PC magazine how to tell youre a tech addict tech companies and their responsibility how to keep your kids tech use in check april 2018

TECH COMPANIES
AND THEIR
RESPONSIBILITY

DIGITAL EDITION

MAY 2018

HOW TO KEEP YOUR
KIDS’ TECH USE
IN CHECK


CONTENTS
MAY 2018

COVER STORY

HOW TO TELL IF
YOU’RE A TECH
ADDICT (AND WHAT
TO DO ABOUT IT)
A guide to defeating the endless scroll.

FEATURES
THE TECH INDUSTRY
RECKONS WITH ITS
RESPONSIBILITY
The ethics of how their products
affect consumers and society.

REVIEWS
CONSUMER
ELECTRONICS
Fitbit Versa
Apple iPad (2018)
Sony a7 III

HARDWARE
Lenovo IdeaPad
720s
Sony a7 III

Raspberry Pi 3
Model B+

SOFTWARE
& APPS
Adobe Illustrator
CC
Malwarebytes
Free

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

Adobe Illustrator CC


WHAT’S NEW NOW
FAST FORWARD

Why Intel’s Diane Bryant Isn’t
Afraid of AI

WHAT IS MAX-Q?
An explainer

HOW VIRTUAL
AVATARS HELP
STROKE PATIENTS
IMPROVE MOTOR
FUNCTION
IT WATCH
Want to Speed Up Your Users’
Internet? Look at Your DNS
Server

TOP GEAR
What We Love Most This Month


COMMENTARY
DAN COSTA
First Word

READER INPUT
TIM BAJARIN
Alexa, Teach Me How to Talk
to You

DOUG NEWCOMB

I’m asking what
would happen to
you—and your
business—if the
whole thing was
taken offline .

Tesla’s Tussle With Feds Over
Model X Accident Is a Fool’s
Errand

JOHN C. DVORAK

BEN DICKSON
4 Reasons Not to Fear Deep
Learning (Yet)

Last Word

TIPS & HOW TOS
TIPS FOR KEEPING
KIDS’ TECH USE IN
CHECK
They can help grownups, too.

HERE’S HOW THE
EXTREMETECH
STAFF STAYS BACKED
UP

And they really know what
they’re doing.

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FIRST WORD
DAN COSTA

hen Rob Marvin pitched me a feature
story on tech addiction, I was skeptical.
There’s been so much coverage of this
topic already, and so much of it has been terrible.
The headlines, the personal anecdotes, the fearmongering about new, poorly understood
technologies; it’s all just a little too perfect for
sensation-seeking news media. Was there
anything original that we could add to this story?

W
Tech
Addiction
Nation

Rob assured me there was. His report in this
month’s PC Magazine Digital Edition proves he
was right.

Our human inability to master the technologies we
have created is not new. Back in 1990, the New
York Times reported:
The proposition that television can be
addictive is proving to be more than a glib
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that for the most frequent viewers, watching
television has many of the marks of a
dependency like alcoholism or other
addictions.
Although “Internet Addiction” was left out of the
latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM-5), “Internet Gaming
Disorder” was listed as a condition for further
study. The symptoms of gaming addiction are well
known to anyone who’s had a child in the last 20


@dancosta

years, and really, everyone who’s picked up a game
controller. Even so, the American Psychiatric
Association’s summary of the disorder is revealing:
The “gamers” play compulsively, to the
exclusion of other interests, and their
persistent and recurrent online activity
UHVXOWVLQFOLQLFDOO\VLJQL¿FDQWLPSDLUPHQWRU
distress. People with this condition endanger
their academic or job functioning because of

the amount of time they spend playing. They
experience symptoms of withdrawal when
kept from gaming.
That was written in 2013. Since then, technology
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to create addictive experiences to be enjoyed with
special hardware at home after work. Now we
carry the hardware with us every day and never
disconnect from a vast network of addictive digital
feedbacks loops. News, texts, alerts, apps,
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook... wait, is that a new
email? There is no quarter.
:KDWXVHGWREHDSUREOHPIRUPLV¿WJDPHUVKDV
infected the whole culture. Apps, websites, and
pretty much all digital interfaces are constantly
being optimized to make the user feel good and
increase usage. The online economy depends on
selling your attention. (Well, and your data, but
one problem at a time.) None of this is accidental.
Trained professionals--designers, UX experts,
psychologists, data scientists--constantly
researching and optimizing for greater usage. They
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human.


Perhaps the more pernicious technology threat is that the addiction process can
be automated. It’s easy to wrap your head around the concept of A/B testing,
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JDPHGHVLJQWKLVNLQGRI$’WHVWLQJLVFDOOHGcolor coding. As NYU marketing
professor and author Adam Alter explains in our story:
Color coding is where you’re trying to work out which of two versions of a
mission works best,” said Alter. “You tag the code associated with one
version of the mission red and the code associated with a different version
yellow. Let’s say you’re wondering whether a quest is more engaging if
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million people. You measure different metrics, like how many people
return to the mission more than once and how long they spend. If you
discover version A works better, you go with the red code and put aside the
yellow. And you keep doing that until you have the tenth, twentieth, or
thirtieth generation of a game.
The entire world is being color-coded.
Is technology addiction real? Are you an addict? Is it a treatable condition? Who
LVSUR¿WLQJIURPWKLV":KDWH[DFWO\FDQ\RXGRDERXWLW"
Step 1 is reading our story.



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READER INPUT
YOUR COMMENTS

Great article! Been feeling the same way about the
data from my Fitbit Ionic I bought last year,
especially the sleep data. The data is neat, but
how does it really help me?
—ChrisAN82

Fitness
Trackers
Changed
My Life
:HDUDEOHVDQDO\VW
Victoria Song’s
SHUVRQDO¿WQHVV
tracker story
resonated with (most)
readers.

Ms. Song: loved your article! Mainly, I admire
your courage as you use yourself as the example
RIVRPHRQH¿QGLQJVRPHWKLQJXVHIXOLQ¿WQHVV
trackers. At the beginning, I wondered what thing
all those trackers would reveal that you didn’t
know. Then you described polycystic ovary
syndrome, and the light bulb went on. Of course!
Metrics from the tracker revealed that anomalous
weight gain instead of loss couldn’t be the result
of anything you did intentionally—it had to be
something else.
—Ted Thomas

These trackers are BS. I use a heart rate monitor
with a strap for my running, biking, and rowing.
That’s all you need to know where your zone is.
—OrangeDeek

I enjoyed this article, hopefully not only because
of the empathy I felt with another human trying
to make the best of it in this life. I’ve never used
one of these devices, as my willpower seems to
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year from now? I may have need in the future for


something of this sort. If you can get to a point in your life where your normal
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EHQH¿WV+RZHYHUPHDQV\RXPDQDJHWKLVLVXSWRHDFKRIXVRIFRXUVHEXWVLQFHOLIH
has a nasty habit of throwing curve balls, motivation and adaptability are key. It’s
amazing how easy it is to distill this life philosophy down to several sentences; trying
to live it is the real challenge. Strength to you.
—Dave Brumley

Thanks for the insights. You’re not alone, as I know a few people wearing at least two
different devices, me included. Sorry you had to go through that movie scare, bad
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trackers help, because I can clearly see weeks that are great and not so great. If I
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hour walk or hop on the bike. Looking forward to future tech of wearables.
—TrailMixFan

The last FitBit I bought would record anywhere from 400 to 1000 steps on my drive

to work. Kind of skewed the amount calories I was burning per day.
—The Founder

Ask us a
question!

?

Have a question about a story in
PC Magazine, one of the products we
cover, or how to better use a tech
product you own? Email us at
and we’ll
respond to your question here.
Questions may be edited slightly for
content and clarity.

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WHAT’S NEW NOW
FAST FORWARD

Fast Forward: Why Intel’s Diane
Bryant Isn’t Afraid of AI

Fast Forward is a series of conversations with tech leaders hosted by Dan
Costa, PCMag’s Editor-in-Chief. Diane Bryant is EVP and General Manager of
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Dan Costa: Most people think data centers are kind of boring, but you
can do incredible things with them. It’s also the most profitable
division inside of Intel. People think of Intel as a chip company, but the
data center business has exploded in recent years, and part of that is
driving this AI revolution.


Diane Bryant: 5LJKW$EVROXWHO\7KHDUWL¿FLDO

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RII
Artificial intelligence can be difficult to define.
How do you define it?

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There’s a processing component to it, and it’s also
that you need the data sets to work with.

The data
center
business has
exploded in
recent years,
and part of
that is driving
this AI
revolution.


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Intel plays in this solution set in multiple places.

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In the old days, we were the PC Magazine.

There you go.
Now we’re much more.

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revenue stream.
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Then you
need the
algorithms,
those
predictive
algorithms,
which is a
rapidly
evolving space.


Every business is becoming a technology business. You may be a
retailer, but you need to not just use these tools, but use them to
innovate.

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In terms of AI, it’s early days in a lot of ways, but there are AI systems
available today. Can you just describe some of the best examples?

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It seems like a lot of the promise of AI is to break through a lot of those
constraints in all sorts of different industries.

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It’s really something that’s happening globally, too. In the US, we have a
certain set of problems, certain sets of issues, but when you start to
scale this technology out globally, that’s where it really starts to make
a difference.

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See a video of the full interview and many more at pcmag.com/podcasts/fastforward.

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WHAT’S NEW NOW
NEWS

What is Nvidia Max-Q?
BY MATTHEW BUZZI

raditionally, gaming laptops have been hulking machines with big
screens and short battery lives. They were meant to stay put on a desk.
The cooling systems required to run the discrete graphics cards have
typically makes standard gaming laptops large and heavy.

T

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MAX-Q IN ACTION
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variance among laptops.


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the laptop runs coolly and quietly, which is impressive.
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Yes it’s thin, but without any special design considerations, so it runs noticeably
hot.
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especially long.
POWER VERSUS PORTABILITY
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WHAT’S NEW NOW
NEWS STORY

How Virtual Avatars Help Stroke
Patients Improve Motor Function
BY S.C. STUART

‘m hooked up to a 16-channel brain machine interface with 12 channels of
EEG on my head and ears and four channels of electromyography (EMG) on
my arms. An Oculus Rift VR headset occludes my vision. Two inertial
measurement units (IMU) are stuck to my wrists and forearms, tracking the
orientation of my arms, while the EMG monitors my electrical impulses and
peripheral nerve activity.

I

Dr. Sook-Lei Liew, Director of USC’s Neural Plasticity and Neurorehabilitation
Laboratory, and Julia Anglin, Research Lab Supervisor and Technician, wait to
record my baseline activity and observe a monitor with a representation of my
real arm and a virtual limb. I see the same image from inside the Rift.
“Ready?” asks Dr. Liew. “Don’t move—or think.”


I stay still, close my eyes, and let my mind go blank.
Anglin records my baseline activity, allowing the brainmachine interface to take signals from the EEG and
EMG, alongside the IMU, and use that data to inform
an algorithm that drives the virtual avatar hand.
“Now just think about moving your arm to the avatar’s
position,” says Dr. Liew.
I don’t move a muscle, but I think about movement
while I’m looking at the two arms on the screen.
Suddenly, my virtual arm moves toward the avatar
appendage inside the VR world.

I don’t move
a muscle, but
I think about
movement
while I’m
looking at
the two arms
on the
screen.

Something happened just because I thought about it!
I’ve read tons of data on how this works, even seen

other people do it, especially inside gaming
environments, but it’s something else to experience it
for yourself.
“Very weird isn’t it?” says David Karchem, one of Dr.
Liew’s trial patients. Karchem suffered a stroke while
driving his car eight years ago, and he’s shown
remarkable recovery using her system.

VR rehab at USC


VIRTUAL THERAPY
The Neural Plasticity and
Neurorehabilitation
Laboratory’s missions is “to
enhance neural plasticity in
a wide population of
individuals in order to
improve their quality of life
and engagement in
meaningful activities.”
(Photo: Nate Jensen) ne ni

“My stroke came out of the blue, and it was terrifying, because I suddenly
couldn’t function. I managed to get my car through an intersection and call the
paramedics. I don’t know how,” Karchem says.
He gets around with a walking stick today and has relatively normal function on
the right side of his body. But his left side is clearly damaged from the stroke.
While talking, he unwraps surgical bandages and a splint from his left hand,
crooked into his chest, to show Dr. Liew the progress since his last VR session.

As a former software engineer, Karchem isn’t fazed by using advanced
technology to aid the clinical process. “I quickly learned, in fact, that the more
intellectual and physical stimulation you get, the faster you can recover as the
EUDLQVWDUWVWR¿UH,¶PVRPHWKLQJRIDODEUDWQRZDQG,ORYHLW´KHVD\V
REINVENT YOURSELF
Karchem is participating in Dr. Liew’s REINVENT (Rehabilitation Environment
using the Integration of Neuromuscular-based Virtual Enhancements for
Neural Training) project, funded by the American Heart Association, under a
National Innovative Research Grant. It’s designed to help patients who have
suffered strokes reconnect their brains to their bodies.
VR rehab at USC (Photo: Nate Jensen)”My PhD in Occupational Science, with a
concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience, focused on how experience changes
brain networks,” explains Dr. Liew. “I continued this work as a Postdoctoral
Fellow at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the
National Institutes of Health, before joining USC, in my current role, in 2015.


“Our main goal here is to enhance neural plasticity or
neural recovery in individuals using noninvasive brain
stimulation, brain-computer interfaces, and novel
learning paradigms to improve patients’ quality of life
and engagement in meaningful activities,” she says.
Here’s the science bit: The human putative mirror
neuron system (MNS) is a key motor network in the
brain that’s active both when you perform an action,
like moving your arm, and when you simply watch
someone else—like a virtual avatar—perform that same
action. Dr. Liew hypothesizes that for stroke patients
who can’t move their arm, simply watching a virtual
avatar that moves in response to their brain commands

will activate the MNS and retrain damaged or
neighboring motor regions of the brain to take over the
role of motor performance. This should lead to
improved motor function.
“In previous occupational therapy sessions, we found
many people with severe strokes got frustrated because
they didn’t know if they were activating the right neural
networks when we asked them to ‘think about moving’
while we physically helped them to do so,” Dr. Liew
says. “If they can’t move at all, even if the right
neurological signals are happening, they have no
biological feedback to reinforce the learning and help
them continue the physical therapy to recover.”
For many people, the knowledge that there’s “intent
before movement”—in that the brain has to “think”
about moving before the body will do so, is news. We
also contain a “body map” inside our heads that predicts
our spacetime presence in the world (so we don’t bash
into things all the time and know when something is
wrong). Both of these brain-body elements face massive
disruption after a stroke. The brain literally doesn’t
know how to help the body move.

As a former
software
engineer,
Karchem isn’t
fazed by using
advanced
technology to

aid the clinical
process.


FROM THE CONFERENCE HALL TO THE LAB
What Dr. Liew’s VR platform has done is show patients
how this causal link works and aid speedier and less
frustrating recovery in real life. She got the idea while
geeking out in Northern California one day.
“I went to the Experiential Technology Conference in
San Francisco in 2015 and saw demos of intersections
of neuroscience and technology, including EEG-based
experiments, wearables, and so on. I could see the
potential to help our clinical population by building a
sensory-visual motor contingency between your own
body and an avatar that you’re told is ‘you,’ which
provides rewarding sensory feedback to reestablish
brain-body signals.
“Inside VR, you start to map the two together; it’s
astonishing. It becomes an automatic process. We have
seen that people who have had a stroke are able to
‘embody’ an avatar that does move, even though their
own body, right now, cannot,” she says.
Dr. Liew’s system is somewhat hacked together, in the
best possible Maker Movement style; she built what
GLGQ¶WH[LVWDQGPRGL¿HGZKDWGLGWRKHUUHTXLUHPHQWV

We have seen
that people who
have had a

stroke are able
to ‘embody’ an
avatar that does
move, even
though their
own cannot.


“We wanted to keep costs low and build a working device that patients could
actually afford to buy. We use Oculus for the [head-mounted display]. Then,
while most EEG systems are $10,000 or more, we use an OpenBCI system to
build our own, with EMG, for under $1,000.
“We needed an EEG cap, but most EEG manufacturers wanted to charge us
$200 or more. So, we decided to hack the rest of the system together, ordering a
swim cap from Amazon, taking a mallet, and bashing holes in it to match up
where the 12 positions on the head electrodes needed to be placed (within the
10-10 international EEG system). We also 3D print the EEG clips and IMU
holders here at the lab.
“For the EMG, we use off-the-shelf disposable sensors. This allows us to track
the electromyography, if they do have trace muscular activity. In terms of the
software platform, we coded custom elements in C# from Microsoft and
implemented them in the Unity3D game engine.”
Dr. Liew is very keen to bridge the gap between academia and the tech industry;
she just submitted a new academic paper with the latest successful trial results
from her work for publication. Last year, she spoke at SXSW 2017 about how
VR affects the brain and debuted REINVENT at the conference’s VR Film
Festival. It received a “Special Jury Recognition for Innovative Use of Virtual
Reality in the Field of Health.”
Going forward, Dr. Liew would like to bring her research to a wider audience: “I
feel the future of brain-computer interfaces splits into adaptive, as with

implanted electrodes, and rehabilitative, which is what we work on. What we
hope to do with REINVENT is allow patients to use our system to re-train their
neural pathways, [so they] eventually won’t need it, as they’ll have recovered.
“We’re talking now about a commercial spinoff potential. We’re able to license
the technology right now, but, as researchers, our focus, for the moment, is in
IXUWKHULQJWKLV¿HOGDQGGHOLYHULQJPRUHWULDOUHVXOWVLQSXEOLVKHGSHHUUHYLHZHG
papers. Once we have enough data, we can use machine learning to tailor the
system precisely for each patient and share our results around the world.”

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