Louisville wants a fleet of drones to survey areas after shootings

Earlier this week, the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky told reporters that he wants the city to field a fleet of drones that automatically survey areas after guns are fired. The city would detect firearm discharges using its existing ShotSpotter system, WDRB reported, and immediately send the UAVs to the scene, potentially before emergency responders are even called. But this isn’t coming out of nowhere: Louisville could just be the first of over 300 cities that have applied to a federal program that provides funding for local governments that are trying to start their own drone programs.

Cities had to apply for the FAA and DOT’s US Unmanned Aerial System Integration Pilot Program by the end of last November, but of the hundreds of applicants, only five will be chosen. So far, only Louisville is proposing this particular use for a drone fleet, according to Gizmodo.

But the city’s mayor and civic innovation chief believe a host of UAVs buzzing in to photograph or video record a location and leaving thereafter would be less of a privacy violation than blanketing the city in security cameras — and be cheaper, too. Louisville won’t know if its pitch will be be accepted for the program for a couple months, according to WDRB.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: WDRB

Apple to repair iPhone 7s with ‘no service’ bug for free

Today Apple announced it’s launching a repair program for a “small percentage” of iPhone 7 owners who are affected by a “no service” issue. Late last year MacRumors said Apple was investigating the problem and appeared ready to replace affected devices, which would display “No service” in their status bar even when cell signal was clearly available. The cause of the problem is apparently a failed component on the logic board, and Apple says affected units (with model #s A1660, A1679, and A1780) extend through its entire production run from September 2016 until now.

If your unit is on the list then Apple will fix it free of charge (within two years of the original purchase date) by sending it to a repair center. If you’ve already paid for a repair then look out for an email about reimbursement, and if it doesn’t show up then give Apple a call. This is hardly the first recall/repair program we’ve seen for various iPhone issues, which have recently included battery problems (that preceded the software update that slowed down affected phones) for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 Plus “touch disease.”

Source: Apple

Apple Launches Official Repair Program for iPhone 7 Models Affected by ‘No Service’ Issue

Apple today launched a repair program for iPhone 7 devices that are impacted by an ongoing bug that causes them to have no available service even when cellular coverage is available. Apple says the problem is caused by a component that has failed on the main logic board.

The problem affects “a small percentage” of iPhone 7 devices, causing them to display a “No Service” message instead of properly connecting to an available cellular network.

Customers who are experiencing this issue will receive a free device repair from Apple, and those who have already paid for repairs are eligible for reimbursement. Apple will be emailing customers who may have previously paid for a repair related to this problem to offer a refund.

According to Apple, affected units were manufactured between September 2016 and February 2018 and were sold in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, and the United States. Model numbers that are impacted by the hardware failure include A1660, A1780, and A779, and customers can see if they are affected by checking the model number on the back of their device.

We first heard hints of this bug in September of 2016, when Apple launched an investigation into iPhone 7 devices that were displaying a “No Service” message after customers activated and then disabled Airplane Mode.

Apple’s repair program is only available for the iPhone 7, and Apple will examine all iPhones prior to service to verify that the iPhone in question is impacted by the bug and eligible for repair. Apple says that devices with other damage, such as a cracked screen, will need to have those problems addressed before the “No Service” bug can be fixed.

Customers who are in need of a repair should contact an Authorized Apple Service Provider, visit an Apple retail store, or get in touch with Apple support. Apple will be sending all iPhone 7 models in need of repair to an Apple Repair Center.

The new iPhone 7 repair program covers affected iPhone 7 devices for two years after the first retail sale of the unit.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7Buyer’s Guide: iPhone 8 (Neutral)
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How Elon Musk plays on our science fiction dreams

Elon Musk has said that he wants to die on Mars — after it’s been colonized by his company SpaceX.

He may not have the precise details yet, but Musk will figure out the mission in style: The SpaceX space suits are sleek and form-fitting, while his cherry red Tesla sports car will be aboard the maiden flight of the interplanetary Falcon Heavy rocket. Meanwhile, on Earth, he’ll work on connecting our brains to computers through tiny electrodes, building underground networks of car sleds that function like a personal subway system, firing passenger trains through a vacuum tube at the speed of sound and replacing air travel with his Big Fucking Rocket (BFR) spaceship that gets passengers anywhere on the planet in under an hour. That’s without mentioning his efforts to advance electric cars and solar energy. Or the fact that this week, he made $10 million in four days by selling promotional flamethrowers.

With every outlandish company announcement or tweet, Musk can come across as a visionary, swindler or master publicist. But regardless, he grabs news headlines, customers place down payments on products they might not see for months, and Tesla’s valuation climbs higher.

Musk’s stories are irresistible, and a key reason is that he taps into the public’s science fiction fantasies. For decades, sci-fi has shaped our very conception of what the future should be like. At a moment in which technology seems to be leading us toward a dystopia, Musk appears to be everyone’s best shot at getting the future they’ve dreamt of.

“They’re buying into his futurist vision of completely untraversed worlds and ideas and opportunities that no one can see or think of, but when he describes them, you’re inspired,” said Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “That’s why science fiction is attractive to us. It takes us out of our comfort zone and opens up our mind to an entirely new way of thinking, a new universe of all kinds of whimsical and even, in some cases, frightening possibilities.”

Reed studies the way that personal identity shapes purchasing behavior. In Musk’s case, consumers feel like they’re investing in their future selves by buying his products, matching who they are now with who they expect to be in a fantastical future. At the same time, they can vicariously become a little more like Musk, the visionary. Musk’s name has become synonymous with — if not bigger than — his companies. To buy into SpaceX, Tesla or The Boring Company is to trust that Musk will make good on his vision of the future.

Musk’s appeal as entrepreneur and technologist is not about what he does but who he is. At different times, he’s been compared to industrialist Henry Ford, fraudster P.T. Barnum, inventor Thomas Edison and literal superhero Tony Stark. He is not only trying to remold the entrenched industries of automotive, energy and interplanetary travel but also, as writer Neil Strauss points out, to disrupt our very relationship with distance and time. He is, essentially, a geek icon.

“The decision to move from selling hats to flamethrowers to financing a massive tunnel-boring operation is such a preposterous proposition that it’s hard not to be charmed by it,” said Dan Casey, senior editor at Nerdist and host of Muskwatch, a weekly online video series covering exactly what it sounds like. “There is a cult of personality around Musk that you don’t see with similar wealthy tech magnates, CEOs and entrepreneurs. Jeff Bezos may be wealthier, and Tim Cook sits on the throne of an empire of Apple products … but they are straight-up boring compared to Musk.”

In an age in which all tech entrepreneurs promise they have the keys to the future, Musk also offers something else: a “meaningful worldview.” This was the conclusion of Ashlee Vance, author of the biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future and a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. “Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants you to … well … save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation,” Vance writes. Creating a sustainable ecosystem beyond our planet is Musk’s organizing purpose, giving each of his projects an almost moral clarity.

Consumer trust in Musk is important for more than publicity. His products and services come from the future: By nature, he’s selling a dream that won’t materialize anytime soon. Musk has a reputation for overestimating how many cars Tesla can produce, and the upcoming Falcon Heavy test flight was initially slated for last summer. Tesla loses money — nearly half a million dollars per hour, reported Bloomberg in November — and the country’s onetime most valuable automaker is often referred to as an overvalued “story stock.”

Customers are funding the company too. Tesla has taken at least $400 million in deposits for the Model 3, the company’s midrange sedan, even though production is behind schedule. “[Musk] appeals to the futurist in all of us, as we dream of what might be. And he’s savvy enough to ask us to pay up front, thereby getting his customers to provide the funding for his dreams,” said John Mullins, an associate professor of management practice at London Business School. This is why Musk needs a robust mythology: It not only raises capital from both his investors and individual consumers but also staves off the fear that his companies may be peddling vaporware. Perhaps when he sells trinkets like The Boring Company’s flamethrowers and hats, it’s also to remind us that his companies can produce tangible goods.

While Musk’s sci-fi indulgences could easily be interpreted as pure marketing stunts, Vance, the biographer who spent a year with Musk for his book, said the entrepreneur believes in his grand concepts.

“There’s no question to me that, at the heart of this, it is very genuine,” Vance told Engadget. “Elon, you’ve got to remember, grew up as a rabid science fiction geek. He probably literally read every single science fiction book in his city, Pretoria, when he was growing up.”

“When he says, ‘I want to go to Mars and create a multi-planetary species,’ to me, there is no gimmick behind that at all. That is his honest-to-God driving principle of life. It’s the only thing that really explains why he was willing to risk all of his money and his time and his marriages and time with his children to do all of this stuff.”

There is evidence that Musk is driven by more than riches. After his sale of PayPal to eBay, he took home about $180 million that promptly went into SpaceX, Tesla and renewable energy company SolarCity. In 2014, he announced Tesla would make all of its patents open source. Just last month, Musk said he would take no salary from Tesla for the next decade, only getting paid in shares if he hits wildly ambitious milestones (for living expenses, he borrows against his shares).

For sure, Musk knows how to publicize his star power, particularly to his 18.4 million Twitter followers. Though disingenuousness on social media can be sniffed out in a second, Musk can come across online as funny, eccentric and intelligent. “He’s got kind of like a wicked sense of humor that I don’t think people always appreciate,” Vance said. “There’s no way Ford’s CEO is going to sell flamethrowers to the public. He’s on his own level.”

The real test of Musk’s authenticity will be when his projects actually reach the market and evolve into something more than playthings for the rich. Right now, Falcon Heavy is set to launch in four days, and Tesla’s Model 3 is already rolling out. With hope, we’ll soon know if the future Musk has got us all dreaming about is the reality we’ve long desired — or sheer fantasy.

Images: SpaceX (Spacesuit, Mars colony layout)

Alexa can now control your HP printer

HP has been working on bringing voice control to its printers, introducing Cortana and Google Assistant skills last year that let users tell their virtual assistants to print a variety of different documents for them. Now, as of this week, Alexa-enabled devices can also connect to HP home printers.

Alexa can follow through on a number of different commands. Users can ask her to print games like sudoku puzzles or bingo cards, their to-do or shopping lists, coloring pages and even graph paper, blank calendars or notebook paper. You can see instructions on how to set up your printer to connect with Alexa here.

The Cortana and Google Assistant skills allow for similar commands, though each assistant has capabilities that the others don’t. For example, you can use the Google Assistant to print your Google Calendar or Alexa to print your Amazon shopping list. The Google Assistant HP skill launched last May while the Cortanta skill became available in October.

Anneliese Olson, HP’s head of home printing, says that connecting printers with voice assistants is convenient and useful though in the future, HP printers will likely be responsive to voice commands on their own. “Integrating voice into the home printer is an undeniably useful application of the technology,” Olson said in a statement. “For busy families, the virtual assistant ecosystem makes a lot of sense and connecting a printer to it is a natural extension within the smart home.”

Source: HP (1), (2), (3), (4)

How to copy and paste on a Chromebook

When you first fire up your new Chromebook and get to work, you’ll probably have a few questions about the slim Chrome OS and how everything works. One question that users eventually have is, “How do I copy and paste on Chrome?”

The good news is that copying and pasting on a Chromebook works very much like copying on other computer systems. Let’s go through common copy/paste tasks and how you can do them quickly.

Copying a text selection

Do you need to copy a block of text quickly? Here’s how:

Step 1: Start by highlighting the text you want to copy. On the Chromebook touchpad, you can press and hold your finger to create a selection box that will highlight the text you want to copy as you move your finger. Everything that’s highlighted will be copied. Using a mouse for this type of selection allows for a bit more precision and speed.

Step 2: Now to copy. The fastest way is the traditional keyboard shortcut, which still works on Chromebooks. Press the Ctrl and the C keys at the same time. This will automatically copy the text and store it while waiting for you to paste it somewhere else.

Step 3: Head over to the place you want to paste the text, and select this area so your cursor is there. Then press the Ctrl and V keys at the same time. This will paste the selection. Note that you can past multiple times, since the content will stay stored in your clipboard until you overwrite it with another copy.

Note that text formatting may change a bit from place to place, or that it won’t copy with the exact same appearance. There’s not much to do about this except to reformat as you go, or use a clipboard manager to strip all formatting, which may be a little better for big projects.

Copying images and video

As long as the source allows you to copy images or video (not all do), this is also a simple process. Let’s go!

Step 1: Hover over the picture or video that you want to copy, and then right click on it. For the touchpad, the right click should be set to a two-finger tap. This takes a little practice if you haven’t tried it before, but quickly becomes normal.

Step 2: If you are copying an image, you will see options to copy image, or copy image address. The URL is useful for certain coding or publishing tasks, but generally copying the image itself is what you want to transfer the content.

Step 3: If you are copying a video, you will see options to copy video URL and probably copy embed code as well. Choose which is right for you. Both the URL and the embed code can be used to copy a video link over to another spot. For pasting a video into a chat stream or other casual use, you only need the URL.

Step 4: Head to the place you want to paste, put your cursor there with a tap, and press Ctrl and V keys at the same time. This will copy the associated image or address.

Note that if you are clicking a thumbnail or a linked image, you will only see an option to copy link address. This will give you a link to the web page that the image or video can be found at. Head over to that web page if you want a more direct option.

Copying a full web page

If you need to copy everything that’s on a particular web page, this is how you do it!

Step 1: Click on a neutral part of the web page that you want to copy, where nothing else will be highlighted or chosen, and press the Ctrl and A keys at the same time. This will highlight everything on the page.

Step 2: Without clicking again, press the Ctrl and C keys to copy everything that is highlighted.

Step 3: Move your cursor over to the area where you want to paste this information, and hit Ctrl and V.

Note that this will copy everything, including headers and buttons and other web content objects, but not necessarily with the layout intact, which can look…very weird. If you want a full picture of the website instead, your best bet is to use the screenshot function.

Bonus: Copy and paste extensions

Once you get comfortable around your Chromebook, you may want to take a look at various extensions that make advanced copy and pasting easier. There are a lot of add-ons targeted at specific tasks: There is one that helps you copy multiple items at once, and another that’s designed to make copying with Office Online easier.

There are even extensions that speed up monotonous copy/paste tasks like copying rows in ADP or copying out Amazon listings for other programs. If you have a more complicated copying project, give it a search on the Chrome web store and see what comes up!

Editors’ Recommendations

• How to take a screenshot on a PC with Windows 10, 8, and 7
• Like Chrome OS, but miss Windows? Here’s how to install it on your Chromebook
• Here’s how to make a watermark to help protect your photos
• A crash course in how to make your own memes
• Learn your way around the Windows 10 Command Prompt, plus how to watch Star Wars

The best Alexa-compatible smart-home devices for Amazon Echo

By Rachel Cericola

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, reviews for the real world. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

Imagine walking into your home at night, arms overflowing with groceries. To turn your smart lights on, you’d need to put the bags down, pull out your phone, unlock it, open the app, find the control for the lights you want, and then tap the icon. With an Amazon Echo and Alexa, you simply say, “Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights.” And it’s not just lights; Alexa is capable of controlling everything from basic smart plugs to garage doors.

Smart bulbs

Photo: Grant Clauser

All models of the Philips Hue smart bulb, our pick as the best smart light bulb, allow you to power multiple lights on and off, dim, change a bulb’s color, and even create light groups to enable color schemes throughout the house on command. Just know that in addition to your Alexa device, you’ll also need the Hue Bridge, a hub that can handle up to 50 Hue-ified lights.

Smart plugs

Photo: Rachel Cericola

Belkin’s Wemo Mini smart plug (our preferred plug-in smart outlet) is one of the many Wemo devices that you can control with Alexa. The Wemo Mini plugs into any outlet and connects to your Wi-Fi network, so you can turn fans, lights, coffee makers, and pretty much anything else on and off from your smartphone. You can even set them on a schedule, or call out commands to your Echo devices.

Smart light switches

Photo: Rachel Cericola

Lutron’s Caséta is a strong wireless lighting-control system on its own, and one that we recommend to people who want a good lighting system but don’t necessarily need all of the other features that a system like Samsung’s SmartThings offers. Alexa works with Caséta in-wall and plug-in dimmer switches, and you can group them so you can turn off multiple lights with just the sound of your voice.

Thermostats

Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

What’s the current temperature setting on your Nest Learning Thermostat? Ask Alexa. The voice assistant can also raise and lower temperatures or set our top smart-thermostat pick to Away mode. If you don’t use the Nest’s geofencing features (and many people don’t), the ability to verbally adjust temperature settings can be a favorite feature. Multiple-thermostat owners can also call for specific devices by naming each Nest.

Robot vacuums

Photo: Liam McCabe

No one loves vacuuming, but robot vacuums make the chore as easy as pushing a button. And thanks to Alexa integration. the iRobot Roomba 690 and iRobot Roomba 960 ensure that you never even have to lift that one finger. You can bark out orders to command your Wi-Fi–connected robot army to start, stop, or resume cleaning. You can even ask Alexa to locate the little buggers.

Security cameras

Photo: Rachel Cericola

Adding Alexa control to Wi-Fi security cameras allows you to arm and disarm cameras as you enter and exit your home and to view live feeds on some Alexa-connected devices. Our favorite indoor security camera, the Logitech Circle 2 works outside too, and accepts prompts through Alexa to disable the privacy mode and even initiate recordings on command. Our outdoor pick, the Nest Cam Outdoor, provides clear imagery, the ability to distinguish between people and pets (with a paid Nest Aware subscription), and a truly weatherproof cord. If you want to cut that cord, Netgear’s Arlo Pro 2 offers customizable alerts and seven days’ worth of free video storage.

Smart hubs

Photo: Jon Chase

Alexa can control a lot of things, but only if you specifically ask it to. For example, if you ask Alexa to turn off your bedside lamp, it won’t automatically adjust the thermostat as well. If you want to experiment with these types of automations, consider the Samsung SmartThings Hub, our top pick for smart-home hubs. It’s compatible with a lot of different devices, including everything in Amazon’s Alexa line.

Door locks

Photo: Jon Chase

The Kwikset Kevo, which is our top smart-lock pick, doesn’t have a lot of smart-home integration. However, it does allow you to lock and unlock the door with Alexa voice commands from inside the house, as well as to provide temporary access to guests. To use the voice control, you need to pair it with the Kevo Plus hub, which at time of writing is sold separately for $100.

Doorbell cameras

Photo: Rozette Rago

As we describe in our guide to smart doorbell cameras, the SkyBell HD offers the best, most reliable peek at the other side of your door, without an added monthly subscription. With Alexa, you can ask that system to take a quick snapshot or video, turn the chime on and off, and even provide a peek through the Echo Show or Echo Spot.

Garage-door controllers

Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

The Gogogate 2 can open, close, and check the status of your garage door from anywhere, so you can let people in while you’re away, or make sure you don’t accidentally leave it open. As our upgrade pick, it can even integrate cameras, so you can view the status of your door from the app. You can also ask Alexa to open and close the door and have it respond accordingly.

Smart sprinkler controllers

Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Rachio’s Smart Sprinkler Controller is one of our favorite ways to smarten up yard work. It has an easy-to-use interface and supports both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands. That means you can ask Alexa to have the system turn on and off, water specific zones, and delay run times. However, this system lacks any type of local control, so you can’t make schedule adjustments without an Internet connection.

Media streaming devices

Photo: Chris Heinonen

You can find a lot of devices that allow you to get your Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu, or other streaming fix—and not just in our guide to the best media streaming devices. However, the Amazon Fire TV Stick is currently the most compact model that also packs the power of Alexa. Having voice control can save you a lot of time when navigating tens of thousands of streaming options.

Kitchen appliances

Photo: Nick Guy

For the most part, Alexa’s kitchen utility is limited to its timer-setting abilities and basic recipe-reading skills. But some appliances are beginning to integrate voice controls to varying degrees of success. Web-enabled sous vide circulators are among the earliest adopters thus far. We like the Anova Precision Cooker Wi-Fi—pair it with Alexa to check the status of a steak, adjust temperatures, and even get a little extra direction.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

‘Yakuza 6: The Song of Life’ launch date pushed back to April 17th

One more month, folks. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is due to land in the United States, Europe and elsewhere around the world on April 17th, a one-month delay from its original release date. To soften the blow of this announcement, publisher Sega also revealed the launch date for the Yakuza 6 demo: It’ll go live on PlayStation 4 on February 27th, and save data will transfer to the full game.

“This will be the first time everyone will have a chance to play the game (a moment we have long been anticipating!) and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it,” Sega wrote on Twitter. “We have many new plans to reveal over the coming weeks to give you all more insight into the series, so stay tuned!”

An important update on Yakuza 6 : The Song of Life pic.twitter.com/8MILlBPI4x

— Yakuza Game (@yakuzagame) February 2, 2018

Yakuza 6 came out in Japan in late December, closing up series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu’s vengeful storyline in the fictional Japanese town of Kamurocho. Yakuza is a third-person, open-world, action-heavy franchise known for its over-the-top characters and ridiculous side tasks. The Song of Life is the seventh game in the series — the most recent installments to hit the US were Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the first title, and Yakuza 0, a prequel that came to PS4 in January 2017 and was received warmly by fans and newcomers.

The PS4 won’t be hurting for big games in April. God of War — another big-name, single-player, PS4-exclusive game — comes to Sony’s console on April 20th. God of War is a major first-party title for Sony and the new game has held a starring role at the company’s past two E3 press conferences.

‘Far Cry 5’ season pass takes you to Mars and Vietnam

It’s almost time to head to Hope County, Montana. In addition to Far Cry 5’s American vibes, there will be more to explore if you pony up for the game’s season pass. The trio of adventures will have you battling the undead in “Dead Living Zombies,” the Viet Cong in “Hours of Darkness” and gigantic spiders in “Lost on Mars.” Sure, aside from “Hours of Darkness” these sound pretty over-the-top, but they aren’t out of the ordinary for the series. For example, Far Cry 3 had the awesome, ’80s-inspired “Blood Dragon” add-on pack that starred Michael Biehn.

More than that, Ubisoft recently announced an add-on scenario for Rainbow Six: Siege where you’re battling zombies and aliens in New Mexico. Ghost Recon: Wildlands also entered the jungle with a Predator-themed expansion late last year. So yeah, the season pass’ deviations from Far Cry 5’s main story aren’t entirely unprecedented.

More than just expansion episodes, though, season pass purchasers will also gain access to Far Cry 3 Classic Edition, which sounds like a gussied up version of the third game in the series. That’ll go on sale separately for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this year, but PC players and console folks who buy the season pass (or the game’s “gold” edition) will get it four weeks ahead of everyone else.

What’s missing is pricing for the season pass. The standard game is $60, while the gold edition is $90. The extra $30 includes the base game, season pass and some cosmetic items. We’ve reached out to Ubisoft for additional information and will update this post should it arrive. Far Cry 5 will be released on March 27th.

Source: Ubiblog

Strava’s fitness heatmaps are a ‘potential catastrophe’

The 2018 cybersecurity race to the bottom is off to an exciting start. First out of the gate is Strava — now widely known as the “social network for athletes” — and its reckless data-visualization “heat map” gimmick that revealed details of secret military bases around the world.

It was the kind of incident deserving of a plot line in a ridiculous Hollywood drama. And yet, here we are, with Twitter and the whole world discussing and dissecting fitness routes of soldiers and agents in sensitive locations, such as American bases in Afghanistan and Syria, a possible secret CIA base in Somalia, military facilities in war zones and much more.

I’m not sure how many times we need to go through this. The trifecta parable of confusing privacy settings, postpublication safety considerations and the requirement of major headlines for companies to give a shit. It’s as if the makers of Strava and its ilk are living in a completely different internet.

Let’s be clear: Fitness apps have a massive privacy problem. MapMyRun, Nike + RunClub and Strava (to name a few) all come with scary default privacy settings that are combined with mapping tools. These apps are a dream come true for stalkers, terrorists and spies.

And yet, nearly 10 years after Please Rob Me made a devastating mockery of Silicon Valley’s reckless location-sharing mania — by using publicly available social-media information to show when people’s homes are vacant — Strava just burps and says, “Hold my beer.”

Strava’s global heat maps have been around for awhile but got a big update in November 2017 boasting “1 billion activities” and “3 trillion latitude/longitude points” mined from “10 terabytes of raw input data” from its users. (Spoiler alert: unsuspecting user plot twist ahead. We’ll probably never know how much of this inadvertent sharing came from Strava’s carelessly confusing privacy settings.)

Yet it was the observations of one national-security-policy nerd on Twitter over the past weekend that got all the infosec chickens clucking. “Strava released their global heatmap,” tweeted Nathan Ruser. “13 trillion GPS points from their users (turning off data sharing is an option) … It looks very pretty, but not amazing for Op-Sec. US Bases are clearly identifiable and mappable.”

And Strava’s location data patty-cake playtime with the data of its “global community of millions of runners, cyclists and triathletes” who use Fitbits and phones is amazing. For spies and bad guys, that is.

With the data, press reported that it’s possible to “establish the names and hometowns of individuals who have signed up for a social sharing network where runners post their routes and speeds. One popular route on a base in Iraq has been nicknamed “Base Perimeter” by the U.S. runners who regularly use it. Another outside-the-big-U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, is called “Sniper Alley.”

Strava heatmap of an area in Kandahar, Afghanistan which includes an airfield.

If only someone in the San Francisco startup’s offices had foreseen this. Except they sort of did. People had for months been trying to tell Strava that its privacy protocols were dangerous and that its maps were just a little problematic.

These issues with Strava had been well-established by at least July of last year when a female runner and journalist exposed the company’s very real privacy problems in an article for Quartz. I think the article was overlooked and largely ignored because the app’s fairly dangerous privacy mess was described as a “feminist issue.” As in, it got shuffled off as a women’s problem.

Strava’s response to the July 2017 article — calling out its reckless privacy practices as a threat to women — was to publish a blog post two days later essentially blaming users for not doing its privacy settings correctly.

It’s hardly a coincidence that the people most at risk of violence from apps that exploit user privacy and location data are the ones most routinely ignored when they raise the alarm.

Anyway, when increasingly larger news outlets began to report about Strava’s exciting new feature, self-guided online tours of military facilities in war zones, Strava attempted to reuse its old blog post from last year as a statement.

When no one would go away, Strava issued a new statement saying that it takes the safety of its users seriously. The company will now focus on privacy awareness to address security issues.

That’s great. This is fine. Well, not really. Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard School of Public Health, told press that the public availability of the data represents “a potential catastrophe.”

Strava heatmap of the area surrounding The Pentagon in Washington DC.

The US military kind of agrees. A lot. Reuters reported by midweek that US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered a review of the situation and will be changing its guidelines for the use of all wireless devices on military facilities. As is tradition, no one’s confirming or denying anything. “Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters at a news briefing he did not know of any instances in which U.S. base security had been compromised as a result of the mapping,” the outlet reported.

Many would expect Strava’s heatmaps to have been taken down for review, pending user privacy clarifications (making sure people understand what they’re sharing), meetings with military and hopefully also domestic-violence shelters and also women in general. But if this is you expecting this, you would be wrong.

The maps are still live as a wire, and people are poring over them like porn from an alien planet. “People wearing Strava-enabled fitness trackers appear to have been poking around a Thames shipwreck containing nearly 1,500 tonnes of explosives from the Second World War,” The Register reported in this great post on interpreting the heatmaps, cautioning us on how to avoid jumping to conclusions as more people tear into the data looking for new things to make headlines out of in the coming weeks.

We can only hope that some good comes out of the Strava heatmap debacle. I don’t mean the kind where Strava seizes the opportunity to radically change the way user privacy is taught to ordinary people, to take the lead in creating sustainable data sharing practices for at-risk populations, or any such impossible nonsense. I mean the more realistic kind, where people find Disneyland’s secret entrances.