double or more than at cruising speed.

Heesen Yachts works closely with Van Oossanen marine architects on many projects, and Van Oossanen patented the FDHF.

Fast Displacement hulls have been rated at 30 percent more efficient at cruising speeds and 15 percent at maximum speed compared to typical hulls. Those numbers translate to greater fuel efficiency, quieter operation, and a more comfortable ride.

If you’re loving all this info, you can find out much more about FDHFs here and here.  The bottom line (both of which are hull jokes) is all about water resistance. FDHFs have less resistance than non-FDHFs.

Hybrid Propulsion Power

The second half of Home’s quiet, efficient operation formula is its hybrid power system. Home has two water-cooled 127 kW electric motors that can cruise solely on generator power at 9 knots, keeping life on board unusually quiet.

Home also has two MTU 12V, 600 kW diesel engines. She can run on either power system or both. Maximum speed is 16.3 knots, but at Home’s 12-knot cruising speed the range is an estimated 3,750 nautical miles.

Amenities

There’s an owner’s apartment forward on Home’s main deck with a study, large bath, and a full-beam bedroom. Five guest staterooms on the lower deck include two singles, two doubles, and a full-beam VIP suite. A gym and spa are also on the lower deck.

Home’s sky lounge has floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean and has teak finishings to match the exterior design. The interior design is by Christiano Gatto.

Home’s design is all and more than we’ve come to expect from Heesen and other top yacht builders. But there’s one thing missing — a typical feature reportedly absent is one no one will miss: the incessant roar and grind of huge diesel engines while the vessel is underway.

So long Yik Yak — popular messaging platform bids users adieu

Why it matters to you

Gossip is perhaps nastiest when its perpetrators are anonymous, but gossip may be cut down a bit now that anonymous messaging platform Yik Yak is shutting down.

Anonymous trolls may have a slightly harder time starting rumors and spreading gossip, particularly around college campuses, now that popular messaging app Yik Yak has announced its shuttering. The controversial messaging app, which has always felt oddly like a real life “Gossip Girl,” announced on Friday that it was disbanding. Because at some point, we all have to grow up.

“We started Yik Yak in 2013 because we wanted to help you connect with the people right around you on campus, whether you knew them or not,” co-founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington wrote in a blog post. “… The idea of local connection was always our number one goal.”

For awhile, Yik Yak looked to be on its way to something huge. It raised more than $73 million in venture funding, and had quite a following across various college campuses. But despite this seeming popularity, Yik Yak never did quite catch up to the plethora of other messaging and social apps in its ecosystem. And now, four years after its founding, it is no more.

More than half of Yik Yak’s staff was let go late last year, and while the co-founders shared that “a few members of the Yik Yak team will be joining the Square family … in Atlanta,” for the most part, you can bid anonymous posts on the Yik Yak platform goodbye.

“The time has come … for our paths to part ways, as we’ve decided to make our next moves as a company,” wrote Droll and Buffington. “With the school year drawing to a close for many of you and summer vacation on the horizon, now feels like a good time for us to say ‘so long for summer’ to y’all, too. To that end, we’ll begin winding down the Yik Yak app over the coming week as we start tinkering around with what’s ahead for our brand, our technology, and ourselves.”

Are you sacrificing your privacy for cheaper internet?

Earlier this month, President Trump signed off on an order that halted upcoming rules that would’ve prevented internet service providers from collecting and sharing user data without consent.

As it stands, ISPs can legally collect their users’ browsing history, and sell it on to marketers or other entities. For some, that sounds like a huge breach of privacy. For others, it’s the sound of opportunity knocking.

It remains to be seen which ISPs will take advantage of their legal right to monetize user data. However, there’s already plenty of evidence that diminished privacy legislation carries some very real risks.

Drawing a portrait from a million points of data

“If there’s not a law that says you can’t sell it, then probably someone will try to sell it,” said data analytics consultant Meta S. Brown. “A lot of the stuff that we want to keep private, there are laws that keep it private.”

Brown cited medical records and credit card transactions as two types of personal information that are protected by law. Such information would be very useful to various groups, as evidenced by the numerous recent hacks targeting hospitals and other medical providers, but there are laws in place to prevent such data from being shared.

The legislation policing ISPs capacity to share users’ browsing history was meant to provide similar protections. Without such legislation, there’s nothing to stop the sale of such data for profit. In this situation, why wouldn’t companies take advantage?

For ISPs, the problem may be with the product itself.

Piotr Adamowicz

“If I had browsing histories, and I could sell them — and let me make it clear, I am not in favor of this, it’s one of the reasons why I think we need reasonable privacy laws — I don’t think that the best place to sell that would be to businesses for marketing,” said Brown.

While ISPs have the right to collect and share user data, they’re impeded by the fact that most of their customers are households, rather than individuals. If each person in a household was tied to a user account, then their browsing history would give better insight into their interests, which could be used to advertise products and services. However, with several browsing histories intermingled, the data needs to be processed if it’s to be of much use. There are also other privacy risks, like one member of the household being served ads based on the browsing history of a fellow resident.

Data is valuable because it allows companies to perform direct marketing, rather than mass marketing — meaning that they’re targeting potential customers based on data, whether it’s public records that indicate that they recently bought a new home, evidence of an interest taken from browsing history, or something else entirely. Data collected from an entire household is too imprecise to be useful.

Yet companies don’t necessarily have to process data on their own. Companies like Acxiom specialize in aggregating this information from various sources. Publicly available information is combined with data collected from various sources, ranging from in-person surveys to purchases made on online accounts. The end goal is a comprehensive view of a prospective customer, made up of several different pieces of information. ISPs could make money by selling off your browsing history to such an aggregator.

If there’s not a law that says you can’t sell it, then probably someone will try to sell it.

“Many companies are discovering that they have people-based data assets,” reads the Audience Monetization section of the Acxiom website. “But just because you have them doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to effectively leverage them.” The firm offers services to help other companies turn the data they’re collecting into a “corporate asset,” which can be used to make money.

The idea that someone could approach your ISP and ask to buy a record of your browsing history is largely a paranoid fantasy. Yet the truth might be even more uncomfortable.

Organizations like Acxiom are trawling all available sources for information on consumers. The data your ISP collects can be combined with data from other sources to form a sharper profile of your habits than any one source can achieve.

In this, ISPs do not deserve special shame. A variety of organizations, including social media networks and major retailers, have profiled customers for years. Not everyone is comfortable with that situation, however, and blocking ISPs from profiting on private data was an opportunity to set a new standard in a major industry, and show that limits can and should be implemented. Halting the rules is a major setback for privacy advocates.

Ways and Means

It’s difficult for the government to regulate the communications industry, given that it’s in a constant state of change thanks to the influx of new technology. As a result, the FCC typically prefers to interpret existing legislation, rather than come up with something wholly new and tailor-made for today’s standards of communication. In 2014, the Communications Act of 1934 was described as “the most important internet law” by VentureBeat.

This situation means that legislation pertaining to the internet can sometimes be flimsy and vague, allowing companies to bypass, if not break, the rules. The regulations that were set to go into effect later this year were intended to make the rules clear-cut. Given that they were repealed, rather than replaced with another set of rules, the status quo has been preserved — and the status quo is something of a wild west.

Current rules require little information be given to users up front. For example, Verizon Wireless users can find documentation related to data tracking in the legal section of the company’s website, but it’s well hidden compared to the resources aimed at “agencies, brands and channel partners” interested in sourcing user data via a program like Verizon’s Precision Market Insights.

There isn’t a legal obligation for ISPs to share how they utilize user data.

Precision Market Insights uses Verizon’s PrecisionID technology to offer access to “precise target audiences.” Official documentation describes PrecisionID as “privacy-safe,” though that’s in dispute. In 2014, it was described by Wired as a “privacy-killing machine.”

Outside of Verizon’s marketing jargon, PrecisionID is known as a perma-cookie by the label X-UIDH. It works by injecting a unique device identifier into web requests made via the company’s network, which helps tie browsing habits to a data plan for marketing purposes. In 2014, the EFF expressed concerns about both the company’s usage of the technology, and its potential vulnerabilities in a detailed blog post. Because of widespread criticism, customers were eventually offered the ability to opt-out.

In 2015, Verizon completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL, which was widely observed as an attempt to secure a strong video advertising platform. Verizon has the means to find out what its users are interested in via PrecisionID, so buying technology that can serve up relevant ads based on that data would seem a wise investment.

There’s no confirmation that this is the company’s intent — but if the pieces fell into place by chance, it was a lucrative coincidence. The global market for telecommunications data as a service is expected to hit $79 billion by 2020, according to a report from Ad Age. The lion’s share of that amount will be made in the United States and Asia, because of tighter privacy regulations in the European Union.

The perceived value of internet service has dropped as the public has gotten used to ubiquitous network availability. However, if ISPs can make money elsewhere, they can afford to give their customers a better deal. It’s up to us to decide whether it’s worth giving up our privacy to get a better rate.

What do you really know about your ISP?

Now that the FCC’s planned consumer privacy rules have been struck down, ISPs are deciding what to do with user data behind closed doors. The proposed legislation would have meant that users had to opt-in, confirming that they’re aware of their ISP’s practices. Comcast has already pledged that users will be able to opt-out of data collection, but that requires that the user has an awareness of the issue and an impetus to make the decision, which is very different from an opt-in model.

“You can’t say for sure, unless you’re seeing the data that’s being sold,” said cybersecurity expert and CEO of Keeper Security Darren Guccione, when I asked him about how ISPs might utilize user data. “You don’t know the extent of the information that’s being transferred to a separate party.”

There isn’t a legal obligation for ISPs to share how they utilize user data — although, like many of the regulations pertaining to user privacy, it’s a murky subject. “As a federal matter, it is much less clear what the obligations are for ISPs,” wrote Ernestro Falcon, legislative counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, corresponding with Digital Trends via email. “Even more so if you live in a state covered by the 9th Circuit Court decision (FTC vs AT&T Mobility), where the FTC itself is legally barred from addressing the practices of common carriers such as telephone and cable companies.”

The status quo is something of a wild west.

“Transparency laws regularly try to meet this goal of informing consumers about the products they are using,” he explained. “So yes, a law can be introduced that requires transparency on data collection practices.”

However, there is no such law in place now. Companies may choose to publish reports of their own volition, as Comcast did shortly after the repeal, but it’s not legally required. “The bottom line: Comcast values our customers’ trust, and we will continue to protect the privacy and security of personal information,” wrote the company’s chief privacy officer Gerard Lewis. That’s a noble sentiment, but also one that’s driven by public relations.

Consumers would do well to reward companies that practice transparency with their business. Full, frank accountability should be the norm, not the exception. In lieu of laws to rein ISPs in, the average internet user can make their opinion heard by voting with their wallet. If your privacy is more valuable than having cheaper internet access subsidized by advertising, make sure you don’t sign a contract with a company that doesn’t make its stance on data collection public.

“There’s very little transparency in terms of the expanse of information that’s being traded in this ecosystem,” said Guccione. “I think the level of transparency is going to have to be greatly increased, or the result is going to be a tremendous amount of litigation.”

EPA pulls climate science web pages to reflect White House views

President Trump and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt aren’t exactly fans of climate science, and they’re scaling back the EPA’s website to reflect their views. The EPA has started implementing a site revision that will “reflect the approach of new leadership.” As you might surmise, that means that mentions of climate change, regulation and Obama-era policies are on the chopping block — the language endorsing the Clean Power Plan is “out of date,” the EPA claims. And unfortunately, that means axing information that has been around for multiple administrations.

The Washington Post notes that the EPA has pulled a nearly 20-year-old page explaining the fundamentals of climate change and how it affects the US. While updates to the site were frozen and closely scrutinized under President George W. Bush’s administration, his White House was still content to leave the page running — clearly, even that was too much under the new presidency.

The EPA stresses that it will use “proper archiving procedures” to preserve the previous version of its website. That information won’t disappear if you’re really looking for it. However, the very fact that it’s going away from the current site is problematic. While the EPA website is bound to reflect administration policies, the basic climate science content was a valuable source of information for students and anyone else who needs to know how climate change works. Curious minds will have to turn to the archives or third-party sources to get the facts. And of course, it’s hard to escape the irony of an environmental agency that avoids mentioning science that helps the environment.

Via: Reuters

Source: EPA, Washington Post

Watch SpaceX try a picture-perfect rocket landing at 7AM ET

Many SpaceX rocket landings have gotchas for viewers. Drone ship landings frequently mean shaky satellite video feeds, and nighttime launches just aren’t very photogenic. You’re about to have a much better look, however. SpaceX is launching a US spy satellite (NROL-76) on April 30th in circumstances that are about as good as you could hope for. The 7AM Eastern launch window opening is definitely early (especially if you’re on the West coast), but it guarantees daylight at Cape Canaveral. And more importantly, there will be a ground landing — you should get unfettered, high-quality video of the whole affair.

As Reddit user 007T points out, there’s only been one other landing with this set of circumstances before: the CRS-10 mission from mid-February. We’d expect this sort of picture-perfect rocket landing to become relatively commonplace now that SpaceX has stepped up its launch schedule, but you may want to cherish the novelty while it lasts. If you’re up shortly after sunrise, you can tune in below.

Via: Reddit

Source: SpaceX, YouTube

Own the great outdoors without incident with these 12 emergency kit musts

Most people keep emergency kits stowed at home or in their automobiles to err on the side of caution. However, fewer individuals maintain an emergency kit specifically catered to incidents that may arise while enjoying the great outdoors. While items such as a backup flashlight or a pack of bandages are obvious choices, there are plenty of other lesser-known products to keep within arm’s reach. From gadgets designed to help you communicate with minimal or nonexistent cellular reception to self-defense products intended to keep wildlife safely at bay, here are 12 items we suggest adding to your emergency kit.

Midland Emergency Radio

The ER310 E+READY Emergency Crank Weather Radio is one of our favorite emergency weather radios to help you stay in the loop on weather updates or pending emergencies — it even doubles as a flashlight. A USB port enables you to charge compatible devices and a small crank on the side allows you to manually recharge the device.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

High-proof bourbon

Let’s be honest, booze and camping go hand-in-hand. While an ol’ two-finger pour of bourbon is certainly a relaxing way to wind down after a long day on the trail, the antiseptic properties of higher proof alcohols make them a pertinent addition to any outdoor emergency kit. With an indefinite shelf life, this item won’t expire in your camping kit, although something tells us that, even without incident, you may need to restock often.

A GPS unit

We all know how spotty cellular reception can get in remote areas. In these instances, the GPS on your cell phone tends to be rendered useless. That said, a secondary GPS unit helps you determine your exact location to more easily navigate your surroundings. Read more about our favorite GPS units here.

Shop for GPS units on:

Amazon

Hemostatic Gauze

While a basic gauze is an easy way to keep open wounds clean, hemostatic gauze is ideal for immediate treatment after an injury. Curad Bloodstop hemostatic gauze does exactly what the name implies. A clotting agent on the material expands and absorbs blood to help slow bleeding and seal wounds.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

EpiPen

Those with severe allergies or asthma are probably used to keeping an EpiPen within arm’s reach. If you’re isolated in the wilderness, an EpiPen could be a real lifesaver during an allergic reaction. Keep one of these stowed in your emergency kit just to be safe. There’s even an Aterica Smart EpiPen case that reminds you  — via the paired app — to bring your EpiPen with you, just in case you forget.

goTenna

As noted previously, cellular reception can be spotty in remote areas. That said, the goTenna is a great way to communicate, if you need to send a message during an emergency. The device pairs with your smartphone via Bluetooth and once connected, allows for the sending of private messages to others in your group — or to simply broadcast a message to other goTennas nearby.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

Sawyer Products B4 Extractor Pump Kit

If you spend enough time in the great outdoors, bites and stings are inevitable. While most stings are more of a nuisance than anything, some can be life threatening. The Sawyer Extractor Pump allows you to extract venoms and poisons immediately after an incident. The unit comes with four different tips to treat a variety of stings and bites. This pump was designed to be used with a single hand, meaning you can perform treatment on yourself if you’re caught in a pinch on a solo mission.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

Liquid bandage

When attempting to prevent infection, wound care is crucial. While gauze is a great way to keep most dirt and debris out of wounds, there are other preventive measures you can take. Liquid stitch products, for example, are ideal for creating a waterproof barrier between small cuts and the elements. If need be, you can always use super glue as well.

Shop for liquid stitch now on:

Amazon

Basic medicines and ointments

There are also plenty of basic medicines and topical ointments to pack for outdoor adventures. Ibuprofen and other pain relievers are an easy way to treat minor aches and pains from the trail (and maybe even a slight headache from quaffing your emergency kit libation of choice). Similarly, lidocaine topical jellies and ointments can be used as a local anesthetic to dull the pain of sunburns, poison ivy (and oak), as well as minor cuts and insect bites.

Emergency beacons

If your vehicle breaks down, emergency lights are a great way to create a safety buffer between you and passing vehicles. The Wagan EL2639-3 FRED Flashing Roadside Emergency Discs are a solid, rugged option to pack in just in case.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

FlashTorch Mini

The FlashTorch Mini is an exceptional multitool to pack in an emergency kit. The flashlight itself dishes out more than 2,000 lumens to light up the night while also generating enough heat to ignite combustible material, making the FlashTorch perfect for starting fires on the fly. When set upright and set to full power, the powerful lens can be used to heat a small pan for cooking meals. Read our full review here.

Buy one now from:

FlashTorch

Frontiersman Bear Spray

Most encounters with bears ensue without incident, however, when dealing with wildlife, there’s always the potential for danger. If you happen to come across an aggressive bear on the trail or if one approaches your campsite, bear spray is a great way to protect yourself from a distance. This Frontiersman model allows you to spray a bear up to 30 feet away. A canister of bear spray isn’t necessary for all trips, though the item is certainly something to consider.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

Skybox VR aims to be the best media player for every platform

Skybox lets you watch videos streamed from your PC, no matter which headset you own.

There are plenty of different VR video players that are available for viewing all of those awesome videos that you download from the internet. Being able to watch the videos that you want to watch, when and where you want them, isn’t really anything new. Now, with Skybox’s Airscreen feature you can stream videos from your PC right to your VR headset. We’ve got all the details for you here.

Read more at VRHeads.com

‘The Circle’ takes anti-tech paranoia to ludicrous heights

As a book, David Eggers’ The Circle was a flimsy attack against modern technology culture with occasional bits of insight. As a film, though, it’s so disjointed, ridiculous and dull that even Tom Hanks can’t save it. Sure, it didn’t really have much of a chance, given its source material. But as a fan of director James Ponsoldt’s (The Spectacular Now, The End of the Tour) work, I had an inkling of hope that The Circle would translate better to the big screen. Unfortunately, practically nothing about the film works. And that’s a shame — more than ever, there’s a desperate need for intelligent criticism of the technology industry today.

Spoilers for The Circle novel and film ahead.

Black Mirror does a fine job of portraying the downsides of technology. but even though it’s now readily available on Netflix, it’s still something that’s targeted at a media and tech-savvy niche audience. A big-budget, wide-release film starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson has more potential to reach a broader group of people who might not think as deeply about the privacy issues surrounding their Facebook accounts. Sadly, all the film really does is shout, as loudly as possible, that technology is bad and will inevitably lead us towards a totalitarian state.

The basic premise of the film feels like a modern day Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. Mae (Emma Watson) is a twenty-something with a dead-end job who miraculously receives a job with The Circle, a beloved company whose religion is sharing and who now controls the vast majority of the web. You can think of it as the lovechild of Google and Facebook.

Its earliest innovation was “TruYou,” a unified account that controls everything you do on the web and ties you to your real identity. TruYou was heralded as a major convenience win for consumers, which was somehow steamrolled pass regulators and critics. Even more unbelievable, the film claims that it sanitized the web by killing off anonymous comments. Seriously, all it takes is a quick look at any site with Facebook-powered commenting to see that’s false.

The company’s follow-up product — tiny and inexpensive high-definition cameras that can be placed just about anywhere — is a bit more believable. But that’s only until you learn that they also upload video directly to satellites from anywhere on Earth (for free, I guess?). And no, there’s no talk of battery life either. As Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), The Circle’s affable figurehead, describes it, the “SeaChange” cameras will lead to a world where nothing is hidden.

It’s easy to see how such a product could be useful, but it’s even easier to grasp how it could lead to a reckless surveillance state. Of course, few people within the company question the cameras. That duty is left up to a mysterious stranger working for The Circle, who warns Mae of the company’s troubling privacy issues, and Mae’s hometown ex-boyfriend, who goes off the grid to avoid tech’s infiltration into his life. All other Circle employees basically seem like idiot children who lap up everything the company does.

Eventually, Mae gleefully embraces the idea of the SeaChange cameras by “going transparent,” which involves wearing a camera all day and broadcasting to an online audience of millions. It never occurs to her that this could lead to issues — even when she broadcasts her parents having sex (because, of course, she helpfully had cameras installed in their house too). The film raises some interesting questions about a generation of online users who document and share every aspect of their lives. But it’s more interested in portraying that as something that’s inherently wrong, instead of trying to find any deeper meaning.

STX Entertainment

Indeed, that’s something the film does over and over again. It’s not hard to imagine where things end up going when a crowd of Circle employees start chanting “Sharing is caring!” with religious fervor during a company-wide meeting. The Circle takes some ideas about social media to their logical conclusion, but the result is inexplicably terrible. Case in point: During a discussion about encouraging more Circle users to vote — something Facebook has been doing for a while — Mae posits that it could even be better to require a Circle account to vote. And it’s not long before she considers making voting in America mandatory.

Mae’s fascistic tendencies reach a new high point when she reveals a new search engine that can find anyone on Earth in under 20 minutes. We assume it’s using some sort of facial recognition technology, but a big part of the search process also involves Circle users who can physically locate the target. Mae starts off by demonstrating how it could be used to find a criminal on the run, but her audience quickly goads her into using it to find her off-the-grid ex-boyfriend. In the film’s most ludicrous sequence, Circle users chase him out of his house, pursue him in a high speed chase, and eventually use a drone to force him off of a bridge to his death. The dangers of social media!

It’s cartoonish how quickly The Circle devolves into dystopia. It simply states that our modern tech will lead us down a dangerous path, instead of offering any insightful criticism. Worst of all, the film isn’t even entertaining enough to enjoy as a B-movie conspiracy thriller. It feels like it’s edited together with a hacksaw, with no meaningful motivation or logic connecting it. And every performance also feels stiff and inhuman, especially when they’re just reciting dialog from Eggers’ novel.

The Circle will no doubt scare people who are already suspicious about where technology is leading us. But really, that’s all it’s interested in doing. There’s no intriguing self-reflection, like we see in Black Mirror. And it’s certainly not asking any big questions about our relationship with technology, like Ex Machina. It’s ultimately a missed opportunity, especially with companies like Facebook and Google crawling into every facet of our lives. Now that we’re actually living in the over-connected cyberpunk world that science fiction has predicted for decades, I’m hoping to see some smarter mainstream technology criticism eventually.