Last March, a Nevada court indicted April Parks, proprietor of A Private Professional Guardian, which had secured court guardianship over four hundred elderly Nevadans, working with crooked doctors and social workers to find the identities of old people who had considerable assets, then using a streamlined court process with no checks and balances to have those people declared to be unable to care for themselves. (more…)

2.45 am… I woke up and looked out of the window. It was a jet-black sky with twinkling stars, spread like diamonds across the universe. There were so many of them. I was wide awake in a few minutes. I walked out to the patio, barefoot, my soles feeling the cold of the tiles and wetness of the dew.

I slipped on my headphones and listened to Tom Petty, walking, sitting, walking some more. I wasn’t searching for specific songs to listen to, just his greatest hits. Listening as a way to pay homage to a great rocker. I was introduced to his music by one of my oldest friends, Tito. He turned 50 earlier this year, much like me last year. I turned 51 last week. We have been roommates twice, survived a handful of heartbreaks and even a move to the suburbs. We now live on the opposite coasts, so to keep in touch we text each other ―sharing music tips and often talking about the great music we come across. Our friendship was cemented by our love for music and Tito’s obsession with MixTapes. Tito and I share a lot of memories together, and while we both lived through tough times, I don’t remember having a sad day when we didn’t talk through things.

Tito is the charter member of a very personal club of mine called “The Circle of Happiness.”

What in god’s names is that, you might ask.

The circle of happiness is a group of friends, family members, coworkers, colleagues, lovers, acquaintances, and those you encounter during the daily business of life. These people are a net positive to my life and add a vital ingredient of happiness to life. Their contribution is not a kiss, a gift, or money. Their contribution is instead a question, a smile, and a few moments. Their contribution is to make me feel — I am better because I have them in my life. There are no metrics of friendship, no length of time associated with it. There are no expectations, no engagement commitments. There are no likes, no tweets, no reminders of fake Facebook anniversaries.

In order to have a circle of happiness, you need to understand what happiness really is. We all have a different interpretation of it. Mine is very simple: a state where I don’t feel hopeless, but instead hopeful. Happiness is knowing that the present is reality and the future is a gift. And most importantly, it is not about negative emotions. Happiness is not a mythical objective, but instead it is about feeling a sense of gratitude. It is not about smiling all the time, but instead it is about not being angry, resentful, spiteful, or jealous.

I am blessed with a great circle — my family, many friends, great co-workers and great people. And the best part is that I don’t need a web service to keep track of this circle. A few of us chat on a daily basis in the Telegram app. We talk about events, discuss news. It is our proverbial chai-shop. Others stay in touch on WhatsApp. Others on iMessage and some are just email and phone friends. Some I see once or twice a year, others every day. Some I have met only a handful of times in my life, others have known me since I was conceived. I can be honest, real and direct with them… whether in real life or in digits via various communication tools. And for sure, we don’t always agree about everything (or in some cases, anything) but they all make me happy and thus make my life better.

A few weeks ago, when returning from Tito’s birthday celebrations while sitting on a cross-country flight, I started looking at Facebook from this lens and realized that I had lost the plot and was living outside this circle of happiness. Here is what I wrote:

“Looking through a wider lens, I am starting to find a subtle change happening in myself. Despite my best efforts, I am starting to see my life in context of life led by others. It is not how I think and who I am, and perhaps a little time off the networks will give me better perspective.”

Facebook is not net additive to life anymore — even though it deems itself a social network and Mark Zuckerberg passionately talks about connecting everyone on the planet, the harsh reality is that it is nothing but a giant advertising network. For a while I thought it was more than that, an answer to my prayers. In a 2007 column, I wrote:

Whether in Parisian cafes, Bombay chai stalls, or Manhattan singles’ bars, humans have an overwhelming need to get together, talk, communicate, and interact. Our genes are coded that way. It’s no surprise that as we rush toward an always-on, ever more connected society, we want to mimic these offline interactions on the Net….What we need is something more intimate, meant for a tight group of friends and family members. It’s not about performance; it’s about connection.

Facebook managed to keep me around for a decade, as I used it to form connections. It became addictive, thanks to algorithms that prayed only to the god of growth and its ultimate goal: subjugation of all human attention to the frivolous flim-flam in between an endless stream of pennies-a-minute advertisements. It is not a circle of happiness; instead it is a dystopian web, where performance is the currency, not real connections.

It has been over two weeks since I took a Facebook vacation. It is becoming more like a sabbatical. I don’t miss the pointless chatter. I don’t miss the news links, the videos and the baby announcements. I miss some of the people, but inevitably find other ways to connect with the ones that are important. I feel bad that I have not gone back to thank everyone who might have wished me well on my birthday. I am still bummed for not replying to people’s messages on Messenger. Some of them will give up, but the important ones will inevitably find other ways to connect with me.

I am, for now, in a cocoon called my circle of happiness.

October 2, 2017

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Games

Ticket to Ride: First Journey

Android Police coverage: Introduce your child to the wonders of board games with Asmodee Digital's release of Ticket to Ride: First Journey

Ticket to Ride: First Journey is a child-friendly version of the popular railway-themed German-style board game.

31 new and notable Android games from the last week (9/27/17 - 10/3/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Just over a year ago, Yahoo admitted that it had been hacked in 2013, and estimated that 500 million accounts had been compromised (the company blamed state-sponsored actors, and federal prosecutors have indicted two Russian spies for ordering the operation). Now the company has admitted that all three billion of its accounts were affected. (more…)

Scuba Diving magazine announced the winners of its underwater photography contest and the results are an awe-inspiring glimpse of another world that exists within our own. Above, Kevin Richter's magnificent photo of an octopus in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia, took first place in the compact camera category. Below: Rodney Bursiel took first prize in the wide angle category for this shot of a whale calf breaching in Tavarua, Fiji; Eduardo Acevedo's image of this ribbon eel in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia won second place for macro photography.

See the rest at Scuba Diving Magazine.

Microsoft has a streaming music service, though you'd be forgiven if you've forgotten about it (or in my case, forgotten about it several times). The relative unpopularity of it has pushed the tech giant to put to rest its Groove Music Pass in favor of Spotify.

Current customers will be able to transition their curated playlists and collections to Spotify — you may even get a free 60-day trial of the premium service for your trouble.

Microsoft's Groove Music Pass is dead in favor of Spotify was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Since late 2016, the Transport for London has been running a pilot scheme, providing wifi to passengers while logging and retaining all the wifi traffic coming in and out of its access points, compiling a massive dossier on every tube-rider who had wifi turned on for their devices, whether or not they ever accessed the wifi service. (more…)

53-year-old Juana Escudero heard that she had died seven years ago. Only she was still alive – obviously it was a different Juana Escuadero. Both lived in Spain and both shared the same birthday. She thought it was funny at first, until she soon realized that the government treated her as a dead person, meaning ordinary things were nearly impossible to do, like seeing a doctor, renewing her driver's license, receiving widow benefits, and anything else that goes through the government.

Escudero is so desperate to reclaim her life that she wants to take a DNA test and dig up her own grave to prove that she is not dead, but it's not going to be easy.

According to Oddity Central:

One of the strangest moments occurred last year, when Escudero called the Malaga City Council to ask about the confusion, only to hear that since the cemetery fee had not been paid, her remains had been removed from the grave and moved to an ossuary.

“That day, we called the Malaga City Council and they told us was that since my mother was buried there and we had not paid the fee, the tomb had been emptied after the legal period and the bones deposited in an ossuary,” Marta, Escudero’s daughter, said. “So what I had to tell them was difficult, because I had my mother in front me and I was talking to her.”

To solve the problem, Juan Escudero has offered to have “her” remains in Malaga tested for DNA, to prove that it’s not her. She has filed a petition towards this, but has yet to receive a response. Last year, when she visited the cemetery in Malaga, officials told her that “they have orders to do nothing about this case”.

When it comes to paying her bills, however, she has miraculously risen from the dead – the banks have never stopped sending her bills for loans, mortgage, and life insurance payments. “On the government’s computers I am dead, but for the banks I am alive and kicking."

Image: Eli Duke

The official party line from Taser -- who make less-lethal electrical weapons as well as a range of police body-cameras and other forensic devices -- is that its weapons don't kill ("no one has died directly from the device’s shock"). Reuters reporters who heard this claim decided it was highly suspect and took action, mining America's court records to find "150 autopsy reports citing Tasers as a cause or contributor to deaths," and that those deaths were disproportionately inflicted on "society’s vulnerable – unarmed, in psychological distress and seeking help" -- all told, they found 1005 deaths in which Tasers were implicated. (more…)

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Apps

Blizzard Battle.net

Android Police coverage: [We're all soldiers now] Blizzard releases Battle.net app for Android

The Battle.net desktop app is Blizzards' answer to Valve's Steam client.

17 new and notable Android apps and live wallpapers from the last week (9/26/17 - 10/2/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Watch how this adorable little girl reacts when she finds out that she's going to have a baby brother. Not what she wanted. I've never seen a face go red so fast! Good thing there were sweet treats on hand.

I'm the sort of person that gets excited for Monday. Not because of work, but because it's when I get my next Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify. I may have a Play Music account, but Spotify's recommendations are on an entirely different level. And in a blog post today, Spotify announced yet another personalized playlist. It's called Your Time Capsule, and the songs in it are based on music from your teens and early twenties.

Spotify’s new ‘Your Time Capsule’ playlist is a nostalgic romp through the music of your youth was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

This short documentary about Korean fashion is on its surface about the many looks cultivated by Korean designers, but it's especially interesting as an analysis of what late-stage capitalism looks like in a homogenous culture. (more…)

Researcher Melanie Barboni studies geology for a living, but as a side gig, she is known as The Hummingbird Whisperer (more…)

The European Commission has a well-deserved reputation for bizarre, destructive, ill-informed copyright plans for the internet, and the latest one is no exception: mandatory copyright filters for any site that allows the public to post material, which will algorithmically determine which words, pictures and videos are lawful to post, untouched by human hands. (more…)

Amazon's hardware lineup occasionally gets a refresh, like with the new Echo Show earlier this year. But today is different. Amazon decided to announce six new products today, including sequels to the incredibly popular Echo speaker.

Amazon Echo 2nd Generation

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The original Amazon Echo was one of the first mainstream smart speakers, and ultimately helped define the entire product category. Since new functionality mostly only required software updates, there wasn't much of a a need for Amazon to release a new model (especially since other companies produced alternative Alexa speakers).

Amazon announces new Echo speakers, Spot alarm clock, 4K Fire TV dongle, and more was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Earlier this month, Google Allo for web added several expressive features found on the mobile apps like Whisper/Shout, as well as stickers, emoji, and GIFs. The latter feature is being revamped today with a better interface and search.

more…

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Games

Spirit of Justice

Android Police coverage: Capcom has ported 'Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Spirit of Justice' to Android, and you can grab it today for $19.99

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Spirit of Justice was recently released on Android by Capcom.

21 new and notable Android games from the last week (9/20/17 - 9/26/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.