#ศาสตร์เกษตรดินปุ๋ย : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

U.S. tightens restrictions on Huawei yet again, underscoring the difficulty of closing trade routes

Aug 18. 2020

By The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen, Ellen Nakashima · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, NATIONAL-SECURITY, WHITEHOUSE, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS 
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration on Monday took its harshest step yet to block Huawei’s access to semiconductor chips, in another sign of the complexity of severing the Chinese technology company from global supply chains.

The Commerce Department originally banned the export of U.S. technology to Huawei in May 2019, calling the Chinese company a security threat. But it’s had to tighten the rules several times since as Huawei has found ways to continue buying components made with U.S. technology.

Some industry executives said the latest restrictions are the toughest yet and could deal a crippling blow to Huawei by cutting it off from most of the world’s semiconductors, which are critical to the operation of electronic devices. The Chinese company has found a way around previous restrictions, however, and has continued to report sales growth, bolstered by its large domestic market.

China has also been pouring billions into developing its own semiconductor manufacturing and design, and while industry executives say it is years behind and still reliant on Western technology, China has caught up in other sectors.

The U.S. semiconductor sector panned the new rules, saying they were broader than necessary to protect national security and would harm an important American industry. Huawei didn’t provide an immediate comment.

The new restrictions are another sign that the Trump administration’s crackdown on China is accelerating in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, in which Trump has attempted to distinguish himself as the tough-on-China candidate.

The administration’s actions in recent weeks include sanctioning Chinese companies for allegedly facilitating human rights violations against minority groups in China’s Xinjiang region; warning U.S. executives not to lobby for China; and banning TikTok from operating in the United States unless it is acquired by an American company by a September deadline.

The campaign against Huawei has deeper roots. The original May 2019 blacklisting prevented the export to Huawei of any technology from the U.S. without a license. But Huawei still found ways to buy semiconductors and other parts containing U.S. technology that were manufactured outside the U.S.

In May of this year, Commerce tried to close that loophole by amending its regulations to say that overseas manufacturers of semiconductors, if they use U.S. equipment or software to produce chips according to Huawei designs, would need a license from the United States before selling them to the Chinese company.

Commerce tightened the rules again Monday, saying it will require such manufacturers to get a license even if they are selling chips that were not designed by Huawei but are intended for Huawei’s use.

Industry officials said that will cut Huawei off from most chips made worldwide, because semiconductor factories can’t escape using U.S. software and equipment in their production process.

“This kills Huawei,” said one industry executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters. “Any chip made anywhere in the world by anyone is subject to this.”

Kevin Wolf, a former senior Commerce official who is now a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, also described U.S. software and equipment as essential in chip factories worldwide and said the new prohibition is therefore extremely broad.

“Every foreign-made semiconductor of any type anywhere in the world is now subject to U.S. license requirements if a Huawei company is in any way involved, directly or indirectly, in the transaction,” he said.

The Commerce Department said the action would “prevent Huawei’s attempts to circumvent U.S. export controls to obtain electronic components developed or produced using U.S. technology.”

The agency on Monday also added 38 new Huawei entities to the trade blacklist, including many of Huawei’s cloud-computing subsidiaries around the world. Any company selling U.S. technology to those subsidiaries will now need a license from the Commerce Department.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo characterized the new rules as attempting to close loopholes, saying Huawei had “continuously tried to evade” the blacklisting.

The Semiconductor Industry Association criticized the latest measure.

“We are still reviewing the rule, but these broad restrictions on commercial chip sales will bring significant disruption to the U.S. semiconductor industry. We are surprised and concerned by the administration’s sudden shift from its prior support of a more narrow approach intended to achieve stated national security goals while limiting harm to U.S. companies,” the group said.

“We reiterate our view that sales of non-sensitive, commercial products to China drive semiconductor research and innovation here in the U.S., which is critical to America’s economic strength and national security,” the group added.

The industry association has been pushing the administration to allow U.S. companies to sell chips Huawei uses to make cell phones and other consumer devices, arguing that those pose no threat to U.S. national security.

The Trump administration has focused on Huawei’s telecom network equipment as posing a security threat, saying Chinese officials could tap into that equipment installed overseas to spy or to disrupt infrastructure. Huawei has dismissed those allegations.

Semiconductor chips are designed with highly automated software that programs billions of lines of code.

The industry executive said only three companies in the world make that software, known as electronic design automation, and all are subject to U.S. export controls because of their U.S. operations.

Two – Synopsys Inc. and Cadence Design Systems – are headquartered in California. A third, Mentor Graphics, was acquired by the German company Siemens in 2017, but all of its operations are in the U.S., which is what counts for export control purposes, the executive said.

Moreover, there are only a handful of manufacturing toolmakers in the world for semiconductor production, each of which is the only one of its kind and is a necessary part of the process, the executive said. Three of these companies are based California: KLA-Tencor, Applied Materials and Lam Research. Remove any one of these companies and it’s impossible to build a chip, the executive said.

“It’s like a puzzle,” the executive said. “If you’re missing one piece, you can’t build the puzzle.”

The Dutch company ASML also makes a critical tool used in semiconductor production.

Stephen Ezell, vice president at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a think tank, said the U.S. step represents a “significant escalation” in trade tensions.

“While the administration is right to insist that Huawei, and China more broadly, compete within established global trade rules, and appropriately take countermeasures when they don’t, blanket tech export/use restrictions on Huawei run the risk of harming U.S. firms, which make $11 billion in annual sales to Huawei and of encouraging China to redouble its efforts to develop a completely indigenous semiconductor ecosystem,” he said by email.

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Apple cuts off Epic from its tools, endangering future Unreal Engine projects on iOS and Mac

Aug 18. 2020

By The Washington Post · Gene Park · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS, VIDEO-GAMES 
Epic Games, locked in a legal battle with Apple and Google over developer payments, now says Apple is threatening to cut the company off from developer accounts and iOS and Mac development tools.

This decision, expected to go into effect Aug. 28, might have widespread effects on App Store development. This goes beyond “Fortnite,” the Epic Games title that was the catalyst for the legal fight. Epic Games is also the creator of Unreal Engine, which has not only become an industry standard for creating video games, but also film, commercial business and TV shows such as “The Mandalorian” on Disney+.

Operating System developers (like Apple and Microsoft) provide updated tools to developers for free or a small fee to develop programs for the systems. An Epic Games spokeswoman tells The Post that without that access, all future versions of Unreal Engine can’t be developed for iOS and Mac devices like iPhones and Macbooks. In turn, subsequent updates to iOS or Mac devices could make software running on Unreal Engine unusable.

This is a particularly precarious time for Epic Games as it plans to release the fifth iteration of the Unreal Engine, expected to power the next generation of video games. And it doesn’t just affect games by Epic. “Hello Neighbor” by Dynamic Pixels in 2017 has become a huge hit on mobile platforms. This could also cut off the “Mortal Kombat” series from the mobile market, as it also uses the Unreal Engine.

Epic has filed for a temporary restraining order to stop the move from taking effect. “Not content simply to remove Fortnite from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic’s entire business in unrelated areas,” wrote attorneys for Epic Games. “Technology markets move swiftly. … The damage to Epic’s ongoing business and to its reputation and trust with its customers will be unquantifiable and irreparable. Preliminary injunctive relief is necessary to prevent Apple from crushing Epic before this case could ever get to judgment.”

If Epic Games is cut off from Apple’s tools, many developers would have to forgo the Unreal Engine for other systems. That’s not an easy feat, particularly for small studios who have found huge success thanks to the Apple App Store.

“The effects will reverberate well beyond video games,” an Epic Games spokeswoman wrote in an email to The Post. “It will affect developers who use the Unreal Engine on Apple products in many fields.”

Game developer Brianna Wu said she already invested thousands for a new Mac to port an Unreal 3 iOS game over to a 64-bit program.

“Now that project is dead in its tracks,” Wu told The Post. “Using Unreal to develop iOS games has always been extremely risky. All the greatest games of all time, games Apple promoted at iOS keynotes like ‘Infinity Blade’ are gone, lost to time because Apple constantly breaks Unreal Engine with updates.”

Wu said Apple seems to be pushing iOS developers to use Xcode, Apple’s own integrated software development program.

“Apple’s 3D tools are better than they were a decade ago, but it’s not anywhere near the league of Unreal Engine,” Wu said.

Epic Games has been trying to mobilize millions of “Fortnite” players to reach out to Apple to demand change, while fighting the issue in courts. Apple’s reasoning has been that Epic Games flagrantly violated App Store policies by offering alternative methods of payment.

“Fortnite” will no longer be updated on mobile devices, as the game moves on to its next season, possibly later this month.

The Post is reaching out to other developers of iOS to see how this decision could impact their work.

#ศาสตร์เกษตรดินปุ๋ย : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

University of North Carolina moves to remote teaching after virus spreads among students during first week of class

Aug 18. 2020Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gather along Franklin Street on Aug. 9, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Ted Richardson

By The Washington Post · Nick Anderson · NATIONAL, HEALTH, EDUCATION, HEALTH-NEWS 

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the largest schools in the country to bring students to campus for in-person teaching, said Monday that it will pivot to all-remote instruction for undergraduates after testing showed a pattern of rapid spread of the novel coronavirus.

The shift signaled enormous challenges ahead for those in higher education who are pushing for professors and students to be able to meet on campus. Officials announced the abrupt change just a week after classes began at the 30,000-student state flagship university. 

They said 177 cases of the dangerous pathogen had been confirmed among students, out of hundreds tested. Another 349 students were in quarantine, on and off campus, because of possible exposure to the virus, they said. 

The remote-teaching order for undergraduate classes will take effect Wednesday, and the university will take steps to allow students to leave campus housing without financial penalty. The actions are likely to reverberate in North Carolina and beyond, including other major public universities that have hopes of playing college football in the fall. UNC-Chapel Hill’s Tar Heels teams play in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“We understand the concern and frustrations these changes will raise with many students and parents,” UNC-Chapel Hill’s chancellor, Kevin Guskiewicz, and provost, Robert Blouin, wrote in a statement. “As much as we believe we have worked diligently to help create a healthy and safe campus living and learning environment, we believe the current data presents an untenable situation.” 

The leaders pointed out a bright side: “So far, we have been fortunate that most students who have tested positive have demonstrated mild symptoms.”

In Chapel Hill, clusters of coronavirus cases had popped up in three residence halls and a fraternity house in the first week of the fall term, sending students into isolation and quarantine rooms and raising faculty worries about how far the virus will spread in the campus community.

The public health conditions at UNC-Chapel Hill were being closely watched as colleges and universities around the country move this month toward the first day of class, some with entirely remote instruction and others with a mix of teaching online and in person.

Among 100 major public universities – two per state – an analysis from Davidson College found that 23 have plans to teach primarily in person or offer a “hybrid” of face-to-face and online. Those with in-person plans, the analysis found, include the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Iowa and Kentucky.

Reports have emerged of risky gatherings of students in close quarters, without masks, in college towns including Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama, and Dahlonega, home of the University of North Georgia. A cluster of 23 confirmed coronavirus cases also hit a sorority house at Oklahoma State University.

At the University of Notre Dame, which is also one week into its term, there have been 58 confirmed coronavirus cases this month. The prestigious Catholic university, with 12,000 students, is teaching primarily in person.

But Notre Dame officials are keeping a close eye on off-campus parties in South Bend, Ind. “That has caused us concern,” Paul Browne, the university’s vice president for public affairs and communications, said. 

In the week before class started Aug. 10 at UNC-Chapel Hill, 10 students and one employee tested positive, according to the university. But clusters of cases piled up in the residences known as Granville Towers, Ehringhaus and Hinton James, as well as the Sigma Nu fraternity house, according to text alerts the university sent students in recent days. A UNC-Chapel Hill dashboard shows 130 students tested positive last week out of 954 tested. Five employees also tested positive. 

“After only one week of campus operations, with growing numbers of clusters and insufficient control over the off-campus behavior of students (and others), it is time for an off-ramp,” Barbara Rimer, dean of public health at UNC-Chapel Hill, wrote in a statement Monday. “We have tried to make this work, but it is not working.”

Faculty, too, were calling for a review of the situation.

“The fact that it is happening this early in the school year, just a week into classes, has everyone quite concerned and quite alarmed, quite frankly,” said Mimi V. Chapman, a professor of social work who is chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty.

Clusters are defined as at least five cases in a residence. 

The public university has about 20,000 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students. This month it is housing about 5,800 students in campus housing – less than two-thirds of capacity – with many more students living off campus in Chapel Hill and nearby communities. More than half of classes had at least some in-person teaching on opening day, although many faculty have been switching in recent weeks to all-online delivery.

Before the first day of class, university officials said they were confident in their plans but would closely monitor how many cases emerge and other data, including the number of students in quarantine.

Officials say many students appear to be taking public health seriously. Masks are worn all around campus, they said, and students are maintaining physical distance from each other when they go to class. 

“It has been heartening to hear reports from faculty and staff and to experience for myself the excellent compliance on campus this week,” the provost, Blouin, wrote Thursday. “Our goal, certainly, is full participation both on campus and off among all members of our Carolina community.”

But they were deeply concerned about gatherings off campus. The UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor, Guskiewicz, wrote a letter recently warning fraternities and sororities and other groups that they must follow health rules.

One dorm was set aside to isolate those who test positive and another to quarantine those who had come into close contact with confirmed cases. One first-year student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for privacy reasons, told The Washington Post on Monday that she had been in quarantine since Thursday night. This student said the problem arose because she had breakfast one day just off campus with a classmate who later tested positive.

“I was definitely worried,” she said. “I kind of broke down when I first got here.” But she said she has adjusted and is resigned to waiting for her viral test results and living apart from her peers for two weeks. 

She said her meals are delivered, including a turkey sandwich for lunch and grilled chicken for dinner, as well as a supply of Pop-Tarts, oatmeal and cans of soup. “I was told I could only leave if I need a breath of fresh air,” she said.

#ศาสตร์เกษตรดินปุ๋ย : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

License allowing some trade with Huawei expires, spelling possible trouble for rural telecom companies

Aug 15. 2020

By The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, POLITICS, ASIA-PACIFIC
WASHINGTON – A U.S. reprieve that had allowed some trade with Huawei to continue has now lapsed, potentially complicating operations for some rural telecommunications networks.

The reprieve, which expired Thursday night, provided some exceptions to a trade ban the Trump administration imposed last year on the Chinese tech giant, which it labeled a security threat.

That ban generally prohibited U.S. companies from exporting technology to Huawei. But the reprieve, known as a temporary general license, allowed U.S. software providers to continue sending updates and patches to Huawei so the Chinese company could disseminate them to customers using Huawei cellphones or Huawei wireless network equipment.

The Commerce Department has said the reprieve was largely meant to help rural telecommunications companies in the U.S., some of which use Huawei equipment in their mobile networks. Larger U.S. telecom companies have largely avoided using Huawei equipment, but rural providers adopted it because it was relatively inexpensive.

The Commerce Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday on the expiration. Lawyers said it was possible the agency would still renew the temporary general license in the coming days.

A Huawei spokesman said the company didn’t have an immediate comment.

Jerry Whisenhunt, general manager of Pine Telephone Company, a network in rural Oklahoma that uses Huawei equipment, said he was less concerned about the reprieve ending than he was about a bigger problem – a law enacted this year requiring U.S. telecoms to rip out and replace equipment that poses “national security risks.” The Federal Communications Commission this year designated Huawei and fellow Chinese equipment producer ZTE as posing such a threat.

The new law says telecom companies won’t have to replace the equipment until the federal government gives them money to do so. Congress hasn’t yet allocated money for the replacement effort, and Whisenhunt sees no sign of it doing so soon. In the meantime, he doesn’t want to spend money to update a network he knows he needs to rip out.

“The longer they wait the more likely it is that we’re going to have problems” with the functioning of the network, he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the license expiration would affect users of Huawei cellphones, which run on Google’s Android operating system.

Earlier this year, Google said the U.S. trade ban meant it was prohibited from providing its technology or apps to new Huawei phones, but that it was still able to update Huawei phones that had been on the market before the trade ban was announced in May 2019.

“We have continued to work with Huawei, in compliance with government regulations, to provide security updates and updates to Google’s apps and services on existing devices, and we will continue to do so as long as it is permitted,” Google said in that February statement.

On Friday, Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said it was the temporary general license that had allowed the company to send those updates. He declined to comment further.

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Facebook calls out Apple for imposing App Store fees on small businesses

Aug 15. 2020

By The Washington Post · Rachel Lerman · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT 
Facebook on Friday called out Apple for the fees it imposes through its App Store, just a day after Fortnite maker Epic Games filed a suit against the iPhone maker for the same practice.

Facebook announced paid live events for businesses on Friday, a feature that will allow businesses to host virtual events through the social media app, directly charging participants. It said in a news release it asked Apple to reduce the 30 percent fee it takes from purchases made through apps downloaded from its App Store.

Apple refused, Facebook said.

“We approached Apple about this policy and asked them to reduce this fee for businesses struggling during covid-19,” Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook App, said on a call with reporters Friday. “And unfortunately they dismissed our request.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Critics have alleged the App Store fees are an example of Apple’s dominant place in the market and have called them out for anticompetitive behavior.

Facebook is also facing antitrust probes for its dominance in the social media and online advertising industries. The company collects fees from small businesses for selling products using its tools, though it has waived those fees through the end of October this year. 

Simo sidestepped a question about Facebook supporting Epic and making an antitrust point about Apple, instead focusing on helping small businesses during the pandemic.

“What we are pushing on right now is making sure all tech companies that can afford to do so join us in supporting small businesses,” she said.

Lawmakers focused in on Apple’s fee structure when questioning Apple CEO Tim Cook last month during a landmark antitrust hearing focusing on tech giants. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., accused Cook of profiteering as the novel coronavirus spread around the world by forcing commissions on companies that have had to switch to digital models during a pandemic that has forced much of the business world online. 

Cook denied that accusation. “We would never do that,” Cook said.

Apple does not impose its 30 percent fee on real-world goods, such as items shipped from Amazon or cars ordered by Apple. But small businesses have switched to virtual conferences and events during the pandemic, which are subject to the fees.

Apple has faced growing backlash about its payment practices in recent months, including from Epic, Spotify and lawmakers in Congress.

Epic’s lawsuit against Apple alleges the company has become a “behemoth seeking to control markets, block competition, and stifle innovation.” Epic introduced a feature in the Fortnite app earlier this week that would have given people discounts for buying game currencies directly through Epic, rather than through Apple’s payment system. In response, Apple removed the app from its store and Epic sued.

Google also removed the app, and Epic sued it as well. But Google has less of a hold on apps on its Android system, and the Fortnite app can still be downloaded directly from the Epic website.

Facebook said Android users will be able to use Facebook Pay for events and businesses will receive all the money. 

Facebook said it would not take fees for these events for “at least the next year.” The company plans to showcase the fees in the iOS app with a label that reads, “Apple takes 30% of this purchase.” 

The feature, along with the label, is still under review by Apple. Simo said Facebook won’t know for a few days if Apple will approve the wording. 

“We think that this is not about pushing people to go and use a different form of payment, which is more against Apple’s rules, but it’s really about transparency,” she said.

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Maker of hit video game Fortnite sues Apple after game’s removal from App Store in dispute over payment system

Aug 14. 2020

By The Washington Post · Rachel Lerman, Reed Albergotti · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT, VIDEO-GAMES 
Fortnite is better known for facilitating virtual battles between video game players. On Thursday, it picked a fight of its own with Apple, setting the stage for a courtroom brawl that, if successful, could have far reaching ramifications for the iPhone maker.

Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, said Thursday it is suing Apple over “anticompetitive conduct” after the tech giant kicked the game’s app off its App Store. Epic Games released a feature that lets users choose how they want to pay for in-app purchases – either through the App Store or Google’s Play Store, or from Epic directly, which saves up to 20 percent.

Apple generally takes a cut of 30 percent of payments made in apps obtained through the App Store. Google Play Store generally takes a similar 30 percent cut.

Not long after Apple removed its app, the video game maker filed a 65-page lawsuit in federal court in Northern California that appeared to anticipate Apple’s actions.

Fortnite is one of the most popular video games in the world. Last year, Epic Games boasted the game had about 250 million active accounts a month. According to market research firm Sensor Tower, Fortnite was downloaded 2.4 million times on the App Store over the last 30 days and generated $43.4 million in consumer spending through the iOS app over that period. Since it was created, it has tallied 133.2 million installs and accounted for $1.2 billion in spending.

Getting kicked off the App Store means new users won’t be able to download the mobile app. Users who already have it on their phones will still be able to use the game for now but won’t be able to update it to new versions.

Epic’s suit specifically calls out Apple’s payment practices.

“Apple’s removal of Fortnite is yet another example of Apple flexing its enormous power in order to impose unreasonable restraints and unlawfully maintain its 100 percent monopoly over the iOS In-App Payment Processing Market,” the filing reads.

Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said the company removed Fortnite from the store after Epic violated its guidelines.

“Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the App Store guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services,” he said in an emailed statement.

Google had removed Fortnite from its Play Store as of late Thursday. Android users can still download Fortnite directly from Epic’s website.

“For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for users,” Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said in a statement. “While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies.”

Epic’s legal battle against Apple is the latest episode in a war between app developers and the tech giant. In recent years, Apple has grown more powerful because of its App Store, which controls which apps can be installed on iPhones. By contrast, developers can bypass Google’s Play Store with different Android app stores or offer their programs to download from their own sites. The App Store is more lucrative, though, because iPhone users spend more money online. And when businesses designed around mobile apps have proven successful, Apple has increasingly encroached into those areas, using its power over the App Store to advantage itself.

The App Store has drawn the attention of lawmakers investigating Apple and other tech giants over competition concerns. Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook defended the App Store cut in front of Congress when big tech executives were grilled as part of the investigation. 

In recent years, as Apple has grown more powerful and competition in the smartphone industry has withered, developers have begun to fight back. Most prominently, music streaming service Spotify made public complaints in Europe, leading to an investigation by the European Commission into Apple’s business practices.

Even as companies push back, Apple has grown more aggressive in enforcing its cut. In the past, Apple had allowed developers to collect subscription fees outside the App Store, so long as those alternative options were not advertised on the App Store. Companies like Amazon and Spotify had taken advantage of that loophole. But when email service Hey tried to do this, Apple stopped approving updated versions of its mobile app.

Companies like Spotify and Epic Games argue that Apple’s fees are artificially high because of Apple’s monopoly over the App Store, and they say the benefits Apple provides as the curator of the store do not merit a 30 percent fee.

Spotify spokesman Adam Grossberg said the company applauded Epic Games’ decision to “take a stand against Apple and shed further light on Apple’s abuse of its dominant position.” He added, “Apple’s unfair practices have disadvantaged competitors and deprived consumers for far too long. The stakes for consumers and app developers large and small couldn’t be higher and ensuring that the iOS platform operates competitively and fairly is an urgent task with far-reaching implications.”

Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney had already criticized Apple for the practice earlier this summer.

“The iOS App Store’s monopoly protects only Apple profit, not device security,” he said.

Members of Congress asked Cook if the company would ever increase its 30 percent commission, but the executive sidestepped the question. He stated the company has never increased subscription fees.

Apple has made some exceptions to the 30 percent fee, including for Amazon videos earlier this year. But those exceptions appear to be one-off deals. Apple also does not collect fees on purchases of real-world goods, such as items shipped from Amazon, coffee bought from Starbucks or cars ordered through apps like Uber and Lyft.

Fortnite was released as a free game in 2017 by Epic Games. While it initially failed to make a splash, the game quickly pivoted toward the then-growing battle royale game genre, which drew more fans every month. The game’s popularity skyrocketed in March 2018 when Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the world’s most popular video game streaming personality, played matches of Fortnite with rappers Drake and Travis Scott, and NFL star JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Fortnite then became a global cultural touchpoint, becoming so popular that national sports leagues grew concerned about lax player training schedules, and Netflix executives cited the game, and not HBO or Hulu, as its biggest competitor.

The game remains one of the most-watched on Twitch, the streaming platform owned by Amazon.

On Thursday, shortly after its app was taken down by Apple, Epic rolled out a website and a video that spoofed Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial. Back then, IBM was the juggernaut and Apple was the upstart. The commercial used George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” to paint IBM as Big Brother.

“On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984,” the commercial said.

Now, Epic Games sees Apple as having taken IBM’s place. “Epic respectfully requests this Court to enjoin Apple from continuing to impose its anti-competitive restrictions on the iOS ecosystem and ensure 2020 is not like ‘1984.′”

Epic’s suit says the payment system is used to effectively “gag app developers” from even mentioning other payment options outside the app.

“Apple has become what it once railed against: the behemoth seeking to control markets, block competition, and stifle innovation,” the suit reads.

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Chiang Mai mountain schools bridge education gap to revive dying communities

Aug 13. 2020Students at Ban Khobdong School are pictured in their Palong hilltribe costumes.

By Jintana Panyaarvudh
Special to The Nation

Fang, Chiang Mai
Jintana PanyaarvudhKuljira Longkaew, a Prathom 6 student at Ban Khobdong School in Chiang Mai’s Doi Ang Khang, dreams of becoming a voiceover artist and earning huge income.

To fulfil her dream, the 11-year-old Palong hilltribe girl knows she must study hard to master the three languages she already speaks – her native Palong, Thai and English.

Soonthorn Keskesri, director of Ban Khobdong School, presents the ‘Angkhang Model’ network.

But ordinary subjects are not enough to achieve her ambition, so she needs her school to provide music tuition too.

“Learning languages helps me to speak clearly and fluently, but music class will show me how to use rhythm correctly and that will help me get good at voiceover,” she said.

Kuljira longkaew, a Prathom 6 student, creates a handicraft to sell at the Ban Khobdong School shop.

Kuljira is one of many hilltribe students living in remote and mountainous northern Thailand, where the quality of education is often low due to economic and social deprivation as well as cultural difference.

Attempting to improve the situation, five schools in Doi Ang Khang have partnered to conduct research on “new normal” education for the 21st century that caters to students in remote areas. The schools of Ban Khobdong, Ban Luang and Debsirin 9 in Fang district, and Ban Phadaeng and Santiwana in Chai Prakarn district are now collectively known as the “Angkhang Model” network.

Headed by Riam Singthorn, an award-winning teacher at Ban Khobdong school, the research project is aimed at designing curriculums that empower graduating students to earn a living from their local resources so they don’t need to leave for work in big cities.

The project is funded by the Thailand Science Research and Innovation (TSRI).

Among many problems faced by underprivileged students here is lower-quality education, which affects their chances when competing for college places with students in big cities. Most are from ethnic groups and do not have Thai citizenship, making it even more difficult to enter higher education. And with pressure high to get a job and begin earning, very few continue their study beyond school.

Doi Ang Khang is renowned among tourists for its blooming wild Himalayan cherry trees and cool weather, but the local economy has taken a hit from an ecosystem rehab plan. Resorts have been demolished or closed to tourists, forcing local parents and children to leave the area and make their livelihoods elsewhere.

However, the Covid-19 lockdown saw locals flock back to their hometowns, where they had to seek whatever local resources were available to earn a living. 

While some struggled, others turned the crisis into an opportunity. Villagers in Ban Phadaeng, Chai Prakarn district, found a way to make money from its avocado trees, earning Bt100,000 to Bt1 million from selling seedlings online during the outbreak.

Push for self-sufficiency

Realising that schools had a vital role to play in Ang Khang’s push for self-sufficiency, Riam said the network switched the focus to alternative and vocational education. 

The school’s directors, teachers, parents and students agreed that adding vocational skills training to their normal curriculum would help students earn a living in their hometowns when they graduated.

Initially, the Angkhang Model aimed to boost basic literacy among the highland children, but technology enabled researchers to go deeper, mapping the children’s different circumstances – social, geographical, local wisdom, identity, and social capital – to tailor curriculums for each separate community.

With Doi Ang Khang being “set to zero” under its ecosystem rehab plan, the TSRI asked the researchers to refocus the goal from literacy to how to develop locals, their community and surroundings simultaneously for the sake of Ang Khang’s future, explained Benjawan Wongkam, the TSRI officer who oversaw the research project.

She said literacy alone was not an answer for the area’s problems since parents here want their children to find jobs quickly and make a living.

A pupil at Santiwana School demonstrates how to make banana cake.

Though students lacked opportunity for further study due to their statelessness, if they were given skills to exploit existing natural resources in the area or follow sufficiency economy practices, they could stay at home and earn money, she added.

Schools under the Angkhang Model are already teaching a range of skills in addition to their normal curriculum. Students at Santiwana School are learning cooking, crafting and electrician’s skills and using them to make money, while pupils at Ban Phadaeng School are taught how to graft avocado seedlings and process the fruit into ice cream and soap.

“What we are trying to do is to support our students so they can make their livelihood here when they graduate, and don’t need to leave home to find jobs elsewhere,” said Wasant Muensorn, director of Santiwana School.

For local students like Kuljira, the future is starting to look brighter in Doi Ang Khang. 

—

Jintana Panyaarvudh

Freelance writer

Former managing editor, The Nation

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Facebook says it’s taken down 7 million posts for spreading coronavirus misinformation

Aug 12. 2020

By The Washington Post · Rachel Lerman · NATIONAL, TECHNOLOGY, HEALTH, MEDIA, HEALTH-NEWS 
Facebook said Tuesday that it took down 7 million posts pushing covid-19 misinformation from its main social media site and Instagram between April and June as the company tried to combat the rapid spread of dangerous information about the virus.

The company also put warning notes on 98 million covid-19 misinformation posts on Facebook during that time period — labeling posts that were still misleading but not deemed harmful enough to remove.

Facebook and fellow big social media sites Twitter and YouTube have been scrambling to keep up with the flood of posts promoting fake cures or harmful speculation about the spread of the novel coronavirus since early this spring. Facebook put policies in place to try to regulate covid-19 posts, but their moderation teams that monitor such posts have also been disrupted as offices remain closed.

Facebook sent its content moderators home in March, a move that led to fewer posts being removed in certain rulebreaking areas between April and June. But other policies benefited from improved artificial intelligence technology, and Facebook reported a bump in removing posts for violating some policies.

Tuesday’s reports was Facebook’s sixth on how well its rules are being enforced.

The company took down 22.5 million posts on Facebook for violating its hate speech rules during the time period, an increase from 9.6 million posts during the first quarter of the year. Much of that increase was due to better detection technology and adding three languages to its automated system that searches for violating posts, Facebook said.

Facebook is also once again expanding its definition of hate speech, it said Tuesday, to include more content depicting blackface and some harmful Jewish stereotypes.

But operations tremors caused by covid-19 also meant Facebook had to prioritize some rules over others, and other metrics slipped. The company took down 35.7 million posts for breaking its rules about adult nudity and sexual activity, compared to 39.5 million in the first three months of the year. The change was because of “temporary workforce changes due to COVID-19,” Facebook wrote in the Community Standards Enforcement Report.

The company also called for an independent audit of its reports – which will be released quarterly from now on – a move that would give external organizations a peek under Facebook’s secretive hood.

“No company should grade its own homework, and the credibility of our systems should be earned, not assumed,” Facebook technical program manager Vishwanath Sarang wrote in a blog post announcing a request for proposals for the audit.

Despite the teams of thousands of content moderators, social media sites have still let coronavirus misinformation spread online. In May, Facebook and YouTube removed the so-called “Plandemic” video featuring a conspiracy theory about how covid-19 spread, but it had already been viewed millions of times.

Facebook took down one of President Donald Trump’s posts for spreading coronavirus misinformation earlier in August, after the president posted a video of an interview he gave on Fox News. It was the first time the company had taken down one of the president’s posts for violating its covid-19 misinformation policy. In the interview, he falsely claimed that children are “almost immune” from covid-19.

Twitter also sanctioned the video on its site and required the Trump 2020 campaign account to delete a tweet with the same clip.

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Disinformation for profit: How a Florida ‘dealmaker’ turns conservative outrage into cash

Aug 12. 2020The Wolf of Washington website on a laptop computer. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara. Photo by: Melina Mara — The Washington Post Location: Big Sur USA

By The Washington Post · Isaac Stanley-Becker · NATIONAL, TECHNOLOGY, POLITICS 
The reality curated by “The Bearded Patriot” and “The Wolf of Washington” is dismal.

The websites tell of nonstop riots and “crazed leftists.” They warn of online censorship and the wiles of an “anarchist billionaire,” a reference to George Soros, the liberal investor and Holocaust survivor.

The material is tailor-made to inflame right-wing passions. But its underlying purpose is to collect email addresses and other personal information from impassioned readers, whose inboxes then fill up with narrowly targeted ads. The effect is to monetize the anger stoked by misleading political content – for as much as $2,500 per list of contacts.

An investigation by Alethea Group, an organization combating disinformation that draws its name from the Greek word for “truth,” has linked the operation to Mark S. Evans Jr., a self-proclaimed “online multimillionaire” who affixes “DM,” for “dealmaker,” to his name. The network of 178 sites, at least half of which are politically themed and share visual as well as technical features, is designed to harvest email addresses, which are then sold to commercial brands, according to Alethea Group’s analysis, and possibly also to political campaigns.

The findings, which were provided to The Washington Post, illuminate the financial motives behind the spread of hyperpartisan, low-quality news. And they reveal how merchants of misinformation are exploiting techniques of data collection to more efficiently capitalize on polarization and falsehoods and more effectively target specific communities.

“This is for-profit fearmongering enhanced by aggressive data collection,” said Cindy Otis, Alethea Group’s vice president of analysis. The digital marketing apparatus made possible by the sites, including lucrative data profiles of their visitors, “comes with the capability to support political consulting or campaign work,” said Otis, a former CIA analyst and the author of “True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News.”

Email marketing and campaign list-building are not cutting-edge tactics. But the findings by Alethea Group shed light on a practice further to the extreme, one devoid of any apparent newsgathering mission and unfolding almost entirely in the shadows, with recycled content and stock images.

Peter F. Aquart, an associate of Evans listed as an agent in several of his ventures, posted this summer about “skip tracing,” a practice associated with bounty hunters that involves determining a person’s whereabouts and other private information. “Who are you using?” he asked on Facebook. Around the same time, Aquart hinted at one possible use for the more robust records he was pursuing. He wrote on LinkedIn that he was seeking support for a mass-texting program, a service increasingly central to political campaigns.

“Pairing collected data with things like skip tracing software and bulk messaging apps – it’s where a lot of these networks are headed,” Otis said. “It is the future of political disinformation.”

Neither Evans nor Aquart responded to calls or text messages seeking comment, or to emailed questions about the websites, some of which were previously traced to Evans by BuzzFeed News and linked to advertisements for masks. Aquart acknowledged receipt of a text message but stopped replying after a Washington Post reporter identified himself.

Several LLCs operated by the two men, including Rightside Data and Direct Mailers Group, are set up to sell the data collected from the right-wing websites. The firms provide contact details that are also associated with some of the news sites, and a media and marketing specialist listed as a Rightside employee, Andy Pangerl, posted ads in May claiming access to “30 Conservative Leaning Email Lists.”

The lists, he wrote, include “1.5 million baby boomers.” Several months earlier, a Facebook page associated with the company advertised a list collected from one of its sites, Real American Pundit. It offered 173,000 email addresses for $2,500.

A LinkedIn profile for Rightside Data, which has also done business as Cash Flow Lead Gen, says it is “focused on delivering highly targeted, quality email leads . . . with our newsletter assets.”

The description adds, “We drive clicks.”

The nimble enterprise offers a case study in how domestic actors stand to profit from the pollution of the online information ecosystem, which has only intensified, experts say, since the 2016 election brought the dangers of disinformation to the fore. The labor required to set up the sites, repackaging existing headlines with a more explicitly partisan or sensationalistic angle, is minimal, said Lisa-Maria Neudert, a researcher with Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project. But the potential payoff, from even a few stories that gain viral attention on social media, is significant.

“It’s a huge crisis,” said Chris Vargo, a professor of data analytics and digital advertising at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “There are thousands of these sites, fueling hyperpartisanship, reinforcing people’s existing beliefs and making it possible to target them with dangerous disinformation about anything from an election to a vaccine for the coronavirus.” 

Partisan interests do not appear to be a primary motivation for the people behind the online network. Pangerl – whose LinkedIn profile indicates that he formerly worked for Newsmax Media, a conservative outlet whose email lists were tapped for online fundraising by President Trump’s campaign in 2016 – has made pro-Trump posts, including a tweet ridiculing a Democratic primary debate and tagging the president and his eldest son and daughter, along with a range of right-wing pundits.

Evans, however, rarely posts overtly political messages, though he does use news events to advance his business philosophy. Several days after Trump’s election in 2016, he titled a post, “President-Elect Trump’s 100-Day plan . . .” The eye-catching headline was only a hook to tell clients that the president’s plans were less important than the question of how they were bettering their own lives, as Evans wrote, asking, “So what’s your 100-day plan?”

The tactic speaks to Trump’s place at the center of viral clickbait.

“The worst of the Web used to be cat videos,” said Joshua Braun, a scholar of online media at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “Now it’s Trump or viral hoaxes around coronavirus.”

Advanced ad targeting makes it possible to capitalize on the passions the president incites to market products to a narrower and narrower segment of people, Braun said. These technologies, which were manipulated by the Russians in 2016, have drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill. They have also spurred a wave of research documenting how ad targeting based on Web-browsing behavior reinforces racial bias and inflames partisanship, among other harmful outcomes.

In the case of the network linked to Evans, profit appears to come not from Web advertising but from newsletter sign-ups. Evans owns or operates a cluster of businesses – with addresses in West Palm Beach and Riviera Beach, Fla., among other locations – that focus on digital marketing, real estate transactions and other means of quickly amassing significant riches.

But his main mission seems to be that of a life coach. Claiming to advise “thousands of people across the world,” he offers to transform clients from “mules,” who toil away with little reward, into “magicians,” who achieve results within 10 minutes. He dispatches his advice in morning “Cigars and Coffee” sessions, streamed live on social media, where he tells his followers, who usually number no more than several hundred per session, to “get addicted to winning.”

Evans offers his own life story as a model for would-be clients to emulate. A self-published memoir tells of his ascent from a trailer park in Ohio – “barely graduating high school” – to his life in South Florida “making more money than I ever dreamed possible while traveling the world.” He identifies two primary ventures – “a massive real estate investment firm and a lucrative media company” – that he says “generate millions of dollars each per year.” 

One of the lessons he took with him from his childhood, he says in one video, is to “be honest, be ethical, do the right thing, even if it hurts.” At the same time, the overarching promise he recalls making to himself was, “I’m going to do whatever I can in my powers to go out and achieve wealth at a whole new level.”

That promise took shape in the form of American Wealth Builders, a business that boasts of helping real estate investors diversify their holdings. Comments on the group’s Better Business Bureau profile raise questions about its effectiveness. “This is by far the worst investment you could ever possibly make,” one apparent client wrote in April 2019. “You would be better off to simply light your hundred dollar bills on fire.”

The warning has not kept customers away from Rightside Data, which promotes four clients on its website: Agora Financial, Family Survival, New Market Health and the Oxford Club. All but Family Survival are affiliates of Agora Inc., a Baltimore-based publishing network, and an Agora spokesman confirmed they had obtained email addresses from Rightside Data.

In the past, Agora subsidiaries have expanded their marketing reach by leasing email lists from prominent conservatives, including Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican candidate for president, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who twice ran for the GOP presidential nomination.

Information gleaned from the right-wing blogs serves the same purpose fulfilled by the contact lists of conservative politicians. The American Pundit, Bearded Patriot and Wolf of Washington websites appear to be part of a common network, centrally designed and operated, according to Alethea Group’s findings. Many of them share domain registration data, IP addresses and Google AdSense identification numbers.

The sites also use similar coding and design features. Virtually all of them include an opportunity to enter an email address and sign up for a newsletter. They also feature similar privacy policies stating that the sites are collecting data from their visitors.

Most of the content is pulled from other conservative outlets, such as the Daily Wire and the Washington Examiner. Writers for external sites are sometimes credited, while other stories appear without bylines, among the key indicators of suspect media identified by the Global Disinformation Index, a Britain-based research group.

Some of the figures operating the sites took steps to conceal their involvement, according to Alethea Group.

One called “Patriot Reserve,” which employs a common tactic for right-wing blogs selling Trump paraphernalia, identifies its chief executive as “Ron Madison.” But the headshot is a stock image, and the website uses the same Wisconsin address listed for the Direct Mailers Group and other websites in the network. The site offers a commemorative Trump coin, which it says typically sells for $127, for $9.

It assures viewers, “This is not a gimmick!”

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Back-to-school laptop guide: Pandemic survival edition

Aug 12. 2020n the spring, Washington Metropolitan High School senior Na’Asia Hawkins, 18, needed a laptop and WiFi in order to take her classes online and graduate. CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys.

By The Washington Post · Geoffrey A. Fowler · NATIONAL, TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION 
Pencils, paper and crayons? No, this year’s most important back-to-school supply is a computer.

After a scramble when covid-19 first shut classrooms in the spring, many school districts have designed this fall’s education around laptops and tablets. That, of course, presumes parents can get the right device, prevent it from breaking, keep the WiFi running and ensure their kids aren’t just goofing off online. And with the economy in the toilet, many families can’t afford a pricey new laptop or broadband connection.

Kaitlin Reilly, 10, works on an assignment for language arts on her iPad in her room. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys.

Maybe the laptop is something your school supplies – or maybe you’ll buy it yourself. Either way, you need a survival plan.

Last year, American schools bought about 30 million laptops and tablets, while parents bought 2.2 million directly, according to industry analyst Futuresource. Even with a push toward free laptop programs, many schools are still asking parents who can afford it to buy equipment themselves. And for some families, getting a new laptop is a rite of passage.

But the pandemic has changed what we need these machines to do. Now laptops need to get online at home, away from free school broadband and professionally managed WiFi networks. Laptop hardware also now needs the horsepower and battery life to run video conferencing and Web browsers for six or more hours.

The good news: You don’t have to spend much more than $300 to get a computer with a good battery and a webcam that can keep on trucking for three or four years. “Across the country, most curriculum has gone on the Web, so you don’t have to invest in that high-end laptop,” said Kenneth J. Thompson, chief information technology officer of the San Antonio Independent School District.

Online learning has its upsides, too. Teachers, in theory, can get data to personalize instruction. Students are also learning tech skills early. “The silver lining is that kids doing this right now are going to be even more prepared for our digital economy,” Vanessa Monterosa, Los Angeles Unified School District program and policy specialist, said.

It’s as much about having the right mindset about screen time as about having the right gear. The goal should be to “help my student learn self-regulation and screen-time management skills – and discover a love of learning on a unique platform,” Common Sense Media parenting editor Caroline Knorr said.

So where do you start? I spoke with teachers, administrators, parent advocates and tech companies to draw up a back-to-school laptop guide for a year when school is the laptop.

– Listen to your school – or ask it these questions. The trouble begins when parents don’t understand what the school has given their student, or what they really want them to buy.

“I always advise parents to go back and ask the school if they have any advice,” said Adam Garry, a former teacher who now works as Dell’s senior director of education strategy. Not only can listening keep you from wasting money, but schools are much more likely to provide free troubleshooting and support on a sanctioned device. That’s a precious gift for parents suddenly serving as home-school IT help desk.

Mind you, a lack of communication isn’t always parents’ fault. Schools in scramble mode sometimes fail to be clear. In a survey earlier this year, Futuresource found that only 35% of schools recommended laptop models or operating systems to parents – and when they do, only half of parents actually take their advice.

Whether you get a device or buy one, make sure you ask: What’s already loaded? How does your child log in? Where are the assignments and class links? What are the rules about what your child can and can’t do on the device? Can you turn on or add more parental controls? And who do you call when something isn’t working?

Common Sense made a handy draft cheat sheet for schools that has even more good questions for parents.

– Talk with your children about their needs – and responsibilities. Is this device just for school, or is it also how your child is going to be in touch with friends and play? When parents buy laptops directly for their children, they spend more than schools do – an average of $520, according to Futuresource – because they want them do more.

Your child might have some strong opinions. A device with a stylus could help them explore an interest in art. If their friends are really interested in Minecraft, they’ll be better off with a Windows laptop. Even something like the ability to set virtual backgrounds on Zoom video calls could be a status symbol or source of stress. (Lots of older laptops don’t have enough horsepower to run these backgrounds – here are Zoom’s requirements.)

Whether it’s on loan from school or a purchase, a laptop is also a responsibility. Consider making a contract with your child about how they’ll protect it from drops, water and other destructive behavior.

Chromebooks, which are laptops that use a version of Google’s popular Web browser, account for the majority of educational laptops. They’re inexpensive because they run online programs that don’t require a fast processor or lots of storage. Schools like them because they’re easy for administrators to set up and control. If your school tells you to buy one, you might consider Dell’s $250 3100 Chromebook education, the $360 HP Chromebook X360 12-inch or splash out on the $570 Asus Chromebook Flip C434.

But I’ll be blunt: I don’t love Chromebooks, because Google is increasingly more interested in harvesting our data than in helping us. In February, New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google for child privacy violations. (Tip: Be sure your kid is using his or her school-supplied address to log in to theirs because Google isn’t allowed to track them as much with that account.)

And you don’t need a Chromebook to run your school’s Google-based educational software. Laptops running Microsoft’s Windows 10 have gotten much, much less expensive. Windows laptops can run Web-based software, as well as more sophisticated apps that have to be stored on the laptop hard drive. The downside is Windows has more of a reputation for security hassles and other troubleshooting problems. (Tip: Make sure you’ve got the built-in Windows Defender Antivirus turned on.)

I recommend focusing on models Microsoft calls out for being optimized for education (available here). Laptop makers give those solid battery life, design them to take drops and even survive bored kids trying to pick out the keys. You might consider the $350 Lenovo 100e 2nd Gen, the $471 Dell Inspiron 15 5593 and, at the high end, the new $980 Dell XPS 13.

“If you’re able to get the education version of Windows 10, that would be best,” advises Microsoft’s education group leader, Jordan Chrysafidis. It has a simplified start menu, has been tuned to disable potential disruptions like the talking Cortana assistant, and pushes software updates to late at night.

– Apple keyboard are fixed now – but Macs are changing soon. In K-12 education, Macs are niche. But they have their advantages: Apple builds devices to last, makes support easy and simplifies syncing messages, photos and other files with an iPhone. Just know you’ll pay hundreds more for the privilege – and Apple only offers its individual educational discounts to teachers and college students. (Hey, Apple, aren’t pretty much all American parents teachers now?)

If your family is in the Mac tribe, Apple also makes life simpler by giving you just three main laptop choices. Most students go for the least expensive, the $1,000 Macbook Air.

The good news is that Apple has recently updated the whole line to replace the “butterfly” style keyboard that caused many people to complain of dust and crumbs killing keys. I’ve been using Apple’s new “magic keyboard” on my own Macbook and am happy to report it feels fine and hasn’t been foiled by my pandemic snacking.

If you’re considering buying a new Mac, just keep in mind that Apple announced this summer it’s going to begin switching to a new kind of processor later this year. That means a new generation of Macbooks is just around the corner that could boast better performance and battery life.

– iPads are fine for the young but still aren’t laptop replacements. Touchscreen-first devices like the iPad are great for young learners. But many school IT managers tell me they shift to Chromebooks or Windows laptops by the time kids move into third grade. That’s when students need to start writing and typing with a keyboard, and the cheapest way to add an Apple-made keyboard to an iPad brings the overall price to $488 (without educational discount).

And while Apple keeps pushing the iPad’s software to be more productive with features like a fully functional version of the Safari browser, it still can’t replace a laptop. I own both an iPad Pro and a Mac laptop, and I grab the Mac when I want to write or edit photos and video, while I use the iPad when I want to read, video chat or watch TV in bed.

The pandemic suddenly made webcams a critical element of educational tech. Most new devices come with them, but they’re not always very good. You can buy an external webcam that plugs into the computer – after being in short supply in the spring, they’re now back at many stores.

One issue that’s easily overlooked: the placement of the webcam. Some laptops put it down near the hinge, forcing your Zoom class to look straight up your nose. Even iPads have cameras in an awkward location on the side when it’s flipped horizontal.

Don’t forget headphones, either. They’re a lifesaver if your household has multiple people learning or working from home during the pandemic. Expensive noise-canceling ones aren’t necessarily worth the money at home – their tech is designed to cut out low-frequency background noise like an airplane hum more than the drone of a little brother.

Some families also opt for a stylus or digital pencil to use with an iPad or two-in-one laptop-tablet device. There’s evidence, Microsoft says, that learning comprehension on math and science improves by more than 28% when notes are handwritten instead of typed. Software is also getting much better about making handwritten notes searchable – of course, depending on how messy your handwriting is.

And there’s one inexpensive upgrade you can try if a new laptop is out of the budget: For less than $100, you can get a 21-inch screen that plugs into the laptop and lets kids sit up straight and focus on the task at hand. It might just be the next best thing to a desk in a classroom.

– Make sure your kids are actually learning something. Distance learning amplifies all the worries parents have about screen time. How much time should children be spending in front of their laptops now? “A lot of parents want to know: Are you doing homework or are you playing games? And they want to be able to manage that,” said Knorr of Common Sense.

Chromebook, Windows and Mac laptops as well as iPads all offer parental controls. But none are foolproof: Kids multitask, and often figure out how to get around restrictions. There’s no sure-fire way, for example, to make sure they only access the educational videos on YouTube.

Another option is the parental controls built into your home WiFi network, where you can restrict access to content and even cut off connection during certain hours. Some Internet providers include these tools free into an app that comes with the service, or you can buy your own WiFi router that includes family controls.

But in the end, software alone isn’t going to ensure a productive school year. Children need to learn the skills to be good digital citizens.

“If we have certain expectations for the kiddos, parents need to be the models,” said Sophia Mendoza, director of the Instructional Technology Initiative in Los Angeles. Her own daughter, she said, recently called her out for using her phone late at night. “These are learning opportunities for families.”